Joy Lab | navigate depression, anxiety, & stress with the science of joy
Joy Lab isn't your typical happiness podcast. We focus on navigating mental health experiences like depression, anxiety, stress, grief, and burnout with the science of joy. You can expect a blend of the best cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques, positive psychology practices, stress management techniques, and mindfulness skills. Each month we focus on building one Element of Joy such as gratitude, self-compassion, confidence, self-acceptance, humility, and self-connection. It's a holistic approach to mental health that's refreshingly free of finger-wagging and toxic positivity and full of practical, whole-person support that's empowering and actually helps. Joy Lab is hosted by two leaders in mental health, Henry Emmons, MD (integrative psychiatrist) and Aimee Prasek, PhD (mental health researcher). You'll probably find this podcast most useful if any of these feel familiar: * You feel caught in cycles of worry, anxiety, or panic attacks. * Stress has settled into your body, with tension, fatigue, and irritation showing up too often. * The news of the world is getting under your skin, affecting your mood and focus more than you'd like to admit. * Day-to-day life feels too "meh" and you want something more. * Your mind feels full, foggy, or restless... maybe at 3am, when it seems especially determined to revisit everything you can't solve. * You've been in a low mood or depression rut for a while and you want tools to move through it. * Burnout has left you exhausted, detached, or running on empty. New episodes drop every Wednesday + the 1st of each month. Each episode is a practical guide to managing depression and anxiety, building resilience, cultivating joy, and navigating life with more steadiness. It's an empowering approach that isn't just focused on what's wrong or endlessly chasing after fleeting moments of happiness. Henry and Aimee bring 50+ combined years of mental health expertise, along with the lived experience to know that "not so bad" is not the end goal for mental health. Joy Lab is here to help you reclaim the resilience and joy that's already within you. Joy Lab is an Ambie-nominated, trusted mental health resource and is powered by Pathways North, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This content is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Consult your doctor or a qualified health professional before making changes to your health routine. If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 (SAMHSA) or contact the NAMI HelpLine at 1-800-950-6264 (Mon–Fri, 10am–10pm ET), text "HelpLine" to 62640, or email helpline@nami.org.
Episodes
Humility is a powerful mental health tool we have. The science of happiness is clear: genuine connection and belonging are among the strongest predictors of emotional resilience and wellbeing. In this episode of Joy Lab we'll explore the final dimension of humility: going beyond yourself.
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Humility and mental health are more connected than you might think. And if you add self-compassion to the humility-ego mix, then you have a recipe that can support mood, offer stress relief, and give your mind and body a break from constantly trying to defend yourself. We'll dig into all this with the "Check Yourself" step of the humility framework, unpacking ego threat, defensive thinking patterns, and the...
Humility is a powerful (and mostly misunderstood) mental health skill that's grounded by self-knowledge and self-compassion. Humility is also a powerful antidote to rumination and harsh self-criticism and a tool to support mood and emotional resilience. We'll build up humility through this series by taking a positive psychology approach along with Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren's framework to build humility (know yourself, check yourself, ...
Humility is not a weakness or a sign you're a pushover, instead it's a mental health tool that just might be exactly what our loneliness epidemic and anxiety culture are desperately craving. Humility is an accurate, grounded sense of who you are. And that grounded sense of self is a foundation for confidence, deeper connection, and holistic mental health.
Here's what we'll explore this episode:
There are four researc...
Spoiler: you were never meant to do this alone. In the final episode of Joy Lab's Resilience series, Dr. Aimee Prasek and Dr. Henry Emmons explore the most powerful — and most underrated — ingredient in lasting resilience: deep, meaningful connection. They unpack the neuroscience of belonging, the illusion of separation that quietly wrecks...
We're in our Element of Resilience and we're going somewhere most mental health conversations completely skip: the heart.
Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek unpack why mental health has been so brain-centric for so long, what the field of neurocardiolo...
In this episode of the Joy Lab Podcast, Dr. Aimee Prasek and Dr. Henry Emmons dig into one of the most counterintuitive resilience skills we can build: turning toward negative emotions instead of running from them. This isn't about wallowing. It's about befriending the feelings that are already there so they can actually move through you, instead of g...
Calming the mind sounds simple, right? And yet most of us would rather do almost anything other than sitting quietly with our thoughts. In this episode, Dr. Aimee Prasek and Dr. Henry Emmons dig into the science of Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs), the surprising research on just how much we think, and the powerful practice of the observer self: the part of your mind that can step back, see what's happening, and choose diffe...
What does it actually mean to be resilient? Spoiler: it's not about white-knuckling through hard times or being the type of person who just 'endures' everything. In this episode, Dr. Aimee Prasek and Dr. Henry Emmons kick off Joy Lab's month-long exploration of Resilience. They'll share a science-grounded, warmly human look at what resilience really i...
We're in our new "month of renewal" format. We're essentially exploring this question throughout the month... what if growth required less effort? This is an encore episode that helps us answer this question. Reminder that we'll be back with new episodes May 1, 2026.
We're in our new "month of renewal" format. We're essentially exploring this question throughout the month... what if growth required less effort? This is an encore episode that helps us answer this question. Reminder that we'll be back with new episodes May 1, 2026.
Busyness: society's favorite status symbol and one of resilience's sneakiest enemies. In this episode, Henry Emmons, MD and Aimee Prasek, PhD dig into time poverty &md...
We're in our new "month of renewal" format. We're essentially exploring this question throughout the month... what if growth required less effort? This is an encore episode that helps us answer this question. Reminder that we'll be back with new episodes May 1, 2026.
In this episode of Joy Lab, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek dismantle the idea that balance is a fixed destination you arrive at someday — once the laundry...
We're in our new "month of renewal" format. We're essentially exploring this question throughout the month... what if growth required less effort? This is an encore episode that helps us answer this question. Reminder that we'll be back with new episodes May 1, 2026.
Solitude and fun in the same sentence? Stick with us. In this episode, we'll explore how intentional alone time — free from devices, distractions, and the pressu...
We're doing something a little different this month — and a little more of nothing. This is our new "month of renewal" format (happening three times a year in April, August, and December). We're essentially exploring this question throughout the month... what if growth required less effort?
This is it — the finale of our 10-part series on grief, and we're closing with a Gate that might be the most quietly powerful one yet: Other. That's right, the catchall. The one that says: if your loss doesn't fit neatly into a framework, it still counts. If you're feeling it, it counts.
Losses that fall into this category include: Identity shifts, infertility, retirement, faded friendships, the life you thought you'd have &m...
Grief doesn't wait for loss to arrive. Sometimes it shows up early — sitting beside you while someone you love is still right there. That's anticipatory grief, and if you've ever felt your mind drift to a future without someone while they're still in the room, you already know it.
In this episode of Joy Lab, Dr. Henry Emmons and Dr. Aimee Prasek explore the Eighth Gate of Grief: the grief, stress, anxiety, and dread that can ...
Grief doesn't only come from what happens to us directly. In this episode of our Grief Series, we'll look through the Seventh Gate: Trauma — specifically collective trauma and secondary (vicarious) trauma. We'll break down what these are, how they physically land in your body, what the Window of Tolerance really means for your day-to-day life, and what to do when you find yourself overwhelmed by stress. We'll explore super he...
In this episode of Joy Lab, we'll explore the Sixth Gate of Grief: the grief we carry for harm done to ourselves and others. We'll draw on the expanded framework of Francis Weller's gates of grief to unpack why this gate is one of the most challenging and most liberating to work with. It's important to note that this isn't about guilt-trippi...
What if some of the grief you carry isn't entirely yours? In this episode we'll open what Francis Weller identified as the Fifth Gate of Grief: ancestral grief. We're talking about the unacknowledged, untended sorrows of those who came before us: lost languages, severed connections to land and ritual, collective traumas like war, displacement, and genocide. But we're also talking about the science; specifically, epigenetics and how...
What if the loss you're carrying doesn't have a name — no death, no disaster, just a quiet, persistent ache that something was always missing? In this episode of Joy Lab, we'll look at Gate Four of our grief series: What We Expected But Did Not Receive. Drawing from Francis Weller's The Wild Edge of Sorrow, we'll explore the grief...
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