Motherhood, Therapy & Not Losing Yourself with Carissa
What happens when a therapist becomes the patient—and pregnancy cracks everything wide open?
This episode is a raw, funny, deeply honest look at mental health, motherhood, and why “doing it all” is a lie.
Summary
This week on Ducking Realitea, Siobhan sits down with Carissa Kerwin, former special ed teacher, almost-licensed therapist, and pregnant first-time mom who is unapologetically not loving pregnancy. Together they dive into the messy overlap of childhood, trauma, teaching, motherhood, and mental health in a way that’s raw, funny, and painfully relatable.
Carissa traces her winding path from Texas special ed classrooms and coaching volleyball to the therapy chair in California. She talks about the emotional labor teachers quietly shoulder, why teenagers kept flocking to her classroom at lunch, and how that pushed her toward becoming a therapist.
The conversation goes deep: generational parenting styles, the invisible load mothers carry, pregnancy hormones that feel like “being 12 and getting your period for the first time,” body image, disordered eating, depression, ADHD, and what it really means to “do the work” in therapy.
Siobhan shares a powerful breakthrough about finally telling the truth of a rape she’d rewritten in her own mind—and how naming it transformed a 40-year friendship. Carissa brings the clinical lens and the lived experience, offering compassion, language, and perspective for anyone who’s ever felt “too much,” “not enough,” or just utterly exhausted by being a person.
This episode is part vent session, part masterclass in self-awareness, and part love letter to the kids we once were. It’s honest, validating, and refreshingly unpolished, exactly the kind of conversation we need more of.
Carissa Kerwin
Carissa Kerwin is a therapist-in-practice based in California, originally from El Paso, Texas. After seven years teaching special education and high school English (plus coaching and even driving the team bus), she pivoted into counseling and is now working toward full licensure as a Licensed Professional Counselor. Passionate about teens, trauma, pregnancy and postpartum mental health, Carissa blends lived experience with clinical training to help people make sense of their stories.
Resources & Mentions
Support for sexual assault survivors (US): RAINN – National Sexual Assault Hotline
Crisis support (US): Call or text 988 or chat via 988lifeline.org
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Trauma-informed therapy approaches
Conversations around postpartum depression & maternal mental health
Esther Perel
💡 Key Takeaways
“Every emotion you have is welcome. It’s the behavior attached to it that we have to learn to control.”
~ Carissa
Teaching is emotional labor on steroids, teachers are acting as counselors, parents, and crisis managers while being underpaid and over-scrutinized.
Therapy isn’t a quick fix – it’s a space you co-create; you get more out of it when you’re honest about what you need (and when you’re dodging).
Pregnancy and postpartum deserve real mental health support – it’s normal to struggle, grieve your old life, and resent the “glowy” narrative.
Childhood wounds shape adult patterns – from people-pleasing to overworking to body image, a lot of it traces back further than we think.
Women’s ADHD and neurodiversity are wildly under-recognized – especially when you’re a “good student” who learned to play the system.