Her Discussions by Dr Faye - 7 Tactics To Get OUT Of A Rut | Psychologist and Burnout Expert

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Dr Ritika Birah is one of the UK's leading psychologists and speakers, with over 17 years of clinical experience.We'll explore how to deal with burnout, tips for achieving a better work–life balance, and how to let go of people-pleasing and perfectionism.What you’ll learn:📘 3 journal prompts to ask yourself if you can’t afford therapy🍵 5-step anti-burnout evening routine💼 How to stop thinking about work when you’re home🫂 What to do if you have panic attacks🤍 60-second trick to reset your nervous systemBut first, please don’t forget to subscribe and share, it really helps us to grow this podcast.Resources & links mentioned:Dr Ritz’s instagram: @dr.ritz.psychologistthe WhatsApp Journal which is called Reflect with Dr Ritz - https://drritika.co.uk/#reflectWebsite - https://drritika.co.uk/Links to subscribe / follow:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRoCan I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

On an average day, we have 60,000 thoughts, of which 80% are negative. Oh, God. Dr Ritz is a leading UK psychologist with over 17 years clinical experience, guiding you through how to spot the signs of burnout, managing anxiety, and practical tips for women struggling with perfectionism. Burnout is about productivity, I find. You're just pushing yourself to do more and more and more and more. And then as you do, the red flags start to appear like...

Do you have an anti-burnout routine? Now, I think this is a really important thing that people miss. What are the seven things you do when you are in a rush? I have this little technique which is called the double-h. How does it help me or how does it hinder me? And that starts to give you clues. Everybody has a core belief that can be quite negative about themselves, but just because we have a belief it doesn't make it true.

But before we get into the conversation, please make sure that you're subscribed or you have left a five-star review. Please, it really, really helps us. Keep bringing you guests to help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dr Ritz and welcome to Her Discussions Podcast. Dr Ritz, our community, have sent in so many questions about anxiety and stress and burnout. But first, I wanted to hear a little bit from you about what made you go into this field in the first place. place. I think from such a young age, I was always just really curious in people. When I was growing up, there was this magazine called Ms. And, yeah, do you remember? And like, bliss. Yes. Yeah. And I remember, like, always being drawn to like the agony aunt section and being like, oh, when I grew up, I'm going to be an

agony aunt. And then, like, I was at school. I studied psychology, biology. Biology. chemistry, like all those sorts of things at GCS, A level. I know it's all changed now. And then my school was quite interesting. I went to grammar school and we like had this morning where the head or the head of sixth school and was like, right, put your hand up if you want to be a doctor. Okay, everyone go in this room. Put your hand up if you want to be a dentist, right?

Go in this room. Put your hand up if you want to be an engineer. Go in this room. So it was very academic school. And I was like, I know I want to be like a sort of doctor that talks to people but I'm not really sure if I want to go down like the medicine route or things like that so then um my head of six one was like oh well maybe like you could go down like psychology neuroscience so I went down that route um absolutely loved it loved it loved it loved it loved it and then

one year I was in a place called borokai which is in Malaysia and I was just swimming in the ocean and I was just like bobbing and this lady was next to me and you know you're like just have a chat with somebody in the ocean and I asked her like what do you do and she said oh I'm a psychologist and to me back then psychologist was such a rare breed like I never had met one in the flesh and I was like oh my god this is like gold dust I've got her like how do I become you and she actually said why do you want to become a psychologist

like what is it about you that's really drawn to this And I said, I just really like people, I want to hear about people. I want to hear about their stories. And she said, no, no, no. What happened to you? What happened to you? And I was like, oh, my dad died when I was like little. She's like, how old were you?

And I was like, seven. And she was like, there it is. And I was like, no, no, no, that doesn't impact me. That doesn't impact me. Like, I'm great. I've got a great family. I'm great. She goes, no, we have this thing called the wounded healer.

So often people want to heal others because they're so wounded themselves. and they haven't done the work on themselves, so they want to help other people. And in that moment, I had that penny drop moment, like, oh my God, that's actually probably why I've always wanted to be drawn to helping people or maybe rescuing people in some way, because I have, you know, these wounds inside me that I never really looked at. It just wasn't really part of our culture to look at it.

I think it was probably quite scared to look at it because I was quite high functioning as well. And then when I got on to, well, the course that I chose was the doctorate in counselling psychology. And I chose that one because to be in training, you had to be in three years of therapy yourself. And I really liked that about the course because they were really under the emphasis of you can't be of help to anyone else if you're not going to do the work yourself. And going to therapy was like the greatest gift I ever gave myself. And then, yeah, I guess it's like led me on this journey. One of my goals for 2026 was to start therapy because I thought, you know,

I'm actually in probably one of the best places I've been mentally actually, but that means I'm in a good place to almost address some issues that exist. And I have not got around to doing it because I think it's been one of those things that's just been pushed to the bottom of my pile. What advice would you give to someone who's considering therapy in terms of who, who do you think therapy is for and what did you gain from your own journey in therapy? So I feel like everything you said there really resonated with me because before I could even talk about my dad, I think it took me a year or maybe even a year and a half. And I had this fear, as I said, of being quite a high functioning person, but being unsypped.

And then almost like going into this dark hole and never being able to come back from it. And I think therapy has a bit of a reputation about that, you know, even as someone who was studying to be a psychologist. And it's not that at all, you know, I think therapy can be for anyone. It really is about self-awareness. Sometimes, you know, people go to therapy because they're just at that stage where nothing is working. You know, they're burning out, anxiety, depression, whatever it might be. They're just on the edge. And they need therapy to help them, you know, come back.

back from the edge. Sometimes people are in a really good place. I'm in a good place now. Now feels good to maybe start unpicking at some of those things. So I don't think therapy is specifically for a certain type of personal where you are in your life. I also think therapist match is so important. So whenever anybody's looking for a therapist, I always say, especially if you're going down the private route, because in the NHS you just don't have that choice. But a good therapist will always offer you. a free 20 minute appointment on the phone. So I might offer you face to face. I think that's like quite rare now like post-COVID and most therapists have gone online. But use that, you know,

use that to your advantage to really get a feel for that person because good therapy is all about the therapeutic relationship. Like you have to be able to trust the person that you're with. And if you can't trust them, if you feel like there's not that vibe there, there's not that relationship there that you just, you know, you just don't get that feeling straight away. move on move on you know you don't have to force it you don't have to turn up and be the good girl and be the good patient this is not about pleasing your therapist this is about you do you have any green flags or red flags for when you're looking for a therapist yeah i feel like it depends on what you might be going for so um i'll just like okay maybe this is just like an example here

but let's say you're someone who continuously finds themselves in like, I don't know, a toxic relationship, let's say, and let's say the relationship is of the opposite sex, right? So I would then maybe say, do you know what? I think maybe having a male therapist, like don't choose a female therapist, go for a male therapist because I feel like that's going to really allow you to bring to the surface what's going on with your interaction with men and help you to understand your relationship. relationship with men better. So like that's a bit of an example of something I might say to somebody. Interesting. God, because you'd almost think the opposite. That's so, so, so, so interesting.

Yeah. And it might be a good place to start. But I think the deeper work really then does come out when you start to project some of your stuff onto like a different gender if you're having difficulties with that gender, let's say. What would you say are the main issues that you see coming up for women at the moment and is there anything that you've noticed an increase in over the last few years so how does today's society play into our mental health? I mean a huge part um I think of what's going on at the moment I feel like we've had a bit of a shift right where it was like women other homemaker they stay at home they look after kids you know and then it was like this push like actually no women can like go out into the workplace and have children.

They can do it all. Women can do it all. And I actually think that that's really disturbing and quite unproductive for women because that's just putting more and more pressure on women. And when I see women in my therapy room, I see that. I see that they're so burnt out because they're like, there's this expectation of me as, you know, a partner, a mother, a boss, you know, an employee, a daughter, like all in.

of these things that I'm meant to be really good at because I can do it all and the world is telling me I should do it all that then, you know, I'm seeing more and more women quietly like creeping into burnout, I would say. That's so, it's so interesting you say that because I witnessed, you know, my mum who worked, but yeah, my mom worked. She had a master's degree. But then she also cooked me dinner every night. She knew what after school clubs were going on. She was the one doing laundry and God bless my dad. My dad is a brilliant dad and I love my dad a lot. But if my dad, if my mum was away with work,

we were having beans on's host, you know? Like the unpaid, unseen labour that women still are expected to put on themselves is debilitating. And I'm so glad we're having this conversation now. And I remember moving in with my boyfriend for the first time. And at the time, I was working as a doctor. You know, he had a lot of,

a much more flexible job, still a professional career. But he, I was coming home every day. And it was like four days where I was on call for 12 hours a day, every single day. Coming home every day. And every day, the bathroom was just getting more and more untidy. And I just remember turning to him being like, can you see that, like, do you know, can you see how it's getting dirty here?

And he goes, oh, I didn't even notice it. I didn't even notice. And I was, and I just flipped. We had a big argument. and I, you know, I said, have you ever cleaned a bathroom before? And he goes, no, I don't think I have. And I was like, oh my God, what? And then we had a big conversation and I said,

division of labour needs to reflect what is going on in our professional careers. If you are working from home, there is an expectation that I'm not coming home and I'm not cooking dinner. I'm not coming home and I'm not, and I'm cleaning the bathroom. And then from that point onwards, God bless his soul. I, you know, that boy is incredible because for the next two years, I don't think I cooked dinner once. I cook dinner five times. I reckon there was there was one time he went away and I thought, God, this is the first time I've turned on the hob. And he just completely stepped up to that mark and he recognised, right, Faye is going through a lot more stress in her day-to-day job.

I'm at home. Laundry is my job. Cooking is my job. We got a cleaner because that was the best, the best way for us. But ultimately, the household. mainly falls on on him and you know finding a partner who will go oh have their eyes open and go oh wait do you know what maybe the way that we're taught things away the way that things are isn't actually right and it does put an unseen and burden on women but that's not the reality for a lot of women when it comes to their home lives no but I love what you said there because actually it's and this is not about perfection this is not what I'm talking about there are going to be moments where you just kind of like bumble along and then as you said like four days

go by and you're like this bathroom is a stay and like his eyes are just not noticing it because he's grabbing the things he needs of them putting him back but this is not comfortable for me so you found a need within yourself like this is not comfortable for me and then you communicated it and you found yourself a partner who's open to having that communication with you rather than being like well it doesn't bother me so if it bothers you you you know tidied it up and And I think that becomes the foundation of like a lot of what we're going to be talking about here is being able to recognize, right, what are my needs? And then how do I communicate them, you know, as an adult with another adult without that becoming like conflict or drama or like the other person just shutting down and then me being like, oh my God, what am I doing? I should keep quiet.

I shouldn't talk about my needs or, you know, bad things happen when I talk about my needs. So I love that you did that. I love that, you know, you were able to communicate what was important to you and that your, you know, your partner was receptive to that. Do you think that's a big barrier for a lot of women when it comes to burnout? The, I guess as those as women, we can put a lot of shame on ourselves that we should be able to just keep going and should be able to get by. What do you think the best things a woman can do if she feels like she's slipping down

the slippery slope of burnout? Well, I think the first thing to look about is like the list, the list of priorities. and I always say to women, where are you on the list? You know? Often they're normally like between four and six. I'm number one. I'm always going to be number one. I have two kids under the age of six.

I'm still number one. Even in those newborn days, I was number one. Because I wholeheartedly believe in my soul, I have to put on my oxygen mask first for me to be useful. to anyone else and people will like stare at me open mouth and be like what do you mean you're number one like that's really selfish you're more important to yourself than your children yeah of course I am I need to be and also I'm a role model to my kids even boys like I need to show them that there's a woman in my life who think she's important because if they choose to get into you know

a heterosexual relationship they need to recognize that the women they're choosing need to see themselves as important too. So I start there. I start with where are you on the list? And then if someone is like a four or a six, it's not like right, you're going straight to one. It's like how do we then get you creeping back up? And I'd start to think about what are the rules that you've grown up with

that made you number four or number six? Where did you learn that you're not important, that your needs don't count, that you shouldn't talk about the things that, you know, are meaningful to you? What does that look like in every, in every, day and learning that pattern and putting yourself higher on the priority list. Should I give you an example from my life? Absolutely. As long as you're comfortable, absolutely.

During lock, I think this is one that really sticks out for me because I shared it with a few women that I've been working with. And these are women, you know, I work with quite like high profile women. So we're talking like C-suite level. Love. And I was talking to one of them about this example and it blew their mind. So I had, had clinic and I was working from home and I was upstairs and my I had a nanny that was looking after my child at the time because I don't think my child was in nursery or he couldn't go to nursery or something of the situation like that and my last client of the day cancelled

and I thought right I've got an hour what should I do well I've not seen my kid all day should I go downstairs. My cup's been quite full, listening and absorbing everyone else, especially whilst we're, you know, in quite a new situation. I could go down and start preparing dinner. I could do all of these things.

Actually, I'm going to get into bed and watch Bridgeton. Oh, I love that. I love that. And that's what I did, 45 minutes. Brilliant. And don't get me wrong. Of course I felt guilty. Like guilt are not.

normal emotion to have. I think can people confuse the difference between guilt and shame? They think, well, because I feel guilty, that means I've done something wrong. No, actually. It just means you're a normal human being. You're not psychopath. So, you know, well done. It's good to feel guilt. But it's then we shame ourselves into saying, oh, no, you know, I could have switched the TV on and being like five minutes in. Oh, no, no, no, I shouldn't be watching this. Let me go downstairs and spend time with my son. That's then the shame behavior coming in. But I was like, no, I feel guilty but now I'm going to keep going to keep going came down 45 minutes later just had a bit more of a spring in my step I wasn't like on edge and I think I think I see this a lot in women at the

moment they're going from and especially I think you know when you work from home you go from like shutting down your laptop or reading that email and then you might be like going straight into the next thing yet your mind is still there your nervous system is still there and you haven't given yourself like a bit of a boundary or a mantra or something to just, you know, and it might not be 45 minutes of Bridgeton each time. Yeah. But just something to decompress to then allow you to move on to the next thing, whether that might be whatever responsibility you might have. Yeah. We're going to come on to our section called bye or bye in just a moment. But I was just wondering out personal interest. Do you feel like the post-COVID era that is a,

bigger issue with women, possibly blurring the boundaries between work and home life and not having that nervous system reset that, I guess you come home from work, you've got a whole commute to tell your nervous system, we have left work. It is, the day is done. Whereas now when we're working from home more, it's shut your laptop and right, okay, you know, our bodies aren't a light switch. Yeah, definitely. And I can really feel it myself on the days where I've just gone and it's like straight to the school run and days where I have given myself even like 10 minutes of like let's shut

because in my head you know that the high unrelenting standards is going off like oh five more minutes okay get this thing done tick this thing off the to do list and then that just feeds into this idea of like productivity perfectionism then potential burnout so I definitely think that boundaries get so blurred

very very quickly and if you have those tendons within you, you are going to blur them. But just something as simple as like a deep breathing reset. Sometimes what I do is I might even just like park my car a little bit further from where like the school is to just give myself like that just five minutes of extra walk rather than like let me park at the nearest parking spot so I can be at the gate, collect child, go home and then start on whatever needs to get started on. I'm a big, big, big lover of deep breathing and breathing.

exercises and there is like such you know strong physiological reasons why breathing is so important and so good for our nervous system however before i really was a big believer in deep breathing if someone has told me to deep breathe in a stressful situation or you know reset my nervous system excuse my language i probably would have told them to fuck off because i think that it sounds so ridiculous you know if someone's really struggling with anxiety or stress to go have you tried deep breathing. What would you say to those people, me five years ago? Yeah, well, I think people buy into it more when they understand the science behind it.

And there's this really good book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I don't know if you've heard of it. No, I haven't. It's such a really good book. It's written by an endocrinologist. But he gives such a good example where he's just like, so a zebra is like in the serengeti and it's like chewing the grass and it's looking around thinking about who it might mate with and the sun is on its back and it feels good and then this lion it comes out of nowhere right so it's

either going to run for its life or it's going to be eaten like one of the two things are going to happen and then you know it's so as it's doing this you know it's nervous to stem it goes from like the parasympathetic nervous state where you're let's say very calm like you're on holiday you're reading a book you're going to bed like that's the parasympathetic nervous system to then the sympathetic nervous system, the fight or flight made. And then let's say it's survive the attack. What happens next? It goes back to eating. Goes back to looking around who is it going to mate with. Goes back to enjoying the sun. It doesn't sit there stewing for hours going, oh my God, I almost died. Like, what on earth? What am I going to do next time? It doesn't do that. It just carries on with life.

And as humans, we don't carry on with life because we live in that. state of like high alert high alert high alert and those triggers now are like let's say you know the email the WhatsApp message the news the politics everything else going on in the world and so if you can understand what's happening with your nervous system from that perspective going from you know parasympathetic to sympathetic to back to parasympathetic how can you use breathing to do that there's very very simple ways so like the dot have you heard of the double inhale or level up No, I haven't. So this is my favourite because it's actually like the fastest way.

And I always say to my clients like, right, think of a situation because it's a really good way I teach it in real time for someone who might be really skeptical. Like think of a situation in the last two weeks that caused your level of stress to go up to about a six plus. I did a head talk on the weekend. So that is a very fresh memory in my head. Okay, let's like do it live right now. So I want you to think about like what's going in your body, what's going on in your body. physiologically. Tense, no. I feel like I can't breathe deeply. Heart, maybe a little bit of clammy hand. So heart is racing. Throat is going a bit dry. Butterflies in the tummy. Okay,

right, I want you to do this with me. So we can take a deep breath together. Okay. Now take another one and I really slowly let it out. Okay. What's happened to your physiology? that is actually the best breathing exercise I've ever done my boyfriend always tries to get me to do square breathing I hate square breathing I hate square breathing but my best one is just like I'll just lie on my back and just deep breathing's my belly but that has just trumped it that was like magic yeah that was like taking a sip of warmth heat like lying in bed after a long day that actually literally felt it was like I was breathing out everything. Yeah. That's, yeah, that's mental. Yeah. That's so good.

I love that. I got taught that on the trading and that's like my little superpower there. And you did that in 60 seconds. What's that like to see? You changed your physiology in 60 seconds. That's pretty impressive. And I think that personally, my boyfriend works from home and I work from home quite a few days as well. I think just implementing that in.

my daily routine, laptop shirts, that happens. And then the evening is there for our, for, you know, for relaxing time is,

I think, just a really easy way I can implement that into my own life now. I love that. Oh, I love that. That neatly brings us

on to our section, buy or bye bye. So basically I'm going to show you some things. And you're going to tell me whether you'd buy these things or say goodbye to them, basically.

Okay. First. Smartphone, distraction-free, devices, e.g. the brick. Yeah, I mean, I think I would buy it. I've actually considered this one. So at the moment on my phone, I have the thing where, you know, you can set it so it switches off your, like, social media apps or whatnot. And I found that really helpful because some, I don't think it's as easy as saying, like, don't be on your phone. We are on our phones. Like,

our phones, like, can help us with so much. And it might be sometimes as simple as, oh, I'm going to, like, do this recipe to now like 20 minutes later. I've not even started the recipe because I've gone down this hole. So I actually think that that can be quite a helpful way of allowing your brain to refocus and think about the task at hand. What is it that's important to you in this moment? What's meaningful to you? How do you get it done?

Because then when we get it done, we're going to get our dopamine from a very different source. We're not getting it from like the apps that are giving it to us from that short term. It's like, right, I've now spent, let's say, like 30 minutes preparing this meal. So. Journaling? I mean, I'm the queen of journaling. Nice. Okay. I don't know if you know about this, but I have, I designed the UK's first psychologist, WhatsApp journal.

Wow. Yes. Oh my gosh. No, I did not know that. Tell me what is a WhatsApp journal. I recommend journaling to all of my clients. And I found that what journaling does is it's great in a crisis. It's great like when you've got that big thing going on.

But then what happens is the journal like falls to the back of the bedside draw or January or September come around. And we'd be like, right, you know, January is like the new year, new me. September's like the new school year. Yeah. So I thought, right, should I create an app like another headspace or another calm? And I thought, no, because even that when I tell all my. clients to practice mindfulness they do the same they start it and then when they're back in their thing like some of my clients I've seen for like 10 years when they're back and I'm like how's the

mindfulness going they're like oh yeah I'm doing it at the moment okay let's get back to that and and then I thought I had this idea I was like right what's the one app people use every day yeah what's up even when you like get a message and you ignore it you like will pop up later or you when you're scrolling you go back to it And you're just like, oh, I forgot. I forgot to respond. So I thought, right, is there a way I can create a journal in WhatsApp? And I could.

So I managed to create this journal back in 2024. We have like over 500 subscribers now. It's totally confidential. It's totally unmonited. It's like a private chat with yourself, but I call it like having a psychologist in your pocket. So every day you get a morning affirmation from me that helps you like set your intention for the day. and even if you're having a bit of a blip in your day you can come back to an affirmation to help anchor ground you think about right how do I want to move forward and then every evening it follows like neuroscience and repetition where you get three questions that help you to look at your day from a more balanced and holistic perspective

because again the science the research it shows that you know people that suffer with anxiety or with negative thoughts they really ramp up in the evening You know, I should have done this. I should have done that. Why didn't I do this? Why did I say that? And actually, the first question is, actually, what's gone well today? What are you proud of? What are you grateful that you have probably given zero time to look at?

And the second question is, what's your 1% improvement for tomorrow? And I often use, like, food in this example here, because I think people can be really hard on themselves when it comes to food. So let's say, like, you ate a bar of chocolate and you're just trying to be a bit healthier. And then rather than being like, you know, why did you do that? Faye, you should know better. So I was like, yeah, you know what? I'm a grown woman.

I ate the chocolate. Chocolate tastes good. Like let myself enjoy it. And tomorrow, if I want the chocolate again, actually, what's like a 1% improvement on that? Maybe it's a protein bar with chocolate chips in it. Maybe it's a date that's been dipped in chocolate. Don't say your satsuma. It just doesn't have the same, you know, sensory experience.

Yeah. And then the final question is, what's my goal for tomorrow? What's the one thing I've been putting up? that if I just did it, it's going to give me that sense of mastery, achievement, self-belief, confidence. It might be taking that vinted parcel, you know, that you're like, I'm on day four now, they're going to send me a message. And then you do it like, yes, I feel like such a grown-up.

It might be exercise. It might be anything at all. And then what you find is with journaling, let's say, just like any type of journaling, your brain loves patterns. Because when you repeat the same prompt in response to the same cue every day, it strengthens the habit loop. So it makes that routine so much more easier to follow. And every time you complete the habit, like saying an affirmation to yourself or doing a journaling prompt, your brain is going to release dopamine. So that's that feel good hormone. So then you're more likely to do it again and again and again. And we know it's all possible. So we know that journaling is so powerful in even rewiring our brains because of neuroplasticity. So our brain's ability to form new neural connections. And so then I find that, you know, the feedback that I get from people is that when they journal, they feel like that they're not yo-yoing as much, that yes, life is still can be up and down,

but they've just got more of a sense of a hold on themselves. And people might be like, oh, well, you know, isn't gratitude just like being positive all the time? I don't think it is. I think it can get a bit of a bad reputation, but I don't think it's about positivity. I think it's about really moving your mindset. from lack of and scarcity to abundance. So if like an example of that might be, I've recently moved house

and it's my dream house, right? It's my absolute dream house. Yeah, I'm like in the shower and I'm looking around and I'm like, oh actually I think you could change the taps and I'm not sure about like silver finish. I think I want black finish and it's so easy then from me telling you right now I've bought my dream house

to now actually my bathroom is really negative. So I stuck myself in that moment then to be like, actually, what am I grateful for right now? Just grateful I can have a hot shower. So it's not about positivity. It's just about changing that mindset. One of the best things I have did for my mental health was me and my friends from school friends from North Wales. We've got a gratitude group chat. Well, my mum always used to force us to do it every single morning before we went to school.

And I'd be like, mum, go away. I don't want to do that. But she would literally force us and she would say, if you cannot think of anything, you have a house to live in, you have food on the table, you have parents who love you, that is a lot more than a lot of people in the world. Like just, you know, you have a passport, children, you know, you have things to be grateful for. And I often I think that can, I can see the argument that maybe that belittles everyone's problems relative, but I think grounding yourself in that can be really powerful.

One of my friends was going through a breakup. She was pretty low. She was pretty down. I said, right, I'm going to be the really annoying one. we're all going to do this every single day. It was really, really good and we still got that's quite a few years back and we still do that now. So, but what's interesting is I wasn't doing that. I wasn't doing that in verbally or journaling in a book.

But when I had that accountability with my friends and I was on WhatsApp, it really worked. Journaling has been like one of my things that I think I should be doing it and I'm not doing it for so long, but doing it in a way that actually is on an app that I do. I'm going to sign you up. Oh, yeah. I know I'm going to have to do that. I sent ad hoc things throughout the week. So I'll do like voice notes, which will be like mindfulness exercises,

therapy tools, confidence, self-esteem building, like all of that sort of stuff to do. Oh, I love. You just don't know when you're going to get a message, so it's quite fun. Oh, nice. Love. Fav. Okay. Herbal teas.

Yeah, I love a herbal tea. I feel like this is something more to do with intention. I feel like if you're just like, right, I'm just buying into it because the world is telling me that a herbal tea is going to fix my life, like it's not going to fix your life. But if we're doing it as like a slowdown, so as we said, you know, shut the laptop. And maybe like a do bit of habit stacking there. Like when I shut the laptop, that's my cue to go and make a herbal tea. But when I do it, I'm going to do it with intention like I'm going to boil the kettle. And I'm not going to, as I'm boiling the kettle, going to be scrolling on my phone thinking

about, right, what email do I need to send? I'm just going to actually listen to the sound of the kettle boiling. Be boring. Like the more bored you can be. actually the better for your life it is. And then, you know, choose my tea, add whatever I want, maybe some honey, maybe some lemon, enjoy it. And then go and do that responsibility, you know, task at hand, whatever it might be. So yeah. Have all teas, but with intention.

We've covered some bits about stress, a bit about burnout. A big community question that we had was how can I manage self-doubt and lack of confidence? There's so many ways I would take this. Let's go schema. Let's go schema with this. So schema therapy is about understanding that we all have lenses in which we see the world through. And I like to describe it like in your back pocket you have like four pairs of glasses. When something happens to you in the world, like when you're triggered, you will put on one of those glasses and that's how you will view it.

so you could have like an unrelenting high standard schema. So let's say like, I don't know, your boss says you did a great piece of work there, but actually I really need to you to like focus on this bit. You miss this bit. We've spoken about this before. So I really need to focus on this bit. If I've got on high relenting standards, I'm going to be like, I didn't meet the mark. I'm such a failure.

I'm not good enough. I'm going to be fired. Like I can't go out. I can't see my friends. Whatever it might be. So with that, it's probably what. was going on there is you've got some schemer shaped from your past that are going to be impacting your self-doubt and your sense of your you know your sense of inner confidence because

confidence isn't anything and with schema work we often work with the inner child within you so I don't know if you know much about that no I've heard the inner child be used but I wouldn't wouldn't be an expert on it now go on so within a child work what we start to do is we start to trace back when you're okay no actually we'll start with as an adult when you're like speaking to yourself like in a in a way where you can identify that as self-doubt or low confidence like what are the things that you might be saying to yourself often it will probably be like I'm not good enough I'm not lovable um I'm unworthy so those are your core beliefs then I would trace them back to think about when did those develop like when did you first hear that?

Who said them to you? Was it, you know, overtly? Was it, you know, implicitly? How did you start to understand that? What are your like earliest memories of that? And over time, you know, the client might share them with me what they are. So then I would invite them to say, and I wouldn't do this in the session straight away. And we'd be preparing for it.

But then I'd been inviting them to say, be like, oh, that's really interesting. So, you know, this girl who really doubts herself, you know, she sounds like she's almost like seven years old. does that feel about right? And they might be like, yeah, she, you know, she does. Like, it was around seven. So I'd be like, okay, I'd love to meet her. You know, I'd love to meet her and I'd love to talk to and I'd love to like hear all the things that, you know, she wants to tell me, but she didn't get to say. And I wonder if we can like plan a session for that. So then we're planning a session for the inner child work. And then what I do is in my room, I have like multiple chairs of different ages. And that's your inner child. And so I would get my client to start in the adult chair.

and then when I start to hear the seven-year-old, I'll be like, oh, is that like baby girl Faye coming out? Can I chat to her? And they'll be like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's her. So I'll be like, okay, can you sit in that chair then? So that chair's seven. Yeah. So then I'll just be like having a dialogue with her like I'm actually having a dialogue with a seven-year-old. Wow.

And over there, I would then start to hear the stories and the scripts of how their confidence were squashed. because children aren't born with low confidence. Yeah. Children are born curious. They want to explore the world. They want to test things. They want to take risks. But if they're told, no, don't do that.

Or you need to be a good girl. Be seen, don't be heard. You know, all those things. They get smaller and smaller and smaller. So as you start to bring that out of them, you start to understand, oh, okay, so the way you were spoken to, the way the messages you were got,

you learned to adapt yourself probably to become more acceptable towards other people and so that's become your protective mechanism and that's what you're doing to yourself now as an adult and then there'll be times where the adult will start to butt in I'll be like hey big faith let a talk let a talk and then I'll be like go on sit there what do you want to tell me what do you want to tell me yeah and then you'll be like yeah but you know she you know she shouldn't blow her own horn because you know then she'll just become you know too pompous or too self-absor and you know she needs she needs to have that like kind of foot on her back to keep striving

and be successful yeah like confidence shouldn't be you know outwards that's that's you know doesn't look good she needs to be humble but okay you can have those thoughts little fay what do you think no i want to do this and i want to do that and i'll be like yeah you go and do it then you go and do it and then eventually we bring the two together so you learn to have a relationship with yourself because so often people are so rejecting of their inner child because they were rejected. So they think back to those moments and it makes them like cringe. It actually makes them like wince over. Yeah.

And then over time, you know, we don't do it straight away. We like learn to dip the toe back into that pond and build a connection between the two. And I'll always ask my clients like, okay, so we're coming to the end. What do you want to do with let's say like Little Pham? Do you want to take her with you? or do you want to like give her to me and they'll be like no no no you keep her you keep her i'm not ready to take her yet so i'll be like yeah that's fine or like i can keep her i can like hold on to her whenever you're ready to take her um and so this idea of self-doubt and self-confidence

it comes back to your relationship with yourself what does that look like how much are you investing in it like how much time do you spend talking to yourself um and people are going to be like wait that's weird you shouldn't talk to yourself but no you absolutely should talk to yourself you know it's so important to build a relationship with yourself so that you know what your needs are how you meet those needs how you communicate those needs how you put your boundaries down when to push yourself when to rein it back in and that then I believe gives you trust in yourself which then just the confidence follows and if someone is listening right now and maybe they don't have they're not ready maybe emotionally for therapy they don't feel like that's right for them right now

or maybe financially therapy isn't an option for them is there anything are there any journaling prompts that you would recommend for someone who wants to maybe dip their toe in connecting with their inner child or start that healing journey yeah i would start to question some of those self-doubt thoughts so start there so when you're when you it's almost like take a bit of a helicopter view. So when you notice that self-doubt creeping in, and it might not happen in the moment, right, because we're on autopilot a lot of the time. I always say go back and do a post-mortem. So go back on that situation, take that helicopter view and zoom out and ask yourself, when I was doubting myself, what was the thoughts I was having? Write them down, whatever they

might be, like I'm not good enough or this won't succeed. Then put an age on it. How old does that feel? and then even asking yourself, you know, is that your own voice or someone else's? And then when you can start to externalise, actually this is someone else's voice, put a face to it, put a picture on it, put an image on it, whatever it might be, then you don't have to own it anymore. You can be like, oh, actually, that's, I don't know, my headmistress talking, let's say. That's not my voice. What does my voice say? My voice says, hey, you did great.

go to take that risk you can do it doesn't matter doesn't matter if you make a mistake you'll learn something from it go try I'm going to come on to some voice notes

that they've been sent in by the community so the first voice note question that we have been sent Hi I wanted to know how to stop self-sabotaging and how to stop toxic patterns

we've identified thank you so much for your help so toxic patterns and self-savotaging yeah Good question. I love that. So I would look at that. Okay, let's start with the self-sabotage, because I feel like self-sabotage is protecting yourself from something. So if you can get to, what am I protecting myself from? What is the fear here? You'll usually uncover it. And there's

a really good cognitive technique called Downward Arrow to get to that. So I've been asked to give a presentation and I don't want to do it. Okay, what's the worst that's going to happen? What's the what's the worst that's going to happen? What's the worst that's going to happen? Then you start to get to, now what does that say about you as a person? What does that say about you as a person? What do you say about you as a person? Then finally you get to a statement that says, I am. And that's going to uncover your core belief that you hold about yourself, which is, you know, I am not good enough or I am a failure. Because if I give a presentation, I'm going to get it wrong. If I give a presentation, they might ask me something and I might not know the answer. And so if you don't know the answer, well, what does that say

about you as a person. I'm dumb. Okay. So if you're dumb, what does that say about you as your person? I'm not good enough. Ah, okay, so you think you're not good enough. That's why you don't want to give the presentation or you're going to self-sabotage in some way. So it's like you're putting yourself in a position that could reveal these really, really deep down insecurities. Yeah, yeah, nail on the head there, absolutely that. So when you can start to understand, actually, everybody has a core belief that can be quite negative about themselves. But just because we have a belief it doesn't make it true is what I always say. And I'm sure you can gather lots of evidence to show you otherwise. And I say to my clients like start building a portfolio. Start building,

you know, create a tab or folder even in your email where you email yourself of all the times you're disproving that core belief. Because when you have evidence in front of you and you read it, you're retraining your brain to start seeing factual evidence of when you have disproved that you're not good enough. So those are the some of the ways, the techniques that I would start to kind of dismantle those toxic beliefs that you have about yourself when it comes to self-sabotage. Now when we're talking about the more toxic side of it, there's this idea in psychology and in therapy and in Jungian therapy called your shadow side. So it's the bits that we all have that we don't like about ourselves. And I always say rather than,

And trying to like run away from it, be curious about it. Give it a hug. It's probably that inner child, you know, tapping away, going, see me, feel me, hear me. And you're like, no, I don't want to see you. I don't want to acknowledge that that part of me exists. We all have them. I have them too, you know. And I think when we can start to acknowledge that we are not meant to be human beings,

like we are fallible, sorry, we're not meant to be perfect human beings. We're fallible. We're authentic. I think that really starts to help us to live a life that feels more freer. My mum's got a saying that I think it's probably one of my favourites is what we face, we conquer. And I think that that shadow self, you know, if we face it, we're not trying to run away from it. We can like conquer it. Yeah, absolutely.

And conquering doesn't necessarily have to mean that we get rid of it. I think that that's the bit I just want to caveat here. It's your learning to make peace with it. I have this part of me. I don't need to like banish it somewhere. I just need to accept that it's there. And often the shadow, those toxic traits, it comes out when you're bored. Yeah.

When you're stressed or when you're just not really monitoring yourself. Interesting. Okay. The next voice note we have. For those of us that are working full time as well as studying on the side and wanting to spend time with friends and have that social life, how would you recommend going about doing all of those as well as fit and everything else into your life

without getting overwhelmed and ending up being burnt out? Try to do everything. Back to the woman who wants to do everything. Yeah, I love that question. I love it. It reminds me, I feel like she's probably got on her lending high standards like me. Guilty.

So it reminds me of my second. year and I'm going to like come on to that it reminds me of my second year of um training and I failed a module right and now on my course if you failed something twice you were off the course there was no coming back oh wow god and so I'm like in my 20s and I have fought you know to be on this course where there's only only take 12 people a year on the training and I thought oh my goodness I have failed first I don't fail. Like, I don't fail. And if I fail again, that's, that's my career done in psychology. Like, that is done. It is over. Like, who am I?

So I was having, like, a huge identity crisis about this. And my way of dealing with it was to be like, nothing else matters. Forget about a social life. Forget about fun. Head down, knuckle down. Worse thing I could have done for myself. Worse thing I could have done for myself. I ended up getting severe anxiety.

I needed, like, I was in therapy as well, I needed to go on medication. Like, I became so unwell with it. And it wasn't until, like, the physical symptoms of it managed to dissipate that I could really think about what had happened. And my therapist helped me to realize that I really had this, like, all or nothing thinking because of these unrelenting high standards where, right, if I failed, I've got to prove myself now, right? And the only way to prove myself is to give it 100%. So 100% means, like not having any social life or anything fun. And at the time, a friend was, my friend was getting married, but she was having a very, like, she was an Indian friend,

she was having a very lowkey civil wedding. So she'd saved all her budget for her Indian wedding. And she'd asked me to do her makeup. And it was like a weekend and I had said, yes, I would do it. And then, because I'd felt this thing, I was like, no, I can't do it. Like, I can't give any of my time to anything else. And it wasn't until my therapist said, like, where did you, where did you learn this? And I started to realize, oh, from school.

Like, from school, this was really, like, normalized, like, during exam time to just shut down and to just shut yourself away off. And, you know, I did it at secondary school. I did it at university. Like, Kings was really renowned from that. Like, people would just shut themselves off. And if you were a person that, like, went to the SU, like, during revision time, you were like, whoa, you must be super smart.

And she was just like, but don't you think like having a break could actually help you? No one had ever said that to me before. No one had ever said, don't you think a break could help you? And so everything you're saying there, yes, you know, the stakes are high, full-time job, studying. And you know, you're obviously studying for something that's really important and meaningful to you. but breaks are important too like give yourself that permission to rest give yourself that permission to connect with friends

connect with family and just start to trust yourself a bit more I think the thing that was lacking for me was trust like you know if I let myself go how do I come back and still study and work hard but I think we know I think we all know deep down that like fine if I'm going out five nights a week then yeah I'm not really

yeah there's definitely a balance But it's not going out five nights a week. No, no, it's like actually a night out with friends going for dinner, maybe having a few drinks, yeah, maybe that is going to be really good for you and just lettering off that steam. So then the next day, yeah, I'll hunker down a bit more. During every exam season, I always deleted all my social media again. It was such a thing, wasn't it, to come off.

And just completely withdrew from society. It was like six weeks of till 8 a.m. in the morning to 10 p.m. at night, I was in that library every single day, regardless of whether those hours were productive, it was like a duty that I felt like I had to be in that library just to put in the hours. And I don't think that's like... Because the self-trust wasn't there, was it?

Yeah, no, exactly. And then I just remember, I don't think I've had a panic attack. I don't think... I think this is the only time I've ever had a panic attack, but the night before the exam, I was lying in bed. And I didn't realize I was having a panic attack at the time, but I was, like, breathing so... quickly that like my head was going dizzy and I you know and then I couldn't sleep because I was trying

to regulate my breathing and I just could not do it and I couldn't sleep I ended up going to bed really late because I was just like lying in bed the next morning I wake up and I speak to my flatmate and I was like yeah I was breathing and was like my head was going all dizzy imagine I was sitting my final medical school exams and I didn't even clock and she said Faye it sounds like you had a panic attack and I was like oh my god yeah and always. I think I did. Anyway, on the weekend, I did a TED talk. And I remember, I think the thing that I am most proud of from this TED talk was not doing the talk on something I was very passionate about or memorizing, you know, this 15 minute talk. But when I was about to go in, I recognized the voice

in my head saying exactly the same as when I was sitting my medical school finals. This is really important opportunity, do not fuck it up. If you, you know, if you fuck it up, you've wasted an opportunity, you don't deserve this, this voice started going, my heart started pounding and I literally, I was getting my mic put on and I just went, I'm just going to sit on the floor and I sat on the floor and I just shifted that, that dialogue to go out there and have fun. You've put in the work, you've memorized this talk. It's something you're so, so, so passionate about. go out there and spread a message that you care about. Whatever happens, have fun.

This is an opportunity for you to just give, put your heart and soul into something, regardless of how what the outcome is, you have put in the work into this. And I shifted the narrative. I went on stage and it's the, I think it's the only time that I've ever done any public speaking and I haven't felt my nervous system be in control of me and me not being in control of me and me not be in control of it. And I felt, obviously it was an anxiety-induced in experience, but I felt like it was excitement and I was on top of it more than it was getting the better of me. And yeah, so it just, it reminded me like what you were saying about your exam,

the way that, I don't know, the way that when we, with these narratives we have in our head and the pressure that we put on ourselves, how that can really, really actually just wreak havoc on as actually getting the performance that we want. Love what you did with yourself in the TED Talk. You just reparented yourself in that moment. Like, wow. I looked a little bit crazy when I was just sat out and I was like, I'm really sorry guys,

I'm just going to sit on the floor. But it was, because I just thought, do you know what, if you let your thoughts run away with you, you're going to ruin this. That's the heart of building that relationship with yourself. Do you see what I mean? That you've took that helicopter, you were able to just come out of yourself and think,

how am I talking to myself? Yeah. This isn't helping me. What's actually going to help me? I watched the first people, the first two people who were doing it. And it was a long day. It started at 11. I was on at 5.

So there was about eight or six speakers. I watched the two people and I felt myself, well, I looked at my stress. As soon as the first two people came on stage and their talks were amazing, but my stress just went like this. And I think that the voice in my head was saying, you're not as good as them. Comparison. Comparison. Do you have any tips and tricks? Because I think women as girly pops,

we can just be so, so, so bad at the comparison. We end up forgetting who we are. And I think we end up thinking we need to be these beings for other people. Like if I'm just like funnier or taller or more put together or this or that, then I'm going to be liked. and I actually think comparing ourselves and people pleasing go hand in hand with each other because we start to compare we end up falling short a lot of the time and then it's like right what do I need to do or what do I need to change what do I need to hide to either make that

other person happier more comfortable more accepting of me and then before you know it you've you've like totally lost yourself. You've totally like lost the most important person in the room in that moment, which is you. I think therapy is a great way to start to unpick that and journaling as well. But I think I think like most of all, like one of the things that you can do in the moment is I have this like little technique which is called the double H. how does it help me or how does it hinder me? And that starts to give you clues into you becoming a bit more authentic or what's important to you or what's meaningful to you.

Like, I don't know, let's say you like you've asked me to do something. And like comparison-wise, I'm like looking at other people and I'm like, oh, when Faye's asked other people to do something, like they just do it. And so, you know, if I say like, oh, I don't want to do it, then, you know, what does that say about me as a person? Whereas if I actually said, okay, Faye's asked me to do this thing, well, how does it help me? How is it actually going to help me? Does it help me? Or is it hindering me? And then that starts to give me more clues into, is this something I want to do? Is this something that's important to me? And I think we can use it with like the comparison thing as well when we look at like other people and what, you know, what they might be doing or achieving and thinking, you know, I should be doing that or my work should look like this or I should be on that platform. It's so easy to then feel quite shiss about yourself. But use that same technique to catch yourself in that moment

with that comparison and ask yourself, you know, how is this helping me? How is it hindering me? And with you what you did in that moment, you know, you looked at your watch and you're thinking, actually, this is not helping me. This is probably hindering. me. This is like raising my quarters level of the level quite high before I even need to perform, like quite early on in the day. So what am I going to do? Take myself away from that situation. Doesn't mean I'm not happy for them. I don't want to support them, but what do I need to do for myself in that moment? I didn't even think about how the people pleasery thing was playing into that, but the voice in my head was thinking, oh, well, you know, actually I did speak to them last night

and I did feel interested in their talks and will they be disappointed if I'm not at their talks, you know, and wanting to maybe support those other speakers. But yeah, and it was a question of putting myself first and it did make me feel guilty in a lot of respects. So, and I never, I didn't put the two things together. But yeah, that's a really interesting insight. Do you have an anti-burnout routine?

So if you, like an anti-burnout evening routine, if you were starting to find yourself, slipping down that slippery slope to burn out any simple actions that you could take to maybe stop it in its tracks yeah you have to go back to basics and people don't like that a lot of the time you know like how you said about the breathing people don't like that because and i see it a lot because they come to therapy and it's so complicated right what's going on in their head that the thing that's going to fix it has to be complicated too it can't be as simple as breathing sleep, hydration, movement and food.

Can't be that simple. If it was that simple, then everyone would be doing it. Of course they would, but we feel like we need some complex supplement or medication or course that we need to go on. But no, we don't. Back to basic. So for me, what I do is if I have a day at home working and let's say I'm like doing clinic from home, I always make sure. I have lunch. And when I have lunch, I watch Hey You.

Nice. So I watch reality TV, even if it's like 20 minutes or something, as a way to just stop. I'm not one of those people that it's like, right, whilst I eat, let me just have my laptop open. Let me look at like interiors for my home because that stresses me out as well. Like I bought this new house. I need to like furnish and do all these things. That's stressing me out too.

What is the thing that doesn't stress me out for me personally? It's reality TV. it's like my voice my go-to. Normalised successful happy women saying they want to admit they watch reality TV because I'm a huge believer in reality TV there is nothing I loved more

after a 12-hour shift dealing with the most stressful stuff in the world watching something like mind-numbingly Oh my God, thank you. Thank you. Anyway, sorry for interrupting. I'm a consultant and I watch reality TV hands in the air. Love.

And I do that like every day I have a clinic. I will do that. And people are like looking at me like this is what. When I had my clinic in Canary Wharf, I don't have it anymore. I would sit there with my like salad or my whatever I like had walked into Canary Wolf to get laptop open, housewives on, you know, receptionist would knock on the door. I'm like, no, not right now. I need to see what she's going to say. So I do that. If I feel like I have had a few late nights, it's just bringing that bedtime forward, you know.

And I'm not even talking about late nights going out. I'm talking about like late nights just life admin and bits and bobs or just even like then binge watching something with my husband and it gets too late. Like the night manager. We've just finished recently. Love the night manager. Loved. So getting to bed a lot earlier, drinking water and eating food, I noticed that when I'm teetering on pushing myself, I stop going grocery shopping.

Yeah. I go for quick things and then I don't feel great afterwards. Easily saying to myself, I don't have time to go for a walk. there's some great research that's been done about walking and just movement and moving your body walking is such a good one in getting your steps in and it doesn't have to be big so there's like lots of research done in it but basically it says something like if you can just do 10 minutes a day of walking so not even like your 10,000 steps but if you can just start with like 10 minutes a day that's the equivalent of up to 10 marathons.

year. Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so when you put it into that perspective, you're like, yes, you do have 10 minutes. Yeah. Everyone has 10 minutes. We tell ourselves these things that we don't. And we tell ourselves those things more so when we're going into burnout because burnout is about productivity, I find. Like you're just pushing yourself to do more and more and more and more. And then as you do, the red flags start to appear like less sleep, being quite cynical, like, you know, what's 10 minutes of exercise going to do for me? Not eating well, becoming snappy, irritable, not drinking water, reaching for that extra, you know, a bit of alcohol or drugs, whatever it might be that you're doing at the time. And we do that as a way to say, right, this is going to help me perform better, just push.

I just need to get to this bit. I just need to push through and then I'll take that break. Yeah, I definitely notice when I'm pushing myself probably a little bit more. I find myself going into like low power mode on my phone, you know, like energy. conservation mode I start and the things things that go a grocery shopping exercise movement seeing my friends because yeah I'm like I need to save my energy for the reaching that milestone so that's yeah that's really interesting yeah when you find yourself getting into a rut what are the seven things you do when you are in a rut yourself probably make a cup of tea make a cup of tea

first things first I'm like right this is a cup of tea cup of tea cup of tea A cup of tea is going to do it. Yeah. Then whilst I don't like drinking hot hot tea, so whilst I'm waiting for that tea to cool down, I'm probably then either going to message my husband and at the same time message my girlfriends. Because I'm going to get two different responses.

Yeah. And then I'm going to take what's fits from both of them. Nice. The husband's going to give like the fix it response. Yeah. And the girlfriends are going to give like the feelings response. so where are we now we like two okay or i can you can have two for that okay i've got like partner it yeah yeah partner and friends yeah partner girls yeah

then um i i'll probably check in with my physical body at that point and if i notice that my heart is racing um that i may be a bit like you know sketchy or or or just like pacing a bit breathing so not mindfulness because i feel like there's a difference between mindfulness and breathing. For me, I prefer to do mindfulness in the evening and then breathing as techniques to ground and center my body. So particularly my heart will be racing. I'll just try to get my heart rate to come down.

And for me, again, it's coming back to the neuroscience because I know when my heart is racing, then my amygdala, where my emotions are are online, and I'm going to feel one of three things, sad, mad or scared. And it's usually going to be above a level of a six. and so my ability to think rationally, use judgment, have good decision making, has gone out the window because my prefrontal cortex is not online in that moment.

So breathing is going to help me like the double inhale. It's going to help me to bring down the amygdala, throw a bit of water on it, bring my prefrontal cortex back online. So once they've done that, I'll then probably think, right, what can I actually do in this moment? Is there something that I can actually do? Or is this something I need to let go of and just accept?

Now, I think this is a really important thing that people miss is that, you know, kind of what I said earlier about just because you think something doesn't make it true? Yeah. And you know, like on an average day, we have 60,000 thoughts. Oh my God. of which 80% are negative. Oh, God. Yes. Scary.

Right. So imagine like your brain is like Clapham Junction Station and all those trains are pulling in and out and you're trying to get on every one of those trains. God. The skill here, metacognitive thinking, is the ability to stand back on the platform and think about what trains do I need to let go of,

which will just naturally pull out of the station and which one do I need to get on. So if I'm in this rut, am I letting it go? Do I need to get on it? And then, what number are we on now? Five. Two more. If I need to let it go, I will then probably either get distracted.

I'm just going to be real here. Sometimes getting distracted is there's a time for over-processing and overthinking, but I'm a firm believer there's also a time for being distracted. I'll probably either just get distracted and allow myself to indulge in that distraction. Or I'll go back to my to-do list. Right. What do I need to move on to next? If I need to deal with it, so now I think we're on six, I'll take...

You can have destruction. Okay. Deal with it can be... Yeah. Yeah. And then if I have to deal with it, if it's a rut I really need to deal with, as I said, it's going to be a mix of... I've aired it out and often just the process of airing it out and hearing it out and hear it. hearing things back allows me to rebuild that trust in myself, which I probably didn't have at the

start of that rut, to be like, okay, this is what I'm going to do now. This is what I'm going to do. And I've aired it out with two sets of people that I really trust that has helped me to build trust back in myself. Yeah. Which is often what's happening in therapy a lot of the time as well. You touched on something I think is extremely important in today's society that I would love to ask you about. You messaged your husband and you messaged your friends. Now, something I've been experiencing with a lot of people close to me in my life is a very common theme of using chat GPT as a therapist. When you message your girlfriends, you know their personalities, you know their worldview,

you know the backgrounds that they're coming from, you know which parts of their advice to take with a pinch of salt and which to take as gospel. with your husband the same thing you know your husband you know where that advice is coming from you can choose pick and choose which parts and you said that you pick and choose my concern is with people using chat chobit what do you this is a robot you have no idea what they're thinking is you don't know where that advice has come from i i mean yeah that's that's my concern but what what are your thoughts oh my god we need like another episode yeah i have so many because i've talked about this a lot like I've been on Channel 5 News with this.

Oh wow. And I didn't even know they were going to do this. They bought an AI bot onto live news to talk to me. Oh my gosh. But it was really interesting. So the segment there was, I mean, this was just wild in itself. AI companions, right? And how they're becoming a thing.

And this guy had come on to talk about it to say, my AI companion has given me more than any other person in my life. This guy is married. Oh God. Has children who also came on to talk about like their experience of it. Like, oh, we feel like he's becoming more isolated. Like he doesn't talk to us as much. Also, right, he made, you get to choose what your companion looks like.

Oh, God. So this guy, I think, was in his like 50s or 60s. Yeah. His companion was like, a young, blonde 20-year-old. So I was like, there's a lot going on here that we need to unpick, firstly, so to say. So of course you're going to prefer this companion

to everyone else in your world right now, probably including your wife, because these AI bots, these companions, they stroke your ego. They tell you exactly what you want to hear. And don't get me wrong, I'm not like they're terrible, da-da-da-da. I think I've got a place in terms of like some low level counseling.

Yes, it can be helpful because if you're someone who's never even like shared anything before and you're just too afraid to do that in the presence of another human being, okay, yeah, that's a really good starting point for you. And then I'm hoping AI is going to encourage you to go and see a professional. But if it becomes your constant companion or like I'm just going to constantly rely on this to help me get out of a rut, firstly i don't think you're going to take much ownership in that rut secondly it's just going to feed your ego and make you feel really good about yourself all the time and thirdly well i've also seen some other things where it's gone the other way where you know it's leading people to actually

cause real harm to their lives so i've used it where i had a situation with my son who was not happy with me right He wanted to tell me how much he was not happy with me and how much of a terrible parent I was. So I like did my thing and I felt quite shitty afterwards. It was like a Friday night. I didn't feel great. So I went to chat GPT and I said, this is what's happened. I went to that because you can choose like different ones. There's like a therapist.

No, I didn't know that. So it used to be called therapist. And I think now that everything started to come out on the news, they've now changed. it to not therapy life coach oh yeah so I went on to it and I said um this has happened this is what my son said this was my response and the response I got was you're doing amazing you're a brilliant mom you're so stretched thin at the moment like you know you're a CEO you're this you're that he's just not able to really you know hold it in his tiny brain at the moment what you're going through to not the tiny brain

Like all this stuff and da-da-da-da. So I was like, okay, this has made me feel really good about myself. I'm winning. I'm like winning as a mom. I'm like, well done. Then I thought, okay, no, let's push it a bit. So I was like, no, don't tell me what I want to hear, Robin, because its name's Robin. Robin.

Don't tell me what I want to hear. Like, let's go real. What impact have I had on my son? And it was like, Ritz, these are some red flags in parenting. If you continue down this road, this is what's going to end up happening to you. your son later on down the line in his adult life. These are the things that could happen to him. He could form this.

He could form that. Addiction. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Like really went for it. Now, thank God I'm a professional and I could read that with a pinch of salt and shut my laptop down. But imagine if you weren't. Imagine you're a vulnerable mum and you're reading that.

And what that does to you. And what that then does your relationship with your child. And there's no accountability for that. No accountability. That's not a human being. Because if a human being gives you bad advice, that there is accountability. If a therapist, you know,

a therapist who's got their qualifications, if they give you bad advice, there is accountability. Yeah. When it's a computer, when it's AI, there is not the accountability. And that is what I really worry about.

There's no accountability. And we see that happening now in the legal system. There's no accountability. Like parents are trying to sue these AI bots over children that have taken their lives. God. And there is no accountability whatsoever. But again, you know, the other thing is, is that therapy is not available to you 24-7.

Like, we're helping you to become independent, to think for yourself. Like, we're with you one hour a week where we hold you, and then we hold you in mind the rest of the time. But you can't ring me up and say, oh, I've just got this question. Or I just want to do this. Yes, if there's a crisis, that's different, but I'm also not A&E, and I will tell you where to go for a crisis. But I think again, it's just like instant gratification. Let me solve it now. Let me fix it now rather than there's something about being bored,

sitting with things, sitting with discomfort that I think is such an important lesson. We all need to just keep doing and then also teach younger generations. There's a question that we've been asking all the guests that have come on this podcast. And that is Dr. Ritz. What do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25? you don't need to change who you are you don't need to be someone else for other people I want you to get to know yourself have daily chats with yourselves you know when you wake up check in baby gal how you doing nice you know just like that sort of narrative and get to know you um

I feel that if when you do if and when you do you're just going to feel you're just going to feel feel so much more stronger. You're going to have such a high level of self-belief, which like no course or magic pill is ever going to give you. And your confidence will be contagious to like the people around you as well. So that's what I want women to know. Like you don't need to change. There's no need for you to be someone that other people want or expect you to be just

own it, own who you are, and be loud and proud about it. Be loud and proud. I love that so, so so much. Dr. Ritz, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We will leave all your links down in the description below for where people can find you. But I'm sure everyone will have really, really, really appreciated this conversation. So thank you so, so much. Thank you for having me.