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

The more you try to please a controlling person, the worse your life will get. Highly controlling people cannot be satisfied because people around them will never be able to do enough to meet their criteria. Even when you meet it, there'll be more you need to give. If you're dealing with a controlling person, this might be the episode for you.

Romantic relationships can create some of the most complex emotional challenges in your life. From heartful to heartache, from elated to deflated, relationships bring us through a roller coaster of emotions until we are either fulfilled or completely drained. It doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes the right tools and the right mindset can create relationships that don't have to be so difficult. In fact, they can be wonderful when you know how to deal with the challenges that show up.

It's a challenge to stay present for someone who is so down and out. Sometimes you go into your own "stuff" trying to help them with theirs. It's the curse of many highly sensitive people, and certainly difficult for almost any empathetic person. But there are ways to do this, and sometimes it's necessary if the person you are there for just can't get out of their upset.

We can create our own dysfunction but be so jaded by those around us that we can't think clearly enough to stop toxic or hurtful behavior. There's a time when you have to get away from other people so that the fog can lift and you can think clearly. It is during those times when a lot of healing can take place.

Many unresolved emotions sit outside the box of current thinking. Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” When you aren't getting the results you want today, or you find yourself easily triggered by certain events or people, you may be carrying around old baggage that perhaps requires a level of thinking just outside the box. If you don't want to go outside that box, it could be why you're stuck.

When someone you care about leaves or dies, there is a space inside you where they used to be. Your identity was wrapped up with them. They were a part of you. And because of that, when they're gone, you can feel lost. You can feel lonely within even when you're around others. It's important to start filling that space with something that gives you meaning and purpose.

Where should you start when it comes to healing old stuff from the past? Should you do a deep dive into your childhood, bringing up all kinds of memories and traumas that you may or may not have repeated to therapists over and over again? Or should you talk about how it bothers you today and see if someone can help you gain a new perspective? What about skipping over the trauma and just looking at what behavior came out of it? There's a path you can take to reverse old emotional triggers just by doing something different to get a different result. If it sounds too easy, then you definitely need to listen to this episode.

There's a cause and effect to patterns of behavior that, if you don't recognize the relationship of those behaviors to the results you're getting, you may be creating results that you don't want. However, when you find out just what you're doing that might be causing you to sabotage your own happiness, you might be able to turn things around.

When the feelings of inadequacy overcome you, do you let them linger in the background? Do you repress them so that they come out in emotionally destructive ways later? Inadequacy usually has a source. We'll talk about that and a lot more in this packed episode.

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.