The Short Version
TherapaJi is a Punjabi and South Asian mental health advocacy project.
We build private check-ins, practical resources, community listening projects, and culturally aware routes to support for the things our families often carry quietly: provider pressure, migration, language, family roles, silence, grief, shame, and the words we were never handed.
TherapaJi is not a therapy practice. It is a place to listen, learn, build resources, and point people toward support that understands the context.
Who Built This
Amar Banga founded TherapaJi after realizing how many South Asian families were trying to talk about mental health using language that was never built for them.
Amar is a first-gen Punjabi Sikh, MS Clinical Mental Health Counseling student, Counseling Intern at EPP Advisory Group, and co-host of 167 Hours. His clinical training lives at EPP. TherapaJi is the advocacy, resource, and community-learning work built around the questions our families rarely get asked.
Why TherapaJi Exists
Most mental health resources assume people can name what they feel, separate themselves from family pressure, and explain their culture in a neat paragraph.
That is not how it works for a lot of us.
Sometimes the pain shows up as anger. Sometimes as overwork. Sometimes as “main theek haan.” Sometimes as the dad who does not know who he is when the store, truck, shift, or routine slows down. Sometimes as the kid who translated too early and kept translating everything after that.
TherapaJi exists to ask better questions and build better resources from the answers.
What We Are Building
Saadi Gall
A private community listening check-in. You answer only what fits, get a private reflection first, and then choose whether to submit anonymous answers for combined community learning.
Resources and tools
Punjabi emotional vocabulary, breathing tools, check-ins, guides, and practical next steps that do not make people translate their pain before they can start.
Community research
Careful, limited, honest learning from anonymous responses. We show what we ask, what we can and cannot claim, and what we build because of what people share.
Directory and network
A growing route toward practitioners and advocates who understand the cultural context before someone has to explain everything from zero.
What This Is Not
TherapaJi does not diagnose, treat, or replace therapy. It does not provide emergency support. It does not publish individual stories without permission. It does not pretend a small anonymous sample represents every Punjabi or South Asian person.
The standard is simple: listen first, protect privacy, avoid overclaiming, and build resources people can actually use.
Start Here
If something here feels familiar, start with Saadi Gall. It is private first. Anonymous community sharing is optional.
Start a private check-in | See what TherapaJi is learning | Explore resources