I’m Burned Out and Regular Therapy Isn’t Helping
For Brown women who were culturally conditioned to abandon their needs and prove their worth in work, family, and community! You don’t need to suffer to prove that you care!
Key Takeaways
Brown women don’t burnout, we have a martyrdom complex that tells us that we must suffer to prove our worth in work, community, and family
A therapy intensive gives you unhurried time to take a deeper dive on intergenerational trauma
How my EMDR Intensives can help you unlearn the trauma of family legacy, cultural, and societal burdens
There’s no glory in martyrdom, and how to stop abandoning yourself for the culture.
Why Brown Girls Burnout Fast
Growing up, I learned very quickly that financial independence is the key to freedom.
Growing up in a culturally conservative Malayali-Indian Catholic household, I wasn’t allowed to exercise my own agency unless I was making my own money. If I didn’t want to be controlled, I had to take control of my own life. You don’t want a curfew as an adult living at home? Get your own place, and make your own money. You want to get married to someone YOU like? Make your own money.
Many Brown girls learn that financial freedom leads to overall freedom. At the same time, we feel guilty for our financial success, especially if our own immigrant parents and communities don’t have strong financial means. When you’re taught to be ashamed of financial and career success, but need financial and career success to survive, you might feel like you need to struggle to prove your worth. You might work twice as hard for your hard work to be acknowledged. This is toxic productivity.
As a therapist who works with Brown women like you, I believe that Brown women don’t just burn out—we become martyrs. At my practice in Manhattan, I work with Brown women who learned early on that we have to suffer to prove our belonging and worth. Just like our mothers became martyrs to prove how much they put family above all else, Brown women sacrifice their needs to prove their worth within and outside the home.
You don’t need to suffer to prove that you are deserving of better. Who are you outside of your relationship to your work, culture, and family?
What is a Therapy Intensive?
If regular weekly therapy isn’t helping you recover from burnout, then you’re allowed to ask for MORE. If you’ve been to therapy and you’ve ever thought,
“Damn I wish sessions were longer”
“I completely forgot what we talked about last week”
“I came to therapy to work on this issue, but my therapist never talked about it with me”
“I feel like we keep rehashing the same things every week and I’m going around in circles”
Then my therapy intensives might be right for you.
Therapy intensives are essentially longer therapy sessions that are specifically targeted towards one goal. Instead of meeting with me for an hour a week, you meet with me only once for 10 hours within 3 days to 1 week.
I know what you’re thinking: “10 hours in one sitting?!? That sounds like a lot!”.
But our time together in 1 week will be broken down in 2-, 3-, and 4-hour intervals with plenty of breaks in between to allow for concentrated progress outside of the chaos of your demanding life.
If you’ve been to therapy for guilt and shame, bicultural identity, burnout, or intergenerational trauma and you’re finding that an hour a week isn’t cutting it, then my therapy intensives can help you dive deep and accelerate on the main issue that keeps getting lost in the sauce of weekly therapy.
Why Brown Girl Burnout Often Calls for Something Different
For busy Brown women who are making strides in their careers, giving their moms the life they deserve, and trying to be everything for everyone, weekly therapy sessions can help you set aside time for yourself when it’s so easy not to. Weekly therapy can be great way to remind yourself that you deserve to rest, and can be great for building an empathic relationship with yourself, and for developing relational skills with another human being.
But in the hustle and bustle of career, family, and cultural expectations, weekly therapy can turn into focusing on the immediate past, rather than diving deep into the core, over-arching issue that brought you to therapy in the first place.
What I’ve noticed as a therapist is that weekly therapy can feel like an added to-do on a list of things you already need to get done. Therapy becomes something to cross off your to-do list, rather than to meaningfully engage with. You might feel like you’re struggling to keep up with everything, and start to wonder if therapy is for you anymore.
Listen, I get it—weekly therapy can sometimes interfere with everyday life, but deep down you know you need to work on the martyrdom complex you inherited from the women in your life, the same martyrdom complex that’s preventing you from fully showing up in therapy. What if instead of meeting for an hour each week for a whole year, you can put in concentrated effort for a therapy intensive with me in just one weekend?
What to Expect and Who I’m a Good Fit For
I’m holding EMDR tappers, devices used to help you regulate your emotions and feel in your body
If you’ve been to therapy for these issues before and need something more, my EMDR Intensives might just be the right fit for you! Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy that uses bilateral stimulation to emotionally regulate the part of your brain that stores traumatic memories and experiences. It can be used for navigating cultural guilt and shame, bicultural identity, relationship anxiety, and intergenerational trauma. If you’re a Brown woman who feels scared to confront your guilt and feels triggered in your relationships with your parents, family, and cultural community, then EMDR might be a good fit for you.
While EMDR can be done in weekly therapy, as a therapist I notice that 53 minutes to an hour a week is not enough for Brown women like you to fully engage in EMDR, especially if you’re a high-achieving Brown woman who’s prone to burnout. That’s why I also offer EMDR in intensive therapy format!
Here’s my general process for EMDR intensives:
Before: At your consultation, we’ll see if I’m the right fit for you. Then, we’ll schedule a 1-hour intake to explore your goals.
During: We’ll schedule your desired interval length for an EMDR Intensive (2-hour, 3-hour, or 4-hour intervals with breaks in between), which includes:
Joining: I meet you where you’re at to name your needs that you’ve been taught to make small in the name of culture and burnout.
Grounding: We’ll develop tools to help you access a calm state and get through life’s challenging triggers, even with your family’s cultural expectations and judgement from others.
Past, present, and future: We’ll identify the martyrdom complex holding you back and how you’d like to respond to generational trauma patterns better in the future.
After: We’ll schedule a follow-up to see how things have been going since your intensive and tune-up any lingering triggers.
How My Therapy Intensives Can Help You Reset and Rebuild
My EMDR therapy intensives are designed with Brown women in mind. We won’t just tackle the legacy burdens you’ve been carrying since childhood. We’ll also tackle the cultural burdens that make you believe you need to abandon your needs to prove that you care, and the societal burdens that tell you that you should just be grateful for the bare minimum as a Brown woman. With Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), we’ll utilize what’s called bilateral stimulation to help you process and regulate painful memories that hold you back.
With my EMDR Intensives, I can help you finally get clear on what you actually want and stop sacrificing your needs to prove that you care. In 3 days to 1 week, you can feel less on edge the next time you communicate a boundary, and more confident in who you are—regardless of whether or not people think you’re “selfish”!
Here’s a breakdown of why my therapy intensives are better for you in the long-term:
My EMDR therapy intensives allow you to take a deeper dive in one sitting into your distant and immediate past—without having to recap how your week was, or wrap up right when things are getting good.
Who I am and What I Offer
Hi, I’m Tracy, and I’m an EMDR Certified Therapist™
I’m Tracy and I call myself “The Bad Indian Therapist”. I’m an EMDR Certified Therapist™ for Brown Girls who are constantly abandoning themselves in the name of culture and burning themselves out to the point of becoming a martyr. Because here’s the thing: Brown women don’t just burnout. We become martyrs for a cause, and we attach our identity to productivity. Whether it’s work, family, or a cause we’re deeply passionate about (such as a Free Palestine or immigrant rights), we don’t know who we are outside of working for something and someone else, even if it means killing ourselves softly.
I believe that in order to be there for the people you care about, you have to be selfish to be selfless. You can’t help someone or be fully attentive to the people you care about if you’re too burned out trying to be for everyone. But teaching yourself to be selfish in a cultural society that demonizes women who put themselves first is an uphill battle.
At my practice in New York, I offer both virtual and in-person EMDR intensives for Brown women like you who have been to therapy before but know deep down that something is missing, and no longer want to follow unrealistic cultural scripts that keep you small in every part of your life! If you’re done burning out for everyone else and you’re ready to put yourself first, what more do you have to lose?
My EMDR Therapy Intensive Could be the Answer for Your Burnout
You don’t need to sacrifice your needs to prove that you care about your work, culture, family, or community. YOU matter, and your contributions are important and enough. If weekly therapy hasn’t helped you feel this way, then maybe it’s time for EMDR, and maybe it’s time for an EMDR intensive.
Brown women shouldn’t have to burnout to belong. My EMDR intensives can help you feel more confident in your boundaries and centered in your values, without sacrificing your schedule or career to fit in weekly therapy.
There’s no glory in martyrdom. If you’re sick and tired or being sick and tired, and you’re done abandoning yourself for someone or something else, then what are you waiting for? Stop self-sacrificing and book your EMDR intensive intro call today.
Hi there! I’m Tracy and I’m “The Bad Indian Therapist”.
I’m an EMDR Certified™ licensed therapist in New York who helps you stop letting cultural guilt, shame, and burnout take the wheel and embrace your desires! If you’re a Brown woman who’s been to therapy before and you’re looking to take a deeper dive in your healing journey, learn more about me and how my EMDR intensives can help you!