In Your Right Mind with Monique Rhodes

The children are settled, nobody's ill, you've got the weekend free, and there's still something in your chest that won't settle down. Most people treat that feeling as a sign that something needs fixing. This episode is about why it isn't, and why getting used to it might be one of the most useful things a person ever learns.

You're awake before you've decided to be, and the thinking has already started, and it isn't kind. Sometimes it's about today. Often it's much older. A student asked why this happens every morning and then follows her around all day, and most of the answer turns out to be physical.

You're in the supermarket queue and a woman speaks sharply to her little boy, and the verdict is there before you've finished looking at her. You didn't decide to think it. This episode is about why it happens that fast, what all that judging is quietly costing you rather than her, and one question you might try that takes about ten seconds.

You have one. The move to the coast, the leaving of the job, the if I could just get the weight off. Whatever goes wrong this week, that same thought arrives and offers itself as the answer, and you've had it several thousand times without ever making a single phone call about it. This episode is about what that thought is actually doing, and a two week test that shows you what's underneath it.

You dropped something this morning, and you heard what you said to yourself. It was quick and flat and it barely registered, and you've been saying versions of it for about forty years. This episode isn't about being nicer to yourself, because you've heard that already. It's about a question somebody once put to the Dalai Lama that he couldn't understand, and what that reveals about the one relationship you never get a day off from.

There's a person. You didn't have to think about it, they just arrived. And somebody once told you to forgive them, and you wanted to put a chair through a window. That reaction is intelligent and this episode defends it. Then it gives you what works instead, which isn't forgiveness and doesn't involve deciding it wasn't that bad.

You've never actually felt most of your feelings. You've had positions about them instead. If you can be in real distress at a dinner party and still get up and clear the plates while nobody notices a thing, this episode explains what you learned to do, what it's been costing you, and the one word you'll have to stop using.

There's a kind of terror that isn't about the bad news. It's about not knowing yet. If you're standing in your own life waiting for somebody to walk in and tell you what happens next, this one's for you. Your body finds the not knowing more expensive than the bad news, and once you know that, there's somewhere different to put your effort.

Somebody asked how you were this week and you said fine, and you said it beautifully, because you've had a lot of practice. Then later something hot and resentful came up in you, pointed straight at them for not knowing. This episode is about that loop, including the half of it nobody ever admits, and the one sentence that quietly breaks it.

You heard your own voice come out sharper than the situation deserved, and you've been quietly worried ever since that this is who you're becoming. It isn't. Irritability is the first thing to go when there's no space left in your life, and in this episode we look at what your temper is actually telling you, why it always lands on the people closest to you, and the one minute experiment that changes the whole evening.

You know the people who walk into a room and everyone in it sits up a little straighter, and somewhere along the way you decided you're just not one of them. This episode takes that decision apart. Dolly Parton spent sixty years making people feel bigger rather than smaller, and when you look closely at how she actually did it, it isn't a personality at all. It's a handful of small refusals, and every one of them is available to you on an ordinary Tuesday.

There is a woman who has never once said "I love you." Not to her daughter, not to her granddaughter. 

If you have someone like that, you've almost certainly stopped expecting the words, and you've probably landed on one of two conclusions. Either they don't feel it, or you're the reason. Neither is usually true. People who can't say it are rarely withholding it. They just never had the words made ordinary or safe in their own mouth, and you cannot shame somebody into handing over something they've never held. 

Her granddaughter, who is in he...

You've had the same argument with your sister forty times and never once out loud. 

This usually gets filed under overthinking, and you've probably concluded you're anxious, or dramatic, or that you can't let things go. You're none of those. You're doing something extremely reasonable and completely impossible, and nobody has ever named it for you. 

You're looking for the sentence that guarantees how the other person will react. That they won't be angry. That they'll finally understand. And there is no such sentence, which is exactly why you can rehearse the same four lines fo...

You wake at three in the morning and your mind is already mid-sentence. Not a crisis. A conversation. 

You've probably decided this is insomnia, or that something is wrong with your sleep, or that you're bad at switching off. None of those are what's happening. You surfaced the way everyone surfaces several times a night. The difference is that something was waiting there for you, and it had been waiting all day. 

I explain why what's waiting is almost always a conversation with a specific person, why slowing your breathing slides straight off it, and th...

You've tried the apps. The breathing. Probably the medication. And you're still here.

"I've tried everything and nothing works" usually gets treated as a mood to be talked out of. It isn't. It's an accurate report about a very specific kind of failure, and the moment you can name that failure, what you do next changes completely.

I explain what everything you've tried has in common, why nobody has been working on the thing that actually matters, and the three things to do instead. Including the reason people quit at week five, when it was...

There are moments when meditation will make your anxiety worse, and almost nobody in my field will say that out loud.

If you've ever sat down to meditate while genuinely anxious and got up feeling worse than when you started, you didn't fail at it and you're not bad at this. You were using the right tool at the wrong moment, and nobody told you there was a difference.

I explain exactly why it backfires when you're already struggling, why the same practice is lovely on a calm day, and the rule I use to...

Your mind was fine all day. Then you lie down, the light goes off, and it starts.

If that's your eleven o'clock, this isn't a sleep problem and it isn't a discipline problem. There's a reason it begins at that exact moment and not twenty minutes earlier, and once you understand it, the whole thing stops feeling like something going wrong with you.

I explain what your mind is actually doing when it won't settle, why the racing is one question repeated rather than chaos, and three things to do about it. The first one...

You'd drive across a city at ten at night for someone you love, without a second's deliberation. Now try asking yourself for twenty minutes and watch how long that takes. This episode takes apart the belief that looking after yourself is something you have to earn, and offers a different definition entirely. Not a treat. Not an indulgence. Something much more useful, and much harder to argue with.

You've gotten so good at looking fine that people don't just believe you any more. They've stopped checking. This episode is about the exhausting second job of performing okay, why hiding your burnout doesn't protect anyone, and what the research says happens to your body and your relationships while you hold that face still. Plus one small experiment involving one person, one sentence, and one degree more truth.

You finally looked up therapists. Then you saw the price, did the maths against everyone else's needs, and quietly closed the laptop. This episode is about that moment, and what it actually costs you to keep filing yourself under later. Not a substitute for therapy, and not a consolation prize. A real, grounded answer to the question of what you do while you're waiting for something you can't afford yet.

You sit down to meditate and you can't do it. Your mind won't slow, and sometimes you feel worse afterwards than you did before, so you quietly decide meditation isn't for you. It is. What nobody told you is that a practice built for a settled mind can't be started at an eight out of ten, and there's a simple ninety second step that comes first.

Your life looks fine on paper. You can list everything you're lucky to have, usually while lying awake at three in the morning. And you still feel flat, and then you feel ashamed of feeling flat. This one is about why gratitude has never once moved that feeling, what your nervous system has been doing with the dial all these years, and how joy actually comes back, which is nothing like what you've been led to expect.

If you've ever said "I've tried everything and nothing works," this one is for you. There's a reason the supplements, the apps, the journals and the early nights all helped for a fortnight and then stopped, and it has nothing to do with you being one of the ones it doesn't work for. I'll show you what every single thing on your list had in common, and the one ninety second practice that goes in completely the opposite direction.

This episode is about the strange anxiety that arrives not when life is hard, but when it starts to get genuinely good. If you've ever found yourself bracing, pulling back, or creating problems right when things were finally going well — this is for you. It's not self-sabotage. It's a nervous system that learned to stay ready.

This episode is for anyone who has noticed a strange blankness where their own desires used to be — not depression, not burnout, just a quiet difficulty accessing what you actually want. We're talking about how it happens, why it makes complete sense, and how to find your way back to yourself.

You'd never speak to a friend the way you speak to yourself. This episode is about that gap — the double standard most of us carry without examining it — and what the research actually shows about what self-compassion does and doesn't do to your drive, your resilience, and your ability to change.

This episode is for anyone quietly mourning a version of their life that didn't happen — the relationship, the path, the self they thought they'd be by now. We're naming a grief that rarely gets acknowledged, and exploring what it actually takes to step into the life you have.

This one goes somewhere most wellness conversations won't. If you grew up learning that anger wasn't safe — and you've been carrying it as anxiety, exhaustion, or a vague sense of resentment ever since — this episode names what happened and what it might take to finally let that feeling exist.

If you're the person everyone else leans on — the one who tracks, anticipates, and holds it all together — this episode is for you. We're talking about the invisible cognitive weight of always being the responsible one, why it quietly erodes your sense of self, and what it actually takes to put something down.

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.