The Journey Towards Becoming A Mental Health Professional

My name is Syrena and I am a recent Mental Health Counseling graduate. I graduated with a masters in Counseling from Syracuse University this year and I learned so much valuable information that I know I wouldn't have if I wasn't in the program. I want to share what I have learned and what I am still learning with as many people as possible. I have also realized that there is no right or wrong way to do mental health and there needs to be more empathy and understanding of this. I hope by me sharing my educational learnings of theories/active listening tools/etc., personal examples, examples with clients and much more that I can show people that they are not alone in their struggles because counselors are not perfect either. My listeners are people interested in connecting with themselves and others in a deeper way than we are comfortable with. I love to learn about a range of things that will help me be the best version of myself and I hope my listeners share this interest.

As I said in the previous questions I started my podcast because I wanted to share the valuable information I have learned in school. I also am a shy and socially anxious person and this was a way for me to challenge myself with things I was uncomfortable with, sharing who I am with others. I hoped that I could be a model for others to learn from and a podcast was a great tool to utilize. I love podcasts and listening to them when I get ready in the morning and just whenever I have free time, but there are weeks were I listen to podcasts everyday and weeks where I prefer music. It was actually during a week where I was listening to a lot of podcasts that I decided to jump into making my own. I thought of the idea the first class I had at Syracuse in the counseling program but I didn't commit to it until this past summer. I was finishing my program, staying motivated with all the podcasts I was listening to and had more free time. It took me a week to release my first episode, but that one was easy. the episodes that came after were more challenging for me. My first episode is just me introducing who I am and after that I just never know if what I am talking about is what people want to hear about.

I try to release two episodes a week. The first episode is the main episode for that week and the second is supposed to be a shorter episode where I walk through an activity with the listener that is related to what we talked about in the first episode. There are some weeks I get both out on schedule but other times where I have no idea what I want to talk about so it holds me up a day or two. I do everything myself so I have read a lot about how to produce a podcast online and it helped a lot. I am still looking for a job so I have more time than most people do to record. The editing is the what takes longest for me because I sometimes talk in circles and have to rerecord or I say "um" ,"and" and "but" so much that it gets annoying. I try to keep my episodes as candid as possible but sometimes I have to cut a lot of those words out. But I can usually record for up to 2 hours and have that released within an hour to 2 hours after. I pay for everything myself as of now but I do get a very small commission from the listeners listening to an add at the beginning of each episode. I spent $50 on my microphone and that is about it. I have not paid for advertising or anything else.

I am interested in taking sponsorships but I have non at this time. I would love to record my podcast as a career but at this point I am not able to. As of now my podcast benefits me in a variety of ways. Other than some financial benefits, I am broadening my understanding of how to produce a podcast, write episode content, edit, etc. I am also in the process of interviewing a couple of guests for future episodes and that has brought great connections with different people. I also get a great deal of happiness from people listening to my episodes and that feels good.

I use a dynamic microphone I bought off Amazon to record my podcast episodes and I hook that up to my laptop. I record and edit in garageband on my laptop. I also get my music from purple-planet.com. I have found guests from people reaching out after seeing on my site that I am looking for guests and I have friends I think would be great for the podcast. So a mix of other people reaching out and me reaching out. As of now I interview each guest view Zoom. I usually write down points I want to hit on a document and read off of that when I record but I try to add in some extra context or examples to keep it from being too robotic. But sometimes I don't have anything written out and I just talk it out. But I usually know what I am talking about before each recording and have examples I want to give to the listener.

I tried to upload my podcast to as many platforms as possible and advertise it on my Instagram I recently advertised it on my Facebook for different people to see. 48%-spotify, 15%- apple, 14%-podbean, 5%-overcast, 18%- other

Make sure you look up information about music because that was the trickiest part for me. You can produce your podcast with not a lot of money but there are limitations to what music you can get or quality recording tools. I tried to take inspiration from the podcast My Favorite Murder because they are casual in their recordings and genuine. But I also take inspiration from Mind Pump in how they deliver their information to their audience. Depending on what your message is on your podcast or each episode your approach to how you record and deliver your information will change. Just be true to who you are.

instagram.com/syrenamichele/?hl=en,  

theseshwithsyrenamichele@gmail.com, 

open.spotify.com/show/60QnjzArn9p8V4NqOfVYi6?si=HCglhh3MR6-wD_AeP29AGQ