Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Top Psychologist: The #1 Advice Everyone Needs To Hear If They Experience Burnout | Mini Episode

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Another Thursday, another mini episode!Every Thursday, we’re sharing the Buy or Bye Bye segment from one of your favourite Her Discussions episodes - a breakdown of what actually works for your health. This week, we're revisiting our episode with Dr Ritika Birah who is one of the UK's leading psychologists and speakers, with over 17 years of clinical experience.In the full episode, we discuss:📘 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 systemListen to the full podcast here:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/62CXmtQ5rircTtPCXOM9VI?si=DeAHqCQrQT2wLUA2DZ4Gkw YouTube: https://youtu.be/Bqj5YBGM1N0 Please don’t forget to subscribe - it really helps us grow the podcast.Resources & links mentioned:-Dr Ritz’s Instagram: @dr.ritz.psychologist -the WhatsApp Journal which is called -Reflect with Dr Ritz - https://drritika.co.uk/#reflect -Website - https://drritika.co.uk/Can 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 this with someone who wants to protect their brain, boost focus, or live smarter, it might help them feel more energized and confident.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests:Podcast Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/herdiscussionspod/⁠⁠Broadcast channel: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/⁠⁠ 🛑 Disclaimers & legal:This podcast is for educational / informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. All opinions are those of the speaker(s).

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 destruction-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, or like social media apps or whatnot. And I found that really helpful because 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 you 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. Thub. Jindling. 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. 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 drawer or January or September come around and we'd be like, right, you know, January's 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 in, I'm like, how's the mindfulness going? They're like, oh, yeah. I've got doing it at the moment. Okay, let's go back to that. And then I thought, I had this idea. I was like, right, what's the one app people use every day?

Yeah. WhatsApp. Even when you like get a message and you ignore it, it like will pop up later or when you're scrolling, you go back to it and you're just like, ah, 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 unmonitored. 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 for me, that helps you like set your intention for the day. And, you know, 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 neuro-sendiport, science 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 satsimo. 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 off that if I just did it is 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, you know, 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. And it's so easy then for 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 I've 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. 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, God, that was 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 it's on an app that I do. I'm going to sign you up. Oh yeah, no, I'm going to have to do that. I said 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. Five, 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 shop the laptop, that's my cue to go and make a herbal tea. 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 boredy 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 leaven, enjoy it. And then go and do that responsibility, you know, task at hand, whatever it might be. So yeah. Have a little teeth, but with intention. Thank you for listening. If you would like to hear the full episode

with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in the description.