Podcast Business News Network Platinum · Podcast Business News Network Platinum, Podcast Business News Network, PBNN

14098 Steve Harper Interviews Susan Engel Psychotherapist, Social Worker and Certified EMDR Clinician

·25 min·1 clip

"Stop giving your power to the pain" becomes the episode's sharpest line about agency.

1. Podcast Business News Network Platinum centers this episode on Steve Harper and Susan Engel discussing the power of positivity. 2. Steve Harper hosts the conversation, and Susan Engel is introduced as a psychotherapist, social worker, and certified EMDR clinician whose perspective shapes the discussion. 3. The episode asks how "real positivity" differs from pretending everything is okay. 4. Harper describes a men's group exercise where eight people named something positive and something challenging about each other. 5. Engel says the exercise felt awkward and disconnecting, and she prefers more natural conversation over binary labels. 6. Harper uses the group's "win for the week" practice to argue that reframing can turn even difficult events into gains. 7. Engel says client work often starts with shame or struggle and moves toward a broader understanding of what happened. 8. She gives the example of someone who never learned to advocate for themselves and instead shuts down. 9. Engel links that pattern to limitations that "sit or fester or grow or mushrooms within us." 10. The conversation moves into sports, especially golf, tennis, bowling, and shoveling snow. 11. Engel says shame about sports performance often comes from earlier life experiences rather than the game itself. 12. Harper says he was never picked for dodgeball and now plays tennis three times a summer without caring that he is "horrible." 13. Engel says the same logic applies to snow shoveling, where a person can choose to focus on exercise, fresh air, or getting a Jeep freed from snow. 14. She says physical activity can feel easier when a person stays in the body instead of overthinking the task. 15. Engel introduces the idea of becoming "consciously unconscious" from a tennis book as a way to stop getting stuck in the head. 16. She connects that idea to focus problems, saying a person can focus for 30 seconds, then 45 seconds, and gradually extend that capacity. 17. Harper and Engel sound conversational and reflective, with Harper pushing examples and Engel responding with clinical framing. 18. The exchange stays calm and practical, with repeated returns to gratitude, responsibility, and everyday self-talk. 19. Listeners interested in therapy, self-improvement, sports psychology, and reframing would likely get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a tightly argued business-news segment or a fast-paced interview may skip it.

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