Today we’d like to introduce you to Shabnam Kalbasi.
Hi Shabnam, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am a Southern California girl. I grew up north of LA in the suburbs and was a music performance kid through and through. I majored in voice and opera in undergrad at UCI and graduated with my Masters at the University of Southern California. While I always considered myself an introvert, performing became an avenue for me to relinquish the rigidity I carried in myself day to day. Onstage I felt free and it became my safe space. I ended up singing at some of the most exciting opera houses in the U.S., getting a manager, performing at the Kennedy Center and yet, I felt like something was missing.
Making a living as a classical singer is difficult, but the thing I became most uncomfortable with was the patriarchal culture, being typecast, and not feeling that I had a lot of agency over the jobs I’d get, all of which impacted my mental health.
After living out of a suitcase for approximately three years, I returned home to LA. I ended up taking courses to apply for my Master of Science in Marriage & Family Therapy. I was so lucky to get accepted into the master’s program at CSUN. After starting the program, my music life didn’t diminish, it just evolved.
Fast forward to now, I am a psychotherapist building my private practice while still singing, I am a member of the LA Master Chorale and I sing for television and film as a SAG singer. I’ve learned through the years that we aren’t all just one thing. We can be many things and thrive in different environments and pathways.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smooth? No, but I think that’s the beauty of it, right? To continue through the challenges, the fatigue, the overextending our energy. I think at one point, I was saying yes to too many things and realized I was burning myself out.
One thing I began to realize especially after the pandemic, as the work culture began to shift was the importance of only saying yes to things that excited me. Whether it was in the world of therapy or music that enabled me to put my best foot forward.
As a therapist, part of the work is that I feel rested, prepared, and engaged with my clients. I can’t be a good clinician if I’m not taking care of myself.
As you know, we’re big fans of Therapy with Shab. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I specialize in relationships.
I work with clients who want to work on the relationships they have with themselves and others: be it with our families, partners, friends, and colleagues.
The quality of our lives exponentially improves when those relationships are fulfilling and nurturing. Ironically, we forget that the relationships we neglect at times, is the one we have with ourselves–whether it is affected by our depression, our anxieties, fears, insecurities or negative beliefs about ourselves.
As a child of immigrants, my work as a professional musician, and now as a psychotherapist– have strengthened the idea that a comprehensive grasp of ourselves allows us to gain a better understanding of how we fit into our ever-changing and challenging world.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I think Mental Health is slowly getting the traction it needs, much to be attributed by a global pandemic that affected all us one way or another.
I hope that mental health is more accessible in the years to come, and I hope to not only continue work with my clients, but begin writing more for my blog and to present my experiences as a clinician to a larger audience, ultimately.
Pricing:
- $125/50 minute session
Contact Info:
- Website: https://therapywithshab.com/
- Instagram: @therapywithshab
Image Credits
1st image: The Headshot Truck 2nd image: Thereafter photography
