What Mentally Strong People Do on Their Worst Days with Psychotherapist Amy Morin

A Bit of Optimism

Psychotherapist Amy Morin joins the show to discuss reframing mental health as 'mental fitness,' a continuous practice rather than a static

Key takeaways

• Amy Morin distinguishes between 'mental health' as a static goal and 'mental fitness' as an ongoing practice.
• Avoidance strategies, such as staying in bed during a 'mental health day,' can actually exacerbate depressive symptoms.

Main topics

• Mental fitness vs. mental health
• Managing emotions and anxiety

Notable quotes

Mental health sounds like some goal you have to achieve... whereas mental fitness... is a practice that you commit to your life.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable psychological strategies for navigatin

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) You do not want to relive any of the things that you have lived, those tragedies. What about you has changed because of those things that deep down inside, you're glad they happened? Speaker 1 (0:12) So I grew up incredibly shy, but probably as a kid could have been diagnosed with selective mutism. I didn't talk for years. And public speaking would have been my number one fear. I gave the eulogy at my husband's funeral. And in that moment, I was like, I don't care if I embarrass myself, if I stumble over my words. I don't care how I sound. It's not about me. I've been through the worst of the worst. Yeah, negative Speaker 2 (0:35) review just doesn't do it anymore. Speaker 1 (0:37) Yeah, go ahead and do that. I'm okay now. Speaker 3 (0:39) The mental health industry is booming. There's all kinds of therapists out there, some of them legitimate, some of them not. There's all kinds of advice being dispensed across social media. But here's a question. If all that mental health guidance we were getting was working, Wouldn't there be a decline in our anxiety and depression? But there's not. It's going up. So maybe, just maybe, the advice that we're getting or the advice that we're following is wrong. That's why I invited Amy Morin on the show. She's a psychotherapist who wrote an amazing book called 13 Things That Mentally Strong People Don't Do. And her new book... is the Mental Strength Playbook. She questions the advice that we're getting and the advice that we're following. She views mental fitness as something that we work towards, nothing that we'll ever achieve. But most importantly, there are very simple and practical steps that we can take to keep ourselves mentally strong regardless of the ups and downs that we all experience in our professional and personal lives. If you like this content and are interested in more, please remember to subscribe. This is a bit of optimism. This episode is proudly brought to you by SAP. Staying at one job for a whole career used to be the norm. Now, it's the exception. So when it does happen today, I want to know why. Is there something wrong with the employee? Or is the company doing something right? Given how rare a long tenure has become, I was excited to talk to David Robinson. He's been at SAP for over 20 years, and I wanted to hear what it takes to continue staying interested and inspired at one company. To learn more about SAP, the AI cloud ERP for businesses of all size, head to sap.com slash grow. Amy, thanks for joining me and coming in. I appreciate it. Speaker 1 (2:41) I'm thrilled to be here, Simon. Speaker 3 (2:42) Let's talk about mental health. Speaker 3 (2:47) I think you and I see the world very similarly. You know, I hate the term mental health. Yeah. I use the term mental fitness. Mental health sounds like some goal you have to achieve, which nobody ever will. We're always falling short where mental fitness, like physical fitness, is something you're always working on. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind, but it's a practice that you commit to your life. But you are more qualified to talk about mental health than I am. You're actually sort of trained in this stuff. It's an obsession right now. Everybody's talking about mental health. People are dispensing armchair advice all over. Instagram and TikTok, which I hope is well intended. However, there is a problem with the mental health world in America today. Speaker 2 (3:27) Yeah. Speaker 1 (3:29) Yeah, despite our increased conversations with mental health. It's Speaker 3 (3:33) a Speaker 1 (3:33) real Speaker 3 (3:33) topic now. Speaker 1 (3:34) Right. As you've noticed, we're not getting better. That over the years, it seems to be our mental health is struggling more and more. And despite a lot of these superficial conversations, I'm not hearing from a lot of people like, I'm so grateful that the more we talk about it, the better I feel. In fact, sometimes it's the opposite. And something I'm seeing in my therapy office is people are now going on a quest to be like, I can just figure out what happened to me when I was seven and somehow I'm going to feel better today. Or they think that mental health is something to be achieved or something you have or something you don't. And when you think about it, like nobody walks around and says, well, I'm physically healthy, right? Like physical health is not a goal. Less Speaker 3 (4:11) of a conversation. Right. Speaker 1 (4:12) But when it comes to mental health, it's like people think, yes, I'm mentally healthy or you're mentally ill. But the truth is. You looked at a scale of how people are on optimal mental health. The CDC at some point said about 17 % of people are probably operating at optimal mental health at any given moment. And where we fall on that scale varies throughout the day. It depends what you ate for lunch, who you've been talking to, whether you're tired. So many of these factors, yet we think you either have mental health or you don't. Speaker 3 (4:39) Yeah. I think we've also confused feelings, like having feelings. Like you're sad. Yeah. You're angry. You're frustrated. You're overwhelmed is not a mental health problem. That's just life. Right. The younger generations are just talking about it more. Well, Speaker 1 (4:56) I think we're talking about feelings more. But as you say, now that we're talking about it more, people are thinking that there's a problem with their feelings. So the one I hear all the time is, well, I have anxiety. Well, we all have anxiety. And the problem is, is that. An anxiety disorder is just called that. So we name it the same thing as the feeling. So then people think, well, if I'm anxious before I give a presentation, clearly I have social anxiety or some kind of anxiety disorder. And we don't separate those things. And we don't talk about how to deal with those feelings. I'm finding a lot of people are like, well, what do you do when you're sad? And I think our phones and technology could be wonderful tools, but so many people are just reaching for them to escape those emotions. And we're not learning how to tolerate them and work through them. Speaker 3 (5:40) In your practice, do you teach people how to feel? Do you teach people how to have emotions? And I think your insight there, which is if the mental health industry was working, Speaker 1 (5:50) there Speaker 3 (5:50) would be less problems and less anxiety and less of everything. But the trend is going up. So either the mental health industry doesn't care to get you better because there's a profit motive to keep you sick, or there's a misunderstanding of what it is and we don't know how. To ask for help or what help looks like. Probably some combination of both, I would imagine. So can you tell me a story of somebody who, from your practice, who doesn't see you anymore because they came with a problem and it's fixed, quote unquote. It's better. They're good. Speaker 1 (6:25) Yeah. So. Well, fortunately, I can think of many people over the years. But if I were to think of like a recent one, I had somebody that came for depression. Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:34) And Speaker 1 (6:35) it was really clear. And Speaker 3 (6:35) they were actually depressed. Right. They weren't just sad. Speaker 1 (6:38) Right. Because what happens a lot these days is people come in and they're trying to like optimize their mental health, right? Like, oh, I have an avoidant boyfriend, so I need to work on my attachment issues. Well, that's not a mental illness. If we're talking about true mental illness, like major depression or generalized anxiety, that's much different. When somebody came in, he had definitely had major depression. And it was a matter of let's talk about what strategies work for depression. Sometimes it's exercise. It's increasing your social circle. It's about being more active and participating in daily things, managing your diet, a lot of strategies like that, coping skills. How do you deal with a bad day when you have depression versus what does it mean to just be sad? And so I'm a cognitive behavioral therapist by trade, which means I help people. shape the way that they think, which then shifts the way that you feel. And then you also change your behavior and it creates a more positive feedback loop. Speaker 3 (7:31) So how did you help him change the way he thought about himself? So Speaker 1 (7:36) a lot of what he was struggling with was the automatic thoughts that popped into his head. So somebody doesn't call you back when you're battling depression. Sometimes it's because I'm worthless because people don't like me because it's all my fault. Or if you don't get picked for a project at work, it's because I'm not good enough. And when you really peel back the layers of what kinds of things people are thinking, it often boils down to that deep-rooted belief of somehow I'm flawed and not good enough and people don't like me. Speaker 2 (8:04) And Speaker 1 (8:05) when his depressive episodes would get activated, he had a couple of them throughout his life, but it just got kicked into high gear where he would assume everything was because he was a flawed human being. And the more he would think about that, the less... he would participate in life. And unless he would participate in life, yeah, the worst he felt. Speaker 3 (8:22) And so how did you turn it around? Speaker 1 (8:24) So we would take a look at those thoughts. Like, literally, if somebody didn't call you back, that's one option. Maybe they actually don't like you, but what are 10 more? Or what can you tell yourself when you wake up in the morning, something he battled was on a really depressed day, he didn't want to go to work. Well, you could stay home. But what happens when you stay home, the typical quote unquote, mental health day, staying in bed doesn't reduce your depression, right? So what can you do when you wake up and you think, actually, I'd like to stay home today? What can you then tell yourself? And so for him, it was a list of the top 10 reasons why you should go to work when you don't want to. And he would leave it on his nightstand. So when he would wake up in the morning and think, if I just stayed in bed today, I'd feel better. He'd read over that list, try to talk himself into, yep, I don't want to go to work, but it's good for me. And I'm Speaker 3 (9:09) going Speaker 1 (9:09) to do it anyway. Speaker 3 (9:10) I love this. Because there is an irony in all of our solutions, which again, well-intended and supportive environment, I need a mental health day. Speaker 1 (9:20) Yeah. And Speaker 3 (9:20) I'm going to stay home and it'll make me feel worse. Speaker 1 (9:23) Right. Speaker 3 (9:24) Now, if somebody's lying and they go to the beach, I mean, more power to them. That's probably really good. That's Speaker 1 (9:28) a Speaker 3 (9:28) real mental health day. Speaker 1 (9:30) Right. Speaker 3 (9:30) Like play hooky and go to the beach. That's awesome. Speaker 1 (9:33) Right. But Speaker 3 (9:33) there is a great irony in this, which is I'm overwhelmed at work. I need a mental health day. So I'm going to stay home, sit in bed. eat Haagen-Dazs and watch movies and feel worse at the end of the day. Speaker 2 (9:44) Why are Speaker 3 (9:45) we choosing Speaker 2 (9:46) solutions Speaker 3 (9:47) that we think will help that actually either do nothing or make it worse? Speaker 1 (9:53) A lot of it's about what's going to make me feel better right now. So for somebody who says... I don't want to go to work. Well, sure, at 9 a.m. when you're watching TV or you're still sleeping, maybe you feel a little better than if you're in that boring meeting in the office or you're faced with a pile of paperwork. Of course, though, that coping strategy creates longer-term problems. The avoidance doesn't make it go away. So on Tuesday when you wake up in the morning, you don't suddenly feel like, I can't wait to go to work today. It often becomes more difficult. But I think it's really about... A lot of the coping skills we reach for sometimes make us feel better in the moment, but then create bigger problems in the long term. Speaker 3 (10:29) Let's scale it back a little bit. So somebody who's clinically depressed, that's a diagnosis. Yep. I mean, that's Speaker 1 (10:33) a Speaker 3 (10:33) thing. But what we're talking about, I think, is the more pervasive feeling that people have that I am dealing with my mental health or I have mental health challenges, which is there's no diagnosable issue there. Right. There's, you know. the ups and downs of life. Some of the examples you're talking about, you know, you're overwhelmed, you don't feel like going to work. I'm like, wait a minute, I sometimes wake up and I don't go to work. Do I Speaker 2 (11:00) have mental health issues? Right. You Speaker 3 (11:02) know, and now I'm diagnosing myself because I hear that somebody else who does have mental fitness challenges. Speaker 3 (11:10) Again, I'm so fascinated. It's like, why is your business booming? You know, it's like, it shouldn't, I wouldn't want it to be, no offense. I like, I want you to do very well. I want you to hang a sign out the door saying, I'll help you with your mental health and nobody knocks, you know? Speaker 1 (11:23) Yes. And of course that would be the dream. And I think, say 10, 15 years ago, it was really about if you had a mental illness, so your doctor might send you to therapy. Right. In today's world of social media and influencers who are often talking about these issues and using labels incorrectly, and we're talking so much about mental health Speaker 2 (11:44) that Speaker 1 (11:45) people are going to therapy not because they're sick, but because they're, say, have a narcissistic ex-boyfriend that was gaslighting them. And so they say, gosh, you know, I'm dealing with this. I need to talk to somebody about it. And then the problem with my industry is, is your insurance company is going to pay me a pretty small amount to see you. But if I charge you out of pocket, I can charge a lot more money. So it used to be that therapists only saw people with a mental illness because they were getting reimbursement from insurance companies. Now a lot of therapists are charging a private play. So you don't necessarily have to have a mental illness. You might just be dealing with something that you saw on social media. And Speaker 3 (12:22) I know I'm Speaker 1 (12:22) going Speaker 3 (12:22) to get in trouble for this, but I'd like you to react to it, even if I get in trouble for it. There's a financial disincentive for therapists to get you better. Yeah. Because... most therapists don't make passive income. They only make active income. I have to work to make money. And so getting new clients is hard. Keeping clients is easier. If you come in and say, I need your help for X, then we're going to keep this going. I remember my sister, I've talked about it. We did a podcast episode on it. She went through a real tragedy. She lost her husband at a very young age. And you can relate. And ironically, she was seeing a therapist prior. because she was dealing with anxiety that she might lose somebody. And it just weirdly happened. And so she had the therapist already. And then like, she did all the other things as well. In addition to the therapy, which, you know, she pushed herself to go out. She spent time with friends. She spent time with family. She eventually got back on the horse and like, really felt good. Speaker 1 (13:20) And Speaker 3 (13:20) she said to her therapist, I think, you know what? I've, this has been, you've been amazing. And I think, I think I'm good. I'm, I'm done. And the therapist said, I don't think you should stop. And my sister was like, no, no, I feel really good. And I've like felt really good for like, I've got less to talk to you about. And the therapist was like, no, no, I think you're being foolish. I think you should keep going. And I was like, and by the way, good therapist. Speaker 1 (13:42) Yeah. Speaker 3 (13:42) Right. But where my sister's eye says I'm healthy, I don't need the therapy. What the therapist hears is I'm losing money. I'm losing a client rather than yippee for me, I helped someone get better. Right. And so. Are therapists Speaker 2 (13:57) part of the problem of our inability to Speaker 3 (14:01) move through some of the struggles we're having? We're going to get a lot of flack on this. Speaker 1 (14:06) Well, certainly. Not all Speaker 3 (14:09) therapists. Right. But I understand that. It's not fun losing a client. No matter what you do, if you work for an ad agency or a law firm, nobody wants to lose clients. Speaker 1 (14:18) Right. And certainly that's an example of one, right? And there is the pressure to say. I need an income. So how do I keep people coming back? It's not Speaker 3 (14:29) nefarious. It's not evil. It's just like, you know, they may genuinely want to help people, but you keep them on the books. Speaker 1 (14:36) And on the flip side of that, I mean, we get plenty of people too who will be like, you know, I'm better. I don't need to come back to therapy. And we'll have that honest conversation of, well, maybe you have... bipolar and you're having a good week, but you're not cured and to at least educate them on, you know, or how would you know if you needed to come back in the future? What do you anticipate next week? And space out your sessions. Maybe go ahead. We'll see you again next month instead of next week. And we'll see how you're doing. But if you need me in the meantime, you could call so that when people hit the dip, say in their mood, that they're still prepared and we don't leave them high and dry. However, obviously there are cases where therapists will say, you know. If I keep you on a little longer, if I can convince you, then that's one less person I have to go find and bring in. Speaker 3 (15:24) Instead of doing a straight ad read, we're pioneering something