Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and Silicon Valley clinician Nana Adabie joins Becky to talk about the paradox she lives inside every day: building a tech tool to help people recover from tech overload.
Nana shares the patient moment that sparked the idea for Loretta, a grounding app named after the tree in her front yard, and walks through why traditional meditation apps fail people with ADHD, how dopamine-seeking and parasocial relationships online affect mental health, and what "grounding" actually means in the body.
They talk candidly about audacity, immigrant identity, burnout, and Nana leads a live guided grounding exercise listeners can do right along with her.
Topics Covered (with timestamps):• (
02:17) Nana's background as a Silicon Valley psych nurse practitioner and the burnout epidemic she saw firsthand
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03:35) The patient moment that sparked Loretta: "I wish I had a Nana in my pocket"
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05:51) Why Loretta is built differently for neurodivergent users, short, narrative, not traditional meditation
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06:54) Nana's own relationship with technology, burnout, and the parasocial trap of online validation
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09:42) Is dopamine addiction real? How the ADHD brain seeks novelty and stimulation
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11:37) Living with "two identities" and how Nana rebuilt her own offline creativity through piano, painting, and nature
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15:21) What grounding actually means, in Nana's own words
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17:24) The story behind Loretta's name, the tree in front of Nana's house
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17:56) A live guided grounding exercise listeners can follow along with
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22:58) The audacity conversation: "there's so many mediocre men building so much dumb stuff, why not me?"
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27:54) How the Loretta app actually works, step by step
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33:36) Nana's closing advice: go sit in the sun, barefoot, for ten minutes
Resources Mentioned:
• Loretta app: helloloretta.com
• Nana's Substack: https://nanaefua.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips
• "The Creative Act" by Rick Rubin: https://amzn.to/4xtruBN
• "Liberate Your Business" by Becky Mollenkamp: beckymollenkamp.com/book
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