The Brain Dump

Everyone told you sodium was the enemy. Your doctor said watch your salt. Every nutrition label flags it like a warning sign. The entire public health conversation has been one long message: too much will kill you. Nobody told you what happens when you don't have enough. Sandy's sodium came in at eight on her HTMA. The optimal range is around twenty-five. She drinks at least sixty ounces...

You were told to take your calcium. Drink your milk. Protect your bones. What nobody told you is that calcium without its cofactors is calcium without direction. It goes where it goes. And where it goes is not always where you need it — or where you want it. This episode is the calcium conversation that the drink your milk messaging left out for decades. What This Episode Holds What Sandy's o...

Welcome to the Mineral Files — a new series where Sandy goes through the minerals on a hair tissue mineral analysis one by one, explaining what they do in the body, what it looks like when they're out of range, how they connect to mental health, and where to get more of them. She is starting with magnesium. And she is starting with a mistake she made herself. When Sandy's own HTMA result...

This week Sandy made a CPS report. In the process, she discovered that a previous report had already been made by someone else — and nothing had happened. Not because anyone was malicious. Not because nobody cared. Because somewhere between two agencies that were supposed to be communicating, the ball sat on the floor and nobody owned the gap. That same week, a trial in Massachusetts has the menta...

Sandy knew something was wrong before she said it. She reached for a word — a simple, familiar noun — and what came out instead was a description. She called the Navy "the army that's on the ocean." It wasn't the first time. Words were slipping. Her thinking felt foggy and slow and unreliable in a way it never had before. She was developing a low-grade paranoia she couldn'...

Imagine being born in a room with no electricity and becoming the light that no one wanted extinguished. Dolly Parton died on August 25th, 2026, at 80 years old. And in a country that can barely agree on the weather, virtually everyone stopped and grieved her the same way at the same time. This episode is Sandy's honest reflection on what that reveals — about Dolly, about us, and about what w...

Before Sandy was a therapist, she spent 12 years in pharmaceutical research. And it was there — not in graduate school, not in a textbook — that she first witnessed the most powerful healing mechanism she has ever encountered. Not the drug. The relationship. What This Episode Holds How Sandy ended up in pharmaceutical research and what she witnessed there that she has never been able to unlearn Wh...

A little girl decided on her own — in her own time — that she felt safe enough to stay the night. No pressure. No nudging. Just a small, quiet, completely unscheduled moment of genuine connection. Sandy calls that Vitamin J. Vitamin Joy. And this episode is about what burnout actually steals from you — not just your energy, your productivity, or your clinical presence. Your joy. And more specifica...

There is a man Sandy knows peripherally who has been to counselor after counselor. In person, telehealth, retreats, multiple modalities, multiple clinicians, multiple genuine attempts to shift something that keeps repeating in his life. And nothing is moving. Not because he's resistant. Not because he isn't trying. He shows up. He does the work. He has more insight into his own patterns...

This week Sandy received her SEP — her somatic experiencing practitioner certification. Four years of training. Hundreds of hours of consultation. Personal work that goes places you don't always expect it to go. She is pausing to name it because she thinks we don't do that enough. We achieve things and move right past them toward the next thing. She earned this. And it matters. And then,...

This is not the clean version. This is not the Instagram version where someone has a hard week and comes out the other side with a beautiful lesson and a five-step framework wrapped up in a bow. This is Sandy recording in the middle of it. Still tired. Still not fully back. Still going. On Monday night, Sandy and her husband spent the night at the doggy emergency room with their dog Rudy. They did...

Get your HTMA testing done with Sandy: https://sandyboone.thrivecart.com/htma-testing/ Sandy has spent a lot of episodes telling you why. Why you're burned out. Why insight isn't enough. Why you can't think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. This episode is the how. No theory for the sake of theory. No 14-step protocol you'll abandon by Thursday. Just the tools Sand...

Sandy has been reading. Specifically, she has been reading Matt Hussey at The Brink — two pieces called Sick for Profit: How Wellness Podcasting Sells the Cure It Can't Afford to Give You and Griftonomics: How Wellness Became the Perfect Con and Then Got Elected. Her honest reaction after reading both? He's not wrong. And he's painting with too broad a brush. And when that brush swe...

Sandy left corporate America to build something different. Something meaningful. Something that reflected who she actually was. Something that felt like freedom after years of bureaucracy and grind. And then, without ever deciding to, she rebuilt corporate America inside her own practice — with her own hands. This episode is the honest retrospective she wishes someone had given her before she star...

There's a quote hanging in Sandy's therapist's office. Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. She has read it a hundred times. Lately, she keeps landing on the same word — not destiny, not hab...

Have you ever felt exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix? You're eating reasonably well. You're resting. You're managing your stress as best you can. And you still wake up tired. Still drag through your days. Still feel like your body is working against you instead of with you. If that's you, Sandy has something to share that changed the way she understands her own hea...

Sandy was recently asked to speak on a workman's compensation panel about somatic experiencing — and she is bringing that same depth of expertise directly to this episode. If you have ever wondered what somatic experiencing actually is, how it differs from talk therapy, or why chronic pain so often has a nervous system story underneath it, this is the most comprehensive answer Sandy has given...

Do you know how much control your insurance panels actually have over your practice? Not your clinical decisions. Not your treatment approach. Your business — your rates, your caseload, your credentialing data, your evenings lost to prior authorizations and claim denials. The reimbursements that haven't kept up with inflation in years. Most therapists don't know the full picture until th...

What if your nervous system isn't fragile? What if you are not too sensitive — you are just living in a time where the input never stops? The world is loud right now. War, politics, climate, economic strain, cultural fragmentation — and that is before we even get to what is happening in our personal lives. So when someone tells you to just regulate your nervous system, it can feel almost insu...

My father came to my son's graduation. I didn't call him after. And I never heard from him again. That is not a dramatic story. There was no explosion, no ultimatum, no final conversation. There was just a door I quietly stopped holding open. And the silence that followed told me everything I needed to know. This episode is about that. And it is about so much more than that. What This Ep...

This is not a therapist-bashing episode. Sandy is a therapist. She cares deeply about this field. Which is exactly why she is saying something. Because when patterns get passed down as "this is just how it's done" without anyone questioning them, nothing changes. And change — in the therapy room and in the field itself — is exactly what we are here for. This one is an invitation, no...

Sandy was born screaming. Her mother looked across the delivery room and said — she has your mother's temper. She wasn't wrong about what she saw. She just didn't have the right word for it yet. None of us did. This episode is about what that rage actually was, where it came from, what it cost the women who came before Sandy, and what she finally learned to do with it. What This Epi...

When was the last time you felt truly seen? Not complimented. Not heard in the surface-level way where someone nods while thinking about what they want to say next. Seen — the way that doesn't require you to explain yourself, earn it, or make yourself smaller to fit into what someone else can hold. If you had to think about it for a while, this episode is for you. This one goes some places Sa...

Nobody told you it would feel this invisible. You went into this work because it mattered. And it still does. But somewhere between the hard cases, the underfunded systems, and the wins that close quietly behind a door — it gets heavy in ways that are difficult to name and even harder to refill from. This episode is for that. What This Episode Holds Why mental health only enters the national conve...

If you've ever said "I'm just an overthinker" like it's a personality trait you were born with — this episode is going to reframe everything. Sandy Boone breaks down what's actually happening when your brain won't stop replaying conversations, analyzing decisions, and running through every possible scenario. Spoiler: it's not a flaw. It's a strategy. An...