Thera-cation

liz

As a Houston resident for the last 20-something years, I have become accustomed to the biennial tradition of escaping impending natural disaster by car. Sarcastically known as hurrications, these mini trips are typically stressful (e.g., Will our house still be there when we go back?). Occasionally, there have fun moments, like when we went to Norman, OK to escape Rita and ended up watching the whole first season of Lost in a single sitting with my husband’s best friend and his wife.

My therapist is enjoying a stay-cation this week, a product of these COVID-plagued times. For some reason, August seems to be the agreed month for all psychologists to take off. Note that they haven’t mentioned this in my grad program yet, but I’m sure we cover it in the Professional Practice Seminar at the very end.

Having been in twice-weekly therapy since January, it’s a bit strange to go a whole week without a session. In some ways, it’s been nice to not have to plan around my appointments. Even over Zoom, they are draining. It’s hard to explain how it is that an hour spent talking about the jumbled contents of your mind can fell as exhausting as running a half marathon, but it is. It takes a lot of energy. It’s well-spent energy and generative time that’s also intense and fatiguing. Often, I need a nap afterwards. Still, I miss the opportunity to process thoughts and emotions with someone who is compassionate but not emotionally invested.

It’s been good to have this week to work through things on my own, write in my journal, and let my mind reset a bit. Therapy is hard, good, and necessary work. Soon, it will be time to get back to it. For now, a little rest is the right thing.

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Published by liz

From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.

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