Psychologist explains why patience can be transformative

PsyPost’s PodWatch highlights interesting clips from recent podcasts related to psychology and neuroscience.

On Monday, January 19, 2026, the Hidden Brain podcast, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, featured psychologist Sarah Schnitker. The episode, titled “You 2.0: The Practice of Patience,” challenged the conventional view of patience as a passive trait. Schnitker framed it instead as an active form of emotional regulation that protects mental and physical health.

In the first half of the interview, Vedantam and Schnitker discussed the boundaries of healthy patience. Schnitker explained that virtuous patience occupies a “sweet spot” between the extremes of recklessness and passivity. She noted that true patience often requires courage, citing Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach to civil rights as an example of active waiting rather than resignation.

Research tracking personal goals supported this distinction. Schnitker mentioned a study showing that individuals who balanced patience with courage were able to pursue their objectives effectively. Those who lacked courage often slipped into passivity, failing to make progress despite their willingness to wait.

Later in the episode, the conversation shifted to specific psychological strategies for managing impatience. Schnitker advised against suppressing feelings of frustration, as this often backfires. She suggested that simply acknowledging the emotion and observing it from a third-person perspective can reduce its intensity.

The psychologist also highlighted “cognitive reappraisal,” which involves reframing a situation to find benefits or understand another person’s perspective. Additionally, she discussed how entering “flow states,” such as immersive activities like gaming or cooking, helped people cope with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Toward the end of the interview, Schnitker explored how a “higher-order purpose” influences the ability to endure difficulty. She detailed a study on adolescents observing Ramadan, which found that fasting for spiritual reasons led to sustained increases in patience. Similar results appeared in research on marathon runners, where training for charity proved more effective for character growth than training for fitness.

The episode concluded with a look at the physical and mental costs of chronic impatience. Schnitker noted that an inability to wait is linked to higher risks of cardiovascular problems and anxiety. She added that impatience is also associated with loneliness and depressive symptoms, likely due to the strain it places on relationships.

You can listen to the full interview here.