Iman Tohami

Hey friends 🍀💛,

Since starting my “Said in Therapy” journey in 2020, I have been thinking a lot about what I want out of this project, and it always brought me back to the initial intention I had before I started which is psychoeducation and breaking the stigma around mental health.

The self-help industry has been booming for some time now, and so many books are sold and overly promoted as THE answer to all your problems. As a result, toxic positivity is rising, and the self-esteem of whole communities is at the lowest it has ever been.

We live in a very intense and performance-oriented society. What is sold to us is that we are our accomplishments and that we are nothing without them. Don’t get me wrong, accomplishments are amazing and should always be celebrated, but they are only a tiny fraction of what makes us human. Accomplishments are also a natural outcome of personal and internal growth. The more you work on yourself, the better you navigate living in this world, and in extension— the more you achieve.

That brings me back to why I started “Said in Therapy”:

Psychoeducation. But is psychoeducation just another fancy word for what self-help gurus want to sell us?

To me, it was always the interaction between many layers and dimensions. Understanding our emotions and thoughts, means understanding our behavior and why we do what we do. Psychology is a vast discipline and leaks into almost everything we call life, but only a few people know about that secret. It's the combination of our rational thoughts and emotions 🧠🫀 and influences every aspect of our human experience, whether it is relationships, work or the development of the self.

Psychoeducation is not only about mental illness and mental health; it’s also about why people do what they do daily. It’s about understanding the cognitive processes, including motivation, attention, memory, self-awareness, and awareness of others.

I am writing this today to tell you that I have found back to the initial intention but also renewed it with the learnings I had over the last two years.

While psychology is very much considered an empirical science, it’s also the science of human nature. For that, I intend to build that bridge to bring information to you that is not only rooted in science but also easy to understand. This is what scientists call pop-psychology and is often side-eyed in the academic community. But I think it matters. Knowledge of any kind shouldn’t be constrained to a selective few but widely spread, so everyone gets to choose what they want to do with it.

I hope to break the stigma around psychology in our culture and make the walk to a therapist as easy as the walk to a GP when we struggle with our physical health; because physical and mental health are ultimately connected.

I want to end this very first newsletter with a not-so-cheesy thank you. I didn’t know I would find so much meaning in my social media presence, but I did. And for that, I need to thank the community that believed and trusted in me, especially in my Q&As.

I hope to do this for a long time, and I hope you benefit from what I have to share.

Welcome to the community.

❤️ Share this newsletter with a friend; let’s spread love.⁠ #saidintherapy

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