In Your Right Mind with Monique Rhodes

When things are good, do you find yourself bracing for what's coming? That low hum of vigilance underneath the happiness — scanning, waiting, not quite letting yourself land in the good — is one of the quietest and most exhausting forms of anxiety there is. In this episode, Monique names it, traces it to its roots, and offers a way to start actually inhabiting your own life instead of standing guard outside of it.

When things are good, do you find yourself bracing for what's coming? That low hum of vigilance underneath the happiness — scanning, waiting, not quite letting yourself land in the good — is one of the quietest and most exhausting forms of anxiety there is. In this episode, Monique names it, traces it to its roots, and offers a way to start actually inhabiting your own life instead of standing guard outside of it.

That quiet voice that says everyone else has it sorted and you're the only one winging it? It has a name — and it's not the truth about you. In this episode, Monique unpacks the impostor phenomenon, why it affects the most capable people the hardest, and what's actually underneath the fear of being found out. This one will make you feel less alone and more honest with yourself all at once.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… 👉 Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye...

That quiet voice that says everyone else has it sorted and you're the only one winging it? It has a name — and it's not the truth about you. In this episode, Monique unpacks the impostor phenomenon, why it affects the most capable people the hardest, and what's actually underneath the fear of being found out. This one will make you feel less alone and more honest with yourself all at once.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… 👉 Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and eye...

If you've ever been in the middle of a panic attack and didn't know what was happening to your body, this episode is for you. Monique breaks down what a panic attack actually is — not as a sign that something is wrong with you, but as your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do — and walks you through what genuinely helps in the moment. This is the episode you'll want to send to someone who's scared and doesn't know where to start.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you n...

If you've ever been in the middle of a panic attack and didn't know what was happening to your body, this episode is for you. Monique breaks down what a panic attack actually is — not as a sign that something is wrong with you, but as your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do — and walks you through what genuinely helps in the moment. This is the episode you'll want to send to someone who's scared and doesn't know where to start.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you n...

If you've spent your life being told you're too sensitive, this episode is for you. Monique explores the research behind high sensitivity — why roughly one in five people are wired to feel and process the world more deeply — and why the problem was never the sensitivity itself. It was the shame we learned to wrap around it. This isn't about fixing how you feel. It's about finally understanding it.

If you've spent your life being told you're too sensitive, this episode is for you. Monique explores the research behind high sensitivity — why roughly one in five people are wired to feel and process the world more deeply — and why the problem was never the sensitivity itself. It was the shame we learned to wrap around it. This isn't about fixing how you feel. It's about finally understanding it.

You love them. You'd do anything for them. So why does an hour with certain family members leave you more drained than a twelve-hour work day? In this episode, Monique explains the real reason the people closest to us have the most power to undo us — and it has nothing to do with weakness or immaturity. If you've ever driven home from a family gathering wondering what just happened to you, this one is for you.

You love them. You'd do anything for them. So why does an hour with certain family members leave you more drained than a twelve-hour work day? In this episode, Monique explains the real reason the people closest to us have the most power to undo us — and it has nothing to do with weakness or immaturity. If you've ever driven home from a family gathering wondering what just happened to you, this one is for you.

There's something you did — maybe years ago, maybe more recently — and no matter how much time passes, you can't seem to put it down. In this episode, Monique unpacks why self-forgiveness is so much harder than we're told it should be, and what's really keeping you locked in self-punishment. This isn't about excusing what happened. It's about finally understanding the difference between guilt that teaches you something and shame that just keeps you stuck.

It's been years, and something can still catch you off guard and knock the wind out of you. This episode is for the part of you that's been quietly ashamed of still feeling it — grief, heartbreak, an old loss — long after you think you're supposed to be done. There is no timeline. There never was. And this episode explains why.

On the outside, you have it together. The deadlines are met, the people are looked after, the difficult situations are handled with grace. On the inside, you haven't stopped for years. This episode is for the woman who looks fine — and is exhausted by looking fine.

You've tried the breathing. You've tried the apps. And yet that low-grade hum of tension in your body never really goes away. This episode isn't about another technique — it's about the actual reason your nervous system stays on high alert, and the one shift that changes everything underneath.

You already know you're too hard on yourself. You've known it for years. But knowing it hasn't made it stop — because the real reason behind that relentless inner critic isn't what most people think. This episode goes underneath the self-criticism to where it actually comes from, and what it would take to finally change your relationship with the voice that never lets you rest.

A dark or disturbing thought arrived out of nowhere and now you can't stop wondering what it says about you. This episode is the conversation most people never get to have: what intrusive thoughts actually are, why they happen to the most conscientious people, and why the thought itself is not the problem. You are not your worst thought — and this episode will help you actually believe that.

You're not living your life. You're living inside a performance review that never ends — and no one else is actually conducting it. This episode is about the real reason you can't stop worrying about what other people think — and why simply deciding not to care has never worked. It's not a character flaw. It's biology. Your nervous system treats social judgment the same way it treats a physical threat, which means willpower was never going to win this one.

You say you want things to change. And you mean it. So why does part of you keep pulling the brakes just when things start to move? This episode names the thing most people won't say out loud — that staying stuck has real payoffs — and offers a kinder, more honest way to understand your own resistance before you try to fight through it.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… 👉 Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick (and 

There's a version of you that got decided a long time ago — and it's been running the show ever since. This episode looks at the gap between what's actually true about you and the story you've been telling yourself, and why that gap is where everything either opens up or quietly closes down. If you've ever felt like you keep bumping into the same ceiling, this one is for you.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… 👉 Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a

You've tried to change before. You went big, you started strong, and then life happened and the whole thing fell apart — again. This episode is about why that pattern keeps repeating, and why the answer is almost embarrassingly small. Monique explores the science behind why dramatic gestures don't stick, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts.   Ready to break the cycle for good? If this episode resonated with you, there's something you need to try next… 👉 Take the Happiness Quiz at https://iintendtobehappy.com/ — it's a quick 

Most of us spend a huge amount of our lives trying to make people understand us. The long explanation. The third re-phrase. The 3am perfect sentence. The screenshot we send to a friend. The argument we have with our partner for the fifth time.   We think we're looking for resolution. We're actually looking for something else. And in this episode, Monique names it — and offers a way to put it down that will quietly change your relationships and your nervous system at the same time.   In this episode: — The hidden hunger underneath the constant need to be understood — Why even when peo...

There are two kinds of calm. Only one of them is actually calm.   If you have always been the steady one, the soft-voiced one, the one everyone goes to in a crisis, this episode might land differently than you expect. Because some of us are calm because we have worked through what we feel — and some of us are calm because we have spent decades sitting on it.   The difference matters. And it shows up, eventually, in the body.   In this episode: — The two kinds of calm and how to tell them apart — Why suppressed anger costs you your boundaries, your desi...

If you've been writing a gratitude list every morning and nothing in your life feels any different, this episode is for you.   Most gratitude practice is performance dressed up as practice. A list of words that never made it into the body. And it's why people can do it for years and feel exactly the same.   There is one word missing. One. Once you put it in, the whole practice changes — and it becomes the foundation of a happiness baseline that actually holds.   In this episode: — Why a gratitude list on its own doesn't move anything — The one word that turns gra...

We keep blaming our phones. We keep blaming dopamine. I want to tell you something true that nobody seems willing to say out loud.   Your phone is not the problem. Your phone is the solution to a much bigger problem nobody wants to name. And until you name it, no amount of screen time settings, no amount of digital detoxing, is going to do a single thing.   In this episode I unpack what the phone is actually protecting you from, the first time I had to look at it in myself on a silent retreat, and the small daily practice th...

If you have been on a healing journey for years and you are still not okay, I do not think you need more healing. I think the healing is the problem.   This episode is for anyone who has read the books, done the courses, sat with the therapists, and still wakes up wondering what is wrong with them.   I unpack why the project of fixing yourself is part of what keeps you stuck, the sentence that finally broke me out of it, and one small experiment to try this week.   You are not a project. You are a person.   Ready to b...

I'm going to say the thing nobody in your life will say to you.

The reason you keep saying yes — the reason you give and give and end up empty — is not because you are a kind person. It is because you are frightened. And until you can see that clearly, nothing changes.

In this episode I unpack the difference between kindness and the survival reflex that looks like kindness from the outside, why most people-pleasing advice doesn't work, and the small, hard question to ask yourself the next time you say yes.

This is a different kind of episode. No list. No three takeaways. Just one conversation about something I think we don't talk about enough — the particular pain of wanting today to be different than it is.

The mood you woke up in. The argument that's still sitting in your chest. The day that already feels heavy when nothing has even really happened yet. We're going to sit with this together, gently, and I'm going to offer something I learned the hard way.

Take your time with this one. It's not a quick listen.

If you grew up being the one who kept everyone calm, you didn't choose it. It was assigned to you. And the role you played as a child often becomes the role you play everywhere — at work, in relationships, in friendships.

Today I want to talk about what it actually costs to be the family peacemaker. Why your nervous system probably still scans every room. Why you can't relax when other people are tense. Why "I'm fine, don't worry about me" comes out of your mouth before you've even checked whether it's true. And what it might lo...

You've been told to set boundaries. You've tried setting boundaries. And somehow you're still exhausted, still over-explaining, still feeling like you have to defend the smallest "no." So today I want to push back on the most-recommended advice in the wellness world and tell you what I actually think happens when you keep being told that the answer to other people's behaviour is just to draw a clearer line.

There's a deeper conversation underneath this one, and we're going to have it. By the end of this episode I want you to walk away with a different...

Most people don't know they're burned out. They just think this is who they have become.

In this episode, Monique walks through five quiet signs of burnout that almost nobody talks about. Not the obvious ones. Not "you're tired" and "you're working too hard." The ones you can have for two or three years without ever realising you have them.

You'll hear why losing your anticipation for small things is one of the very earliest signals, why going quiet on the group chats isn't antisocial — it's a system in power-saving mode — and the specific kind of e...

Monique has spent fifteen years around genuinely calm people — and she means the real ones, not the ones who post about it. They all do nine very specific things that the rest of us don't.

This episode walks through all nine. Not personality traits. Not temperament. Habits. Which means they're learnable.

Number six is the one almost no one believes is actually a calmness skill. Number eight is the one Monique personally got most wrong, for the longest time.

You'll hear what calm people do with small decisions, why they refuse to run a...

There is a kind of permission that arrives — sometimes in your fifties, sometimes later, sometimes never — and it quietly changes everything about how you live the next thirty years.

In this episode, Monique walks through seven specific things the people she knows who have this permission have stopped apologising for. Not the obvious ones. The ones almost nobody talks about.

You'll hear the story of a woman who came back from ten days at her sister's house, exhausted, and realised she hadn't said the word "no" once in the whole visit. The cake at the lunc...

There is a kind of tired that cannot be explained by anything you did.

Not the tired you feel after hard work or a bad night's sleep — those make sense. You can trace them. You can point to a reason.

This episode is about the other tired. The tired that arrives in the late afternoon when you have barely done anything. The tired that finds you sitting on the edge of the bed at nine in the morning, already wrung out. The tired you cannot explain to anybody else and have started to wonder if so...

I have been teaching happiness at over seventy universities for fifteen years. And I have watched the wellness industry get almost everything wrong.

Not a little wrong. Wrong at the level of the question.

In this episode, I'm telling you three things the happiness industry is selling you that are actually making you worse. Not because the people selling them are bad — most mean well. But because the entire premise is built on a misunderstanding about how humans actually work.

Happiness isn't a feeling — it's a baseline. Forced positivity isn't wellness — it's shame with a...

Most perfectionists have been praised their whole lives for being perfectionists. That's the thing that makes it so hard to see.

In this episode, Monique unpacks what perfectionism actually is, underneath the praise: a survival contract your younger self made with the world that said, if I get this right, I will be safe.

She tells the story of a woman called Nina — a successful lawyer whose family and team had stopped bringing her their rough drafts because they'd learned she had a very accurate ruler. And the story of a brilliant writer friend with a...

If you say sorry when someone bumps into you — this episode is for you.   In this conversation, Monique talks about the slow, quiet erasure of yourself that happens when you've spent years apologising for existing. The waiter, the wrong order, the friend who talks over you, the text that begins "so sorry to bother you." All those tiny moments where you choose someone else's comfort over your own legitimate need. Again. And again. And again.   She names where this comes from — the fawn response, the way some of us learned, very young, that small was safer than seen. And she shares...

You are caring for your kids, your parents, your work, and your own grief — and somewhere in that pile, you forgot you were a person too.   This episode is for the women in their forties, fifties, and sixties who are holding more than anyone is acknowledging. The ones who know their mother's medication schedule the way they know their own phone number. The ones who track who needs which form, which appointment, which gentle phone call. The ones who park outside the supermarket for five quiet minutes because they cannot face one more aisle yet.   Monique tells the story of her...

If Mother's Day was harder than you expected, and now it's Monday and you're not okay — this episode is for you.

Not the catastrophic kind of hard. The quieter kind. The kind that happens when your mother is still here, you maybe even saw her or rang her yesterday, and yet you spent the whole day performing a version of your relationship that felt three inches away from the truth. The kind of hard that doesn't fit on a sympathy card.

In this episode, Monique talks about what she calls the Mother's Day hangover — the flat...

If you are the person everyone calls when they're falling apart — who do you call?   This episode is for the strong ones.   You know who you are. You're the eldest daughter, the friend everyone leans on, the person who keeps the family together, the one who organised the funeral. And you've been wearing that role so long you might not even realise it's a costume.   In this conversation, I want to talk about the hidden cost of being the strong one. The way it gets handed to you so early you don't remember putting it on. The slow, quiet loneliness of al...

If you've been calling yourself lazy lately, this episode is going to gently change something for you.

We've been taught to read exhaustion as a character flaw. Can't get off the couch? Lazy. Can't reply to the message? Lazy. Skipping the workout? Lazy. But what most of us call laziness is actually emotional depletion. They are not the same thing, and treating one like the other is making people sicker.

In this episode, Monique walks through the difference between lazy ("I don't want to") and depleted ("I literally cannot"), the way emotional debt accumulates without...