Everything Is Political series

The Politics of Mental Health with TikTok Star Dr. Han Ren

June 8, 2026

This episode is for you if you’ve ever felt like you have one foot in each world, belonging fully to neither — or wondered why therapy can feel so expensive, so inaccessible, or so disconnected from who you actually are.

Becky and Taina talk therapy — as a practice, an industry, and a genuinely political space — with licensed psychologist Dr. Han Ren. They get into what most clinical training leaves out (anti-oppressive frameworks weren’t part of Han’s program at all), why access to a therapist who actually understands your identity is its own uphill climb, and the cultural stigma that keeps entire communities from ever walking through the door.

Han also previews her upcoming book, The Hyphenated Life, about the exhausting, in-between experience of never feeling quite enough for any single space — and why masking and code-switching are legitimate survival skills, not a personal failure to be “authentic enough.” The conversation closes on something bigger: how we’ve turned real trauma responses into individual pathology instead of naming the systems that caused them.

About our guest

Dr. Han Ren is a licensed psychologist with a private practice in Austin, working primarily with overthinking overachievers, people of the global majority, and clients navigating perfectionism, people-pleasing, and complex trauma. She’s been creating mental health content since October 2020, and is the author of the upcoming book The Hyphenated Life, about bridging the in-between spaces of intersectional identity.

In This Episode, We Get Into:

• Why most clinical training still doesn’t include anti-oppressive or multicultural frameworks — and what that leaves out
• Starting a TikTok in October 2020 to fill the gap left by generic, one-size-fits-all therapy content
• The real barriers to access: insurance, cost, wait lists, and finding a therapist who actually understands your identity
• A story about the hunt for a queer-competent therapist, and getting asked “who takes the role of the man” in a same-sex marriage
• Why cultural stigma around therapy — privacy, “keeping the personal personal,” “that’s a white people thing” — is its own political barrier
• Building trust through an anti-carceral, safety-planning approach instead of leading with the threat of a 911 call
• Her upcoming book The Hyphenated Life: masking and code-switching as a legitimate survival skill, not a failure of authenticity
• How pathologizing trauma responses — like people-pleasing or hypervigilance — turns real survival strategies into “your problem”
• Why “just be more resilient” so often protects broken systems instead of fixing them
• Resources for clinicians and for anyone seeking support before they can access a therapist: peer-led circles, and books like My Grandmother’s Hands and Decolonizing Therapy