Making Therapy Work for You — with Shani Tran

Like sometimes, the process is not necessarily looking at the end goal, but stopping and looking and seeing how far you've come. Hi everyone. My name is Dora and welcome to "Radio Headspace." So today, I wanna talk about therapy and I think that sometimes people assume that just because I'm a meditation teacher, I don't go to therapy, like it has to be one or the other. And that is not the case at all. I've actually been in therapy for a very long time. I think it can be great for your mental health. And I also think it's a very hard thing to start and sometimes even harder to navigate. Whether it's cultural stigma or just misconceptions around therapy, these are very real barriers that a lot of people face. So that's why I brought on Shani Tran. She is a licensed therapist, content creator, and the founder of The Shani Project. Her work is all about making therapy more accessible for everyone. And this episode is almost like a how to guide for therapy. We get into the before, during, and after of a therapy session, green and red flags to look out for when searching for a therapist, and also how to break up with your therapist. I hope you enjoy. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on "Radio Headspace." I am so excited for this call as someone that has been in therapy for over five years now. Less consistent than in the beginning, but I really just wanna dive into the therapy journey, especially for people who don't know where to begin. Because there's so much information out there and I know for myself- Yeah. I would've loved like the, you know, ABC, 123 guide of like where to get started in some of the different things that we actually have the power in changing when it comes to therapy and picking providers or settings or even just different type of therapy types. So excited and happy to have you here. My first question is, what initiated you on your path to becoming a therapist Originally, I think it has to do with the meme that it's going viral right now, where it's like, "I could've used a hug, but I went and got a therapy degree." And that is what basically landed me, I guess here in that I had a lot of trauma in my childhood. My mother and my father remember it differently than I do, but I just remember being alone in my adversity and not really having anyone to lean on. And so for me, I had fell in love with the psychology class when I was in high school. The teacher. The teacher makes a difference, let's just say that. And I told my guidance counselor, "Hey, I want to be a therapist." And they're like, "Oh, you need a master's." And I was like, "Okay, nevermind." So focused on theater, but it just kept...