About
Meet your host
The issues Desis bring to my therapy office tend to follow remarkably similar patterns. Desi Dramas is my way of sharing insights from my clinical practice with the wider Desi community.
Dr. Heena Manglani-Terranova is a Harvard-trained licensed clinical psychologist and the founder of Novani Therapy & Wellness, a virtual psychotherapy practice that serves patients across California, Massachusetts, and Florida.
Through that practice, Dr. Heena helps individuals and couples get unstuck from repeating patterns in their lives. She is a 1.5-generation South Asian American — born in India and raised in the United States — and part of a bicultural couple. She brings firsthand insight into what it means to navigate multiple cultures, and the cost when those cultures pull in different directions.
Naming those patterns helps patients step out of cycles and try new approaches to improve their lives and relationships.
Her clinical approach is integrative, drawing on Narrative Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Emotion Focused Therapy, among other modalities. Her primary objective is to empower patients to build the kind of lives they want to live. Instead of choosing between Desi and American, traditional and modern, or collectivistic and individualistic identities, she helps patients find a blend of cultures that feels right to them.
The Desi Dramas Podcast grew out of her clinical work and a desire to share therapeutic tools tailored to the cultural context. The podcast is Dr. Heena’s way of bringing the richness of her therapy room to the broader Desi community — not as a replacement for therapy, but as a complement to it. As a Desi, the stories she unpacks aren’t only clinical. They’re personal.