Strides To Solutions

Esther Adams
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Strides To Solutions uncovers how animal-assisted psychotherapy—from equine sessions to canine companionship—rewires the brain for lasting cognitive and emotional gains. Join host Esther Adams, a trauma-informed psychotherapist with a doctorate in psychology, as she shares powerful client stories, expert interviews, and hands-on exercises designed to strengthen attention, memory, executive function, and resilience. Tune in for actionable strategies that transform barnyard breakthroughs into real-world success. esthernava.substack.com

  1. 23h ago

    Why Some Breakups Are So Hard to Let Go Of

    Why can someone know a relationship is over while still checking an ex’s social media, replaying old conversations, or feeling emotionally pulled back months later? In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores why intellectual acceptance and emotional detachment do not happen at the same speed. A former partner may remain encoded in the brain’s systems for safety, reward, identity, and future prediction long after the relationship has officially ended. The episode examines attachment anxiety, emotional withdrawal, rumination, rejection sensitivity, digital surveillance, and the loss of self that can follow a breakup. It also looks at how repeated contact, preserved messages, and social media exposure may keep attachment cues active, while structured reflection, social connection, self-compassion, and reduced exposure may support psychological updating. The deeper question is not simply why letting go takes time, but what teaches the nervous system that the relationship is truly over. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why Some Breakups Are So Hard to Let Go Of

  2. 23h ago

    Why Relief Can Be More Addictive Than Pleasure

    Why do people repeat behaviors they do not even enjoy? In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores how relief can reinforce checking, avoidance, reassurance seeking, compulsions, substance use, and other escape behaviors. A behavior does not have to feel good to become powerful. It only has to make distress stop, or create the belief that something worse was prevented. The episode examines negative reinforcement, impaired safety learning, and the shift from deliberate coping to automatic repetition. It also explains why avoidance can prevent the brain from discovering that a feared outcome may never have happened in the first place. The deeper question is whether relief is helping us feel safe, or teaching the brain to stay afraid. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why Relief Can Be More Addictive Than Pleasure

  3. 23h ago

    Why You Can Miss a Life You Did Not Actually Enjoy

    Why do people sometimes long for jobs, relationships, or life stages they remember as exhausting, painful, or deeply difficult? In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores how memory softens emotional pain while preserving meaning, identity, belonging, and structure. What we miss may not be the life itself, but the version of ourselves that existed within it. The episode examines the fading affect bias, the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memory, and the grief that follows when a defining role or relationship ends. It also looks at why nostalgia can restore self-continuity and help us move forward, but can also become a retreat when the present feels inferior to the past. The deeper question is whether we are remembering what happened, or what that chapter came to mean. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why You Can Miss a Life You Did Not Actually Enjoy

  4. 1d ago

    Why Some Brains Stay Young Into Their Nineties

    Why do some people reach their eighties and nineties with memories that rival adults decades younger? In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores the science of superagers and what their brains reveal about resilience, memory, and healthy aging. The evidence points to a mix of preserved brain structure, cognitive reserve, genetics, physical health, social connection, and psychological well-being. Superaging is not explained by one habit or one biological advantage. Some people appear to resist age-related brain changes, while others maintain strong cognition despite them. The episode asks how much of this resilience is inherited, how much is built across a lifetime, and how much may still be influenced later in life. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why Some Brains Stay Young Into Their Nineties

  5. 1d ago

    Why Life Feels Faster as You Get Older

    Most people assume the answer is biological, that some internal clock quietly speeds up as we age. It turns out that story doesn’t really hold together. What the research actually points to is something stranger and, I think, more hopeful: the years aren’t moving faster, they’re just leaving fewer marks behind. In this episode, I dig into the difference between how we experience time while it’s happening and how we reconstruct it afterward, why routine is basically a machine for erasing memory boundaries, and why a single new experience can feel like it flew by in the moment and still expand a whole year in hindsight. We’ll get into event segmentation, the neuroscience of novelty and attention, and what a simple mental exercise called chunking can do to make a year feel shorter, on command, no aging required. This one changed how I think about my own calendar. I suspect it might do the same for yours. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why Life Feels Faster as You Get Older

  6. 1d ago

    You Don’t Really Understand It Until You Can Explain It

    Why teaching someone else transforms familiarity into deeper understanding We often assume we understand something because it feels familiar. We have read the chapter, watched the lecture, or followed the explanation without getting lost. But the moment we try to explain the idea to someone else, that confidence can fall apart. In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores why explaining is one of the most powerful learning strategies available to us. Teaching forces the brain to move beyond recognition and rebuild knowledge from the inside out. It requires retrieval, organization, paraphrasing, causal reasoning, and the ability to identify exactly where understanding breaks down. The episode examines the difference between simply remembering information and restructuring it into a coherent mental model. It also explores why explaining complex material can outperform ordinary review, how the presence of a real learner changes the task, and why planning, feedback, responsibility, and adaptation may matter more than merely expecting to teach. Explaining is not automatically effective. It can reinforce misconceptions, overload working memory, or become little more than repetition when the learner relies too heavily on notes or visual aids. But when the difficulty is properly structured and the explanation is tested against questions or feedback, teaching turns vague familiarity into knowledge that is specific, durable, and transferable. You may not need a classroom to use this strategy. You only need to close the book, reconstruct the idea in your own words, and notice where the explanation stops making sense. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    You Don’t Really Understand It Until You Can Explain It

  7. 1d ago

    Why Effective Learning Often Feels Like Failure

    Why do the study methods that feel easiest often teach us the least? In this episode of Strides To Solutions, Esther Adams explores why struggle can deepen learning—but only under the right conditions. Productive struggle exposes gaps in our knowledge, forces effortful retrieval, and helps us judge what we truly understand. Yet when difficulty overwhelms working memory or undermines our sense of competence, the same struggle can shut learning down. Discover why rereading and cramming create a false sense of mastery, how the brain mistakes fluency for understanding, and what separates a useful challenge from cognitive overload. You’ll also learn how prior knowledge, stress, motivation, feedback, and social support shape whether difficulty makes us smarter or simply leaves us exhausted. The lesson is not to push harder at all costs. It is to create the right kind of difficulty: challenging enough to provoke deeper thinking, but supported enough to keep learning possible. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    Why Effective Learning Often Feels Like Failure

  8. 1d ago

    The Hidden Step Between Feeling Someone's Pain and Actually Helping Them

    We tend to assume compassion is just empathy that spills over into action, but the research says something more complicated. Witnessing someone suffer often triggers distress first, a fast, self-protective reaction that can just as easily push you to withdraw as pull you toward helping. In this episode, I dig into what has to happen, in the brain and developmentally, for that distress to actually convert into effective, motivated care. We'll look at the neuroscience of the shift from empathic distress to compassion, why some people experience warmth and kindness as a threat rather than a comfort, why generic mindfulness doesn't automatically build compassion the way people assume, and what the research says actually works when it comes to training this skill, in yourself and in how you show up for others. Understanding before advice, always. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit esthernava.substack.com

    The Hidden Step Between Feeling Someone's Pain and Actually Helping Them
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Strides To Solutions uncovers how animal-assisted psychotherapy—from equine sessions to canine companionship—rewires the brain for lasting cognitive and emotional gains. Join host Esther Adams, a trauma-informed psychotherapist with a doctorate in psychology, as she shares powerful client stories, expert interviews, and hands-on exercises designed to strengthen attention, memory, executive function, and resilience. Tune in for actionable strategies that transform barnyard breakthroughs into real-world success. esthernava.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Esther Adams
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    155
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Esther Adams, Linsey Adams, Strides To Solutions
  • Show Website
    Strides To Solutions