Dr Emily Musgrove: How to Stop Overthinking & Break Free from Negative Thoughts

**Sarah Grynberg** (0:00)
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Emily Musgrove is a psychologist, speaker, and author of Unstuck. Through her work, she helps people better understand their minds, navigate life's challenges, and build healthier patterns of thinking.
Together on the podcast, we explore how to cope with ruminating thoughts, break free from the comparison trap, and move forward when you feel stuck. Emily also shares practical strategies for calming and overthinking mind, building greater self-awareness, and creating healthier thought patterns so you can live with more confidence, clarity, and purpose.

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (1:15)
My grandpa used to say that you make more friends coming second.
In the end, winning is not actually the most important piece. Being the most successful is not the most important, but friendship and connection is probably really the heart of the matter, I think. We don't always have to be focused on the best, the most, the enoughness piece. Like, what happens if you just look around you a little bit more, I think.

**Sarah Grynberg** (1:48)
I'm Sarah Grynberg, and this is A Life Of Greatness.
Through my years of studying and researching the connection between human behavior, personal growth and transformation, I have discovered the keys to unlocking greatness within others. In this podcast, I share stories and experiences from my own teachings, along with conversations with inspiring guests to help you learn the simple tips, habits, practices and strategies to cultivate an extraordinary existence.
My hope is that this episode reminds you that you don't have to stay trapped in unhelpful thinking. Emily's insights are practical, compassionate and incredibly empowering. And I know you'll come away with tools you can start using straight away. Well, Emily, I was just telling you that I have a different notepad today because my dog ate the one. That I usually use my puppy, which is hilarious, but that's what happens in life.

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (2:52)
It does. It's very unexpected.

**Sarah Grynberg** (2:54)
Thank you for coming to the podcast.

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (2:56)
Thanks for having me.

**Sarah Grynberg** (2:57)
I've heard about your work for a long time now, so it's lovely to have you here. You're actually a clinical psychologist.
I always like to start at the beginning in my podcast interviews. What drew you to want to study clinical psychology?

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (3:12)
Well, if I go back into my childhood, I've always really been interested in why humans do what they do. I just remember even as young as eight, just being really fascinated about moral dilemmas, for example, and how people make decisions and why some people are happy and why some people aren't. I think that's been a really big interest of mine just intuitively.
I really knew that I wanted to be a psychologist probably from year 12 And then I haven't really looked back since then.

**Sarah Grynberg** (3:48)
And I always wonder this about people within your space, psychologists, psychiatrists, even myself as a mindset coach. I definitely have experienced this.
When you deal with topics like people come to you, not because they're feeling on top of the world, otherwise they wouldn't need you. They come to you because they're not feeling on top of the world. And especially within your field, you get very heavy topics. How do you shield yourself from your client and something that is close to home? So if a client comes to you and they talk about something that's happening in their life, that's actually happening in your life too, and it triggers something within you, how do you deal with that?

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (4:33)
Look, I think it's a really, really important question because honestly, no human therapist are not as immune for being activated and triggered. I have a supervisor that I see regularly who helps me really work with what's called counter transference. So this is this experience here that we get when we have someone sitting across from us who might be activating our own experiences, our own issues, our own challenges. And so that's-

**Sarah Grynberg** (4:58)
Which happens with friends and daily life as well.

**Dr Emily Musgrove** (5:01)
Yeah, I mean, this is the thing is that there are two humans in the room. So just because you're a therapist or a psychologist, it doesn't mean that you're not going to be affected or influenced in some way.