Desi Couch

When we recorded this epsiode in July 2026, students in India had taken to the streets in protest and we can’t stop thinking about what that kind of collective courage does to the human nervous system. As therapists and South Asians living in the US, we talk about the grief and rage we’re holding while watching young people ask for safer, fairer education and face brutality for it. We also name th...

Mental health rarely announces itself with a neat label in South Asian families. It shows up as “my heart is anxious,” a heavy head from thinking too much, a stomach that will not settle, joint aches that will not quit, or a crushing tiredness that sleep does not fix. In this episode, licensed mental health professionals - Malika and Gitika- want to make that hidden language visible, because so ma...

A lot of us grew up thinking a “good family” means staying close no matter what, but nobody teaches you how to stay connected without swallowing your own truth. We pick up our DDLJ thread and use Simran’s family to talk about something bigger: healthy family dynamics, unhealthy patterns that get normalised, and what mental health awareness can look like inside real Desi homes.  We break down a con...

Bollywood can be comforting, funny, and deeply familiar and it can also quietly teach us what a “good” son or daughter is supposed to look like.  In today's epsiode Licensed Mental Health Counselor Malika and Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Gitika talk about ways these Bollywood tropes reflect cultural assumptions. We take Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) and the Pretentious Movie Reviews r...

Grief does not wait for the “right” time and it definitely does not pause just because we move to a new country. We start with a gentle content warning and an important reminder: we’re both mental health professionals, but this is education, not therapy. From there, we follow the thread that so many immigrants know too well, the moment you realize you have to become your own parent, make your own...

Malika and Gitika walked into Dr. Gabor Maté’s live lecture expecting insight but we got so much more than that! There’s something disarming about the way Dr Maté’ connects the personal to the political, the clinical to the everyday, and the mind to the body without splitting them into separate boxes. If you’ve ever felt your emotions living in your skin, your stomach, your jaw, or your fatigue, t...

Immigration fear can take over your whole nervous system even when you’ve “done everything right.” Today we talk honestly about that reality from both sides of the couch: as therapists and as first-generation immigrants navigating the same headlines, policy shifts, and threat-to-belonging that our clients bring into session.  We dig into the mental health patterns that show up under immigration st...

Immigration can look like forms and visa categories from the outside, but from the inside it often feels like fear, pressure, and a constant negotiation of safety. We’re Gitika and Malika, two Desi mental health professionals living in the U.S., and we get honest about how migration shapes our identities and the way we move through the world. We name what so many people carry quietly: the way your...

What happens when two South Asian therapists decide that therapy’s four walls aren’t big enough for the conversations our community needs? We built Desi Couch to take healing into the open. In our first recording, we share the immigration paths that shaped us, and the moment we realized that silence—not a lack of suffering—keeps many South Asian families from care. We dig into what we saw in clini...

Hello!!  We are Malika and Gitika, two immigrant licensed mental health professionals in the US, and we invite you to our podcast, Desi Couch!  We created Desi Couch as a cozy, honest space for South Asians across the world who want language for what they have carried for years. We talk about South Asian mental health through a holistic lens, looking at how family systems, culture, identity, and t...