EntreSesiones #2 · Desi Llamas, psychologist and TikToker

What this video is about

In this episode of EntreSesiones, Alberto Moreno talks with Desi Llamas, psychologist, psychotherapist, researcher and lecturer at the University of Málaga, known for her content on TikTok and Instagram. They talk about therapist self-care and her experience of exhaustion when she was combining research, teaching and clinical work. She highlights flexibility as the key to sustaining many fronts and recounts that, during a stay in Australia, she stopped posting on social media for several months and accepted the consequences.

Much of the conversation focuses on psychology communication on social media: the pressure to post, sensationalism, polarisation and the role of the algorithm and confirmation bias. They discuss the contradictions between the messages of different psychologists, unqualified practice and the risk of pathologising normal experiences or encouraging self-diagnosis. They also point to the need to train therapists better, to review one’s own results and not to assume that the effectiveness of a model is that of the professional applying it.

In the final part, Desi Llamas talks about consistency between what she wants and what she does, avoiding excessive introspection, the value of community and critical thinking, and her projects: a podcast, her book on relationships and a course on emotional validation.

Topics: social media outreach, therapist self-care, unqualified practice, critical thinking, pathologisation