Therapists IRL

Send us Fan Mail June is World Infertility Awareness Month. A gentle trigger warning for our listeners.  If you have dealt with pregnancy loss and/or infertility, take care in listening to this episode.  I (Steph) would not have been able to listen to it at certain points of my story. Welcome to Episode 21 of Therapists IRL, where Steph shares about her painful 6-year journey walking the lonely pa...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt impending doom? Gone to the ER thinking you might be dying? Obsessively pictured terrible outcomes to normal every day scenarios?   Welcome to Episode 20, where Jen & Steph chat with fellow therapist Nikki Blakesley about her battle with lifelong anxiety.  Anxiety is tricky. Sometimes it just feels normal to imagine the worst possible outcome of a situation...

Send us Fan Mail You walk into the house on your 18th birthday and hear "Surprise!" Your friends are all there, there's pizza, cake, and presents. Why do you feel like you're about to burst into tears? Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 19, where Jen and Steph tackle the topic of depression, and Jen shares her personal journey living with low-level depression and S.A.D.,  hiding...

Send us Fan Mail You're standing in the card aisle desperately searching for just the right one.  The one that says something like "Happy Mother's Day. Thank you for birthing me. The end."  Welcome to Episode 18 of Therapists IRL, where Jen & Steph talk all things Mothering on the cusp of Mother's Day in the US.  Join us for real talk about our moms, the ways we relate...

Send us Fan Mail POV: You're home for the holidays with your new husband, and your mom barges in your room at an ungodly early hour running the vacuum.  Oh, you haven't experienced that?  Congratulations!  You didn't grow up in an enmeshed family system. Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 17, where Jen & Steph unpack the foundations laid by family dynamics in our boundary systems...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you finally have the language to understand yourself, understand your experiences, and understand you're not alone? You become a badass human. Welcome to Episode 16 of Therapists IRL, where Jen & Steph chat with Jesie Steffes about living life as a Highly Sensitive Person in a larger body. Join us as Jesie shares her own soul journey as an HSP and the in...

Send us Fan Mail Rom-coms have ruined us. We've spent so much time watching the "happily ever after" version of relationships that most of us aren't really ready for the reality...which may look a lot less like "The Notebook" and a lot more like "10 Things I Hate About You." Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 15, where Jen and Steph talk red flags (as in RUN...

Send us Fan Mail You know you're in a bad relationship when... you come home from vacation to find family heirlooms missing because your significant other took a trip to the pawn shop while you were out of town. Welcome to Episode 14 of Therapists IRL, where Steph and Jen talk the talk after walking the walk in bad, toxic, and sometimes abusive relationships. That's right. We've bee...

Send us Fan Mail POV: A 16 year girl plants a "purity flag" with her dad under the shadow of The Washington Monument, proclaiming her dedication to chastity alongside hundreds of other teenage girls, under the watchful eye of the Evangelical Christian Nation.  Welcome to Episode 13 of Therapists IRL, where Jen and Steph discuss the impact of religion on mental health. Join us as Steph sh...

Send us Fan Mail It's the Goldilocks of emotions, with the sweet spot being not too much, not too little, but juuuussssst the right amount.  Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 12, where Steph and Jen share their personal and professional experiences with the often  misunderstood emotion of anger.  It gets a bad rap, but anger is actually a pretty important emotion, and it's one that wome...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine sitting on the potty as a toddler, congratulating yourself on mastering the anal developmental phase. Yeah, I know, right? Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 11, where our special guest, Inga Larson--psychotherapist, life coach, and licensed massage therapist--shares her experiences being raised by her "shrink," aka psychiatrist father, who also happened to be a...

Send us Fan Mail People go to therapy for all sorts of reasons, but mainly to figure out if their childhood trauma is the reason  they can't stand the sound of someone chewing popcorn. Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 10, where Jen & Steph explore their own reasons for going to therapy, and talk about some of the most common reasons people do, too. And no, the sound of popcorn is not usu...

Send us Fan Mail Who else has been through their fair share of pain in this life?  Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 9, where Steph shares a little about her journey out of trauma and grief around the loss of relationship, infertility, abusive relationships, and more. Don't worry,  there was a light at the end of the tunnel!  And it wasn't an oncoming train.  Resources: Man's Searc...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 8, where Jen opens up the family vault of generational trauma and addiction.  There aren’t many families who haven’t been touched by addiction in one way or another… It’s a devastating disease for the addicted individual and for the friends and family around them.  Jen lovingly shares her experiences growing up in a family with addiction, and sha...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 7, where Jen and Steph get personal about personality! Why are we the way we are? What parts of our personality are hard-wired? And why does it matter? Today we’re tackling two popular personality tests, the Myers-Briggs and the  Enneagram. Do these tests really tell us anything? How accurate are they? Join us to find out! And, oh yeah, we also k...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 6, when Jen and Steph have the privilege of interviewing their first guest, Dr. Tricia Rampersad.  Dr. Trish, as she's affectionately known, shares her experience of being a therapist during the dumpster fire that was 2020, navigating her own losses while showing up for her clients.  No one was prepared for a global pandemic, and therapists...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL, Episode 5, where Steph and Jen swap stories about living life as empaths (absorbing emotions all over the place), and look into the nature of HSP's--highly sensitive persons.  Are they one and the same? What's the difference? Whether you're an empath who can't help but feel everyone's feelings, an HSP who's just trying to su...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 4, where Jen and Steph dive into the complicated world of friendships.  Prompted by some recent experiences in their own friendship (podcast production ain't always pretty), Jen and Steph keep it real, sharing personal stories about friendships in their lives.  From misunderstandings and miscommunications to the unavoidable conflicts that ari...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 3 where Steph shares a bit of her own story. Our backgrounds influence and shape who we are and who we become, and Steph dives into parts of her journey that have gotten her to where she is today...a well-balanced badass of a woman! No therapists were harmed in the making of this episode,  but vulnerability hangovers are real. Please note: Wh...

Send us Fan Mail Full Disclosure: After publishing the original recording of Episode 2 (Jen’s Journey- Diet Culture Sucks and Pizza is Delicious), we realized a lot of Steph's awesome contributions got cut out due to poor connection or who knows what (we're not techy, remember?), and it didn't feel like the quality we want to be putting out.  So...we RE-recorded the episode (which i...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Therapists IRL Episode 2 (Take 2)  where Jen shares more about her eating disorder history (fortunately, long ago history), and Steph and Jen mutually agree that diet culture is the worst and that pizza is delicious. Eat more pizza! Note: If you or a loved one is struggling with an eating disorder or you are concerned about eating-disordered thoughts, below is a list of...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the inaugural episode of "Therapists IRL," the podcast where two seasoned therapists dive headfirst into the ties that bind us all...being human.  In this very first episode, Jen and Steph share a little about themselves, their background as therapists, what motivated them to plunge into the podcast pool (spoiler alert:  to destigmatize mental health issues, n...