132: Walking Alongside: Authentic, Justice-Oriented Therapy with Katie La

A Simple Therapy Podcast:

Honest Conversations on Therapy, Mental Health, Healing and Self-Growth.

In this episode of A Simple Therapy Podcast, Sindee Gozansky welcomes Katie La, a licensed professional counselor and supervisor whose work is grounded in trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and justice-oriented care. Katie came to therapy not by design but by what felt like destiny—a near-full scholarship tucked inside her graduation diploma pulled her into a field she hadn’t planned to enter. What grew from that unexpected beginning was a deep, decades-long commitment to meeting clients where their histories actually live: in culture, in survival, in the parts of themselves they were taught to dismiss.

Sindee and Katie cover what it really means to bring your whole self into the therapy room. Katie shares openly about growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in Houston — the shame of feeling not American enough, a household where emotions were never named, and a culture built around physical survival rather than feelings. That background shapes everything about how she works with clients today, especially those from minority and marginalized communities who carry guilt just for having a mental health struggle at all. The conversation moves through validation as the only real starting point, the difference between projecting your lived experience onto a client and letting it make you more attuned, and why curiosity is a more powerful clinical tool than any certification. Katie also pushes back on the self-regulation-only model most therapists learned in grad school, making a quiet, convincing case for co-regulation — community, culture, karaoke with friends — as equally necessary for healing.

This one is for any therapist who has felt the pull between their training and their humanity. Katie’s perspective is expansive but her delivery is grounded and real, and what stays with you is something simple: the most important thing you can offer a client isn’t a technique. It’s the willingness to walk alongside them — not ahead, not behind — and not look away from what’s true.

00:49 – Meet Katie La

02:40 – Growing Up Vietnamese in Houston: Assimilation, Shame, and Survival

06:32 – Why So Many Minority Cultures Deprioritize Mental Health

09:38 – Holding Your Own Culture While Sitting With a Client’s

13:00 – Walking Alongside, Not in Front

17:08 – Radical Honesty in the Therapy Room

21:12 – Collective Care and Justice-Oriented Care

25:04 – Co-Regulation vs. Self-Regulation

28:50 – What We Need to Unlearn from Grad School

34:11 – Concrete Ways to Be More Culturally Attuned

40:27 – Where to Find Katie and Cognitive Revival

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