Are you ready to have a laugh while breaking down the mental barriers with us, Sonia and Sam, your therapy comrades? Come along as we bare our journey in private practice, and why we chose to turn our experiences into a light-hearted podcast. We promise you, it will be a roller coaster ride filled with laughter, learning and some serious discussions.
In our candid conversation, we tackle the delicate topic of grief and how to support someone going through it. We shed light on the dignity of giving individuals autonomy in their grieving process and touch on the remarkable work in organ and tissue donation. We also explore podcasts as a comforting resource for those considering therapy, reminding you that therapy is a practice, not an expertise. So, let’s learn and grow together, let’s navigate through the beautiful mess of our lives, and most importantly, let’s make mental health a less daunting topic. With us, it’s going to be fun and insightful, so tune in!
Instagram @mentalbreakitdown
Email: mentalbreakitdown@gmail.com
Logo Artwork: artofandoy.com
Connect with us of you have questions, want to be on the podcast, or have topics you want discussed!
Are you ready to have a laugh while breaking down the mental barriers with us, Sonia and Sam, your therapy comrades? Come along as we bare our journey in private practice, and why we chose to turn our experiences into a light-hearted podcast. We promise you, it will be a roller coaster ride filled with laughter, learning and some serious discussions.
In our candid conversation, we tackle the delicate topic of grief and how to support someone going through it. We shed light on the dignity of giving individuals autonomy in their grieving process and touch on the remarkable work in organ and tissue donation. We also explore podcasts as a comforting resource for those considering therapy, reminding you that therapy is a practice, not an expertise. So, let’s learn and grow together, let’s navigate through the beautiful mess of our lives, and most importantly, let’s make mental health a less daunting topic. With us, it’s going to be fun and insightful, so tune in!
Instagram @mentalbreakitdown
Email: mentalbreakitdown@gmail.com
Logo Artwork: artofandoy.com
Connect with us of you have questions, want to be on the podcast, or have topics you want discussed!
Welcome to Mental Break it Down a podcast for therapists and the therapy curious, where we dig into all things mental health and mental health adjacent. We're so happy you're here, let's jump in. Welcome to Mental. Break it Down. Hi, I'm Sonia, I'm Sam and we're therapists in private practice. Uh-huh, we're coming here today to well, first of all, first episode of this podcast and to talk about why podcasts maybe, and to talk about what we do a little bit maybe.
Sonia:Well, we could start with what we do, who we are Great, go ahead, great. So, as Sam said, we're therapists in private practice. We graduated not too long ago and jumped right in and we wanted to start a podcast as a way to have fun. Right, this work is full stop. Yeah, full stop. This work is really hard and challenging. Sometimes, as rewarding and beautiful as it is. You have to find pockets of where you can pull out the fun, and that's what we're doing. It's also a way for us to create community, not just with each other, but other clinicians and our peers and people we went to school with who are also in the business and in the profession. And what else, samantha? What else are we doing? This?
Sam:Well, is that just in general? Or like why are we doing this? Why are you?
Sonia:doing this? Why am I doing this? Because you're forcing me to. I'm kidding.
Sam:I want to be here, You're out here in the world bad-mouthing me in public. I'm not shocked. I'm not shocked at all.
Sonia:I'm not a blogger per se, like writing a blog, so this feels like a great way to journal our experience.
Sam:So as a teen did you not have a diary, but a vlog. Are you a vlog or am I a?
Sonia:private person. I didn't have either of those things. I just I was a private person, like I Even from yourself. Yeah Well, like my space. Just, I was not allowed to be on my space, so I wasn't. How did my space come?
Sam:up.
Sonia:Well, just like I'm saying, as we grew up, like social media was coming up right, I didn't vlog, I wasn't on my space, I didn't document my life online.
Sam:Nothing like that. Yeah, neither.
Sonia:I wasn't a journal or because I was scared someone would find my journal there and like growing up in the household that I did, there's no privacy because nothing is yours, and so this feels like a way to do that, but way more open.
Sam:So I just went from saying To document to like scrapbook. Yeah, visual and audio scrapbook, exactly.
Sonia:And I'm so glad I'm doing it with you. Oh my God, yeah, okay. So why are you doing this Fun? Are you forcing yourself too?
Sam:I don't like being super public and on camera and stuff, so it is maybe a little bit of a exercise and exposure therapy for me. I've gotten used to it now, just practicing and working with stuff. I also don't like blogging and writing, and to be a therapist today means you have to wear many hats if you're in private practice, which includes marketing, networking, seo, all that business-y stuff that we're not really taught just anybody really. So, yeah, blogging is not my jam. I'm going to do it because I think that it's good to have some information out there. But this is for fun and I don't I'm really hesitant and I've been actually thinking about this a lot.
Sam:Putting you know I have a tendency to not put something out until it's been fully formed. Perfectionism Perfectionism is finest to where I being a beginner is difficult, and so I've been working on embracing that, and that includes this podcast, because this is our first podcast. We've piecemilled hardware together, trial softwares, brought friends and family into the fold, so this is really just like a labor of fun and embracing the beginner mindset. There's going to be audio issues.
Sonia:There's going to be video issues.
Sam:There's going to be us figuring out our flow and how this podcast will look going forward. I think that that is an exciting thing, that I don't want to make it like this podcast is fill in the blank. This podcast just is. It just is and it will be whatever it ends up being. Yeah, it's going to morph, I'm sure no-transcript.
Sonia:Very silly right, you have to say yes.
Sam:Sonia, we're silly, sonia, we're silly.
Sonia:And so I think those of you who are listening and watching expect us to be silly and be ourselves. I think one thing to say is we are therapists, and so confidentiality is something that is always in our brains, and so we're not going to talk about people in our lives that don't want to be on a public platform. We have lives outside of our work, but we also respect the privacy of people that are in our lives, so we won't be discussing super, super personal details, but we will share a lot about ourselves.
Sam:You're crazy. I'm going to take candid photos of everybody. I love and I'm going to cut them into this video.
Sonia:Grandma. Privacy be damned. Your uncle, third cousin removed.
Sam:Everyone. Uncle knows not of podcasts. Okay, putting him right on.
Sonia:Great. But you will see our colleagues and hear from our colleagues and peers, people that we're connecting with, which I'm really excited about Forced friendship. Yeah, yes, they don't know it's forced.
Sam:Oh, I just tell them Great, you look someone in the eye and say I like you, we're going to be friends now. And they're like I have no choice in it.
Sonia:Yeah, oh great, it's all about me, okay. So what else? What else do you, sonia? What do you?
Sam:do Tell the people your niche, Like what? Why are you a therapist? No, that's a little bit too deep actually for this first episode. But what do?
Sonia:you do, I think very quickly. Why am I a therapist? It's because it took me a long time to get here. I didn't know what path my life was going to take and found, like yourself, in pandemic, returning back to school returning back to grad school and I'm so grateful that we shared that experience.
Sonia:We will talk about that in our podcast, I'm sure, but the reason I do this work is I don't want to say the cliche to help people, but I think really the reason I do this work is to help myself understand me better, my relationships better and other people. I'm not going to say it's to understand why people do what they do that there's a component of that. But really I got into this work because I have very specific life experience, as do you, and I needed to make sense of that Somehow. And then I saw an experience so much need in my community for people that look like me, that come from my background, that have my cultural heritage.
Sam:And for those who are actually watching a video, what is your background in cultural heritage?
Sonia:So I am East Indian and I am an immigrant in this country, and I was raised in a very traditional household but still had to assimilate in a culture rate to the American way of life, and so that was a real struggle for me growing up.
Sonia:I didn't know where I fit. I didn't know if I was Indian enough, I didn't know if I was American enough and I never felt like I really belonged, because I couldn't embrace either fully, because there was always an expectation from the other side to let go of the opposite side. Does that make sense?
Sam:Yeah, kind of like you're standing on a bridge and one side is your culture of origin essentially, the other is this Americanized culture. And you don't know which one you belong to. Both of them are screaming different things at you on either side, so you're just standing on a bridge.
Sonia:And in the middle just don't know where to go, and so a lot of my work now is helping clients going through that. How do I find my personal identity? How do I manage family relationships, relationships with my mother, who is very traditional and I'm not, or whatever that looks like. So long story short. What I do is I work with adults who are navigating challenging Relationships, but I work at the individual level and a lot of the work does include identity, cultural components and core values. Mmm, that was a long way to say it.
Sam:No, it wasn't. It was just a few minutes of you telling your entire life story yeah that was just a nutshell.
Sonia:And how about you, samantha? What do you do? I?
Sam:Focus on grief and loss.
Sam:Death death, not necessarily only death, right, because grief can come at you in so many different ways, from the death of a loved one, loss of community due to a move, a natural disaster, relationships ending, dreams unfulfilled. You know, life transitions, just life transitions in general, and I think I got into this work because it was so mysterious, right. So grief and end of life, not a lot of people like to live in that space and work in that space, and so I was always of the mindset of like this is really interesting, everybody goes through it. Why don't we talk about it? Why are we so bad at it? And I, when I say we, I just mean the culture, american culture that I grew up in. We're not the only ones that are kind of bad at it, and so I liked Sounds weird. I like to talk about things that make people uncomfortable, sometimes, because bringing out what is uncomfortable into the light of day, it takes away its power, right, and so Because we don't talk about death, dying and just loss, or even recognize that like your pet died.
Sonia:You are grieving, yeah, your relationship ended.
Sam:What does that look like? If no one else really liked the person that you were with? How do you grieve that and get support when everybody's like I'm glad it happened, right. So talking about that stuff with anybody who will listen to me is just doing my little part to take away the taboo About talking about it. If you talk about death, you know it's not gonna make you die, right.
Sam:If you are supporting somebody, how do we deal with our own feelings of being uncomfortable and not knowing what to say, cuz we're not taught what to say, how to support, because it's the difference of like taking care of somebody which is essentially there. Then You're in the space of being like almost Parental in that nature and taking away some of that power. Versus how do you care for somebody that's going through grief? Yeah, and that is giving, making sure that they have the autonomy and the power to make choices for themselves, because a lot of times we get so uncomfortable with death and grief of any kind that we shoot these platitudes that people that are very unhelpful because it's soothing us.
Sam:So talking about it just when you are supporting somebody who is grieving and we start to understand what that looks like for them and what they need. In turn they become a great support for other gravers. So it's it's therapy by proxy, and if one person talks about it with somebody else gets them interested, like it just kind of spiders out. So that's where my passion lies with with this work. We're bad at it. I'm so sorry. We're trying to be better.
Sonia:I was just going to say that I think Death and grief and loss, whatever shape it takes and whatever the reason, I think the natural Tendency for people is let me make you feel better, or I want my friend to feel better, I want my mom to feel better, I want to take the pain away.
Sonia:I want to take the pain away and a lot of times that looks like, like you said a lot of platitudes and a lot of Words that that you think are kind, but they don't land as kind as to the person that's going through it and like, yeah, I agree, I think so many of us are bad at it and maybe bad is not the right word, but we just don't know we're uneducated, educated, uneducated and experienced with it exactly because we want the pain to go away and then life move forward.
Sonia:Right which is so hard that life has to move forward after loss of any kind. But yeah, it's. How do you support people, mm-hmm, and your work is so needed and the first understanding is it's not going to go away.
Sam:Yeah, and there's nothing anybody or anything can do To make it go away. And I think therein lies the first misconception yeah, you can't say anything to make somebody feel better. It happens in their own time, in their own way, to their own level of feeling better, and it's not a pathology like grief, is not a mental illness and or as a catalyst for other things. But I think that is the uncomfortable place that a lot of people sit with, cuz see, the person that you care about is struggling and you want to just take it away. Right, it happened for a reason. They're in a better place. This relationship wasn't meant to be all the while. That's like stabbing the person who's grieving. Yeah, cuz it's not really open and listening. But what else are we to do unless we're educated?
Sonia:Well, I think that's where people like you come in there just like you and if you talk about your uber niche like Uber, uber niche, my very, very specific specialty.
Sam:I come from a background in organ and tissue donation. I mean, if you just follow the Trail of Bread comes, I was always like the weird kid that's like, hey, let's talk about your end of life wishes. And so I come from that background supporting donor families who have given the gift of life to somebody else in their bereavement and understanding of exactly what happened.
Sam:Cause, let's be honest, when you're grieving, you retain no information, right? Especially because when somebody gives the gift of life in that fashion, normally the person is in that position because it's been a sudden and traumatic accident, a death, and so you're as the bereaved family or friends. All of a sudden, your loved one is gone or is leaving you very shortly, right, and then you have people coming in saying a whole bunch of things at you. You're not gonna remember anything. So then the aftercare team comes in and is there as a source of support to give you information about what just happened, what the next steps are, how to connect with recipients, where to find grief and bereavement support with therapists like me, or group counseling, and so I am just well versed in not only those that have given the gift, but have received the gift.
Sonia:So, transplant recipients, you're such a like well of knowledge when it comes to that. So anything I've ever wanted to know about organ and tissue donation.
Sam:I've asked you.
Sonia:And I've learned more than I think I ever anticipated to, but it's so interesting.
Sam:It's only 1% of people who have an imminent death that are on ventilated support. So imagine, out of 100 people at a hospital, right, maybe three or four are on ventilated support and then maybe only one of them are able to donate. It's such a small niche and the lovely part is you don't really need to know about it unless you've been in a sort of accident or a family member has.
Sam:But that's when it gets scary, right, because you don't know what's going on and you're going through trauma, and that's why their support system's in place with they're called OPO, so organ procurement organizations, and so that's why they have staff on site as advocates to help the family through that too.
Sonia:That's so great, and I know we're gonna talk more about your work in a future episode, but yeah, it's again. Your work is so needed. I think grief is such a universal experience. Nobody gets out of this thing alive right, as morbid as that sounds. But we will experience grief and loss and death in some way, and so who do you go to for?
Sam:support. Yeah, I mean you do some of that work too right. So somebody comes to a new country. The future for your children might look different, like grieving, separation from family if it doesn't work out. Yeah, yeah, it touches every part.
Sonia:It does, it really does. And, like you said, grief and loss comes in many, many different forms. And so I think you're right. We both do that work, but that is your specialty, my specialty. And again, very, very important work. So glad I'm doing this with you, Samantha.
Sam:Ugh, are you gonna get all sappy and cute?
Sonia:No, I can't cry on camera.
Sam:You could, and it's totally okay to be vulnerable and cry Absolutely, but not today. I'm curious even though we're not really putting labels on this podcast relationship quite yet, we're seeing where it goes what do you hope to get out of us doing this, essentially video scrapbook or audio scrapbook?
Sonia:I am really excited to see our growth, just as clinicians, business partners. I'm also really excited to learn from other therapists. I'm really, really excited to learn, because we are meeting people that I didn't even know that this like niche of therapy existed.
Sam:Oh, like their focus yeah.
Sonia:Yeah.
Sam:What it's great. It's great. This is all self-serving.
Sonia:All self-serving. I want to learn.
Sam:I want to grow.
Sonia:We are lifelong learners in this profession, so why not do it in this format?
Sam:Oh yeah, before I went to grad school. During grad school, during this time I would listen to podcasts of therapists talking about the process of therapy, talking about the business of therapy, talking about being in therapy, and then just other people talking about their experience in therapy. So everything therapy and therapy adjacent, I consumed because it was really interesting to me. I'm here to learn all about it. I would get little kernels of wisdom here and there, and, especially during grad school, you're just absolutely hungry for it because you feel lost a lot of the time, because it's a big, scary thing to do, and so when I could listen to, it was psychology in Seattle, and so the person that does that is Dr Kerkonda, and he was the chair for Antioch Seattle, which is a counseling grad program, and I would just consume everything he put out, because there's little tidbits in there he'd have like supervisees on and what does it look like to be an intern before we did?
Sonia:our first session.
Sam:So these little comfort kernels, essentially that is what I hope to provide. So we're doing this for ourselves, we're doing this to learn about our community and our colleagues and to learn about other niches, so we're well versed and can refer out if clients need that sort of help, even outside of our profession. And so I hope to be able in that process, to provide little nuggets to somebody who's considering going to therapy Knowledge nuggets, knowledge nuggets, yeah. Somebody who is like, maybe therapy is right for me, oh, maybe I should go to grad school, oh, what does it look like to be in private practice versus this, oh, what does that niche look like? And so hopefully somebody, somewhere, will get even just a little knowledge nugget.
Sonia:Yeah.
Sam:That'll be helpful for them, because that's kind of what community is all about, absolutely.
Sonia:So if we were to say who this podcast is geared for, what?
Sam:would we say that's so hard? I think we keep saying for therapists and therapy curious or therapy enthusiasts which is a good focus because we're going to have our guests will be talking about their experience in the profession as well as what they do for clients. So it's then for therapists and for clients, but I think that if anybody's interested it'll help them.
Sonia:Yeah or if you're curious about therapy, have never engaged in therapy and you're hesitant, but you want to learn. I think this is a great way for people to learn about it.
Sam:Absolutely.
Sonia:Yeah, we're not engaging in a therapeutic relationship.
Sam:Yeah, this is an academic by any means yeah.
Sonia:But if you're curious about certain things about therapy, therapists and private practice, whatever, I think this is a great way to learn about it.
Sam:Yeah, and it's even stuff like hey, my therapist did that. Is that weird, yeah, is that normal. That's why I think the community and I feel like I say that word consistently all the time but the focus of this is community. So if somebody is listening and they have a question or a topic they want covered or something reaching out to us, well, a give us something fun to do, b might give them the information they're seeking, or we can provide resources in that fashion because somebody might go hey, I'm looking for a therapist in that niche, just as this exists, and that gives us a lovely excuse to then do research and see who around here does that which is very exciting Back to grad school, again research.
Sam:Yeah, I mean, the learning never stops in this profession ever, which is exciting. Constantly reading, constantly learning, because you want to provide the best care. Gotta stay up to date.
Sonia:Yeah, get out of here with that 50 year old. No, I'm kidding. There are things that are tried and true, but our profession is changing and morphing, which is really, really exciting.
Sam:Well, just like doctors and lawyers. That's why what we do is called a practice, because it's not an expertise necessarily. And I kind of get a little bit iffy if somebody calls himself an expert, because that to me gives me like a finality. Like you learned all you possibly can, yeah, but yeah, it's a practice because it is ever-evolving. We're learning new things all the time. Just sponges, just sponges, yeah, and we couldn't possibly know everything. And that's why we reach out to community.
Sonia:You can't do it alone. I mean you could, but Ew boring, well, I mean. I do like my alone time.
Sam:But it's dangerous to do this work alone. Yeah, just because you don't know sometimes if you're making the right choice and you need to support mentorship yes, support mentorship, clinical advising, advising supervision.
Sonia:That's what I meant clinical supervision. For us, that's a requirement right now.
Sam:So yeah, yeah, and I think that I'm going to carry that with me my whole life I don't think I'll ever be without a clinical supervisor For me.
Sonia:I think the person that I am, the kind of therapist that I am and want to be, I need community. I cannot do this work For me. I can't do this work alone.
Sam:Mm-mm. So that's why we're doing this together. We're here together. Can you imagine starting a whole ass business? No by yourself how boring, and yeah, at least for me.
Sonia:People do it all the time. People do it all the time, but that's why the option to do it together is there, and we did it.
Sam:That's our choice.
Sonia:Yay, I'm so glad to be here with you. Did I already say that? Yeah, how come you haven't said it back to me?
Sam:I was just about to say it, but I knew you were going to complain about the fact that I didn't say it and I kind of wanted to wait for that, of course. No, I'm glad to be doing this with you. I know that I'm very lucky to have a relationship with you another therapist that's so close and that we work really well together. There has not been a fight thus yet. Not yet. The future is open For anything. I know we need to come up with a safe word if one of us is being just an absolute butt.
Sonia:Peanut butter papaya Pringles.
Sam:I never remember that PPP.
Sonia:Are you all right? No, pringles. No, I'm not.
Sam:I'm just, I'm really excited. You know the point that you get to if you look back on a journal, if you look back on photos or whatnot, like, say, 100 episodes from now. I'm so curious to see where we're at, yeah, personally and professionally, what the podcast looks like, what our practice looks like at that point, because that's ages from now, that's what I was just saying is I'm really excited for the growth and the change. Neability to look back and be like oh baby Sam, are you?
Sonia:OK, look at how nervous we were or how whatever we were, because we're definitely different from a year ago.
Sam:Oh, of course, like drastically.
Sonia:I don't even know her anymore.
Sam:Who is she? I don't know.
Sonia:I don't know, a new therapist. I mean I'm still new, very new, but that was like a different level of new.
Sam:Yeah, there's different levels of new.
Sonia:Yeah, is that it? That's it. I think that's good, that's great. We hope you join us on this wild ride Any questions, comments no concerns.
Sam:Go ahead and keep those to yourself. Contact Till next time I'm.
Sonia:Sam, I'm Sonia and this is Mental Break it Down.
Sam:Bye. Mental Break it Down is produced and edited by Sam and Sonia. Our logo was created by the amazing art of Andoi. If you have any questions, comments or have a topic you want discussed on the podcast, email us at mentalbreakitdownatgmailcom or connect with us on Instagram at mentalbreakitdown. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Nothing said in this podcast constitutes personal or professional consultation, therapy, diagnosis or creates a council-client relationship. It is not intended to provide medical or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests are theirs alone. Thanks for listening. Bye.