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Laura Caruso, welcome to seeing other people.

Thanks for having me.

I'm so excited to be here.

I know that this conversation is going to be beautiful.

Like, there are so many things that we can talk about.

There are so many things I want to talk about with you.

I want to congratulate you on all of your success.

You recently started the Safe Space with Laura Caruso podcast. Congratulations. And your practice well psychotherapy. Congratulations on

doing that. Thank you. Huge accomplishment. What brought you to this point in your life? I know.

Oh my God. Yeah. We're really going with the hard hitters first. Honestly,

I feel like I have this existential thought process every few months of like, how did I get here?

Like I feel like I just blinked one day and then I woke up and suddenly I had the career and the life that

I always wanted. Like when I was a kid, I always used to envision myself, like walking around New York

City and living in the city and traveling

everywhere and like working for myself. And so it's almost a pinch me moment every single day

of like, wow, I'm really doing this. That's incredible. Where did you grow up? New Jersey.

Okay, cool. Yeah. That's, that's cool that you can like actually recognize that. Yeah.

I think about when I was younger and I don't know if I had,

I had no idea like what I pictured my future life to be. The one thing I do remember though, I was probably like 12 and I was like, I wonder what I'm like look like when I'm like 18. I wonder what I'm going to look like when I'm like 25 and 30. And I feel like I look the same. That's so funny.

So I'm like, I don't know what I was expecting.

I honestly think I look the same. That's so funny. So I'm like, I don't know what I was expecting. I honestly think I look more similar to younger me. Like I look like six year old me versus teenage me. I don't know who that girl was. I mean teenage me is probably, I imagine we were similar. But like teenage me was scary. Yeah, same. Like middle school me. Same. Middle school me was not a vibe. Yeah, we don't talk about middle school me. So, okay, what led you to want to become a therapist? I was actually a speech therapist first. So I was moving to New York City. I was actually going to pre-med at Columbia and then working full-time as a speech therapist. So I always knew that I wanted to change careers, but I thought I wanted to be in medicine. And then the pandemic hit. And I had to sit with my thoughts like everyone else and had to confront mental health like everyone else for the first time. And that pushed me into the psych world. And I was actually in a relationship at the time. And my ex had said,

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