Today we’d like to introduce you to Annia Raja, PhD.
Hi Annia, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a clinical psychologist in private practice now, but my path to this point has taken many twists and turns. I first started out in the business world actually—I majored in finance in college and initially worked in investment banking and then as a management consultant for a couple years out of undergrad. During my consulting days, everyone around me was applying for MBAs. But I just couldn’t get myself to take that reflexive next step. I thought to myself, “Wait, I already did business school, why would I jump through all these hoops again?”
My resistance to that, along with some serious soul searching, led to me to quit consulting and the corporate world altogether and pursue a career change towards psychology. I re-enrolled at my alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin (go Longhorns!), to complete yet another undergrad degree, this time in psychology. I had initially discovered my interest in psychology during my undergraduate days, but up to that point, I had treated it as nothing more than an intellectual passion.
At that time, I was hoping to pursue a clinical research career, and so I applied to PhD programs in clinical psychology. I thankfully got into several top-tier programs and picked UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas for a variety of compelling personal and professional reasons (more on that later!).
I initially went into my PhD thinking that I would focus on research in women’s health. While I had a knack for research and the scientific process, I quickly realized that I was finding the parts of my PhD that involved working directly with patients incredibly rewarding, and so I decided to focus on that instead. Through a series of fortunate experiences along the way, I found myself gravitating toward in-depth psychotherapy.
I was blessed throughout my training with some brilliant clinical advisors on how to become an in-depth therapist. Each of them taught and modeled for me the transformative impact that working with people over the long-term in therapy can have—how life-changing and transformational it can be for people’s sense of self, their meaning and purpose in life, their relationships with themselves and others, and so much more.
And on the personal end, I started my own in-depth therapy as a first-year grad student with an incredible therapist who is warm, incisive, sharp, and kind beyond measure—and we’re still going strong in our therapy together after all these years. I often tell people that my own therapy and my incredible therapist have been some of my biggest teachers in my development as a clinical psychologist for my own clients.
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?
Hardly! Is anything in life that is worth having or pursuing a smooth road? Like I mentioned, my becoming a clinical psychologist was a huge change, and so as you might imagine, there were a lot of bumps along the way. The road to this point was filled with detours, potholes, road closures, and accidents. But through it all, it’s also been immensely rewarding, filled with adventure, and honestly fun as hell.
One of the biggest stressors was during the time that I was applying to PhD programs. While I was chugging along doing my thing at UT-Austin, preparing my applications while working in research labs and writing my honors thesis, my husband decided to make a career change of his own. He too decided to leave the corporate world behind and pursue medicine instead.
Neither of us wanted to do long distance, and so we applied to PhD programs (me) and med schools (him) all around the country, hoping that somehow, we could both get in at the same place (or at least the same city). I can’t overstate how stressful, nerve-wracking, and existentially uncertain of a time that was in both of our lives!
We each got into several excellent schools—I got into some West Coast schools here in California, and my husband got into some East Coast schools, but the only school that we both got into was UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas (which is thankfully, a top tier institution for both medicine and clinical psychology!), and so off to Dallas we went for grad school, relieved that we avoided a long distance set-up.
Clearing that hurdle was hard enough. But over the course of the next ten years of us, with both of us going through graduate school, medical school, postdoc, and residency together, many more trials and difficulties came in our path. It was hard, for sure.
I’m fortunate to be really passionate about what I do, but I also think it’s crucial to create and maintain a rich, intentional, and meaningful life outside of my career. That too can be difficult and take a lot of time and effort, but that’s always been a non-negotiable for me.
Things like having hobbies, traveling regularly and for extended periods of time, being there for my loved ones, reading, spending time alone to recharge my introvert battery, taking care of myself with exercise and nutrition, and much more—as hard as that can be to manage sometimes, I’m adamant about never letting those things take a backseat to my career.
We’ve been impressed with Annia Raja PhD Therapy, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
In my private practice (Annia Raja PhD Therapy), I provide in-depth therapy to high achievers struggling with anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, and people-pleasing.
I love working with my high-achieving clients to unpack all sorts of stuff, known and unknown to them, that’s keeping them stuck in life. My therapy clients tend to be super accomplished go-getters who are really good at getting shit done—be it at work, in school, for their family and loved ones, or anything else in life that’s amenable to problem-solving. But this doer/fixer pattern can also be one of the things that get in the way of creating a meaningful life for themselves that’s independent of their accomplishments and how others see them.
I’m also specialized in therapy for physicians. This isn’t a specialty that’s really out there right now, but it is something I’ve carved into my practice because of a serious need. Being alongside my husband through medical school and residency while he trained in an incredibly demanding specialty, as well as seeing our mutual physician friends and colleagues along the way, I got an intimate view into the insane stressors that medical doctors experience. I feel so much compassion in my heart for physicians because of these personal connections, and so I’m particularly passionate about working with doctors in therapy to help them work through all the stress, burnout, overwhelm, and more that they deal with on the regular.
One of the first things I often tell my clients when they’re first starting therapy with me is that there are no quick fixes to the types of difficult things that bring people like them to therapy. How do I know that? Because the reality is that if there was a quick fix possible, high achievers like them probably have tried it already. And being the excellent problem solvers that they are, it would have already worked, meaning that they probably wouldn’t be here talking to me.
Through my in-depth approach to therapy, I forge a deep therapeutic relationship with my clients, where we go beyond simply targeting “symptoms” or trying to “fix” our way out of life’s hard stuff. In fact, there are no quick fixes in therapy with me—my style is in-depth, it’s the antithesis of the “problem solving” and instant gratification approach that we can so often be used to in other parts of life and modern culture, and it’s going to get uncomfortable and painful at times (especially if done well!).
Of course, someone might be struggling with a particular issue that compels them to first reach out for help, but almost always, that one issue is only a starting point and usually just the type of the iceberg. Depth-oriented therapy does take time, but it’s so worth it.
Furthermore, as a woman of color (South Asian, to be exact), I’m deeply attuned to the intersection of systemic, sociocultural, and political forces that impact my clients’ lived experiences. Things like systemic power, privilege, and oppression affect us all, whether we benefit from or are harmed by these things. All of that means that I work with my clients through perspectives of anti-oppression, liberation, and decolonization to help them heal and grow.
Overall, I love working with people (be they doctors, business executives, tech and finance professionals, activists, creatives, or any other high achievers) who are ready to create a rich, meaningful life beyond their professional pursuits—people who are realizing that their ambition and achievement, while incredibly rewarding in certain ways, is coming at some real, unsustainable personal costs, and they’re ready to do a different kind of work on themselves.
That’s where therapy with someone like me can come in!
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love Los Angeles more than words can express, even with all its quirks, contradictions, and annoyances. I constantly feel like I can’t soak up enough of this beautiful, maddening, frustrating, yet despite it all, irresistible city.
The amalgamation of nature and the outdoors, arts, culture, food, and diversity in LA is unmatched. My practice is based in Santa Monica/Westside + online. But just like the city itself, my favorite parts of LA are actually sprawled all over the place.
I especially love Echo Park and Silver Lake. I’m usually found walking around birdwatching at Echo Park Lake or jaunting about somewhere on Sunset Blvd, whether it’s grabbing a coffee at Dayglow or Stereoscope, eating the most delicious focaccia sandwiches at Ceci’s Gastronomia, or grabbing slices of pizza and cake at Quarter Sheets. Oh, and I also can’t forget some more favorites—Pijja Palace, Bacetti Trattoria, Cookbook LA, Hippo.
And outside those usual suspects, I’m either hanging out at the beach with binoculars and a good book, hiking in the Santa Monica or San Gabriel mountains, or strolling through the Huntington Library Botanical Gardens in San Marino to literally stop and smell the roses and/or gawk at the glory of the Desert Garden.
I can’t get enough of the nature, food, and culture here in LA (who can?!), but if I had to make one gripe, I do miss me some good Texas-style barbecue. I was born and raised in LA until elementary school, after which my parents relocated us to Texas. We have tons of family ties to LA and Southern California, meaning we constantly went back and forth, and so I consider both California and Texas my home states.
I feel so lucky to be rooted to the best two states in the country—yes, I know I’m not helping the silly rivalry between California and Texas at all with that take, but I said what I said! Go ahead, you can call me a #coastalcowgirl. Yeehaw, beach!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.anniarajaphdtherapy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anniarajaphdtherapy/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniaraja
Image Credits
Brooke Nowogrodski
