The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Apostates - a hidden population for potential trauma and abuse - with Hari Parekh

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

Starting point is 00:00:32 the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. Without a memory entering Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Thank you for listening and thank you for being part of my world. Today is episode 43 and I will level with you. This episode was always going to be happening, but this is not quite the episode I had planned. But yeah, the one I had planned is coming soon. But yeah, there's just been a slight delay. But yeah, I am today using some old footage but it's really an incredible interview that I'd done and really very interesting and it's with Harry Parekh and he is now a third year trainee whereas when we met to do the interview I believe he was getting interviews for training he might well have just been told he

Starting point is 00:02:30 had a place on training actually so it was interesting to listen back to this episode because I think I've become a better podcaster over the last couple of years um and yeah just it feels like a lot has changed in my life you know since then so I've just checked and we got this published in May 2020 um so yeah it's you know coming up um almost two and a half years ago probably since we filmed it and loads has changed you know what we know is that we were in a much earlier stage of the pandemic at that time um and i um was filming on my nhs laptop at that time and then it all got stuck on there and we couldn't get it off so we could only get the sound off so um despite the fact we had filmed ourselves um it was stuck and so um we couldn't

Starting point is 00:03:32 we couldn't access the video um and so it was um yeah just audio only um and we're keeping it audio only today because I don't have any additional video, but you can definitely watch it on YouTube. If you do like to access your podcasts that way, there will be a blog post coming soon as well. But it's not quite ready yet, but it will be coming soon. So I thought this was a really interesting episode to bring to your awareness as aspiring psychologists, because the term apostate wasn't one that I was aware of. And it's a hidden research population, but also potentially a hidden trauma population too. So I won't say too much more about it. But I hope you find this really interesting and really

Starting point is 00:04:26 inspiring so I will catch you on the other side. Right so hi I'm Dr Marianne Trent and I'm a clinical psychologist. I've got a keen interest in research and I spotted some really interesting research just yesterday actually and it got me very excited and so I reached out to the person that's written the research and he's here with me today. I'll let him introduce himself. Hi my name is Harry Parekh. I wrote the research study on apostates as a hidden population of abuse victims which was published in January of this year. I've got around four years experience working in psychology so yeah I've got my stripes. Okay, honestly I'm so excited to speak to you. I predominantly worked in adult

Starting point is 00:05:16 mental health but also children and families so I was surprised to learn of a really big interesting word that I had no idea what it is even to look at it on paper I was like I don't even know how to say that can you take us through what what it is? So apostate is is a big word and it's it's the way that the it's the way that the religious kind of describe it's it's a term used by the religious to describe people raised within religious families who once identified as religious, but have now ceased to believe in the existence of God, gods, or follow that religious belief. So, and then they now identify as non-religious. So it's the people that have gone from being religious to non-religious okay so there's not like a tick

Starting point is 00:06:06 box option on forms that we see as yet saying apostate apostate um but it's you'd sort of either you'd go for like no religion or yeah you go for no religion you go for atheist or you go for you know other um i think it's it's one of those terms which isn't really widely used or really widely recognized it's kind of used as a kind of label used by the religious to negatively sometimes associate somebody with that word so it's but the people that have gone through that process seem to have taken it on themselves and kind of okay so they're owning it they're doing it but it's actually originally was a derogatory term right that's interesting perhaps we need to think about rebranding it um but i guess whatever it is for now it's just important that we talk about it and you know for me who's um a qualified clinical

Starting point is 00:07:00 psychologist who have never heard of this term um it was you know i'm also excited to learn new terms and new things but it feels like something i should have known about see i don't think you should have done and i think that's the beauty of it in that this is a this is a problem with hidden populations in that nobody should know nobody would know that this exists within normal kind of consensus and normal kind of conversations in the same way that all those years ago nobody knew that domestic violence was a thing nobody knew that sexual violence was a thing or on a base violence was a thing and it's the same rhetoric and going it's not a you know it's not a hindrance on on any professional to not know what it is when

Starting point is 00:07:41 for example this is the first time the academic sphere can actually point themselves to an academic piece to say this exists so I would never say that a professional should have known it if anything what it does is it adds to the professional repertoire of any professional working in in the field to go oh hang on a minute are we missing something out and that's the conversation which I'm sure you're interested in um so yeah no you know no worries about not knowing it but the beauty of being a professional is that once you do know it you're like oh

Starting point is 00:08:15 I love that I know it so thank you for introducing that to my uh my consciousness but also it will be something that I honestly sincerely will take with me to think about with with clients regardless of their faith or current faith I guess having read your research everybody should very interesting it was really is for me it's so important to think about family systems but also family backgrounds so um you know you said that actually people who cast themselves in apostates and took part in your research um had experienced violence um from family members because of that precisely and it's you know it's the same issues that you have with

Starting point is 00:09:05 intra-familial kind of family violence it's that kind of area where you know these victims are being as their kind of terms go they're being assaulted they're being seriously assaulted and they're being psychologically abused you know the difference between the assault and the serious assault is the difference between pushed and shoved to being threatened to be killed or being threatened to be harmed with you know like a knife or a gun or something say more serious than that and psychological abuse contains a plethora of things like coercive control stress depression isolation you know neglect you know all of those kind of terms as well which we we see within the kind of clinical framework when we work you know i've got experience working with people that have been through domestic violence and it's

Starting point is 00:09:48 very similar kind of notions of the things that they've gone through so yeah it's it's bringing on a seriousness in the fact that leaving a religious faith or making that decision that this perspective might not be for you has consequences that are very extreme and we need to be very aware of actually within certain frameworks how is this working when they're going to the gp when they go you know when families go into the gp with a child when they're going to hospital when they're seeing a nurse and they're seeing a midwife in all these kind of different areas or when they're going to school you know we only have to look at the kind of um we only have to look at the cases the case studies of things like victoria climbia um baby p daniel pelker in coventry you know um subji and suji atwal you

Starting point is 00:10:38 know or shafir ahmed and look at the honor base violence within that all the different cultural and traditional issues and go people in positions of power struggle to question that why did they struggle with that and actually what's related to that we've only just got to the point now where we were able to where we've got systems in place for professionals to do that and now i'm basically saying hi you you need to add another one into that into that remit and here's something for sadly for professionals here's another there's another angle that we need to be we need to be aware of because another thing for us to think about on our training but really important to think about because you could you could imagine them going to the gp with their with their parent

Starting point is 00:11:21 or with their carer and having gone through all of this stuff and not being able to voice it it's the same way as women aren't able to voice about rape or not able to voice about sexual violence or domestic violence and how do we allow that to happen yeah again one of my um clinical specialties has become working with people um who have been traumatized either through sort of type one trauma so like something extreme like a explosion or something like that but also type two traumas which would be kind of stuff that adds up that is smaller stuff or joined up or developmental trauma so stuff from their childhood uh first 18 years of life i don't know if you're aware of it but there's a scale that um is widely used um in trauma populations called the ACE so the adverse

Starting point is 00:12:06 childhood experiences scale and when I was reading your research I guess I was wondering whether the people who were um in your survey whether if they'd been aced um before it's possibly in future research whether they all were how high their a score would have been anyway so whether they they're more likely to become an apostate to turn away from a family that's always been quite scary and quite controlling or whether actually maybe their ace score to the first 18 years of life maybe their a score was zero um but then the reaction to leaving the faith um has evoked this violence do you see what i mean

Starting point is 00:12:49 yeah i think i think the the the complication of of this with an ace would be that it's not necessarily that it's through it's not necessarily that it will always be through adverse childhood experiences that somebody would therefore leave for example you could turn you know you could go through childhood completely like you know you could go through childhood completely fine and maybe then decide that actually this perspective isn't for me but the childhood was completely fair and there were no complications there and you could be an 18 year old going this isn't for me. You know, we also know of people within Jehovah's Witness communities who there was an 80 year old lady that left at 80. And she's like, I'm finally able to leave, for example.

Starting point is 00:13:33 So the ace would perhaps not kind of figure out the intricacies of what constitutes somebody leaving because the aura is massive. I wonder whether it might have some predictive power for thinking about what the familial reaction would be though so it might not necessarily be a contributor to them wanting to to become an apostate but whether or not they put whether or you know it might be predicted for the violence or the hostility i think that what we what we found and what we find is that it's whether somebody makes the public announcement that they've left um whichever religious denomination um if they leave it's primarily focused on what's going to be the reaction of the family when i do it so some people care about the reaction quite a lot or some people go you know what I need to make the I need to make the call and I'm done for the people that need for the people that take a lot more thought into the reaction

Starting point is 00:14:32 of other people there's a concern as to going you're making a decision based on you but you're adding all these factors involved to make sure that you know is the decision they're making legitimate um they weigh in and they that that ace would then have a bit of a bit of power to it then or a bit of strength to it to go well actually if the if the you know if the if the household or if the the factors within it are kind of threatening towards somebody leaving in that way then maybe this there's something in that where they would suggest that they would remain within such practices or they wouldn't challenge it or they'd find that they couldn't um which would be really useful information yeah again future research isn't it that's the joy i'd seen that in your paper you'd you'd referenced it to sort of almost be like being like coming out

Starting point is 00:15:20 if somebody's uh you know coming out to their family about their sexuality and sort of likened that disclosure um as becoming an apostate yeah there's um because because interestingly the notions of gender and sexuality and the the way that that is concentrated upon within kind of religious households or religious communities and the way that that's perceived especially if you're you know uh if you if you um identify as part of the LGBTQ plus range um that there's a complication there of how people might react to that now the the severity that that could bring is very similar to an apostate coming out because the sad thing is is that scriptures don't provide any leniency and neither do community structures and neither do family structures either so the severity. I'm surprised to see your appendices at the end of the research with the bits of scripture from different faiths literally saying what what

Starting point is 00:16:23 should happen to people who who look elsewhere for religion and that's only a snapshot and that was only you know i had like i think i had like two or three pages before i brought it to vince um he's the second author who's my supervisor and i was just and he's just like you need to cut that down and just just pick the yeah there's always more to say isn't there but the word count doesn't allow it and i think that you know you we can't get away from the fact that it's written in a way where leniency is is is not there for making such a decision um and yeah we have to be aware of that but to be fair just because it's written doesn't mean we have to do so again it's looking at human

Starting point is 00:17:04 reaction and it's looking at, you know, with the CFT model, for example, you're looking at the threat systems of people that you're then approaching. You're looking at the way that people react to news that they weren't expecting. And factoring that is probably the biggest part of this. Yeah. So if we could have mental health professionals professions know and do one thing other than be accepting um and open without judgment is there anything you think would be useful for us to be doing or to know i mean it's it's this thing of um for example the

Starting point is 00:17:42 concern when we started this was how will the psychological kind of professional population view this and this one loves it this one thinks it's really useful and that's the point in actually what we're trying to say is that up until now perhaps the way that um the structures of religion and the way that communities and families kind of assert themselves around a religious faith and belief and traditions and cultures and values, psychologically speaking, is gold dust. Because a lot of the people that I've worked with over the years don't have half of that and you think you know what having that level of stability if you use CFT terms using you know compassion focus therapy terms if they have that kind of sense of stability and support then actually that would provide them with at least a little bit more of an opportunity going forwards which is what a lot of the research would say we're kind of turning that on our on the on the on its head a little bit here where where we're saying, hang on a minute, guys. I know that all of you guys are saying

Starting point is 00:18:46 that this is all fabulous stuff. What happens when it doesn't work? And I think that it's that perspective that the academic sphere, even in psychology, hasn't seen before. There are plenty of activists that have spoken about it, but this is the first time academically we can say, hang on a minute, let's question and critique

Starting point is 00:19:04 this beautiful thing that we think is is a really good thing so it's about our ability to reflect and go just because they've got family structures community structures religious ties and doesn't mean that that that means that that's that's positively enabled going forward actually do we need to question that or do we need to look at that a little bit more in depth and how was that operated for for them um if anything within within a within intervention i think i think you could probably appreciate it gives you this extra level of going well let's just tap into that a little bit and let's see where that's at and that's that's an angle that perhaps clinicians haven't had gives us a bit of added value and a bit of confidence to think about it yeah and and the

Starting point is 00:19:52 notion of you can think about it in those ways like we can question you know the the the identity you know when you're when you're working with a with a patient for example for a number of years you know you learn to you know you formulate that patient you understand the kind of how they are why they are where they are what's caused it etc if anything this gives you an extra angle within that to go hang on a minute let's just let's just this means so much to you in what way how where does that come from and actually i remember working with a patient previously and her religious identity was part of the domestic violence that she'd been through so technically having to talk having to talk about

Starting point is 00:20:32 the religious faith at the same time we're talking about her trauma kind of trauma and domestic violence history you can't not separate you can't keep them both separate yeah you've got to bridge the gap and go well actually your thoughts on this side and your thoughts on this side kind of match up here where's that's that's that's concerning um we need to have that ability as professionals to have the confidence to say you know what i can question that religious part or i can question that cultural part and i can question that traditional part if you do it from the position of respect I think that's okay and you know inquiry and thinking about what whether it's you know keeping some of the problems stuck yeah I think so yeah yeah I was really interested to know that there's an organization as well that supports people so I'd never heard of faith to

Starting point is 00:21:22 faithless but that's something you mentioned in your in your research as well yeah so um so they work as the apostate service for a non-religious charity humanist uk um i currently work as their volunteers manager so what we do is we support and where i know right they're always um we work to support non-religious and apostates who have gone through these experiences. I think we also provide things like safeguarding training for professionals, we provide, you know, we go to universities to deliver talks and all those kind of things so we're trying, we're trying and hopefully the aim is to... You've got such a varied experience, it's amazing. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:22:08 You know, I mean, this is the point in that I was very lucky in that, you know, I was originally Hindu and I became an apostate at university, but I went through none of the adverse issues that are raised in the paper. Working with, when I used to run the student sector of Humus UK, I met the co-founders of Faith for Faithless who are at MTS Shams and Alia Salim and that was when they were a standalone

Starting point is 00:22:32 organization and I realized that actually people are being abused as a result of leaving their religious faith well this is the truth at the same time I was doing my master's in forensic and criminological psychology and they were like you know pick a dissertation topic come on find something do you ever sleep no um and you know they were basically I was failing at finding a dissertation topic and then Vincent was just like what do you know do what you know do what you enjoy and I was like well Vince here's an area that hasn't been looked at before. And I mean, he knows his stuff and he was like, well, that's piqued my interest. It's piqued mine too.

Starting point is 00:23:14 That decision all those years ago has led us together today. We're looking at 2015, 2016 when this was a master's thesis on its own. So it's taken a good four or five years for it to get to the point of publication. Yeah, well, it brought us together, Harry. It's been so nice to talk to you. And honestly, you've given me such food for thought. So thank you for doing the research. But also thanks for following it through and actually writing it up and get it to publication.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Because so many of us, myself included with um my doctoral thesis just never got to publication and yeah well done to you because it's a lot of work it's a lot of commitment thank you it was um i think i think the argument from my point was that um if we had i mean we were really lucky to meet the hypotheses that there are people being abused for this we were lucky that we met the hypothesis for that I think that it would have been

Starting point is 00:24:15 those people might have said they're unlucky in terms of research goal basically true but I think the fact that we were able to, because not only did we work with faithless we were a humanist uk we were you've got a good sample as well it's a nice size sample you had yeah we were with the pia tasha foundation and we got a worldwide sample as well so this isn't just really one nation is at risk this is you know throughout the entirety yeah i think that

Starting point is 00:24:42 it would have been a disservice to the victims that put their name forward to have not have pushed it forward for publication. And the fact that it's the first one is just the icing on the cake, really, because we can basically shout about it. I love that it is the first one because actually it makes everybody feel less alone. I'm sure all of the research participants,

Starting point is 00:25:03 you know, have access to copy and feel really validated and heard because of that but then you know for clinicians like me I can evidence it you know I can I correct 2020 you know have you read that paper um that's amazing you know that's a really you know it's really nice to be part of that but it it's gonna it's gonna speak and it's gonna keep on speaking um to support clinicians but also help um clients feel heard understood and less isolated and alone so it's really you've had that response to it because i think that that's what is i think i think the next steps for this piece is is that's that's where it's headed in relation to

Starting point is 00:25:44 getting more and more professionals becoming more and more aware of this exists here's an area we didn't know okay what do we do about it and i think that having professionals like yourself go that's really interesting i'm glad it peaked my peak my you know attention that it will gain more than what it would have done and hopefully the attention it can then gain will then work towards you know things like policy and procedure and kind of influencing governments and legislation and things like that as well so so yeah i'm really i'm pretty stoked yeah well me too well done good job harry and thank you so much for agreeing to talk with me today and to kind of get this story out there a bit more with a bit with mental health focus as well

Starting point is 00:26:27 um thank you so much no worries thank you for having me you're welcome thank you for listening i hope you found that really interesting i could listen to harry all day and thank you for harry for giving his consent for me sharing this as a podcast episode, because it's still a really important message that needs to get out there. And you can access his research paper if you would like to. I will find a link in the show notes for that. So don't forget we have the Aspiring Psychologist Collective coming very soon. I will update you on that as soon as it's available.

Starting point is 00:27:09 The Clinical Psychologist Collective is available too. And across this application season, I am leaving the membership open so that you can dive in at any point that you would like to. So there's loads going on there. We've got a research clinic, we've got CBT teaching and formulation, we've got live Zooms with me as well as weekly opportunities to ask me anything and during application season we've also got a free eight-week live mindfulness course as well. So there is so much going on and it's all for the monthly price of £30 a month and you can catch up on everything you've missed so far as well. If you've got any questions, give me a shout. Otherwise, very much looking forward to catching

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The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Apostates - a hidden population for potential trauma and abuse - with Hari Parekh

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