Joanna Hardis, LISW, LLC

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Joanna Hardis, LISW, LLC

Joanna Hardis, LISW-S, is a licensed therapist, author and speaker who helps people do hard things.

Her second book, “Just Do Nothing (for Parents): How to Parent Better by Doing Less,” guides parents on building distress tolerance.

04/02/2026

Regardless of how you feel about the idea of “let them.”

Letting them be upset.
Letting them misunderstand.
Letting them make their choices.

What often gets overlooked are the emotions that come with it. When you practice letting them, you’ll have to accept the urges that'll pop up in their place.

03/31/2026

Reasons “their pain is my pain” is problematic:

👉🏼 For kids, we don’t want them to grow up thinking that other people’s pain is their problem to solve.

It sends a message that their distress is a problem (reinforcing the belief that challenging emotions are problems to solve instead of something to move through).

👉🏼 The person on the receiving end may not want your advice or attempts at problem solving.

It often propels us into action instead of giving them the space to solve it themselves.

👉🏼 It puts the other person in the position of taking care of your distress or learning that if I’m upset, you fall apart.

When someone else is upset, the ideal response is to be a steady presence who can acknowledge their pain without feeling compelled to fix, eliminate, or absorb it.

03/26/2026

When your child is struggling, your instinct is to make it better. I get it. That instinct is intuitive.

But moving too quickly impacts both you and them.

If we react to non-urgent things as emergencies (being late for school, a fall that startled them, something they forgot at home ) what message are we sending them?

What skill set do we rob them of developing when we swoop in and do it for them?
What message does it send when we solve their problems for them?

When we can learn to PAUSE before acting, we build the capacity to respond instead of react. That's what learning to Just Do Nothing helps us do.

That’s how capacity is built — theirs and yours.

03/24/2026

Overthinking can feel productive.

It can feel like if you just stay with it a little longer, you’ll finally land on the right answer.

But most overthinking isn’t problem-solving, it’s resistance to discomfort.

When you notice the spiral starting, the goal isn’t to argue with the thought, it’s to disengage from it and Just Do Nothing™.

03/19/2026

Many people assume that if something feels harder, they must not be able to do it.

That’s not always true.

Often the ability is there. What’s missing is the capacity for discomfort in that moment.

You don’t build capacity by waiting to feel ready, you build it by staying with discomfort a little longer than you want to.

That’s what Just Do Nothing™ is for.

03/17/2026

What looks like luck could be distress tolerance.
And what we call chance is often a skill we can’t see. 🍀

Staying calm under pressure doesn’t mean the absence of anxiety. That person may have the skill set to let that discomfort be instead of immediately responding to it. Having the skill set gives you the ability.

Practicing the skill set builds your capacity. That’s the function of Just Do Nothing™.

03/12/2026

Not every urge requires action, but you only learn that by not acting on some of them.

Just Do Nothing™ is how you practice that.

03/10/2026

Sharing them here in case they land for you too. ✍🏼💭

03/06/2026

This is the part people forget.

You will think “I can’t do this” more than once.

The repetition can make it feel significant, but it isn’t. If you've told yourself you can't, your brain will bring it back. Brains are prediction machines.

The goal is not to eliminate the thought, it's to stop treating it like a fact and focus on the action.

Pay less attention to your thoughts and feelings and more to what matters.

That is Just Do Nothing™.

03/04/2026

Taking care of a sick dog (or person) will test your distress tolerance fast.

When stress is high, everything in your head feels like a problem to solve right now.

You want certainty, reassurance, or to do something to "fix it" but that just leads to more doing. In these moments, what I needed to do was the opposite.

These are the times I remind myself to Just Do Nothing™.

This last month has been such a powerful reminder: most of my thoughts and feelings do not deserve action. 🐾❤️‍🩹

03/03/2026

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t missing the event, it’s the story you tell yourself afterward.

“I should have been there.”
“They’ll remember this.”
“Good parents don’t miss games.”

The guilt can get real loud.

Before you let it run the show, however, try to PAUSE.

Not to eliminate the discomfort (that’ll make it louder) but to function with it as you carry on with your day.

There will be times when you wanted to make the event but you couldn’t, and that’s hard.

In these situations, the goal is not to make an already difficult situation worse by intensifying the guilt, shame, or worry.

Learning how to Just Do Nothing™ with our thoughts and feelings helps us do just that.

02/26/2026

We say we want our kids to handle hard things, but how good are you at modeling this? When they’re upset, how often do you rush in to make it better?

Hard truth: Telling kids to "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't work. If we want our kids to be able to tolerate distress, we have to be able to do it ourselves.

That means we’ve got to build our own capacity first. Not just know what to do, but practice it, model it, live it.

Yes, it’s hard. That’s why I wrote Just Do Nothing (for Parents): How to Parent Better by Doing Less. Get your copy here: https://www.amazon.com/Just-Do-Nothing-Parents-Parent/dp/B0FV3Q1CSV/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=186694602175&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.TpDwdGHYAH2sytusLzTUZYo9Wf_VBMfDW_adriUtfZhXslhi3cmpbUTNyZah9VZRnjsHXshMQDg7qr3Dw84L6FD8gLha8pgl9vv7t55ozlUibAB91Q8N-j_Th4s475jsATLxEHxX3qX4mtcX0fx30Vm5bx_Px5rzNQGquMyeiFpKEnR6g9HjZ_bex04cnAbClkEJWMxRsM61NCexVXujOVP5dXQjBnfq4YFWU7CWQUo.kU_EKJHJ9BrVYltvcKxqX6t7Q7lYdi_dX0bLOQSfjn4&dib_tag=se&hvadid=779578903387&hvdev=c&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9007374&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=16061565774535719021--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=16061565774535719021&hvtargid=kwd-2449620034313&hydadcr=8927_13572557_37416&keywords=just+do+nothing+for+parents&mcid=1239d623b2fb3700955e650990abf8e4&qid=1771943779&sr=8-1 📚

Address

2460 Fairmount Boulevard Suite 320
Cleveland Heights, OH
44106

Telephone

+12166008696

Website

http://joannahardis.com/

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