Your Thoughts Will Heal or Kill You with Marisa Peer and Lewis Howes

Peer says the brain has no sense of humor, so casual statements like "I'm dying under paperwork" or "it would kill me" prompt it to protect you in unhelpful ways, such as producing symptoms or blocking relationships.

In her role, function, purpose work, clients speak as their symptom and often find it gives a payoff, such as a headache that spares a daughter from disappointing her father. She says a symptom with a purpose won't go until that is addressed.

Peer says she has never met an addict who believed they were enough, and she attributes the self-destruction of stars such as Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston partly to unearned success and living a lie.

Because people are wired to favor what they know, those raised on criticism reject praise. Peer says daily self-praise, said in the way you wished a parent had spoken to you, can become familiar and build a "praise muscle".

She says feelings return stronger when pushed down with food, drink or shopping, and should be acknowledged and voiced soon after the hurt, even to a mirror or a wall, until they no longer need to be felt.