We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katy Manganella a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katy, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

In my work as a therapist, I often find myself talking with people about what their parents did wrong. When given the chance to answer your question now, I feel a strong pull towards it. Not because my parents were perfect, but because I want to recognize that my mom really did her best in very difficult circumstances. My mom was (and still is) a very thoughtful parent. I remember when I was 11 or so, she sat me down and talked with me about insecurities. She told me about how it was normal to feel insecure and she used the example of “some people feel insecure about their noses, this is a normal way to feel and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with your nose.” I remember after that, looking in the mirror thinking, “there’s nothing wrong with me.” I think her naming that insecurities were normal prepared me for having them, and at the same time, cognitively prepared me for not letting those insecurities consume me or impact my self worth. She talked about emotions in a similar way. When I was going through something difficult, she’d sit with me and she’d tell me she was there and that I wouldn’t always feel this way. Her go to phrase was, “this too shall pass.” She didn’t try to rescue me or solve problems for me, she was just there. And that is what I needed. Now, as an adult and a therapist, I think that’s usually what we all need. She was reassuring me in that 1- I wouldn’t always feel this way, and 2- I had the capabilities to navigate whatever I was going through. My mom instilled a strong, stable sense of self in me, and I am very grateful.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sure! I am a Licensed Professional Counselor in Austin, TX and I own a small group private practice called Austin City Counseling. As a therapist, I work almost exclusively with Millennial and Gen Z women with anxiety and anxiety related challenges, such as perfectionism and people pleasing. I support the people I work with in re-connecting with themselves, identifying what’s important to them, and creating a life that aligns with that. Clinically, you could say I work on anxiety. But more humanly, I help people feel good being their realest selves.

I am most proud of the way I bring my whole self into my work. For me, this work is more than just taking my education and applying it to a treatment plan. It’s an embodied practice where I too am a human figuring it out and using these same tools and resources, while supporting others like me to do the same.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

In grad school, I received the message that it was “bad” in some way to work with people like you because you would over-identify with them and your own stuff would become tangled in theirs. So, out of grad school, I sought out working with people who had very different problems from my own. I started my career working in homeless services and what I quickly found was that people are people, and what I was really connecting with was our shared common humanity. The more I did that work, the more I realized I was most effective when I connected with the common humanity I shared with my clients then. Naturally, I started to realize, I was doing my best work when I was my authentic self. This led me to, over the years, unlearning the lesson I had learned in grad school. I eventually left homeless services and in 2018, I went into private practice and changed the population I work with entirely. I have found I am most in my groove, and do my best clinical work, with women who have similarities to me. You probably have put it together by now, but I have my own history with people-pleasing and perfectionism. My lived experience with that gives me a deeper level of understanding the intricacies of the people I work with. It has made me a more impactful therapist.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

Without a doubt, I would choose this profession and this speciality every single time. I get to show up to work every day, getting to be my full self and helping others do the same. I can’t imagine more energizing work than that! I feel very grateful to be one of those people who knows this is exactly what they want to be doing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://austincitycounseling.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/austincitycounseling/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katymanganella/