World Mental Health Day: Rewriting the Rules

Sophia Bush (0:00)

Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress.

Welcome back to Work in Progress, friends. This is an episode I am particularly excited to present to all of you, because it has been born out of a long-time Work in Progress partnership, and it comes with free stash, and that feels so exciting to me.

And I know the world feels like it's on fire lately, and prioritizing your mental health can be hard, which is why I'm excited to partner with BetterHelp on this episode. We are joined by an expert today who encourages all of us to do just that. Sonni Williams is here. She is a licensed professional counselor and perinatal mental health certified clinician who works on BetterHelp's clinician team. She specializes in women's and perinatal mental health, and her entire mission in life is to make women feel seen and supported. We got introduced by the team at BetterHelp because you know, they've been part of our podcast family for a long time. And what it's led to is a pretty incredible resource set for all of us. Sonni decided to create a project to really look at the messages that women absorb, how we're supposed to live and succeed and care for other people and take care of ourselves, the shoulds and the shouldn'ts, and how most of them, let's be real, contradict each other. Whether that means make sure you're taking care of everyone else, but make your own needs easy. Speak your mind, but not at the expense of keeping the peace. You know the drill. When you've heard messages like those for long enough, they stop feeling like expectations and they start becoming the rules you feel like you're supposed to live by. But rules, especially the ones imposed on us by society, yes, I mean women, but let's face it, men too, are meant to be questioned. We've got to reframe them and maybe abandon them all together so that we get to build something better. But I know therapy isn't always accessible to people, and that's why I asked our sponsors at BetterHelp if they might help me launch a free partnership for Work in Progress users, because I think everybody needs a little bit of space at the end of a year, like this one. And they answered the call.

I asked for hours for WhipsMartys, and guys, they multiplied the hours I asked for by a crazy number. They are going to provide 10,000 hours of free therapy for this community, and they've created a world mental health day initiative that is accessible to you whether you sign up for free therapy or not. It's called the Permission Project, and it explores all of those unwritten rules we carry, and gives us a how to so that we can start questioning them and rewriting them for ourself. I am so grateful that Sonni has joined us today as an expert to walk us through this. I am so grateful to the partnerships team at Work in Progress and the team at BetterHelp for doing this for us. We're going to put the links for free therapy and all the programs we're going to talk about today in the show notes so that they're easy for you to access.

And oh my gosh, I'm just excited and sending each and every one of you a hug. I hope that this feels like it's coming at just the right time. Let's dive in with Sonni Williams.

Sonni, I'm so happy to have you here today. You know, not to open with a joke or anything, but 2026 is kind of a dumpster fire. Everybody's really stressed out. And knowing your incredible, you know, I don't even want to say line of work, like your presence in the world, the way you show up for people, the way you encourage people to take care of their mental health. I just am so glad you're here. We need you.

Sonni Williams (4:10)

Thank you, Heart, warm and fuzzies. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be that space for so many people. And it is much needed for sure.

Sophia Bush (4:20)

Okay, before we get into all the things you've learned and all the things you have to share with us, I actually want to go back and do a little personal touch point. One of the things I think I've really taken from my own therapy practice is carrying along the younger versions of myself with me. And when we think about, you know, the younger women that we were or the little girls that we were, I'm curious if you got to interact with Sonni at nine or 10, that little girl version of you, what qualities do you think you would see in her that are still so true for you today?