If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This | Dr. Julie on The Mel Robbins Podcast

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Struggling is normal, and you trade places with other people over time

  Dr. Julie mixes a bowl of white rice (everyone) with wild rice (the roughly one in four people with a mental health problem in a given year). Any small pinch, meaning your circle, includes someone who's struggling. Seeing your pain as a normal human experience removes the judgment so you can get curious. Mel adds that we all swap between being the wild rice and the white rice.

• 02

  Emotions are information, not evidence that something is wrong with you

  Sadness, anger and anxiety usually signal a need or something going on around you. Emotion regulation isn't about making painful feelings disappear. It's about dropping the judgment and turning toward them with curiosity.

• 03

  Your attention is a spotlight, and you can't pull actors off the stage

  "Only positive vibes" makes you feel like a failure every time a critical thought appears. She teaches defusion instead: picture your thoughts as actors on a stage. You can't drag the ones you dislike off, but you choose which one gets the limelight, and that shapes how you feel.

• 04

  Be the predator, not the prey, when fear arrives

  When she was diagnosed with breast cancer a week or two before her manuscript was due, she deleted her own gentle chapter on fear and rewrote it. The prey darts around avoiding threats; the predator has a goal and is on the front foot. "This cancer isn't coming after me, I'm coming after it." The fear stayed. She just used it rather than waiting for it to go away.

• 05

  Let emotional waves wash over you

  Waist-deep in the ocean, if you try to hold back a wave you tumble; if you turn sideways and bend your knees, you land again. Her inner world is "like a sauna": helpful only if you don't stay too long. In acute distress, reach out to someone you trust. She admits to dark moments, mostly fear for her children.

• 06

  Resentment points to what you need to work on

  Blaming the other person keeps you in prey mode. Resentment usually means you haven't held healthy boundaries, or sometimes that you're taking someone for granted, in which case gratitude helps. Left unchecked, it destroys relationships.

• 07

  Compare narrowly, and never with friends

  Telling people to stop comparing is impossible. Comparing yourself to friends puts a scoreboard between you: their wins feel like your losses, and bids for support become "I had it worse." Useful comparison is concrete, like watching a club player a few steps ahead of you with a great backhand, never comparing personalities or worth.

• 08

  Confidence is a byproduct of evidence from action

  Every time you get through something uncomfortable, even badly, your brain logs proof that you survived. You have to go where you have no confidence and be willing to be a beginner. The self-doubt may never fully go away; you learn what to do with it.

• 09

  Avoidance brings instant relief and slowly shrinks your life

  With a wooden rainbow toy, she removes layers one at a time: crowds, a friend's 200-person wedding, buses, restaurants. Each avoided thing gives an addictive "phew," but the arch shrinks until life feels depressingly small and missing things you value. Mel recognized this in her postpartum depression and in a child with anxiety who stopped going to sleepovers.

• 10

  You don't need to be fully healed before a relationship

  She calls that social media rule "utter rubbish." Under it she never would have married Matt, her partner of 20 years. Struggle doesn't mean it's the wrong person, and strong couples have often been through the most together. If a partner isn't a talker, ask why you need them to be. She and Matt mostly repair with humor.