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Welcome back to the Said in Therapy Podcast, where we discuss everything psychology, sometimes serious, sometimes with a funny twist, and talk about the stuff most people only admit to their therapist.
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I'm your host, Iman Tohami.
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I'm a therapist with more than 15 years' experience talking to people on a daily basis.
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And today we are talking about self-help, the industry, the books, the influencers, the vision boards, the affirmations, and the mirror.
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We are asking the question nobody wants to ask.
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What if it's all a scam?
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Now, before you leave because you think it's a boring topic and you go back to your morning routine journaling or whatever, hear me out.
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Because I'm not saying growth isn't real.
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I'm not saying therapy doesn't work.
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And I'm not saying the industry doesn't have some good aspects.
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I am saying the industry that sells you the idea of self-improvement might actually be designed to keep you stuck.
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And I think that's worth a conversation.
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So let's get into it.
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Okay, so let me paint a picture for you.
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Let's say it's Sunday evening and you feel that familiar anxiety, right?
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And the week ahead, you don't really want to think about, so you open your phone and you see a reel of someone standing in a minimalist apartment or whatever, golden hour light, and they say, six habits that changed your life.
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Sorry, six habits that changed my life.
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These are the things I changed to become rich.
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And something in you thinks, maybe it's time.
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Hey, listen, I want to tell you that I fell into that trap.
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So it's not only you, right?
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That's the genius of self-help.
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It meets you exactly at your most confusing and painful moments.
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The moments where you need real help and it says, I have the answer.
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Here's the book, here is the course, here is the challenge, here is the boot camp, the system, just follow the steps.
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But here is the question I want you to think about for a little bit.
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How many steps have you followed?
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How many books have you finished?
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How many January 1st have you started a new framework?
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And where are you now?
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I'm not asking
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to shame you.
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I'm asking because I think the answer reveals something uncomfortable about the model itself.
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The self-help industry is worth, depending on which report you look at, somewhere between$10 and$40 billion globally.
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Let that sink in.
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That's an industry with a serious financial interest and you never quite getting there.
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Think about how it works.
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If a book actually solved all your problems, you would never buy it again.
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You would be done.
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And that's not what happens.
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You finish, for example, Atomic Habits.
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Okay, wait a second.
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Listen, actually I think it was a good book, okay?
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But then what happens?
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You feel inspired for two weeks, then life happens, the habits slip.
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Let's be honest, they don't stick around for a long time.
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And six months later, I don't know, you're buying a new book.
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Bootcamp or masterclass that you have seen on Instagram, and you pay$27 for it, or$100, or whatever the price tag is.
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Each product implies that the last one wasn't quite enough.
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And the message underneath is always the same.
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You're broken, we can fix you for a price.
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That's really not wellness.
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That's a subscription model built on your insecurity.
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I know that hurts, but this is something that I had to tell myself as well.
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This was a serious conversation when I started looking into different ways to broaden my own brand, if you will.
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And I'm not very business savvy.
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So I took all the courses, but when I looked at it and sat with myself for a while, after spending a lot of money, I actually realized no, this is not how it works, this is not helpful.
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All the information I'm getting from these books or courses or masterclasses or whatever is something that I could have found by doing some simple research.
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Now, here is why I want to bring in therapy.
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Because I think it exposes exactly what self-help gets wrong.
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In a real therapy session or in a real therapeutic work setting, whether that's CBT, psychodynamics, somatic, whatever modality, the goal is never to add more habits to a broken system.
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The goal is to understand the system.
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To ask why do I keep doing the things that I don't want to do?
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Why do I sabotage?
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Why does progress feel so threatening?
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What am I actually afraid of?
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Those are not questions self-help wants you asking.
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Because if you really answered them, you might not need the next book anymore.
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Self-help says do more, be more, optimize more.
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Therapy says slow down, look at why you keep running.
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One of those is very comfortable because it just forgets about everything else.
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It just wants you to build something new, but building something new on top of something rotten will ultimately just break down.
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And the other one, which is usually therapy, is very confronting and it's painful to go through it.
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While one wants to make millions of you, the other one forces you to look at your life and yourself and to find out what actually the problem is.
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Now I want to specifically talk about productivity culture for a second, because I think it's one of the most ridiculous corners of self-help.
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There is this idea that if you just structure your time perfectly, time block your calendar, do deep work, eat a frog, protect your mornings, I don't know.
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You will finally become the person you want to be.
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And look, I'm not against structure and routine.
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Routine actually calms your mind and your nervous system.
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Structure can be really helpful.
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But ask yourself this why are you so desperate to be productive?
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Because more often than not, when I sit with that question with myself or my clients, what comes up is fear.
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Fear of being worthless.
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Fear that is, I don't know, if I'm not producing, I have no value.
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This is what the world was feeding you.
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The fear that rest is laziness.
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The fear that slowing down means you're falling behind.
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And no productivity system addresses that fear.
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It gives you a new outfit, nothing else.
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You can have the most optimized calendar in the world and still feel completely empty at the end of the day.
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And when that happens, self-help is the answer for what you shouldn't do.
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Self-help always wants you to say, I need you to do better.
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The answer self-help offers is you need a better system.
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Not maybe the system isn't the problem.
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Maybe there is something else.
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Here's another thing that bothers me about traditional self-help.
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It's almost aggressively individualistic.
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It's all about your habits, your mindset, your discipline, your morning routine, whatever.
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The implicit message is if your life isn't where you want to be, it's a you problem.
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Do better, work harder, think longer, believe more.
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But what about the external conditions people live in?
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What about the systemic barriers, the generational trauma, the economic pressure, the communities people are raised in?
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What about the fact that some people are starting from harder places and telling them to journal their way out of it?
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It just doesn't help.
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It's not helpful.
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It's actually brutal and cruel.
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Real therapy acknowledges contexts.
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It says, of course you responded this way.
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And here is the situation you lived.
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Understand where you're coming from to understand who you are today.
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Self-help too often says winners find a way regardless.
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But honestly, that's not empowerment.
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That's playing dressed up as inspiration.
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Okay, I don't want to just bash everything without offering something real, some type of solution that you can that you could use and build on.
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Because I do believe change is possible.
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And I have seen it over and over again.
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I have seen it in therapy rooms, in honest conversations, in my own life, in people who do the actual work.
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So what is it that actually works?
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Number one, relationships over content.
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The research on this is pretty consistent.
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Human connection is one of the most powerful agents of change we have.
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Not a book, not a course.
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A person who sees you and stays.
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Therapy works in large part because of the therapy relationship between the therapist and the client, not the techniques.
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Number two, understanding before action.
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Before you try to change a behavior, try to understand it.
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What function does it serve?
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What was it protecting you from?
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When you know that change becomes possible, because willpower alone doesn't do the work.
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It achieves nothing without understanding.
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Number three, tolerating discomfort instead of optimizing the way out of it.
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Guys, this is extremely important.
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We live in a society that doesn't like uncomfortable situations.
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Discomfort is the number one enemy of our generation.
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This is why we spend so much time scrolling and not thinking and feeling.
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Growth is uncomfortable.
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And the self-help industry often promises a smooth path.
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And that trust me, just trust me, that doesn't exist.
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There is no smooth path to growth.
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There isn't.
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The real work involves sitting with hard feelings, not hacking your way past them.
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Number four, community and accountability.
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Listen, it's not about the influencer you follow.
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Of course you might like influencers.
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You know, I follow them too.
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Actual humans in your actual life who know your actual situation.
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This is irreplaceable.
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I think you all might ask me for a conclusion now, or you know, some type of reflection.
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Is self-help really a scam?
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Okay, listen, here is where I end.
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The content isn't always the problem.
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Actually, there are a few things that I really like about the books that I read from that industry or from that corner of the internet or the the books world.
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And I'm an I'm a very fast reader, so trust me, I have read quite a few books.
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Some books carry really useful ideas.
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Some frameworks do help people orient themselves around it.
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And I think this is also important.
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I cannot just bash everything, you know.
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I'm not saying burn it all down.
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What I'm saying is be suspicious of any industry that profits from your belief and your insecurities.
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You know, they want you to believe that you're not enough and that you need to be better.
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Be suspicious of solutions that never quite solve the problem.
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Be suspicious of advice that ignores your history, your context, your nervous system, and your humanity.
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And it replaces all of that with five steps or a morning routine.
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I'm telling you, that will ultimately fail.
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You're not a broken machine that needs better software.
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You're a person complex, so many facets, shaped by experiences in your life deserving real understanding.
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Real understanding unfortunately doesn't sell as well as PDF guides.
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The most radical thing you might be able to do is stop consuming content about your life and start actually living it.
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Maybe with help, real help, human help, but on your own terms.
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So this is what I have got today.
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If that episode hits somewhere, share it with someone who needs to hear it.
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Leave a review.
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It really helps if you leave me a review on Apple Podcasts.
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And yeah.
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If you want to go deeper on any of this, I link some resources in the show notes.
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I'm Iman Tohami.
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This is Said in Therapy.
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Take care of yourself.
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And I mean that in the realest way possible.