There has been an undeniable progress in public discourse surrounding mental health awareness. Yet, the conversation still feels clinical, sanitized, or overly performative. Believing that destigmatizing mental health doesn’t translate to talking more but talking better, Alicia Racine Fink launched Xanyland: Comedians on the Couch. This podcast creates a space for genuine therapeutic exploration.
Xanyland unpacks the surreal, typically contradictory landscape of modern mental health through candid, hilarious, and sometimes emotional conversations with comedians. It combines humor and psychoanalysis to dismantle stigma, question prevailing mental health narratives, and invite audiences to reflect, laugh, and feel seen.
The podcast’s name is a double entendre. On the surface, it’s playful, suggesting a whimsical, slightly chaotic world à la candyland. Digging deeper, it presents a critique about how mainstream mental health discourse has become increasingly dominated by diagnoses and symptom management. “Land,” in particular, signals the broader mental health ecosystem, which Fink has observed to be controlled more by metrics and mass marketing than by human nuance. Essentially, Xanyland’s mission is to help people view mental health as a shared human experience, messy, hilarious, and worth exploring with curiosity and care, instead of a product or performance.
Xanyland is known for unfiltered conversations with comedians about mental health, identity, trauma, and healing. Here, humor becomes a tool to voice the “shadow” aspects of the self that typically go unspoken. The conversations are structured to feel accessible and human, allowing listeners to reclaim the depth of psychoanalysis and frame it through the lived experiences of those willing to speak the unspeakable, often with a punchline.
The voice behind Xanyland makes it more compelling. Fink has a dual background that enables her to hold space for emotional depth and creative expression. With a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting and a Master’s in Psychoanalytic Counseling, she has always been drawn to storytelling that lives at the heart of therapy and the arts.
The beginnings of Xanyland stem from Fink’s experience in stand-up comedy. After moving to Los Angeles and before starting her practice as a therapist, she sought an outlet for expression and found it in a local stand-up comedy class. “Comedy helped me reconnect with my voice,” she says. “I also appreciated comedians more as the cultural truth-tellers that they are.”
It’s not only the wit and their exceptional timing that stood out to Fink. It’s their vulnerability. “The comedians I met are people unafraid to vocalize the contradictions we all carry, the love and resentment we feel for our families, the absurdities of anxiety, the loneliness behind laughter,” Fink remarks. The therapist saw this as a bridge between the couch and the stage, two worlds she knew intimately.
Xanyland was, therefore, born as a platform where these raw, unfiltered exchanges could live. Fink developed the podcast to reflect nuance, emotional complexity, and above all, honesty. These are the very things she felt were missing from mainstream mental health narratives. The comedians on her show are viewed as collaborators, offering insights that are as emotionally intelligent as they are funny.
This structure enables the podcast to delve into various topics. Early episodes tackle the bewildering process of finding a therapist, including what to look for, how to communicate one’s needs, and how to develop a meaningful relationship with a mental health provider. Other episodes explore the broader conversation around medication. Fink approaches this subject with balance, acknowledging both the over-medicalization of mental health and the life-saving potential of psychiatric drugs. “Xanyland doesn’t take a polarized stance. We value empathy and individual context,” says Fink.
Subsequent episodes delve into issues like bipolar disorder, ADHD, sobriety, and hypnotherapy, with guests who speak from personal and professional experience. An upcoming episode will break down the concept of narcissism, a term that has become so overused that its clinical meaning is often lost. Another will examine grief and how people talk or avoid talking about loss.
Overall, the unifying thread across all these episodes is a commitment to realism and relational depth. Fink isn’t afraid to correct misconceptions or bring psychoanalytic ideas. However, she does so with a grounded, conversational, and humorous tone. This approach highlights Xanyland’s impact.
The podcast aims to redefine how people engage with therapy and mental health topics more broadly. “We hope that listeners get to walk away with new language for their own experiences and understand that they’re not alone,” Fink states.
Ultimately, Xanyland advocates for more truthful, nuanced, and human conversations about mental health. Fink plans to expand the scope of the podcast with a series of bonus episodes. These will address hot-button mental health issues beyond the world of comedy, bringing in specialists to break down complex topics like hypnotherapy and couples therapy. Another planned subseries will analyze popular TV shows through a psychoanalytic lens. Future episodes will continue exploring how mental health is portrayed in the media, shedding light on the narratives that shape public perception.
Media Contact
Name: Mike Fink
Email: mike.r.fink@gmail.com
Published by: Pathos Communications Ltd