Anchor Moments

Every person you pass has a story you don't know. The cashier who barely makes eye contact. The man on the corner you walk around. The refugee who lives down the street. The soccer mom who seems to have it all together. The advocate who won't stop fighting. Anchor Moments is a podcast about the experiences that made us who we are - the moments we can't stop being shaped by, whether we want to be or not. Each episode, one person shares their story. Not a celebrity. Not a politician. An everyday person, whose life you might have walked right past without knowing - and whose story, once you hear it, changes how you see them forever. Because I've come to believe one thing: it's impossible not to love someone once you know their story. Anchor Moments is trauma-informed, mental-health-aware, and built for the people who feel unseen, and for the people who want to see them.

Anchor Moments is a education podcast hosted by Krista Patrick, with 26 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Krista Patrick hosts Anchor Moments, a education show with 26 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #26

  Ep 26: Performing Normal: The Therapist Who Quit Being Good - Amy Watkins' Story

  Sep 16, 20261h 40m

  Amy grew up in a house that ran on fear. Hellfire, rapture-any-minute, and a God who was mostly a punishment schedule. Being good meant being invisible. Wanting things was a sin - she circled the Sears catalog in her head, because circling with a pen got you in trouble. So she got good. Good at reading every room, good at being whoever the person in front of her needed her to be. Good enough to build a whole adult life on it: a marriage, a career as a therapist, a flawless performance of a woman who was fine. Then it came apart - the marriage, the family, and finally the performance itself. What's left is who you'll meet here: a trauma therapist who calls herself God's favorite problem, and the author of a book that leaves nothing out. In this one: Why a little girl crawled down the hallway at night to check that her parents were still in their beds The difference between estrangement and parental alienation - and why Amy is careful about which word she uses What setting a boundary feels like in your body when you've never set one (she has a very specific answer) Longing versus love, and how she finally learned to tell them apart Why she says she even healed as a good girl The sunset skydive, and what jumping out of a plane had to do with posting her first video Amy is a licensed professional counselor and trauma therapist in Philadelphia. A hundred thousand people follow her at gods.favorite.problem. Her book, Performing Normal, is out now - and she didn't leave anything out. Warning - it's a heavy one: childhood sexual abuse (talked about honestly, not graphically), high-control religion, an affair, and estrangement and parental alienation - on both sides of the mic. Take what you need, including skipping this one. It'll be here when you're ready. FIND AMY Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gods.favorite.problem/ Performing Normal, her book - out now: https://www.amywatkinsstudio.com/book Everything else: https://linktr.ee/gods.favorite.problem IF YOU NEED SUPPORT RAINN - National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-4673, or chat at online.rainn.org . Free, confidential, 24/7 Recovering from Religion - recoveringfromreligion.org - free peer support for people questioning or leaving high-control religion National Domestic Violence Hotline - thehotline.org , 1-800-799-7233 - includes coercive control, not just physical abuse 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

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  Episode #25

  Ep 25: 27 Years of "It's All in Your Head" - A Therapist on His Own Medical Journey

  Sep 9, 20261h 59m

  Austin Bridges treats anxiety, OCD, and trauma for a living. He spent the first twenty-seven years of his own life being told by doctors that he had it backwards - that he wasn't sick and anxious, he was anxious and therefore sick. Reacting to formula at three months old. Celiac at twenty-seven. Four more years for the nausea, and then a two-hour appointment with a doctor his mother found, who listened to all of it and said he knew what it was and could fix it. Austin cried. Not because he was finally being helped - because for once, he wasn't interesting. In this episode: - The two diagnoses he calls the turning points of his life, and the twenty-seven years in between - The gastroenterologist who answered him with "which one of us went to medical school," and the practice that wouldn't let him switch - The one thing every doctor who actually helped him had in common, and it isn't credentials - The man in the yellow hat, and why getting used to the hat never works - What anxiety is actually made of - he says it's only ever two things - The pill in his hand, and the sentence his OCD used to keep him from swallowing it - Why he thinks people with OCD are the most courageous clients he works with - The rug in my therapist's office, and what he told me to do about it A heads up: chronic illness, medical dismissal, panic attacks, compulsions described in detail, a significant weight change on a medication, and one brief mention from me of a time I was suicidal. Austin also names several clinical OCD subtypes in passing. Nothing here is medical advice. This week's question: what's your version of the rug? The small thing you can't leave alone that you already know isn't about the thing. Come tell me on Instagram. FIND AUSTIN AustinBridgesTherapy.com - info@austinbridgestherapy.com - Instagram @austinbridgestherapy MENTIONED IOCDF - iocdf.org - directory of OCD therapists EMDRIA - emdria.org - directory of EMDR therapists Stopping the Noise in Your Head by Reid Wilson Gut Feelings by Douglas Drossman, MD - the doctor who diagnosed him Celiac Disease Foundation - celiac.org IF YOU NEED SUPPORT 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice. Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday. If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while listening. And follow so the next one finds you. Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

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  Episode #24

  Ep 24: "I'm Over the Justification of Behavior" - Mike's Story

  Sep 2, 20261h 35m

  Mike Dyson will tell you the year that changed his life was 1993, and that everything before it was him trying to get through on his own. He was bullied for years as a kid, some of it for being adopted, and learned early to smile while holding fear underneath. In the Marine Corps, an officer humiliated him on the parade deck when he was twenty-two. His answer wasn't to fight back - it was to become the best in every room, every time, so no one could touch him again. It worked, on the outside. Marine of the Year finalist. A business owner. An HOA president. None of it healed what was underneath. In 1993, at the end of himself, he asked God to take his life and do whatever needed doing with the mess of it. The first thing he says he heard back: stop blaming. In 2023, doctors found significant coronary artery disease, and he had a double bypass. Three decades after the night that changed the direction of everything, another valley he never would have picked. In this episode: The night in 1993 that started everything, and the four words that began it The pastor who didn't know what to do with him, and the thirteen years it cost What the 2023 diagnosis asked of a man who thought he'd already done the hard part The dashboard-light reframe that changed how he holds his own anger Why he calls "everything happens for a reason" bad theology What his book, The Shadow, is actually about, and who he wrote it for What "God meets us in weakness, not just strength" means to him on an ordinary Tuesday A heads up: bullying, his mother's difficult decision the week she found out she was pregnant with him in 1960, heart surgery described in detail, and a season of past domestic abuse mentioned briefly. Nothing here is medical advice. This week's question: the first thing he says God told him was stop blaming. Who would you have to stop blaming? Come tell me on Instagram. FIND MIKE mikedysonauthor.com - The Shadow, available on Amazon Facebook: Mike Dyson IF YOU NEED SUPPORT 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries thehotline.org - National Domestic Violence Hotline The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice. Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we're still becoming because of them. New episodes every Wednesday. If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while listening. And follow so the next one finds you. Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

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  Episode #23

  Ep 23: "It Doesn't Work That Way" - The Thing I've Never Said Out Loud

  Aug 26, 202640 min

  My dad drove my car out to Utah, dropped me off at college, and was dead by September. I was barely eighteen. This is what happened after, and what a man in authority said to me when I finally worked up the nerve to tell him about it. I have never said all of this out loud. I was raised that these experiences are sacred, which is a word that does a lot of work when what it's actually doing is keeping you quiet. In this episode: What I was taught to believe about experiences like this, and why "sacred, not secret" landed differently on a kid who needed to get everything exactly right The fork I was standing at in that dorm room, and the two-hour prayer where I asked for nothing The phone ringing in a room that didn't have a phone The woman on the window bench who sang me a song in a language she didn't understand, and what the temple told me years later when I went back to find her The seven words from my church leader that sent me into a faith transition I'm still in, and why I now think I needed them Heavy or light - the one question I taught my kids to use when nobody can tell them what's true Where I've actually landed, which is not where you'd expect and is not tidy A heads up: this one is about the death of a parent and there is a lot of grief in it. It also covers being disbelieved by a religious authority, a past struggle with alcohol, and mental health. I name my religion in this episode. I'm not making a case for or against it, and this isn't the episode where I tell that whole story. This week's question, and I mean it: has something happened to you that you couldn't explain, and you either never told anyone, or you did and they gave you their version of "that's not how it works"? And what's the thing you've never said out loud because of how you were raised? Come tell me on Instagram. MENTIONED "Say It Anyway" by Rosi Golan, Mosiah 2:17-19 IF YOU NEED SUPPORT 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries dougy.org - The Dougy Center. Free peer grief support, and a worldwide directory of grief programs you can search by where you live reclamationcollective.com - religious-trauma-informed therapist directory and peer support groups, for people leaving a faith and for people staying in one The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. This week they're mine. I'm not asking anybody to take them on. Take what helps, and leave the rest. Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday. If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while you were listening. And follow so the next one finds you. Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

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  Episode #22

  Ep 22: She Took Three Pills for a UTI. Five Months Later She Was in Hospice - Talia's Story

  Aug 19, 202650 min

  Talia Smith was raised by her grandmother, called her every day on the drive home from work, and was holding her hand when she died. She spent ten years as her husband's full-time caregiver after he broke his neck. In April 2021 she got a urinary tract infection, asked good questions, took the antibiotic exactly as prescribed, and the next morning she put her foot on the floor and fell. Five months later she was admitted to hospice. This is the story of what it costs to be the person who did everything right. In this episode: The grandmother she was glued to from birth, and the grief she says she has never recovered from The regret question she asked her grandmother, and then years later asked her grandfather, and the identical answer they both gave The voicemail meant to reassure her about her husband, and what she heard underneath it Ten years of caregiving, and the closeness she says she'd never had in any other relationship The UTI her doctor said she would never normally have treated, and the prescription she got anyway The question she asked before she swallowed the first pill, and the answer she was given The ER doctor who named the drug before she could finish her sentence, told her he sees it often, and sent her home with ibuprofen The word a doctor finally handed her, and the single story she found when she searched it The friend who turned out to live 45 minutes down the road A heads up on this one: medical trauma, medical dismissal, disability, hospice, and the death of a grandparent. Talia describes a rapid physical decline in real detail. Take care of yourself while you listen. One more thing. Talia's microphone stopped recording partway through and neither of us knew. There is no backup. What you'll hear is the first part of a much longer conversation, and the part that's missing is the part she came to give. I explain it properly at the end, and I'd rather tell you than have you think she trailed off. This week's question: Has there been a time you knew something about your own body, and you were told you were wrong? What did that cost you, and what would you do differently now? Come tell me on Instagram at Anchor Moments Pod. FIND TALIA All her links: https://linktr.ee/finding.vulneraries Her site, This Is Floxed , and the support group she runs - both are on the linktree above IF YOU NEED SUPPORT FDA MedWatch - report a reaction to a medication yourself: fda.gov/medwatch or 1-800-FDA-1088. You don't need anyone's permission. 988 - Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, call or text, US, 24/7 findahelpline.com - free, confidential support in over 100 countries Caregiver Action Network - caregiveraction.org - support for family caregivers The stories and views shared on Anchor Moments belong to the people telling them. They aren't always mine, and that's the point. I'm not here to agree, correct, diagnose, or decide who's right. Take what helps, and leave the rest. This show is not medical advice. Anchor Moments is a show about the moments that split a life into a before and an after, and who we became on the other side. New episodes every Wednesday. If this one moved something in you, send it to the person you thought about while you were listening. And if you're not following yet, follow so the next one finds you. Got a story? anchormomentspod.com Instagram + TikTok: @anchormomentspod

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