Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 67:

Thank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast.

People listen to the podcast from all over the world.

Today we are joined by Khaled Yousef who lives in the UEA. We learn about Islamic Psychology and mental Health in the Middle East.

I’d love your thoughts!

I hope you find it useful. I’d of course love any feedback you might have!

The Highlights:

• (00:28): Welcome and intro
• (01:34): A forgetful moment!
• (02:32): intro to today’s guest: Khaled Yousef
• (03:52): How we met….
• (05:50): Khaled’s background
• (07:16): A U.K. university….. but abroad!
• (09:01): The importance of GBR by BPS
• (13:18): Mental health and self-awareness
• (14:49): Mental health in the middle east
• (17:09): It’s catching up with the west but it’s not there yet
• (19:01): Being a Muslim and an aspiring psychologist
• (19:58): What is Islamic Psychology?
• (23:34): Self disclosure in mental health and psychology
• (25:53): Being authentic
• (26:53): Relevant experience in the middle east
• (29:45): Honorary work in psychology
• (32:48): Khaled’s tips for reducing burnout
• (34:55): Thanks to Khaled
• (35:08): Summary, Compassionate Q&A Dates and Close

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Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Maryanne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. So we are now at the start of interview season for clinical psychology. Anyway as of the Friday just gone, which was the 17th of March, you should have heard by now if you are being offered an interview for this year's clinical psychology doctorate interviews. So fingers crossed you have. So as ever there are our compassionate q and a dates that we've got coming up. We've had the first one, which I'll admit was supposed to be on the 13th of March. And I'm very sorry to say that I forgot. It was just clean, overlooked in my diary. So I was settling down watching some tv and someone from my membership messaged me to say, oh my God, tonight's session in the membership was amazing, but I'm sorry that it meant that I missed that I missed a compassionate q and a. And I was like, oh,

Oh dear , oh wow, I forgot to do it. So I did it the next day instead. I did it on Tuesday, the 14th of March and it was really well received. And if you didn't catch it, you can watch it on replay on my YouTube channel, Dr. Marianne Trent. If you can't see it right away, toggle to the bit that says live broadcasts and it will be in there, or you can look on the playlist. It's definitely in there for the q and a sessions. Okay, so the second of the dates that we've got coming up is on Monday the 17th of April, 2023 at 7:30 PM I will try to make sure I remind myself a bit better at this time so that it definitely happens at that time. I'm very sorry if you were looking for it and you were inconvenienced in any way. And then the final of the series is Tuesday, the 5th of May 2023, 7:30 PM So hope you'll find those really useful.

So if you would welcome some extra support at this time, then do please consider coming on board to the Aspiring Psychologist membership cuz people have found it to be such a useful resource. It's honestly been a lovely thing to, to yeah. Put together and see come to fruition so beautifully. So there's more information about that in the show notes. Or you can go to my website, www.goodthinkingpsychology.uk. So today we are thinking about slightly earlier stages of Korea but also learning a little bit more about faith and culture. And something that you may or may not know much about is psychology. So I thought it would be really useful to speak to somebody who's based in a different country and to get a bit of an understanding about him, his name's Khali and yeah, what he's studying, how he's studying it, and how faith and culture impact on him and what he's learning and what he's understanding. So hope you'll find this to be a really useful episode and I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side. So I want to welcome along our guest today Khaled to the podcast. Hi Khaled.

Hi. Hi everyone.

So I know people are probably, you know, getting bored of hearing me say it, but we did meet on LinkedIn, didn't we?

Yes. like everyone else for sure.

, I love LinkedIn. And we got chatting because you'd heard Alicia's podcast episode that I did with her thinking about faith and values. That's why, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Like the first thing other than LinkedIn, it was also Alicia's podcast. Like I I, I saw the episode on my LinkedIn, also LinkedIn again . And I was like, oh wow, this is really interesting. I'm gonna like listen to it. And I, and then I followed it like directly after I listened. Cause I, I, I, I honestly wanted to listen to more and more from the podcast, so I was really curious on that.

Great, thank you. Why did that podcast episode specifically resonate with you in the way it did, do you think?

First of all, like personally anyway, I believe that faith is like generally disregarded as, you know, something that can improve or dis or or worsen a person's mental state. Some people can be traumatised by, by faith and then they have a worse mental state. Some people can be totally enhanced in terms of like, you know, what they think or their anxiety lessons or something like that, or their depression is lessened or, or decreased. So I was thinking, okay, wow, like, you know what, what both of you were asking and replying with was just like really insightful information and like something that more people could honestly use. [inaudible] .

Thank you. I just sneezed . Thank you. I was listening as I sneezed. Yeah. Okay. I'm really glad that resonated with you and you like the style of questioning. And as we speak right now you are not in the UK so we've had to kind of organise a time for recording that meant that you weren't up in the middle of the night and neither were I. So do you wanna tell people a little bit as you feel comfortable too? Where in the world you're speaking to us from?

Yeah so I currently reside in the uae so it's four hours ahead of Dr. Trent's timing. So right now it's about 11 30, 11 45 for her. And it's about 3:45 PM for me right now. So yeah, just four hours difference. Not too, not too much thankfully, but not too little either. So it's totally fine for my schedule anyway.

Brilliant. Did you manage to get across to go and see any of the World Cup in Qatar? Were you able to get there? Oh

Yeah, a a lot. Some people I knew from university actually went there, but no, unfortunately, I, I, I didn't, I didn't.

No, not for you. Not for you.

Yeah, I saw like one or a few games just, just from TV but not, not actually going there, so, yeah. Yeah.

Cool. So why did this episode resonate with you particularly? So we know you are an aspiring clinical psychologist, but what stage of your career are you at at the moment?

So I'm in my bachelor's degree, so I'm in my foundation here and I have three years to go after Foundation year. So found, so it's technically foundation year is the first year before the three years where the psychology programme actually like starts and, you know, ramps up in difficulty and quantity. So I have four years to go for bachelors and then after that is the postgraduate studies. So I'm literally in my first year of university.

Great. And I understand that you are at a UK university, but a foreign campus, is that right?

Exactly. So I'm studying in the University of Birmingham to Dubai right now. And Birmingham, university of Birmingham, like in Edgbaston was around since 1900. But my university is only been around for a couple of years now and like as, let's alone at this new campus, cuz there used to be an old one, which I never even visited. But they have the new campus which opened only about two years ago, if I'm not wrong. And that was when they, that was when, you know, they started hosting the same programmes, the same content as in the Edgbaston campus, but just in the Middle East in Dubai specifically.

That's amazing. Cuz actually, some of the, the tricky bits about people moving from different countries to the UK or even internationally is whether the qualifications are recognised, whether they're the same, but if it's the same qualification, then you get none of that. So presumably if your course is the equivalent to the British one, you'd potentially be eligible for registration with the British Psychological Society. Is that right?

Yeah, exactly, because as far as I'm aware, anyway, I could be wrong or maybe there could be changes, I'm not sure. But at least as of right now, from how, from how much I'm aware if the, if the British Psychological Society approves of the Birmingham psychology degree and like this is the same university, it's the same, even the same module. Even on Canvas, we also use Canvas and the presentations are there, literally everything is there. That's, that's the same. If you know Edgbaston has the BPS accreditation, then surely, as far as I'm aware, Birmingham Dubai should have it as well, or at least I think they're trying to get it maybe in one or two years. It might change. I'm not a hundred percent sure. I think, I think as of right now they don't have it, but they're going to get it, like get the ACC accreditation in a year or two max. I hope so. Brilliant.

Brilliant. But that, you know, even if you don't end up with the the accreditation still having the, you know, the same training, the same experience, the same skills, and you know, on your transcript is if you do want to work internationally one day, that's gonna, you know, it's gonna really futureproof you so well. So yeah, well done to Birmingham Dubai campus, because that sounds like a great idea. And I guess, you know, at the end of the day, universities are businesses and they're money making endeavours, aren't they? And Exactly. You know. Exactly, exactly. It's all about, oh, you know, academia we're, we are bettering people, but actually the bottom line is they want to make money and they're exactly business of making money is by educating people. And so if they can see there's a gap in the market, then they're gonna exploit that. But I think that's, that's a pretty savvy one. I'm pretty pretty impressed with that.

Exactly. If I may add something sure. University of Birmingham is the University of Birmingham to buy is the first Russell Group University to be anywhere in the Middle East. We haven't had we've had other universities from the UK before. We've had right now in Dubai we have a Harriet Watts for example. But like we don't have any Russell Group University. So Exeter leads, those aren't in Dubai or Saudi or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Qatar or anywhere else in the Middle East. But Birmingham is like, okay, we'll put Birmingham to Dubai in, in Dubai where it's literally one of the most popular places for tourism and so on, and we're gonna have lots of Arabs to join our university. So it was honestly a smart financial move. Like, I, I gotta be honest,

I think, so might set up an aspiring psychologist to buy programme . Yeah, very smart, very savvy. Okay, so what what led you to wanting to pursue a career in psychology?

Hmm. Yeah, so basically as a kid, I used to always flip from job to job, like, in terms of like a dream career, you know? So I used to think, oh, I wanna be a baker. Okay, nevermind. I wanna be a movie director. I actually wanna be a video game creator. So like I, I thought of like so many different things, right? And then like high school hit like towards almost the end of high school. And I was still not even sure what I wanted to do, like as a job, as a career. What, what uni what major to go into university, like, none of that, right? Honestly, like I was so behind. And then basically like, it was basically kind of two factors, but the first one was when I signed up for, to do AP psychology, the advanced placement psychology.

For that my school was like offering, you know, that they offered APS back then, so I would, so I chose to do AP psychology. But the thing is also what's it called? It's a self-study ap. So I didn't have a teacher, right? Like, I'm just study by myself and what the school like offered me. So maybe sometimes they'd offer exams or you know, chapters of like the Barons book to, to read, you know, so they'd make sure like, okay, you're reading everything. But they were also not that serious at the same time because it was post covid and, you know, everybody was just like, just lacking in terms of their efforts at school. So like, it was both like half, half from what this, from what my school side was offering. And advanced placement, by the way, like a side note, it's the equivalent, the American equivalent to a British A level.

So they're basically kind of the same thing if you're going to American universities generally speaking, they might ask for aps, obviously if you're going to UK universities in might ask for A levels. So it's like sort of like an equivalent issue. But basically AP psychology, that was like a first thing. It really helped to be totally honest because it like offered me so much insight into it. I, I was studying from like the Barens book, Princeton book, like lots of sources as well, just for that one exam. And it, like, it really like informed me of course of what psychology actually was and different types of it and different even some, sometimes different self-defense mechanisms. I learned from Barons and like for the ap for the advanced placement exam, like a lot a, I learned countless, like so much valuable info just from that, from that from that advanced placement exam, I still have like my books, it's been two years and I still have my books from the, from the AP because I, I just like cherish it that much .

But the second thing other than the AP was like my own personal, like struggles with mental health, like it sounds even redundant at this point, but I like genuinely like back then, you know, I struggled with like, overthinking or you know, like, you know, having like, sort of like body insecurities if you can call it that. And like, you know, I, and later on as time went on, especially two years ago, I, you know, I born belch better, like perception myself better, did better habits. And I was wondering like what I could do, cuz I knew people around me as well that suffered either mentally or emotionally or, or whatnot. So I was wondering like, okay, what if I could attribute this what I've done for myself, even if in just a life coach way to help other people and like, you know, spread some goodness or knowledge I learned, whether it's psychology or just for my own, like introspection or experiences what could I do to like, say to not save people's lives, but even like sometimes could cause psychologists do save people's lives. So I also thought about, you know, how do I help people mentally diagnosing disorders and preventing suicides. Like I thought that stuff was, would be extremely fulfilling for me. So it's both the advanced placement and my own personal experiences and other people experiences of people around me that maybe wanna pursue psychology.

Brilliant. Well, thank you for sharing that because I think it's always interesting thinking about what brings us to the profession and speaking as a Middle Eastern man, how is mental health handled or considered or referred to by people? You know, around you?

Hmm. Yeah. Okay. So it totally depends from country to country to be honest, because I feel like the UAE is much more open in terms of inviting international people and employees, which obviously how Birmingham Dubai exists. It's obviously from another country, but you know, they managed to make the whole university here and lots of the same programmes and everything. Even obviously some staff from from England for example, are working here. So it depends from country to country. The UAE is like, has been really good, I feel like, in my personal opinion, from what I know anyway at you know, having more psychology programmes and allowing more people to teach psychology. But it, but for example, in a country, like where I'm from, I'm from Syria. In Syria, like mental health is like barely discussed. Lots of people don't really like know about it.

Some people might like, feel really bad, but maybe they'll just attribute to religion or say, oh, I have no friends, or, you know, like, no social, no active social life. Or maybe they just like have bad habits or something. They don't really like acknowledge like, okay, maybe it's this habit or it's this disorder that's causing this thing and you know, we'll try to work from there. Or maybe it's this medication you need, like Syria, it's not really that common. Like I, I know someone personally, a woman personally from Syria because they, we've been having a, we've, we've, we have had a civil war for like years now, right? So her son actually would sometimes scream in the middle of the night, like literally post-traumatic stress disorder would literally scream in the middle of the night because like, he would hear like bombs like before as a, as a really young kid.

And then she told me like, oh, they'd go to a psychiatrist and they'd give him medication, but it would, it wouldn't really help out for the long term. And then he, then he would just keep doing the same behaviour. So it really depends, like Syria, the situation there has just not that been good from a psychology standpoint. The UAE has been really good and I, I think I, I can't be sure of course, but I think some other countries Saudi Arabia, Egypt they've been better like in terms of employing more psychologists and stuff like that, getting more people from abroad to teach in those countries. But it's still like not as good or not as advanced as somewhere like America, Germany, the, the UK and of course psych. Another thing to add is that the psychology standpoint and knowledge is so much better nowadays in the Middle East compared to like 20 years ago, 15 years ago, people would just barely even know it, that they don't bring it up.

But like now it's becoming much better. People are getting more aware. Life coaches, for example, are kind of helping it out, even if it's not necessarily psychologists. Life coaches for example, they do kind of bring up, oh, mental health is this how to do good habit is that, and you know, life coaches are helping out as well. I know personally some Arab some Arab life coaches from people I know that they've told me, oh, this guy's really good, this woman's really good, but psychology, it's improving, but it's still not there yet. You know, not like America, UK Austria, so on.

Yeah. So it sounds like some of our western approaches to mental health are sort of filtering through, and certainly with the UK universities being present on the soil that might speed that up a bit as well.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I don't even have much to add because, you know, the UK having the, the universities here, I feel like it's also helping quite a bit. Like, I think even 10 years ago or so, 15 years ago, the, the UAE didn't have one single psychology degree, if I'm not mistaken. So now, now it's getting like it's accelerating.

Yeah. Yes. Building its momentum, for sure. Okay. And once you've done your your undergraduate degree, have you got an idea about what you might do next?

That's such a good question. So I, I'm really fascinated by clinical psychology for sure. Diagnosing disorders and like really going in depth, like something like a social social worker or a mental health counsellor wouldn't, possibly wouldn't do. So I would wanna like go more in depth and tackle more like serious trauma, more long-term stuff. I, I kind of thought that psychiatry, like, it's sort of the same thing, but I thought it didn't really appeal to me as much because I, I don't wanna have like shallow sessions and just give medication at end. I thought I wanted to like form like good relationships with clients, of course, only during the time, of course, you can't talk, as far as I'm aware, you can't talk with, socialise with your clients during and after sessions, you know, like, oh yeah or did you go to this restaurant?

So nice? It's like, no, you have to only talk the office. So like, I would like personally love doing that. And also because like, I, I'm a Muslim and I've been, I learned quite a bit about Islamic psychology and honestly it also seems like really interesting to me how like faith and psychology are actually intertwined and like what, what, how faith can either accelerate or worsen someone's mental health. I feel like faith is just generally not discussed like Muslim or otherwise how, like maybe other people might just be mentally scarred or maybe they have wrong perceptions or maybe you know, they might just have something wrong in terms of their faith. And maybe that's what's like not being addressed. Because generally from what I've learned, psychology doesn't really address impacts that things like religion have. So Islamic psychology would be like really interesting to delve into. So it's either clinical or Islamic, though I've always thought more about clinical and I'm more familiar with clinical. So yeah.

Could you tell us a bit more about Islamic psychology, if you can?

Okay, so I'm not an Islamic psychologist myself, but essentially if I'm not wrong, so basically in Islam we believe that there's four things. Like I speak from a Muslim also we usually have four things like to take care of. So we have the heart, which is basically your emotions which means called an Arabic jesid, or the body. So like, you know, your physical self ru which is your spirit. So like, you know, spiritually and also so the heart, the soul and, and the mind, so mentally, so you basically have spiritual, emotional, physical, mental. So you have these four aspects are intertwined to make like a good you know, being a, a good being and a role and someone that I would do in this life. And as in Islam, we also believe that there's a next life either heaven or health.

So that we believe. So for example, if I'm, if I have really good relationships and I have and I have a, good spiritual health, so maybe I'm practicing my religion all the time, but I have horrible physical health, so I'm always going to doctors and I have, you know, I can, I'm always getting really tired and maybe I'm a smoking addict, so, you know, I, I can't feel relaxed without a cigarette. So basically like these, so basically this doesn't really constitute a full like human being in wellness because this, the physical part's always taking away from the other parts as well. And it's worsening your overall like, existence in this life. So, you know, you might be worse off in sports or other physical activities or, you know, outings with family or friends. So that's why, for example, all four of these, like generally speaking in Islamic psychology must be like, must be considered not just physical, mental, emotional, like the, the, spiritual is also important. So obviously maybe sometimes from an Islamic scholar's point of view, maybe you have these three aspects, but the spiritual is, is, is isn't up to part. So maybe you're gonna need to practise more in order to feel actually more fulfilled and then have a good, like wellbeing overall, all these four, spiritual, physical, mental emotion.

Great. Thank you. That's really interesting as an idea. And I guess, and you might have heard me talk about on the podcast before, it's like having your ducks in a row, or at least knowing which ducks it is you're trying to tame, isn't it? You know, and you know, yeah. When we look at Maslow's hierarchy, you know, if your health is impaired, that's going to really impact on your ability to move up that pyramid. It's also interlinked. So I really like that that explicit focus on those four areas. You know, and I think sometimes when we, when we've got some of our ducks in a row, or if you've got three of those areas that are actually looking pretty, pretty good, pretty shiny, it does then perhaps give you the impetus to think, let's see what we can do about that fourth one. Let's see how we can to get that more in line with, with the others where I wanna be, because it might be holding me back from my goals or stopping me from being as well as I can be.

Yeah, exactly. So maybe for example you might, you might always be devoted to your relationships, but then your mental health, it might be bad because maybe you might be more people pleasing or maybe you'll just do or say things that you normally wouldn't do just for the emotional aspect and not the mental one. So you're just ignoring your, your mental health and your own sense of peace, you know, that that's a, that's another thing. So they're all related in Islamic psychology, even clinical obviously, but usually clinical psychologists exclude the spiritual, so, so Islamic psychology considers the spiritual as well as the other three, not just spiritual and not just other three. So it's all four.

Brilliant. Thank you. And I think it's okay to combine the two, I think it's okay for you to be an Islamic clinical psychologist. So of course, certainly when we're working in the h s you know, we are, we are not using faith interventions, but I think it's absolutely okay to talk about, you know, well, I understand as a, you know, an Islamic male or you Muslim or whatever, you want to introduce yourself as, as I understand it, this is, this is the learnings of my faith, this is how we understand it. But you're not saying you should do this or you should do that. You're offering clients in different way of looking at things to see if things resonate with them. So yeah, I, I, I am okay with bringing myself to therapy, so, you know, I'm not sharing my woes. I'm not you know, I'm not sharing all this deep personal information, but I will happily share that I'm a parent and I'm a parent of two boys, you know, and I'm married.

And you know, you might well know from listening to the podcast that my dad died in 2017. So I'm happy to share that basic information with clients if it's relevant, you know? Yeah. Because I think it helps you to be a human first and a psychologist second. And because it just offers you some context and makes you feel more like a tangible human rather than some robotic therapist, you know, I, so as you go through your training, you might well develop some competence and confidence in just weaving in appropriate amounts of yourself into the work you do with people without it being all about you. Cause it shouldn't be all about us.

Exactly. Yeah. Like, I, I sometimes think that I'm like, okay, maybe I've seen before that some therapists say, or that, you know, maybe something that therapists can sometimes do, not always, but sometimes do, is they bring up their own details so that the, that the clients can resonate with them, but not to the point where the therapist becomes like the client and they switch roles. Like, no, like the therapist can sometimes say some details, one or two or something so that the client can like, relate to them or think like, okay, this is a normal human being thing and, and it's totally fine to feel this way or have something that happened this way.

Exactly. And actually a good, a good catchphrase to use if you don't want to use self-disclosure is, you know, other clients I've worked with have found that or lots of people have told me that, or, you know, I wonder if you might consider the ideas from Islam that tells us about this, but you're not actually saying, this is what I say, this is what I believe. You're just, you know, introducing that there might be different viewpoints. So certainly in dynamic psychology and psychotherapy, you wouldn't use any, any level of self-disclosure at all, but it's got to feel comfortable to you and authentic, you know, so we're not sharing more than we feel comfortable with really.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I fully agree. Like you wanted to wanna just overbear on the client and sometimes, you know, bringing extra details from yourself might be embarrassing on your part. So, you know, bringing like an external source, oh this these therapists also think that the, you know, you, you know, you should do this thing and so on and so forth. Mm-Hmm.

great. So, you know, in terms of whatever role you end up pursuing it's often really useful to have relevant experience roles. So have you got plans to start doing some sort of clinic lish relevant work on the side of your degree or, you know, roles that you might think about applying for? It's probably feels quite distant. We're talking about, you know, four years time. But have you got roles you're considering or would consider?

Like in terms of just internships, you mean? Right.

So in this country we might have support work in psychiatric hospitals or home care or teaching assistant or assistant psychologist. There's a whole, you know, psychological wellbeing practitioners. I don't know if that training's yet started coming to coming to the Middle East, but there's a whole variety of relevant experience. And I, I guess I wondered what the flavour of that kind of work is, is looking like at the moment.

Mm-Hmm. Yeah, so basically like in the Middle East, like I've said, unfortunately there's not as much experience as in the uk. Even getting jobs sometimes. I've heard even for, for like, cuz I live in the UAE of course, so sometimes even for national students it's a bit hard like to, to always get a job on the spot. Sometimes you need connections or mutuals or that like, you know, can get you a job. Sometimes you really need like a qualification. You really need a university degree in order for people to accept you some there's, I swear I think I've seen personally, I think I've seen maybe only one person under 18 that's actually been able to find a job. Other than that though, generally speaking, like internships aren't that easy to find here. Maybe if the university offers you something directly like, you know, volunteering for example, but I don't know if it is volunteering considered like summer internship work in the uk. Like

So honorary experience is absolutely relevant. But what can sometimes be tricky with honorary experience is that sometimes it's fewer hours a week because of course people need to be able to make a living. And so when we are looking at counting how many months or full-time equivalent months people have had, it sometimes takes a lot of work to even, you know, add up to a couple of months. And so that's why it can be deemed as less favourable because unless you're working full-time every day for free, you know, five days a week, which many people can't and shouldn't have to afford to do, then it's tricky to, to get the same amount of experience, if that makes sense. So you know, it's very much useful. So I did an honoree assistant post and I did that by taking day, a week of annual leave from my paid role over 10 weeks.

So 10 days. But whilst on paper that didn't look like, that's not even a month, you know, but actually in terms of my life, that was, you know, three-ish months maybe even going on for four depending on how spaced out it was. But in terms of my understanding about psychology and my confidence in talking about psychology and psychology terms and, you know having a reference to put on my form that was a clinical psychologist and you know, just my confidence in talking about all of that stuff and feeling like I could talk the talk and walk the walk. So in terms of what I got from those 10 days, I would say it was massive, but on paper it looked like less than a month's experience. So we don't always do it for, for how many months on our form, it looks like we do it for the massive leaps and bounds that it helps bring on our development. So you know, I couldn't at, at time afford to not be working, but I could, I decided I could take the hit of having two weeks less annual leave that year. So, you know, still a little bit more rubbish cuz for the rest of the year I had less annual leave. But actually being in that role really energised me anyway. I loved, I loved doing that and so I, I felt like it was worth it.

Wait, so you worked for 10 days over a span of almost four months and but you still say that like e even though it might have been really exhausting or draining, it still really helped you out even till now?

Yeah, so I was working for a local government. I was lo working for the council, so I'd usually work Mondays to Fridays, you know, nine to five. But I'd negotiated with my basically I, I, I knew of a clinical psychologist that was sort of working with some of my clients and so I'd emailed her and said, is there any chance you'd consider taking me on in an honoree? I'll take some annual leave and we wrangled a bit and then eventually she said yes. So yeah, I then negotiated with my workspace to allow me to be essentially part-time for 10 weeks so that I could take every Monday off to go and work. Yeah, under, under a clinical psychologist. So yeah, it's no more exhausting in terms of me doing days of, of work in a week. But of course, one of the key ways to not burn out as a human, let alone an aspiring psychologist, is to make sure that you take your annual leave. And of course that was two weeks worth of annual leave that I then wasn't able to take cuz I'd taken it doing honorary work. Does that make more sense?

Ah, yeah. So you used up the two weeks of your annual leave during your internship, during your work site, so yeah. And

Therefore have a holiday. Yeah, it allowed me to not be at work. So I was on annual leave. I wasn't getting paid by the honoree service, but I was getting paid for my normal role. So it didn't lead to any diminished income for me.

Okay. Okay. I think I understand now. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And in terms of, you know, I've shared little tip for reducing burnout is make sure you use your annual leave. Have you got any tips to help you reduce burnout as an aspiring psychologist? Because, you know, when you look ahead, it, you know, you said, you said before we start recording, it feels like, you know, 10 years time, you know, might, might be like in a good place, but at the moment it feels like it's like, you know, on the distant horizon. So how are you reducing and avoiding burnout?

Mm, yeah. It feels so close yet. It's so far. I think like, I mean, I only speak from a student's and a student's experience, but for me I feel like setting up a routine, even if you don't always follow it, like for me personally, I feel like it's helped a lot, so I don't like lose track of time. And I don't, you know wa waste sit around and like not to do something. I also feel like in terms to avoid burnout like just doing something like in the middle, like some people do Pomodoro, but personally I've never been able to do that. Exactly. Fix 25 and then five and 25, then five. It's, it's been hard for, it's hard for me to do that. But just having some other systems.

You call it Pop Pomodoro,

Have you heard of it? I I always saw it on YouTube. So it's, it's basically this study or work technique. Some people, a lot of people do or some people do where you study for 25 minutes, you have a break for five, you study for 25, you have a break for five, then you study for 25, then you have a break for five again. And then when you study for 25 minutes the fourth time, then you have a 30 minute break. So this is basically what some people do to study for like a full day or half a day or something. So they study for 25 minutes, then five minute break, like three times in a row. Then when they study 25 minutes the fourth time, they take a 30 minute break instead of a five minute. So yeah, but I personally was never able to do that

All. Yeah. I used to do something similar with myself with Mars bars when I was to encourage me to, to study, I would reward myself with Mars bars, which yeah, probably not advisable, but in short term first it worked for me .

Oh yeah. Like, you know, it is just getting candy like, well what, what else could you want? Like something so simple. That's so nice. .

Yeah. Khali, thank you so much for coming along to the podcast and sharing your wisdom and your thoughts and the way you see the world. It's been a real pleasure.

It's, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me here.

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