When I started Normalize the Conversation, I wanted to engage in conversations that would help me better understand my own mental health. I decided the best way to learn was by listening to other people. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how much my own experiences shaped my perspective on what treatment and recovery should look like.
Over the past six years, I have spoken with over 280 mental health professionals, researchers, advocates, authors, people with lived experience, and people who simply had a story they wanted to share. I’ve had conversations with people from Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, India, Australia, and so many places in between. I’ve talked about diagnoses, medications, therapy modalities, trauma, grief, relationships, racism, culture, systemic barriers, treatment practices, holistic approaches, advocacy, and the things we still don’t know enough about.
The biggest lesson? Mental health affects all of us AND none of us experience it in exactly the same way.
Following my experience in the psych unit, I understood mental health much more like a checklist. The nurses walked around with a clipboard and checklist every day to rank your mental and emotional status for the doctor to determine that you had to take an antidepressant, and you were not allowed to leave yet. You had certain symptoms, you fit into a diagnosis, and then you figured out how to treat it. It was three easy steps that meant if I was feeling sad and hopeless, I needed medication, and I’d feel better. And that was the standard across the board for every human struggling.
The more people I’ve spoken with, the more I’ve realized how individualized the human experience actually is. Two people can have the same diagnosis and have completely different experiences, perspectives, needs, resources, relationships, and environments. Where someone lives, how they were raised, their culture, access to education and healthcare, their relationships, their socioeconomic circumstances, and the systems around them can all shape what mental health looks like for that person.
Mental health exists on a continuum, and our experience of it can change throughout our lives.
Over the past 6 years, I’ve been privileged to learn how much I don’t know I don’t know. It has also been a challenging thing to discover, because the more conversations I have, the more my perspective shifts and a deeper understanding forms. 290 conversations later, and I’m still learning and unlearning.
One of my favorite parts of hosting this podcast is realizing how many questions I never thought to ask.
I didn’t know how many questions I could ask a clinical pharmacist. I didn’t always know what to look for when finding a therapist or what questions could help me determine whether someone was actually the right fit for me. I hadn’t fully considered how treatment practices have been shaped by history, how racism has influenced mental health experiences, or how a lack of education and access can affect whether someone ever receives the support they need.
Then there are the conversations that introduce me to approaches I had never considered before—different therapeutic modalities, medications, holistic practices, advocacy models, and ways of understanding ourselves that challenge what I thought I knew.
That has taught me something important: not knowing something isn’t a failure. Staying unwilling to learn is the problem. It’s avoiding the hard conversations and refusing to have your privilege brought to the surface in those conversations.
The thing I’ve learned most is how much I want to continue approaching life with curiosity in both my own mental health and other individuals’ experiences. The world changes the way you understand mental health, because again, your experiences shape your perspective.
Talking with people from around the world has made it impossible for me to think about mental health without thinking about context.
Tyler Merritt’s conversation about being Black in America showed me how racism and lived experience can shape mental health in ways that cannot be separated from the larger world around us. I never considered the fear of being pulled over for speeding or seeing someone develop fear of me just for walking on the same sidewalk.
Tiffany Yu helped me think differently about disability and ableism. I never considered the feeling of isolation that can come from a restaurant not having wheelchair accessible tables. Dr. Hortencia Jimenez opened conversations around diet culture, oppression, and intuitive eating. Rooshan Alam’s conversation brought me into discussions about grief, misinformation, misogyny, and what it can cost someone to speak publicly about mental health in Pakistan.
These conversations don’t give me one universal answer about mental health. They do something much more valuable: they make me question the assumption that my experience is the default.
There are things we share across cultures and communities, and there are also experiences I will never fully understand because they aren’t mine. We can recognize our common humanity while respecting the differences that shape each person’s story.
I’ve learned that expertise and lived experience belong in the same conversation.
I have enormous respect for clinical training, research, and professional expertise, as I did complete a masters in clinical psychology. At the same time, I’ve learned that expertise should never erase the knowledge someone has about their own life. The person living in their mind and body every day has information no textbook can provide.
Some of my favorite conversations have happened when professional knowledge and lived experience were allowed to inform each other rather than compete.
Dr. David Susman’s conversations around psychiatric care and the recovery model challenged me to believe there is such a thing as a positive experience in a psychiatric treatment facility. Other guests have helped me understand medications, therapy, neuroscience, relationships, trauma, and countless other pieces of mental health.
Then someone with lived experience will tell me what it actually felt like to sit on the other side of that diagnosis, treatment room, medication, or system.
I’ve personally experienced both perspectives, and it shapes my understanding of what both sides can get wrong when there is a lack of communication, resulting in misunderstanding. I need both perspectives so that I can continue to learn, and so can my listeners.
I’ve stopped thinking of mental health as something we eventually “solve.”
This might be one of the biggest shifts in my thinking. When I started these conversations at 21 years old, I believed (let’s be honest, I hoped) mental health was something you eventually figured out. You struggled, learned the right tools, got better, and then moved on.
Now I see it differently. Mental health is something we continually learn how to navigate. It’s something I’m still learning to navigate with the help of new conversations, treatment plans, and life experiences.
There are seasons when we feel strong and seasons when we need more support. There are things that work for us at one point in our lives that might not work forever. Sometimes we outgrow coping mechanisms. Sometimes we discover new ones. Sometimes we need professional support. Sometimes we need community. Sometimes we need rest.
None of that means we failed. It means we’re human, and as humans, we continually grow and evolve.
Knowing something and knowing how to use it are completely different.
This realization has influenced almost everything I create outside of the podcast:
Someone can understand that self-care is important and still have no idea what self-care looks like when they are completely exhausted.
Someone can understand what a boundary is and still freeze when it’s time to actually communicate one.
Someone can know they shouldn’t believe every negative thought and still find themselves spiraling at 2 a.m.
Someone can understand that asking for help is important and still have absolutely no idea how to say, “I’m struggling.”
Information matters, and information alone isn’t always enough.
That’s why I’ve become much more interested in creating tools that help people practice what they know rather than simply learn another concept. And making sure every conversation contains practical tools for the listeners to walk away with something new.
Every conversation has taught me something about connection.
No matter how different two people’s stories are, I keep coming back to the same fundamental human needs: we want to be heard, understood, respected, and reminded that we matter.
Sometimes that happens through therapy. Sometimes it happens through a conversation with a friend. Sometimes it happens because someone asks a better question. Sometimes it happens because someone finally says, “I’m here.” And sometimes it happens because someone hears another person’s story and realizes, Oh. I’m not the only one.
That is why I believe so strongly in normalizing these conversations.
The podcast exists because I don’t think we should have to wait until someone is in crisis to talk about mental health. We should be able to talk about it when we’re doing well, when we’re confused, when we’re learning, when we’re struggling, and when we simply want to understand ourselves better.
I’m still learning.
The funny thing about hosting 290 conversations is that I probably have more questions now than I did when I started.
I’ve learned about things I didn’t know existed. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve had my assumptions challenged. I’ve heard stories that made me uncomfortable. I’ve heard stories that made me feel deeply understood. I’ve learned things I wish I had known years ago.
You can often hear me learning in real time. That’s one of my favorite parts. I’m not pretending to have all the answers. I’m listening with the audience, asking the questions we all have, and having my entire perspective shift with one sentence. I’m sitting across from another human being and asking, Tell me more.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is: There is always more to learn about mental health because there is always more to learn about people.
I want to keep asking better questions. I want to keep listening to voices that are different from mine. I want to keep learning about what is working, what isn’t, where systems are failing people, where people are finding hope, and what we can do differently.
Every conversation changes the way I understand the next one.
And after 290 episodes, I don’t think I’m anywhere close to done learning. If anything, I’m more curious than ever. For now, Normalize The Conversation will be on pause, but that doesn’t mean the conversations have to stop. With nearly 300 episodes in our library, there is still so much to explore.
I’ve organized popular past episodes by topic to make it easier to find conversations that interest you, whether it’s anxiety, depression, trauma, relationships, addiction, neurodiversity, treatment approaches, or hearing directly from people with lived experience. You can explore a topic you’re curious about, revisit a conversation that resonated with you, or discover a perspective you may never have considered before.
I hope you’ll continue exploring these conversations while the podcast is on pause. There is plenty to left to learn, and you never know which conversation might introduce you to something that changes the way you see yourself or someone else.
Until the conversations resume, please remember: the more we listen, the more we realize how much there is to understand.
