[00:00:03] Wendy Kendall: So our two guests in this episode are Taslim Tirani, an organizational and coaching psychologist, and Dr.
[00:00:12] Wendy Kendall: Christina Barker, holistic clinical psychologist and trauma specialist.
[00:00:18] Wendy Kendall: And welcome to this episode, both of you.
[00:00:21] Wendy Kendall: I'm really delighted to be able to spend this time speaking to you about this topic of overcoming career trauma and disillusionment through private practice.
[00:00:32] Wendy Kendall: So this is a topic that I really wanted to get into because I've also experienced it.
[00:00:41] Wendy Kendall: I think this whole series about healing through private practice is essentially kind of group therapy for me.
[00:00:47] Wendy Kendall: So thank you for coming along today and kind of co regulating and kind of sharing stories with me, because I kind of recognize myself in all different parts of this series.
[00:01:01] Wendy Kendall: But this topic of career trauma and disillusionment, I've had different relationships with it through the years.
[00:01:12] Wendy Kendall: I think my first experience of feeling really traumatized through my career was when I was actually working in public sector and I was working as a ministry of defense psychologist, and that was just through kind of poor leadership, toxic working practices, and so on.
[00:01:37] Wendy Kendall: I really got to a point where I was burnt out.
[00:01:40] Wendy Kendall: But what that did for me was really ruptured the trust that I had in myself and also the trust that I kind of had in psychology.
[00:01:52] Wendy Kendall: And there was then this period of disillusionment and reformulating of my own identity and how I wanted to continue to practice.
[00:02:01] Wendy Kendall: So that was my kind of initiation into what it feels like is then a kind of.
[00:02:13] Wendy Kendall: Let me think, it's a kind of cycle almost.
[00:02:21] Wendy Kendall: The other experience I had then was through the pandemic, where I had spent 20 years working with big global organizations on helping leaders to think about uncertainty and preparing them for, I thought, things that can come out of the blue and really knock you off track and how to continue to lead through uncertainty.
[00:02:48] Wendy Kendall: And we called it leading in a VUCA world.
[00:02:51] Wendy Kendall: Volatility, uncertainty.
[00:02:54] Wendy Kendall: I can't even remember what the rest of VUCA stands for now.
[00:02:58] Wendy Kendall: But when the pandemic happened, it was very disillusioning to see what actually happened in terms of leadership in some of those big organizations.
[00:03:12] Wendy Kendall: And again, I had to go through this process of coming to terms with that, and I think I'm still coming to terms with that on the corporate side of the work that I do and then reformulating a different identity for myself in this direction, in a new direction, thinking about regeneration, thinking about this ecosystem of private practices that we're developing.
[00:03:36] Wendy Kendall: So those are a couple of examples of where I feel like I've been through a similar process.
[00:03:43] Wendy Kendall: I've not gone into the details of how traumatizing some of that was.
[00:03:48] Wendy Kendall: And I know that for both of you, you've had kind of experiences in depth about some of these issues as well.
[00:03:56] Wendy Kendall: And I just wondered if you would be happy to kind of share some of that with us.
[00:04:00] Wendy Kendall: So I'm going to come to Christina, first of all, for some of your experiences.
[00:04:05] Wendy Kendall: Hi.
[00:04:08] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah, I know that through the coaching that I've received through yourself, I've spoken probably at length about some of these experiences.
[00:04:15] Dr Christina Barker: But what I recognized even yesterday in the run up to sort of coming here today and to speak to you for this podcast was that there were some of the memories that I'd almost forgotten about.
[00:04:27] Dr Christina Barker: I'd almost like parceled them off neatly and put them to one side in sort of preparation to go back into some of the work that I previously undertook.
[00:04:41] Dr Christina Barker: So I started unpacking, I suppose, before bed, as you do.
[00:04:46] Dr Christina Barker: What were some of the actual key traumas, the core traumas that have caused significant levels of distress and disruption to my career path, really.
[00:05:00] Dr Christina Barker: And I suppose it took me right back to where I started, when I was really eager and keen to be a psychologist and how sort of my whole career path had been tailored around that.
[00:05:13] Dr Christina Barker: All I needed was to become a professional and get that onto that doctorate and be a psychologist.
[00:05:20] Dr Christina Barker: And when I remembered right back to where that drive came in, it was sort of my following my first degree, which was actually forensic science.
[00:05:29] Dr Christina Barker: I went into working with young offenders for the youth offending teams.
[00:05:35] Dr Christina Barker: And it was there that you needed a professional qualification, whether it was nursing, psychology or social work, to progress your career.
[00:05:43] Dr Christina Barker: So I was sort of boxed in.
[00:05:45] Dr Christina Barker: There was no way of progressing without stepping forward in one of those directions.
[00:05:52] Dr Christina Barker: And I suppose the frustration came when there was, we've seen maybe on the news over the years, because we're going back about 20 years now.
[00:06:05] Dr Christina Barker: There was the sort of CSE scandals for the child, sexual exploitation, and I was coming into contact with a number of, particularly the young girls often looked after children who'd be classed as vulnerable, but at high risk from being targeted by men in the community and exploited sexually.
[00:06:28] Dr Christina Barker: And they were actually criminalized through that process, missing.
[00:06:33] Dr Christina Barker: And then they wouldn't be meeting me for their scheduled appointments because it's like a probation sort of set up, but for young people and then having to go into court to sort of present and speak in defense of these vulnerable girls.
[00:06:48] Dr Christina Barker: And I probably didn't recognize at the time, but I suppose that's where the trauma started, to hit home or to take shape and it also shaped my career and sort of like, my personal passions and what drove me into this career all stemmed from, I suppose, that point of wanting to make a change, wanting to make an influence and be more influential across services so that we could support the young people.
[00:07:15] Dr Christina Barker: So that's the direction my career went in then, really, after training, there's a big.
[00:07:22] Dr Christina Barker: Lots of things went on prior to training.
[00:07:25] Dr Christina Barker: It's a lengthy career process, but it took maybe ten years to actually become qualified from starting studies.
[00:07:36] Dr Christina Barker: But then I went through to work for a short time in Rotherham, then in the specialist CSE and sexual trauma children's homes, right up until the back end of just as we came out of lockdown.
[00:07:49] Dr Christina Barker: So that was the sort of work that kept driving me.
[00:07:55] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah.
[00:07:56] Dr Christina Barker: And I suppose the layers of trauma that came from that field witnessing also in the inpatient units, that the young people are often labeled, stigmatized, diagnosed and medicated and seen as problematic, personality disordered or psychotic, and not addressing the trauma that's been hidden in their lives, that is sort of the main trauma.
[00:08:27] Dr Christina Barker: But I realized that's the thread that's run through my career until a point of complete burnout, which I would probably describe as a breakdown as well.
[00:08:38] Dr Christina Barker: But then I was with a system that is harmful and often unhelpful.
[00:08:44] Dr Christina Barker: We think about mental health, and when people do get into a cris situation, which really mirrored and replicated the thing that was causing me distress in my professional life in terms of women and girls not being understood and considered from a psychological viewpoint, recognizing the harm that's been caused to them through their trauma experiences, experiencing that, then, as.
[00:09:14] Wendy Kendall: From what you're describing, that sounds also.
[00:09:17] Wendy Kendall: I mean, apart from vicarious trauma, it sounds almost like then it's not the same as vicarious trauma.
[00:09:27] Wendy Kendall: It literally became a trauma for you.
[00:09:29] Wendy Kendall: Like, it wasn't just something that you observed, it was something that then kind of swept you into the same kind of vortex almost, in that oppressive.
[00:09:44] Wendy Kendall: I'm sorry, taz, I was just going.
[00:09:46] Taslim Tharani: To come in because you mentioned that there might be layers to this, but it sounds like a real combination of vicarious trauma as well as moral injury, that there were these injustices or this kind of mismatch in terms of your own values and morals and what the system was doing to these young people.
[00:10:09] Taslim Tharani: Yeah.
[00:10:09] Taslim Tharani: So it just sounds like there's lots of layers there in terms of that build up of trauma over the years.
[00:10:16] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah, the multiple layers of that as well, because I suppose what I recognized yesterday as well, thinking about this, was there's almost like a silence across the board, and it is a vortex.
[00:10:30] Dr Christina Barker: And it's a very strange type of dynamic to go into when you're working within that field of trauma, particularly sexual trauma, because there's multiple layers of oppression and silencing throughout the system in that even the local authorities, going back to the time that they started unfolding, you sign in a contract that says you're not allowed to speak about anything that occurs in the workplace bearing these cases and concerns, real evidence, liaising with police forces and escalating the information up through child protection procedures, not getting information back, but being told that that's the procedure, that's how it works.
[00:11:17] Dr Christina Barker: You can't ask questions.
[00:11:20] Dr Christina Barker: So really early on, being silenced and not being able to speak up, it was early in my career, and I was young.
[00:11:29] Dr Christina Barker: If something like that was happening now, I might be a bit more clued up to in terms of whistleblowing and not following orders.
[00:11:37] Dr Christina Barker: But at that time, going back 20 years, I think we were more like, you follow orders and you do what the organization tells you to do.
[00:11:45] Dr Christina Barker: You don't question things.
[00:11:47] Dr Christina Barker: And again, good girl.
[00:11:49] Dr Christina Barker: Conditioning that as a female, again, starting to realize I've not been subjected to the things that these young girls had been on the same extent and the same level, but some exposure to abusive practices or patriarchy or toxic masculinity, challenging sort of relationships in my own youth on situations.
[00:12:13] Dr Christina Barker: There's a layer in there of how it actually mirrors some of your own experiences as well, and maybe the blame that comes towards the individual, particularly.
[00:12:23] Dr Christina Barker: I know the young girls that end up in the criminal systems and the inpatient units, they feel that they're the problem.
[00:12:33] Dr Christina Barker: They're giving diagnosis of personality disorder oftentimes or psychosis because they're reacting to the extreme experiences that they've had.
[00:12:46] Dr Christina Barker: But the system comes down on them and creates more trauma, retraumatizing them.
[00:12:50] Dr Christina Barker: And then to be witnessing that and to be part of that system, the change that's needed is probably more systemic than societal.
[00:13:01] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah.
[00:13:03] Dr Christina Barker: You feel quite helpless to make changes.
[00:13:09] Wendy Kendall: Exactly.
[00:13:09] Dr Christina Barker: An individual.
[00:13:10] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Wendy Kendall: Thanks for sharing that.
[00:13:13] The Experience of Being a Psychologist
[00:13:13] Wendy Kendall: I want to bring Taslim in now because to hear about your experiences and then not to kind of just reference one another's experiences, but I'm starting to feel like there may be kind of similarities and commonalities that may merge.
[00:13:35] Taslim Tharani: Yeah.
[00:13:38] Taslim Tharani: The vicarious trauma, just because of the work that I've done and am doing, I've experienced less of in my career.
[00:13:46] Taslim Tharani: Being an organizational psychologist, I think that's kind of not at that kind of extreme level where I'm working directly with people who are going through traumatic experiences themselves.
[00:14:01] Taslim Tharani: But I want to start with a quote which I think really just sums up my experience of being in psychology.
[00:14:10] Taslim Tharani: And I think that I started to feel this quite significantly during my masters in occupational psychology, where I was bullied in my masters by my fellow cohort because of the way that I pronounced things.
[00:14:24] Taslim Tharani: And that's kind of think when this started to emerge for me, so to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best to make you like everybody else, needs to fight the hardest battle ever.
[00:14:40] Taslim Tharani: And I would say that my experience in psychology has been that.
[00:14:48] Wendy Kendall: A lot.
[00:14:48] Taslim Tharani: Of the research that we do is all normative, right.
[00:14:51] Taslim Tharani: There's something about how do we like.
[00:14:55] Taslim Tharani: There is a certain way to be a psychologist, and if you are not being a psychologist in that way, you said those words like, you are the problem.
[00:15:04] Taslim Tharani: There's something wrong with you.
[00:15:06] Taslim Tharani: It's not the discipline, it's not the profession.
[00:15:11] Taslim Tharani: And as I was thinking about this, I will go back and share some of the moments, maybe, but I was thinking about even my bio, and this was pointed out to me by somebody, by a mentor said, it's interesting.
[00:15:28] Taslim Tharani: In your bio, you say that you combine the human approach with the evidence based that psychology is grounded in.
[00:15:35] Taslim Tharani: So I have separated out in my own belief system or understanding that there is this humanness, and then there is this evidence based in psychology, which suggests that they are not one and the same thing, which is so fascinating to me that I've unconsciously done that.
[00:15:55] Taslim Tharani: So what is it about the profession that has resulted in me feeling like the human soul has kind of been stripped away from it?
[00:16:07] Taslim Tharani: And last year I was on a coaching qualification which was grounded in something called psychosynthesis, which is a psychospiritual approach.
[00:16:20] Taslim Tharani: It's a psychospiritual approach to therapy and coaching.
[00:16:24] Taslim Tharani: And I think most psychologists who come from that evidence based perspective would completely discredit it because it's more theoretical and philosophical than it is evidence based.
[00:16:36] Taslim Tharani: But they brought us back to the etymology of the soul.
[00:16:40] Taslim Tharani: Sorry, the etymology of psychology, which actually means the study of the soul.
[00:16:45] Taslim Tharani: And I thought that was so fascinating because that's the bit that I feel has kind of been missing in my psychology experience, that what we do or the work that we're meant to be doing with our clients is not what we experience within the profession.
[00:17:01] Taslim Tharani: Like you said, christina, we experience the silencing and actually a dehumanization of ourselves as psychologists within these broad systems.
[00:17:12] Taslim Tharani: So I kind of just wanted to frame what I'm going to share kind of with that.
[00:17:19] Taslim Tharani: And then I really resonated, Christina, with what you shared about these systems or these systems of oppression.
[00:17:25] Taslim Tharani: And I think my career traumas, I have had some that have been quite significant and very explicit, but the majority of them have been very subtle and very implicit.
[00:17:37] Taslim Tharani: And there's lots of different things about me makes me different.
[00:17:42] Taslim Tharani: So, for example, being south asian, being female, I've now recently had an adhd diagnosis.
[00:17:49] Taslim Tharani: I also had my own mental health challenges and my own trauma from within.
[00:17:54] Taslim Tharani: My own kind of background and family life and upbringing and all of those things together makes me quite different, as well as having the kind of cultural influences in my life.
[00:18:07] Taslim Tharani: My parents were born in East Africa.
[00:18:09] Taslim Tharani: They moved to East Africa when I was ten years old.
[00:18:14] Taslim Tharani: I'm british, but I'm not british, if that makes sense.
[00:18:19] Taslim Tharani: When I think about career traumas, you might have these kind of big moments of career traumas, of things that might happen, a toxic situation or a bullying manager or some big thing that happens that is really significant.
[00:18:37] Taslim Tharani: But most of my experiences have really been those day to day things that happen that you almost don't even realize.
[00:18:46] Taslim Tharani: There's things that you just brush off.
[00:18:47] Taslim Tharani: But over time, coming back to what you said, wendy, for me, they started to erode away any sense of self and self esteem that I had.
[00:19:01] Taslim Tharani: What they did was really start to disconnect me from me.
[00:19:05] Taslim Tharani: So I started to really experience a disconnection from self.
[00:19:16] Taslim Tharani: And they also were so subtle that I become the problem.
[00:19:22] Taslim Tharani: All these things are happening, and I can tell that I'm being singled out or I'm not being given this opportunity, or there's an article where someone writes about some work that we're doing in East Africa, and all the men are named in the article and the women who've been supporting aren't named in the article.
[00:19:40] Taslim Tharani: Those kinds of things start to happen.
[00:19:43] Taslim Tharani: And I sit there thinking, is it me?
[00:19:45] Taslim Tharani: Is it my personality?
[00:19:46] Taslim Tharani: Is it because I'm just wrong in some way, shape or form?
[00:19:50] Taslim Tharani: Or is it actually because of gender, because of age, because of race, because of ethnicity, because of my religion?
[00:19:57] Taslim Tharani: And I think that in some ways, when it is more explicit, I actually think it's easier to deal with.
[00:20:04] Taslim Tharani: So, for example, in one of my first ever jobs, it was associate coaching work.
[00:20:11] Taslim Tharani: I was told I can't coach anyone younger than myself.
[00:20:14] Taslim Tharani: Sorry, I can't coach anyone older than myself.
[00:20:17] Taslim Tharani: So I could only coach people my age and younger, which is ridiculous.
[00:20:20] Taslim Tharani: I mean, that is blatant ageism.
[00:20:23] Taslim Tharani: But because it was so obvious that that's ageist, it was like, that's ageist, I'm going to ignore it and I'm going to coach whoever wants to work with me.
[00:20:35] Taslim Tharani: But when it's that kind of subtle implicit discrimination that happens, it's really difficult to then I think that kind of inward focus of self blame, that disconnection to self, the eroding of self esteem, the not being able to trust ourselves, that constant second guessing starts to emerge.
[00:20:59] Taslim Tharani: And I was going to talk about this later in response to one of another question, but just because, Christina, you've kind of started to share about these systems, and over the last five years or so, I've really been thinking about these systems that we navigate and how psychology as a profession is actually there.
[00:21:21] Taslim Tharani: It exists to uphold some of these systems.
[00:21:24] Taslim Tharani: And Belle hooks talks about these four systems of oppression, and she talks about capitalism being one of them.
[00:21:34] Taslim Tharani: So that feeds the not good enough stuff a lot that you are the problem.
[00:21:41] Taslim Tharani: If you're not succeeding, it's because you're defective in some way.
[00:21:46] Taslim Tharani: You mentioned Christina patriarchy.
[00:21:48] Taslim Tharani: So patriarchy is a big part of, you know, what we don't realize is things like patriarchy affect men just as much as it affects women.
[00:21:59] Taslim Tharani: So there's patriarchy.
[00:22:00] Taslim Tharani: There's something called white supremacy culture, which people often really misunderstand.
[00:22:05] Taslim Tharani: But I really recommend this article by Oakland Jones that talks about these cultural aspects that kind of seep into our ideology and our systems without us even being aware of, know, the sense of urgency, this worship of the written word and lots of other things.
[00:22:24] Taslim Tharani: And then the fourth one that she talks about is imperialism.
[00:22:28] Taslim Tharani: And they all kind of interact in different ways to kind of impact us at an individual level.
[00:22:35] Taslim Tharani: And I think that now I have a lot more of a greater understanding of how these systems influence just the ideology that we exist in and therefore influences everything that has come through in psychology.
[00:22:52] Taslim Tharani: So all of our research articles and our papers and what we're reading, what we're absorbing, but because it's unspoken, it's unsaid and it's not made explicit, we're not even realizing it.
[00:23:04] Taslim Tharani: Like so many of the theories that we study have all been, they've largely had white male, middle class participants, and so they're not representative the way that we do research.
[00:23:16] Taslim Tharani: So I'm going to stop there because I've said a lot, but there's been.
[00:23:24] Dr Christina Barker: A.
[00:23:26] Taslim Tharani: Which comes back again to what you said Christina, which is around this kind of not following orders and not questioning.
[00:23:34] Taslim Tharani: And for me, there is that kind of seeking approval.
[00:23:38] Taslim Tharani: And I must say that that kind of came from within me, that I grew up in a cultural context where you have respect for hierarchy, for status, for your elders, and I grew up in that context where I am okay once somebody else approves of me.
[00:23:58] Taslim Tharani: And until that point, I am not okay for lots of different reasons.
[00:24:05] Taslim Tharani: The professional route for occupational psychology has been incredibly challenging.
[00:24:10] Taslim Tharani: We've had multiple changes since I graduated.
[00:24:12] Wendy Kendall: From my masters old route.
[00:24:15] Taslim Tharani: Then there was a 2010 route, then there was a 2012 route, then there were lots of changes around those, and then there was a 2019 route.
[00:24:22] Taslim Tharani: And for me, the lack of professional approval from the BPS itself has had such a huge impact on my career.
[00:24:34] Taslim Tharani: And not only that, but somebody back in 20, when I was going through a lot of physical illness, challenged my integrity.
[00:24:46] Taslim Tharani: And that happened in a public place when I was in a leadership role.
[00:24:52] Taslim Tharani: And I don't think I have ever fully recovered from that because that experience and then her, I would say discrimination towards me over the years meant that I did not end up getting my chartership in occupational psychology and not having that box ticked, despite the fact that I know that I am a really ethical, really good psychologist, is so unbelievably heart.
[00:25:23] Taslim Tharani: Our profession can do something like that.
[00:25:28] Wendy Kendall: Yes.
[00:25:28] Taslim Tharani: And for me, it's just so shocking.
[00:25:33] Taslim Tharani: We're a profession that's about alleviating harm, and yet as a profession, we inflict harm on our own community.
[00:25:40] Taslim Tharani: And that's very devastating.
[00:25:43] Taslim Tharani: I got a bit emotional there, but, yes, I'll pause.
[00:25:46] Taslim Tharani: I'll stop there.
[00:25:46] Taslim Tharani: I've said it, said a lot.
[00:25:48] Wendy Kendall: It is devastating, I think, especially because we come in to the profession often, I'm rejecting this sense that, oh, we come in naive and idealistic because actually we come in as, let's say, human beings who have been less subject to the oppressive system that we are going into, if you see what I mean.
[00:26:19] Wendy Kendall: Are we naive and idealistic at that point?
[00:26:22] Wendy Kendall: Maybe, but only from a position of a judgment point within an oppressive system.
[00:26:26] Wendy Kendall: Right.
[00:26:27] Wendy Kendall: What we are is human beings that have values that are taking us in a direction of what we hope is a profession that is helping, that is nurturing, that applies its own lessons to itself, that embodies the values that it says that it embodies.
[00:26:45] Wendy Kendall: And then when we find that's not the case, unfortunately, what I hear and what I experienced as well is within these systems of oppression.
[00:27:00] Wendy Kendall: And I love the description that you shared from bell hooks there around capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, culture and imperialism.
[00:27:08] Wendy Kendall: But when we enter into these or enter further into these systems that are, as you said, enacting and upholding these relationships of power, what we end up in is a situation where somehow we become inadvertent allies or perpetrators of the same oppression, and then that undermines that.
[00:27:37] Wendy Kendall: It's almost like, as you said, people then start to question your integrity, and then we start to say to ourselves, well, who are we?
[00:27:46] Wendy Kendall: And this is where I feel like the disillusionment and loss of trust in ourselves comes and the dehumanization, which is, well, who am I really, if I've been involved in doing those things as well?
[00:28:01] Wendy Kendall: Has it made me an actor of these systems where it's like the nature of these systems can only be so pervasive and so robust because they recruit people into enacting them in ways if they were conscious they wouldn't dream of doing.
[00:28:26] Taslim Tharani: I don't know if it's about not dreaming of doing.
[00:28:28] Taslim Tharani: I think that kind of consciousness is such a big part of it.
[00:28:32] Taslim Tharani: But also there can be a sense of we don't have a choice.
[00:28:38] Taslim Tharani: We are in these systems that we have to navigate them.
[00:28:41] Taslim Tharani: And actually it's like you get really into it, like, for example, down this track of this career that actually to step away from it, which I think is what you're doing, Wendy, which is really enabling people and creating a community so that people can step out of the system and create something that's a lot more like you use the word regenerative, but a lot more meaningful.
[00:29:10] Taslim Tharani: And also that hopefully doesn't inflict the same level of harm, but we have to survive as well.
[00:29:18] Taslim Tharani: And unfortunately, the way to survive is we have no choice but to navigate these systems.
[00:29:24] Taslim Tharani: So you're absolutely right.
[00:29:25] Taslim Tharani: Absolutely.
[00:29:29] Taslim Tharani: I would go as far as saying we are all harmed by these systems and we are all complicit in them as.
[00:29:34] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, yeah, that's a great way to kind of summarize it, I think.
[00:29:39] Wendy Kendall: Christina.
[00:29:40] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[00:29:40] Wendy Kendall: Just wanted to draw you back into the conversation there from these kind of reflections and what's kind of come up for you as we were kind of reflecting on some of these processes, trying to get a little bit more perspective and distance on them.
[00:29:57] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah, it were really interesting to hear some of your experiences there, Chaz Lim, and I'm really sorry that you've had to go through some of that.
[00:30:06] Dr Christina Barker: What was coming to mind for me was some similar themes, really, particularly like doctoral training when we tried to bring some sense of challenge at that point to some of the diagnosis, the DSM that was being used and psychology seeming to go default to this.
[00:30:28] Dr Christina Barker: Almost like a psychiatrist mode of seeing that there is scope in diagnosis and really talking about the evidence base for these criteria and any sense of challenge towards that at that point.
[00:30:44] Dr Christina Barker: Whilst I was at the time going through my own EMDR therapy.
[00:30:47] Dr Christina Barker: So, yeah, I was quite highly emotional and distressed.
[00:30:53] Dr Christina Barker: It was seen when I challenged this idea of personality disorders that actually they would be saying, well, it's a spectrum, Christina, and you're actually on that spectrum.
[00:31:03] Dr Christina Barker: They didn't say it in quite those words, but there was that suggestion there that, well, this is a spectrum and we're all on it, some of us more so than others.
[00:31:15] Dr Christina Barker: So it was like anything try to challenge the status quo.
[00:31:19] Dr Christina Barker: It could be quite quickly thrown back.
[00:31:22] Dr Christina Barker: Well, that's about you and your problems that you need to sort out in order to qualify.
[00:31:29] Dr Christina Barker: I think that was actually said by one of the supervisors, again, sort of putting an individual problems as opposed to seeing the bigger context and thinking about how we can support individuals and this sense in the profession as well.
[00:31:46] Dr Christina Barker: I think of seeing psychologists or as professionals, us, as being in some way different from the people that we are helping and supporting the clinical field of seeing that them and us and that splitting off of then being able to be quite degrading or judgmental towards, as we say, patients, clients or people that we're working with.
[00:32:13] Dr Christina Barker: And I've always taken that position that we are working with the communities.
[00:32:19] Dr Christina Barker: We are part of that community and what we see in the community and the problems as a participant and also a helper.
[00:32:29] Dr Christina Barker: And it's been able to see ourselves as equals.
[00:32:34] Dr Christina Barker: But like you say, we're at that point where there is the power and the oppressive systems and we're not necessarily being as collaborative as we could or should be.
[00:32:50] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Wendy Kendall: And just to kind of bring this regenerative lens in, the more I learn about it, what I learn is that fundamentally it goes back to this story of separation, which is at the heart of all of western science and kind of ways of knowing, which is that we are the neutral observers and we observe the subjects and then we make observations that are verifiable about these subjects.
[00:33:23] Wendy Kendall: And this story of separation has pervaded so many of these systems, which is that we're somehow separate from the world around us, separate from these life systems, that we're different from these life systems.
[00:33:42] Wendy Kendall: We have a special status.
[00:33:44] Wendy Kendall: Some people have more special statuses than others.
[00:33:46] Wendy Kendall: And you can see how it kind of starts to kind of pervade and permeate all of these different things that we're trying to do.
[00:33:59] Wendy Kendall: And at the end of it, people like ourselves go into professions.
[00:34:05] Wendy Kendall: And the principle that I come back to that I think a lot of us kind of think about is what gives life to this person in front of me, what gives life to this community around me, what gives life to this society and the places where we are, which include non human species as well as the humans.
[00:34:30] Wendy Kendall: That at its heart is more of a regenerative perspective, but it's absolutely antithetical.
[00:34:37] Wendy Kendall: That question, what gives life is antithetical to capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, culture and imperialism, because all of those systems are based on the story of separation.
[00:34:49] Wendy Kendall: So it's almost like within psychology, we're challenging, when we come back to some of these things about how are we parts of the community that we work with, how are we in a session, coaching, therapy, consultation, facilitation, how are we like the people?
[00:35:10] Wendy Kendall: Not separate from the people that we're working with, but how are we like the people that we're working with?
[00:35:17] Wendy Kendall: How are our stories intertwined?
[00:35:20] Wendy Kendall: How do we weave communities together?
[00:35:22] Wendy Kendall: All of these things are a fundamental challenge to the power bases, and therefore we either get with the program or we ship out.
[00:35:35] Wendy Kendall: It seems like that's where we get to, essentially.
[00:35:39] Wendy Kendall: So, coming back to you, Taslim, what was it that kind of led to you deciding to work in your own way within this kind of independent private practice context?
[00:35:59] Taslim Tharani: Can I just go back a step, actually, because there were just some of the things that you were sharing that just reminded me of a couple of things.
[00:36:07] Taslim Tharani: So I'd like to quote again.
[00:36:12] Taslim Tharani: So my friend Lauren Forsoff shared pieces of writing.
[00:36:20] Taslim Tharani: She's a brilliant writer.
[00:36:22] Taslim Tharani: So in Belle Hook's book teaching to transgress, she shares her own story about her own academic journey.
[00:36:33] Taslim Tharani: And fundamentally, psychology is kind of grounded within academia.
[00:36:40] Taslim Tharani: And she says, the only important aspect of our identity was whether or not our minds function, whether we were able to do our jobs in the classroom.
[00:36:52] Taslim Tharani: The self was presumably emptied out the moment the threshold was crossed, leaving in place only an objective mind, free of experiences and biases.
[00:37:04] Taslim Tharani: There was fear that the conditions of that self would interfere with the teaching and or academic process.
[00:37:12] Taslim Tharani: And I think that quote just really sums up what you've just been sharing and been talking about.
[00:37:20] Taslim Tharani: And I will come back to your question, which I might ask you to repeat.
[00:37:23] Taslim Tharani: But the other thing that kind of came to mind, as you were sharing this was that.
[00:37:28] Taslim Tharani: Often the parts of psychology that I'm drawn to are actually the ones that borrow wisdom from indigenous and eastern traditions.
[00:37:41] Taslim Tharani: And this is also really difficult because there's so much in those approaches which feels regenerative, like using this term, that feels life giving, that feels connecting, that feels like it's a way of meeting the other as not the other, in a way that kind of recognizes the we and the US rather than that separation.
[00:38:12] Taslim Tharani: And I find that so sad at the same time, because on the one hand, we create a separation between us and them.
[00:38:21] Taslim Tharani: We've used the word communities, and I know that could mean lots of different communities, but often these types of things impact and minority communities a lot more.
[00:38:29] Taslim Tharani: And yet the wisdom that we draw on from within psychology, that actually moves us towards these more hopeful, regenerative aliveness practices come from those very same communities.
[00:38:44] Taslim Tharani: And that's something that I find really difficult.
[00:38:47] Taslim Tharani: But I think.
[00:38:48] Taslim Tharani: So, coming back to your question, I think when I started to see and realize this, it was actually a bit of an empowering journey for me, because what I realized is, yes, I am different, and I'm different because of lots of different things.
[00:39:04] Taslim Tharani: But actually what makes me different is what the people in power desire and yearn for so much.
[00:39:12] Taslim Tharani: That's why my ancestral wisdom is appropriated.
[00:39:17] Taslim Tharani: That is why there is a yearning to bring back this psychology of the soul.
[00:39:24] Taslim Tharani: So I think that in and of itself has enabled me to say, I inherently know within myself whether or not it's been researched yet or not, that these things fundamentally are about being human and really make a difference, not only in my own life, but to my clients life as well.
[00:39:49] Taslim Tharani: So there's something in that that's kind of almost in my own psyche, I guess, is readdressing that power dynamic.
[00:39:58] Taslim Tharani: So almost like I'm kind of.
[00:40:02] Taslim Tharani: I don't know if that makes sense, kind of taking that power back in a way, that there's something around just that.
[00:40:14] Taslim Tharani: And I think there was a real pivotal moment where this happened for me.
[00:40:18] Taslim Tharani: So one of the areas that I've specialized in for many years is acceptance, commitment, therapy.
[00:40:23] Taslim Tharani: I've been working with that for coming up to 15 years now.
[00:40:30] Taslim Tharani: And because of my own colonial, colonial history or ancestral history, it's been well over 100 years.
[00:40:40] Taslim Tharani: It's coming up to 125 years that my family have not lived in India, which is where we originated from.
[00:40:49] Taslim Tharani: And so we were not taken, but we migrated from India to East Africa largely as laborers, so to build train tracks and so forth.
[00:40:59] Taslim Tharani: And then from East Africa to the western world.
[00:41:03] Taslim Tharani: And I always speak about my communities as being broken by colonialism and brokers of colonialism with this kind of awareness about what I was saying before, about that our indigenous kind of wisdom is really what these new third wave therapies, et cetera, are drawing on.
[00:41:26] Taslim Tharani: Even if some of them deny that that's what they're doing, they are.
[00:41:31] Taslim Tharani: I became very close to someone called Sakshi Bhantal, who I think that you might be aware of.
[00:41:37] Taslim Tharani: And she shared with me one of her workshops that she drew from indian psychology.
[00:41:43] Taslim Tharani: And I sat there and thinking, well, this is so aligned to the way that act, or RFT, which is relational frame theory, conceptualizes the self.
[00:41:55] Taslim Tharani: And this is also part of my own belief systems from my own kind of understanding.
[00:42:02] Taslim Tharani: And I think that recognition was both so painful but also so hopeful.
[00:42:07] Taslim Tharani: And it was painful because I am learning about my own ancestral wisdom through a western lens, because that's what's accessible to me, and that feels deeply painful.
[00:42:18] Taslim Tharani: And through connecting to these amazing people who have grown up in the country that I'm from, that I've not grown up in, I now have access to our ancestral wisdom from coming from within my own culture.
[00:42:38] Taslim Tharani: And so that feels really beautiful.
[00:42:40] Taslim Tharani: So I would say I can't remember what the question was, but I think one of the things that's really supporting me in kind of coming out of this disillusionment and starting to think about how I can bring some of this into my practice is through connecting with people who have a direct connection to that ancestral wisdom.
[00:43:00] Taslim Tharani: And Sakshi is one of those people that we've kind of got a mini study group going on with us.
[00:43:06] Taslim Tharani: We're kind of learning about this indian psychology as well as knowing, just having this kind of deep knowing and trust that this is what's needed.
[00:43:20] Taslim Tharani: And people are really yearning for ages.
[00:43:24] Taslim Tharani: Sorry.
[00:43:26] Wendy Kendall: No, don't.
[00:43:27] Wendy Kendall: Not at all.
[00:43:28] Taslim Tharani: I don't.
[00:43:34] Wendy Kendall: And as you're describing that, it made me think about.
[00:43:37] Wendy Kendall: And I'm going to come to Christina in a second, but just to try and also provide a segue in this sense, because one of the writers and psychologists I've been quite influenced by recently has been Sharon Blackey.
[00:43:55] Wendy Kendall: Now, Sharon Blackey went and studied myths and legend of Western Europe.
[00:44:01] Wendy Kendall: So we think about what had to be exiled first, before capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, culture, imperialism, could flourish.
[00:44:15] Wendy Kendall: And what it was was also our original culture, which was animist, which was shamanistic, which was rooted in interbeing with the environment in which we grew up.
[00:44:31] Wendy Kendall: And what we only have left now.
[00:44:33] Wendy Kendall: We don't have direct, because we're talking about 1500 years, right, of lost connection.
[00:44:42] Wendy Kendall: But what we have are the myths and legends and the stories.
[00:44:45] Wendy Kendall: And so Sharon Blacky has been very much kind of bringing that back into with books like haggitude and the Enchanted Life and so on about what that might look like for us in this world.
[00:44:59] Wendy Kendall: And that's my link to Christina, because I know Christina.
[00:45:03] Wendy Kendall: You also then went into your own path of study, of integrating more kind of holistic spiritual, and then know, basing yourself in Cornwall, which is a very kind of spiritual place to be in the British Isles as well.
[00:45:24] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah, I was really interested in those discussions that were unfolding then, because my journey, I suppose, to rebuilding trusts and overcoming the disillusionment has been my own healing through the yoga trainings, very influenced by indian culture and psychology, in the yogic philosophies and practices and the shamanic initiations that has been ongoing for me since maybe 2017.
[00:46:02] Dr Christina Barker: I started sort of exploring those alternative models, modalities, but going right back to the root of what it is to be human and how to heal.
[00:46:16] Dr Christina Barker: Because for me, what was missing was in the mainstream psychology, which it still is, really.
[00:46:23] Dr Christina Barker: The mindfulness was great, yeah.
[00:46:26] Dr Christina Barker: But it was lacking spirit.
[00:46:28] Dr Christina Barker: They'd completely cut the spiritual connection out, and it was devoid of, as the services are as well, of the heart and the soul.
[00:46:39] Dr Christina Barker: Thinking back to sort of, where have we lost that?
[00:46:41] Dr Christina Barker: Like you say, in terms of our ancestry, but also thinking about the murdering of women, in particular, in terms of the witch trials and anyone with any sort of gifts, that's true, was killed.
[00:47:02] Dr Christina Barker: So there's still this sort of sense of talking about or stepping into these alternative ways of healing or being where we do rely on.
[00:47:14] Dr Christina Barker: I said in my clinical psychology interview, I would talk a lot about intuition, because I've always sort of that knowing that deep knowing and understanding of other people or what people might need or what the right next steps are, that is intuitive.
[00:47:33] Dr Christina Barker: And actually in the psychology field and training, a lot of it's like imposed ideas, models, what so and so said back at what date and following these principles and practices on the ground with an individual who's in front of you or community who it doesn't apply to, like Paslin said, who aren't white, who aren't male, ethnocentric, they're not applying.
[00:48:02] Dr Christina Barker: There's a disconnect, trying to impose a model or approach onto person or a community.
[00:48:11] Dr Christina Barker: But when we go back to some of these indigenous practices, that really do connect us to more the energetics and thinking more instead of the mind, the cognitive, the academic, literary focus coming back to the felt sense, connecting with the body, connecting with the heart.
[00:48:34] Dr Christina Barker: I suppose it's from there that we become equal, as equal as we can be, and trying to remove or overcome some of the power differentials and start from the root up to try and be more humane and understanding of one another as opposed to the current psychological way of being at times which isn't as centered and connected.
[00:49:08] Dr Christina Barker: Although I know, act like you say, the third wave therapists are becoming more informed by what we once would have known and been.
[00:49:21] Dr Christina Barker: I'm not sure if that's answering the question.
[00:49:23] Wendy Kendall: Well, the thing is, what it strikes me about as well is how actually there are sometimes tacit recognition, there is tacit recognition of some of these fault lines in the ways of practicing in something like psychology.
[00:49:46] Wendy Kendall: I mean, it's probably in other areas of science, but here we are talking about psychology.
[00:49:53] Wendy Kendall: I count myself as being quite fortunate of doing an applied psychology master's degree.
[00:50:00] Wendy Kendall: And if I'd have known that it was so stats based my master's degree, I probably wouldn't have done it, because I didn't believe in myself as being someone capable of doing advanced statistics.
[00:50:10] Wendy Kendall: But what I was fortunate enough to experience in my masters was, yes, studying the statistics and what kind of went into and what those quantitative methods were actually doing and how they were trying to quantify variance between different populations and what the maths of that was, and the underlining mathematical models.
[00:50:44] Wendy Kendall: And then within that, there was an understanding, quite an explicit understanding, that that was about creating a map of reality.
[00:50:54] Wendy Kendall: But it wasn't the territory that there was always going to be, because we looked at research design, there was always going to be unexplained variants out there, the likes of which we could probably never capture.
[00:51:08] Wendy Kendall: So that immediately reduced the power of the quantitative, because we knew quantitative could help us in some ways.
[00:51:16] Wendy Kendall: But there's a whole world of variance out there that is unexplained and probably unexplainable, but it's still, in inverted commas, reality.
[00:51:29] Wendy Kendall: So what you were describing, Christina, about intuition, the fact that we can't quantify it and put a p value on it or whatever.
[00:51:38] Wendy Kendall: Some people, I'm saying some people, you can get into arguments easily about the p value of something, but I think, and what I think gets prioritized is this empiricism about.
[00:51:55] Wendy Kendall: Have we been able to put this through a randomized control test?
[00:52:00] Wendy Kendall: But there's an entire kind of beauty of qualitative research.
[00:52:07] Wendy Kendall: And even that is a small subset of all the other ways of knowings that there are in the world, which is phenomenology.
[00:52:16] Wendy Kendall: Right.
[00:52:17] Wendy Kendall: So even phenomenology is kind of putting it in a particular lens.
[00:52:24] Wendy Kendall: But I think for me, that was where I think what that's helped me do as well, coming back to what became a way of having one's feet on solid ground whilst we're navigating these systems that are throwing us all over the place.
[00:52:49] Wendy Kendall: Taz, you're talking about reconnecting with ancestral wisdom and bringing that up to know, bringing that from there into the here and now and feeling that thread of connection.
[00:53:05] Wendy Kendall: And Christina similarly feeling like all this stuff that was just such a maelstrom, actually, there's a whole story here of repressed knowledge and about people, stories of genocide, essentially, within our own culture, where healers and wise people and intuitives were got rid of in recent history.
[00:53:30] Wendy Kendall: Last few hundred years, really, for me, it's that sense of where do we put our feet on solid ground again after we've been swimming for so long and feeling as though we're going to drown in something and we get our feet back on solid ground, and now we have a different relationship with all of that power stuff.
[00:53:57] Wendy Kendall: So, yeah, those are some of my reflections.
[00:54:00] Wendy Kendall: I don't know what comes up for either of you at that point.
[00:54:04] Taslim Tharani: Yeah, there's something else here that I think, again, is something that you've really facilitated, Wendy, which is about community, and what you said right at the beginning of the podcast, which is around co regulation, and that actually, over the last few years, the more that I have found ways to speak some of my experiences, the more that I have found other people who are probably, I perceive them as having more power than me because of their particular identities and so forth, but who are challenging the status quo, who are being more radical in their approaches.
[00:54:54] Taslim Tharani: And actually, those opportunities for connecting with those people kind of gives for me.
[00:54:59] Taslim Tharani: It feeds that.
[00:55:02] Taslim Tharani: That's part of that journey for me about rebuilding trust in myself.
[00:55:06] Taslim Tharani: Yes, I still not always able to do that myself because I guess that trust has been eroded relationally.
[00:55:14] Taslim Tharani: So I feel like that trust needs to be built back up again relationally.
[00:55:19] Taslim Tharani: And so actually seeing more and more people challenging some of these things is really helping me, I think, continue to step forward and continue to heal and grow out of those career traumas.
[00:55:39] Taslim Tharani: So I don't know why that arose for me as you were speaking, but it did.
[00:55:45] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, no, but I think, as I think about that idea of putting our feet back on solid ground, that to me is about something about rebuilding trust.
[00:55:57] Wendy Kendall: And I think your point about the very individualistic way of thinking about that is that we start by rebuilding trust in ourselves, and then we rebuild trust in others.
[00:56:10] Wendy Kendall: But I think what you're saying is, actually, I can start by rebuilding trust in others, and then in that way, I start to rebuild trust in myself as well.
[00:56:19] Wendy Kendall: That's an inter being lens on trust.
[00:56:24] Taslim Tharani: Yeah.
[00:56:25] Taslim Tharani: And I think that comes back to this is a part of psychology that I do really love is about why human babies are born so completely dependent on adults.
[00:56:38] Taslim Tharani: I never believe that things are one way.
[00:56:40] Taslim Tharani: So, you know, the sense of, I need to, people say, oh, you need to love yourself before anyone else can love you or whatever, all this thing.
[00:56:49] Taslim Tharani: And I always think it's like an ebb and flow.
[00:56:56] Taslim Tharani: The more I trust myself, the more I'm able to trust others.
[00:56:59] Taslim Tharani: The more I trust others, the more I'm able to trust myself.
[00:57:02] Taslim Tharani: It's a constant kind of back and forth flow, I think.
[00:57:09] Taslim Tharani: And also this sense of other people believing in me helps me believe more in myself.
[00:57:16] Taslim Tharani: And therefore, I'm able to believe more in others and again, vice versa.
[00:57:19] Taslim Tharani: So it just kind of grows, I think, organically.
[00:57:25] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[00:57:25] Wendy Kendall: It's a relationship of reciprocity.
[00:57:27] Wendy Kendall: It's reciprocal.
[00:57:29] Taslim Tharani: Exactly.
[00:57:31] Wendy Kendall: Christina, for you, what has helped in terms of rebuilding trust in self and others, when we think about that reciprocity as well?
[00:57:42] Dr Christina Barker: I think it's still an ongoing journey.
[00:57:45] Dr Christina Barker: And it fluctuates, certainly in terms of connecting with like minded people or people who've had similar experiences.
[00:57:56] Dr Christina Barker: Taslim, you, sharing some of your experiences, again, you sort of have a feeling that we're not alone in this sort of journey of difficulties and challenges along the way.
[00:58:07] Dr Christina Barker: And like you say, I think particularly for me, because maybe I am, I don't know what it is yet, but was writing, and I found that because journaling does help in terms of processing whatever's in the subconscious.
[00:58:27] Dr Christina Barker: But some of the things that I thought that I was going to be publishing the work of, like, Dr.
[00:58:33] Dr Christina Barker: Jessica Taylor, the sexy book, Psycho, the book, when that came out, part of me was like, well, that's the book I'm supposed to be writing.
[00:58:42] Wendy Kendall: Hang on.
[00:58:43] Dr Christina Barker: My own healing process.
[00:58:45] Dr Christina Barker: It was like, I think, actually, thank book, someone else has written it.
[00:58:53] Dr Christina Barker: She's running ahead with the baton, and she's really taken this sort of field head on with power and courage.
[00:59:03] Dr Christina Barker: And that's actually helped in my healing journey because I know that the things she's fighting for would help me as an individual, would help all other women and girls that come into contact with mental health services.
[00:59:21] Dr Christina Barker: And knowing that you're not alone in that sort of battle, really, because that can feel overwhelming to think that you're the only one that has a certain viewpoint or is challenging the status quo when there's other people out there that are doing it and they're doing a bloody good job of it.
[00:59:39] Dr Christina Barker: It gives you resource, really, to follow in their footsteps or connect and support their work also.
[00:59:49] Dr Christina Barker: So I'm a member of.
[00:59:52] Dr Christina Barker: Get the wording right, av, I need to check my.
[00:59:59] Dr Christina Barker: I'm a member of the antipathologizing network professionals.
[01:00:06] Dr Christina Barker: All the links will be on the show notes, I believe, but that's sort of headed up by Jessica Taylor.
[01:00:13] Dr Christina Barker: In terms of practitioners, professionals who you can go to for support, who don't hold the DSM and the diagnostic and pathologizing sort of framework, we don't hold that to be true, basically, and we see everything through that lens of trauma, everything as a response to trauma as opposed to a disorder or disorder or an illness.
[01:00:46] Dr Christina Barker: So having people out there that are singing from the same hymn sheet, I think that enables you to build trust in a way of doing things differently as you go forwards.
[01:00:57] Dr Christina Barker: That's been central for me to see other professionals out there with those similar viewpoints.
[01:01:05] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[01:01:06] Wendy Kendall: And I think that's why I really wanted to have a conversation about this topic with you two knowing a little bit also about some of the history from both of you that it was going to be, we were going to get into some depths of what we're doing about that.
[01:01:29] Wendy Kendall: The question that I come back to is thinking about where do we go from here, really, as a practitioner, I know I'm building things into my way of practicing that give me hope that there is a place for me to go and a place for other people to go when they're redefining what it means to be in practice as a psychologist, whether you're doing that independently or whether you're doing that within some of the big organizations or whatever that are out there.
[01:02:04] Wendy Kendall: Just thinking about kind of drawing our conversation to a close here, what else do you think we need to know and consider when we're thinking about overcoming career trauma, which is a very sanitized label for what we're describing here, and this kind of disillusionment and rebuilding trust, what else should practitioners know about?
[01:02:36] Wendy Kendall: Consider, think about perhaps.
[01:02:39] Wendy Kendall: Can I come to you, Christina, first come blank so question was, what else do practitioners need to think about or consider for thinking about a message of hope to people about overcoming this very sanitized thing that we call career trauma and this disillusionment and kind of rebuilding trust, what message of hope would we offer to people?
[01:03:23] Wendy Kendall: Or would you offer to people.
[01:03:28] Dr Christina Barker: Which would have helped me maybe earlier in my career, but that sense of knowing that you're not alone.
[01:03:35] Dr Christina Barker: I think when we are working in maybe sanitized services and settings and people are maybe not putting the head above the parapet and just going along with things, we can feel very isolated.
[01:03:49] Dr Christina Barker: And that maybe it is me that's just not getting on with it.
[01:03:53] Dr Christina Barker: Maybe I am being difficult and coming back to that trust in self from the head into the heart and knowing if things don't feel right, whether it's an interactions with a colleague, whether it's the setting in itself, that coming back to your intuition and what you know to be true and seeking the support as opposed to being silenced and siloed and separate and isolated, there is always someone somewhere in some service that will provide a listening ear at least.
[01:04:39] Dr Christina Barker: But I think if we are feeling traumatized as well, there can be that tendency to disconnect, dissociate, isolate and be alone.
[01:04:49] Dr Christina Barker: I think I've been in that position for a long time, actually.
[01:04:54] Dr Christina Barker: So taking those steps forward sooner rather than later to reconnect relationships, that we can then move forward and regain that trust when we've been burnt.
[01:05:09] Wendy Kendall: Fab.
[01:05:10] Wendy Kendall: Thank you.
[01:05:11] Wendy Kendall: Taz, I'm coming across to you.
[01:05:14] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[01:05:14] Taslim Tharani: So really similar things to mean.
[01:05:19] Taslim Tharani: I think, firstly, the first thing is that it does take time.
[01:05:25] Taslim Tharani: Even with me working through a lot of trauma on a lot of different levels, both personal and professional, in some ways, it feels like a lifetime's journey in a way, and that there are going to be, for me anyway, moments when things can be kind of triggered and I'm kind of right back there again.
[01:05:47] Taslim Tharani: But I would say that for me, that recovery journey gets quicker and quicker every time.
[01:05:55] Taslim Tharani: And I think there's something around learning from those past experiences so that we do feel able to make different choices going forward.
[01:06:05] Taslim Tharani: So coming back to, for example, that sense of always needing approval or kind of waiting for somebody else to say, no, you're doing a good job.
[01:06:18] Taslim Tharani: And also that kind of.
[01:06:23] Taslim Tharani: I don't know if I can put words to it, but can I give an example?
[01:06:27] Taslim Tharani: I know we're kind of wrapping up.
[01:06:30] Taslim Tharani: I had an interview last year that was so fascinating.
[01:06:34] Taslim Tharani: So it was for workshop facilitation.
[01:06:37] Taslim Tharani: And I asked for reasonable adjustments.
[01:06:40] Taslim Tharani: They weren't particularly effectively offered for that interview process, and the interview process was just awful, and it didn't allow me to show the best of myself, and it was for associate training work.
[01:06:52] Taslim Tharani: And it was bizarre that.
[01:06:53] Taslim Tharani: So they rejected me, despite the fact that their SLT, I've got recommendations and testimonials from them saying I am one of the best facilitators they've ever experienced, and yet I was still rejected from that company versus another organization.
[01:07:08] Taslim Tharani: I just had an interview from, again, for some associate work yesterday, where the whole setup of the interview enabled me to show them who I am and the best of myself.
[01:07:19] Taslim Tharani: And so that experience last year took me right back to that place of, oh, God, I'm awful, blah, blah, blah.
[01:07:26] Taslim Tharani: And this experience was a very different experience.
[01:07:29] Taslim Tharani: But I think what I'm now learning to do was saying, but if that is what that organization is like, that is not an organization that I want to work with.
[01:07:37] Taslim Tharani: And so there's something about kind of bringing, like, me recognizing my own agency and my own choice within that.
[01:07:46] Taslim Tharani: I don't know if that is.
[01:07:46] Taslim Tharani: Sorry.
[01:07:46] Taslim Tharani: That was very rambly.
[01:07:47] Taslim Tharani: But, yeah.
[01:07:48] Taslim Tharani: So I think there's something around this is a journey.
[01:07:51] Taslim Tharani: It does take time.
[01:07:53] Taslim Tharani: We may find ourselves back in those places, and with support, we can continue to remind ourselves of our own worth and really trust our intuition, as Christina said, as well.
[01:08:10] Taslim Tharani: And then I guess the other thing.
[01:08:12] Dr Christina Barker: Is.
[01:08:16] Taslim Tharani: For me, there's something about being really honest with myself.
[01:08:19] Taslim Tharani: So learning how to tell the truth about my experiences to myself and others, I think that's another thing.
[01:08:29] Taslim Tharani: And also, I don't think we can do this alone.
[01:08:33] Taslim Tharani: I really think that this healing journey, after experiencing career traumas and disillusionment is about doing it together.
[01:08:40] Taslim Tharani: And that comes back to what you were saying, christina, about the sense that we're not alone.
[01:08:45] Taslim Tharani: And then somehow, I don't know how, but it's like somehow finding the courage to do things slightly differently.
[01:08:56] Taslim Tharani: And I am going to refer to my logo that you can see in the background.
[01:08:59] Taslim Tharani: This is half of it.
[01:09:01] Wendy Kendall: I was glad you were going to mention that.
[01:09:03] Wendy Kendall: Then.
[01:09:08] Taslim Tharani: When I first was working with my website designer to come up with this logo, I was like, it doesn't feel professional.
[01:09:15] Taslim Tharani: It's fun and a bit quirky and creative and really colorful, but I was like, but that is me.
[01:09:22] Taslim Tharani: That's what I want to offer.
[01:09:24] Taslim Tharani: I want to offer something different.
[01:09:26] Taslim Tharani: I don't want it to be standard corporate looking.
[01:09:30] Taslim Tharani: I am warm.
[01:09:31] Taslim Tharani: I am colorful.
[01:09:33] Taslim Tharani: It's like a Mendy type of or henna type of design.
[01:09:37] Taslim Tharani: So that kind of links to my cultural background, and it's got lots of different elements that are all unique, kind of coming together to make something beautiful.
[01:09:46] Taslim Tharani: There's so much in it that relates to thriving together, which, as he knows my brand.
[01:09:52] Taslim Tharani: And I think there's something about how do I, in my practice, how do I find ways of coming back into alignment?
[01:09:59] Taslim Tharani: How do I find ways of being honest with myself and others about the way I am, how I practice, even if that is slightly different from the norm or what's expected?
[01:10:11] Taslim Tharani: Yeah, sure, there's lots of other things, but those are the things that come.
[01:10:18] Wendy Kendall: To mind and just kind of drawing three threads together there.
[01:10:29] Wendy Kendall: The thing that really kind of stands out for me, or almost like the message that kind of came from inside me somewhere, was, if I'm thinking of a message of hope, I've got a little bit of a kind of warrior part of me that's like, do you know what?
[01:10:48] Wendy Kendall: Psychology belongs to all of us.
[01:10:51] Wendy Kendall: It doesn't belong to some deity somewhere, some God on high to be passed down like the flipping tablets on the mount or whatever.
[01:11:03] Wendy Kendall: That's not what psychology is.
[01:11:05] Wendy Kendall: Psychology belongs to all of us.
[01:11:07] Wendy Kendall: And so if we're saying that this is not a representation, this is missing vital parts, actually, all of us have the right to stand on our 2ft and make that statement.
[01:11:21] Wendy Kendall: So there's something for me, when I think about what's required for psychology to be more life giving, it also has to be more democratized.
[01:11:35] Wendy Kendall: We have to be closer to people.
[01:11:37] Wendy Kendall: We have to be connected with one another.
[01:11:39] Wendy Kendall: We need to have more democratized power relationships.
[01:11:43] Wendy Kendall: We can't just be about bowing to the power of institutions or bowing to the power of norms or whatever.
[01:11:54] Wendy Kendall: So, yeah, that's kind of the message of hope.
[01:11:57] Wendy Kendall: And there's a lot of us who are thinking like this, and there's a growing number of us who are thinking like this.
[01:12:05] Wendy Kendall: So come and join us.
[01:12:07] Wendy Kendall: It's cool in this part of the world, right?
[01:12:12] Taslim Tharani: Absolutely.
[01:12:15] Dr Christina Barker: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:12:17] Dr Christina Barker: If we want change, then I suppose it's taking that empowered action in it and then trusting in ourselves and our beliefs, really, and following that path.
[01:12:26] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, absolutely.
[01:12:28] Taslim Tharani: Can I share a quote?
[01:12:30] Wendy Kendall: Yeah, go on.
[01:12:31] Wendy Kendall: Yeah.
[01:12:31] Wendy Kendall: I love your quotes, taz.
[01:12:34] Taslim Tharani: So this is by Ariah Mountain Dreamer, and it sums up, I think, how I want to be and hope I am in my practice, especially in my coaching.
[01:12:48] Taslim Tharani: So it says, what if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through trying and striving but by welcoming the people, places and practices who offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold.
[01:13:04] Wendy Kendall: There we go.
[01:13:05] Dr Christina Barker: Beautiful.
[01:13:06] Dr Christina Barker: Thank you.
[01:13:08] Wendy Kendall: Thanks so much, both of you, for being here today.
[01:13:11] Wendy Kendall: It's been such a rich and going back on, bringing back, thinking about my ifs training.
[01:13:20] Wendy Kendall: It's been a very self led and energizing conversation and a very courageous conversation as well.
[01:13:28] Wendy Kendall: Thanks to both of you for that.
