Amy Personally Speaks

October | Depression Awareness Month
In this deeply personal episode of Amy Personally Speaks, psychotherapist Amy Mitchell-Washington draws inspiration from Dionne Farris's powerful song, Hopeless, to explore the emotional complexities of depression.
Depression doesn't always look like sadness. Sometimes it hides behind a smile, a successful career, a busy schedule, or the familiar words, “I'm fine.”  With compassion, clinical insight, and her signature conversational style, Amy explores the often-unspoken realities of depression, reminding listeners that being functional doesn't necessarily mean being emotionally well.
This episode is an invitation to recognize the pain we cannot always see, extend compassion without judgment, and remember that hopelessness is a feeling, not a life sentence.  Because even when hope feels distant, help and healing remain possible.
If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 988 to connect with the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
 

However, Comma.
One word can change an entire narrative.
In this episode of Amy Personally Speaks, Amy explores the transformative power of “However, comma...” — a simple phrase that creates space between hardship and hope.
Through reflection and perspective, Amy reminds listeners that healing doesn't erase what happened. It simply gives us permission to keep writing our stories. Because sometimes, the most powerful part of your story is what comes after the comma.

What happens when people remember a version of you that no longer exists?
With humor, a teenage cigarette in a vestibule, and some enduring wisdom from her mother, Amy explores the difference between who we were and who we are still becoming.
We often judge our younger selves using wisdom we only gained by getting older. But maybe you weren’t simply “young and dumb.” Maybe you were young—and becoming.
Your past can inform you, teach you, humble you, and occasionally make you laugh. But it doesn’t get to name you.
They’re remembering a chapter. You’re living the whole book.

Something is happening on the other side of the microphone: listeners are listening—and speaking back.
In this special mile-marker episode, Amy pauses The Journey Inward to reflect on the messages, shares, laughter, and “Amy, now why did you have to come for me like that?” moments coming from listeners.
Because there’s a difference between being heard and being listened to. Being heard means the words reached you. Being listened to means something stayed with you.
The window seat is getting crowded—and Amy couldn’t be more grateful.
Sometimes five'ish minutes is all it takes to start thinking differently.

In this episode, Amy Mitchell-Washington takes listeners inside one of the foundational tools of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: the CBT Triangle—the connection between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
What we think influences how we feel. How we feel can influence what we do. And sometimes, before we realize it, we're responding to a thought as though it were an established fact.
Amy breaks the triangle down in practical, everyday language and invites listeners to become curious about what's happening inside their own emotional ecosystem. Because changing the outcome doesn't always require changing everything.
Sometimes, you simply have to figure out which corner of the triangle needs your attention.

What if some of the most important things in our lives have been there all along—we simply haven't learned how to hear them yet?
In this bonus episode, Amy reflects on the difference between being a talker and being a conversationalist, the wisdom of a lesson her mother gave her decades ago, and an unforgettable moment with a clinician trainee that changed the way she thought about listening.
Sometimes the right question, asked at the right moment, creates enough space for us to hear something differently.
Because maybe transformation doesn't always begin with an answer.
Sometimes, it begins when we finally hear what has been there all along.
Because maybe transformation doesn't always begin with an answer.
Sometimes, it begins when we finally hear what has been there all along.