Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, author, keynote speaker, and a contributor to The New York Times. Her debut book, REAL SELF-CARE: Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble-Baths Not Included, is an NPR Best Book of 2023 and a national best-seller. Real Self-Care has been featured by Good Morning America, NPR’s Code Switch, The New York Times, The Ezra Klein Show, The Guardian, and translated into 10 languages. She lives in Austin with her partner Justin, their toddler, and their two cats, Kitty and Fifi.

Topics Covered:

• Growing up spending summers in India and navigating life as a "Good Indian Girl"
• Becoming disillusioned with medicine and psychiatry and that journey that led her on
• Her move to Austin since 2020 and how that experience has been
• The growing interest in self-care and what the difference is between self-care and faux self-care
• The nuances of holistic or integrative medicine and the barriers communities of people face in mainstream medicine
• The differences between tools and principles in real self-care and how they can work together to help you make big decisions in life
• How to apply real self-care to Asian American guilt
• Disrupting intergenerational trauma
• How to identify which boundaries are yours vs boundaries that may have been passed down by your culture or family

Materials Referenced:

• REAL SELF-CARE: Crystals, Cleanses, and Bubble-Baths Not Included by Dr. Pooja Lakshmin MD
• Dr. Pooja Lakshmin Instagram
• Good Morning America Segment
• NPR's Code Switch: Real self-care takes real systemic change