13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success

Amy Morin brings a combination of professional expertise and personal experience to her work on mental strength. As a licensed clinical social worker with a master’s degree from the University of New England, she has practiced psychotherapy for over two decades across diverse settings including community mental-health centers, hospitals, and schools. Her academic background includes teaching psychology courses at the college level, while her clinical experience encompasses individual therapy, group facilitation, and specialized work with adolescents and families. Additionally, Morin served as a therapeutic foster parent for 10 years, providing her with firsthand insight into resilience building within vulnerable populations.

However, what distinguishes Morin’s approach is how her professional training intersects with extraordinary personal loss. Beginning at age 23, she experienced a devastating series of tragedies: her mother’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm, her husband’s fatal heart attack three years later, and eventually her second father-in-law’s terminal cancer diagnosis. These experiences transformed her from a conventionally trained therapist into someone who personally tested the very principles she advocates. This dual perspective—clinical expertise combined with lived experience of profound grief—lends authenticity to her framework that purely academic or purely anecdotal approaches might lack. At the same time, her perspective may potentially overlook how systemic barriers, poverty, or discrimination might complicate the individual agency that her approach emphasizes. While her therapeutic training provides evidence-based foundations, readers should consider whether her strategies fully account for circumstances where personal resilience alone may be insufficient to address complex life challenges.