Special Guest Interview: Psychiatrist and Executive Coach Anna Yusim

Today, we’re excited to feature an inspiring conversation with award-winning psychiatrist, executive coach, and author Dr. Anna Yusim on the Sit and Stay podcast.

With a private practice spanning six states and a background that includes training at Stanford, Yale, and NYU, Dr. Yusim brings a unique perspective to the world of mental health. In this episode, she shares how her journey—from competitive math student to spiritual psychiatrist—shaped her approach to care, and why she believes the future of psychiatry lies in integrating body, mind, and spirit.

Dr. Yusim also opens up about her solo practice journey, her leadership role at Conscious Health, and her efforts to co-create a new center for spirituality and mental health at Yale. We hope you enjoy this thought-provoking conversation as she offers insight into building a practice rooted in science, compassion, and meaning.

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Parker Anderson: So today, we are joined by Anna Yusim. Anna is an internationally recognized award winning board certified Stanford and Yale educated psychiatrist and executive coach with a private practice operating across six states and is the best selling author of Fulfilled: How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life.

She's a clinical assistant professor at Yale Medical School and is currently working to establish a spirituality and mental health center at Yale in collaboration with the Yale Divinity School. She's worked with Forbes 500 CEOs, Olympic athletes, and academic leaders and draws from her experience living in over 70 countries while studying global spiritual traditions. She's a frequent contributor to major media outlets, including CNN, Fox News, ABC, and NBC.

And in 2020, she was named a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, which is the highest honor that can be granted to a US psychiatrist. This is just a taste of Anna's resume. I will let her fill out the rest. Thank you for being here today, Anna. We're happy to have you.

Anna Yusim: Thank you so much, Parker. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Tom Tarshis: And, Anna, you're in New York right now. Is that your primary residence area?

Anna Yusim: Yes. So I split my time between New York and Connecticut. So right now, you're actually finding me in Connecticut. But I come out to you guys often, so I absolutely love California. And was just there about two months ago.

Tom Tarshis: Very cool. And I know you went to Stanford, but did you grow up in California?

Anna Yusim: No. I was born in Russia and in Moscow, and we came when I was five to America. I grew up in Chicago, then went to Stanford. That was my outing outside of the Midwest.

And then medical school at Yale. And then, residency at NYU where I did my practice for many years. And then with COVID, made a COVID move to Connecticut.

Tom Tarshis: Awesome. And one of the questions we always like to ask our guests is: When did you know you wanted to be a psychiatrist or go into medicine, and how did your early journey towards your training develop?

Anna Yusim: Absolutely. So, I grew up in a family of mathematicians. Everybody loved math. And I actually went to a math and science magnet school called the Illinois Math and Science Academy. And I, too, thought I was going to be a mathematician.

I was a big nerd. I was on the math team at the Illinois Math and Science Academy, and I would sit doing contest problems for hours and nothing would make me happier. So then I went to Stanford with that expectation, started to take all of their advanced math classes, and lo and behold, none of the TAs spoke English. They were all for brilliant people from other countries. But suddenly, I couldn't understand what's being said.

And my passion for math started to dwindle. And I jump on the pre-med bandwagon thinking, “What am I gonna do now with my life?” I don't think I'm gonna be a mathematician like I thought. And somewhere along the line, like in my time at Stanford, I discovered the books of Dr. Irvin Yalom, who is a brilliant psychotherapist and author.

And I read his books and was so taken by them, and I thought, this is what I want to do with my life. I want to understand people with this depth of humanity and be able to help them through the challenges of their life and then write stories about them. And essentially, that's what my life has become.

Tom Tarshis: Wow. Yeah. And, yeah, we're blessed to have doctor Yalom here [at Stanford], and he’s in his nineties, and I think, still, running some groups and doing some mentoring and, yeah, profound writings that have had such a big impact on so many people in our field. That's very cool and super interesting that you got that as an undergraduate, and that helped shape your path.

So you knew when you entered medical school that you wanted to do psychiatry, it sounds like.

Anna Yusim: Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. That was my plan. So I wrote my application essay with, I think, quotes from Jung and Freud.

So that was the plan all along. In medical school, I was thinking about the heart or the mind, which one will it be? And I did seriously consider cardiology, but somehow psychiatry just pulled me. So I think I was meant to be a psychiatrist, and I'm really, really happy that was my profession.

We can make mistakes in our lives, but I feel like this was one of the right decisions. So thank goodness.

Tom Tarshis: Yeah. I was sort of interested in surgery, but the surgery/psychiatry joke was always, “Well, we both like looking at the insides of people just in different ways.”

Anna Yusim: Absolutely. My neurosurgery friends and I have that very joke. And I had the exact opposite. I could not wait to get out of the surgical room.

I was like, “Oh my God.” But there's some people that just love it. Certain specialties just pull people. You just know.

Tom Tarshis: Very cool. Yeah. It sounds like your career and what you've done has been shaped a lot by overseas travel, spirituality and holistic approaches to mental health and physical health, which is incredible and awesome. But tell me, when you finished all your training, what was your job and how did it progress to writing a book and traveling and where you are now?

Anna Yusim: Yeah, Tom. You know, so interestingly, as I was training, spirituality couldn't be further from my mind. And I often say, had anyone told me twenty-five years ago that I would become a spiritual person, and much less write about this, and this being the focus of my work, I would have laughed. I was a math person and I did my thesis in philosophy. This was my thing, rationality, logic. God could not be farther from my mind.

And then towards the end of my residency at NYU, strange and unusual things started to happen in my life that in a way led me to see the world anew. And as an example, I remember I had gone to a lecture, and afterwards was sitting in an ice cream shop, eating ice cream and this woman and a child came up to me and she said, “I'm a psychic. I have a message for you. Can I give you a message?” So she looks relatively innocuous, and I'm like, “Sure. Give me your message.” 

So she starts telling me all of these truths about my life that she has no way of possibly knowing, and these are things that aren't even in my journal, maybe. They're certainly not on Facebook. I've never seen this woman before. Then she left, and I was like, “What in the world just happened?

How did this woman have this strange insight into my life, including the name of the guy that I had a crush on at the time?

Tom Tarshis: Oh my gosh.

Anna Yusim: So specific. Crazy things. And so I was like, what happened, and what does this say about the nature of the mind? You know, we think that each mind is separate and distinct and that my thoughts are actually in [my brain]. How did this woman read my thoughts?

Then, I had a number of these experiences altogether, including some with patients. So this was the universe taking me into this whole other dimension that I then started to study and eventually started to write about. So this became like a whole new direction in my life. And by virtue of integrating spirituality into my life, the other aspects that are more holistic and integrated entered my life. Because the way that I see our profession or psychiatry is as having two primary modalities, psychotherapy for the mind and psychopharmacology for the brain.

Our profession is very powerful. We help a ton of people, but there's also a lot that is missed in that. And what's missed in the brain-mind model is the body and the spirit. And so spirituality is what I was describing to you, but then there's also so many aspects of the body that also aren't included in most modern psychiatric practices. Like in my training at Stanford, Yale, at NYU, I had a total of two nutrition classes.

And yet, we eat for our health all the time, including for our mental health. So this is something that is often overlooked. And there's so many other aspects of the body that are so pertinent and important to psychiatric practice. So my idea now is moving from a brain-mind psychiatry model to a brain-mind-body-spirit psychiatry model.

Parker Anderson: You studied a wealth of different spiritual healing practices around the world from Kabbalah to shamanic traditions to Buddhist meditation. How do you decide what's appropriate to integrate into a Western medical model?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. It's such a great question, and I think it really varies by the person that you're working with. And I think, as with anybody, you meet your client or patient where they're at. And I have plenty of people come to me, not spiritual at all, and completely not interested in spirituality. And that's okay, and that's great. That's where they're at. 

So we work with the tools that they are open to. There are so many amazing psychological tools, sometimes psychopharmacological tools. And then if spirituality enters eventually, great. And if it doesn't, fine.

And so I think really it's about what people are open to and what comes into the practice through that.

Tom Tarshis: Very well said. And did you start out on your own in a private practice, or were you working in a group? What was your business journey like to integrate how you wanted to provide care for people?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. Absolutely. So after I graduated and finished my residency at NYU, every single other resident went to complete a fellowship. I was like, “I am so done. I'm so done with training.”

So I went and hung up my shingle, and just started my practice. And I started doing all the SEO optimization marketing, meeting all the people, walking up and down Park Avenue. “Hi. I'm doctor Anna Yusim. I'm a new psychiatrist in town.”

So in six months, I was full, and it's been full ever since. So I've just loved private practice, and I've expanded my practice in so many ways. I'm now also an executive coach. I do a lot of consulting. I’m licensed in six states. We primarily practice via telehealth now. So it's a very different practice now than it used to be.

But at the end of the day, it's like meeting people at the soul level and helping them to overcome some of their greatest pain.

Tom Tarshis: Gotcha. Gotcha. And do you have other people working for you or with you? Or, have you always been more solo? What's that journey look like?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. In my practice, I've always been solo. But I have so many colleagues with whom I work in so many ways. I'm a clinical assistant professor at Yale. We're starting the center, so I have a whole collegial environment there.

I have a ton of peers. We do peer supervision. But in my practice, it's always been just me. I keep going back and it's been a continual dialogue. Do I actually begin a clinic, and do I bring on some other people, some nurse practitioners, etc.? But I just haven't because somehow as I weigh it, what I have right now is just so right for me.

And that could change at any point. I do other things too. I'm the Chief Medical Officer for a company called Conscious Health in Los Angeles. So we bridge age-old universal spiritual principles with some of the top tools of psychiatric practice, including ketamine therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and a specific form of TMS called electromagnetic pulse therapy, and a number of other modalities as well. But my practice, which has been the mainstay for the last fifteen years, has just been me.

Parker Anderson: I was kind of fascinated by your work at Conscious Health. I wanted to ask, because you're bridging these ancient psychospiritual techniques with cutting edge treatments like ketamine assisted therapy or transcranial magnetic stimulation, it's like you're combining the best of the past with the best of the future. And I was kinda wondering what has been the most surprising thing for you combining those two worlds?

Anna Yusim: You're exactly right. It's the best of the past and the best of the future. So I think the most surprising thing has been, because we are an insurance based company, we take insurance for all of our patients, but we also provide certain services for optimization as opposed to the treatment of pathology.

So we have a lot of people come who don't have a diagnosis. So insurance isn't going to cover it, but it's really to optimize their brain. And there's so much that can be done with transcranial magnetic stimulation and the specific application we have at Conscious Health called electromagnetic brain pulsing for brain optimization. So we work with a ton of athletes. We work with a lot of fighter pilots and [other types of people] who want to enhance themselves.

So a lot of people who are Silicon Valley startup people wanting their brains to work better, I've done a bunch of those sessions, and it's so powerful to see. I think that that really is the wave of the future. And then especially paired together with spirituality for meaning-making and more of an existential flavor to what is this really all about just makes it that much more meaningful.

Tom Tarshis: It's like prevention is the best medicine for the brain, almost. In medicine in general, we're over-focused on you needing a diagnosis to do treatments, and you're having the approach of doing some preventative work, nutrition, and spiritual… Bringing everything in is very logical, and the right public health way to do things.

Anna Yusim: Absolutely. Yes. And I think we need more of that holistic, integrative [approach]. Casey Means was just appointed as our new surgeon general, and she's very holistic, very integrative in her approach.

So I think that we're gonna be moving in that direction.

Tom Tarshis: Very good. And just to comment, a lot of people in the mental health field go the solo practice route, and if you do that, how do you keep up some other connections and have contact with peers? And you've done that.

You have an adjunct faculty appointment at Yale, you're working on a center there, and you're working as a Chief Medical Officer. And you mentioned doing peer groups and supervision. Was that quick when you were solo that you thought, “Hey, let me make sure I reach out and connect with other people”?

What was the path to get that peer contact and fulfillment set up in your career?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. That’s a great question because when I was starting out, for me, the most important thing wasn't really to get peers. It was to actually hire the very best supervisors—the very best people who were gonna teach me because I just got out of residency. And here I was, starting this Park Avenue private practice, having all kinds of cases, many of which I've never encountered. So I needed the best of the best.

So I had, over time, four incredible supervisors who taught me so much in addition to having tons of friends with whom we continue to do and are regularly doing peer supervision. And people do find the psychiatric profession to be quite solitary. I could certainly see that. And it's exactly the opposite of my own experience. Because with my patients, I feel that I'm constantly in dialogue.

We're constantly connecting, communicating. I'm very, very active as a psychiatrist. There's some people who more sit back, active listening. It's more a psychoanalytic model, but it's very different from the model in which I practice. I feel that the experiences with patients are very social experiences for me.

Tom Tarshis: Very cool. Just to jump to the spirituality topic, in our field, I think it was about a decade ago at our clinic that we started including questions about religious beliefs and incorporating that into care. Because as you mentioned, meeting people where they're at and not ignoring that religion plays a big role in many people's lives and spirituality.

And before we [started recording today], we were talking about the clear association with spirituality and improved mental health outcomes. And we even did some research out in California looking at: “Did spirituality protect mental health outcomes during COVID?” And not surprisingly, the data we found was that it certainly did.

So I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what you're doing at Yale and what the future holds for that. And if it's successful there, what are the next steps?

Anna Yusim: Yeah, definitely. We have had for the last year a whole bunch of mixers of the Divinity School faculty and students and the medical school faculty and students. And usually we have one person who's been presenting and it's been so wonderful because the medical school was more quantitative methods. Divinity school, qualitative methods.

There's been a number of research collaborations discussed and started, a number of grants applied for at that intersection, and a number of research projects. We're at the fundraising stage, but we already have project one, two, and three as soon as the funding comes. I'll tell you our three research projects. 

One of them is in the lab of Dr. Al Powers, looking at the nature of intuition. So my belief about intuition is that intuition is the voice of the soul. Getting in touch with your intuition is essentially getting in touch with the divinity within you. A lot of psychiatrists may not agree with that definition, but, nevertheless, it's a cognitive faculty that could sometimes have a magical or very spiritual appeal to it. And Dr. Powers' research is on schizophrenia, so it's on voice hearers. And he uses psychics as his control group. So individuals who are voice hearers but are able to control the voice hearing, as in contrast to schizophrenics where the voice hearing leads them down a downward spiral from which it's hard to escape.

And so in our project, it's going to be the reverse. The psychics and how they receive their clairaudient messages are gonna be the experimental group, and we're gonna learn more about the nature of voice hearing. And also the fact that all of us can actually develop our psychic intuition and develop that capacity to connect deeper to ourselves. There's many different ways in which you can develop intuition. Clairaudience is one of them.

Clairsentience, which is through your emotions and through your body. Claircognizance, when you have an intuitive punch of just knowing.

So those are the four clairs, all the different capacities for intuition. So that's gonna be one of our research projects. The other one will be with Dr. Lisa Miller from Columbia and Dr. Marc Potenza at Yale looking at the neural correlates of spiritual experience. And then another one will be, with Dr. Christopher Pittenger and Dr. Ben Kelmendi. And we have a Psychedelics Research Center at Yale.

So this is going to be looking at the spiritual side of psychedelics use because not only do psychedelics offer a novel neurobiological treatment for some of our most treatment resistant psychiatric conditions, but for many, it also offers a connection to spirit. So we're gonna be studying the nature of that. So that's a little bit of the cross-section. And like I mentioned, we hope to do this in many universities, and it's all gonna be dependent on the different researchers and their own interests.

Tom Tarshis: That’s so interesting, and just having done research for the last twenty years, when you hear people come up with new projects and ideas and with people with the right credentials and planning, you can see how popular all of your projects are that it feels exciting to know that this is happening, and to keep tabs on it. Things can take a long time in the research world to actually do the projects and get some outcomes, and it sounds like your people identified [something], but your money is still being… You're at the money step versus…

Anna Yusim: We're at the money step. We're fundraising. Exactly. We are fundraising.

And we're doing tons of things right now where it doesn't require a lot of money. But once we get the big money, there's gonna be big projects that are gonna follow.

Tom Tarshis: Very good. We always like to ask our guests who've been in the industry for a long time and have had lots of exposure: There are a lot of things broken about our field in general, so if you could pick one thing to fix and/or target to improve care for our patients, where would you put your energies? What problem would you wanna address?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. It would be changing it to a mind-brain-body-spirit psychiatric model from a strictly mind-brain model. And I think the mind-brain model model is effective and powerful. But it's also limited. So it's adding the body and the spirit, which is what I'm working to do through the center and through a number of other projects like Conscious Health and things like that.

Tom Tarshis: That makes sense. And with integrative care, I feel like there's been more recognition and more push, but there's a lot of constraints in our system or barriers that people who want to integrate more aspects have to struggle with, including insurance company reimbursement, access to care, all these other other factors. And what we need is more research that comes out about the connections, and better outcomes will hopefully make that easier.

[Conscious Health] does work with insurance, but what strategies have you found to be successful, or do we need to just write insurance companies off at this initial phase of trying to integrate more aspects for mental health care and psychiatric wellness?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. You know, the insurance that we take is for transcranial magnetic stimulation and ketamine treatments and, less so for the other [things we do]. But the other treatment, we just integrate into psychotherapy. So this is regular care with patients, and we have those conversations. We ask important questions.

We meet them where they're at. We see if spirituality is important to them and if they would like to proceed in that way. If that's something that is relevant and meaningful. And if it is, we have the path forward, and we don't necessarily even need insurance for that yet. But, yes, it would be wonderful if there could be specific spiritual interventions as there are already specific spiritual diagnoses in the DSM. But, yes, it would be wonderful if down the road that happens.

Tom Tarshis: Parker always has to check me on my [opinion on insurance companies when we record the podcast, but after a couple decades fighting with dozens of insurance companies on behalf of patients, I’m maybe just slightly cynical. Right, Parker?

Parker Anderson: Yeah. Tom loves to talk about his thoughts on the insurance companies

Anna Yusim: I know. There's many thoughts and lots of frustrations. I, as a Chief Medical Officer, don't deal with that as much as my Chief Financial Officer and my CEO. So I'm on the side that really is a little bit immune to that, but I have heard the frustrations. But I also have heard that there are people who have been so open to partnering in so many different ways too.

So I've seen both.

Tom Tarshis: And the other thing that I think would be super interesting for our listeners, and we've talked a little bit about how you're licensed in six states, I believe. Is that correct? And you also do executive coaching. What led to going for the licensing in multiple states? And then what are the advantages or disadvantages or the difference between your role as an executive coach versus as a psychiatrist for someone you're working with?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. Absolutely. So I got licensed with the different states because I actually, over the last few years, have been living in a few different states to kind of figure out, do I wanna stay in Connecticut? Do I wanna check out Florida? Do I wanna check out Colorado?

And so I would go there. I would have to pick up some patients there, and then I ultimately am still here in Connecticut and New York, at least for now. And so it was from that space and getting patients in a number of states that I became licensed in those states. And it's quite easy. I mean, you pay a little bit of money, but it's quite easy with one license to be able to expand that.

I've given tons of talks actually on the intersection of coaching and psychiatry and what the differences are. And I've done it more for the coaching community, and for them to have good boundaries as to: Where does this end and where does this begin? And so coaching, it's a very different animal.

It could look very similar to therapy, but it could actually also be something that is completely different because coaching could be something that is funded by a company. So you are hired by a company in order to work with the CEO or or the CFO, so your client is, of course, the CEO, but also the company that is hired. So in addition, usually in therapy sessions, I talk to the patient, and that is your primary information. But in a coaching engagement, you will also often do 360 reviews, maybe two or three times in the six month engagement. So at the beginning, the person that I'm working with, the CEO that I'm assigned to, will identify 6 to 10 people who are key stakeholders in their life.

And they could be people probably at work, but it's okay if it's also at home, like their partner or their children. And if people hire me privately, then it will definitely be their wife and their children. You know, people can also hire me privately for coaching and pay on their own, but I'm just giving you some differences. So a company can pay. It's a very different financial structure and so different, loyalties in a way and affiliation.

Still, your primary client is obviously your client, but you have to think about it a little bit differently. And so, you have the client's goals, but you also have the company's goals to take into account. And you have the client's account, but you also have the company's account of how the client is doing. And you keep checking in with them every few months to make sure that progress is being made and that everybody agrees what the goals of the engagement are and have very tangible benchmarks for ensuring that you're making progress, that the client's making progress, and that things are working. So that's a few of the differences, but there's also many more.

Tom Tarshis: That's super interesting, and I hadn't even really thought about that. But, yeah, the person hiring you and the different benchmarks and goals. You would have to get a lot of consent paperwork signed if you were a psychiatrist talking to all those people.

But if it's an executive coach type relationship, that's not needed. And if you are working with someone and you really identify, “Hey. You do need a therapist or a psychiatrist.” Is that something then you would identify and add and try to suggest that or give a referral for that?

Anna Yusim: That's happened a few times in my coaching sessions, and then I find them somebody really excellent to work with on specifically that. Yeah. And also with coaching, you can have a very different kind of engagement. Like, I've had engagements that are six day engagements where someone hires me to come for six days to work with them and their significant other on improving their relationship, like that kind of coaching.

Very different than therapy. And those have been very interesting, amazing, very transformative experiences. Because another thing I do is transformational workshops where people come, myself often with some colleagues, we have a few days of transformation. And so sometimes I'll get hired privately as a coach to do that for a couple, something like that.

Tom Tarshis: Oh, very cool. And just some specific details on executive coaching, you don't need a license to be an executive coach, right? I imagine you can take notes, but you don't need to do a formal, sort of, medical record.

Anna Yusim: That's such a great question. You know, relative to the medical profession, coaching is like the wild, wild west. You could do whatever and call yourself a coach. You don't need any degrees, which was so interesting because even before I started my practice, I was on my website, and I asked my supervisors if I need to say that I am a psychiatrist and a coach. And they’d ask, “Why would you wanna add that you're a coach? You have a medical degree. Why would you wanna put yourself down by adding ‘coach’ to that?”

But that's not the case. Some of the best executive coaches are amazing at what they do, so I'm part of a coaching organization, called the 100 Coaches Agency.

It was started by Marshall Goldsmith. So I get my coaching clients sometimes from there and sometimes not, but it's a community, and they have a certain certification through them. But if you want to be a very high-level coach, you can get certified at Harvard. You can get certified through amazing coaching agencies and organizations. So there's definitely ways to be very, very versed and academically on top of it as well and learn all the different frameworks.

I've done it through my organization. I haven't done additional training, but I've learned a lot of the frameworks just by being a part of that.

Tom Tarshis: Awesome.

Parker Anderson: Tell us a little bit about your appearances on national television. How did that start? And when you're there, are you representing yourself as a psychiatrist, as an executive coach, or as Anna?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. It's always been as a psychiatrist and also as Anna. I think it started literally just one day when I was called by a news agency. “Would you like to speak on this?” So they came to my office, and I spoke.

And then it just kept happening over and over and over. And then it started happening for really big things, especially during COVID where I was asked to speak on Fox News. We did a whole big thing. And then I was asked to speak on CNN about COVID.

So it was a lot of things like that. And then about a month ago I was on Health Headlines, which is the Yale New Haven primary news channel. And that was together with Dr. Christopher Pittenger with whom we're starting this mental health and spirituality center. So the opportunities just kind of pop up, essentially.

I don't have a publicist. I don't have anybody who's seeking them out for me. They just come. I really enjoy it, and I do a lot of it.

Tom Tarshis: Well, and I'm sure [the audience] can see [your] charisma and engagement. So someone offered you one, and then people are like, “Hey. This here's someone who's great at this,” and I think it's a testament to how [we] can feel your energy coming through and your passion and all the projects you're in.

Anna Yusim: Thank you so much.

Tom Tarshis: Yeah, it's cool to see how that evolves. And I think as mental health clinicians, some of those opportunities pop up, and there's probably a way to seek some of them out as well. But you have to have the right, I think, personality and charisma to make some of those things happen.

Parker Anderson: Mhmm.

Tom Tarshis: Well, this is awesome. If you're looking ahead in this field, we have a lot of colleagues and very multidisciplinary, different levels of practitioners of all sorts of training in this field. Is there anything you're very excited about coming in the next decade, including stuff we've talked about, or is there something else that you are excited about?

Anna Yusim: Yeah. I mean, I feel like our profession is changing so rapidly. Like electronic health records, right? When I was a resident, there was no such thing, and now everybody has them. That's just as an example, electronic prescription writing. When I was a resident, when I started out, I was writing hand prescriptions. Now everybody's doing everything electronically.

When I, for my ten years of practice, was sitting in an office many hours a day, staring at my patients, sharing space, being able to look in their eyes. Now I'm looking at a screen like [this interview]. Maybe 10% of my sessions now are in-person, 90% are not. But sometimes we do really cool things. We'll walk in Central Park together, or we'll walk in a forest together.

Those were our COVID sessions when no one wanted to be indoors, you know? And I feel like now they also have so much AI-mediated therapy. They're gonna create my brain into an AI or your brain into an AI, so your patients will be able to ask all the questions, but they don't really need you. They just need your AI. So I'm very excited to see how this progresses.

A lot of people have fear about that, and I think we have to be careful, create the right boundaries, but I think that it's very exciting. Things are changing in ways that I never would have anticipated and will only continue to do so.

Tom Tarshis: Very well said. And I think with COVID and just decreased stigma and lots of other reasons, it's the field of psychiatry, I feel like we have the street credit we deserve, and people are recognizing the importance. And, yeah, AI is a whole other [thing]. We're currently using some tools in our software.

There’s probably a dozen companies with their AI therapy/psychiatry idea, which they all seem reasonable or interesting. Although I'm skeptical about it, I'm not concerned about clinicians being replaced. Never say never, I guess. But, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Anna Yusim: Yeah. I agree. I agree. And even telehealth, it's offered so much freedom. I love practicing via telehealth, but I also miss being able to look eye-to-eye with my patients.

And that was so special. And it still happens once in a blue moon, but it's a very different practice. The world is changing, and we just have to be in flow with that.

Tom Tarshis: Very well said. Thank you. I really just loved this conversation and really grateful for you to spend some time with us today and talk about all the interesting things that you're doing and what your path has been.

Parker, any final questions we have for Anna? I feel like we got so much great stuff.

Parker Anderson: Yeah. This has been wonderful. My only final question would be: Is there anything else that you'd like to say? Anything else you'd like to plug? Anything of that sort?

Anna Yusim: No. I'm just so, thank you guys for doing this. I mean, I'll plug my book that I'm writing right now. It's not out yet, but soon. So my [first] book was called Fulfilled, How the Science of Spirituality Can Help You Live a Happier, More Meaningful Life. 

My book right now is on the science of miracles with the miracle being defined as something highly beneficial yet statistically improbable. And the question of the book is: What can we do to increase the frequency of miracles in our life? So coming soon to a theater near you, well, to a bookstore near you, more likely. But, yes, I'm plugging that.

Parker Anderson: Love that. Alright. Great. Well, I'll go ahead and wrap things up.

Anna Yusim: Awesome. This was wonderful. And please let me know if you're ever in New York and Connecticut. We'll grab a cup of coffee.

That would be so wonderful.

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Stay tuned for more insight and stories in next week’s blog post!

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