Hello there, welcome to the Good Enough Shrink podcast! We are your hosts, Dr. Jenna Cheng and Dr. Patrick Kelly. We are child, adolescent and adult psychiatrists practicing in the Los Angeles Area.

We are on a mission to demystify child psychiatry, and have conversations surrounding difficult topics on youth and adult mental health. But not without a bit of play along the way!

The title of this blog is a tribute to the famous child psychiatrist, Donald Winnicott, and his concept of the "Good Enough Parent.” This is the idea that the imperfect but sufficient provisions of a parent builds the child's resilience in an imperfect world. We want to empower children and parents to embrace their strengths and flaws, and know that you are good enough.

Importantly, we want to emphasize the power of holding difficult emotions from the lens of attachment theory. Attachment theory is based on the idea that humans need a social bond with another to survive. This bond, when it is “good enough”, serves as a secure base from which a child can explore the world unafraid. Your attachment experience from childhood is malleable and can influence the way you approach relationships in adulthood, serving as its own motivational system. When this attachment is disrupted or ruptured, it can lead to emotional issues and sometimes full blown psychiatric disorders. This is where psychiatrists and therapists come in.

This podcast is for the curious adults, parents, family members, mental health professionals and trainees, looking to understand mental health from a developmental perspective.

So we hope you join us in this adventure! To explore how your childhood might shape your adulthood, and how small wins can have big impacts and big losses can be overcome by the smallest wins. To see that you are not doomed if you had adversity in your childhood. Your experiences and feelings matter. They belong to you, and you can own them and use them to propel you toward enlivening your life.