Lara-ism

Pardon the background noise — from my boyfriend’s alarm to my neighbors slamming their doors lol. Anyway, in this episode, I talked about different examples of binary thinking on mental health – how we expect people who are diagnosed with a mental disorder or people who are simply not okay to consistently look the part and how we tend to immediately invalidate what they’re going through when they’...

This is a letter I wrote for my parents. Finally seeing them as human beings, just like me, helped me understand that all their actions when I was growing up, regardless of how it made me feel then, were done out of love. That discernment enabled me to forgive, heal and love them even more.

⚠️TRIGGER WARNING: I touched on the topics, suicidal ideation and self-harm, so if you're not doing okay right now, please do not listen to this episode. I keep saying lately that I've been having one of my longest depressive episodes, so I figured why not talk about my experience and what it really feels like? I'd also like to make people understand that depression is not remotely the same as fee...

This is a message to those who are suffering and feel like giving up. Please hold on. p.s. This is the first time I used background music. I recorded on the spot so I wasn’t exactly prepared (there was too much background noise when I was recording). Apologies in advance in case you find it distracting!

In this episode, I tried being more spontaneous — no structured framing of overall message whatsoever. I shared several thoughts about Mental Health — my own mental health condition, why mental health is real, focusing on surviving (versus thriving) during the pandemic, how our fear of failure is contributing to our anxiety and going deeper into that fear — why are we afraid of failure anyway? The...

A letter I wrote for my partner, John Jimenez, expressing my gratitude for him and his love. Having a person who loves you the right way heals you and John has been one the reasons why I’m in a much better place now.

I was recently asked to share simple things I do during a tough day – which was tough (lol) for me to answer because my immediate reaction to anything is to reflect. So instead of outlining steps or actions, in this episode, I discussed what kind of questions I reflect on during a tough day.

Even before the pandemic, questions about managing anxiety are something I’m frequently asked. People often ask me for tips, but I really prefer going deeper and understanding anxiety. In this episode, I discussed how our trauma is most of the time the root cause of our anxiety and what we can do to address it.