Flip Your Mindset

Have you ever felt completely exhausted from trying to be the person everyone else expects you to be? Not because you are doing anything wrong, but because you carry around a lifetime of expectations, obligations, and invisible rules about who you think you are supposed to be. This week, I am joined by Pam Brown, a professional certified coach and the author of Build a Life That is Becoming Should...

For most of my life, if you’d asked me whether I had trauma, I would have said no. Without hesitation. At 30, no. At 40, no. Honestly, even at 48, probably no. What I would have told you instead is that I had anxiety. Generalized anxiety disorder, to be exact, diagnosed after my first nervous breakdown at 30. For years, that diagnosis became the lens I saw myself through. And if anxiety was the pr...

What if it’s not anxiety? After twelve weeks of back-to-back loss, I realized the tight chest, the daily tears, and the constant overwhelm I felt weren’t anxiety at all. They were something I almost never hear anyone name: a nervous system carrying more than it could hold. In this episode, I challenge the word “anxiety” and the habit we have of dumping grief, exhaustion, overwhelm, and stress into...

Welcome back to Flip Your Mindset. Have you ever asked yourself if everything you built was not really about ambition, but about survival? Today I sit down with Lena Fein to discuss exactly that. Lena is the author of “Shattering the Mirror,” a memoir about confronting a traumatic childhood. In this episode, Lena shares her story of being raised by a mother who used power and control to parent. We...

I almost didn’t write this. I debated it in the shower, while I was getting dressed, the whole morning. But there’s so much going on in my personal life right now, and I’ve always believed these real experiences can be teaching moments. So here we are. Between April 1 and May 23, life piled on and up. Not one hard thing. Not one stressful moment. Multiple emotionally significant experiences stacke...

Some conversations stay with you long after you stop recording. My conversation with Junie Moon was one of them. If you’ve ever smiled on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside, this episode is for you. Junie spent 20 years in a marriage where she walked on eggshells, managing everyone’s moods, micromanaging every detail, making herself smaller so she wouldn’t rock the boat. From th...

For a really, really long time, I thought anxiety meant something was wrong with me. I thought I was broken, that I had generalized anxiety disorder, and that I was too sensitive, emotional, or tightly wound. But looking back now through a nervous system lens, I see something very differently. I see adaptation, overwhelm, and protective layers. To understand this, I want to share a story about a v...

For years, one phrase has shaped the way millions of people understand trauma: “The Body Keeps the Score.” It became more than the title of a bestselling book. It became a framework. A movement. A language people used to finally explain why anxiety, hypervigilance, burnout, chronic stress, emotional overwhelm, and even physical symptoms felt so deeply connected. But recently, a neuroscience paper...

Welcome back to the Flip Your Mindset Substack. We are thrilled to bring you another insightful conversation. Today, Dr. Bethany Bilodeau is back with us. While our previous episode explored childhood diagnoses like ADHD and ODD , today we are focusing strictly on the challenging behaviors you are dealing with inside your home. About the Guest: Dr. Bethany Bilodeau Dr. Bethany Bilodeau is a leadin...

What if you could train your brain to find calm after living in a constant state of high alert? This week on the podcast, I sat down with Dolly Regier, an expert in neurofeedback and the founder of Balanced Brains + Bodies. Dolly brings a wealth of knowledge with her Master of Education in Neuroscience and Trauma, but she also brings her deeply personal experience as both an adoptee and an adoptiv...

Today’s conversation is not a standard discussion about narcissism. It is not a simple checklist of traits , nor is it a basic “five signs you are dealing with a narcissist” type of overview. In our latest episode, I sit down with Kimberly Weeks to discuss a deeply uncomfortable but incredibly necessary new documentary called The Narcissist’s Playbook . Directed by Mark Vicente, who spent over a d...

We see the statistics on the news constantly, but we rarely hear about the families left to pick up the pieces. Today on Flip Your Mindset , we are having a conversation that society often tries to avoid. It is a heavy topic, but it is an incredibly necessary one. We are talking about the hidden, long-term trauma of gun violence and how it physically alters our bodies and our communities. I sat do...

Have you ever noticed the same negative thoughts showing up again and again? These thoughts are automatic and usually not very kind. You might have an active inner critic, which I like to call the itty bitty shitty committee. I recently recorded a solo podcast episode about this exact topic. My amazing podcast manager, Starlin Santos Cruz, encouraged me to start sharing more of the insights I usua...

Welcome back to the Flip Your Mindset Substack! I recently sat down for a raw, honest conversation with Dr. Bethany Bilodeau, an expert in human behavior. I actually found Bethany scrolling on social media because she was speaking the exact same language I use with my clients. I had been researching literature to help the parents I work with, and everything she was saying aligned perfectly with wh...

Have you ever felt emotionally exhausted without being able to point to a clear reason why? Or have you ever reacted strongly to something and wondered, “why did that hit me so hard?” Have you ever noticed that certain patterns keep repeating, even though you have worked so hard to break them? If any of those questions landed for you, I want to introduce a metaphor that sits at the very heart of m...

When a child receives an autism diagnosis, parents are often met with a wall of clinical logic and a list of things that their child supposedly cannot do. You walk out of the doctor’s office feeling like the floor just dropped out from under you, completely overwhelmed by the lack of clear, actionable guidance. But what if the mainstream narrative is missing a massive piece of the puzzle? In a rec...

Welcome back to my thoughts, straight from the Flip Your Mindset podcast. Today, I really want to talk about anxiety, and I want to give you a reframe. Let me start with something that might sound a little surprising: anxiety is actually not your biggest problem. I know that might feel really hard to believe, especially if it has been running your life, stealing your sleep, and making everything f...

Have you ever asked yourself why you still struggle with anxiety even though you know exactly where it comes from? Many people spend years in therapy reading books and listening to podcasts. They can explain their patterns perfectly. Yet, their bodies do not cooperate, and the panic remains. If this sounds familiar, you are not broken, and you have not failed at healing. The Gap Between Knowing an...

The Hidden Trauma of Transracial Adoption Welcome back to Flip Your Mindset. Today I am sharing a deeply moving conversation with Eisner-nominated comic creator Sarah Myer. Sarah is the author and illustrator of the graphic memoir “Monstrous, a Transracial Adoption Story”. We connected after Sarah reached out to me on Instagram regarding a previous episode I recorded about adoption. I wanted to br...

Welcome to another solo episode of the Flip Your Mindset podcast. Before we explore today’s topic, I want to share a big goal of mine. I am putting it out to the universe to host my own radio show in 2026, hopefully on XM radio. It is a lifelong dream to talk with other experts in the trauma space about the struggles we all face. But today, we are focusing entirely on the idea of rest. The Problem...

You are doing all the “right” things. You go to therapy. You drink the green juice. You journal. You go on your mental health walks. On paper, your life looks stable maybe even successful. But internally? You still feel disconnected, anxious, and stuck. In this week’s episode of Flip Your Mindset , I sat down with Alyssa Booth , a licensed therapist and empowerment coach, to discuss a phenomenon s...

Why Your Body Doesn’t Believe You’re Safe Have you ever felt like you could logically list all the reasons why you should be fine, yet your body is telling a completely different story? Maybe it is a tightness in your chest, a clenched jaw, or a stomach that never quite feels settled. This disconnect between what you know and what you feel is one of the most misunderstood aspects of trauma. When I...

Have you ever hesitated to correct someone who mispronounced your name? For today’s guest, Hui Ting Kok, allowing people to call her “Hui” instead of her full name, “Hui Ting,” was a way to avoid being seen as difficult. It was a survival strategy to ensure she wasn’t a burden. This small example speaks volumes about the internal contracts we make to feel safe, especially within immigrant families...

If someone looked at your life from the outside, what would they see? For many of us, they would see success. They would see someone who is capable, self-sufficient, and “getting a lot of s**t done”. They might see a successful career, a comfortable home, and a strong network of friends. But if they could look inside, the picture might be radically different. In the first solo episode of 2026, I w...

In the latest episode of Flip Your Mindset , we sat down with author Ted Neal to discuss his two powerful memoirs, Two Years of Wonder and 20 Years of Unraveling . While his first book touches on the soulful yet challenging experience of working in a Kenyan orphanage in the early 2000s, his second book exposes a much darker reality: the systemic abuse that occurred there and the fight to bring it...