The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Islamic Psychology & Middle Eastern Mental Health - with Khaled Yousef

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. With Dr. Marianne Trent Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:33 I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. So we are now at the start of interview season for clinical psychology anyway. As of the Friday just gone, which was the 17th of March, you should have heard by now if you are being offered an interview for this year's clinical psychology doctorate interviews. So fingers crossed you have. So as ever, there are our compassionate Q&A dates that we've got coming up. We've had the first one, which I'll admit was supposed to be on the 13th of March. And I'm very sorry to say that I forgot. It was just clean, overlooked in my diary. So I was settling down, watching some TV and someone from my membership messaged me to say, oh my god, tonight's session

Starting point is 00:02:25 in the membership was amazing, but I'm sorry that it meant that I missed a compassionate Q&A. And I was like, oh dear, oh wow, I forgot to do it. So I did it the next day instead, I did it on Tuesday the 14th of March and it was really well received. And if you didn't catch it, you can watch it on replay on my YouTube channel, Dr. Marianne Trent. If you can't see it right away, toggle to the bit that says live broadcasts and it will be in there. Or you can look on the playlist. It's definitely in there for the Q&A sessions. Okay so the second of the dates that we've got coming up is on Monday the 17th of April 2023 at 7.30pm. I will try to make sure I remind myself a bit better this time so that it definitely happens at that time. I'm very sorry if you were looking for it and you

Starting point is 00:03:20 were inconvenienced in any way. And then the of the series is tuesday the 5th of may 2023 7 30 p.m so hope you'll find those really useful so if you would welcome some extra support at this time then do please consider coming on board to the aspiring psychologist membership because people have found it to be such a useful resource. It's honestly been a lovely thing to put together and see come to fruition so beautifully. So there's more information about that in the show notes, or you can go to my website, www. learning a little bit more about faith and culture. And something that you may or may not know much about is Islamic psychology. So I thought it would be really useful to speak to somebody who's based in a different country and to get a bit of an understanding about him.

Starting point is 00:04:29 His name's Khalid. And yeah, what he's studying, how he's studying it and how faith and culture impact on him and what he's learning and what he's understanding. So I hope you'll find this to be a really useful episode. And I'll look forward to catching up with you on the other side. So I want to welcome along our guest today, Khaled, to the podcast. Hi Khaled. Hi, hi everyone. So I know people are probably, you know, getting bored of hearing me say it, but we did meet on LinkedIn, didn't we? Yes, like everyone else, for sure. I love LinkedIn. And we got chatting because you'd heard Alicia's podcast episode that I did with her, thinking about faith and values. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Like, the first thing other than LinkedIn, it was also Alicia's podcast.

Starting point is 00:05:20 Like, I saw the episode on my LinkedIn, also LinkedIn again. And I was like, Oh, wow, this is really interesting. I'm gonna like listen to it. And I followed it like directly after I saw the episode on my LinkedIn also LinkedIn again and I was like oh wow this is really interesting I'm gonna like listen to it and I and I followed it like directly after I listened because I honestly wanted to listen to more and more from the podcast so I was really curious on that great thank you why did that podcast episode specifically resonate with you in the way it did do you think uh first of all like personally anyway i believe that uh faith is like generally disregarded as you know something that can uh improve or this or or worsen a person's mental state some people can be traumatized by by faith and then they have a worse mental state some people can be uh totally enhanced in terms of like you know what they

Starting point is 00:06:03 think or their anxiety lessons or something like that or the depression is lessened or or decreased so i was thinking okay wow like you know what what both of you were uh asking and replying with was just like really insightful information and like something that more people could honestly use thank you I just sneezed thank you I was listening as I sneezed um okay I'm really glad that resonated with you and that you like the style of questioning um and as we speak right now um you are not in the UK so we've had to kind of organize a time for recording that meant that you weren't up in the middle of the night and neither were I so do you want to tell people a little bit as you feel comfortable to where in the world you're speaking to us from yeah so I currently reside in the UAE

Starting point is 00:06:55 so it's four hours ahead of Dr Trent's time so right now it's about 11 30 11 45 for her and it's about 3 45 p.m for me right now so yeah just four hours difference not too not too much thankfully but not too little either so it's totally fine for my schedule anyway brilliant did you manage to get across to go and see any of the world cup in qatar were you able to get there yeah a lot uh some people i knew from university uh actually went there but no unfortunately i i didn't i didn't no not for you not for you yeah I saw like one or a few games just just from tv but not not actually going there so yeah cool so um why did this episode resonate with you particularly so we know you're an aspiring clinical psychologist

Starting point is 00:07:41 but what stage of your career are you at at the moment so I'm in my bachelor's degree so I'm in my foundation year and I have three years to go after foundation year so fun so it's technically foundation year is the first year before the three years where the psychology program actually like starts and you know ramps up in difficulty and quantity uh so I have four years to go for bachelor's and then after that is the postgraduate studies. So I'm literally in my first year of university. Great and I understand that you are at a UK university but a foreign campus, is that right? Exactly, so I'm studying in the University of Birmingham to buy right now and University of Birmingham in of birmingham like in ed bachetan was around since

Starting point is 00:08:25 1900 but uh my university has only been around for a couple of years now and like as let alone at this new campus because it used to be an old one which i never even visited but uh they have a new campus which opened only about two years ago if i'm not wrong uh and that was when they that was when you know they started hosting the same programs the same content as in the EdBadgeton campus but just in the Middle East in Dubai specifically. That's amazing because actually some of the the tricky bits about people moving from different countries to the UK or even internationally is whether the qualifications are recognized whether they're the same but if it's the same qualification then you get none of that so

Starting point is 00:09:05 presumably if your course is the equivalent to the British one you'd potentially be eligible for registration with the British Psychological Society is that right? Yeah exactly because as far as I'm aware anyway I could be wrong or maybe there could be changes I'm not sure but at least as of right now from how from how much i'm aware uh if the if the british psychological society approves of the birmingham psychology degree and like this is the same university it's the same even the same module even on canvas we also use canvas and the presentations are there literally everything is there that's the same uh if you know ed bachston has the bps accreditation then surely as far as i'm aware

Starting point is 00:09:46 birmingham to buy should have it as well or at least i think they're trying to get it maybe in one or two years it might change i'm not 100 sure i think i think as of right now they don't have it but they're like going to get it like get the accreditation in a year or two max i hope so brilliant brilliant but that you know even if you don't end up with the um the accreditation still having the you know the same training the same experience the same skills and you know on your transcript is if you do want to work internationally one day that's gonna you know it's gonna really future-proof you so well. So, yeah, well done to Birmingham Dubai campus, because that sounds like a great idea.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And I guess, you know, at the end of the day, universities are businesses and they're money-making endeavours, aren't they? And, you know, it's all about, oh, you know, academia, we're bettering people. But actually the bottom line is they want to make money and their business of making money is by educating people. And so if they can see there's a gap in the market, then they're going to exploit that. But I think that's a pretty savvy one. I'm pretty, pretty impressed with that. Exactly. If I may add something.

Starting point is 00:11:02 Sure. University of Birmingham, the University of Birmingham Dubai is the first Russell Group university to be anywhere in the Middle East. We've had other universities from the UK before. We've had right now in Dubai, we have the Heriot-Watt, for example. But we don't have any Russell Group universities. So Exeter, Leeds, those aren't in Dubai or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Qatar or anywhere else in the Middle East. But Birmingham was like, okay, we'll put Birmingham Dubai in Dubai, where it's literally one of the most popular places for tourism and so on. And we're gonna have lots of Arabs to join our university. So it was honestly a smart financial move. Like, I gotta be honest. I think so. Might set up an aspiring psychologist to buy program.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Yeah, very smart, very savvy. Okay, so what led you to wanting to pursue a career in psychology? Yeah, so basically, as a kid, I used to always flip from job to job like in terms of like a dream career you know so i used to think oh i want to be a baker okay never mind i want to be a movie director i actually want to be a video game creator so like i thought of like so many different things right and uh then like high school hit like towards almost the end of high school uh and i was still not even sure what i wanted to do like as a job as a career what what you know what the major to go into university like none of that right honestly like i was so behind and then basically uh like it was basically kind of two

Starting point is 00:12:36 factors but the first one was when i signed up for to do ap psychology the advanced placement psychology uh that my school was like offering you know they offered APs back then so I would so I chose to do AP psychology uh but the thing is also um what's it called it's a self-study AP so I didn't have a teacher right like I'm just studying by myself and what the school like offered me so maybe sometimes they'd offer exams or uh you know chapters of like the Barron's book to read you So they'd make sure, okay, you're reading everything. But they were also not that serious at the same time because it was post-COVID, and everybody was just lacking in terms of their efforts at school.

Starting point is 00:13:15 So it was both half-half from what my school side was offering. And advanced placement, by the way, like a side note, it's the equivalent, the American equivalent to a British A-level. So they're basically kind of the same thing. If you're going to American universities, generally speaking, they might ask for APs. Obviously, if you're going to UK universities, they might ask for A-levels. So it's like sort of like an equivalent-ish. But basically, AP psychology, that was like a first thing.

Starting point is 00:13:40 It really helped, to be totally because uh it like offered me so much insight into it i was studying from like the baron's book princeton book like lots of sources as well just for that one exam uh and it like it really like informed me of course of what psychology actually was and different types of it and uh different uh even some sometimes uh different uh self-defense mechanisms i learned from bar's and like for the AP for the advanced placement exam like a lot I learned countless like so much valuable info just from that from that uh from that advanced placement exam I still have like my books it's been two years and I still have my books from them from the AP because I I just like cherish it that much uh but a second thing other

Starting point is 00:14:21 than the AP was uh like my own personal like struggles with mental health like uh it sounds even redundant at this point but i like genuinely uh like back then you know i struggled with like overthinking or uh you know like you know having like sort of like body insecurities if you can call it that and like you know i and later on as time went on especially two years ago i you know i formed my better like perception myself better did better habits and i was wondering like what i could do because i knew people around me as well that suffered either mentally or emotionally or whatnot so i was wondering like okay what if i could uh attribute this uh what i've done for myself even if it's just a life coach way to help other people uh and like you know spread some goodness or knowledge i learned whether psychology

Starting point is 00:15:03 or just from my own like introspection or experiences uh what could I do to like say it's not safe because eyes but even like sometimes because psychologists do say people's lives so uh I also thought about you know how do I help people mentally diagnosing disorders and preventing suicides like I thought that stuff was would be extremely fulfilling for me so it's both the advanced placement and my own personal experiences and experiences of people around me that maybe want to pursue psychology. Brilliant. Well, thank you for sharing that, because I think it's always interesting thinking about what brings us to the profession.

Starting point is 00:15:37 And speaking as a Middle Eastern man, how is mental health handled or considered or referred to by people um you know around you yeah okay so uh it totally depends from country to country to be honest because i feel like the uae is much more open in terms of uh inviting international uh people and employees which obviously how birmingham dubai exists it's obviously from another country, but they managed to make the whole university here and lots of the same programs and everything. Even obviously some staff from England,

Starting point is 00:16:12 for example, are working here. So it depends from country to country. The UAE has been really good, I feel like in my personal opinion, from what I know anyway, at having more psychology programs and allowing more people to teach psychology but it but for example in a country like where i'm from i'm from syria

Starting point is 00:16:31 in syria like mental health is like barely discussed lots of people don't really like know about it some people might like feel really bad but maybe they'll just attribute to religion or so i have no friends or you know like no social no active social life or maybe they just like have bad habits or something they don't really like acknowledge like okay maybe it's this habit or it's this uh disorder that's causing this thing and you know we'll try to work from there or maybe it's this medication you need like Syria it's not really that common like I I know someone personally a woman personally from Syria uh because they we've been having us we we have had the civil war for years now. So her son actually would sometimes scream in the middle of the night,

Starting point is 00:17:10 literally post-traumatic stress disorder. He would literally scream in the middle of the night because he would hear bombs before as a really young kid. And then she told me they'd go to a psychiatrist and they'd give him medication, but it wouldn't really help out for the long term. And then he would just keep doing the same behavior so it really depends like syria the situation there has just not that been good from a psychology standpoint the uae it's been really good and i i think i i can't be sure of course but i think some other countries uh saudi arabia

Starting point is 00:17:39 egypt uh they've been better like in terms of employing more psychologists and stuff like that, getting more people from abroad to teach in those countries. But it's still not as good or not as advanced as somewhere like America, Germany, the UK. And of course, another thing to add is that the psychology standpoint and knowledge is so much better nowadays in the middle east compared to like 20 years ago 15 years ago people would just barely even know of it let alone bring it up uh but like now it's becoming much better people are getting more aware life coaches for example are kind of helping it out even if it's not necessarily psychologists life coaches for

Starting point is 00:18:18 example they do kind of bring up all mental health is this uh how to do good habits is that and you know life coaches are helping out uh as well but i know personally some are uh some arab life coaches from people i know that they've told me oh this guy's really good this one's really good but psychology it's improving but it's still not there yet you know not like america uk austria so on yeah so it sounds like some of our western approaches to mental health are sort of filtering through. And certainly with the UK universities being present on the soil, that might well speed that up a bit as well. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:53 I don't even have much to add because, you know, the UK having the universities here, I feel like it's also helping quite a bit. Like I think even 10 years ago or so, 15 years ago, the UAE didn't have one single psychology degree if I'm not mistaken so now now it's getting like it's accelerating yeah yes building its momentum for sure okay and once you've done your um your undergraduate degree have you got an idea about what you might do next uh that's such a good question so i'm really fascinated by clinical psychology for sure

Starting point is 00:19:25 uh diagnosing disorders and like really going in depth like something like a social uh social worker or a mental health counselor wouldn't possibly wouldn't do so i would want to like go more in depth and uh tackle more like serious trauma more long-term stuff uh i i kind of thought that psychiatry like is sort of the same thing but i thought it didn't really appeal to me as much because i don't want to have like shallow sessions and just give medication and i thought i wanted to like form like good relationships with clients of course only during the time of course you can't talk as far as i'm aware you can't talk with socialize with your clients during and after sessions you know like oh yeah uh did you go to

Starting point is 00:20:01 this restaurant so nice like no you have to only talk in the office uh so i would like personally love doing that uh and also because like i'm i'm a muslim so i've been i learned quite a bit about islamic psychology and honestly it also seems like really interesting to me uh how like faith and psychology are actually intertwined and like what what how faith can either accelerate or worsen someone's mental health uh i feel like faith is just generally not discussed like muslim or otherwise how like maybe other people might just be uh mentally scarred or maybe they have wrong perceptions or maybe uh you know they might just have something wrong uh in terms of their faith and maybe that's what's like not being addressed because

Starting point is 00:20:45 generally from what I've learned psychology doesn't really address impacts that things like religion have so Islamic psychology would be like really interesting to delve into so it's either clinical or Islamic though I've always thought more about clinical and I'm more familiar with clinical so yeah. Could you tell us a bit more about Islamic psychology, if you can? Okay, so I'm not an Islamic psychologist myself, but essentially, if I'm not wrong, so basically in Islam, we believe that there's four things, like I speak for my Muslim also. We usually have four things to take care of. So we have the heart, which is basically your emotions, which means qalb in Arabic. Jased, or the body, so like, you know, your physical self,

Starting point is 00:21:26 ruh, which is your spirit, so like, you know, spiritually, and also, so the heart, the soul, and the mind, so mentally, so you basically have spiritual, emotional, physical, mental, so you have these four aspects are intertwined to make like a good, you know, being a good being and a role model. And so what I would do in this life, and as in Islam, we also believe that there's a next life, either heaven or hell. So that we believe, so for example, if I'm if I have really good relationships, and I have, and I have a good spiritual health, so maybe I'm practicing my religion all the time, but I have a good spiritual health so maybe I'm practicing my religion all the time but I have horrible physical so I'm always going to doctors and I have you know I can go is getting really

Starting point is 00:22:11 tired and maybe I'm a smoking addict so you know I I can't feel relaxed without a cigarette so basically like these so basically this doesn't really constitute a full like human being in wellness because the physical part is always taking away from the other parts as well and it's worsening your overall like existence in this life so you know you might be worse off in sports or other physical activities or you know outings with family or friends so that's why for example all four of these like generally speaking in islamic psychology must be uh like must be considered not just physical mental emotional like this the the uh spiritual is also important so obviously maybe sometimes from an islamic scholar's point of view maybe you have these

Starting point is 00:22:49 three aspects but the spiritual is is uh isn't uh up to par so maybe you're going to need to practice more in order to feel actually more fulfilled and then have a good like well-being overall all these four spiritual physical mental emotion great thank you that's really interesting as an idea um and i guess you might have heard me talk about on the podcast before it's like having your ducks in a row or at least knowing which ducks it is you're trying to tame isn't it you know and um you know yeah when we look at maslow's hierarchy you know if your health is impaired that's going to really impact on your ability to move up that pyramid and it's also interlinked so i really like that that explicit focus on those four areas um you know and i think sometimes when we when we've got some of our ducks in a row or

Starting point is 00:23:39 if you've got three of those areas that are actually looking pretty pretty good pretty shiny it does then perhaps give you the impetus to think let's see what we can do about that fourth one let's see how we can to get that more in line with with the others where I want to be because it might be holding me back from my goals or stopping me from being as well as I can be yeah exactly so maybe for example uh you might you might uh always be devoted to your relationships, but then your mental health might be bad because maybe you might be more people-pleasing, or maybe you'll just do or say things that you normally wouldn't do just for the emotional aspect and not the mental one. know that's another that's another thing so they're all related in islamic psychology even clinical obviously but usually clinical psychologists exclude the spiritual so islamic psychology considers the spiritual as well as the other three not just spiritual and not just other three so it's all four brilliant thank you and i think it's okay to combine the two

Starting point is 00:24:39 i think it's okay for you to be an Islamic clinical psychologist. So, of course, certainly when we're working in the NHS, you know, we're not using faith interventions. But I think it's absolutely okay to talk about, you know, well, I understand as, you know, an Islamic male or Muslim or whatever you want to introduce yourself as, as I understand it, this is the learnings of my faith. This is how we understand it. But you're not saying you should do this, you should do that. You're offering clients in different way of looking at things to see if things resonate with them. So yeah, I am okay with bringing myself to therapy. So, you know, I'm not sharing my woes.

Starting point is 00:25:28 I'm not, you know, I'm not sharing all this deep personal information, but I will happily share that I'm a parent and I'm a parent of two boys, you know, and I'm married. And, you know, you might well know from listening to the podcast that my dad died in 2017. So I'm happy to share that basic information with clients if it's relevant, you know, because I think it helps you to be a human first and a psychologist second. And because it just offers you some context and makes you feel more like a tangible human rather than some robotic therapist, you know. So as you go through your training you might well develop some competence and confidence in just weaving in appropriate amounts of yourself into the work you do with people without it being all about you because it shouldn't be all about us exactly yeah like I sometimes think that I'm like okay maybe uh i've seen before that some

Starting point is 00:26:26 therapists say or uh that you know maybe something that uh therapists can sometimes do not always but sometimes do is uh they bring up their own details so that the that the client can resonate with them but not to the point where the therapist becomes like the client and they switch roles like no like uh the therapist can sometimes say some details one or two or something uh so that the client can like relate to them or think like okay this is a normal human being thing and and uh it's totally fine to feel this way or to have something that happened this way exactly and actually a good a good catchphrase to use um if you don't want to use self-disclosure is you know other clients i've worked with have found that

Starting point is 00:27:05 or lots of people have told me that or you know I wonder if you might consider the ideas from Islam that tells us about this but you're not actually saying this is what I say this is what I believe you're just you know introducing that there might be different viewpoints so certainly in dynamic psychology and psychotherapy you wouldn't use any at any level of self-disclosure at all but it's got to feel comfortable to you um and authentic you know so we're not sharing more than we feel comfortable with really yeah exactly yeah i fully agree like you you wanted to want to just overbear on the client and sometimes you know bringing extra details from yourself might be embarrassing on your part so you know bringing like an external source oh this these therapists

Starting point is 00:27:49 also think that you know you know you should do this thing and so on so forth. Great so you know in terms of whatever role you end up pursuing it's often really useful to have relevant experience roles so um have you got plans to start doing some sort of clinically relevant work on the side of your degree or you know roles that you might think about applying for it probably feels quite distant we're talking about you know four years time but um have you got roles you're considering or would consider uh like in terms of just internships you mean right and so in this country we might have support work in psychiatric hospitals or home care or teaching assistant or assistant psychologist um there's a whole you know psychological

Starting point is 00:28:38 well-being practitioners i don't know if that training has yet started coming to coming to the middle east but um there's a whole variety of relevant experience and i guess i wonder what the flavor of that kind of work is is looking like um at the moment yeah so uh basically like in the middle east like i've said unfortunately there's not as much experience as in the uk um even getting jobs sometimes i've heard even for for like because i live in the ue even getting jobs sometimes i've heard even for for like because i live in the uae of course so sometimes even for national students it's a bit hard like to always get a job on the spot sometimes you need connections or mutuals in order that you know can get you a job sometimes you really need like a qualification you really need the university

Starting point is 00:29:20 degree in order for people to accept you so uh there's only i swear i think i've seen personally i think i've seen maybe only one person under 18 that's actually been able to find a job uh other than that though generally speaking like internships aren't that easy to find here uh maybe if the university offers you something directly like you know volunteering for example i don't know if it's volunteering considered uh like summer uh internship work in the UK like so honorary experience um is absolutely relevant but what can sometimes be tricky with honorary experience is that um sometimes it's fewer hours a week um because of course people need to be able to make a living. And so when we're looking at counting how many months or full time equivalent months people have had, it sometimes takes a lot of work

Starting point is 00:30:14 to even, you know, add up to a couple of months. And so that's why it can be deemed as less favourable, because unless you're working full-time every day for free you know five days a week which many people can't and shouldn't have to afford to do then it's tricky to to get the same amount of experience if that makes sense so um you know it's very much useful so i did an honorary assistant post and i did that by taking a day a week of annual leave from my paid role over 10 weeks, so 10 days. But whilst on paper, that didn't look like that's not even a month, you know, but actually in terms of my life, that was, you know, three-ish months, maybe even going on for four, depending on how spaced out it was. But in terms of my understanding about psychology and my confidence in talking about psychology and psychology terms and, you know, having a reference to put on my form that was a clinical psychologist and, you know, just my confidence in talking about all of that stuff and feeling like I could talk the talk and walk the walk. So in terms of what I got

Starting point is 00:31:21 from those 10 days, I would say it was massive but on paper it looked like less than a month's experience so we don't always do it for for how many months on our form it looks like we do it for the massive leaps and bounds and it helps bring on our development so um you know I couldn't at that time afford to not be working but I could I decided I could take the hit of having two weeks less annual leave um that year um so you know still a little bit more rubbish because for the rest of the year I had less annual leave but actually being in that role really energized me anyway I loved I loved doing that and so I felt like it was worth it wait so you worked for 10 days over a span of almost four months and but you still say that like even though it might have

Starting point is 00:32:13 been really exhausting or draining it still really helped you out even till now yeah so I was working for a local government I was like working for the council so I'd usually work Mondays to Fridays, nine to five. But I'd negotiated with my basically I knew of a clinical psychologist that was sort of working with some of my clients. And so I'd emailed her and said, is there any chance you'd consider taking me on in an honorary? I'll take some annual leave. and we wrangled a bit and then eventually she said yes um so yeah i then negotiated with my workspace to allow me to be essentially part-time for 10 weeks so that i could take every monday off to go and work um yeah under under a clinical psychologist so um yeah it's no more exhausting in terms of me doing days of work in a week.

Starting point is 00:33:08 But, of course, one of the key ways to not burn out as a human, let alone an aspiring psychologist, is to make sure that you take your annual leave. And, of course, that was two weeks worth of annual leave that I then wasn't able to take because I'd taken it doing honorary work. Does that make more sense? Ah yeah so you used up the two weeks of your annual leave during your internship during your work sorry so yeah and therefore you didn't have a holiday yeah it allowed me to not be at work so I was on annual leave um I wasn't getting paid by the honorary service but I was getting paid for my normal role so it didn't lead to any diminished income um for me okay okay I think I understand now yeah okay yeah yeah okay and in terms of you know I've just shared a little tip for reducing burnout is make sure you use your

Starting point is 00:33:57 annual leave have you got any tips to help you reduce burnout as an aspiring psychologist because you know when you look ahead it you know you said you said before we start recording it feels like you know 10 years time you know it might be like in a good place but at the moment it feels like it's like you know on the distant horizon so how are you reducing and avoiding burnout yeah it feels so close yet it's so far uh i think like i mean i only speak from a student and a student's experience but uh for me i feel like uh setting up a routine even if you don't always follow it like for me personally i feel like it's helped a lot so i don't like lose track of time uh and i don't you know waste or sit around and like not do something um i also feel like in terms to avoid burnout uh like just doing something like

Starting point is 00:34:47 in the middle like some people do pomodoro but personally i've never been able to do that exactly fix 25 and then 5 and 25 then 5 it's it's been hard for it's hard for me to do that but um just having some other system call it pomodoro have you heard of it i always saw it on youtube so it's it's basically this uh study or work technique some people a lot of people do or some people do where uh you study for 25 minutes you have a break for five you study for 25 you have a break for five then you study for 25 then you have a break for five again and then when you study for 25 minutes the fourth time then you have a 30 minute break so this is basically what some people do to study for like a full day or half a day or something so they study for 25 minutes then five minute break

Starting point is 00:35:28 like three times in a row then when they study 25 minutes the fourth time they take a 30 minute break instead of a five minute so yeah but i personally was never able to do that yeah i used to do something similar with myself but with mars bars when i was to encourage me to to study i reward myself with Mars bars which yeah probably not advisable but um in short term bursts it worked for me oh yeah you know it's just getting candy like well what else could you want like something so simple that's so nice yeah Khalid thank you so much for coming along to the podcast and sharing your wisdom and your thoughts and the way you see the world um it's been a real pleasure it's my pleasure thank you so much for having me here

Starting point is 00:36:09 you're welcome welcome back thanks for listening or watching depending on which you're doing i'd love to know what you think about this episode whether it's evoked anything for you and if it has please do come along on the aspiring psychologist community brackets free group um on facebook and i'd love to catch up with you there um do take a moment um if you are listening as a podcast or even if you're not um if you're watching on youtube still to leave me a rating and a review on apple podcast the aspiring psychologist podcast show that would be really appreciated please do bear in mind that the books the clinical psychologist collective and the aspiring psychologist collective can be useful for whatever stage you're at with your journey

Starting point is 00:36:55 whether it is that you've got interviews or that you're still carving out your career and gaining your experience ready to apply to some other area of psychology or indeed clinical psychology in future people have said that they're really useful for helping them think about reflecting um and for also thinking about other opportunities and avenues for jobs so somebody contacted me recently so they're just starting a new role and they feel so excited and it was actually reading um those books that gave them the idea of that of even searching for that role so yeah good things happen and lives are changing because of this podcast which is wonderful the same can be said for people within the aspiring

Starting point is 00:37:38 psychologist membership that feel like they got interviews this year because of the work that we've been doing to help coach them and to help supercharge their abilities and their confidence so do please consider coming on board if you think that would be useful for you and it's 30 pounds a month but with no minimum term so thank you so much for listening watching whatever it is you're doing i will look forward to catching up with you for our next episode, which will be available for you from Monday at 6am. Thanks for being part of my world and I'll see you very soon. Take care. With this podcast at your side, you'll be on your way to being qualified. It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast with Dr. Marianne Trent.

Starting point is 00:38:42 My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself so if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay but trust me you will not put the book down once you start

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