398. "You Can Do Tough Things" | Building Resilience and Empowerment with Allison Guilbault

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Allison Guilbault:
I would say find support, right? If you are stressed out, find support. Obviously on pro-therapy, it does not have to look like therapy, right? But find someone who can be objective to help you process whatever it is that you're going through.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Richard. And we have a great guest today to share with you. Her name is Allison Guilbault. She is a licensed therapist. She is the owner and operator of Mindful Mental Health. She's been all over the media, places like Medium, Psychology Today, CPS. 

And today, she and I are going to talk about a lot of things, but we're going to talk about mindset, empowering oneself, living the life that we all want to live. So, Allison Guilbault:, because that's so fun to say, welcome to The Daily Helping. It is awesome to have you with us today.

Allison Guilbault:
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, this is gonna be a lot of fun. I love to know, because you and I are in similar worlds, right, although I don't practice anymore, you are helping people's mental health, which I absolutely appreciate. Tell us a little bit about your journey. How did you get put on the path you're on today?

Allison Guilbault:
Oh, great question. So, I don't think uncommon to a lot of stories for people who are in this field, it started with my own struggles with my mental health. I, in high school, had a lot of anxiety, in college had a lot of anxiety, and I didn't know it was anxiety back then. I remember having my first panic attack when I was maybe like 15 and my mom didn't know what to do for me. So, she took me to the hospital. They told me that I had a panic attack, and then they sent me on my way, and didn't offer any support, medication, offerings to services. 

And so, I kind of whiteknuckled it for a pretty long time in trying to find ways to reduce my anxiety, just feel better, feel more confident, feel more stable. And so, when I went to college, it was really important to me to create space for people, so that they didn't have to struggle the way that I did. I'm very happy to say, I think, … I was about to say, 2024-2025 now, it's less stigmatized. I think with the emergence of social media, there's a lot more access points, there's a lot more normalization of therapy in mental health,  and what we go through. But yeah, it started with me. I relate to a lot of my clients.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I think it's interesting, too, one of the things that I noticed as a trend is certainly COVID was one of the things, where mental health's stopping a buzzword and, actually, people started giving a damn about it. And I don't think it's changed. I think this, now, became part of our culture in the sense that, "Hey, we're going to look at mental health in the same way that we look at medical health and treat them both." And you're even seeing that. I mean, there's a lot of states now where there's parity in terms of health insurance that they have to treat mental health the same way they do medical health. That was not the case years ago. 

So, we're definitely moving in the right direction in terms of getting people access to mental health. But it also feels like maybe we're moving in a not-so-great direction in terms of the overall mental health, if you're taking a temperature check of where we are as a society, particularly here in the West. 

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Right now, we're in the post-COVID. It's not surprising to me that like anxiety has risen, depression has risen. We went through a global pandemic. That's pretty stressful. And like, at least, again, speaking from the place in which I live in America, there's sort of a definite air of uncertainty and destabilizing energy. So, the surroundings in which we live in, certainly, affect our mental health, right? We're not just, like, living in a vacuum. So, outside sources and if there's conflict, then that affects us too. 

So, I think, right now, we're in a very unique time where I'm biased but I wish that every person could have someone that they could talk to that could kind of help them sort through whatever it is that they might be going through and feeling right now.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And I know that part of what you do is you speak to entrepreneurs, you help people tap into their inner power, and we're going to touch on those things in a bit. But I am curious for your opinion, because it has been said, and not by me, but I've seen this in a number of places, particularly amongst younger people. So, I'm talking people in their 20s, people in their 30s. There is a marked reduced degree of resiliency in those populations compared to different generations of the past. What's your take on that?

Allison Guilbault:
Well, I guess, resiliency is really subjective, right? So, I'm curious to know before I answer, what do you mean by resiliency?

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Well, being able to be mentally tough in the face of adversity, really.

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah. I have heard that myself for sure. I think we're coming… traditionally, my generation, Boomer generation, we look at sort of like how to do life in a really specific way, right? Like, you got to show up, you got to be tough, you got to stay consistent. And I think the culture is significantly changing. I see a lot of college students now, and that's just not the vibe in which they live. So, I think from a traditional standpoint, I could definitely see it as, like, well, the resiliency is lowering. They're not as tough. They're not showing up the same way.

On the flip side, you could argue that maybe they have better boundaries. Maybe they're like… I'll give you an example. I tell this story a lot. I have a friend of mine who went for a job interview. And they said, like, "Okay, you're pretty much a shoo-in, but we're going to ask you to do more than 40 hours of work." And he was like, "Cool. No problem. So, like, what's the salary change?" And they're like, "Well, no salary change. You're going to have to keep showing up." And he was like, "No. The salary in which I'm agreeing to is for this 40 hours of work." And they responded like, "That's not good work ethic, right? We have other people that are happy to work 60 hours for this rate."  And he declined the job. 

And when he told this story somewhat publicly, there was a very big divide on if they were team him, like, "Yes, your salary is for only 40 hours. And actually that was really good boundaries," versus "Actually that's terrible work ethic. You're supposed to go above and beyond." So, I think it's a very subjective question and interesting one. I'm glad you asked it. I think it's a mix of both. I mean, I see lazy clients, not my clients, but people that might not have the strong work ethic that I'm used to aligning with. I also see that they have better boundaries too. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
No, it's a good answer. And I think it speaks to a lot of different things. I think one of the things that shifted with COVID, which we keep going back to today, but I think it's relevant is that when people started really working from home in large numbers, all of a sudden, there was no real delineation from what is work and what's not. Nobody had a contract before COVID that said, "Oh, well, I'm going to be in the office from 8 to 5," because the going home, to a degree, although everybody's got mobile devices and email, but to a degree, leaving the office insulated you from work. But when we started working from home, there was no boundary, and there was no written rule that said if you got an email at 10.54 p.m., should you or should you not respond to that email? What's the protocol for that? 

But I do think one of the things that is problematic and, again, speaks to resiliency and I think is going to stem very beautifully into your sub-specialties is the external locus of control, I think, is more pronounced in Western society than it ever has been. Period. So, for somebody who, really, your secret sauce is helping somebody have the right mindset, live their dream life, empower themselves to achieve their dreams, what's your take on external versus internal locus of control? And for somebody who has an external locus of control, what are some of the things a person could do to start grabbing that by the throat and taking control over their own life?

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah, a beautiful question. I'm, sort of, a nerd for what's called somatic psychology, right? And what all that chops down to is your mind-body connection is really telling. And I think we have a really, really powerful feedback loop that most of us have not been conditioned to actually listen to. So, before I was a therapist, I was a private investigator, and I worked for the government, and I worked for a very high up firm, and I was extremely successful. And I was miserable, right? And I think I had a very strong attachment to my external locus of control. 

And when I look back at that time in my life, something I encourage clients to do is to really think about, like, where is their alignment? Are they doing what they're doing based on pressure or based on passion? And they sound buzzwordy and it sounds cliche, but at the end of the day, I strongly believe that. And if I reflect back, it was all pressure, right? Like I dropped into my body, and I was, like, responding to my emails at 10 p.m. I had poor boundaries. Like, everything felt anxious. I was tense, I punched my jaw, I couldn't sleep well at night, like I wasn't really smiling, I didn't feel really connected to my work, but I was doing it because that's just what I knew and I was successful at it. 

And so I had sort of the mindset of,  we call it sunk cost fallacy, right? I had spent so much time doing this. I just stayed in that loop, right? And when I finally burnt out, everything else, all of my self-worth was so external to me. Was I pleasing my boss? Was I getting this investigation done that I was just kind of lost and all of it? And I did what we do sometimes when I burnt out. And I went back, and I started from scratch, and went back to school a second time to get a third degree in mental health, so that I could actually get licensed this time. 

And now, I still work hard. I still do. I'm going to be totally honest. Sometimes, I answer my emails at 10 p.m., but it doesn't feel like, when I connect into my… I'm gonna say a real cheesy word here, but here we go, like my soul essence, when I look at how I'm showing up to my life, I am authentically happy. That doesn't mean I don't have bad days at work. Of course I do. I have tough clients. Yesterday, my email stopped working, which in this day and age is a hellacious event to happen. But I'm more centered on, like, what do I need and I'm focusing more on my mindset, on my control, on reflecting to, like, is this making me happy? Am I doing this work because I am feeling fulfilled at the end of the day, versus I'm doing this because I'm showing up for someone else's dream. 

And I think it's a big shift. Most of us do not tough skills around that, how to kind of, like, dig in and look at, is what I'm doing making me happy? Like, that's not a question most of us are taught to ask.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So let's dig in because I think you're right. We get, oftentimes, so caught up in the traps of our society, right? The mortgage, the car, the lifestyle. And the data on social media is very clear about this, it's that there is an inverse correlation with respect to one's happiness. So, the more people that are on Facebook, the more people that are posting, I should say that, the more people that are posting, not just Facebook but on social media, the less happy that they report out to be.

And a lot of reasons why, when they ask the people that were researched, is because they see the lifestyle of all their friends and family, their neighbors who are always posting these epic vacation pictures with the kids and these lavish resorts, and they think, "Well, why can't I have that?" So, I think a lot of people, because of just keeping up with the Joneses, maybe go into a career. I mean, your private investigator/government story was a great example, right? You said you were great at your job. You were killing it but it was killing you. At least inside, it was killing you. 

So, if somebody's listening to this and their alarm bells are going off in their head saying, "Oh my God. This is me," Allison, what are some of the things that you would advise them to do to start making some shifts there, other than just say, "Screw it, burn the ships and quit your job today," because that's not always smart either.

Allison Guilbault:
No. And it's not always smart, right? We do live in a world where mortgages matter. We have families to feed and bills to pay. So, the answer I always give is it does start with mindset. And I know it feels like a cop-out answer. It's like, "Okay, you just want me to change my thoughts?" But pivoting our thoughts really does change our reality. 

Fundamentally, I'm what's called a CBT therapist, cognitive behavioral therapist. And the foundation of that is just our thoughts dictate our feelings, which dictate our behavior. So if I think, "Oh, I'm not going to be able to get another job. How am I supposed to start over again?" I'm going to feel really anxious. And maybe I'm not even going to take the first step, which is looking at a program. If I need to go back to school, or looking on Indeed to see if there's a job available. It's a really mobilizing force. But if we start to shift our mindset to possibility, we do start to build some confidence. 

For me, when I had that burnout, I did need to kind of like throw the baby out with bathwater. It had gotten to a point of such stress for me that I just had to leave that career and I knew I had to do it almost immediately. But I was living in New York City as a single person with a huge rent to pay. And so, I had to get really creative. So, I always encourage clients, like let's look for creativity, patience, and flexibility. 

I looked into my life, I reviewed my life, and I'm like, "Okay, what's my fundamental? If I leave this career, what do I need?" And the first thing I needed was money,  which I think is a pretty reasonable need for most people. And so I thought, "All right. This is how I know how to get money. There is millions of jobs out in this world, millions, millions and millions of jobs. I could do so many things. What else can I do, even if I just right now need some training wheels?" 

And what I came up with is I went back to bartending, right? I was a bartender in college and into my first master's degree. And so, I went back to bartending. And that allowed me a cushion where I wasn't just like, "Eff it, let's just not pay my rent." I found myself a creative solution to meet the immediate need and also then allow some space for me. I went back to school. I had to get another degree. 

And so, that's not gonna shake down for everybody. But if we start to believe there are other options, that is actually a really powerful brain neural pathway that we can start to build and it allows more opportunity. It starts to kind of chip away our anxiety and builds more of our confidence. And that can allow some of that creative juices to flow. Where can I find support? What other options do I have?  Like we need to get a little bit of problem solving in that space. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So this is intuitive to me, the creativity piece. And I love this. The patience piece is interesting because somebody in a situation where they are no longer happy in their job, maybe they got laid off, maybe AI replaced them or something crazy, right? So how do you have patience when the clock is ticking and a proverbial gun is to your head? 

Allison Guilbault:
Well, that's a great question. And Dr. Richard, that's real hard, right? So, it's going to be hard and I want to start there. So, patience, kind of like if I think of the word patience and I'm visualizing it, I'm imagining like a maternal figure, like, "Shh, we've got this," right? And like a lot of the time, patience doesn't actually come with that energy. However, it's sort of patience and trust. I'm going to add a little addendum there. 

The way that I often think about it is, I'm at a difficult juncture point in my life. I'm choosing between two very hard things. Staying the same is going to be very hard. Activating patience when my anxiety is telling me something is urgent is also gonna be really hard. However, the cue there is anxiety often tells us things are urgent and they're usually not.

So, again, in my example, if all I did is focus on, "Oh my God, I'm not gonna be able to pay rent," I wouldn't have been able to curate the idea that's like, "Okay, there is another life for me, where maybe I'm a happy hour bartender, which fills that 33 years old," not the most. Like it's not my proudest moment. It felt like a step back in the time, right? But it actually really wasn't a step back. It was creating a new step. It was creating a new step for a new future. I just had to be patient and trusted that that's what was gonna happen.

And that is really, really hard, right? Kind of like leaping into the universe and hoping it catches you is a radical idea, which is why most of us won't do it. It's because the devil we know, it's easier than the devil we don't. But if I look at my long lifespan, hopefully I lived to 100 here, creating that new step that felt like that step back has pivoted my life in such a phenomenal way. And I think back to which was harder, creating that step that felt like that step back, becoming a happy-hour bartender in my 30s, going back to school in my 30s, taking out more loans in my 30s, it's like, okay. 

But now, I'm in my 40s and I have a practice that's super successful. I publicly speak. I'm writing a book.  I'm working on a book deal. I travel the world. Like my life is so fulfilled. And if I had stayed and let the urgency win and let the fear of "But I have my mortgage" win, yeah, I'd be paying my mortgage and I'd be unhappy as all hell, right? And I'm paying my mortgage now. I just bought myself my first house a few years ago. So, it is difficult energy to embrace. It's just responding to the fear and trusting yourself. 

I'm sure in every one of our stories, we've already done hard things, things that felt impossible, things that were super scary when we embarked on it. Like leaning into that internal confidence that, "I've done scary things before. This is scary, but I can show up to myself."

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love when CBT clinicians just casually throw in words like the universe and things like that because, really, your clinical instructor probably wouldn't have liked the word the universe, I suspect. 

Allison Guilbault:
No, no, no

Dr. Richard Shuster:
But I love what you're saying. And, essentially, what you're talking about is patience and faith, in whatever we happen to believe in, that this is going to work out. So, there was one more letter in that, I don't know if it's an acronym, but the F, the flexibility. So, talk to us about how to be flexible when dealing with something like that.

Allison Guilbault:
Yes, flexibility is life. I used to have a post-it note on my computer that said that. And the reason that I say that is if we become too rigid, we break. Flexibility allows us to bend. And life is often not going to shake out the way we think that it's going to shake out. I love to use the example of, not that I'm harping on COVID here but the COVID gave us a lot of life lessons. I was a COVID bride. And so, I got married in my 40s. And so, I waited a long time in relation to what's traditionally expected. And I was, like, very stoked about my wedding.

And then, a global pandemic happened and everything that I had planned fell right out the window. And we postponed, and we postponed, and we postponed. And finally, a year later, we had a very small wedding. It looked nothing like I would ever imagined it to. And if I hadn't stayed flexible, that could have been devastating. I had a lot of expectations around it. I had a lot of hope around it. I was looking forward to it. Your wedding gets to be a day that you celebrate. I think we can all agree to that. But in allowing myself the space to say, "Okay, this doesn't look like what I thought it was going to look like, but how can I make it work anyway?" keeps the energy, the control, the confidence. Like all the things that we need to actually move forward, like that forward motion requires all of this stuff. 

So,I am writing a book, and I have my own coach, and she was like, "You need an Instagram account and you need a TikTok." And I was like, "What? What is this?" In my whole life, I would never have assumed that I would have a good TikTok. And I use this as an example of flexibility because it also means listening to potentially other support and maybe doing things that weren't expected. Like flexibility to me is always just allowing pivots, allowing open-mindedness, like it all kind of goes hand in hand with flexibility.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love this. So, we've talked about kind of situationally bound stressors, major life decisions. Do I stay at a job? Do I leave the job? But everybody has stress, and the stress ebbs and flows depending on what's going on in our lives. But I know this is a sweet spot for you too, and you've got a million tricks. But give us maybe three, your kind of top three tactics for dealing with stress in the moment.

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah. So, back to that somatic psychology, it's like my number one tip. If you don't necessarily love deep breathing, I'm going to ask you to think about it from a mental health point of view because usually this is the point where people are like, "Oh, my gosh. She's gonna tell me to deep-breathe. Really?" But our nervous system helps or hurts us. So, we have this constant feedback loop inside of our bodies. And so, our brains, top down, is like when our brains are sending a message to our body. So, "Oh, my God. I'm looking at this email from my boss, and he's yelling at me," and that triggers me clenching my fists. I'm getting nervous.

Alternatively or conversely, if I'm just feeling stress and not even sure where that stress is coming from and I start to clench up, it's going to send a signal to my brain. We can reverse that. So, if we can actually pause and notice, do little checks throughout our day, like, "Oh, my God. My jaw is locked. My shoulders are forward," if we can actually start to, like, pull them back, and like take that deep breath, and kind of like open ourselves up, it starts to send messages to our brain that we're okay. 

And when I first learned this, this was like in one of my more spiritual classes that I took to post-grad school, I was not a subscriber. I was like, "This will not change my life." And I was required, as part of the program, to do, kind of, like, a body scan every three hours. Every three hours, just check into your body, where you're at, and then just loosen it. And I swear it has become one of the most clutch coping skills that I have in my toolbox because it really can change. You can even just, if you just do it now, if you can feel yourself kind of becoming more of a puddle. 

And when we're all jacked up, when we're nervous, when we're clenched, when we're tight, that is not where clarity comes from. It's not where answers come from. We kind of need to invite in better energy. So, that would be, I would say, number one. 

Number two, I won't bore you with all the brain science, but just take my word for it, there's brain science backed by this. Mantras and affirmations can go a really long way in creating new neural pathways in your brain. What we tell ourselves really builds. So, if we've been subconsciously telling ourselves our whole lives, like, "I'm not good enough. It's too late. I have to earn my worth," that can affect our entire life. So, I will often tell people when you're brushing your teeth, just say something. Get into the habit of saying something. It doesn't have to be, like, the cheesy, like, "I am beautiful." It doesn't have to look like that. For me, it's, "I can do tough things. Pick my hard."

And number three, I would say find support. If you are stressed out, find support. Obviously, I'm pro-therapy. It does not have to look like therapy. But find someone who can be objective to help you process whatever it is that you're going through.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I loved all of those answers. And I didn't know, I've heard the breathing, we've talked about breathing many times over the years on the show, I've never heard anyone say to rock your shoulders back while you're doing it. So, I'm definitely gonna give that one a shot. Allison, this has been so much fun, so informative. Our time together has flown by. As you know, I like to wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question. And that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Allison Guilbault:
Oh, it's gonna be cheesy but I'm here for it. It's, you can do it. Just keep reminding yourselves that you can do it. That has shifted my entire life. Just constantly repeating, "You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. I can do tough things. I can do tough things. I can do tough things." It is a game changer. It opens up a whole world.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Outstanding. Allison, tell us where people can find you online and learn more about what you're up to.

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah, so I live on the internet, as we all do. My website is anotefromyourtherapist.com. I am a therapist and I specialize in anxiety, trauma, and sex and intimacy. I also do private coaching for women and I have my own podcast called Becoming Unstoppable, which is where you can find… you know, you find it on all the places you find your pods. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Just like this one, yeah.

Allison Guilbault:
Yeah, just like this one. And Instagram, @anotefromyourtherapist. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Perfect. And we'll have notes to everything Allison Guilbault in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Allison, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Allison Guilbault:
Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And I wanna thank each and every one of you as well for taking time out of your busy day to listen to this. If you like what you heard, if you're inspired, if you're gonna go do a body scan three hours a day, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice because this is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are and posting your feeds using the hashtag #mydailyhelping because the happiest people are those that help others.