The Overwhelmed Brain | Stress | Anxiety | Relationship | Critical Thinking | Emotional Intelligence | Emotional Abuse

A single thought can change everything. Your perception relies on your mindset which relies on your thoughts. This is a multi-faceted episode covering three different topics but reminding you of the importance of self-respect, creating access to inner resources, and how being around the wrong people can take away both.

Most people aren't taught emotional intelligence in their upbringing. And because of that, there are often lingering negative emotions hanging around inside us that might need to be addressed if we're going to experience a life without the burden of anxiety, depression, and emotional triggers. Getting out of anxiety and depression are often not easy tasks, but there is an angle I take today that might give you a good start.

Sometimes you have no idea why someone did something that hurt or affected you somehow, and you just have to know the reason. You may never find out because they won't share that reason. I call this an open loop. It's how we become obsessed with certain thoughts that we can't get closure for. When this happens, life can seem to stop, and anxiety and depression have a higher chance of starting. It's time to close the door on old thought patterns that only do us harm.

Part 2 of a two-part episode. Personal power, or empowerment, has a formula. That formula can lead to a much more enjoyable and fulfilling life. Knowing the formula is the first step but following it is an entirely different animal. In part two, I add more principles, or "commandments", to help you improve your life. 

Personal power, or empowerment, has a formula. That formula can lead to a much more enjoyable and fulfilling life. Knowing the formula is the first step but following it is an entirely different animal. Let's talk about applying these principles, or "commandments", to your life. 

About 90% of the people that reach out to me have a question about their romantic relationship. That makes sense because relationships can be complex and tricky to navigate. In this episode, I tackle four relationship questions and share some of the lessons I've learned over the years in my own life.   For more guidance on difficult relationships, head over to

Whether it's the jerk at work or that one person in your family that just doesn't like you, rude and intimidating people can be found in any corner of the world (and under many rocks). In this episode, I share seven suggestions that will help you counter those behaviors and perhaps even make some of these people start respecting you again.

Getting comfortable in your own skin is more than developing confidence and facing the fear and doing it anyway. Confidence is one component. There is also self-worth, self-esteem, self-compassion, and self-love that needs to occur so that even if the most hurtful person tries to criticize you or put you down, you will know yourself so well that it will be impossible to believe what they are saying about you. To stop self-sabotage, check out the workbook here:

Passive-aggressive people have a knack for making you feel bad without you even realizing they're making you feel bad. Their covert methods are designed to poke at your emotions like tiny emotional daggers. If you want to thwart their often hurtful behavior, it's vital to take them out of ambiguity and into the details. This might be the scariest episode ever for the passive-aggressive person in your life.

Your sexual history is yours, but some people like to make it a big deal and cause you to feel guilt or shame for things you did long ago. Whether you regret what you did in the past shouldn't make a difference because it's your past and no one else's. Other people need to keep their eyes off of your rearview mirror and put their focus on the road right in front of them.

If you gave yourself a +1 for every empowered decision you made and a -1 for decisions made that avoided consequences, would you be abundant in personal power or in deficit?   Every decision you make and every action you take every day either adds to your power or depletes it. It's important to be conscious of this as those 1's can add up quickly! You just want to make sure you're going in the right direction more often than not.

It's one thing to be afraid to fall off your bike. It's another to never consider riding one just in case you fall. The fear of failing can be imagined as so traumatic and painful to some that they literally do nothing instead. As you know, doing nothing leaves you in a rut. It is the fastest way to go nowhere. Maybe it's time to learn to redefine failure and learn what success actually feels like.

If you want a toxic person to change, it will probably never happen. However, there is something you can do to change the course of the relationship that may actually cause them to act differently. Sometimes you gotta make rules that guide toxic people to healthier behavior.

When you have emotional reactions that you don't want to have toward someone you care about, you probably try to control yourself but fail. Because of that, the pattern repeats itself over and over again until you heal from some past event or shift your perception so much that what used to bother you simply disappears. That shift is possible.

Do you form authentic relationships by being the real you, or do you only show people what you believe they want to see? What are the risks of showing up as the real you? It may be worth taking a risk to find that out.

If you make the right decisions ahead of time, you can prevent overwhelm from being a normal part of life. It's a matter of making decisions that are in alignment with who you are at the deepest level. When you don't, anything goes.

You can be around people that mistreat you, call you names, and are just downright nasty, and you could still be responsible for your own suffering because of how they show up in your life. It's vital you know the role you play and if you have a choice other than the one you're making in certain situations otherwise you could find yourself in a whirlwind of hurt that might be completely avoidable.

We bring our insecurities with us everywhere we go. To work, to appointments, to our relationship, and everywhere else that might bring a sense of fear into our lives. It's important to address what you are insecure about so it doesn't become a challenge that you have to repeat over and over again. It's not required that you overcome your insecurities, but it sure makes life easier.

Some people might say you overreact and sometimes you agree with them but can't figure out how to stop doing it. If you find yourself reacting as if you were in fight or flight, it's time to get a grip on your emotional triggers and change the patterns that create those reactions in the first place.

Empowerment means having choices and some level of control over the results you get in your life. Disempowerment, as you know, is quite the opposite. In my book, , I take you along the path from disempowered to empowered. In this episode, I summarize the path so that you can get a good start.