Episode 239

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Published on:

21st Mar 2026

Episode 239: Be Annoying: Your Voice is Needed [featuring Caryn Zaner]

In this episode, Patrick Casale talks with Caryn Zaner, PsyD, founder of Therapy for the Apocalypse and Felt Not Fixed, about what it means to run a business—and a life—rooted in values, authenticity, and a commitment to community, especially while navigating the challenges of a capitalist system that isn’t designed for equity or collective care.

Here are 3 key takeaways:

  1. Embrace Value Alignment, Even When It’s Hard: If your business decisions don’t feel authentic or congruent with your values, it’s nearly impossible to stay motivated or feel good about your work. It’s okay to leave “money on the table” if it means staying true to yourself.
  2. Community and Accessible Care Matter: Healing happens in relationships, not isolation. The use of equitable sliding scales and group therapy can make care more accessible and build genuine community in and out of the therapy room.
  3. Rejection is Part of Advocacy: Practice advocating for yourself, even if it feels “annoying.” Not everyone will be your people—and that’s by design. Standing up for what truly matters means you’ll attract your “right fit” clients and repel those who aren’t aligned. That’s how you create real impact.

Let’s dare to be a bit more “annoying”—and a lot more authentic—in our work and our lives.

More about Caryn:

Caryn Zaner, PsyD, is a psychologist who runs Therapy for the Apocalypse (a private therapy practice) and Felt Not Fixed (a coaching and consulting project still finding its shape).

In their clinical work, they offer virtual services for Oregon-based clients, specializing in group therapy and therapeutic intensives for people navigating identity transitions, relational and attachment trauma, and existential distress. Their approach integrates Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFiT), existential-humanistic principles, and relational process work, informed by liberational and feminist psychologies.

Through Felt Not Fixed, Caryn offers coaching, consulting, and facilitation for people and teams who want to live and work in closer alignment with their values. This branch of their work centers on emotional authenticity, community connection, and creative experimentation.

Across both spaces, Caryn helps people move from intellectual understanding to felt experience and from isolation to real contact.

Offer:

Check out Felt Not Fixed, a coaching and consulting space for values-driven humans, practitioners, and teams. It’s where Caryn (will) host evolving offerings like Values Clarity Sessions, Improv-based Perfectionism Recovery Workshops, and community-oriented groups on emotional processing and queer belonging.

For Oregon residents seeking therapy, Caryn offers group therapy and therapeutic intensives rooted in relational and existential-humanistic work.

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About the Podcast

The Neurodivergent Entrepreneur
Honest conversations about building a business while Neurodivergent, the self-doubt, the chaos, and everything in between.
The Neurodivergent Entrepreneur is a podcast for ADHD, Autistic, and all other neurodivergent entrepreneurs who are building businesses, creative work, and lives that actually fit how their brains work. Hosted by Patrick Casale, LCMHC, this show is for people who
want to create meaningful work, create outside of the box, grow their impact, and build something sustainable without losing themselves in the process.

Being a neurodivergent entrepreneur can feel like holding a lot of contradictions at once. You may have big ideas, deep passion, creative energy, and a strong desire to do things differently. You may also be navigating burnout, masking, self-doubt, perfectionism, rejection sensitivity, executive dysfunction, inconsistent energy, and the pressure to keep showing up when your capacity is already stretched. This podcast speaks to that reality honestly, because building a business around your brain, your values, and your lived experience can be powerful, complicated, messy, and deeply personal.

Patrick Casale is a chronically ill, AuDHD, mental health therapist, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, event host, group practice owner, and neurodivergent business owner who has built, grown, burned out, pivoted, and kept going. His work brings together clinical insight, lived experience, business perspective, and real conversation about what it actually takes to create something that feels values aligned. His conversations are direct, compassionate, unfiltered, and practical, with room for both the emotional reality of entrepreneurship and the concrete decisions that shape a sustainable business.

New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature honest conversations with neurodivergent entrepreneurs, creators, therapists, business owners, and leaders. Together, Patrick and his guests explore entrepreneurship, identity, mental health, chronic health,
creativity, leadership, systems, money mindset, visibility, community, sustainable growth, and the behind-the-scenes reality of creating work that matters.

Build your dream business. Protect your capacity. Work with your brain instead of against it.