Ken Huey 0:00

Welcome to the Voice of Hope, where bold leaders and healers share how they're building hope, not just talking about it. I'm Dr. Ken Huey. Let's meet the change makers transforming lives from the therapy room to the boardroom. Today's guest is Beatrice Martinez Peñaver. She's a licensed psychotherapist, founder of Triumph Steps, and co-founder of Healthy Connections Community Mental Health Center. She's spent more than 30 years helping people heal, grow, build lasting emotional resilience. She's created Triumph Steps, a neuroscience-based framework designed to teach emotional literacy, empower clinicians and coaches, and help people turn life challenges into meaningful transformation. Beatrice, so glad to have you.

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 0:46

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about this interview.

Ken Huey 0:50

Oh, fantastic. So I always like to ask kind of how you've landed where you are. You've 30 years as a psychotherapist. What first led you to create Triumph Steps?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 1:02

So, yes, I've been over 30 years in the field, but about 10 years ago was when I created Triumph Steps. And at that time, we had about 25 to 30 clinicians in our center. And I started to feel like that it was not enough, right? We were 25, 30 people doing one-on-ones. And the one-on-one was just not going to cut it and create the level of impact we could have if we focus on prevention. And so I kept asking myself, how can I use my experience, my skills, my talents to reach more people earlier? And honestly, back then, all I wanted to do was just teach children how to be happy so they wouldn't end up in my center later on in life, right? Or any other center out there. I always say that happiness is a skill that can be learned. And I just wanted every child to know the ABCs to be happy. And that's how basically triumph steps started.

Ken Huey 2:02

Wow. You often say, Beatrice, that not everyone needs therapy, but everyone needs emotional literacy. Talk to us about that. Explain.

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 2:12

I am a big proponent of that phrase. Therapy is essential for those experiencing real clinical symptoms like depression, anxiety, or trauma. But that's actually a very small percentage of the population. Even though we think that it's much greater, that's a small percentage. But most people don't meet criteria for clinical diagnosis. They just feel maybe stuck in life. They feel overwhelmed with something that they're going through, unfulfilled. They have dreams, they want more for their lives, but they just don't know how to get there, right? They don't have the tools really to guide them to get there. And that's where emotional literacy comes in. Emotional literacy is the ability to understand your emotions, recognize that thoughts have something to do with how you feel, how you act, and the results in your life. So that's a skill. And just like we teach reading and writing, we should be teaching emotional literacy to everyone. So we learn how to navigate basically our inner world.

Ken Huey 3:15

In your work, what are some of the most important emotional skills people need in order to heal and grow?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 3:22

So I'm very psychoeducational, and that's why I wear more my coaching hat now than the psychotherapist. And so one of the core things I teach is that thoughts lead to feelings, right? We think and then we kind of feel something. Those feelings lead to actions, and then those actions give us results in our lives. So most people think their feelings just happen to them, right? Or just get a thought of this, we just feel that way because we're Italian or we're Colombian and we just have blood or whatever. But when we begin to understand that our feelings are actually coming from our thoughts, then everything begins to change because then a thought is something that we can observe and change, right? So one of the most important emotional skills is simply learning to notice what we're noticing. I always tell people, just begin to notice what you're noticing, and then becoming aware of that internal dialogue without immediately reacting to it. It's one of those first stages right there.

Ken Huey 4:30

How has your view of the mental health crisis changed over the years? And what do you believe we're still missing?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 4:38

So I think over the years we have seen a tremendous increase in awareness, right? There is May now, it's coming up, Mental Health Awareness Month. So there's a lot of awareness, which is very encouraging. But more people, and yes, you hear more and more people talking about their struggles with less stigma, I would say. But what I believe we're still missing is that strong focus on prevention and emotional education. We tend to intervene when someone is already suffering, right? People call us in our practice when they're already in the middle of a crisis. They don't call to say, hey, I'm just happy here, but I want to feel happier. That doesn't happen, right? So they come in when they're very anxious, when the depression has taken over. The crisis has already basically taken a hold of their lives. And while that support is essential, it's still reactive, right? So I really feel very strongly that what we're missing is teaching people the skills before they get there. So my hope is that we begin integrating emotional literacy just much earlier so people understand how to navigate those thoughts, those emotions, and to basically come up with different choices so they're not waiting for that breaking point.

Ken Huey 5:59

Yeah. I think maybe you've answered this, but you started Triumph Steps as a school program. Why emotional literacy in schools?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 6:09

Well, so back then my daughter was very young, right? And I would always tell her, like when I would go drop her up at school every single morning, I would say a phrase to her. I would say, Hey Sophie, remember that thoughts become things, keep them beautiful. That was to me like the first lesson I was giving her in notice what you're noticing. Thoughts become things, keep them beautiful. Thoughts become things, and clinicians and we know in the field that thoughts become things first in our body, right? Because depending on what we're thinking, those thoughts produce different things in our body, different neurochemicals, right? So they produce serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, or they could be producing cortisol. And so depending on what we think, something is happening. So thoughts become things, keep them beautiful. That was just like the phrase where I was giving her like all the knowledge that I had in terms of CBT. And I knew that I would drop her off and they would learn, you know, she would be learning math and science and language arts, but I wasn't sure how much she would be learning about emotional literacy. And that realization really stayed with me because I felt like, okay, we can start here really early with these children, and then my inspiration just came just bigger and bigger, you know, whatever I was doing with her and whatever I was teaching her, I wanted that to be basically out there for a lot more children. And so it became clear to me that if we taught that early on, we would really be doing something to decrease our current mental health crisis.

Ken Huey 7:51

You have worked across many sort of strata of society. You've worked with clinicians, with organizations, with families, with children. Amongst you know, all of the people that you've been around, what have you seen as far as patterns where people create lasting change?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 8:11

So people who create lasting change usually share, I would say, a few qualities, and it's some of the things that we've already talked about. First, they understand that their thoughts have something to do with their destiny. Our thoughts, it's that big, right? So they begin to ask better questions, they're more intentional with the questions they're asking about themselves. And one of the things that I actually begin to reinforce is asking questions such as, how would you love your life to look three years from now? Right? I think those people kind of have that more clear, and that's like defining their dreams, right? Defining where they would love to be. It's very different when you ask somebody, where do you think you're gonna be three years from now? No, what would you love your life to look three years from now? Then you really begin to dream, you begin to design and to take different actions to get there. So they begin to make decisions to move closer in the direction of their dream. And I think that's something that I would say it's the common denominator for these people.

Ken Huey 9:27

Yeah. Beatrice, you say frequently that happiness is a skill that can be learned. What does that look like?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 9:37

Happiness is a skill that can be learned, and some people don't like to hear that because it's like she's telling me that I'm responsible for my happiness, but she doesn't know. Oh, look what happened to me here and there. And it's like we kind of resent, some people kind of resent that a little bit because it's giving me all the responsibility now for my happiness. And I like to say that our past does not define our future, our future is designed with the thoughts of today, right? So happiness is a skill that can be learned, and I know my past that then I'm I am giving people that much responsibility, but I do it in a kind, careful way because there are people that are carrying big baggage of past with lots of pain. But when I say that happiness is a skill that can be learned, I mean that it's something that we don't wait for, it's something that we practice, and we practice little by little, right? We begin to have the small steps that would get us to where we are hoping to get. So in real life, it starts with awareness of notice what you're noticing, and then recognizing how your thoughts are shaking your emotions. And most people think happiness depends on circumstances, but it's really influenced by how we interpret those circumstances.

Ken Huey 11:03

We've talked about kind of the individual and taking charge of their own happiness in many ways. What about families trying to support a loved one who's going through a crisis or trauma, trying to heal? What's one mindset shift that can make a real difference?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 11:20

You know that one of the things that we really try to do is to have the family maybe involved, right? Because that support is going to be something that that's really, really helpful in helping the person. So we educate the whole family on the principles of triumph steps. So we're all speaking the same language. We give them people like a clear structure and the eight steps of the framework that guides them through the coping. It's one of the things that we give to the entire family. So it's not just inside, they're receiving also the platform. They also receive a platform with a bunch of tools right there that helps them practice this consistently and make sure that, okay, the family is here to support, but here's the person with the skills, and here is the toolbox that you can have also and remind your loved ones hey, have you listened to these messages that will help you, like your coach has told you in the morning or in the evening? So we give them a complete package, I would say. And I think that makes it very helpful because it's not just the talk, they have a toolbox with a bunch of very important tools that they can use anytime.

Ken Huey 12:38

When you think about healing and transformation now, what does true triumph look like to you?

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 12:45

So when we were talking about earlier in terms of the results, so thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, actions lead to results, right? So those results, I usually tell people, could be summarized in four buckets. And one is relationships. So relationships, boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, husband, children, co-workers of relationships. The other one is health and well-being, and health and well-being also includes physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, then we have vocation, and then we have time and financial freedom. And true triumph includes all those four domains. All of those four domains, if we were to think of ourselves three years from now, if I would, how would I love my life to look like in those four domains? If we think of how that would love, you know, the how that would look if we then that's what triumph looks like, right? Us working in those four main domains to really help us have that better version of ourselves. And a lot of people say, well, but I'm happy. And I always ask them, could you be happier? Can we be happier? And we can always find something that we can improve in any of those domains.

Ken Huey 14:15

So, Beatrice, you do some very important work helping people see the world with less of a victim lens, which I appreciate very much. That's a big thing to me. People are gonna see this, they're gonna want to know more about you. How would they find out about you? Point them in your direction.

Beatriz Martinez-Peñalver 14:31

So I have two websites. One is my name, beatricemartinez.org, and they can just find the contact information there. But then I also have the other one, which is Triumph Steps, which is the framework. And so we have Beatrice Martinez.org or Triumphsteps.com. And in either one of those, they're gonna link them to my email and my phone number. And I would love to be able to connect with any one of your listeners.

Ken Huey 15:01

Fantastic. Beatrice, spending some time with us and outlining what it looks like to go from having a hard time wanting happiness and moving toward it. Thank you very much for the work that you do. Thanks for joining us on The Voice of Hope. If you were inspired, share the light. And remember, hope's not just a feeling, it's a force. We'll see you next time.