Hi everyone and welcome to episode 42 of the holding court podcast. Today my guest will be

Ilana Grinus, a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of California. May is Mental

Health Awareness Month, so we're going to be discussing the importance of mental health in sports,

the effects COVID-19 has had on individuals, the benefits and the downsides of social media, and a simple

tip you can use today to check in with your friends. All coming up right now on holding court.

Boom, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Balala, la la la la, bum, bum. Um, bum, bum, bum, bum. Um,

bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Bum, bum, bum. Bum, bum. Bum, boom. I'm good. How are you? It's so good to see you. I know. So we go way back to college days. We won't, we won't get into the details of that, but we've known each other for a while. And we've talked about doing an episode together

for a long time. So it's good to have you. Thank you for having me. It is such an exciting day.

We are going to tackle mental health awareness because it is May, but also because we know that

it's super important. And I'm so excited to be here. I love it. So before

we get into our chat, I always love to get everyone's background and how they got to be

where they are. And obviously we got to get you a little credibility with the listeners. So walk us

through your your path that led you here. So I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad and I majored in

psychology and there I learned that I loved talking about sex, anxiety, relationships, and I knew I

wanted to be a therapist. So I took a few years off, traveled the world, and then went to graduate school,

got my marriage and family therapy degree, which is actually a master's in psychology here

in Southern California. And I have been working with all kinds of populations for the last

few years and have just transitioned into my private practice. You're living my dream pretty much because I've talked about it on here before.

I've always wanted to be a mashup of Sue Johansson, which those of my late-nighters that would

stay up and watch Sex Talk with Sue, the little old lady from Canada, and also the female

Dr. Phil, and you're doing it.

Amazing. Yeah, we've talked about this off air, but I really want to be a mashup of Esther Perel,

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