The Therapist Who Learned to Meme
I used to think being a good therapist meant being serious all the time. Then a meme going viral taught me that sometimes the most healing thing I can offer people is a bit of laughter.
Picture this: It's 2018, and I'm one of the few psychologists brave (or foolish) enough to be on Instagram. Most of my colleagues are still treating social media like it's radioactive sludge and keep a wide berth. The self-imposed pressure is intense - every post needs to be valuable, every caption needs to be profound, every piece of content needs to prove I'm a legitimate therapist worth following.
So there I am, spending literal hours on posts, picking the perfect color scheme, adjusting the layout, trying to craft captions that make me sound as close to Confucius, or Buddha (or maybe Yoda?) as possible. Three likes. Maybe five if I'm lucky.
Fast forward to 2024. My account hasn't grown in years, I'm burned out from trying to be the Perfect Online Therapist™, and I'm having what can only be described as a professional existential crisis. Nothing's working, I have nothing to lose, so I think: “I might as well make this fun again.”
I've always loved sharing hilarious memes with my friends - the kind that are random, ridiculous, or anything in between. But posting them as a mental health professional? That felt way too... unprofessional.
Then I saw this meme of a comedian starting to lose it, screaming "Are you kidding, that's unfair!!!" before catching herself mid-breakdown and saying, "I need to calm down. Everything's fine, I'm an adult." I shared it and hit post before I could overthink it.
Five million views later, I'm staring at my phone like, "Well, that's interesting." Beyond the numbers, it was the comments that got me:
"These slides have me smiling and I seldom do that recently."
"Wow. Sensational. I have never felt more seen."
"I feel personally attacked."
That silly little meme was making a real difference because it made people smile and laugh. And suddenly people were following me wanting more of my curations of memes to help us laugh about the hard and hilarious parts of healing - which I lovingly coined my weekly “Dopamine roundup.”
But truly, this wasn't just about a meme going viral. This was about something much deeper that I'd been wrestling with for over 15 years.
I lost my younger brother GJ to suicide in 2009. He was incredibly creative, kind, and thoughtful. He was mega-quirky, a sci-fi and comic book nerd, and everybody loved him. For the most part I was an uber-serious type A overachiever and eldest Asian daughter hell bent on being the “best.” Losing him shattered me in so many ways, but it also became the catalyst for me to discover a new mission in life: helping people love their lives so they never want to leave them.
His death changed how I see everything. I suddenly had this fierce urgency to live more fully, to tell people I love them like it might be the last time, to stop worrying about things that don't actually matter. It shook me out of my busy, perfectionist life and forced me to align how I spent my time with what actually mattered. I became more open to experiences I'd been closed off to before, and I completely lost patience for anything that felt like BS.
So when that meme exploded, it wasn't just about Instagram metrics. It was about the realization that maybe - just maybe - one of the most important things I could offer people was permission to find their healing in laughter, in connection, in the silly little moments that make life worth living.
Here's what I've learned about the radical act of not taking yourself so seriously:
1. Sometimes laughter heals deeper than the serious stuff
So often we think healing has to look serious - sitting in a therapist's office, journaling about our trauma, having deep conversations about our childhood. And yes, that's important work. But sometimes it's sharing a laugh with strangers on the internet who get exactly what it's like to struggle navigating your own emotional meltdowns. Sometimes healing looks like recognizing your own growth in real time and finding it hilariously relatable rather than shameful.
The research backs this up in beautiful ways. Laughter literally changes our brain chemistry, releasing endorphins and reducing stress hormones like cortisol. It activates the same neural pathways as other pleasurable experiences, creating what scientists call "positive emotional contagion" - basically, one person's joy becomes everyone's joy. When we laugh, our bodies relax, our perspective shifts, and our problems feel more manageable. So the saying "laughter is the best medicine" isn't just a saying, but science. Laughter is as impactful for healing as everything else.
Where can you invite more laughter into your healing journey? Maybe it's finding the humor in your own patterns instead of judging them. Maybe it's sharing something funny about your growth with a friend instead of keeping it serious and private. Maybe it's giving yourself permission to laugh at how ridiculous this whole "being human" thing can be. Notice when you're doing better than you used to, even if it's just for five seconds. Let yourself be proud of the small wins, especially the ones that make you chuckle.
They don’t talk about this much, but laughing with clients is truly one of my favorite parts of therapy and it happens all the time. Your healing doesn't have to look like anyone else's - and it definitely doesn't have to be serious all the time.
2. Permission to be unserious is actually permission to be whole
As an eldest Asian daughter and recovering perfectionist, letting people see my unpolished, meme-loving, occasionally ridiculous side felt like taking my doctorate degree and setting it on fire. What if people don't take me seriously? What if they think I'm not a "real" therapist? What if sharing something funny somehow erases all my years of training and expertise? The fear was real, and it kept me performing a version of myself that was only half-true.
But here's what I learned: when we only show up as our most polished, serious selves, we're asking people to connect with a highlight reel, not a human. The memes weren't separate from my therapeutic work - they were an extension of it. They showed that healing doesn't have to look like sitting in a therapy chair discussing your childhood trauma (though that's important too). Sometimes it looks like laughing at your own patterns and feeling less alone in your weirdness. Sometimes it's realizing that the person helping you doesn't have to be perfect to be helpful.
Think about the people in your life who feel most healing to be around. I bet they're not the ones who never show their struggles or never laugh at themselves. They're the ones who can hold both - the pain and the joy, the wisdom and the silliness, the professional and the human. You don't have to choose between being taken seriously and being authentic. The world needs your whole self, including the parts you think are too much or not serious enough. What would it look like to stop performing your "serious" self and start being your actual self?
3. What you're afraid is "too much" might be exactly what people need
Instead of discrediting me, the memes did the opposite. People started reaching out saying things like, "Thanks, I thought I was the only one.” The content I was most afraid to share became the bridge that helped people feel safe enough to explore the deeper work. Because if I could laugh at my own therapeutic breakthroughs, maybe they could too. If I could be imperfect and still be helpful, maybe they could be imperfect and still be worthy of love.
Here's what I wish someone had told me earlier: the thing you're hiding because you think it's "too much" might be the exact thing someone else needs to see to feel less alone. Your weird sense of humor, your unconventional approach, your willingness to be vulnerable about your mess - these aren't flaws to hide, they’re gifts. What are you not sharing because you're afraid it's too much? What if it's exactly enough for someone who needs to see that they're not the only one who thinks/feels/struggles that way?
4. Play isn't going to kill you - it makes everything better
For years, I treated fun like a reward I had to earn through serious work. Enjoyment was for after I'd proven I was a good enough therapist, daughter, human. This is productivity culture talking, and it's exhausting. It's also completely backwards from how creativity actually works.
The meme experiment completely transformed how I'm approaching my next book. For months, I'd been planning to write something serious and valuable about overcoming life's hardest moments, the way I’d overcome the death of my brother. The kind of book that sounds important and therapeutic and marketable. Something about resilience, trauma recovery, finding strength in your darkest hour. All important topics, but every time I sat down to write, it felt like I was putting on a costume that didn't quite fit.
When I gave myself permission to embrace play, everything shifted. I realized I didn't want to write another book about surviving your worst day - I wanted to write about something that actually fits who I am and what I've learned: how to foster joy and overcome the obstacles to it. How to choose aliveness even when life feels heavy. How to find reasons to love being here, especially when everything feels hard. The book isn't going to be written from the position of "therapist who has it all figured out" but as "human who happens to be a therapist and is figuring this out with you." Because that’s honestly who I actually am.
When we give ourselves permission to play, we're not being frivolous - we're accessing a different kind of intelligence. Play opens up neural pathways that serious, focused thinking can't reach. It helps us make connections we wouldn't otherwise make. It reminds us why we care about our work in the first place. Where in your life could you use more play? What would happen if you stopped treating joy like a luxury and started treating it like necessary fuel for everything else you want to do?
5. Joy is what it’s all about
When you lose someone to suicide, joy becomes both more precious and more complicated. There's this weird guilt that comes with laughing, with having fun, with moving forward when they can't. But there's also this fierce understanding that joy isn't just nice to have - it's what makes life worth staying for. It shifts your entire relationship with happiness from luxury to necessity.
This understanding changes how you move through the world. You start to see that the moments when someone feels truly seen, when they laugh until their stomach hurts, when they feel less alone in their humanness - that’s not inconsequential. All of these are lifelines. Every time someone commented that a meme made them smile when they hadn't smiled in weeks, I understood that this wasn't just entertainment. It was connection. It was proof that life can be beautiful and worth staying for.
The choice to embrace joy after loss isn't about forced positivity or pretending everything's fine. It's about recognizing that joy and pain can coexist, that laughter doesn't minimize our struggles - it helps us survive them. If you've lost someone, or if you're struggling to find reasons to keep going, choosing moments of lightness isn't betraying your pain. It's honoring your humanity. Sometimes finding something to laugh about, sharing something that makes others smile, or simply allowing yourself to feel good for five minutes - these small acts become revolutionary. They become ways of saying "I'm still here, and I'm still choosing to find beauty in this messy, difficult, wonderful experience of being alive.
If this resonates with you:
Maybe you've been carrying the weight of always needing to be the serious one, the valuable one, the person who has their act together. Maybe you're exhausted from performing a version of yourself that only shows the polished parts. Maybe you've been hiding the things about yourself that bring you joy because they don't seem important enough or professional enough or worthy enough to share.
Here's what I've learned: the world has enough people trying to be perfect. What it's actually starving for is people brave enough to be real. Your weird sense of humor isn't a character flaw - it's a superpower. Your unserious moments aren't distractions from your important work - they might be the most important work of all.
What if you gave yourself permission to:
Share the thing you find funny, even if others might not get it (they probably will)
Show up as your whole self, including the parts that aren't polished
Remember that connection often happens in the spaces between the "important" stuff
Trust that play and laughter aren't distractions from healing - they might be the point
Stop performing seriousness and start being authentically you (it's so much less exhausting)
Take a moment and ask yourself:
Where in your life are you performing seriousness instead of being authentic? (We all have these places)
What would you do if you knew it was okay to not be productive or valuable all the time?
What's something you love but have been afraid is "too much" or "not serious enough"?
Looking back at where I started - spending hours perfecting quote posts that no one saw, terrified that showing my personality would somehow discredit my professional worth -that version of me was so scared of not being taken seriously that she forgot the whole point was to connect with people, not impress them.
The meme that changed everything wasn't just about going viral. It was about finally giving myself permission to show up as I actually am: someone who can hold space for pain AND share something that makes people find a bit of relief and laughter in the middle of their day.
This shift is showing up everywhere in my life now. I'm writing a book that I actually want to read, not just one I think I should write. Instead of another trauma recovery guide, I'm exploring what it means to actively choose joy, to overcome the cultural and personal obstacles that keep us from loving our lives. It's the book my brother would have wanted to read, the one I wish I'd had during my darkest moments - not about enduring pain, but about rediscovering what makes life feel worth celebrating. The whole thing feels more honest, more alive, more like me.
And maybe that's the real lesson here: when we stop performing the version of ourselves we think the world wants and start being who we actually are, everything gets better. Our work becomes more meaningful. Our connections become more real. Our impact becomes more authentic. And life is a lot more fun.
So go ahead. Share that thing you think is too silly. Laugh at your own growth. Let yourself be seen in your full, glorious, unserious humanity. The people who need what you have to offer are waiting for the real you to show up.
Therese 💜
Speaking of the book I’m working on - if you’re interested, please feel free to follow me on substack where I’ll be sharing more of my reflections on joy - I’d be so delighted to have you join me. AND if this resonated with you, would you mind scrolling down and hitting that little heart? It genuinely makes my day and helps me know what's landing. Thanks for reading.