What happens when the person across the table knows a little too much about attachment styles and red flags? On this episode of F* Them Coping Skills, Anne turns the questions on her co-host Varayna to find out what it's really like to be single and dating as a therapist. Varayna opens up about why telling a date what she does for a living changes the energy of the conversation, why being "genuinely curious" gets mistaken for "therapist mode," and how seeing the long-term outcome of unhealthy dynamics in session shapes what she will and won't accept in her own relationships.

Anne also asks about the vulnerability of being a searchable professional while trying to stay private on dating apps, why capacity and reciprocity matter so much when you hold space for others all day, and whether Varayna feels optimistic about dating (spoiler: over the long haul, yes, just maybe not in the near future). Plus, a house-building analogy that captures the heartbreak of two people wanting the same thing but bringing different tools, and Anne's story of a surprisingly effective New York City pickup line from back in the day.

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This week Varayna interviews Anne, a mom of two (ages 7 and 4) who also runs a private therapy practice and a coworking space for therapists. They dig into what it really looks like to raise kids who stay true to themselves in a world that's constantly trying to socialize that out of them — especially when it comes to gender, sleep, screen time, and food.

They talk through the difference between gentle parenting and permissive parenting (spoiler: they're not the same thing), why co-sleeping worked for one kid and not the other, the guilt of not packing lunches, and why letting a four-year-old mix split pea soup with chips and water might actually be a parenting win. Along the way: the anxiety of raising a son inside the patriarchy, why kids deserve more respect in public than they usually get, and the "worst parenting advice" both hosts have ever received.

Welcome to F* Them Coping Skills. In our very first episode, we throw out the outline we prepared and figure out what this podcast is actually going to be — in real time.

Varayna and Anne introduce themselves, walk through the winding professional paths that brought them to private practice in Atlanta, and get into the why behind starting this show: a shared conviction that a lot of the conventional wisdom therapists are trained to hand out isn't built for the world we're actually living in.

Consider this the pilot. The mission statement. The permission slip.