I’m Diana Gasperoni, and I’m the host of BeREAL. I’m super excited for our second episode today. Today I have the BeREAL team in the house, which is super exciting. I have Ednesha Saulsbury. She’s a psychotherapist. She works with us at Be Well Psychotherapy. She also has a program that she’s going to talk about... which supports black women. 

Then we have Divya Robbin, who is soon to be on the clinical side at Be Well, but does all the support for me, personally. She does tech support, admin support and she is in charge of all the social media. She is getting ready to sit on the clinical side. Today we’re going to talk about what psychotherapy is. Ladies, I’m going to ask you both. We’ll have Ednesha start first. Why does talking help? What is psychotherapy? What is it? 

Ednesha says, “I think it’s interesting because when I think about psychotherapy, it’s all about awareness. It’s a place to talk through or work through not just problems (which I also think is a misconception), but all questions you have about your thinking habits, your feelings, understanding others, and how other people experience you or you experience them. One big thing is, I definitely feel that it’s a place to build compassion for yourself as well as others, but more importantly for yourself. I think we can be harder on ourselves than anyone else can be on us. Sometimes it’s just about having that time and that space to explore being empathetic, being compassionate, being accepting of ourselves. When I view psychotherapy, that’s how I view it. Building awareness.” 

Divya says, “For me, psychotherapy is such a wonderful place for people to take a step back. We live, so often, on autopilot. We’re moving, thinking and feeling in ways that we’re not really acknowledging. Psychotherapy is a great place to sit and acknowledge our experiences, acknowledge our thoughts that are day-to-day, look back at our relationships to bring awareness to that. When we’re on the go so much, we don’t have a lot of awareness. Psychotherapy is a great place to do that. While we’re doing that, we can improve our relationships, improve our thoughts, and start to form more positive coping strategies. That is a wonderful way just to give yourself the ability to do that. That’s what to me psychotherapy is.”

Diana says, “So we get to sit back and look at who we are in the world. I’m my own biggest critic. What is about talking that’s important?”

Ednesha says, “For some of us, talking is foreign. Maybe it wasn’t engaging. People didn’t talk about themselves…” It’s important to get those ideas out, and also have someone who will listen.” 

Divya says, “It’s important to have that space.” Instead of holding that within ourselves, causing anxious thoughts, it’s important to have an outlet… She says that there’s not enough education. You should feel open to talk, with those thoughts and feelings being accepted. 

It’s like ping-pong, throwing the ball against the wall and see what bounces back. Ednesha says that it’s a way to gain understanding. 

It’s like a petri-dish, an experiment. You get to try different things to see what works in the real world. 

Communicating can be harder when technology comes into the room. We communicate differently, particularly the younger generation. Divya talks about how she helps students develop skills in their own relationships and put them into practice. 

Diana talks about how people go to therapy for a number of reasons. Then, when they get there, they don’t want to talk. 

Ednesha talks about how we’re conditioned to talk about relationships and communication. 

Divya says that there’s a feeling of guilt. There may be cultural barriers as part of the transition. It may feel uncomfortable, but they can build an alliance.