#101: What You and Your Kids Need To Do Now To Overcome Pandemic Stress and Anxiety with Amy Morin

Anxiety, depression, all those things are treatable. We have lots of treatment options, even for kids out there. But if we work on building mental strength now, it empowers kids to say, how do I deal with my feelings? How do I manage them in a healthy way? What can I do about this? And they'll be much more willing, too, to ask for help when they need it. So often parents would bring kids into my therapy office saying, my kid asked to see a therapist. And I always think if your kid asks, definitely do it because they, they might be struggling with things and you don't see it.

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Fasten your seatbelt. I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so excited to be here today with my friend and yours. You've already met her on the podcast. You better be following her. We're here today with Amy Morin Bess, bestselling author of so many fricking books, I can't even wait to get into it. Also, newly added editor in chief of Very well Mind psychotherapist and the freaking most unbelievable TEDx speaker ever with, I think it's at 16 million views last time I checked. And my friend Amy, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me back.

Heather, you can come back whenever you want. We'd love to have you every week. You know what? I want to talk about that. You're probably going to be annoyed because I ask you this all the time, but I want it not only for everyone listening right now, but for me. I love when you take us through the timeline of the first time you wrote the article on 13 things mentally strong People don't do until the timeline when your first book really took off.

Oh, okay. So it was 2013, November of 2013, I think it was like November 15th to be exact. I wrote the article 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do. And about November 18th, I think it was three days later, Forbes picked it up. And when it went on Forbes, it just immediately got like a million views. And then every time I refreshed the screen, it had 10,000 more. I'd hit refresh. 10,000 more. 10,000, 10,000. And so all these people were reading it. And then it was in just a couple days after that, I guess that a literary agent reached out to me, said, you should write a book. And so I spent the month of December Creating the book proposal. And by the beginning of January, I had a publishing deal with HarperCollins. And then my first book came out the following December. So just about 13 months after the article, I had my first book on the shelves. And then two years later, my second book, the parenting book, came out. And then about two years after that is when the women's book came out. And I guess it's been two years since then. And now my kids book is coming out. So I guess I'm on a two year cycle for the most part.

I mean, that sounds so simple, but we know it's so not simple. It's so. Well, it was amazing. Number one, you wrote an amazing article that went viral, right, because it got picked up by the right outlet, which is freaking phenomenal. But it all started with you writing about your own experience and what you learned. How to deal with death, difficult times, adversity, et cetera. And when was it that your first book really hit that tipping point such that you would get another book deal?

Oh, so it was a while. I think it was the following August, so it hit the shelves in December, did okay when it came out, but obviously didn't sell 50 million copies like the article did. And so I didn't know what it was like to write a book. I was just a therapist. And everybody kept saying if you don't hit the bestsellers list in the first week that it goes on sale, you probably won't because as you know, pre orders count as sales. So if you can pre sell a whole bunch of books and then when the week it comes out, it does really well and it's on the front of all the tables at all the bookstores. That's like your chance, your week to hit it. And it did okay. But again, it was Christmas. And then we got into New Year's and then by January, there's so many self help books that come out and people are like, new Year, new you. And it's a really overcrowded marketplace. And my book kind of got lost in the shuffle. So I believe it was August that it ended up hitting the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal bestsellers list. And the way that it happened that particular week, Rush Limbaugh read it on the radio, said, hey, I just discovered this book. That was the thing that pushed me over the edge. And so it suddenly sold out almost everywhere, which was exciting and yet frustrating at the same time because people couldn't get their hands on it. And then as soon as that happened, and I knew it, it was selling out. I was frustrated because I thought this is my one chance, but ended up happening that week it hit New York Times and Wall Street Journal best sellers list and then it's hit it a couple times since then. It just takes one big media push and randomly I'll end up on the bestsellers list or it's been a couple times that they've marked it down when they've done special sales like on Amazon where they will mark it down to 299, the ebook version that it will spike and I've made bestseller list that way too.

How crazy. And it must be so surreal for you. I have not had experiences like that yet. And so I totally get what you're saying. When we're told it's all through the pre sales and we're told that this is your window and when it actually happened for you out of the way the experts tell you is possible, weren't you going crazy in your mind that this is so exciting?

I was. So I had sort of thought I'd come to the conclusion of, well, that's great. I wrote a book and I'm a therapist and I got to write a book. And in fact I have an email from my agent who said, you know, that's great and your book sold okay, but you're probably never going to get another deal with HarperCollins because my book didn't sell as well as we had thought when it was off flew off the shelves in the beginning it was just like mediocre sales. But compared to what we thought since the article went viral, it didn't meet their expectations initially. And I remember when she sent me that email and I thought, oh, you know, I just, I really wanted to write another book because I thought that'd be amazing. I was grateful that I wrote one book, but obviously wanted to write more. And so the second that that happened and I hit the bestseller list, I was like, nope, I'm going to go all in. And so that was in August. And then I kept working as a therapist for a little while, but then I decided I'm just going to go like double down on this. I'm going to attempt to try to make this a career. So I cut down on how many days a week I was working as a therapist initially. And then I quit my job altogether and said, here we go, and was lucky enough to get the second book deal and then wrote the parenting book and then before the parenting book went on sale, approached my publisher about the third book, the women's book. And Said, what do you think? And they struck a deal with me for book number three before book number two even hit the shelves. So then I knew the pressure was on. I had to make sure those two books sold. And so I spent more time marketing those and really working hard on those, and then was fortunate enough to be able to now write a kit kids book.

I mean, does it get the same.

Publisher the whole time?

It's still Harper Collins, which is beyond impressive. And I'm with Harper Collins, too. Shout out to Harper Collins. Love working with them, even though they edit me a lot. Does it get easier for you when you keep. Because it's a franchise now. I mean, this is a phenomenon. Do you just feel like, oh, okay, just another bang out.

Another book usually comes out of what my readers ask for. So when the first book came out, readers kept saying, if only I'd learned this sooner, or how do I teach this to my kids? So I thought, duh, write the parenting book. And then when the parenting book came out, I started hearing specifically from women. Or I guess right before when I started talking about the parenting book, women were starting to ask, well, that's great that we talk about mental toughness, but then we look at Navy seals and we talk about elite athletes that are men. What's it look like to be a strong woman? So that's really how that idea came out. And. And then I just had been getting more questions from parents saying, you know, my teenager needs this or my kid needs something else. I'm doing everything I can as a parent, but they don't always listen to me. I want to know, how do I give them the tools that they need? So that's where the idea for the kids book came. Whether or not there's another 13 things book or another mental strength version, I don't know. I get a lot of questions from, like, teachers, like, can you write a book about teachers or couples? So I think it's possible, but I'm not opposed to just saying, okay, that was a great series, and now let's write about something else altogether. We'll see.

Amy, what is it like? Is it that you have these fundamentals that, you know, you learned as a therapist and you're through your experience of working with parents or working with women or now working with kids, you're able to speak to it differently? How does that methodology work?

I think, you know, just the idea of mental strength. Nobody was talking about it. And so even if you look on Google, how often mental strength was Googled before my article compared to after my article, you see this giant spike and it stayed high because people were introduced to the idea that you can be mentally strong and it doesn't mean that you won't have a mental health problem. I think back in the day we thought, well, if you're depressed or you're anxious, it's a sign of weakness. And I really wanted to introduce the idea that, no, you could be mentally strong and still struggle with depression. You can still struggle with anxiety, just like you could become physically strong. You go to the gym, you lift weights, you might still get high cholesterol, but it doesn't mean you can't keep lifting the weights. So I think it was just that notion that it's not a weakness that people gravitated toward. And now I get a chance to say, and here are the things you can do. You don't have to just sit idly in life and let problems come to you, but you can be proactive about it. And people seem to really like that idea of, okay, I can't control everything in life, but I can control whether I work on my mental strength. Here's how to build it. We're not talking about huge things either. Sometimes little things like, I'm going to practice gratitude today or I'm going to face a fear. One really small step at a time just gives people some hope of, okay, what can I do to really manage my mental health and how do I become mentally stronger every day?

How did you change the tone or the voice that you had been writing in to write differently for a kid's book, or did you not change it? How does that work?

So initially, as we talked about a kid's book, they wanted to give me a ghostwriter. And they said, let's give you a ghostwriter because they can make it in kid friendly language. But I didn't want to do that. I thought of somebody else writing a book about mental strength and putting it in what sounded like my language. Yet it wasn't really as much as you try to emulate somebody else's tone and language, it wasn't going to work. So I said, just give me the first stab at it and if it's terrible, we'll figure something out, but let me try. So they agreed and we put it together and I just thought, you know, how do I channel my 10 year old self and think, when I was 10, what did I want to hear? What would have helped me? How do I put this in helpful language? But interestingly, I did a lot of work as a therapist with kids 8 to 12 was a really popular range. I did this whole study about depression, anxiety and kids with behavior problems and the treatments that worked for them. And then interestingly, I had found a lot of the exercises that work with kids like their parents were gravitating toward because it was really simple stuff. And we all want simple in life. We don't want to know. You have to do this 27 step process to change your life. We want to know when I'm stressed out, what works and what works right now. So this like really simple breathing exercises is like smell the pizza, where you breathe in through your nose like you're smelling a piece of pizza. Then you blow out like you're cooling the piece of pizza off. And that's a really simple one. That calms your brain, calms your body, and easy to remember. And so in thinking back about, okay, how do I make this stuff stick for kids, I'm just going to use the same exercises I used to use in my therapy office. And those things that I really resonated with kids in real life, I could then talk about them in the book. So. And other than that, we had to work with an illustrator, which of course wasn't something I'd ever done, but it was fun. And the illustrator that I got to pick from a bunch of different ones. And the one that worked on my book was really good at taking directions. I'm like, this is just what I was picturing when I wrote the book. You know, it's your creative endeavor too. So if you can imagine something slightly different, go for it. She did a really good job. And then in terms of just trying to make it readable for kids, lots of bullets and icons and exclamation points. And then we had, there's a designer that kind of puts in fun fonts and I get the final say on a lot of those things. But they knew what makes it fun for kids. Kids don't want to just sit down to a huge novel or something that looks like a dictionary and read it. They need interactive stuff that reminds them of the exercises and the things they can do and breaks it up in a fun way.

So this book couldn't be coming out obviously at a better time because as a parent of a 13 year old, I mean, I just see firsthand how difficult how isolating this time is, how depressing it is for everyone, the anxiety of that, first of all, the unknown that we as adults have, of course, but for children, it's even scarier because they have less control. What Are some of the tips that you want kids to know that can empower them?

Yeah. So when we wrote the book last March is when I sat down to write it in the very beginning of the pandemic, thinking, you know, this will be over before the book comes out. Of course, here we are a year later, and we know that this is super impacted kids. Like you say, when they looked at kids 11 to 17, that's the age group that's most likely to be depressed right now. They have more depression than adults. And yet we talk about adults having it because we like, oh, we're struggling with finances or we're working from home and all of these things going on, but it's so affecting kids. So in the book, a lot of the exercises will work for right now as well. Just strategies to empower themselves. There's a whole chapter on how to know when do you speak up? How to know when. When it's okay to stay quiet. Like when the umpire calls a strike and you don't think it was. That's not the time to speak up. But maybe when your friend's getting picked on, maybe that is the time to speak up. And just teaching those subtle things for kids to know. All right, what are the differences? How do I take care of myself? What are some strategies so that I can think more positively? And it's not about just thinking, yeah, everything's going to turn out great, and I'm fine. But knowing that when they have thoughts, they're like, oh, I'm never going to do a good job. What can you do instead? And one of the exercises in my book is about blue thoughts versus true thoughts. And blue thoughts is an acronym for blaming myself, looking for the bad news, unhappy, guessing, and exaggeratingly negative. And it's just an easy way for kids to say this. A blue thought or a true thought. And if it's a blue thought, I talk them through. How do you change that? How do you make sure that you reframe it into something more realistic? And we also know that kids who struggle the most in life are the ones that struggle with problem solving. So when they can't, they don't know how to do their homework. They think, I'm never going to get this right. It's because I'm stupid. Nobody can help me. And they sort of become helpless or they just don't know how to take action. So my book outlines exactly how do you tackle a problem? Steps is the acronym where you say, okay, I'm going to say what the problem is think of some solutions, evaluate each one. You pick one, and then you see if it worked. Just to empower kids to know when you face a problem in life, you don't have to avoid it. You don't have to just sit and worry about it. Here's some action you can take. And the truth is, kids are really good at solving problems. They just need a reminder. Every problem, there's tons of different ways to solve it. And they're usually pretty creative at it. In my therapy office, I do a real life exercise where I'll say, okay, this object, maybe it's like a stuffed animal, has to move from one side of the room to the other, but you can't use your hands. And we go through this exercise and initially kids are like, well, you can't. You can't do it. I'll say, well, let's see what we can come up with. And within about five minutes, they usually can think of about 20 different ways to do it. I'm going to use my elbows, I'm going to use something else. I'm going to ask you to move it. I mean, just hilarious stuff. And then we have this whole conversation about, remember how five minutes ago you thought that there was no possible way to solve this, but just within a couple minutes you thought of this many solutions, let's try a couple of them. And it just really opens up their thinking of, okay. When I do face a problem, whether it's a problem with my friend or I'm having a problem with schoolwork, there's lots of different things I can do about that problem. I don't just have to avoid it or hide in my room or sit around and think about how awful it is.

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And that's what so many of the kids are doing right now. I would imagine just the act of them opening the book up, seeing the title of the book, seeing that it's created for them, is going to allow them to feel that it's normal and okay to be feeling this way. That's got to be really important.

Absolutely. So we talk a lot about feelings. So many of us just don't talk about feelings. We don't even really know how to talk about them. And as parents, it's tempting to, you know, calm your kids down, to cheer them up, to even minimize what they're thinking or how they're feeling, to be all that's not a big deal or don't worry about it. And so in the book, I try to make it really clear we all have feelings and you don't have to make yourself happy all the time. Sometimes it's okay to be sad, sort of recognize when are your feelings a friend and when are they an enemy? Really simple exercise so your kid can figure out, all right, when I'm angry, but it maybe empowers me to speak up for my friend. Then anger is my friend, it's helpful. But when I'm angry and I rip up my homework because I'm frustrated and that's when anger becomes an enemy. So then we teach them, all right, when your emotions are an enemy, what do you do about it? And just real hands on skills. How do you cheer yourself up? How do you calm yourself down? How do you deal with worry? And my hope is that kids will then have this whole toolbox of things that they can use moving forward so that when they are done school, when they go away to college, when they move out of the house, they'll still have these skills. When they've done studies on college students and they say, are you prepared for college? Like 90% of them say, yep, academically, but yet 60% say not emotionally. I don't have the skills. I wish grownups would have spent more time teaching me. How do you deal with loneliness? How do you deal with a failed test? What about when you're sad? Because they're just struggling with those things. Thanks.

But the problem is, and you know this, grownups don't know how to teach it right. I'M a first time mother. Just like probably so many people listening, you know, we're all new to a pandemic. We're all new to teaching and parenting in a pandemic. And we're all under so much pressure that like you said, sometimes just ignoring the problem or pacifying or trying to get them to distract or refocus on something else or let's talk about the positives. I know I do that all the time. And that be the go to. So a book like this, not only does it empower the child, but it relieves some anxiety for a parent to say, I didn't know what the toolbox was to hand to my child. But thankfully Amy did. And I'll tell you, this is so funny. My son really struggled the first few months of school in the pandemic. Really, I mean, and I just kept attributing it to, you know what, he's a boy, he's just got to get through this. I don't care what he gets for grades. I had just chalked it up because I didn't want to put pressure on him. Cut to one of his friends says, you didn't turn the alarm situation on, on your phone? And he said, I don't know what that is. So the friend teaches him a tool that's on his phone through the school's app that notifies you that day of what you need to be working on so that you have your homework done for the next day. Basically, a reminder system that we didn't know existed, but his friend had access to it. Taught my son how to access it. My son's grades have gone up drastically since he turned this, this one tool on, but we didn't know the tool existed, Amy. And that's, that's what I like in your book, too. If you don't know the tools exist, you're powerless. But the minute someone hands you that key to unlock the tools, it can completely change your grades, your attitude, and how you get by. So a book like this is the answer not only for kids, but for parents.

Yeah, that's a great analogy, and that's my hope. Then parents will have the language. Because right now, when your kid's upset or your kid's struggling with something, we don't even know what to say or how to say it or which tool to use. But when a parent can say, is that a blue thought or a true thought? When your kid says, I'm going to fail that test on Thursday, when you say that, is that a blue thought or A true thought, you can then teach your kid, okay, I'm going to recognize this probably is just a blue thought. Here's how I'm going to change it. And you can become more like a coach, rather than just saying to them, oh, honey, you'll pass the test. Because then we're not teaching them. How do you deal with your own negative thoughts? Because someday you're not going to be there to reassure them, and you want them to know how to reassure themselves. So when you share that similar language and you can practice those, like, right in the moment, in the teachable moments, that we all have to be able to say, wait a minute, is this a friend or an enemy right now that you're so frustrated? Or is this a friend or an enemy? When you're this sad and you can have those conversations, it just opens up a lot more doors, and kids can start to say, all right, you're right. Let me get a handle on this. What can I do about it right now?

I'm so happy I have you here because I want to ask you this question. Someone told me the other day not to say to my child when he does well on a test, I'm so proud of you, but instead to say to him, I bet you are so proud of yourself. Is there a big difference between phrasing it one way or the other?

You know, I think that there can be. I think. I guess if we were to say best practice, it would be to say, I'm proud of you for the hard work you put in or for the effort that you put in, rather than just the outcome. So that way, if your kid doesn't pass a test someday, then they know, well, I still studied hard, and I'm not for. You know, everybody gets a trophy just because you showed up. But on the other hand, for kids to know that the outcome isn't always the most important thing. So if you want your kids to do well on tests, but you also value honesty, you don't want your kid to cheat. And if your kid thinks, mom or dad's only proud of me when I get a 95 on my test, those are the kids that probably cheat. And, like, 90% of parents are like, no, no, no, I instill a strong moral character in my kid. But we know 43% of kids cheat. And that's probably just because of that difference that we don't explain to kids. Like, because we don't talk about honesty, we talk about their grades. We don't talk about kindness, we talk about the outcome. And so. So I do think that's a good difference to say, you must be so proud of yourself. But it's also okay as a parent to say, I'm proud of you, but to just qualify. I'm proud of you that you have paid attention in class. I'm proud of you that you've worked really hard. I'm proud that you put in so much effort. That way they know it's not just always about the outcome.

Oh, my gosh, that is so powerful. And I'm just thinking to myself, holy cow, I need to work on that. Because especially during pandemic, I keep saying, just pass, just get by, just do okay, you know, and then focus on that outcome. I have not been focusing on the work, so I appreciate you sharing that. One of the other strange things that's happened during pandemic for me in my situation is I took my son to the dentist. Of course you can't go in. He goes in by himself, but they call you after. And my son's been seeing the same dentist for 13 years. And they said, this is the first time we had an issue with your son. He's not brushing his teeth as much as we are accustomed to. We found inflammation in his gums. You know, this. These are situations with him. We've never had these in 13 years. And it made me stop and think, okay, he's not leaving the house nearly as much. He's not around other kids nearly.

Right.

All the things externally that would drive you to look good and smell good and have, you know, good smelling breath, right. They're gone. Because he's faced off with a computer all day long. What are some of the suggestions that you have now that he doesn't have the external reason to do it, to try to get him to brush more other than just, you know, getting him back in the routine again.

Oh, that's a good one. So, and, you know, I think it's not even just kids that are struggling with this these days. How many adults have you heard who say, you know, I haven't changed my pants, my sweatpants in, you know, a week now? So I think probably reminders and then like, just like the alarms that helped him with his schoolwork to make sure that there's a reminder? Because I think for kids especially, it's, you know, they just get forgetful and get kind of lazy when it comes to you taking care of hygiene issues. So maybe you have an alarm and then even on the phone it plays for the two minutes that you're supposed to brush or there's something like that, Just some kind of system in place. But obviously you want him to buy in. At 13, if you're like, hey, mom, set up this system for you. He's not going to love it. But if you talk to him, okay, this is what the dentist said. What should we do about it? This is where you get him to work on problem solving too. And he might say, yeah, you know, I forget to do this, or I haven't been brushing as much, or I'm in a hurry so I run out, or I, you know, wait until two in the afternoon before I even remember, sort of figure out what he thinks would work for him and. And then try some experiments. So maybe you try something for a couple of weeks, see if it works if he's remembering or not. If not, then you say, let's try something else. And for parents that are really struggling, like, this is a real problem, which I've worked with a lot of parents. Their kid won't take a shower for three or four days, and then they're like, this is becoming a problem. You might have to implement some kind of a reward system where you say, all right, if you do A, B and C, here's an external motivator I'm going to give you. You type it to video game time or something else that your kid really enjoys just as a way to give them an extra incentive. And there's nothing wrong with that because sometimes parents will say, I'm bribing my kid. Now, the bribe is when you do it up front. When you say, here's a lollipop. Stop screaming in the middle of the store. You're bribing your kid. But when you say, wow, you've been quiet for two minutes, here's your reward. That's a reward. And it's fine to reward kids when they need a little more help with their intrinsic motivation. You do a little external motivation. And so there's something in particular that would help motivate your son with something. It's okay to go ahead and tie that reward to good behavior.

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Oh I love that. That's. I'm definitely going to use that one and I didn't realize the difference between you know, offering the lollipop the minute they stop crying versus saying, this is a reward for your behavior. So I really like that. I can do that, too. One of the funny things that I've noticed, and I'm sure people listening have noticed this too, if you get in a rut as a parent, right? And so I'm just doing one workout. I'm just going to, you know, one park, and it becomes my new Covid routine. You can you lose that spark of. At first I was excited to do it and that, you know, it put me in a good mood. And then it was just kind of flatline, like, this is just. It is what. This is my Covid workout. And so I ended up getting the opportunity and super lucky. Living in Miami right now, as you know, living in the Keys this time of year is the best. So I got the opportunity to go to a spin class on a roof socially distanced the other day. And Amy, let me tell you, it was as if I went to Disney World for the first time in my life. I was like, this is the best.

Day of my life.

And when I came home, I thought, wow, if I hadn't pushed myself out of that rut that I was in this routine rut, I wouldn't just had all this joy and all this positive experience and be around great music and be near people and just do something new and different and be so grateful for it. And I immediately thought back to my son. I've let him get in his rut. I've let him stay in his room. I've let him do exactly what I was doing. And so he's lost that spark that I got from going to this spin class. And now when I mentioned to him, I'm going to find a camp free this summer, come hell or high water, I don't know where it's going to be or what kind. It's going to be a sports camp, but somewhere in this country, there's going to be a sports camp open, because his camps are all closed here. And I've been looking and I was showing him the websites, and every time I'd show him, I'd see, nah, not that one. No, not that one. And I realized he was being me, going to the same kind of dreary routine that, well, if this takes me on my routine, I don't want to do it. How do you approach a situation like that with a child?

I'm glad you asked that question too, because for so long, we're like, no, I can't wait to get out of the House, I can't wait to go out and do stuff. But now that we're talking about opening up more, the most common questions and concerns I'm getting from people is like, I actually don't want to do it now, and I don't know why. And for some people, it's more social anxiety of thinking I haven't been around human beings in a really long time. And other people are like, it just seems overwhelming or it seems like a lot more work than I'm used to putting in. It takes a lot of effort these days to get out and go, even thinking about doing stuff. So it's all about, I guess, pushing a little bit. We want to make sure that kids are pushing themselves outside their comfort zones and even when they don't want to. So you might just give him three choices. I found these three camps. Which one do you want to go to? To give him a little bit of an option so he can say, you know, not this one, but that one. Because if you find one and you say, I think you should really go to this one, he might find some reasons why he doesn't want to go to that one. But if you say, all right, I narrowed it down to three, but I really want you to pick which one, he'll be much more likely to say, all right, I'll go to this one. Because teenage boys especially love it when they have some say in it and they have some choice. So it's not, mom, pick this one, and she's making me go. But instead it's all, yeah, no, I like this one better. Even if he picks it, you know, based on some random reason or he can't explain why he picked that one. But if you give him some, buy into it. But yet you're not saying, do you want to go to camp or not? You're just saying, which camp do you want to go to? Phrasing it that way might help him be more motivated to say, yeah, I want to go to this one, and here's why I want to go to that. And he'll start thinking about why he wants to go to that one rather than why he doesn't want to go to the one that you purposely pick out for him.

Oh, I love that. Thank you. And I'm totally. We will be doing that tonight. I will be picking three out and.

Say, oh, I'm so excited for you.

To choose the one you'd like to go to. So, you know, you mentioned the social anxiety. Interacting with people seems weird. And I listen, I had it Myself, when I first started going near people, not people I care about, but just to start going back to business type meetings when you don't know someone, I felt really nervous, wondering, are they going to invade my space? Who is this person? You know, it felt so awkward. And I know I can see that same struggle with my child. How do you advise parents to talk to the child? Or how do you advise children if they are feeling that social anxiety?

Yeah, funny you mentioned that. I remember we met in a studio in Miami a while back and we had that even like, do you want to wear a mask? Even if for 10ft apart, do you not do? Right. The questions about, okay, you know, if there's other people in the room, what's their comfort level? And trying to feel that out. So it's just important to have conversations with kids. How do you. How do you feel that out? Some families are going to have different rules. Some families might say, say, let's have play dates, let's have slumber parties. Other families for a long time might not be comfortable with that. They're in different situations. So I think just having open conversations with kids, we haven't done this in a long time. Yeah, it's going to feel kind of weird. What are you nervous about? Rather than say to them, don't be nervous, just invite them to talk about it. Like, I'm uncomfortable being at their house because I haven't been around six people under one roof in a long time. Or I'm uncomfortable, I'm just kind of nervous and I don't even know why. Or I haven't been away from home for more than a couple of hours at a time. I haven't gone away. So all of those things are likely to come up and to just normalize them. And you might even talk a little bit about your own experiences too. We don't want to burden kids with adult stress. But to say to them, this feels really weird, doesn't it? To be out in public, to be in a crowd, or to be around people outside of immediate family. And I think when we just normalize that, kids know, okay, there's nothing wrong with me for feeling this way, but a lot of people are. And I don't know if you're feeling it up there in Miami. Down here in the Keys, it's flooded with tourists. Everybody seems to really lack patience at the moment too, and people are irritable. And you'd think, boy, we should be so excited that down here in South Florida we at least get to be outside and we Get a lot more opportunities than people who are in colder climates and they haven't been out of the house. But at the same time it feels like we've kind of forgotten how to interact or how to treat each other nicely. So I think it's going to take a while. So I think just explaining that to kids. Yeah, this is strange times for all of us now that we're going to start going out of the house and a lot of people, including us, might need some practice. And how do you be kind and how do you still have space and how do you make sure that if somebody's doing something that you're not comfortable with, how do you speak up in a polite way or when do you just remove yourself from the situation? Lots of weird conversations. But I think there's also lots of opportunities right now to talk to kids about that. In real life situations, if you're at the store or when you're out and about and you see things going on to just point it out and say let's talk about how we might handle that or next time what could we do differently? Those sorts of things.

Is the book something that you think the parents we should be reading with our kids or do we allow them to read it themselves to first and then ask questions to spark a conversation?

So I think the most valuable way to approach it would be for parents to read it too so that you can have conversations, ongoing ones, and then you know the language and the tools that your kids are learning. So when your kid's worried about something, you can say to them, oh, this sounds like a great opportunity to practice changing the channel. And then your kid knows what it means and you know what it means. And then you can coach them along the way. Because it's written for the 8 to 12 year old market, I think a lot of older kids especially are still going to get something from it. But no 8 year old is going to read a self help book and start to apply it on their own. They need some guidance and some coaching around that for sure.

That is an understatement. I would imagine that when just the act of. And I just am speaking from personal experience, when someone buys me a book and sends it to me and I get it, I feel so special, right, that somebody took the time to do something so thoughtful and invest in me. I would imagine on some level a child would recognize that as a gift too in some way.

I hope so. I had somebody reach out to me and say I really want to buy this book for my niece and My nephew. But is it rude to give them a self help book? And I said, all right, I totally understand why you might think that handing your niece and a nephew a self help book, they might think, well, do you think I need this? But I think when you explain to them I find this material helpful. These are the kinds of books I read too. I wish somebody had given me this book when I was a kid. When you have those kinds of conversations, then kids, I think, are much more open to it, rather than just giving it to them and saying, you need this to explain why you think it's a good idea, how it could be helpful to them.

But I mean, given the time that we're in a global pandemic, I mean, what percentage do you think? And I don't know if you know an actual number. I don't. But I would imagine the majority of people are currently struggling with depression and anxiety, right?

Yeah, I think the number's like 70%.

So it's a pretty good bet that everybody needs the book right now.

And when we looked at what happened in China when kids came out of quarantine, almost all of them had symptoms of depression and ptsd. Because my fear is people are gonna think once the door is open that everybody's gonna go back to normal and life is good again. But I think we're gonna start, see, for the next few years, we're going to see the consequences of this. I mean, some kids have missed an entire year of their lives of not doing sports and not being able to be in school and be around their friends. And we're going to see the fallout of that after the doors open and we start resuming some normal activity again.

From a therapist perspective, what is the impact of jumping on and doing this work now versus putting kids back out there and six months from now, a year from now saying, I think they are struggling with depression. Let's try to jump in now.

Yeah, it's so important right now. There's so many things we can do to prevent problems. So many things we can do to get them help if they need it now. The longer we ignore it, the longer we wait. We'll just see if it gets better. We'll see if it goes away. The bigger the problems get. We know this, and most people go five to eight years before they get treated for anxiety. That's like eight years somebody might say, suffer in silence before they actually reach out to get help. Anxiety, depression, all those things are treatable. We have lots of treatment options even for kids out there. But if we work on building mental strength now, it empowers kids to say, how do I deal with my feelings? How do I manage them in a healthy way? What can I do about this? And they're being much more willing, too, to ask for help when they need it. Kids. So often parents would bring kids into my therapy office saying, my kid asked to see a therapist. I don't know, do they need to see one? And I always think if your kid asks, definitely do it. Because they might be struggling with things and you don't see it. A lot of struggles with kids don't look the way that we think that they would. No kid's going to come to you and say, I'm really depressed right now. But they tend to complain about headaches, stomach aches, a lot of aches and pains, and physical symptoms, trouble sleeping, changes in their diet. Those sorts of things are usually all signs. But also, kids don't look sad when they're depressed. They tend to look more irritable and angry. So parents will think that they're just being a moody kid, but really they're struggling with other things, too.

Wow, Amy, this work that you're doing could not come at a better time. I'm personally so grateful for it. I know everyone that's listening. Anyone that's a parent needs to purchase this book right now. And anyone who has a young adult child, someone in their life that they love and care about, purchase this book. Because like you said, waiting is not the right answer. That will only allow time to pass and things to get more challenging for that individual.

Absolutely. So my hope is that we'll invest in this now and start working on how do I help? How do we help kids before things get worse?

Oh, gosh, we need to 13 things strong kids do. Think big, Feel good, Act Brave by Amy Maureen. Available now. And where can everyone get it?

So you can buy it on Amazon, Target.com, all the usual places and goes on sale April 6, but you can pre order it anytime.

Amy, thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for writing this book.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

All right, until next time, my friend. Hold tight. We will be right back. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.