You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 90. New Year 2024.mp3
Stephanie Winn: You must be some kind of therapist. Happy New Year! We are doing something different today on the podcast. This is my first ever monologue podcast and normally that kind of scares me because when I get in front of a camera and it's just me and there's no one else in the room and there's no one else I'm talking to, I ramble. So I have my fiancé here for moral support. I'm looking just above the camera at his face. He is here to make me smile and laugh and help me feel like I'm actually talking to someone even though I'm just doing a monologue today. So I hope you enjoyed last week's episode. Give it a listen if you haven't. It's one of my favorite songs and I actually paid for the rights of that song so you better listen to it. It's a Christmas song. And so this year, both Christmas and New Year's have fallen on Mondays and if you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know I always release episodes on Mondays. So I picked a favorite song for Christmas, and then for New Year's I wanted to do something to honor the spirit of newness. I love New Year's personally, although the winter is generally a hard time of year for me. I love sort of the spirit of renewal and reflection, and so I view New Year's as an opportunity to do that. So I thought that since New Year's falls on a Monday this year and I always release episodes on Mondays that I would take this opportunity to do some reflection and share that with you. Reflection on what it's been like podcasting for the last year and a half since I launched in May of 2022. what lessons 2023 has brought me specifically, and then some intention setting and goal setting for 2024, because those are important rituals to me. And I want to also use them as an opportunity to share things I've learned with my audience, especially anyone who might be interested in podcasting themselves, or might have an interest in sort of seeing how the sausage is made, so to speak. Um, so we're going to talk about what I've learned from podcasting, what I've learned this year, any changes in the direction that I'm hoping to go in the future, both with the podcast and with my life. So here goes. So I wanted to start off with sort of an overview of. how successful my podcast has been and that's not so much to toot my own horn as to orient you as listeners because a lot of people listening to podcasts have no idea sort of the scope of the reach of that podcast unless you're sort of a podcasting nerd like I am and you use websites like listen notes which give you a statistic so I can sort of see like how does, you know, how many, not how many listeners that a podcast has, but like sort of where a podcast ranks. And so there are people who have no idea how big my podcast is. And there are people who have no idea how small my podcast is. And so I want to say my podcast has been moderately successful. And I've been sort of toying around with the question of Did I foresee this level of success? Did I imagine it being sort of bigger or smaller? And I want to say in general, I'm happy with where things are at. So on average, a new episode will get about 2000 listens in its first week or so. That's how things have been lately. And so that's between most people listening on audio platforms, I get my statistics from Transistor, and then some people on YouTube, and then lately I've been sharing on X, formerly known as Twitter, as well. And then so it's typically about 2,000 give or take in the first week, and then a few more thousand sort of trickling in in the weeks and months following that. And so I think this is helpful to orient you as a listener, because it does affect my experience, this sort of process of becoming a public figure. And I don't think that's a lot. I don't think that's something that public figures talk about very much. There's sort of like a transparency in that. And it can maybe feel a little too vulnerable or a little too prideful to talk about it. But I want to talk honestly, about what it's been like for me to go from being somebody who was sort of just a therapist known to the people I had met organically in my life, friends, colleagues, clients of course and such, to making this transition into being being known as a public figure. What did I anticipate and what did I not anticipate about that? What did I envision when I started a podcast? So maybe I'll kind of go back to what did I envision when I started a podcast It really sort of was an idea that evolved from my own interest in podcasting and interest in having intellectually stimulating dialogues with people after gaining a lot as a listener. And I'm actually sitting here with my fiancé who was the first person to ever invite me onto a podcast way back before anyone knew that I had anything to say and and that was a that was a real meet cute he he was looking for resources on self-care and found something I had made as a like a flyer not a flyer that's such an old old school term but like a it was a pdf handout that I'd made for my clients back at my old job And I'm really geeky like this, I'll get into an idea and I'll sort of develop a tool. And so I developed this sort of, almost like a spreadsheet of or a matrix of how to think about self care in terms of mind and body. And I had like, rest, energy, protection, nourishment, all these sort of ways of thinking about self-care. And I never put that handout on the internet, but somebody did, like somebody who I gave that handout to put it on some university website somewhere. And the man who's now sitting across from me listening to me ramble found that somehow on the internet reached out to me like, are you the Stephanie Nguyen that developed the self care handout? And I was like, who me? You noticed that I did something? Oh, wow. And so and, you know, it's all the rest is history. So I really I think he's actually an integral part of the reason why I'm here because being in a relationship with someone who believes in me has given me the fuel. And then from there, I've you know, been grateful for the recognition of other people who I've met along the way. And I think that the power of believing in someone is such a huge part of what we do as healers, too, as a therapist, as a consultant. Sometimes we need someone to believe in us, we need someone to see our potential. That's also why I'm really interested in mentorship. So I was inspired to get into podcasting, partly because of podcasts that I listened to and I think I was craving an intellectual outlet other than therapy because therapy is you know somewhat of an outlet it's it's an opportunity certainly to put my mind to use for my clients but it has to remain focused on what's beneficial for the client so any interests outside of what is helpful for my client I would have to nurture in other ways and I started to feel like my life was kind of lopsided and I wanted other avenues outside of therapy to have intellectually stimulating conversations with people. And so that's how my podcast was born. And there was a period of a few months, I think, like starting late 2021, early 2022, where I was really letting the ideas percolate. I like to think of the creative process as sort of like a nebula. You know, there's all this stardust, and it eventually gets pulled together by the force of gravity into a star. And so my process always starts off very nebulous. And at the time I was living alone and ideas would come to me here and there. Like one day the name of my podcast came to me. I was thinking about how sometimes when I'm in social settings, people think I sound like a therapist and this is something I've heard a lot. You must be some kind of therapist. And so the name is kind of cheeky. It's sort of a play on that. And it is something that can be interpreted in a number of ways in the sense that, you know, people, people ask, like, what kind of therapist are you? And I never really know how to answer that. I was like, well, talk therapy, but, you know, I'm not like beholden to any particular lineage or school of thought modality. And it's also, I like the name because it's also kind of a Rorschach test. You must be some kind of therapist. Well, what does that mean to you? Is that is that a put down? Is that a compliment? It's sort of it's sort of a projective exercise in and of itself to see what it brings up for people to think of themselves as talking to someone who's a therapist. The name also gets at something that I had wanted to come across through my title, which was the concept of of this being therapy adjacent, that it's not specific, it's not limited to therapy, and it's not exclusively therapeutic, but it's sort of starting with a psychology oriented mindset and branching out from there into culture, or whatever topics interest me. So what did I anticipate? And what did I not anticipate? I don't think I anticipated how much work it would be, but that's probably a good thing because I'm the sort of person who leaps before I look. I bite off more than I can chew. I'm very impulsive. And if I put myself in a situation where I've bitten off more than I can chew and there's someone or something consequential depending on me making sure I follow through, I will follow through. And, you know, it, and if those pressures or factors aren't there, I am an idea generating machine. And a lot of those ideas never go anywhere. But I did sort of commit myself to this without knowing fully what it would entail. But I've followed through because I guess I have some grit. And so yeah, having a podcast is a lot of work. I don't think I had much of a sense of what being sort of a mid you know, what my friend Jake from episode two calls micro celebrity, the sort of, you know, those of us who several thousand or 10s of thousands, or maybe hundreds of thousands of people know who we are, we're not like, you know, ultra celebrities but we have like a bigger scope of influence than your average person walking down the street. It is such a bizarre and unique experience and I'm going to get into that a little bit more. So I think I want to talk about some of the perks of getting to know people in this way because it's been a really special opportunity to have this platform that I can just sort of offer to anyone and There have certainly been a lot of people I've invited onto the podcast who've never responded or haven't followed through. But I would say that more than half of the people I've invited have been interested. And I've gotten to meet something like close to 90 people as of the timing of this episode. And some of those people have become friends through the process. I have a pretty loose definition of friendship. I'm like an easy come, easy go. Like you're my friend, if we enjoy having a nice conversation, we can pick up where we left off a year later, sort of person. So maybe not everyone would consider people friends in the way that I do, but I want to acknowledge that I feel really good about most of the guests I've had on the show. Some people who are coming to mind who I've really enjoyed meeting are, and some of these are going to be episodes that maybe you haven't heard listeners. Maybe some of these episodes are a little underappreciated. But these are genuine human beings with unique perspectives. And one of the things I like to do on the show is highlight people of exceptional character. And, and I think, I think that I've done that well with, with some of these people who you should definitely check out. So some people coming to mind are Jeremiah Wallace. He's a fellow stepparent with a lot of virtuous qualities in his character that he strives to cultivate. We talked about step-parenting and that's something I've recently discovered, by the way, there is not a lot of dialogue about in general and not a lot of continuing education, specifically for therapists on the subject, considering how common it is, how many blended families there are in the United States, how many people have divorced and remarried with children, you would think that conversations about step parenting would be a lot more common than they are. So Jeremiah has a podcast called blended, you should check out, go and listen to my episode with him if you're a step parent. Oliver Davies, I've interviewed many detransitioners on the show, but that one really touched my heart because he has just such a such a big, beautiful heart. I felt that way about Torin Danowski too, super interesting person. Laura Becker has been really vulnerable. with me, Kat Cadinson. So it's been an honor to platform detransitioners and just to get to know them as unique individuals with their own trauma stories and also stories of resilience. And they're sort of the canaries in the coal mine of the things that have gone wrong in our society. So it's really been an honor to hold space for them and share their voices on my podcast. It was really special interviewing Heather Hying. I consider her a personal mentor. She's one of my inspirations for starting this podcast. As I mentioned, I was listening to a lot of podcasts before I started this and Heather Hying, her podcast is Dark Horse, which she shares with her husband, Brett Weinstein. It's a very popular, well-known podcast. I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already. I admire her so much and I remember, I actually have a story about this. When a friend first told me about Dark Horse Podcast, I was listening to it for a few months and then I said to him, I'm going to meet them someday. And as I've mentioned, like I'm the sort of person I just I bite things off and then figure out how to chew them. I also sometimes just spontaneously say something's going to happen. And and this was one of those things where I'm just like, I'm going to meet them someday. And my friend was like, yeah, right. OK, good luck. I'm sure there are plenty of people who'd like that. Well, sure enough, I've met Heather Hying and she's been so kind to me and supportive and encouraging. And I also really enjoyed meeting Leonard Sachs. He's the only person who I can say I've read all four of his books that I've had on my podcast. He's excellent. I recommend his books to so many people. And that episode that I did with Leonard Sachs is just so full of valuable information. Plus, he's a great storyteller. I enjoyed meeting Jamie Reed. and evaluating a detransitioner's medical records together. She gave me some really great feedback about what that process was like for her and suggested that we do more stuff like that. So hey, if you are a detransitioner that wants me and Jamie to look at your medical records together on a podcast, that is something that we could certainly revisit. I've enjoyed meeting people who At one point in time, I would have thought we have really different beliefs, like people who, like Samantha Stevenson, we did an episode on faith and bioethics. She comes from a Catholic perspective. Robin Atkins, she is a pro-life therapist who considers her pro-life views also very pro woman and very feminist in nature. And I just think she has such an interesting perspective. We did an episode debating abortion because I've always been pro choice. And that episode wasn't intended to change anyone's mind. It was just intended to say, hey, most people are pretty staunch in their views, whether they're pro life or pro choice. And we need to get better at having conversations about the subject as a society rather than just trying to force other people to accept our views. So I really appreciate Robin for having that conversation with me. I think that one was called Two Therapists Debate Abortion, and she's another one of those people. It's just been such a wonderful person to remain in touch with. Some other people who I've met who I've considered sort of loosely friends and maintained ongoing connections with are Soad Tabrizi. She's a therapist in California. Amy Sousa, who, gosh, we started talking before I launched my podcast. Zach and Cynthia of the Paradox Institute, they're lovely people. It was really interesting talking to Josh Slocum of Disaffected Podcast about death because As anyone who listens to Disaffected knows, Josh mostly talks about cluster B personality dynamics and how prevalent they are in society. But he just every so often casually mentions that he spent a long time working in the funeral industry. And so I was like, hey, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what you know about death, right? So that was an interesting conversation. And I remember he appreciated that I was asking him about something he doesn't get asked about a lot. That's another thing I try to do on this podcast is I always ask my guests before we start recording, like what aren't people asking you about? Or you've been on all these shows? What questions haven't you been asked yet? Really enjoyed meeting Carol Sherwood. She, along with Christine Siefen, both of them are from Critical Therapy Antidote, which I'm going to be doing more work with in the coming year. It was awesome to meet Megan Murphy. I really enjoyed my connection with Simon Esler. He's a filmmaker and a deep thinker. And I remember chatting before and after just thinking, wow, if his family and our family lived in the same town, we'd probably be hanging out all the time. Corinna Cohn has been a great person to remain in touch with. Corinna has hosted me on hetero dorks. And honestly, there are a lot of other people I'd love to give shout outs to, but those were just sort of the first people that came to mind when I was writing my little list of, like, who do I want to acknowledge as, you know, people I've had sort of ongoing connections with. And I think I'll go from there into what I've learned makes a good guest, as well as sort of some of the letdowns, unpleasant surprises, and disappointments. And this is really definitely not going to name names when it comes to anything that hasn't worked out so well. But just more for people's information, if you're thinking about going into podcasting yourself, or you're thinking about being a guest on someone's show, you're thinking about being a guest on my show, I think it might be helpful for you to know from this perspective, from the podcaster's perspective, what's helpful and what's not helpful. And when I thought about, in advance of recording this, when I thought about what makes a good guest, I thought it really comes down to three things that are all forms of being considerate. Being considerate of the listener's experience, being considerate of the host's experience, and being considerate of your own experience. So starting with being considerate of your own experience, that's just about grounding yourself thinking about what do I need to do to be comfortable having this conversation because it is nerve wracking being in front of a camera with a microphone. And when I think about the things that have gone poorly, some of them had to do with people maybe not taking care of themselves or being considerate of what they needed in order to get comfortable with the mic and camera. And then later their vanity sort of got in the way of my publishing schedule or, you know, other sort of technical needs on my end. So being considerate of your own experiences, you know, how do you need to prepare yourself to show up so that you can relax and focus on being considerate of the host and of the audience? So being considerate of the host means, you know, showing up on time, being communicative, letting someone know in advance if you need to cancel or reschedule. I've actually gotten that one wrong a couple times and I felt so bad about it. I'm going to tell two different stories. And one is I was going to. One is I had to cancel on someone a week in advance. And this person seemed mildly offended because it was a therapist who I guess books out months in advance and had like cleared that space in her schedule. And I thought, wow, I gave her a week's notice. That to me is plenty of time. But then I've also had One guy who bless his heart was so patient with me, I had to reschedule on him once. And then the second time I actually forgot about our appointment. And that was early on in my podcasting days. Nothing like that has happened since but that guy in contrast was so positive and flexible and understanding. But I do get frustrated as a podcast host myself when people aren't very considerate of how much time and advance I need to plan for these things. The fact that I've blocked off that time for you, my time is in demand. And then another thing being considered the host experiences, I actually put a lot into preparing my guests. So I have a whole page on my website dedicated to my guests. I have information, I send like everything you need to know, I send you that information. And you guys would be surprised how many people do not read it. Like, They just, they don't read it and they're using the wrong equipment or the wrong browser or they don't have space on their hard drive or they haven't, you know, even grabbed a pair of headphones when the instructions say like, please grab a pair of headphones. And you know, if nothing else, at least one of these little eighth inch jack things that plugs straight into your computer is better than nothing. Sometimes people aren't particularly mindful about like how fidgeting or tapping or things like that can affect the audio. I mean, even though I had this happen with established podcasters, which was super weird, because I'm thinking you of all people, should know that you need to hold your body really still and not be like tapping a pen or something. But you know, so being considerate of the audio, being considerate of your host time, making sure you're reading anything that they're sending you. And then being considerate of the listeners experience. So I've had I have had to not publish episodes on the occasion that I just really didn't feel like the guest was thinking about what they sounded like to other people, whether their story was coherent, or whether it was just more kind of stream of consciousness. Now, that's not to put too much pressure on anyone. I am pretty loosey-goosey, pretty stream of consciousness with a lot of the things we do on this podcast, but there are still some limits to how much I will tolerate incoherence or just, you know, not thinking about providing the listener with something that makes sense to them. So things that haven't gone well have pertained to people being overly self-conscious about their appearance and then telling me, let's say after we'd already published the YouTube video, that they wanted us to swap it out for an audio only episode. You know, please, if you don't want to be on camera, like let the host know in advance that you don't want to be on camera. Other things you should definitely let a host know in advance about, and you might be surprised that I have to say this, but if you are in legal trouble, if there's any possibility you will be in legal trouble, if there's any possibility you might be in jail when our episode is going to come out, or that there are people who are coming after you and your life is in danger, I kid you not, these are situations that have come up, like, maybe you shouldn't go on a podcast, because I would so much rather just not talk to you until you're out of the woods, and maybe ready to tell your story in retrospect with your lawyer's approval, then go through the whole process of recording and scheduling and planning and maybe even releasing your episode or not. And then finding out you're incarcerated, or, you know, like, someone's trying to kill you, like, I'm sorry. And, you know, definitely in the situation, I'm joking about this in the situation where someone's life is threatened. Of course, I care about that person. I don't mean to be callous about it. I care if you're if your life is in danger, I will do whatever I have to do to protect you. Yes, I will revoke a published podcast episode to save your life. Absolutely. No problem. But That being said, if you are in that type of trouble, maybe you shouldn't go on a podcast. Maybe your personal safety needs to be a bigger priority. And then I think I'll go from here into pet peeves. So pet peeves, besides people not reading the information I send them about how to be prepared, guest pitch emails from PR agents. I get a lot of these. I think I started getting them when my podcast entered the top 2% or so, according to ListenNotes. So according to ListenNotes.com, You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast is in the top 1.5% of podcasts globally, which is awesome. I still consider that moderately successful because there are a lot of podcasts out there that never go anywhere. So I think, you know, you're sort of moderately successful if you make it into the top 5% or 10%. And then I would say ultra successful is like less than 1%. But that said, my podcast is big enough that I do get a lot of guest pitch emails from PR agents. And these are salesy, They're fake. I can't stand liars. And when I get emails from PR agents who pretend they listen to my podcast and I can just tell that they have no idea, they've just read the description of my podcast and they're like, I love your podcast. I'm such a big fan. By the way, have you heard of so-and-so? No, don't do that. If you want to come on my show, and I can't speak for other podcasters, but I wonder how true this is for how other people feel as well. I want to hear directly from you. I want to know that you know what my show is about, that you have listened to it. And I want a sample of you being a guest on another show. I don't want this whole long dramatic pitch about how great you are and how your book was a bestseller and how you transform so many people's lives. And I don't want this one sheet with like, you know, all these suggested questions I should ask you because like, If I, I don't know, I feel like those emails are meant for a different type of podcast than mine. Or maybe if I was being paid, if I was being paid to highlight someone's work, then I'd be like, sure, give me a list of questions to ask you so I can promote your work. But that's not what I do here. I'm not paid to promote my guests work. I invite people who I'm genuinely interested in talking to, and who are up to things that I would genuinely recommend through organic dialogue. Which reminds me of another pet peeve that I forgot to mention, or a point on ways that things have gone badly. One way that things have gone badly is when people have unrealistic expectations of what I will do to promote their work. And I say this in the context where I genuinely try to promote my guests' work. I think if you've listened to my podcast at all, you will know I'm kind and deferential towards my guests. I try to bring out their wisdom and expertise. And at the end, I'm always like, where can people find you? I put their books in the show notes and in my bookshop. I am very supportive of my guests and I put time into releasing video clips on X, which is my largest social media platform. It's the only one I'm currently active on. I make clips promoting the episode. I do promote my guests and I do not get paid by my guests to do that. But I had a guest after the fact, not naming names, but get upset that I hadn't done more to promote their work. And I couldn't figure out what that was, except I would have like, just extrapolating from what they seemed upset about, seemed like I would have had to maybe write the show notes in a style that didn't, that wasn't my style. Maybe they wanted me to, like, put their book at the very top, like, you should all read this book right now. And that's just not how I write my show notes. Like I, my show notes follow a standard format, which is I give a summary of the episode, some hooks to try to, you know, reel you in of what what you're going to learn from this, then the bio, and then here's where you can find their book or whatever it is that they're up to. So I would say, you know, for me, this person's request felt really unreasonable, because it felt like they didn't appreciate the time that I did put into platforming them and that they had this expectation that it was going to be all about marketing for them. And it's like, you know, like, I'm not a marketing agent. I'm not you're not paying me to promote you. So You know, just just be respectful, be down to earth, be aware that if you go on a podcast, I've had plenty, I've been a guest on plenty of podcasts. And I know I have no control over when the episodes going to be released, what they're going to title it, how they're going to edit it, what's going in the show notes. I've definitely been disappointed when they didn't even put my name in the title, or when they didn't even mention my bio or my website or what I'm up to. Like I've been a guest on shows that were a lot less considerate. than I am, frankly, towards guests in terms of, you know, mentioning where to find them and things like that. But you have to be gracious and flexible if you're going to be a guest, because those are all things you don't have control over. Or if you do have any expectations going into it, I would say ask beforehand. clarify those expectations. When will this episode be released, yada yada. I've also had a lot of people reach out to me wanting to come on the show because they're trying to promote something or raise awareness about an issue that's like right around the corner. That doesn't work. I don't know, maybe that works for some other shows. I can't speak for other hosts. But for me, I plan things out months in advance. And so like, if you're getting in touch with me, because you have something that you need to like, raise awareness about that's happening in two weeks, it's probably not going to happen. So my fiancé just reminded me that I forgot to mention one of my worst mistakes, which I think was made not once but twice, which was forgetting to make episodes anonymous. I feel so terrible about that. It's all been corrected now. It was short term. I think both times that it happened, the guests requested to be anonymous, and basically there was a communication glitch. I knew that the guests intended to be anonymous, I thought everyone on my team knew that the guests intended to be anonymous, and that it was to be produced as an audio-only episode, but I do take full responsibility for the fact that I did not make 100% sure that everybody knew exactly what I intended for that episode. And so there were a couple of episodes that got released where for a short period of time, the video was available and was not supposed to be. And so I felt really bad about it when that happened. And that sort of mistake will never happen again on this podcast. Because A, I learned my lesson the first time and B, we switched our production process. So now it's completely in house. And it's just me and my fiance and no longer working with anyone else. really grateful for his help working on the show, because I because we love each other. And the fact that I'm not paying other people to do this work means we can set aside money for our wedding. And also, everything that happens from start to finish on this podcast happens right here in my home. And so the communication, like those sort of communication gaps will never happen again. I recently told you about a group called Do No Harm, who's working to do just that. Eliminate the harm that so-called gender-affirming care for minors and political ideologies in medicine are causing. Do No Harm is made up of thousands of members across the country, from doctors to nurses to policymakers to concerned parents who see what's happening at practitioners around the country and are waving a red flag. Membership is free and you get unlimited access to information from experts, on-the-ground updates from people working in medicine or state houses to take a stand, and collaboration with other thinkers. Learn more and sign up at do-no-harm-medicine.org slash Some Therapist to learn more. That's do-no-harm-medicine.org slash Some Therapist. So I guess next I'll talk about lessons from 2023, not just from podcasting. My biggest lesson from 2023 has to do with adjusting to being chronically ill. So I've been chronically ill longer than that because I got COVID in late February of 2022. And it was probably in May of 2022 that I was like, wait a minute, I'm still not better. And it was right when I was launching this podcast, there was a lot going on at the time. And actually, this has to do with sort of the whole story arc of the podcast. So maybe I'll kind of go back because I don't think I'm done talking about the story arc of the podcast. You know, I started planning the podcast in fall of 2021, or had originally planned for I think, like a February or March launch, and then some things came up, I needed to push the launch back to May of 2022. yeah, May of 2022. And since I'd already pushed back the date once, and since I am sort of tenacious and will not be told what to do, and will not be set back by life circumstances, I wasn't going to push it back one more time. But the licensing board complaint that I that, you know, is my claim to fame as discussed with Helen Joyce, in episode 11. That happened. In an all in a short period of time, it was like February 2022, I got COVID. Meanwhile, we were planning on moving in together, which is, you know, involved selling the house I was living in becoming part of a blended family with my step kids, preparing for all of these things, right? We moved in April. And I was planning to launch the podcast in May. And then the licensing board came in during all of that. And the house that I'd moved out of, which I was in the process of selling got burglarized twice, while it was unoccupied. So it's just a crazy period of time from February 2022, through the summer. But I still stuck with my plan to launch the podcast in May, because that was that was my plan. And I wasn't going to be set back. And I think, you know, it's possible to question the wisdom in that because there is a time for surrender, there's a time for saying maybe I shouldn't go through with this, because life has thrown this other unforeseen circumstance, or in my case, like several unforeseen circumstances. But it was really a combination of all these things, I think that put me under so much stress, that between the stress factors occurring while I was supposed to be recovering from COVID, I never fully recovered. I am one of those unfortunate people who never fully recovered and has long COVID. And I have a condition called POTS that you can get from any number of viral infections. And I've had to manage that ever since. And I don't know, maybe if I hadn't been under all of that stress and change at once of moving, selling the house, house being burglarized, board complaint, like all of these things, maybe I wouldn't have gotten stuck with COVID because I was sort of on the mend. Anyway, it's a long story. But I think for the first year of being chronically ill, I just kept thinking I would eventually get better. And I've always been working on it, and I'm still working on getting better. I've put a lot of money into it. I've tried a lot of supplements, a lot of treatments. I now have a home hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber. But I think this year it's really sunk in that I might never fully recover, because it's going on two years now, as we're heading into 2024, by the time March of 2024 rolls around, it will have been two years of chronic illness. And I will, you know, continue trying to manage it and treat it as best I can. But it's, it's been a big adjustment, sort of, in some ways, like grieving the loss of my youth. Because I was… How old was I? Wait, 2022… 36? 37? Wait. I was 37 and I'm going to be 39 very soon. So I went from being a pretty active person in my mid-30s. Yeah, I was an active person in my mid-30s. I mean, we got COVID in Mexico after a week of boogie boarding. Before that, I'd been walking three miles a day and lifting weights four or five days a week. I did a lot of gardening and yard work. I went on some pretty epic hikes, which I'm at this point, not sure if I'll ever be able to do some of those favorite hikes again. Like I'm thinking of this one beautiful hike here in Oregon. That's basically eight miles with like an 11 or 1200 foot elevation gain. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that again. I also used to dance like crazy. So. Going from being a pretty active 30 something to entering my late thirties and having this chronic illness that made me feel like I aged 30 years and three months. I think it's been a real like grieving, like an ongoing grieving process for me and an adjustment. And I've just had to sort of roll with just doing what I can do every day. And trying not to stress about the rest and really leaning into the support of my fiancé, who at this point is very accustomed to being the one to go up and down the stairs if it's early morning or late at night. Because with POTS, if I go up and down the stairs early morning or late at night, I feel like I just ran a mile. And so I have a very sweet person who's here to take care of me. He never makes me feel bad about being sick. He always encourages me to rest if I need it. And it allows me to just kind of focus on doing what I can do. So I'm definitely in way worse physical condition than I was a few years ago, but I still try to walk every day if I can, even if I'm tired, even if it's just a short walk. I try to do what I can do to keep my body conditioned. And then I just allow myself to really dive into my work. I think being sick has sort of forced me to dive into my work because A, I don't have the physical energy to do as much around the house or be as physically active. And B, I think there's kind of this anxiety of not knowing if I'm going to be OK. And so the fact that my brain still works well enough to work, I just work as much as I can. And I'm grateful for the financial abundance that that affords us and for the opportunity to save towards future goals. And so, yeah, I would say adjusting to chronic illness has probably been my biggest lesson from 2023. So I just stopped and asked my fiance what he thinks I've or how he thinks I've grown this past year. And he said, I didn't just sit idly feeling sorry for myself. I got to work researching and trying to find treatments for my condition and things like that. And of course, I'm thinking, yeah, but I did spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I definitely threw myself some pity parties. But I actually think there is a connection. I mean, you're right that I did try a lot of things, acupuncture, I've been to several different doctors, I've done float tanks, hyperbaric, I spent a lot of money on hyperbaric, made it a big part of my life, rearranged my schedule around it at one point. I think there's a connection between some of the insights from being ill and the other piece of reflection that my fiancé just offered me, which was that he thinks I've gotten better at having boundaries and having expectations of my guests, for instance. And I think part of that's just like learning what works through experience and also discovering my value. I've gotten a lot more confident, even though I still, for the life of me, cannot just sit here and talk without anyone to talk to. Like, it will be rambling and incoherent. I do think I've gotten a lot more comfortable speaking and more comfortable, I think, putting on my blinders, prioritizing, and just sort of recognizing and this ties in with lessons from being a public figure, which I want to get to just that as a public figure at my level, where I'm sort of just famous enough that enough people want a piece of me that it's overwhelming, but like not famous enough that people think I'm going to be out of reach or off limits. You know, like, if I was Taylor Swift, nobody would expect to hear back from me. I say Taylor Swift just because for some reason she's a celebrity that's on everybody's mind, even though my fiancé and I have listened to her exactly once. On a little retreat, on a little getaway, where he was like, we talked about how funny it was that we didn't even know what Taylor Swift sounded like, and he was like, well let's listen to Taylor Swift then. But but you got what I'm saying. Like it's it's an uncomfortable level of fame to be sort of a solopreneur podcaster and have this many people know who you are. But but I think I've had to get comfortable with not being able to stay on top of email, even though I really do love my email system superhuman. And if you go to some therapist comm slash superhuman, you can get one month free. I do love superhuman. It's a great email system, but I will never be on top of all my email. I have given up on responding to DMs. I don't have DMs open, but you know, even for the people who can reach me that way, like I just have to be comfortable letting people down, not responding to everyone or everything, putting on my blinders in order to get deep work done, which is the creation of a, the creation and production of a podcast is deep work. There are many steps I need to take every week to get that podcast episode ready. And that's just my half of it. I'm not the one doing the editing. I had a professional editor, now I have my fiancé, who's just as good as a professional, but he's a man of many hats. So I've gotten comfortable putting on my blinders, not getting everything done. I love Oliver Berkman's 4,000 Weeks. I believe the subtitle is Time Management for Mortals, because it's sort of the antithesis of your typical time management book, which promises that if you just use this or that strategy, you can get it all done. His message is, no, you'll never be able to get it all done. And life is precious. And your time isn't even your own. Your priorities are determined largely by other people and by forces of nature and unforeseen circumstances. So given how little control you really have over your time, how are you truly going to choose to spend it knowing you'll never get everything done? So I think I've gotten more comfortable with that. Deep work being, of course, a podcast. Writing, which is something that I miss, I would say becoming more sort of in-demand has filled up my schedule to the point where I don't have deep work time to just write. And then of course seeing clients. So I have my therapy practice. I would say another big lesson from the past year has to do with opening up a consulting practice. So I have a new website, stephaniewyn.com in addition to sometherapist.com and stephaniewyn.com brings together my therapy and my consulting services. When I first became known, people started reaching out to me wanting therapy from all over the country. And I was just turning people down left and right, like, no, I'm not licensed to provide therapy in your state, yada, yada. And then I, I started realizing a lot of these requests, they weren't just looking for therapy, they just wanted to talk to me. And so I started changing the standard where it's like, I need to find out, are they looking for therapy? Does this person have a mental illness that needs to be treated? Are they at risk of suicide, harm to self or others, you know, addiction, abuse, anything like really serious, where I need to think responsibly as a mental health professional, make sure they're seeing someone's license to provide the right type of treatment in their state. Or maybe do they already have those needs taken care of? Or are those needs not the issue, but they really want to pick my brain about a given issue. And it's because of the things I say on my podcast or on other people's podcasts or on my blog, and they don't care. if we call it therapy or maybe they don't want to call it therapy, they just want to talk to me. So after seeing enough of that, I decided to start offering consulting and that's been really fulfilling to the point where I even had someone who's a listener of this podcast come to me recently asking, like, are you planning to stop doing therapy? Like, and I, and you know, I do love being a therapist and I think there's something bittersweet again, sort of under that umbrella of lessons from being a public figure, like, There are things I've lost that I can never go back to from the experience of not being known to a wider audience, like being somewhat anonymous, drifting through the world. And there are things I miss about that. It sort of warps your perception. to go through life always anticipating that people know who you are wherever you go, which is like not really true. Like I'm not that well known. It's just enough of an ex- but what I was going to say though is that it's bittersweet. So since I opened a consulting practice, I'd say close to half the people I talk to in a given week are consulting clients rather than therapy clients at this point. And there are things I miss about, as I was saying, sort of not being known. And every now and then I do have a therapy client that doesn't know about any of the work I do. Now it is I do somewhat allude to it in my Psychology Today profile. The information is on my website. You can find out that I have a podcast, a blog, and things like that. Sometimes people don't look at those things, and I have thought about adding it to my informed consent. But there's something nice about getting to have the experience of just being a therapist where my client doesn't know anything about me, and that is something that I have for the most part given up, so there's kind of a bittersweetness when I do get to experience it. Because, you know, the people who come to me for consultation, they know who I am, they know what I have to say on given issues, and that's why they want to talk to me, which is very different from someone who is looking for a therapist and hopes that this therapist who they know very little about will be a good fit based on, you know, they have a nice smile or they practice EMDR or whatever it is the person's looking for. and and there's you know it's mixed because like sometimes it on the one hand it's nice having people come to me kind of knowing what I'm about already and like ready to dive in based on that also sometimes people put me on a pedestal and that's really weird and you know with like with being on a pedestal it's like what goes up must come down there's kind of this dehumanizing element and there's this instinct in people and I haven't experienced this for my consulting clients I'm just sort of skipping around now but like I remember I put on an event once where it was a local event with in person and someone brought someone who she knew who was, I guess, like a big fan of my podcast. And I just remember like the look on this person's face being around me was like, I don't know, it was like the same way that I look and feel when I'm around someone I really admire and I'm like, am I in the same room as that person? Like it was that kind of look and it was so weird being on the receiving end of that. And it was sweet, like I'm not disparaging this person in any way. It was just, it's just weird to be on the receiving end of that and to know that some people see me that way. So some other lessons from being a public figure. is I have a very mixed experience of on the one hand feeling so overwhelmed with the ways that people try to reach me and the fact that it often seems there's I think like an illusion of so many people feel like they need something from me. And then or and yet, I offer really low hanging fruit, and very few people pick it. And, and if I guess the good side of that is that it allows me to clear my conscience, because I'm like, well, okay, I offered the low hanging fruit, and they didn't pick it. So why should I feel badly about not doing more for them. But the low hanging fruit is like, you can schedule if anyone can schedule a 15 minute free consultation. Now, granted, if you no-show that 15-minute free consultation, you're not going to get another one. I keep a list of the people who have no-showed those consultations, and if you want to see me after that, you have to pay right from the beginning. But I was worried when I set that up that I was going to be flooded, and I wasn't. I get a few of those a week. The other low-hanging fruit I offer is my locals community. It's $8 a month. I've offered various promo codes at various times to get one month free. After that, again, it's $8 a month. And that's where you can go to ask questions of me, ask questions of my future guests, get early access to new episodes. And I even started something I think is a super valuable resource, which is a sharecast on Marco Polo. So you have to jump through a couple of hoops because first you have to join my locals community. Then from there, you have to make sure you've downloaded the app Marco Polo, which is free, and then click the link in the share in the locals to join the sharecast. But once you join that, it's like I'm giving all of this free advice for ROGD parents. And I guess, you know, I hear from so many ROGD parents desperate for my help. And some of them are willing to pay me, you know, what might feel like a lot of money to them to consult with me. So I've been surprised that when I offer this thing, it's like, hey, it's $8 a month to join this community, you get free access to these videos where I am distilling the wisdom of my experience consulting with parents like you. it's like very few people have tuned in. So it's weird. And, and it's a lesson from being a public figure, that, you know, it's sort of an illusion that people are desperate for my help. But like, if I'm offering these things that are fairly easy to take advantage of, and people aren't taking it from there, then I really can't feel too badly that I'm not like responding to people's email or, you know, because they're not kind of doing the steps on their end. So maybe now I'll talk about goals and hopes for the future. Cause I've been sort of reflecting on the year behind and the, you know, in terms of 2023 and then more broadly the year and a half plus behind of, you know, what it's been like from this podcast's inception to present. So I want to talk about where I'm going with the podcast. I have at times deliberated changing my release schedule because it is a lot of work to produce a weekly podcast and that it does take time that I could be putting into other things. And frankly, I would make more money if I spent this time seeing clients like hour per hour. I make more money doing therapy and consulting than I do podcasting for sure. Although having a podcast being known and recognized as you know, allowed me to have people seeking me out specifically, and that's a really good feeling. As I was talking about earlier, just being able to dive right in and help people who already know what I'm about focus on really specific issues that they feel like I'm qualified to address. But that being said, although I've thought about changing the release schedule, I do still have so many people to talk to and so much to say and, and the podcast is just starting to become lucrative. So one of my hopes for the near future is to get more paid ads to make this more sustainable. So I do have affiliate ads and I'm really grateful for anyone listening to this who has bought. Any of my affiliate products, namely 8sleep and Organifi, are the main ones that I do ads for on this podcast. You can also see more affiliate stuff on my website at sometherapist.com slash shop. But that being said, paid ads are awesome and I think my podcast has just sort of reached that level where sort of the CPM model would help this to be more financially sustainable. I'd love for more people to join my locals community as well because that also helps the podcast keep going and gives me valuable sort of feedback from engaged listeners. Another thing I am really excited to do in 2024, and this is sort of an announcement, I know it's an announcement I'm making really late into the episode, but is going deeper and building friendships over time with colleagues. So earlier I talked about You know, some of the people I've connected with certainly did not mention everyone. There's just a lot of wonderful people I've talked to on this show. But that being said, one of the things that you can look forward to in 2024 is that I will be having return guests back and that'll be in a number of ways. So the first way I'll tell you about is if you've made it this far, be on the lookout next week, January 8th. for a part two with Helen Joyce. Episode 11 with Helen Joyce debunking the myth of conversion therapy was the most listened to episode for a long time. Maybe still is. I think maybe my James Lindsay episode came close, but I was long overdue for a part two with Helen Joyce, and that one is January 8th, so it's coming out next week. But in addition to that, in addition to the occasional part two with a guest one-on-one, I'm also gonna be bringing back former guests in new configurations. So I'll be having groups of two and three guests, all of whom I've talked to in the past, bringing them together in groups, to try out a new format this year. And that is, I think, going to fulfill some needs for me just to feel like I, you know, I don't know, there's, like, there's something about just having like a really deep conversation with someone and then never seeing them again. That's like, it's like an intellectual one night stand. You know, it's like you have this incredible sense of intimacy, and then you never talk to the person again. And, and some of the guests I've had, it felt like that was all that we needed to say to each other, not not to disparage those episodes in any way, it's just like we covered it all in an hour and a half or whatever. But then there are also plenty of guests where it felt like it was just getting started at the beginning of some kind of relationship. So and as I did mention earlier, I have had ongoing communications with many of my previous guests, if you know, texting DMS, occasional calls and zooms and stuff like that, and various types of partnerships. But we're going to be bringing a lot of previous guests back together, just have an ongoing conversation to feel like I'm deepening these sort of friendships over time with, with colleagues and interesting people. And I think cross pollination is super interesting because I'm, I'm big on world bridging. I've always been sort of one of these people who's like never fully in the center of any one social circle. I'm like on the outskirts of several and I bring people together and I'm a connector. And so I think it'd be really interesting to see different people I know from different ways coming together. So you can be on the lookout for that in 2024. And you might see more partnerships with colleagues and organizations like Do No Harm, where I am blessed to be a senior fellow. I've been running ads for them to raise awareness and encourage people to join and become members. I'll also be promoting in a similar way my friends at Critical Therapy Antidote. So I've interviewed a few people from Critical Therapy Antidote. Carol Sherwood and Christine Seafin, my previous guests, are both pretty central to CTA, but a lot of other people who have been on the show who are therapists are more kind of peripheral to it. And so I'm encouraging people to join CTA and I'll be doing more partnerships with them in the new year. And then the same goes for Open Therapy Institute. I've interviewed Andrew Hartz on a previous episode and he is the founder of Open Therapy Institute. They're up to wonderful things, moving in some great directions. And so you can expect to maybe hear some updates throughout 2024 about groups like these and maybe even fair and medicine and you know possible other groups to be determined but I am excited to have so many wonderful friends and colleagues to connect with. Another goal for this podcast and I say this very tentatively but is to not be so zoomed in on gender stuff because I've gotten kind of pigeonholed and it's It's like a, I don't know, there's like some kind of feedback cycle to it where I sort of became known in the gender critical community and really sought out by ROGD parents specifically. And that's like the content that people want from me. Also the fact that I am vocal about those issues, unfortunately in today's political climate means that certain other people don't want to talk to me. People who I might have other common ground to explore with, but they, maybe haven't had their eyes opened on the gender issue yet and they just see it at first glance and they think I'm like homophobic or something, which is not true, but they just they don't want to deal with gender critical people. And so it's been somewhat isolating from certain communities. And it's sort of funneled me into a little bit of a whirlpool of a certain community. And granted, I mean, I do think gender issues deserve a lot of attention. I think it's the biggest medical scandal of my lifetime, certainly. And I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility on behalf of the mental health professional community. I feel like we've damaged people and alienated people. And we've got some serious work to do. And I know that I have an important voice, given my background on this issue. That being said, I do have other interests and I want to be free to explore those interests. And so even though it feels like every other episode is about the gender issue, I do want to talk to fellow psychology professionals about other psychology topics. This is a psychology podcast after all, although it's also a world bridging cross pollinating, you know, culture and life and philosophy in the universe and everything. But I just I don't want to, I'm not a one trick pony. And I and I think people are treating me that way to like, they're like, I've gotten responses from people about having me on their podcast where they're like, yes, I do want to have you on my podcast someday, but I'm not ready to address the gender issue yet. And I'm like, okay, we can talk about other stuff. I do have other interests. And then finally, I want to talk about goals and hopes for the future in general. So some things that I'm considering making changes would be moving toward being private pay only. in my practice because there are some frustrating things about dealing with insurance panels. And I've had many reasons to hesitate on, you know, taking the leap and just going fully private pay. But there are therapists who are less well known than I am, who have fully booked private pay practices. And so I think I just, I think I'll be sad to have to let go of people who are only able to see me because of insurance, but I think it might be the right move for me eventually. And finally, last thing on my list to mention is that I'm planning on getting married this year. So 2024, going to start planning our wedding. Not for sure, for sure, because we don't have a venue booked yet, but I'm hoping to marry the sweet man sitting across from me. in 2024. And so that means that I can't be fully 100% zoomed in on podcasting and, and even therapy and consulting and all of that, because I do have a personal life. I forget that sometimes, but I have someone really wonderful, who is in many ways the wind beneath my wings, because he believes in me and supports me and encourages me. And that has made all the difference in my life. I feel like it's a big part of the reason that I'm able to do what I do. He's not responsible for the way I think or the beliefs that I hold. If anything, I'm the more opinionated person in our relationship. And I actually remember right when I was like going through my whole sort of social world falling apart as I was questioning a lot of the sort of tenets of like woke left coast liberal community. I remember getting into conflict over social media with somebody I'd known who said something like, must be that boyfriend of yours. And I remember thinking, oh, this was the same person who like, said that Brett Weinstein must be racist because he has a Jewish last name, like, without knowing who Brett Weinstein was. And it was like, do you hear yourself? Like, do you hear what you're saying? Like, so it was like, you know, here's someone who probably claims to have like very feminist views, but who's implying that me as a woman who has beliefs that are offensive to him, that must be because of my boyfriend's, right? It couldn't possibly be my own. So it was one of those things where like, do you hear yourself? Do you hear how sexist you sound like? In our relationship, I am the far more opinionated person. So yeah, I keep my fiance's identity private, but if you do know who he is, do not blame him for anything I ever say, because my opinions are very much my own. But he does a really great job of loving me. I want to say loving me unconditionally, although one of our guilty pleasures is reality TV, because it's like, I feel like my brain is always working on these high-level, complex, deep issues, and then I just like to eat mental junk food every now and then. I'm just watching some really crappy reality TV. I don't know if anyone here has watched dating and marriage reality TVs, but there are a lot of cliches that people say. For instance, what's some of the language young people use these days? They say 100% in reaction to anything. They say, feeling some type of way as a way of describing an emotion, which by the way, I polled my Twitter audience and they said that that was actually a term originally from black culture that meant you were horny, but it has now evolved since then to mean any type of emotion. And another cliche they say on dating and marriage reality TV is unconditional love. They talk about unconditional love and my fiance always makes fun of that because he's like, there are limits to love. Like there are lines that a person could cross where you would have to stop loving them for, you know, to protect yourself. And, and I just think that's interesting coming from someone who really does feel like very unconditionally loving toward me and always sees the best in me. So another lesson I've learned from doing this type of work, I can't imagine having to deal with everything that can be stressful about being a public figure without knowing a lot about psychology. Because knowing a lot about psychology helps me stay sane in the midst of some really crazy making stuff like cluster B dynamics, for example, people idealizing and devaluing and demonizing you on the internet, that kind of stuff. and also being aware of my own cognitive biases like we all have. And so one sort of cognitive distortion that we're all prey to is that negative information stands out a lot more in our minds than positive information, especially when it comes to social stuff, because we're social creatures, we're wired for affection and connection. And the sense that we are at risk of being cast out from the tribe triggers this deep primal survival fear in us. And I've had that fear tested many times. I would say it's been an emotional roller coaster this first year and a half and some change of being known to the world. I've been emotionally reactive at times and I've had to learn how to sort of weather the storm and maintain a more zen-like attitude and create certain boundaries and things like that. But I'm really grateful that at least I know that I have this bias to pay more attention to the negative stuff than positive. And the truth is that the positive does outweigh the negative in terms of how I've been met. Now that's partly because I've blocked a lot of people on social media. Um, which like people make a big deal out of like, Oh my God, so-and-so blocked me. But I, my policy, and I think the policy of some other like relatively sane people is no, like you block as a preventative measure. If there's any indication that someone might be a source of trouble because you only have so much bandwidth and why waste your energy getting stressed out and psychologically impacted and potentially derailed. by people attacking you. So if you see evidence that someone's going to use ad hominem attacks or whatever, you just sort of block preemptively. And that's what I do. So that's one of the strategies. I have some other strategies in place, like with regard to YouTube comment moderation and things like that, to sort of filter out the negative. But that being said, my point in acknowledging all of this is to say, A, what keeps me sane, but B, thank you to all the people who are sending those positive things because I do try to pay attention to that and remember the words of encouragement that you've sent me, the emails, the YouTube comments. I really, really appreciate YouTube comments. It helps with the algorithm, the positive comments on X. I'm no longer active on any other social media platforms because I've just been trying to focus my energy on deep work and important things. And so why spread my energy thin by worrying about like Instagram content or Facebook or anything like that. But, you know, to all the people who have sent positive feedback, who've let me know ways I've touched your lives, I really appreciate that. It's really been an honor to have been sought out in particular by a few people who you know, maybe like reach out to me once, or maybe did like a one-time coaching or consulting session because they were looking for support with their self-expression. I'd say that's the second most common issue people reach out to me for help with. The first is ROGD, rapid-onset gender dysphoria, a term coined by Lisa Littman. But the second is people who are seeking support with self-expression, self-actualization, and communication. And I've had the honor of playing a small role in some people's process of finding their words, finding their courage to speak their truth to their professional community, their friends and family. And it is just is such an honor to be in that role for people. And so I really appreciate your words of encouragement, letting me know how my work has been impactful for you. I really appreciate also the fact that you are listening to this podcast when there are so many other podcasts you could be listening to. You know, as I mentioned earlier, it's a tough crowd, tough attention economy. People's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. And this is a long form interview podcast where, you know, sometimes it takes an hour to get to the deepest part of the conversation. And so I just appreciate those of you who believe in me and who find so much value in this podcast that you're choosing to spend your time and energy doing this when there's so many other things you could be doing. If you want to let me know what you want me to talk about in the future, if you have any questions for me, Best way to do that is join Locals. It's only $8 a month. I do periodically give away promo codes and things like that. If you're my coaching client, I give you a code, so it's only $1 a month. And that's at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. So if you want to be more engaged, that's a place to go. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening. And cheers to you in 2024. I hope you enjoyed this episode of You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist podcast. To check out my book recommendations, articles, wellness products, guest episodes on other podcasts, consulting services, and lots more, visit SomeTherapist.com or follow me on Twitter or Instagram at SomeTherapist. If you'd like to go deeper, join my community at somekindoftherapist.locals.com. Members can dialogue with other listeners, post questions for upcoming podcast guests to respond to, or ask questions for me to respond to in exclusive members-only Q&A live streams. To learn more about the gender crisis, watch our film No Way Back, The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care at nowaybackfilm.com. Special thanks to my producers, Eric and Amber Beals at Different Mix, and to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, Half Awake. If you appreciate this podcast and want more people to find it, kindly take a moment to rate, review, like, comment, and share on your platforms of choice. Of course, just because I am some therapist doesn't mean I'm your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for medical advice. If you need help, ask your doctor or browse your local therapists online. And whatever you do next, please take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, move your body, get outside, and tell someone you love them. You're worth it.