Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast · Amanda Armstrong

What I'm NOT Taking Into the New Year

·33 min·2 clips

Amanda says she cried more over Cooper than over her son’s December birthday and is not making that wrong.

1. Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast centers this episode on "what I'm NOT taking into the New Year" and the New Year's Eve mini-series. 2. Amanda Armstrong hosts, shares her own healing work, and frames the episode around tangible research-based tools and lived examples. 3. The episode asks what patterns to release in 2025 without pretending healing becomes clean, linear, or complete. 4. Amanda describes her free annual New Year's Eve circle event, now in its sixth year, where people write down what they want to release. 5. She says some of her release items have appeared on her list for six years, which she uses to normalize repeated patterns. 6. She argues that healing is not failure when the same issues return, because some patterns are deeply woven into nervous systems and relationships. 7. Amanda shares that attendees named self-doubt, rushing, "having to do it all," mom guilt, and "being too much and also not enough." 8. She recounts a client saying, "I feel like I'm three steps forward, three steps back," and says that experience is common. 9. She criticizes the idea that healing must be performed publicly and linearly, describing "healing culture" as turning healing into "the new hustle." 10. She suggests people may need permission either to step back from healing work or to step fully into it, depending on the season. 11. Amanda says her first major release is "my addiction to urgency," which shows up when an email feels like danger. 12. She explains that saying "thank you for your patience" has helped her replace habitual apologies and constant self-blame. 13. She says the urgency pattern once served survival, but now she is hiring an OBM and reducing her own plate. 14. She names productivity-based self-worth as a long-running issue and repeats, "I matter even when I'm not productive." 15. She gives examples from postpartum life, including missing podcast weeks, feeding her baby, and resisting the belief that a missed episode means listeners will leave. 16. Amanda releases "the shoulds" around grief, saying she cried more over Cooper than over her son’s birthday and refuses to make that wrong. 17. She also releases body shame, describing postpartum changes, bigger pants, and a moment doing back squats while wearing her daughter at a rock climbing gym. 18. Amanda discusses over-functioning in relationships, including "twisting myself into a pretzel," and uses a grocery-store toe-stepping example to explain intent versus impact. 19. The episode stays conversational, candid, and partly improvised, with frequent self-correction, humor, and a few off-script tangents. 20. People who want honest postpartum, grief, and nervous-system reflection will likely connect with it, while listeners wanting a tightly scripted episode may skip it.

As heard by us

A gentle New Year reset built around release and a looser grip on shoulds.

Amanda Armstrong treats New Year’s Eve as a body-first reset, using the holiday to sort what can be released and what can be carried forward. The conversation stays close to home life, parenting, productivity, and grief, and it keeps coming back to one plain point: nobody has to…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

A quieter way to start the year by dropping the extra weight.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Regulate & Rewire: An Anxiety & Depression Podcast