New Year, New Mindset: How Mental Strength Can Transform Your Life with Amy Morin, LCSW Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I am your host, JoAnn Crohn, joined by the lovely Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Why, hello, hello, everybody. How are you? Happy

JoAnn Crohn: in 2024. Who would have guessed?

Brie Tucker: that 2023 is done. Not that a lot of great things didn’t happen and not that I can’t be grateful for all of the amazing stuff that did happen. But, yeah, welcome 2024. I am here with open arms. Welcoming you and your wonderfulness and

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the show. And we’re all going to be mentally stronger in 2024 because

Brie Tucker: did that.

JoAnn Crohn: We are talking with Amy Warren today. She is a licensed clinical social worker, instructor at Northeastern University, psychotherapist, and international bestselling author of the new book, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do series.

This one focuses on couples and she’s the host of the Mentally Stronger podcast. She teaches people how to build the mental strength they need to reach their greatest potential. And I have to tell you, our interview with Amy today, we dig deep in some typical couple problems that we hear here at No Guilt Mom and talking about everything to what happens when your partner minimizes your.

feelings to if you’re a stay at home mom and you’re working all day long, how to bring up the conversation with your partner to also contribute when they come home at night and not have that chance to rest and relax. It’s a good one, Brie.

Brie Tucker: It’s amazing I think that everybody is going to find a lot of relatableness and amazing information. That’s going to be helpful

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. So let’s get on with the show. Regardless, we were talking right before we pushed record, which we should like always be recording. it’s such good stuff. It’s more natural and more like off the cuff, but noticing that you’re in your sailboat and just wondering, how do you deal with that when you’re on the podcast with us right now and being on a sailboat, you’re docked, you have a document. Tell us about that.

Amy Morin: I do. So I have a documenium in the Florida Keys, which means I own doc space. So I like literally bought ocean bottom, but I have the ability now to just dock my boat so that I can have high speed internet and have my own podcast and be on interviews like yours and, have things like electricity too, which I thoroughly enjoy if we

JoAnn Crohn: is a good thing.

Amy Morin: right. Air conditioning in the Florida Keys is good.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. Yeah. How

Brie Tucker: so stinking cool I love the water and i’m trying to figure out how to do more traveling As I become more prosperous in life is the way I’d want to go. That is it

JoAnn Crohn: often do you guys leave the dock and actually sail?

Amy Morin: so it depends. We have a smaller boat that’s really easy to just take out like for the day. If we take the sailboat out, it’s much more of a commitment that you’re going to be gone for,a full day at the least. And then you can go places obviously a lot easier if you have a little motor boat and you just want to go to lunch or something like that.

JoAnn Crohn: I’m just fascinated by this. when’s the last time you sailed? with the big boat, where did you go?

Amy Morin: I think it was probably I don’t know, a few weeks ago and we just went out. There’s like a lighthouse around here where you can go snorkeling and swimming and there’s a coral reef. So we just went out there for the day.

JoAnn Crohn: See that sounds amazing to me. And you didn’t always live on the sailboat. You had a very different life before and one that led you to write your 13 things mentally strong people do kind of series. Can you tell us a little bit about what led you to write it?

Amy Morin: Sure. Yeah. My life looked a lot different 10 years ago. I was a therapist in rural Maine and I guess if we went back to when I was 23, I was therapist in rural Maine and my mom passed away suddenly. and unexpectedly. And that set me on a journey to really be interested in mental strength on a different level.

I wanted to know for my own personal reasons, it wasn’t just about teaching my therapy clients anymore, but I wanted to know how do you go through tough times and not be reduced by it? How do you grow from it? And I was glad that I did because The three years to the day that my mom died, my 26 year old husband passed away and he had a heart attack, which I’d never even knew was possible at the age of 26.

And much like when I lost my mom, it was sudden and unexpected. And so to lose two of my favorite people in really unexpected ways, it was like they were here one minute and gone the next. It really did a number on me and my brain and to process that and figure it out. And here I’m a therapist, I’m supposed to be helping other people deal with their problems and.

I was in a dark place for a long time, and it took years to get back up on my feet and figure out what am I going to do now? And I was fortunate. I fell in love again. I got remarried, got a new house and life was like, Oh, all right, here we go. This is chapter two. And then my father in law got diagnosed with terminal cancer.

And I just remember thinking like, this isn’t fair. How come the. One minute when life starts to look good, I’m now facing this loss again. And so I wrote myself a letter about what mentally strong people don’t do. And it was all the things I’d learned both as a therapist, but through my own life and my experiences.

And I thought, this letter is helpful to me. Maybe it will help somebody else. So I put it on the internet and expected a handful of people to read it, but 50 million people read it. And. And celebrities were tweeting it and sharing it on Facebook. It was a really surreal time, but nobody really knew the backstory.

I literally just posted the list. And so people thought, Oh, you’re a therapist. It’s because you’ve mastered these things. Well, actually it was because I struggled with it. But one of the people that read the list was a literary agent who said, you should write a book. So within a year, my first book came out.

And now here we are 10 years from that, that I have six books on the shelves and I get to do cool stuff, like talk to you about mental strength.

Brie Tucker: oh my god

JoAnn Crohn: that is an amazing, amazing story. And I was reading your book last night, your newest one, about 13, things mentally strong couples don’t do. And I really thought it was interesting how you prefaced it with you’re told to do all the things like go on date nights and have conversations with each other and how you saw in your therapy practice that wasn’t the whole picture.

Amy Morin: Yeah, people would come in all the time and they’re like, we’re doing everything we’re supposed to do. We went on date night on Saturday night and we’re, uh, trying to work on our communication. what they weren’t doing was really the bigger picture stuff. Like they had all of these, bad habits that they were engaging in.

And I’m like, you could go on a date night every single day, but if you’re communicating with disrespect, it doesn’t matter. Or if you’re keeping secrets from each other, you’re ignoring the bigger problems. It doesn’t matter how many date nights you go on. It’s not going to do you any good. 

JoAnn Crohn: one in particular, struck a chord because it’s very common in our audience and no guilt mom. We help women go from being the martyr to being the model, like the role model of their family. And I was like, Ooh, AB listed, don’t be the martyr. Could you like dig into a little bit about that? Yeah, 

Amy Morin: I was really seeing a lot of my therapy offices. People would be like, I’ve done everything for you and yet you don’t appreciate me. we would find that. Right. And I think if we’re honest, we’ve all had those moments where we think I’m putting in so much and I’m not getting anything back.

And we start to grow bitter and resentful. But underneath that is you look at what is it that we’re doing? Sometimes we’re doing these extra things that maybe somebody didn’t even ask us to do. And then we’re mad when they don’t appreciate it. Like the example might be, I spent all day cooking this delicious meal, you ate it in 10 minutes and you didn’t even care. the person might not have asked you to do that.

Or we think that saying no to things, somebody’s all, Oh, you take the good seat at the theater. And you’re like, Oh no, I won’t. And it’s somehow we think that by sacrificing all this stuff, that we should be happy or that there’s a prize, but really we’re just giving people the, taking away their opportunity to show kindness to us when we refuse to let people help us. And we expect everybody to be grateful for everything we’re doing.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh my gosh. Yes. A hundred times. Yes. I have seen that pop up so many times, both in my own, in my upbringing, like my parents relationship. And I think that’s where we first know it. We learn this from the older generation that these are the roles, especially between men and women, women are supposed to be the caretakers and do everything.

And men. Are supposed to go out and bring home the money. And then they get this chance to relax when they get home. This is one of the biggest things that we see in our community, Amy, with stay at home moms in particular. And I want to hear your bent on it because, a lot of stay at home moms feel that it is their job to take care of the home.

So they don’t feel like they can ask their partner for any help. Once they come home from quote unquote, their role of bringing in the money, how do you approach situation?

Amy Morin: Yeah, that’s definitely something I see too with people who say, you know, well, my job is to do the cooking and the cleaning and take care of the kids. And I would fall into these sort of traditional family roles that our grandparents did all these years ago, and it’s hard to break out of it. So I think having those conversations of, that’s wonderful.

I appreciate that you bring home the money and that you work really hard during the day. I also work hard during the day. It’s a different kind of work, a different thing that I do, but I also need time to unwind, to have coffee with a friend, to be able to leave the house, to be able to just sit and relax sometimes. How can we manage that and coming up with a better schedule perhaps for the evenings and the weekends so that it feels a little fair.

Brie Tucker: I feel like sometimes the most obvious way to put that so that it is most likely to resonate would be like, okay, so you get to go to your job and you get to leave your job. My job is here for the next 18 years, minimum. I’m not even talking about the economy and how my kids are going to live in my basement for the rest of their life. right? you get to leave and check out. I never get to leave my place of work, nor my job duties. Ever.

Amy Morin: And that’s a good way to put it

Brie Tucker: Yeah. Maybe not so sarcastically, but you know, maybe in a 

Amy Morin: Yes. But that’s a, an important thing to know is, you know, I feel like I’m on duty 24 seven as opposed to being able to take a break. And I think sometimes it’s just in the language that we use to when, women ask their husbands to babysit

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, no babysitting. It’s a parent.

Amy Morin: Right. And you know, or you ask them, is it okay if I go out for coffee with my friend on Saturday and you take over for two hours, but we frame it as in they’re doing us a huge favor by doing that as opposed to making it a shared responsibility to take care of the house and the kids.

JoAnn Crohn: And let’s not even get into how when they’re out in public with the kids that they get all of these great kudos from other people saying what a good dad they are. And we get nothing about what a good mom we are. But I want to dig into a little bit what Bree said about how we Raise it to our partners and how really that matters.

And I want to hear your take on it right after this break. Okay, Amy. So we were talking about how to frame it best to our partners when we really need that help. And in your book in particular, I’m thinking about the situation you mentioned. and I think it was your second chapter, the couple the woman caught her husband with only fans receipts on the credit card and she brought her feelings to him?

Amy Morin: But then he minimized her feelings in that situation. And I feel like we hear that story a lot. So how should couples go about saying their feelings to each other when one tends to minimize the others? Yeah. So anytime we’re dealing with something like that, it’s important to come to our partner and use the I statement of what I’m feeling. Because you could, you know, you don’t want to use the you never do this or do that. You can say like, I’m overwhelmed. I’m feeling frustrated. And then when your partner says, well, You should be able to handle that better or it’s not a big deal.

Obviously that’s a problem. So I think you call him out and you say, it’s interesting to me that I’m telling you this is how I’m feeling and you’re implying that my feelings are either wrong or that I’m not feeling them to the extent that I’m telling you that they are. And see what happens from there because I think you really want to call out. No, I’m explaining to you I’m in pain. I’m dealing with this issue. But for some reason or another, you want to deny that that’s my reality.

Brie Tucker: Well, because in that case, it makes them the bad, sorry,

Amy Morin: Right. 

Brie Tucker: poke a little lepery, not a tiny bit.

JoAnn Crohn: Brie is in a wonderful relationship. Now we should preface that with saying

Brie Tucker: No, but I’m just saying, I understand, I think a lot of us understand. And then you sit there and it starts that cycle and correct me, if I’m way off base on this, Amy, but it starts that cycle. We start second guessing ourselves. And our feelings, and our worthiness, and oh my gosh, am I the drama queen?

Am I the one that’s making a big deal out of this? Oh, I should be more chill. I should be more, more cool about this. And then we just start denying all of our feelings and then we wonder why the relationship doesn’t work well because we’ve shut off our feelings. Because we’ve learned that our feelings are over the top all the time.

Amy Morin: That’s it. Exactly. And for a lot of people, it goes back to childhood. If you were raised by parents who may be well intentioned, but said things like, Oh, don’t worry about that. When you said, Hey, I’m nervous about that recital on Friday. And they said, Oh, it’s not a big deal. You’ll do fine. Those little things teach us like, okay, are my emotions are wrong or I’m feeling this and nobody else does.

So therefore I must be weird. There’s something wrong with me for feeling this way. And then you get into a. A relationship where somebody implies those same things, it stirs it all up again, where you think I should, yeah, I should be calm about this, and I’m not, or I shouldn’t be upset about this, and you start second guessing yourself.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s crazy because it also plays into mental health as well because I was definitely raised in that way. Not for any fault for my parents. that’s how they were taught to raise kids. That’s how it was. But I had extreme anxiety that wasn’t diagnosed until I was an adult because I was told, Oh, don’t worry about that.

Or you’re making a big deal out of nothing that won’t happen. And I find sometimes that phrase is at the tip of my tongue when my kids have something. that’s the first thing I want to say, it’s not a big deal. 

Amy Morin: think it comes from a well meaning place, as you say, a lot of our parents. Oh, I’m just going to calm you down and say, Hey, don’t worry about that without realizing the damage that it can do as well.

Brie Tucker: Yeah, I think, I think we’re trying to fix it in that moment, right? and yeah, that comes out of me. I know you’re really good at keeping on the tip of your tongue, Joanne. I tend to just have it come out and then I have to be like, okay, wait a minute. I said that wrong. Let’s bring this back. and it’s also. I don’t know, like I’m also dealing with one of my kiddos that has anxiety and I’m trying to get that kiddo to realize that. Their anxiety reaction isn’t the normal reaction that a person should be having in that scenario. hey, I’m all for anxiety. Everybody has anxiety. The anxiety you’re experiencing is bigger than normal. So let’s talk about that. But that’s, sorry, I think I’m getting

JoAnn Crohn: Well, it’s almost like you, you don’t like it. It’s validating feelings to the sense that, it’s not a thing you have to deal with. this is pain for you and it’s not a thing you have to deal with basically. I’m interested, Amy, we were talking about just growing up in childhood, what led you to be a therapist? No.

Amy Morin: that interesting of a story, but I was actually a pre med student and the first day of college we had to dissect cats and I had spent years thinking I was going to be a doctor, but. Everybody was really excited to dissect a cat except me. So I realized I actually didn’t want to be a doctor.

I just liked the idea of being one. So I called my sister. My older sister was a psychology major. She’d just graduated with her bachelor’s degree. So I said, Hey, I have to change my major. I’m thinking psychology. What do you think? She was like, don’t get a bachelor’s in psychology because it’s too vague.

She said, at least go into social work. And then you get a social work license. So I was like, Sure. So I changed my major that day thinking I would probably change it later on. I just didn’t want to dissect the cat on day two. So became a social work major, fell in love with it, decided to get my master’s in it and go on to become a therapist.

Cause once I started learning more about it, I was like, Oh, this is interesting. And then coincidentally, my sister got her master’s in social work too. And we used to have adjoining offices as therapists in a small town in rural Maine. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: a crazy good story.

JoAnn Crohn: That is a crazy story. I would have done with the same decision not to dissect the cat either.

Amy Morin: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: you could, I could, like we did in our high school biology, we dissected worms. I was okay with the worms, but some of the class chose to dissect the rabbit and I was not okay with them even dissecting the rabbit in the room. And they were like cutting off the ear and be like, look at this. I’m like. This is not for me. It’s 

Brie Tucker: have to share, I had the dissect of the cat as well in high school. This is my fun little thing. So first that was my impression of the cat, but, uh, we had to do it in high school and I had an injury that I had to be out of school for three weeks. And it was a lab. Guess who had to take their cat home?

JoAnn Crohn: Oh my gosh. That is horrible. 

Brie Tucker: city and it was in the winter. So it stayed in the garage and it stayed frozen. It was fine. Actually, no, it was really weird, but that, that is, that’s my experience with the cat. And it also made me decide, it also made me decide that there was no way I wanted, my mom was a nurse. I’m like, there’s no way I’m doing anything in the medical field. No.

Amy Morin: right. 

JoAnn Crohn: There’s though. Something else that comes up in our community a lot, Amy, is about being on the same side when parenting, because these parenting styles vary differently between men and women. And I want to hear your thoughts on this right after this. So when two partners have a disagreement with how to parent their child, for instance, what we see a lot, usually the husband wants to go more of an authoritarian with the punishment as far as they call that the discipline quote unquote. And, the women want to take a more like gentle kind of problem solving approach. How do you partners. Start discussing this when they have disagreement on parenting issues. Mm.

Amy Morin: that you present a united front to your kids. Even if you don’t agree with everything, you just don’t want your kids to know because otherwise they’ll divide and conquer, or they’ll also lose respect for one parent or the other, or maybe both because they’re like, if you guys can’t even come to an agreement on what a good consequence is, I don’t trust either of you.

So if you can have the conversations behind the scenes with kids out of earshot, it probably matters much less whether You, which, what consequence they get as opposed to as long as you both look like you’re on the same page. With that said, behind the scenes, you do want to have some open conversations like, you know, Hey, I want, I know you want to take his bike away for a month.

I don’t think that’s necessary. Here’s what I think we can do. And here’s why, but to share your concerns. And sometimes it’s about, we really get to the heart of it. Somebody is I’m embarrassed our kid misbehaves. I feel like we have the bad kid on the baseball team or whatever. And If we can talk about that, Oh, I’m embarrassed about that.

Or our kids throwing tantrums in the grocery store and the other kids aren’t, or it seems behind when it comes to social stuff. So I think we really need to crack down in this area. but then to have those conversations, like how do we teach our kids to do better? And that you raise kids differently.

Your older kid might not struggle with certain things, the younger one does. Certain consequences work well for one, but not the other. And that you just keep making it an ongoing conversation about how do we handle this. It’s trial and error. You implement a consequence and it happens, right away that the kid still. Does the exact same misbehavior. All right. perhaps this isn’t a good consequence. Let’s problem solve what we can do instead.

Brie Tucker: I love that you mentioned that it could be spawned from that I’m embarrassed of my child’s behavior because I think a lot of times we do not give enough credit to that causing our reaction. To our child’s behaviors because I think that a lot of times we’re expecting whether or not we know it’s realistic or not.

We’re expecting that perfect behavior and it doesn’t happen. And then we’re embarrassed. And because of that, we take that embarrassment. out on our children when we’re doing the consequences. I love the idea, like, of, just, pausing and talking behind closed doors, because it gives you that chance to pause and be like, okay, fine, maybe punishing them because I’m embarrassed about the way they acted in front of the doctor is not the most parenting positive. It’s not the parent I want to be. We’ll say that.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah.

Amy Morin: happens a lot that it’s really about us that we’re like, Oh, and kids know that, right? They throw the fit in the middle of the grocery store because they’re like, Ooh, you’ll give in and give me this lollipop if I start screaming in the grocery store. Cause there’s other people around. So to take a look at that, what is that about me?

What am I afraid that this says about me? If my child is misbehaving in public or in front of somebody important or somebody who I respect or maybe it’s your own parents are visiting and you’re like, Oh, I don’t want them to see that my child is disrespectful. So therefore I’m going to crack down twice as hard right now, but we just want to make sure that we’re consistent. But, and sometimes to take a look at what’s within ourselves, perhaps that’s driving our responses.

JoAnn Crohn: There’s also the thing though of what we expect from our kids because, I think sometimes parents go into parenting without really knowing what’s developmentally appropriate and kid behavior. So like the situation with the grocery store, if it’s a, four or five year old having a tantrum right there.

That’s a four or five year old who does not know how to control their emotions they are not being emotionally manipulative or anything like that. And I think that when we don’t go in with that understanding or when parents don’t go in with that understanding that, hey, like this is a kid trying its best and they have no idea what they’re doing versus this is a manipulative act.

I think that stirs feelings in us as well and could even like make us react so much stronger than is needed. But you described Amy such a important point for parents and adults to go through is that it’s finding like you say in your book, finding what the real problem is. I’m drawn back to that first chapter with the woman who came to you and said she was suffering from emptiness and really it was something completely different.

Then that, how do you even start digging in to figure out if that’s the real problem or not when you think it’s something else?

Amy Morin: Yeah. Nine times out of 10, when people come into my therapy office and say, this is the problem, it’s actually not, it’s the symptom of a bigger problem. 

Brie Tucker: Does that immediately make you go, whoa, let’s talk about this.

Amy Morin: It does. It does. It’s fun to dig a little deeper and be like, what else is going on? And same with child behavior.

Your kid kicks you in the shins. Well, maybe they’re hungry, right? Like the problem is often deeper than what we think, or there’s something going on behind the scenes. So it’s like being a detective and figuring that out or couples who maybe fight about money. It’s not really about money. They just have different goals or different ideas in life about priorities and values.

So sometimes I think it’s important to take a step back and really be like,what’s this about? What’s the deeper meaning behind this? And sometimes we can figure that out for ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard though, because we’re like in the weeds and you’re looking at it from your perspective.

So sometimes that’s why it’s helpful to have an objective person, like a therapist who can say, actually, let’s take a look at this from a different angle. And it becomes crystal clear when you have somebody else help you pinpoint what’s really going on.

Brie Tucker: Well, 

JoAnn Crohn: interesting. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: I mean, and don’t, so Joanne and I both have done therapy, enjoy therapy. I love therapy. I think it’s a perk that everybody should get to have free therapy. Therapy for you. Therapy for you. Therapy for you. But I think that it’s fantastic when you are having issues with communication, having that third party that, that is, that you’re not emotionally triggered when they say something.

when they bring up a point that your partner may have been trying to express or whatever, because they’re that, that safe, neutral ground. And like you just said, can see it from this perspective that they’re not emotionally involved in what’s going on. They don’t have the 15 things that they’re holding on to, that they’re harboring. They’re just waiting for the opportunity to bring up. 

Amy Morin: Right. Because so often we can see what our partners are doing wrong, but we don’t see within ourselves. what could I be doing better? It’s really hard to do that. And we get caught up into thinking, if you weren’t a jerk, I wouldn’t be doing X, Y, and Z. Sometimes when people go to counseling, it’s about saying, okay, what can you do differently?

We can’t change a partner’s behavior, but we can focus on this. Stuff that you can do, and maybe even despite the fact that you don’t like some of the things going on, this is still what you can do and how you can work on it.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah. There are so many great things to take away from your book, Amy, and it comes out very soon. Can you tell us more about it?

Amy Morin: Sure. So, you know, my other books are really about on an individual level, what we can do to manage mental strength and become mentally stronger. But obviously our relationships play a huge role in that. And so I really wanted to write a book that says, how can you work together as a team? But also, what can you do when your partner isn’t invested?

It’s pretty rare people come into my therapy office, a couple who are like, yes, we’re both on the same page, and we can’t wait to work together. More often than not, if one person is like really motivated, and the other person’s lagging behind a little, it’s like, what do you do in that situation? So I really wanted to write a book where I explain.

Here’s how you can build mental strength and build a stronger relationship. And even if your partner isn’t invested, there’s still lots of things you can do. Because I explain a lot of stories in the book where I never even met the partner many times. I worked with people on an individual level and sometimes their partner never even came into the therapy office, but we still made huge gains.

So I wanted people to know, even if your partner isn’t going to read this book ever, that’s okay. I want to give you some strategies and tools that you can use to build a better relationship regardless of their investment anyway.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, that was my big aha when reading your book, because I was like, Whoa, couples don’t have to go through this together. And one person in the relationship has such an impact on how the rest goes. And I just, I thought, I think the book’s phenomenal. So go get the book. It is available wherever books are sold. And Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and chatting with us.

Amy Morin: Thank you for having me.

JoAnn Crohn: I think I want to be in the Florida Keys right now, Brie. Speaking of sailboats, that’s so amazing and lovely 

Brie Tucker: don’t really care where the sailboat is. I just want to live on a sailboat. I want to live on a boat. I just, I love it.

JoAnn Crohn: The Florida Keys has that like transparent water where you can see down to the bottom and it’s, have you been places where they have the transparent

Brie Tucker: have, and I’ve been to the Keys once, my, oddly enough, I spent all my summers In Florida, my grandparents lived out there. And so I am definitely an Atlantic Ocean kind of gal. we live on the West Coast now, and the Pacific is not my favorite. I long for my Florida ocean again. But I’ve only been to Keys once, and you’re gonna laugh. I hated it because the water was warm and it was so squishy because there was all that like ouchy and stuff and uh.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, it must have been like in a little algae storm because they have those. They have like periods of time where there’s a lot of algae that

Brie Tucker: Yeah, so I’ve only been once and it was back when I was like a young teen, like 13 maybe. So like water shoes weren’t really a thing. And, yeah, that’s, I can still, just talking about the story, I am reliving the squishiness between my toes. I’m like, no,

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, oh, that’s

Brie Tucker: I can’t, but it was beautiful. I would love to go back. I just haven’t made it there yet. So my parents haven’t taken me on another free vacation. What the heck?

JoAnn Crohn: my first experience with that water was actually it was like 2017 when I did Disney social media mom. So we got to go to the Disney cruise. Disney has their own private island called, I forget what the name of it is now, but like just crystal clear water. And I’d never seen that water before again.

Growing up in the Pacific where it’s freezing cold when you get in and you can’t see your feet at all. Like even if you’re like maybe six inches down, you’re like, Oh, my feet have disappeared because the water’s a little murky. But seeing that, I was like, this is amazing. This is so amazing. It’s so pretty. And Oh, I loved it. I want to go back. 

Brie Tucker: other Well, our guest Amy Morin, her book is fantastic. I really recommend checking it out. And it blew me away. It really blew me away the very first chapter because the story I was talking about was a woman came in with empty nest syndrome. And really, she just felt lonely in her relationship with her husband.

JoAnn Crohn: Like they would sit in the same room and be on their different devices and not be talking or anything like that. And she didn’t attack the problem head on with him at all, which I was like, Whoa, she didn’t bring it up to him. Like, Oh, I feel lonely. What can we do instead? She. started changing what she did.

And she’s like, Hey, I think it’d be really fun if we go to a restaurant tonight. I made these plans. Let’s go to the restaurant. Or what do you think about going on a hiking vacation? And he’s like, sure. It sounds fun. And she made the plans for a hiking vacation. And while they were on these trips, he then started opening up and talking with her and they were able to redo their relationship.

And it was such a like different, like circuitous way. Then I normally see advice talking about these issues between couples and it really worked because She knew that if she talked to him about it head on, he would immediately become defensive and they would get nowhere. So I just, I thought it was so interesting how one person does have the power to not fix a relationship, but improve a relationship that comes with a caveat though. And Amy says this in her book, that this advice is only for people who are in safe relationships where yeah. 

Brie Tucker: there. 

JoAnn Crohn: No, that’s the caveat. If you feel unsafe in your relationship, this is not for you. there are other resources, therapy resources, crisis resources that would be much better suited for that situation.

Brie Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting about, about how all that works. So yeah, I, so Miguel and I, like when we, I think being that we’re, it’s our second, our second marriage before we even got married, He felt like one of his things was that like he didn’t, him and his first wife weren’t able to talk enough about things.

So that was, that was a priority he brought into this relationship. And so every December, end of December, we talk about our relationship, what we felt like went well this year. If there’s anything we would like to do differently, we know it’s a safe conversation. And then we plan our goals for the next year.

So when we did that for, yeah, it actually, so when we did that for 2023, Um, we decided that we weren’t, we had a lot of stress going on within our household and that we weren’t, we had lost our connection to each other and that we weren’t getting, so we planned our goal for 2023 was to spend more time away from the home, just the two of us.

And that was the only caveat that we gave it. And then we went through the calendar and literally it was like, okay, so this day we’re going to go to the botanical gardens, this day we’re going to go to a festival, this day we’re going to take a weekend up at Watson Lake and go, paddle boarding. so that’s why I’m excited for this year. It was fun. It was great. And so 2024, it’s going to be amazing.

JoAnn Crohn: Yes. Yes. I feel like my husband is very overwhelmed right now with all the things and he just doesn’t, he will do things that are planned, but I do have to be the planner at this point in life and I’m okay. I’m okay with that because it always means I’m doing stuff I want to do. I don’t like, I’m like, I’m going to put this on the calendar.

I’m going to put this on the calendar. You can come, you can not come, whatever. That’s cool. It’s just the relationship we have because I go into this being like, okay, I am not here to change him in any way, nor do I want him to feel stressed and do stuff like he isn’t into or doesn’t want to do. that said he comes at it with the same mentality.

He does the stuff that makes me happy. if it’s something, if it’s important to me, I express that to him and I’m like, it’s really important for me to, for you to be here. And he’ll be like, okay. so it’s a two way thing here. It’s not me sacrificing everything for him and saying you could take a back seat. That’s not it at all. 

Brie Tucker: Yeah, it’s, it’s a lot of give and take and there’s a lot of nuances about relationships. And again, what works for one might not work for another. However, like Amy talks about in her book, there are a lot of things that you see consistently that show. You’ve got a healthy relationship moving forward.

You’ve got healthy communication. So there are a lot of things. I absolutely love Amy’s book. So if you guys loved what we talked about, go, go grab Amy’s book, the 13 things mentally strong couples don’t do. It’s available right now. We have a link in the show notes and I um, during the presale, they were doing a free month, subscription to better help as well just for pre ordering the book.

hopefully they’re still doing that. I’m not sure if they still are now that the book’s out, but hopefully that’s still going on. That was pretty awesome. Check it out and see. 

JoAnn Crohn: and it’s worth mentioning, we’re on YouTube, guys. So anything like during this episode, if you want to actually see like what we’re doing, go to YouTube. We have clips of this episode and you can see us talking to Amy in her boat and see what the boat looks like at the back. So, uh,  we will, talk to you later. Remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you and, we’ll talk to you soon. 

Brie Tucker: for stopping by.