Secret Life of Therapists Podcast
I Couldn’t Tell You
In this episode of The Secret Life of Therapists Podcast, we step outside the clinical space to talk with Sarah Deschamps, a former teacher, mother, and author of the internationally recognized Journey to Japan: A Life-Saving Memoir. Sarah is back with us to talk about her highly anticipated new book, I Couldn't Tell You: The True Story of a Mother and Daughter’s Journey to Overcome Their Mental Health Demons.
After enduring years overseas, navigating her daughter’s severe physical illnesses and seven major surgeries, Sarah thought the worst was behind them. Instead, a new diagnosis triggered a deeply complicated wave of psychological trauma. Today, she opens up about the intersection of medical trauma and mental health, and the parallel unraveling of a mother and daughter trying to survive their own internal demons.
This episode is a heavy, beautiful, and profoundly honest look at the hidden toll of chronic illness on a family's mental health. If you are parenting through a crisis or fighting your own quiet battles, this conversation will make you feel seen.
When “Just Friends” Gets Complicated
In this episode of The Secret Life of Therapists Podcast, we take on a question that creates tension in many relationships but is rarely discussed openly: Can you have close friends of the opposite sex while in a committed partnership?
We explore the difference between healthy friendships and emotional boundary crossings, how insecurity and past experiences shape reactions, and why clarity, transparency, and communication matter more than rigid rules.
Because the issue isn’t friendship, it’s boundaries, honesty, and how you protect the emotional space of your partnership.
Your Pace, Your Priorities, Your Life
In this episode of The Secret Life of Therapists Podcast, we explore how comparison quietly pulls us away from our values, and why that drift can leave us feeling anxious, behind, or never quite enough.
We unpack how social comparison shows up in careers, relationships, parenting, appearance, and success, and how it can distort what actually matters to us. When we measure our lives against someone else’s highlight reel, we often lose sight of our own priorities, pace, and purpose.
This conversation offers a grounded, therapy-informed look at how to notice when comparison is driving your decisions, reconnect with your personal values, and make choices that feel aligned rather than reactive.
A Deck of Questions, A Lot of Insight
In this special Q&A episode of The Secret Life of Therapists Podcast, Dr. Habiba Zaman and Kaylan Maloney pull listener questions directly from the card deck Know Thyself and answer them in real time.
Each prompt sparks an honest, unscripted conversation about relationships, emotional patterns, boundaries, self-awareness, and the inner work that shapes how we show up in the world. What unfolds is part therapy insight, part personal reflection, and part invitation for you to pause and consider your own answers alongside theirs.
Play along, reflect as you listen, and discover what your own answers might reveal.
Love Isn’t the Fix You Think It Is
On this episode of The Secret Life of Therapists Podcast, we explore a hard truth many people discover too late: romantic relationships don’t heal unresolved wounds; they expose them.
We unpack why doing your own healing work before entering a relationship changes everything. From attachment patterns and emotional triggers to boundaries, self-worth, and communication, this conversation looks at how unhealed trauma quietly shapes who you choose, what you tolerate, and how you show up in love.
Because the healthiest relationships aren’t built on chemistry alone, they’re built on two people who have done the work.
The Venus Fly Trap: Chemistry or Trauma?
Why do we keep choosing the wrong person to love? In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, Dr. Stephen Edwards, author and therapist, breaks down how unhealthy coping patterns shape our relationships. He explains that patterns like anxiety, avoidance, fear of abandonment, or people-pleasing often come from early life experiences and can lead us toward partners who feel familiar… even when they hurt us.
Dr. Edwards also wrote The Venus Fly Trap: Sex, Lies, and Repercussions, which is a raw memoir about obsession, chaotic love, and emotional destructiveness that illustrates how powerful—and self-sabotaging—attraction can be when coping gets entangled with desire. Big takeaway: until we understand our coping strategies, we risk mistaking emotional familiarity for safety and repeating the same painful cycles over and over. Dr.Stephen Paul Edwards Media Kit here
Why do people die by suicide?
This episode of Secret Life of Therapists approaches the question with compassion and clarity. It explores how suicide is rarely about a single event; it’s often the result of overwhelming emotional pain, hopelessness, isolation, and the belief that things will never get better.
The conversation breaks down the common myths and looks at what’s really happening internally: a nervous system in distress, a mind stuck in despair, and a person who can’t see a way out of their suffering. Rather than framing it as weakness or selfishness, the episode reframes suicide as a response to unbearable pain and highlights how understanding, connection, and early support can make a critical difference.
If this topic feels close to home, you don’t have to carry it alone. Reaching out to someone you trust or a mental health professional can help.
The Next Version of You
Who are you… When the roles you’ve lived in start to change?
This episode of Secret Life of Therapists with Dr. Habiba and Coach Debra explores how identity isn’t fixed; it evolves across the lifespan. Careers shift, relationships change, children grow up, bodies age, losses happen, and the version of you that once felt solid can start to feel unfamiliar.
The conversation looks at how these transitions can feel unsettling, even destabilizing, because we often tie our sense of self to roles: partner, parent, professional, caregiver, achiever.
When those roles change, the question becomes: Who am I now?
Rather than seeing these moments as crises, the episode reframes them as opportunities for reflection, growth, and intentional identity rebuilding.
When Enough Is Enough
In this thought-provoking episode of Secret Life of Therapists, the conversation dives into a question many people quietly wrestle with: How do you know when enough is enough? Whether it’s a relationship, a job, a personal expectation, or even emotional labor, the hosts explore the internal and external pressures that keep us stuck long after something has stopped serving us.
Imposter Syndrome and Emotional Deprivation
What happens when therapists get honest about the struggles they usually help other people through? In this episode, Dr. Habiba and Coach Viorica unpack imposter syndrome, the quiet ache of heartbreak, and the often uncomfortable work of learning what you actually need to feel safe, seen, and authentic in relationships.
This is a candid conversation about dropping the performance, tolerating vulnerability, and building relationships where you don’t have to shrink, over-give, or pretend.
If you’ve ever wondered, “Why do I know so much about myself but still struggle to show up honestly in love?” , this episode is for you.
Am I So Hard to Love?
This episode of Secret Life of Therapists challenges that question at its core. The idea that someone is “too much” or “too difficult” isn’t a fixed truth—it’s often a story shaped by past relationships, attachment wounds, and unmet emotional needs.
The conversation explores how people can develop protective behaviors—like withdrawal, overthinking, or intensity—that may push others away, but are actually rooted in a desire for safety and connection. Instead of asking “What’s wrong with me?”, the episode reframes it to: “What happened to me?” and “What do I need that I’m not getting?”
The real shift is moving from self-blame to self-understanding. Because being “hard to love” usually isn’t about being unlovable; it’s about patterns that haven’t been understood yet.
Redefining the Modern Man
Most men were raised to believe their value in relationships comes from providing, fixing, and staying strong, but not necessarily from being emotionally open.
In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, a male perspective highlights something often overlooked: men do have deep emotional needs: respect, appreciation, and feeling safe enough to be vulnerable, but many were never taught how to express them. As relationships evolve, the expectation is shifting from “provider” to true partner. That means communication, self-awareness, and accountability are no longer optional.
The conversation also touches on polyamory, not as a solution, but as a lens. It challenges the idea that one person can meet every need, and it exposes just how important honesty, boundaries, and emotional clarity really are.
Let’s Talk About Sex… and Why It Stops
In this revealing episode of Secret Life of Therapists, we dive into the often unspoken realities of intimacy in modern relationships. From passionate connection to emotional distance, therapists pull back the curtain on what really happens behind closed doors, both in their clients’ lives and their own reflections.
The conversation explores how intimacy is shaped by more than just physical attraction. Emotional safety, communication patterns, unresolved conflict, and life stressors all play a critical role in whether couples feel connected or quietly drift apart.
Always On: Containment and the Cost of Control
In this episode, we explore the psychological cost of being “always accessible”: emotionally available, responsive, and regulated for everyone else while quietly sidelining your own needs. Many therapists, caregivers, and high-functioning professionals pride themselves on reliability and attunement. But when accessibility becomes identity, it can blur boundaries and erode self-awareness.
We examine how emotional masking develops as both a clinical skill and a survival strategy. Masking often begins as adaptive: maintaining composure, projecting steadiness, and containing reactions in service of clients or loved ones. Over time, however, the line between intentional regulation and chronic suppression can become indistinct. The episode breaks down the difference between regulation (conscious modulation of affect) and inhibition (automatic emotional constriction), highlighting the somatic and relational consequences of the latter.
Attachment to Ambivalence: Being Loved But Not Chosen
In this episode, the hosts, Dr. Habiba Zaman and Kaylan Maloney, explore the quiet but painful relational dynamic of being loved but not being chosen. They unpack the psychological distinction between affection and commitment, and how someone can experience care, chemistry, and emotional intimacy while still feeling fundamentally unprioritized.
Through a clinical lens, the conversation examines attachment patterns that keep people tethered to partners who express love but withhold clarity, exclusivity, or long-term investment. The hosts explore how early attachment wounds, particularly around inconsistency or emotional unavailability, can normalize ambiguity. For many, being loved but not chosen recreates familiar relational dynamics from childhood: proximity without security.
Memoirs of a Recovering Redneck
In this episode, the hosts explore what it means to grow up in a dysfunctional family system and how early relational instability can shape a lifelong question: Am I enough?
The hosts unpack how these adaptations, once protective, become limiting in adulthood. They explore attachment wounds, trauma responses, and the ways survivors of dysfunctional systems question their worth in relationships, work, and identity. Particular attention is given to how competence and achievement can mask deep fears of abandonment or rejection.
Who Would You Be If You Weren’t the Strong One?
In this episode of the Secret Life of Therapists, the hosts, Dr. Habiba and Dr. Andrea, explore the psychological impact of being the eldest child, focusing on the weight of family expectations and the development of performative behaviors. The episode unpacks how implicit and explicit expectations from parents can lead eldest children to internalize roles such as “the responsible one,” “the achiever,” or “the mediator.” Over time, these roles may solidify into performative patterns where self-worth becomes tied to productivity, emotional containment, or maintaining family stability. The hosts differentiate between authentic responsibility and adaptive over functioning, highlighting how chronic performance can obscure vulnerability and personal needs.
Confessions of a Codependent
In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, Dr. Habiba Zaman peels back the layers of codependency: the invisible patterns that shape how we love, help, and lose ourselves in others. From the therapist’s couch to everyday relationships, we explore why “being the strong one” can quietly become a trap, how caretaking turns into self-erasure, and what it really means to set boundaries without guilt.
Because sometimes, the most therapeutic question isn’t “How can I help?”, it’s “Who am I when I stop trying to save everyone else?”
Couch Confidential: Politics, Power, and the Psyche
Secret Life of Therapists pulls back the curtain on what really happens beyond the therapy room, where mental health meets politics, power, and social change. In a world shaped by polarization, policy shifts, and collective stress, therapists are not just listeners; they are witnesses, advocates, and sometimes quiet rebels.
Each episode explores how the political climate impacts mental health, clinical practice, and communities, while unpacking the ethical tensions and personal dilemmas therapists face when advocacy and professionalism collide. Through candid conversations, real-world stories, and expert insights, the podcast challenges the myth of therapist neutrality and asks a bold question: what does it mean to care in an unjust world?
The Dark Side of “Protecting My Peace”
In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, the conversation with Kaylan Maloney explores a nuanced tension many people face in relationships: the difference between genuinely protecting one’s peace and unintentionally using that concept to avoid necessary communication and emotional repair. The hosts unpack how “protecting your peace” has become a popular mantra, often framed as a form of self-care, while also examining how it can sometimes mask fear of conflict, discomfort, or vulnerability.
The discussion also addresses why repair conversations are often misinterpreted as threats to peace, when in reality they can be a pathway to deeper safety, clarity, and connection. Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own patterns: Are they choosing peace as an act of self-respect, or using it as a shield against difficult but necessary conversations?
Raising Kids, Losing Roles, Redefining Self
In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, the conversation with Jen Hawkins turns inward to explore how a mother’s identity evolves across the lifespan of her children. From the early years of total immersion to the quieter, more complex transitions of independence, motherhood is examined not as a fixed role, but as a continually shifting sense of self.
The discussion unpacks the emotional, psychological, and relational changes that emerge at each stage: grief for former versions of oneself, pride in growth, and the challenge of redefining purpose as children need us differently. Thoughtful and deeply relatable, this episode offers validation, nuance, and space for mothers navigating who they are becoming alongside who their children are becoming.
The Fantasy of Who They Should Be
In this episode of Secret Life of Therapists, the conversation with Kaylan Maloney takes on one of the most uncomfortable and relatable human struggles: the difficulty of accepting people for who they truly are. Whether in romantic relationships, family dynamics, friendships, or therapy rooms, the urge to fix, reshape, or hold others to who we wish they would be is examined with honesty and depth.
The discussion explores how unmet expectations, attachment patterns, and unspoken needs fuel frustration and disappointment, often eroding connection in the process. With a therapeutic lens and real-world insight, this episode challenges listeners to reflect on control, compassion, and the courage it takes to meet people where they are without abandoning ourselves in the process.