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Welcome to "Lessons from the Couch", where we invite you to pull up a seat and join Corina and Mariana—two marriage and family therapists based in Illinois—on a journey through therapy, life, and everything in between. In each episode, we have honest and engaging conversations with therapists and non-therapists alike, exploring their unique experiences in and around therapy. Whether it's the story of a therapist navigating early career challenges or a non-therapist sharing how therapy changed their life, our goal is to show just how accessible and transformative these conversations can be.
We also dive into the diverse career paths and personal journeys within the field of mental health, from seasoned professionals to those just starting out (like Corina and Mariana, who are at opposite timelines of their own therapy careers).
If you're curious about therapy, mental health, or simply enjoy meaningful conversations, "Lessons from the Couch" is for you. Get ready to think, reflect, and discover new perspectives one conversation at a time.
Follow Lessons from the Couch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts to listen to new episodes.
Co-Hosted by Corina Teofilo Mattson and Mariana Reyes Daza. Show art by Jae Avilez. Music by Brandon Acosta.
If you're interested in therapy services, either in person or via telehealth, and reside in Illinois, visit www.liveoakchicago.com to learn more.
A lot of the times that urgency for me comes from anticipating other people's needs, which I think is so much about people pleasing. Most of us that become therapists probably have some layer of people pleasing within us that we can heal, and that probably also makes us well suited for this job. We are so eager to anticipate other people's wants and needs. I often repeat that phrase to myself and to other people that just because we want to take care of somebody doesn't mean that they need our care specifically. We need to trust also that somebody will tell us they need us.
Corina:Hi, my name is Corina Teofilo Mattson.
Mariana:I'm Mariana Reyes Daza.
Corina:And we are the new co hosts for a new podcast called Lessons from the Couch. Throughout this podcast, you're going to find us having intimate, deep conversations. We'll be talking to therapists and probably some non therapists, and we're going to bring you into the therapy room with us.
Mariana:Today is 03/12/2025 and today is a unique episode because Corina and I are both here chatting, reflecting. We are the guests. We are the hosts. We are the hests. We are the ghosts.
Mariana:I don't know. Is all I can say. And when I'm thinking about locating us in time today, something that I'm noticing within myself actually is that I have been less attentive to the news lately. And it's making me think of some of our conversations recently where we have talked about our self care and just recognize our bodies etc. And I'm realizing that maybe that is why.
Mariana:I'm struggling to say like, oh this is what's going on in our world today specifically because I think I am at a slight place of self protection where I needed a break from that for a moment. I wonder where you're at and if you have some things that you can locate us in time about.
Corina:Well, as you said that I was thinking about how our locations in time mostly because we've started this in and around the election season up till today have had something to do with the election itself, the inauguration and then the deluge of terrifying things coming out from the administration. But now there's like so many that if we were going to talk about that, like how would we even identify which one? So what I could say on the very, very personal level, of trying to reflect on what wild and terrorizing things are happening is, well, I can say maybe similar to you, I've shifted my relationship with media and I've been trying to strategically explore where do I get news and information from sources that feel credible to me and will give me information I need. I'm trying to avoid new sources that are like just going to try to make my body activated which feels like deeply connected to our conversation with Jordan recently. Then on the hyper personal level, I've been just connecting with friends and parents of friends lately.
Corina:It's a beautiful thing to get to know the families of my friends and to get to know my friends in a new and different way through those exchanges. So last weekend I spent chunk of the weekend with a friend and that friend's parents and the weekend before I did the same thing. So that's my location in this moment in time. What about you? What have you been doing?
Mariana:A change in my life in general is having my parents a lot closer than I have in my life in the past six years because they were in a different country and now we're in the same country. And one really exciting thing that happened recently was about a month ago. I went to visit them and it was so great to not have like an agenda or a motive to see each other because usually it's, it's this holiday or it's Christmas or it's somebody's birthday. And so it feels like there's like a rush or there's a pressure on our time together. It's been really rewarding to see some of the shifts in my relationship with my parents in this adult phase of my life to a point where it felt like I was just spending a weekend with like my besties, the people I love, and that's always been true.
Mariana:I've always had a close relationship with them, but it was so nice to just go and like wake up in the morning and take it slowly. And we went on a walk and we had nice food, but there wasn't like a place to go or people to see other than just each other. And I think that that is kind of like a theme locating myself in time lately where have leaned away a little bit from that rush. I think we talked about that in one of the early episodes, maybe with Jeff. The rush of feeling like you have to run from one thing to another, intertwined with perfectionism, and how that was showing up in my relationships for me.
Mariana:And I've felt a lot more at peace lately with just seeing friends and spending time with the people that are important to me a bit more casually or spontaneously without there being an agenda. So that has been a big theme for me at my almost 26 because my birthday is next week and I'm an Aries and I tell everybody about it.
Corina:So it's almost your birthday. What are you going to do for your birthday?
Mariana:Well, within the theme of my parents, they're coming out the day before and I've never gotten to do this because I've never been in The U. S. For my birthday like I usually go to be with my family. And so I made a whole list of all of the freebies around Chicago that you get on your birthday.
Corina:That's so good.
Mariana:Yeah, and I'm gonna drag along my parents with me to get all of the freebies to really like make the most of the consumerism. What's the top freebie? Oh, probably the Sephora stuff.
Corina:Oh, oh my gosh. That's amazing. That's so funny because my oldest child, I'm sure she does know that there's freebies at Sephora. I wouldn't know that, but she definitely would. And that's exactly her kind of vibe.
Mariana:I guess we're both kind of in that theme of connecting with people, which is also the whole point of this podcast. So I wonder how that happened.
Corina:Well, that's a beautiful connection or segue. I wonder what are you noticing about the things that have been sticking with you? You and I have talked a little bit week to week about what the things are that are sticking with you at the end of any one episode, but I wonder overall, what are some of the lessons that are most stuck with you?
Mariana:Overall, the experience is healing my imposter syndrome a lot. Think To hear different people share their perspectives on what their journey in therapy has been like and just how they interact with clients. It has really emphasized that lesson of there's not a right way to be a therapist or do well in this field in a way that I have found myself feeling like a lot more confident in my sessions and on days that I feel like I didn't do as great a job. Maybe like leaning into that lesson from last week of our body sometimes is just in a space where it's zoning out a little bit more, dissociating and that's okay. And it has felt very loving to be able to take care of myself in that way and not necessarily fall into the trap that I think is also quite common coming out of graduate school of like one bad session then taking that to mean that I must be a bad therapist.
Mariana:And I remember talking about that early on briefly with Misty. That sense of like as a new therapist feeling like I had to do this intervention or the other And lately I've just been leaning a lot more into that therapeutic alliance and relationship with my clients and it has felt rewarding to see the positive effects that that has had, for me at least.
Corina:So you and I might only cross paths once or twice a week in person, but I would say I maybe noticed in you pacing out, trusting that things are not urgent and that there's time and space and pacing. So I feel like maybe I've noticed that. How is it to know it's maybe observable by me anyways?
Mariana:I guess that's validating because I think people often highlight the fact that I am running around a lot or there's a sense of urgency in how I behave. It's a neutral statement is what I'll say. To some people maybe it's like you run around too much, but to others maybe it's not as much. And people will get to hear more about this in the Chauzy episode, which I guess will come out before this. But yeah, it's validating for you to notice that because I really gravitate towards people also that have a of calmness in how they face their day to day.
Mariana:And I think that is something that I see in my partner that really balances us out quite well. And so it feels nice to know that like I may be taking on some of those qualities that I internally feel good. And so I hope that it's externalizing in the way that you are saying. So it feels good.
Corina:I would just add that for myself. I think I'm finding myself surprised and delighted by how much this podcast is influencing me and impacting me and both in the conversations and also listening after the fact it's helping me realize how little I download in the moment and how much more happens in the space in between interactions. And then also in this case, because they're recorded, how much I take from listening back to our conversations that we've had with other people. And in a way, it feels like all of them have had this thread of moving away from urgency, moving towards connection, certainly disrupting oppressive systems, but more on this interpersonal level. Just actually yesterday I saw Chazay because we supervised together in the Community program and we were in this play therapy experience that we're having and we got partnered up for it.
Corina:And it was really lovely experience. And there were two things. One, it reminded me of how important play is. To me, that feels connected to this move away from urgency and into the moment. There is so much more possible in my brain when I'm out of the angst of getting things done and into a space of play or curiosity that comes from that.
Corina:And then the second thing that I noticed was Shazeen. I got paired up and we were doing this exercise where you hold a feather in your hand and blow it to each other and the other person catches it. And one, it was fun and funny. Then two, I noticed that I have an impulsive part when I blew it imperfectly and it was close to me that had this impulse to like catch it for myself instead of leaving space and letting ChaZe catch it. And so I noticed myself trying and then back myself away trying to practice slowing myself down and something he said was trust me and it was like so beautiful and lovely but also painful to realize and remember that the urgency can communicate a message of mistrust and I feel like that's something that I learn over and over connected to pacing things out.
Corina:I learned something about the unintended consequences outside of just getting stuff done or moving around the world quickly of moving so fast is that it can communicate that I don't trust people that I totally trust. So I guess that's where my brain took me with this conversation.
Mariana:Well, no, it's so interesting to think about that. As you said that I was thinking about a lot of the times that urgency for me comes from anticipating other people's needs, which I think is so much about people pleasing, which I can't help but think that most of us that become therapists probably have some layer of people pleasing within us that we can heal. And that probably also makes us well suited for this job that like we are so eager to anticipate other people's wants and needs. So it's interesting for you to reflect that part about trust. I often repeat that phrase to myself and to other people that just because we want to take care of somebody doesn't mean that they need our care specifically.
Mariana:And it is interesting to hear you say that like we need to trust also that somebody will tell us they need us in that moment. That Chasse would have said like, Oh no, I'm not going to catch the feather. Corina, do you mind catching it? Instead of you jumping in and being like, Poor Chasse, let me catch this feather for him.
Corina:Exactly, exactly. In my case, like, I did it wrong. Have to fix it or something. So it's this combo of I really resonate with the people pleasing anticipation piece. And then also this perfectionism of like, I didn't blow it just right.
Corina:Let me get it again and blow it again. And it was so funny because in general, was having such a nice time and I did have such a nice time and the exercises were with balloons and feathers and it was fun and light and it didn't feel high stakes. Yet even in the subtleties of things that don't feel high stakes, there's a way that this wanting to do things right can can pull me out of connection. And so I think the podcast is creating all these opportunities to feel grounded in why it's worth it to keep practicing to slow down to center connection over basically everything else and certainly to center even my own connection to myself above other priorities. And I couldn't have known that that would be one of the outputs, but I'm so grateful for it.
Mariana:Yeah. In one of our initial brainstorming conversation, and actually I feel like it continued to be true for a while, our initial thought for this podcast was that we were going to normalize making mistakes. I wonder how you feel like we have continued to showcase that in the conversations versus places where we've strayed away. Just in general, like, what do you think about how that initial goal has shifted?
Corina:Honestly, for me, it still feels like we're really aligned with that goal in many of the different conversations. I can only speak for myself, but in many of the different conversations at one moment or another, there was an opportunity and I felt really excited about sharing ways that I am still learning and mistake. It's the right word, but also an imperfect word. But the reason it's imperfect is because of the cultural baggage, not because it feels incorrect. But what I mean is, for example, that moment yesterday, it feels like a moment where I'm like, Oh, there's something there.
Corina:There's an opportunity to do this differently. And I want to keep leaning towards that other thing, whatever it is, even if I'm not there. And I'm so happy to share about those kinds of moments on this podcast because I think the thing you shared at the beginning of today, which is that the sort of unintended but beautiful benefit of the podcast has been healing around perfectionism. And so I feel like we're doing it just perfectly just by kind of being ourselves having these conversations with these beautiful and wonderful humans that you and I have gotten to know over the years. And it's not even like we have to try that hard.
Corina:It's kind of part of the natural way for me and you to have conversations, or at least that's been my experience thus far. And even yesterday, I started this once monthly group with some of the students from Northwestern. I'm calling developing consciousness and whiteness where we're going to meet once a month to just create space to talk about seeing the waters of whiteness and white supremacy. And what was so touching is I felt this same kind of room with these folks where like it's not about telling each other who's getting it wrong or even getting it just right, but about like helping each other and ourselves see more of what we haven't been taught to see. So I feel like we're doing it perfectly even without trying.
Mariana:That is true that the podcast itself has felt like a corrective experience for that perfectionism. I think about when I started and it felt like this pressure to have the conversations in a specific way or to be releasing the episodes on a specific timeline, etc. And as we've gone through the process of having the conversations, I've felt myself slowly just trust the process, and I found myself slowly leaning away from needing to have that specific agenda or structure for the way that we're doing the podcast. And like, if the biggest thing that comes out of this whole experience is that you and I can heal some of those perfectionist parts, then like fantastic because at least there are two people that are taking something away from this.
Corina:That's right. That's exactly how I've been feeling. I know that people have been listening because people have told me they've been listening, but each time we have a conversation and then record it and then listen to it later, typically at least two or three more times. I find myself thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so grateful this is recorded one because memory is a deeply imperfect thing and that's Okay, but it's really nice to have source material to go back and remember conversations with people that I love and care about and I'm so grateful to be connected to and then two because it has been this beautiful opportunity to get to know you better too. And so I feel the same way.
Corina:Doesn't feel high stakes to think about, you know, will other people listen to it or will anything bigger happen from this? Because that actually really doesn't matter to me for better and worse. That's just true. I just think it's like an adventure for the sake of itself and it's cool to know that it's like touching other people too.
Mariana:Yeah, And something that has been really cool and unique for me is that in some of our conversations I have stepped back a little bit and like allowed myself to just listen in to the conversation. And it's been interesting to learn about you in that way because I don't think we often go through life getting to know people without us being like a direct participant in the conversation sometimes. And so it's cool to even just notice something that I find to be unique about you is that so far I haven't seen you like code switch very much with people. It feels like you're just always the Corina that there's a thread and there's a follow through in between who Corina is with Jeff, who Corina is with Misty, with Humza, etcetera, etcetera. And I wonder, has that always felt true to you?
Mariana:Or is there something over time that has made you trust that you can just be the same person with everybody that you meet?
Corina:Well, first I'll say I too have gotten to know you in new ways by listening. I'm especially thinking about that episode with Shazay where I felt like I had this opportunity to listen in to the piece of the conversation that was more the two of you and I thought, my gosh, this is so lovely and to be unburdened as you said by like thinking about my own contributions and to just soak it up and take it in. Was really cool. I it makes me really happy. I have heard this from people more and more and I think actually even the longer we do the podcast, more settled I am and the more even more congruent or consistent I feel in this space certainly especially with you, but even with other people too.
Corina:But I think it has been an overtime thing and I think part of it is that I'm a little obsessed with the impact of modeling with understanding the impact of power on people around me, people around us and the ways that the power of my role. So in the in this case, like being the person who runs this business and then in my family, being a parent, being a person who has a lot of privilege, I care a lot about that. And so as specifically as the person who runs Live Oak, I care a lot about what my actions suggest about everybody else and the extent to which everybody else gets to be themselves. So for example, as you know, we have what we call live nights and on those live nights, the folks who are attending therapy consent to this in advance and we take turns having our sessions viewed by our colleagues and peers. I remember the very first time I did it and then again when I did it last year, the feedback I got was like, Oh my gosh, Corina, you're the same.
Corina:You know, you're the same person. I was so glad that that came through. And also I think I think a lot about how to make it feel credible to our colleagues and peers that people get to be themselves. And because I relative to our community hold a lot of degrees of privilege based on my identities and experiences in the world. Have come to learn that if I'm not practicing the thing I'm encouraging other people to practice like how credible can it be for folks who experience more degrees of marginalization than me?
Corina:So practice is part of it. But I think it's this value that I have that oddly enough holds me to a standard of accountability around practicing being myself that helps make it important. And my brain is one that responds to what is important to me. And so it's important to me that other people think it's credible that they get to just be themselves as therapists and as humans in this community to the extent that it's possible while trying to survive and capitalism. And so I think that's really helped me.
Corina:And then I think I've learned more and more about who I am. I'm sure I'll be figuring it out forever. But being at Live Oak, I've learned more and more about who I am. And oddly enough, I think that people in my life who are not my colleagues will learn more about me by listening to this podcast than they knew outside of this, which is this funny interesting thing.
Mariana:Live Oak Chicago is a primarily queer trauma informed therapy practice located on the North Side Of Chicago, offering both in person and virtual therapy, consultation and workshops. We are committed to the practice of becoming a model of a community of diversely identified humans working together to transform the emotional, psychological, and spiritual well-being of individuals, families, and communities, beginning with ourselves. To access therapy, training, or consultation, please visit www.liveoakchicago.com.
Mariana:My follow-up within that is related maybe to something we were talking about a little bit before. And it's as I'm hearing you reflect on the different places that you're in right now in your life as a mom and as the boss here at Live Oak, did you imagine yourself being at a point in your life where you would be like navigating so many positions of power? Did you imagine yourself being a boss?
Corina:No, not at all. I didn't. I was fine in school as a young person, but within my family I was probably the least driven towards academic success. And by that, like, I mean, like getting the highest grades. I did well, and that was the way I would say it now.
Corina:I don't know if this was true back then, but the way I would say it now is like, was fine. Good enough. And I am perfectly comfortable with that in retrospect. In fact, I think in some ways the way that my family understood me was that I was doing my best and I got these like pretty good decent grades. And so in some ways I think I had less stress and pressure put on me because the idea was I was doing my best versus my siblings who were much more like skillful and academically oriented did better, but I think also felt way more pressure than I did.
Corina:And so I didn't at all imagine myself being anybody's boss, maybe a supervisor in some capacity. And that's interesting because from the first job I had, was as a busser in a restaurant cleaning tables and then I became a hostess and then I became a server and basically every job I've ever had. Have had opportunities to move towards some degrees of management in a group home I worked at. I got to become the like program manager, so I got to like plan activities and stuff like that. So I'm certain that there are degrees of privilege that inform why that was the case.
Corina:And then also some aspects of my personality that inform why that was the case. But it's interesting because in spite of that, I still wasn't imagining myself as running a business in particular ever. And so I think it was a surprise to myself and everybody else that I ended up down this path. And I think there's a lot of things that are true about why I ended up running live o and some of them are my sense of loyalty and responsibility. This is a business that care a lot about the people here I care a lot about and I wanted to do well by the people who work here.
Corina:I think some of them have to do with my people pleasing tendencies. Think I believe that I have some like strengths around organization and that like helped me feel up for it. Honestly, I think my ADHD also helped me feel like not too burdened by the responsibility and there's something about the adventure of not knowing that also made it feel like sure. Let's you kind of see for better and worse I would say, but I definitely didn't expect it. But I think some of the ways that I wasn't expecting to be in this role actually make me better suited for it at this particular company.
Corina:To my memory. Wasn't ever like I need to be the person who does this thing. It's got to be this and I see other people who are sort of driven in that direction and it can be easy to lose track of relationships along the way. And I am also vulnerable to that because of capitalism. But I think my ADHD, my particular brain and my personality and not seeing my success as a business person as like an indicator of my value all help me be in some ways more suited to this year than maybe other people.
Mariana:Yeah, I would absolutely agree with a lot of what you're saying. Probably one of the qualities that makes you into a leader that feels very connected, or at least that I experience you as like very connected to the people around you is that it was never the pursuit of power that got you to this point, which I think is maybe what gets people into tricky situations of using that power in a negative way. And that's not a blank true statement, but I think people that are jumping up to positions of power do have to be careful to assess their intentions behind it. It is great to hear that so much of your intention behind it was just to use some of those strengths that you do have and that you're able to acknowledge to support the community and their goals. And it wasn't necessarily from a place of I am going to be the boss and that is going to get me more of this and more of that, and I'm going to get to make decisions.
Mariana:But instead, from that place of, how can I make the most of the skills that I do have to support the community? And I think I sometimes struggle with navigating how I feel about those leadership positions in my own life because I come from a family of yappers, a family of talkers. All of my uncles and my dad on my dad's side of the family, it's three men, and all of their jobs revolve around some form of talking to a crowd. And I would say that I very much bring those strengths in my own life. They have been passed down to me.
Mariana:I don't think I get very nervous having to lead conversations or talking to a group, etc. I feel very lucky that that feels like a relatively grounded space for me. And so I feel like over time I have in a similar way kind of found myself taking on positions that require some form of public speaking, which at times can appear to the world as like a leadership thing. And the reality is that sometimes the thought of that makes me feel overwhelmed. I think of your position and I'm like, Oh, I probably have some skills in my pocket that could allow me to be setting up meetings and things like that or be managing some of the back end work.
Mariana:And just because I have the skills, I don't know if I would want to do that. And I often get caught in that part of almost like sliding into a position of leadership because people around me are telling me that I have a certain skill for it. And I'm curious how you negotiated knowing that you had some of those skills, also that people pleasing maybe within you, to finally arriving to a place where you decided to take on this rather than just sliding into it because you had some of the skills for it.
Corina:I really honor that you've got this consciousness about that because I really think that that has had a lot to do with many of my areas of role development, especially up to coming to Live Oak because many of the times that I ended up taking leadership roles, it was based on other people encouraging me to lean into a leadership role. And that's not all bad, but it does mean it wasn't always grounded in my own sense of interest or desire. It's a privilege to have the opportunity to make those choices. But something I've learned over time is that if I said, with the great fortune that I have had, I have a lot of options. And that if I say yes to all the interest, and honestly, even all the interesting sounding options, I would burn myself out because time is limited and it's such an honor to have that many choices.
Corina:I have had to learn to practice and it really for me is a practice to practice saying no to things even things that are really really interesting to me because they will come at the expense of something else. And that's something I've been practicing for the last several years is trying to slow down enough to say to myself, Okay, if I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? Even on the micro level. So like if I say yes to taking on a new person coming in for therapy, what does that going to mean about my time commitment over the next six months to a year or so? But when it comes to choosing into running Live Oak, I don't think it's all clean.
Corina:Yeah, it was partly because it was very interesting to me and my ADHD being such that I wasn't totally freaked out by it. It was novel enough and interesting enough, and I felt connected certainly to the community. And I did feel deeply connected to the idea of helping this become something that's sustainable beyond any one person. That's like something I can deeply I feel deeply connected to. I think my people pleasing and saviory tendencies were totally also bound up in that decision.
Corina:Looking back now, there were many people who could have done this. Something I will say that I was well, I do feel like I was well suited for. I have been a surrogate, so I've carried babies for other people after I had my own children. And most recently I carried babies for a very good friend. And that experience helps me give a metaphor for how I think about the role that I've had at Live Oak.
Corina:And I do think my strengths are really well suited to help gestate this organization from something to something. And so the from was from what had started as a very small private practice and built and grown into a community of folks, but was still very much a business largely with an administrative team and then therapists into what it is now and is becoming a community of folks taking on varying degrees of responsibility for like managing this institution that it is into what we are considering moving towards, which is a community owned co op. And we're like on the path of exploring that. And I don't know exactly where that will lead. But I do feel like I have some strengths in not being too attached to what a thing is or what it might be.
Corina:I don't feel like I need to know exactly what it's going to become. So I think I had some strengths, but I think some of my own healing work has brought me to a much more grounded place around how I think about my role now versus I really do think there were some saviory tendencies in the reasons I chose to take this on. Not only that, but definitely also that.
Mariana:But things that you have continually questioned through your process of being a leader, which has probably impacted all the ways that Live Oak has changed and shifted from when you first started in this position till now, which is so important. Totally.
Corina:And the learning for me here has been this like multidirectional thing. I really feel like I get to learn from everybody here from my supervisees, from my colleagues, from my peers. This year, a collection of humans here helped us really like step up our game when it comes to health risk mitigation processes. And that's stuff that can only happen because of the brains of the people who are here. Like my brain wouldn't do that by itself.
Corina:Happens in community and I hope and I believe that there are some things that I do that also go the other direction and lead other people to get to learn some stuff from me too.
Mariana:Yeah, and I think that is one of the big strengths of being in this group practice that all of us have such unique lived experiences just naturally by the fact that we are all unique and our intersecting identities make us each who we are. And I have grown to really appreciate and value. I feel like I'm being shaped as a therapist in consideration of all of the identities of the people that we exist in community with at Live Oak. I think that to be true, just in general about being in community with our world, know, that I value so much learning from other people, from their professional experiences, from their lived experiences that like I can't imagine who I'd be if I was just working off of the blank slate of who Mariana is with her own experiences that I think is so unique as compared to maybe somebody that goes into private practice on their own just off the bat from grad school, which has its own strengths. I think that there's people that are very suited for it.
Mariana:And I know that there was a lot of learning that I still wanted to do coming off of grad school that I think has just inherently come from just sitting in our staff meetings and our community meetings and hearing about how people are navigating being a therapist their own way and from our conversations with our guests on this podcast, which I am so grateful for.
Corina:Yeah, no, I really, really resonate. I will admit I have a bias about going into solo practice too soon. Will say because something I learn over and over at Live Oak is that being in community helps keep me reflecting on my own biases. So in this case, this is one of them, but that crossing paths with people talking about the work we do helps me see the limits to my view. It helps me see how I'm stuck.
Corina:And I think that my perception in being in community with people in solo practice is that one of the biggest challenges is keeping perspective and that the folks who've done it best are folks who have like a lot of connections to community. And I think people can build that outside of can build community outside of being a therapist. But building a community of therapists who can like tag team with you to say like how would you approach X situation? Not to find the right answer, but to just notice what are the limits of my thinking? So I really, really resonate with what you're saying.
Corina:I don't know who I would be if I'd grown up in a context where I was more on my own, but I know that I have is this from Wicked? I've been changed for the better. I can guarantee I've been changed for the better by being in this community. I was raised with so many biases that turn out to have nothing to do with the reality of what it is to be in any one kind of human experience and being at Live Oak has helped me to understand that.
Mariana:Just so you know, my theater kid brain immediately just started singing. So I'm not sure what you said in the last sentence. That's fine.
Corina:We can sing together.
Mariana:I very much identify with some parts of the character Jess from New Girl. I don't know if you've seen it. She just bursts out into song whenever people say a specific phrase. It was funny that moment to just realize that like I do that so often. Oh my gosh.
Mariana:Sometimes when my clients say something like, I got the best of both worlds and my brain is just randomly singing Hannah Montana, which is not helpful.
Corina:I would not be mad if we started to join in song. We'll know we've really arrived when we start singing together. We're gonna
Mariana:lose some listeners and gain others.
Corina:And gain others who want to listen to us. Hannah Montana and Wicked.
Mariana:I wonder if staying within some of the frameworks that we've been using in our past conversations, if we can take a moment to sort of reflect on some of our learnings today.
Corina:That's great. You know what? One of our colleagues, Lucy, actually told me that she really loves it and appreciates when you Mariana have been doing kind of summary at the end. So I'd be happy to do that. I can say for myself one of the take homes I've got from today for me is the power of getting to learn in community and power of maybe for me, of not being afraid to let our lessons mistakes, be part of the communal understanding to not be afraid to let that be seen by other people.
Mariana:How about you? I am not wanting this conversation to end is one big thing. Know the same thing. I'm taking away from this. I'm like, oh, this feels like so nice, that's so easy.
Mariana:I'm learning so much about Corina today more than I already have that it's just reminding me of what we're talking about almost of like that constant evolution, not only of self, but also of relationships. Like you talked a little bit about the ways that you have over time changed your connection with different power positions, your growth in some of those biases, etc. You've been evolving and as you've been evolving I imagine relationships have as well and I'm feeling that's even between us right now. That sense of probably some of the pre conversations we've had to this have brought us to this point where today is feeling really easy and connected and I'm feeling really excited to continue learning more about you, learn more about myself. That feels like a takeaway today that like the ever changing learning process about ourselves and other people and how beautiful it can be to accept change as something positive and not just like something scary as it often feels.
Corina:This is so great Mariana. I really really loved it and I knew we had some ideas, but I didn't know where we would go and I love where it
Mariana:Me too. Thank you so much Corina for the conversation as always and I will see you soon. Sounds good.
Corina:Oh, almost knocked over my microphone. See you.
Mariana:Bye. Bye.