Episode Transcript
Dr. Marie Schaaf (speaker):
The people around us very much influence who we are and how we feel. So knowing which relationships are healthy for us, which relationships are damaging, and how do I manage those in my day-to-day life?
Courtney Collen (announcer):
Welcome to “Her Kind of Healthy,” an informative and unfiltered podcast series by Sanford Health. We want to start new and honest conversations about age-old topics, from fertility to postpartum, and so much more with our Sanford Health experts.
In this episode, we’ll hear from Dr. Marie Schaaf who is a specialist in neuropsychology in Bismarck, North Dakota. We recorded her speaking during a Sanford Women’s event on Oct. 23, 2025 in Bismarck. It was called the Women’s Social where Dr. Schaaf joined other Sanford Health providers on stage to discuss popular women’s health topics.
Here’s Dr. Schaaf on mental health.
Dr. Marie Schaaf:
Our brains are so powerful, they do so much for us, and we don’t realize how much they do for us. They can do really good things for us, and they can also cause us a lot of trouble if we don’t realize what’s happening. So it’s really important to know how our brain works and what it’s doing for us to make it work best for us.
So, you know, on the therapy side of things, I really talk a lot with folks about how our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviors and our relationships and our environments, they all have this complex interaction. We really need to know how all of those pieces work and how all of those pieces are influencing one another because in each one of those spots, we can make a change if something’s not working.
For example, in my notes, one of the very first things I have at the top, I wasn’t even going to say it, but imposter syndrome. I’m sitting up here telling you how you’re supposed to feel, but that’s a judgment on myself, right? I’ve got a little bit of training in mental health, so I can let that judgment go and continue.
But it’s very important to know what our thoughts are doing, what our emotions are doing, how our behaviors are benefiting us. The people around us very much influence who we are and how we feel. So knowing which relationships are healthy for us, which relationships are damaging, and how do I manage those in my day-to-day life, right?
We really want to think about – on the neuropsychology side of things – our brain uses a ton of energy. And how are we giving our brain the energy it needs? The two answers are rest and nutrition. What are we giving our brain for energy, right? We also know that our brain uses a bunch of energy for different things.
Dr. Marie Schaaf
Photo by Sanford Health
So again – jumping back to the therapy side of things – managing our emotions takes a lot of energy. So if we have emotions popping up in different situations or with different people, we can drain our energy fast. And then our thinking skills, like our memory or our attention, coming up with the word we want to use, they’re just not there because we ran out of energy, right? And so, knowing how to take care of our brain process, our emotions, give it the rest and the energy it needs, the nutrition it needs, all of this is so important, and it’s so complex.
To me, it feels like a spider web. You wiggle one spot and the whole thing moves, and it’s like, well, where’s the wiggle coming from? It can be really hard to tease apart sometimes, but with therapy, we can learn strategies that help us to build our stamina. Within the field of neuropsychology, we can practice strategies that help keep our brain efficient so that we can do all of the good thinking skills that we need to do. Being aware mindfulness practice can really be valuable for us as far as noticing when things change.
Because for a lot of us, we talked about that mental load. We’re paying attention to everything else. We may not realize when we have a shift and when we need to make a shift to help ourselves get through situations or persevere in difficult spots. So it’s really important that you know, we know how our brain works, we know how our emotions work, we know how our thoughts work, we know what fills us with energy. We know what drains our energy. And with our presentation previously, we talked about values. Where do I want to put my time and my energy? What’s most important for me to use this energy on? Right?
We know that for women, as far as behavioral health conditions are concerned, depression and anxiety, maybe you’ve heard the phrase, “they’re the common cold of behavioral health.” Almost everyone will experience some of those symptoms at some point in their life. And we all have normal emotions, but when they get in the way of our day-to-day functioning, we really want to make sure we catch those, we treat those, and we have really good treatments for behavioral health conditions.
We have therapy. We have medication. And what we find is the combination of the two actually works really well. The medication helps us to kind of manage those emotions to an extent. And the therapy part teaches us how our brain works and what skills work and how to keep ourselves going and doing better long-term. So the two work really well together. So I just want to make sure that when we’re thinking about mental health, we’re thinking about the whole brain.
The brain does a bunch of stuff for us, and we want to make sure that we are addressing all of those components.
Courtney Collen:
This was part of the “Her Kind of Healthy” podcast series by Sanford Health. For more by Sanford Health, visit Apple, Spotify and news.sanfordhealth.org.
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Behavioral Health, Bismarck, General, Health Information, Healthy Living, News, Specialty Care, Symptom Management, Women’s