Amy Dee

Resilience: Mastering the Pivot

As a psychiatric nurse, I spent years caring for people on inpatient units and intensive therapy groups. I’ve seen what happens when people hit a wall. But even better, I’ve also seen how they bounce back. This engaging keynote swaps dry clinical theory for practical tools to build powerful resilience.

Nobody wants a boring academic lecture on resilience. Instead, I share the psychological skills I’ve found useful and tuck these strategies into hilarious, relatable stories from everyday life. By pairing stories with content, I make it fun and easier to remember. So you won’t just learn how to survive tough times; you’ll remember how to thrive through them.

You will walk away knowing how to recognize thinking traps that get you stuck and reframe them to strengthen your resilience. It doesn’t mean you feel no pain or never break; it means you’ll find a way to move forward not despite the challenge, but because of it.

You will laugh while learning real clinical strategies. You’ll leave energized, inspired, and empowered to bend without breaking during your next big shift at work or in life.

Takeaways:

• The Brain Hijack: The Circuit Breaker (or Interrupting Panic Loops)
• The Bounce-Back Reflex: The Reframing Strategy (or Cognitive Flexibility)
• The Armor Routine: The Resilience Base (or Daily Preventive Habits)
• The Sticky Fix: The Crisis Toolkit (or Applied Coping Tools)

Stress Management: The Stories We Tell—Change Your Story to Conquer Stress

It’s not your overflowing inbox or that never-ending to-do list that’s making you stressed. It’s the story your brain is spinning about it all.

When I moved to Norway, learned Norwegian, and started a business, I thought I’d seen every flavor of stress. Nope. Later, I returned to the USA as a single parent, attended nursing school, and became a psychiatric RN in my 40s.

Eventually my brain became an expert storyteller, mostly of the disaster variety. Thankfully, my time as a psychiatric RN taught me a clear truth: resilience to stress isn’t about reducing life’s difficulty; it’s about catching sneaky mental habits—like mind-reading, catastrophizing, or black-and-white thinking— that turn everyday stressors into epic dramas.

In this keynote, through relatable and funny stories, I’ll share mental tools you can use to spot mental loops that keep you stuck in stress.

My goal isn’t just to inspire you, but to send you home with a handful of practical tools you can actually use—so you can quiet the anxiety, work with your brain instead of against it, and maybe even laugh at yourself along the way.

Takeaways:

• Change Your Story, Change Your Chemistry: Stress thrives on panic-driven thinking. Changing your inner script can change your body’s physical response.
• Kill the Drama, Keep the Focus: Emotional drama paralyzes your productivity.
• Switch to objective facts to keep your most important projects moving forward.
• Accept the Chaos: expecting a perfectly calm and predictable life is like expecting a group of raccoons to quietly split a box of stolen donuts.

Navigating CHANGE: Moving From Reaction to Response

You’ve finally gotten used to a new routine and BANG! Life shifts. It might be a move, a relationship change, or a new manager. If you find adjusting to change challenging, you’re not messed up; you are human.

Change disrupts your sense of predictability, and your brain loves predictability. So how is it that some people face these changes with optimism and strength instead of anxiety and fear? I’ll share what I learned about change from a lifetime of transitions: moving to Norway, co-founding a successful Scandinavian business, and returning to college as a single mother at age forty-three to become an inpatient psychiatric RN.

In this down-to-earth, laugh-out-loud funny, and inspiring keynote, I’ll show you that becoming a change optimist is not a personality trait; it is a skill anyone can build. I promise not to bore you with medical mumbo-jumbo or endless PowerPoint slides. Instead, through a mix of deeply relatable and always funny stories I’ll share some practical, down-to-earth strategies to keep your mind steady when life gets wobbly.

You’ll walk out feeling a little braver and a lot more hopeful, with some new tricks up your sleeve for handling whatever changes come your way.

Takeaways:

• Change disrupts your comfort zone: Your brain craves predictability. Sudden changes like a move or a new job cause stress because they disrupt that safe routine.
• Optimism is a skill: You do not need a special personality to handle change well. Anyone can practice and grow this ability over time.
• Change your inner story: Shift how you explain hard events to yourself. This choice keeps you steady when life feels wobbly.
• You can handle the unknown: Life transitions will always happen. You leave with practical tricks to stay brave and face them.

Customer service: Smile, Breathe, and Connect: The Human Side of Support

Have you ever gone out of your way to help a customer for months, only to have them forget all your efforts the moment something goes wrong? That’s because service isn’t just a transaction. It feels personal.

In this session, you’ll learn practical tools through funny, relatable stories. These tips will help you make every customer interaction positive and memorable for both you and your customer.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about people as a business owner handling tough situations and as a psychiatric nurse working with patients on their hardest days. Empathy isn’t just a nice idea; it’s about real connection, and it’s good for business. I’ll show you how to focus less on the transaction and more on your customer’s experience. You’ll see why people react the way they do, especially when things go wrong.

We’ll look at the common thinking traps that can trip up not only your customers, but also you and me. I’ll introduce you to the Peak-End rule. This idea explains why people remember the best or worst part and the ending of any experience. Once you understand it, you can use it to make your interactions memorable in a positive way.

And the best part? You’ll leave with simple tools you can really use—no psychology degree needed. These will help you turn everyday moments into memories that make both you and your customers smile.

Takeaways:

• Mental tools: Learn practical tips to make every customer interaction positive.
• Peak-End Rule: Understand what people remember about an experience.
• Thinking Traps: Learn about common biases that can derail connection between you and your customers.
• Memorable Moments: Turn everyday service into positive memories that make everyone smile.

Leadership: Manage Your Thoughts, Maximize Your Impact

When pressure hits, your team notices everything—not just what you say, but how you react. Keeping people focused and motivated requires strong self-regulation, but that is easier said than done.

This session skips the academic theory and focuses on practical tools from behavioral science.

We will look at how hidden biases mess with our decision-making, how simple cognitive behavioral tools (like Catch, Check, Change) can stop knee-jerk reactions, and how emotional intelligence actually works when things get chaotic.

Through real stories and practical examples, you will learn how to spot your own blind spots, handle your stress, and give your team the steady leadership they need.

Takeaways:

• Energy Speaks Louder Than Words: Teams read and mirror a leader’s emotional state during high-pressure situations.
• Master Self-Regulation: True operational composure requires identifying and neutralizing hidden cognitive biases.
• Apply CBT Techniques: Using the “Catch, Check, and Change” framework allows leaders to manage responses in real time.
• Neutralize Cognitive Biases: Spot and disarm hidden mental shortcuts before they distort your choices under fire