Flip Your Mindset

Have you ever felt like your body was fighting against you? Maybe it is a rash that won’t go away, chronic fatigue that sleep cannot fix, or joint pain that doctors cannot fully explain. We are often taught to manage these symptoms with medication and move on. But what if those physical symptoms are not the enemy? What if they are actually a message? In a recent conversation, we explored the profo...

True story: My guest this week was sitting in a high-level corporate meeting. She was brilliant. She was capable. She had the MBA and the expertise. But she was terrified to speak up. Then a senior leader looked her dead in the eye and asked a question that changed everything. “Why are you hiding in plain sight?” That woman is Dorlee Michaeli. Today she is a trauma-informed psychotherapist and EMD...

We love the “easy” kid. You know the one. The child who sits quietly while the adults talk. The one who comes home from school, goes straight to their room, and never causes a scene. We praise them. We say, “They are such an old soul,” or “They are so well-behaved.” But I have a question for you: Is that behavior? Or is it a coping strategy? I recently sat down with Lisa Ramos, a trauma-informed s...

We have all heard the line before during an interview or an all-hands meeting: “We are a family here.” It sounds comforting. It suggests safety, loyalty, and belonging. But as my recent guest Katie Jean explains, this sentiment is often a trap that blurs professional boundaries and keeps us in toxic environments longer than we should stay. In this episode of Flip Your Mindset , I sat down with Kat...

True story: My guest today, Tosca DiMatteo, was born with a cleft lip and palate. As a kid, she dealt with painful surgeries and years of speech therapy. But the hardest part wasn’t the physical pain... It was the emotional sting of watching other kids walk away from her once they saw her face. She felt different. She felt “less than”. So she made a subconscious decision... If she couldn’t be the...

We often wear our exhaustion like a badge of honor. In a culture that glorifies the “grind,” admitting you are tired can feel like a weakness. But what happens when that tiredness goes beyond needing a nap and becomes a complete systemic shutdown? In this episode of Flip Your Mindset , I sat down with Deidre Gestrin, a licensed mental health professional and founder of Abundant Wellness Essentials...

Do you ever feel behind? There is a pervasive, silent pressure many of us feel—the idea that we are supposed to be at a certain career level by 30, married by another age, and owning a home soon after. If we miss these invisible deadlines, we feel like we are failing. In this week’s episode, my guest calls this pressure the “social clock.” It is the belief that “I’m supposed to be here at this age...

In 1989, Stacy Schaffer was 11 years old. She was an A-student, a perfectionist, and on the surface, she looked “fine.” But at home, she was hiding in a closet. She was surviving the silence of sexual abuse she had tried to report but wasn’t believed. Her mother, battling her own demons and illness, didn’t know how to handle a child who was internally collapsing. So, she paid four men $100 to come...

My guest on the Flip Your Mindset podcast this week, Angie Hawkins, has done things most of us only see in movies. She’s jumped out of helicopters Navy Seal style. She’s bungee jumped off cliffs. And yet, as she told me, she was still terrified of being truly seen . How can both of these things be true? How can someone be so physically brave yet so internally frightened? The answer, as we explored...

Today’s episode of Flip Your Mindset is one of those conversations that sits with you, one that changes the way you see the systems we trust. My guest is Lisa Ramos , a doctoral candidate and the founder of the Trauma-Informed Care Institute. Her story begins with a parent’s absolute worst nightmare: watching her child fight for her life in the ICU. In 2015, her 15-month-old daughter was exposed t...

Have you ever found yourself nodding along in therapy, intellectually understanding every single word, analyzing your past, identifying your patterns... yet still feeling utterly stuck ? Still battling that familiar anxiety? Still catching yourself people-pleasing or abandoning your own needs? If so, you are not alone. And you are not failing at therapy. The truth, as I discovered in my latest con...

Have you ever had one of those days where a small inconvenience feels like a personal attack on your sanity? Maybe a spilled coffee sends a jolt of rage through you. A mildly critical email from your boss makes you spiral into self-doubt for hours. Or a simple change of plans from a friend feels like a massive, day-ruining betrayal. You know, logically, that your reaction feels bigger than the sit...

What if I told you that emotional stress could be lowering your IQ? It’s a startling thought, but it points to a deeper issue many of us face. According to one staggering statistic, 75% of successful professionals feel misaligned , even when they appear to be thriving on the outside. For many, chasing a version of success that isn’t their own has led to a crisis of burnout, stress, and anxiety. Th...

Have you ever felt like you’re running into the same invisible walls in your life? Maybe it’s in your relationships, where you keep finding yourself in the same dynamic over and over. Maybe it’s a constant, humming anxiety you can’t quite explain. Or maybe it’s just a persistent feeling of being ‘stuck,’ like you’re paddling as hard as you can, but the current keeps pulling you back. If any of tha...

When people ask about your childhood, do you find yourself saying something like, “Oh, it was fine,” or “It was good, I guess. I had everything I needed…”? On the surface, it’s true. There was food on the table, a roof over your head, and no big, overt traumas to point to. Yet, deep down, there’s a part of you that feels like something was missing. You might carry a persistent feeling of emptiness...

Is It Your Personality, or a Survival Tactic? Uncovering the hidden 80% of your mind that dictates your success. We all have a story we tell ourselves about who we are. "I'm a perfectionist," "I'm a workaholic," "I'm just someone who avoids the spotlight." We treat these traits as fixed parts of our personality, the fundamental building blocks of us. But what if they aren't? In a recent fascinatin...

Hey everyone, Have you ever felt like you're constantly "on alert," carrying a heavy, invisible backpack you can't seem to put down? That underlying hum of anxiety, the one that whispers in the background even when everything logically seems okay? If so, you're not alone. And I’m here to tell you something truly important: it’s not your fault. For years, I lived with what I now call "high-function...

I'm usually the one asking the questions. As the host of a podcast, I guide my guests through their stories. But recently, I felt compelled to share my own. I handed the microphone over to an expert I deeply respect, Dr. Veronique Mead of the Chronic Illness Trauma Studies blog, and became the guest on my own show. I needed to talk about my journey—a journey that led to three different autoimmune...

The Invisible Backpack You Can't Put Down Let me guess something about your daily experience. You feel constantly on alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop. You know logically that you're safe, but your body is telling you a completely different story. You're exhausted from carrying what I call the "Invisible Backpack"—this weight you can't seem to put down, no matter how hard you try. And here...

Picture this: You're in the middle of an argument with your partner, and suddenly you hear words coming out of your mouth that sound eerily familiar. Not because you've said them before, but because you've heard them before. Maybe it's your mother's sharp tone, or your father's way of shutting down when things get heated. In that moment, you realize you're not just you—you're carrying someone else...

We need to talk about trauma. When most people hear that word, they think of an event . A big, scary, obvious moment that takes us off guard and leaves us feeling unsafe. And yes, an event can certainly be traumatic. But it’s my mission for you to understand this: the event comes and goes. It ends. The trauma is what happens after. It’s the unhealed wound. It's the way your nervous system adjusts...

For anyone who has felt that familiar, dreaded sensation—the racing heart, the tight chest, the mind spiraling into a thousand worst-case scenarios—the immediate instinct is to fight it. To push it down, wish it away, and get it to the curb. We treat anxiety like a relentless enemy, a bug in our system that we need to eradicate. For 30 years, I felt the exact same way. My "ride or die at the contr...

Have you ever had a moment in your day or your life where you’ve thought, "I just don't have the bandwidth for this"?. It’s a common feeling—the sense that your capacity to cope is completely spent. But what if this isn't a personal failing, but a physiological signal from your nervous system? This is the core idea behind the "Window of Tolerance," a concept developed by Stephen Porges that provid...

Do you know the feeling? A chest that’s always a little too tight. A mind that races, replaying conversations and planning for threats that haven’t happened yet. Maybe it’s a constant, low hum of anxiety that you’ve carried for so long it feels like part of your personality. Or maybe it’s the opposite: a heavy, foggy exhaustion where nothing brings you pleasure and you feel like you’re "swimming t...

Ever feel like you're living a life based on someone else's script? Like there's a disconnect between who you are and who you feel you should be? If so, you're in for a treat with our latest "Flip Your Mindset" episode featuring the incredible Donna Parker. Donna, a seasoned therapist, life coach, educator, and speaker with over 25 years in the mental health field, is the founder of Evolve Coachin...