Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

This episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books has been sponsored by Himalaya, the best app for discovering, listening, and organizing podcasts.

Himalaya was nice enough to reach out and make me an editor's choice. So now they're a sponsor.

Check them out at Himalaya.com or in the app store. I'm really excited to be here today with Ben

Michaelis, Ph.D., who's a clinical psychologist, elite performance coach, and the author of

Your Next Big Thing, 10 small steps to get moving and get happy. He has been featured on Huff

Post, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Parents, Glamour, and many other publications,

and as a frequent guest expert about mental health on TV and radio, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa

from Columbia University, and earned his PhD from radio. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia

University and earned his Ph.D. from NYU. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. So,

welcome to Ben. Thanks so much. Glad to be here, Zibi. Thanks for coming on. So can you please tell

listeners what your next big thing is about and how you came up with the idea to write it?

Sure. So your next big thing was

actually really about one woman who I worked with who I can say we mutually changed each other's

lives. She was, to be perfectly frank, it was one of the most difficult kind of clients I had

originally and I, you know, it was relatively early in my experience as a

clinician. And nothing that I did, nothing in my training was helping this woman. And she was,

you know, in her early 40s, single mother with a job that was, she described it as soul-sucking,

I think, was the words that she used. And she was

clearly depressed, but caught in a really bad place and nothing that I'd been trained for helped

her. And I felt pretty, pretty bad and honestly pretty frustrated. And at some point during

the work with her, I just kind of threw everything out the window and I said,

...