What we talked about
In this insightful conversation, Dr. Carmen Román shares her journey from growing up in a poor neighborhood in Guadalajara to becoming a bicultural clinical psychologist with three decades of experience. Drawing from her practice in both Mexico and the United States, she offers a unique perspective on how cultural differences impact our approach to mental health, work-life balance, and family dynamics. Dr. Román discusses her experience with burnout that led to her specialization in helping others prevent and recover from it, and introduces her book “10% More Selfish” which promotes balanced self-care. She explains how Silicon Valley’s achievement-oriented culture often neglects true self-care and how finding purpose through helping others contributes more to happiness than pursuing accomplishments alone. With warmth and wisdom, Dr. Román illustrates how embracing both Mexican community values and American individualism can lead to a more fulfilled life.
Show notes
Dr. Carmen Román grew up in Polanquito, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Guadalajara, a bitterly ironic name given that Polanco in Mexico City is among the wealthiest. She almost became a software engineer; a friend dragging her to a psychology admissions office changed everything. She got in (sixty spots, nine hundred applicants), loved it immediately, built a thriving practice over fifteen years in Mexico, and then burned out completely. That crisis became the engine for everything that followed: the move to the U.S. without a word of English, starting a doctoral program from scratch because her Mexican license didn’t transfer, five years of Aikido training as part of a transpersonal psychology curriculum, and eventually a specialization in helping others recognize and recover from the very thing that had floored her.
What we covered
- Growing up in Polanquito, the poorest Polanco, how her parents acted as informal social workers in a neighborhood where police wouldn’t come, and how teenagers in the community would seek her out to share their deepest secrets before she had any clinical training
- Burning out after an overloaded practice in Mexico, full schedule, keynote bookings a year out, too easy and too fast, and how her body’s hard stop became the catalyst for uprooting entirely and moving to California
- Starting a U.S. psychology degree from zero because Mexican licensure didn’t transfer, and how returning to student status after fifteen years as a supervisor humbled her in exactly the way she needed
- Five years of Aikido practice as a required part of her transpersonal psychology program, and how the martial art’s flowing, receptive quality rewired her therapeutic style from goal-driven to patient, energy-matching work
- The stress-burnout continuum she teaches clients: manageable stress is useful, then anxiety arrives when that stress overwhelms, then depression signals a deeper stop, and burnout is the body’s final depletion of everything, physical, mental, emotional reserves alike
- Silicon Valley’s “accomplishing, accomplishing, accomplishing” culture as structurally incompatible with recovery, and the contrast with Mexican sobremesa, the unhurried time after a meal spent just talking to people, which she frames as culturally encoded prevention
- Navigating HIPAA-compliant practice with Latino families where a parent calling to book a session for their twenty-two-year-old is not overreach but cultural love, and how she threads that difference rather than simply enforcing the American rule
About Dr. Carmen Román
Dr. Carmen Román is a bilingual, bicultural clinical psychologist with three decades of experience spanning Mexico and the United States, founder of the nonprofit Emotions in Harmony, and author of 10% More Selfish. She specializes in burnout prevention and recovery, and works with individuals, couples, and bicultural families navigating the collision of American achievement culture and Latin American community values.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-carmen-roman
- Website: https://emotionsinharmony.org
Episode 30 of the PreVetted Podcast.