Speaker A: Welcome to the Therapist Burnout podcast, episode 31. Hey, therapist. Welcome back to the podcast. Doctor Jen Blanchett and I today am joined by Arya Prasad. So Arya is a psychotherapist and an arts based therapy practitioner. She has worked with a bunch of folks as a school counselor. I worked in schools. We. I didn’t talk about that in our pre interview, but I think we should get to that because I work in schools currently, but currently she’s working in a private organization in Mumbai. She is joining us from Mumbai, which I’m very excited just to hear about worldwide therapists. Hello. She works with. Her niche is high performing individuals experiencing anxiety and burnout. We met on LinkedIn and she posts over there, so. Hello, Arya. How are you?
Speaker B: Hi, Jen. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited.
Speaker A: Good. So I usually kick it off to my guests to just share your burnout story. So if you could tell the good listeners a little bit about your burnout and you.
Speaker B: Okay, so I’m a therapist, and I’ve been working for the past three years as a therapist, but my burnout story was when I was in college. So in India, after your bachelor’s, you need to do a two year masters to be a practicing counseling psychologist. And my masters happened during the pandemic. So 2020. During the pandemic, I was in my second year of masters. And it’s a tough course. It’s a tough program. And that was just intensified by the pandemic. Now, a bit of backstory is that I’ve been a high achieving kid since I was ten, as far as I remember, or maybe even longer than that. And I’ve been the high achieving straight a’s kid. I was always. I always had high expectations out of myself, never took breaks, you know. You know, the. You know, the kind. And what happened was that really worked for me until it didn’t. So it really worked to help me get into a good college, a good program. It helped me achieve goals after goals. When the pandemic began and when the world practically shut, I was home. And Mumbai homes are tiny, so there wasn’t a lot of space. We didn’t know what was happening with our programs, and we did not know what was happening with the world around us. And there was this intense, constant state of anxiety. So in March 2020, I had intense chest aches. And my first chest ache felt like a heart attack, because, again, I had no.
Speaker A: So you had, like, chest tightness. Like, chest. Chest ache. Okay.
Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And right where my heart is at. So it actually felt like a heart attack right up to my left shoulder. And I was freaking out. Right. And this happened for a consistent month. And my mom pushed me to get into yoga. Yoga is a huge thing in India, of course, but I just went for it. But I did not know that my anxiety had burnout coming after. So we’re talking about our academic programs at a standstill. Professors have no idea what’s going on. Institutions have no idea what’s going on. We’re super scared because this time next year, we’re supposed to be getting jobs, and we’re really scared. We’ve all worked really hard up now, and we have no idea what to do. Just the world around us, right? And it doesn’t help having insane expectations out of yourself. I was expecting myself to be at my best self during the pandemic. So no friends, no social life. We have no idea what’s going on. And I still wanted to be the straightest kid. And that took a toll on me, very honestly, because it took over my entire life. By August 2020, I was in the middle of. Middle of my burnout. So it looked like me waking up crying in bed for an hour. Then I just dragged myself out of the bed and just forced myself to sit in front of the laptop. But I couldn’t process anything. Like I’m staring at an empty word dock because brain fog. I. No ambition left. And coming from a person who’s tragic herself or her ambition, I have none of that left. And it was just really scary to see myself be that way, because I’ve never been that before. I’ve never been cranky. I’ve never been this lethargic. I had no energy. I never talked to anybody. It was just. I was just in the corner of my house. I. My mom had to beg me to talk to her, right? And I remember this one time where I just shut the door. I was angry. I was crying. My mom freaked out so hard that she called up my best friend and my knee. My mom’s in the other room. She calls up my best friend, who’s like 40 km away to call me up and talk to me, and she’s that scared. There was this one point where she thought that it was a really bad idea to enroll me in my master’s program. My grandparents are worried they don’t live with us, but they were super wide looking at me because, you know, my face had gone all gone. Like, you could see dark circles. I barely smiled. You know what? I have to add this one thing. I think at least half my class was going through a burnout phase the same time I was. So clearly, I wasn’t alone. It was very clearly a systemic thing that was happening, not just an individual thing. So, yeah, that was how Burt began, and that’s how it showed up as really ugly. Honestly, I didn’t have the energy to do anything, let alone finish assignments. I didn’t have the energy to take a bath on most days. Anxiety intensified. My feeling of helplessness intensified. So it was just a very dark time of my life, and it really affects how I view the world as a therapist and as a person right now.
Speaker A: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. I mean, I think there’s so much, you know, in that that I was like, oh, I have a question on that and this and that. But maybe I want to start with just asking you about kind of how a lot of us therapists, I think we’re, like, straight a students who are high achieving people. We have made all the good grades and actually do the work of therapy. It’s not about getting it perfect or getting it right. It’s about being with someone else. It’s about, like, yes, we have our training. We have our knowledge. That is important, 100%. But it’s not about, like, I got an a today with that client, and I think we all have to have a reckoning with that, you know?
Speaker B: You know, that hit me so hard when I got into my first job. Not as much in my masters, because in my masters, we have this internship, this fever component that’s compulsory for us. It wasn’t as much there, but when my first job came around, I expected myself to get it right every single session. So my first job was working as a school counselor. The best job ever. I loved it as much as I loved it. It was also very challenging, and I worked with children at risk, so children who. This is the school where I worked. There was a slum around it, so a lot of those kids belong to the slum. And we’re talking about kids who experienced everything that you can think of. Domestic violence, bullying, just not having food and a consistent shelter over their heads. Right? So, imagine the amount of trauma that just one child holds, and I’m here expecting that I’m going to get a shot all the time. That didn’t happen. Of course it did. And I remember this one thing that my supervisor told me that still stays with me today. She looks at me in the eye, and she goes, Arya, are you looking for a report card from me? You wouldn’t have to call me out, like. But that was what I was doing. I was looking for a report card validation with every single client, with every single session. Didn’t go right. Check. Was I at my best self? Check. Do others see the students progress just like I do? Check. Clearly, we didn’t meet those checks every single session. But I. I think it’s really different when you. When you come in, in a therapy space, having the traits that high achievers often do. Wanting control. Right. It’s so hard to just give up control. It’s so hard to go with the flow, because what is that? We’re not used to it. It’s so hard to have a set expectation out of yourself and not have that material lesson therapy. So I worked with kids, and we know how kids are. If they don’t want to do something, they will not do it. If they don’t want to talk, they will not talk. And I’ve had moments where I’m paying my head out because why won’t this child talk to me? I’m nice. Talk to me. And I’ve had all of those moments. It’s been incredibly difficult letting go of that part of myself that wants to do it all and wants to do it all well. But I think it’s been incredibly rewarding and honestly, very humbling, because over time, I’ve realized that the essence of therapy wasn’t to get it right. Most of it was just to be with my client, just meeting them where I’m at. You can’t do that with a checklist in your mind, because the moment you’re referring to your notes, your checklist, your to do list for a session, you automatically lose touch with being with the client, which is what they need. Yeah.
Speaker A: Especially. Especially. I can’t imagine, like, you know what you’re describing. Like children at that school who don’t have running water, they don’t have a roof over their head. They’ve probably seen and witnessed horrific trauma throughout their lives, maybe have a loss of a caregiver. So if we think of that aces, it’s pretty high for each one of those kiddos. I think it’s so hard. Especially. I always say this, our younger therapist and myself included, when I was a younger therapist, our first jobs are with some of the most highly acute clients that have the most trauma, that have the most difficulties. And it’s no wonder that we burn out of these situations because we are essentially walking through fire with them.
Speaker B: You know, I was almost there, so I worked in that place for two years. I loved every moment of it where it just didn’t feel, it didn’t feel like I was going in the direction I wanted to go. So as a school counselor, it was never just restricted to one on one therapy sessions. In India, school counselors do a lot of other things. And I worked in an NGO, the school.
Speaker A: And what’s that?
Speaker B: The NGO is, is a non governmental organization.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: And so it’s a not for profit center. And the organization, yeah, they tied up with the school. So that’s why I was in the school working as a school counselor. So I worked as somebody who would help out with learning disabilities. So I would help diagnose children with learning disabilities in the sense that I would send them to a government hospital and ask them to get their tests done so that it would help them in their academics. I would go across classes and understand if teachers needed more support with respect to students mental health. I worked with social emotional learning for students. I was also working as a first respondent in classes and in schools in the sense that if there was any emergency in the community I worked with, I would, me and a social worker would attend to that. Right. So it’s not just one on one therapy that was, that was getting dieting, but it was, in fact, one on one therapy was very enriching for me, and I wanted to do more of it, but I had all of these other roles and I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do all of them and be a good therapist. And after my second year, when my second year ended, I knew I had to leave because I still had a lot of love and care for that place. I didn’t want another burnout to kick in, which would lead to resentment. So I knew the smart thing to do was to leave. And I cried when I summoned my resignation papers. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew that if I wanted to stay in the field, I had to find a place that was more sustainable for me as a medical practitioner. Otherwise, I was out.
Speaker A: 100% makes sense. Like what? The ex. It sounds like the expectations that that place required of you would. You saw the writing on the wall. If I do this for another year, I’ll burn out and then I’m out of this field. There’s no way I can be a therapist or be in my career anymore. 100% makes sense to me. And I think a lot of us make those choices. We just kind of like, I can’t do this. That was my story, too. I can’t do this job. So I’m going to go to over here. And I kept passing the buck until. And burnout kept finding me. I’m wondering, like, going back to, like, where you first experienced burnout in your program, were you, like, in field placements at that time? Was that part of it, or was. Okay, so tell me a little bit about that. Like, what? What were, like, the circumstances that were at play there.
Speaker B: So, because, again, the pandemic we were supposed to have in field placements, but that didn’t happen, so we had to go all online. I was working as an intern with a government hospital in Mumbai, and it was a pediatric psychiatric. So I was working with children who were diagnosed with ADHD, who were diagnosed with autism and their caregivers. All of this happened online. And I think there is so, so difficult to deal with now that I’m thinking back on it, because, one, I was expected to show up and support children and their parents who already had a very difficult time. Second, the coursework was huge. So in India, we have dissertations. The second year of masters is usually when. When we really need to zone in on our dissertations. And I had to change my dissertation topic, which is a separate story. So that was. And I am really bad at research. At least I was there. So there’s that added element.
Speaker A: You completed it, you got it. A done dissertation is a great one. That’s what one of my mentors told me as someone who did a thesis and a dissertation, like, so, you know.
Speaker B: Just be expected to be a student and to be a trainee and then having a set of expectations on my own and trying to keep a social life at the same time while the world is practically burning is not the best time to be a therapist. Right. Because there is no security, there’s no stability, and we need some of it so that we can offer some to our clients. I don’t know how ethical it is for me to say this, but there will be days where I just cry and, like, 07:00 a.m. 08:00 a.m. and then get up and do a therapy session at, say, noon or 01:00 in the afternoon because I was expected to do so. I just had to compartmentalize and shut that part of my life and keep it aside just so that I could be there for my clients. I really hope things change for students soon because we deserve supportive systems. Like, my professors were amazing. They did the best they could, right? They really supported us, they really empathized with us, they really guided us. But I think individuals can only do so much. I really needed systems to take stock of the fact that, okay, is cramming the amount of syllabus. Do we still need assignments? Do we still need to do a dissertation with all of these things during this time? And a lot of people say, I agree, it made us better practitioners, but it really came at the cost of our mental health. I know for a fact that I’m a better practitioner because I had those field of experiences, because I studied the courses that I studied. But my masters were so bad that when I was done, video called my grandmom and she saw me smiling for like, the first time in forever, and she’s like, you’re smiling. Don’t change that. Like, please stick to it, because I haven’t seen it in a very long time, and I think students deserve better than.
Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I’m just curious about, like, what were those? Let me go back, because I’m just sitting like, I feel the emotion, like, right now in myself, and I see it with you. What’s coming up right now, as you.
Speaker B: Say that, I think when I talk about burnout, right, I just feel this amount of injustice at the world around us. We’re not supposed to go through all of this that we do, right? And I am insanely and badly want a just world where we have enough resources, we have universal healthcare, we have reasonable and sustainable systems around us. And every single time I think about my story with burnout, and my colleague’s story with burnout, my professor’s story with burnout, I just feel that everybody is being failed by systems multiple times. The systems are failing us day in and day out, which is why we reach the space that we are in right now. I’m seeing so many therapists just be overburdened by the amount of clients they’re seeing per week, and they’re being paid pennies for it. I can’t do a INR to USD conversion right away, but they’re being paid INR 300 per session, which is. I can’t do the math.
Speaker A: $5.06 for one section, like equivalent of $5 us, I think.
Speaker B: So I can do the math.
Speaker A: And the second fit, I can get a converter, like a currency converter, to understand how little that is in India, that would translate to.
Speaker B: I got one right. And there are organizations that provide clients to therapists, and some of them pay as little as INR 300, which is not even $4 per session.
Speaker A: I’m shaking my head.
Speaker B: And the worst part is, especially new therapists, they end up taking it up because they don’t have an option. Like, you’re not going to have a jelly made client right after you step out of ma. You’ve got to take some time to establish yourselves. You couldn’t take some time to figure out what kind of mortalities you want to use in your spaces? We take time and they’ve been paid $4, maybe $10. $10 is like a nicer finger for India. And then we wonder why our therapist burning out. Like, no ****.
Speaker A: Yes, it makes 100% sense. And when other professions, I talk about this a lot, like people with our level of education, so they went and got their master’s degree in like, business or marketing. What is the equivalent salary those people are making in your country, do you think?
Speaker B: Would you say I’m so involved in the field of mental health that I’ve almost forgotten about everybody else in the world?
Speaker A: But sure, they’re blocking all of those people out. Like, I only care about us. I love it.
Speaker B: I think they should be making a minimum, a minimum of 20,000 inr. More than what a beginner psychotherapist makes. 20,000 is. Give me a second. The conversation is insane.
Speaker A: Yeah, I love talking money. You can stay here all day.
Speaker B: So the conversion is again in USD. Sounds really little, but at least $250 more per month. It’s just at a basic level.
Speaker A: And I could make a twice more. Like twice. Like, they might make twice as much as a therapist might make in India or something like that. Okay.
Speaker B: At a minimum.
Speaker A: At a minimum. Okay.
Speaker B: And I know somebody who. Who got paid my salary with a bachelor’s degree, which is with five years of lesser experience than me. So I’ve got another degree in. I’ve got three years of work experience. And he got paid the same amount right out of bachelor’s, right out of undergrad. And then they wonder why we are burned out. See, it makes me so bad. I fumbled.
Speaker A: And, yeah, I sometimes. Yeah, I was. I was just angry this morning when I was posting, too, for other reasons. Why? You know, sometimes I feel like people will kind of wonder if they’re not in this field. Like, what you went into this. Shouldn’t you be able to manage it? Like, I just don’t think if you’re in our field, you can kind of really understand, like, really what it takes to do this work. Yeah. I’m going to go back a little bit to what you were talking about, about school and like, this, you know, need to feel like we need to know everything. And I think that shows up a lot of us, for a lot of us in our training, because, you know, we have our supervisor perhaps, like, over our shoulder, or we’re showing them. I don’t know. If you showed tape and you had to show tape in school of yourself doing therapy with your client. No, you didn’t?
Speaker B: Nobody.
Speaker A: I had my therapist. We had, like, a window, right? And my supervisor would be behind, like, the mirror, like, looking at me doing therapy, or I have the show tape of, like, the worst part of my session. And so there is this performative thing where you feel like I’m gonna get caught as the imposter. I’m doing it wrong.
Speaker B: I swear to God, I. That still happens. I want to tell you that I’m over it. Also, if I ever had to show my supervisor my tapes, I die of embarrassment. I think I jump out of the program. Is that feeling of, hey, am I going right? Do I drag something wrong? Just the shame, the guilt. When I’m not able to pick up something, the clients say when I make a mistake. And then therapy is like 100 micro decisions in an hour, right? Do I pick up on this? Do I point that out? What do I see next? Something can always go wrong, right? I specified the air quotes because we have a template of therapy going right in our head, and therapy is not going to follow that. So the imposter syndrome is insane. You know, I was ranting to my supervisor in my college, and I’m almost in the verge of tears, and I’m steading, you know, I can’t believe I haven’t gotten this right. When am I gonna know it all? She’s like, Arya, working for 20 years. I still don’t think we know it all. I’m just like, that’s rude. I want to know it all. I would really love it if somebody could just give me a handbook and be like, this is what you need to do. The imposter syndrome kicks in so hard, despite the fact that you’re doing your best, despite the fact that you’re giving it your all.
Speaker A: Why do you think? Why do you think? And this is not unique to you. So I think for everyone listening, why do you think that shows up for therapists?
Speaker B: So, in India, therapists are the last professionals to be approached when it comes to mental health. Doctors will be approached.
Speaker A: So you would go, like, if you were depressed or whatever, you would go to your doctor before you go to a therapist?
Speaker B: Oh, for sure.
Speaker A: Okay.
Speaker B: We’d go to a doctor. We’d go to. So India has a thing of family doctors. Doctors who’ve known you since you were a child. Doctors have known your parents or your grandparents as well, because we’re a collective society, so we go to family doctors. We are heavy on religion or spirituality. So we look after priests, we look after religious leaders. We have. We have. I don’t know what to call them. Saints. I don’t know what to call them. They’re called bawas in India. It means it’s like somebody who guides you on spirituality. Think of it like a guide or a mentor, but for spiritual purposes. And a lot of them also help you out with medicine. We have a lot that in the country for mental health, we will be approached last. I’ve never had a client come to me and be like, oh, yeah, I had symptoms of depression. My thought of approaching you, I did this, I did that, I did this, and now I’m here.
Speaker A: So they probably are holding a lot of shame when they come to you.
Speaker B: I would think as therapists, we’ve just. A lot of us have this tendency to fix. And when we try so hard to fix something that people haven’t been able to fix before, I can see why that makes us feel, like, impossible. We shouldn’t have to fix. That’s not our jobs. Right, right. But we’re in a system that encourages perfection. We’re in a system that encourages extreme amounts of productivity, that values work over our health. So we feel the need to fix. And when we’re talking about something as variable as mental health, we’re not going to be able to fix it. So, you know, add the layer of being a therapist and add the layer of being a high achiever, then add the layer of being in a country where the stigma is so high that you’re not able to break through the taboos of mental health. I’m not surprised.
Speaker A: Yeah. And that your services aren’t valued in your society. Right. So, like, we have that financial layer, and I think that’s for, like, across, probably across the world for therapists. I think it’s changing in some places, for sure, thankfully. But in India, like you’re saying, if we’re the last stop, and that last stop is like, ooh, like, you, you’re here now and then that service isn’t valued by society.
Speaker B: I have. So this is one more thing, right?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: You mentioned the hierarchy. Right. And among healthcare professionals were not even seen as healthcare professionals. Like, there will always be this psychiatrist versus psychologists. The debate between psychiatrists and psychologists in India, it’s always understood that psychiatrists will have a higher ground, a higher value then psychologists. And even there are. There are different psychologists, right. There are clinical psychologists, um, who can engage in testing, psychometric testing, and there are counseling psychologists. Right. And for clinical psychologists, um, they need to have an additional degree. An Mphil degree. Again, there’s that hierarchy.
Speaker A: What is it, the degree?
Speaker B: M. Phil.
Speaker A: M. Phil.
Speaker B: Yes. Master’s philosophy in traditional psychology. Yeah.
Speaker A: I’m a clinical psychologist by training, so I’m just interested because it’s my licensure. I’m like, what? You know, what are they doing? It’s interesting to know. Yeah. So I’m hearing, like, there’s this, and I think somewhat in the US too, because psychiatrists are an MD and they don’t really touch therapy, though. So I think people. Some do. I shouldn’t say that because some do, you know, like Irvin Yalom is a psychiatrist and he talks a lot about therapy, but I think that was probably the old guard, like, where psychiatrists still did some therapy. But I think there is somewhat of that hierarchy that still comes into play. And it sounds like where you are, it’s huge. Like, it’s. It’s very much like this is where you go first, and then I will refer you down to a therapist when we know the long term benefits. Is that actually psychotherapy is better if we’re looking at long term effects, right?
Speaker B: Absolutely.
Speaker A: So it seems like gaslight.
Speaker B: I know that. I know that clients need medications, right? But I’m so tired of having to justify therapy is a worthwhile investment of time and effort and money, because I’ve got people outside telling me that you’re charging too much and what’s the use? We’re just going to sit and talk anyway. Why do you even. I can’t. And just having to justify what you’re doing. And earlier, right now I’ve got a bit of experience, but earlier it was so hard because I almost believed that we’re just sitting and talking. Will this even bring about any change? And now we’re working with clients consistently, so it doesn’t get to me as much. And I’m also able to distance myself from those comments. Like, those comments are the reflection of their values and their knowledge and their skills, not of mine. Right.
Speaker A: Is that. Is that coming from clients or coming from, like, your family or people you know, or everybody? Okay.
Speaker B: Apart from. Apart from my clients who’ve been consistently with me for the longest time. Oh, my God. There are a lot of people who I have to refer out because they. They can’t exceed their budgets. And I’m out of their budget. Right. That’s completely okay. You’re allowed to have your budget for mental health. Absolutely. Right. India, mental health is a very new concept. People can’t afford it. The government has no allowances for it. Insurances have no allowance allowances for it. And so it’s absolutely out of your own pocket. So I get five.
Speaker A: So no one has insurance or government does not sponsor any type of therapy in India at all.
Speaker B: So in government hospitals. So if you go to government hospitals, there are psychologists there. But again, that’s one psychologist or maybe two. Three. I haven’t heard of hospitals having more than two or three psychologists at max. And the amount of people that come to a psychologist is huge.
Speaker A: Yeah. They’re probably just, you know, doing an evaluation, diagnosis and like, you know, here’s a couple strategies. Like.
Speaker B: Exactly.
Speaker A: Hope. Hope. That’s helpful.
Speaker B: Absolutely.
Speaker A: Which is good. I mean, we need that. We need like the assessment and like crisis work, but it’s very different from ongoing therapy. Right?
Speaker B: Absolutely. And you know, one more thing, right? If you, for India, if you have to go to a government hospital, if you’re, for example, if you, if you’re a manual laborer, if you work in construction, for example, you have to take a day off to come to a hospital, which means you lose out on the pay. You’re not going to come to a therapy session every week and lose out on a day’s pay. It’s not feasible. So they drop out. We do have NGO’s, non governmental organizations that do sponsor therapy sessions, but again, population is insane. The volume is just too much.
Speaker A: When that’s what you said you were doing, like as a student that you were required to work in the NGO. I’m just curious, how many, how many clients were you supposed to hold as a student per week? Or like how many sessions were you required to do?
Speaker B: I wasn’t in the NGO as a student. I was in the NGO. That was my first job.
Speaker A: So as a school or. Okay, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker B: The school was. The school. That’s the NGO was right after my masters. That was my first job. Honestly, I don’t remember as a student, it was far less. It was very considerate of our capacity. It wasn’t as much maybe, I want to say eight clients per week. I don’t think it was that much. I don’t remember a lot of it. But as a student, that was, that was the case. But when I worked, when I began working in the NGO, in the school setting that I was placed at, my school had 450 students. And I was the only mental health professional in the school.
Speaker A: That’s a lot.
Speaker B: It is a lot. I love the school, but oh, my God, I was on my foot the entire. On my feet the entire time.
Speaker A: Yeah, just crisis, like trying to put up fires probably. I would imagine with crisis to the next crisis.
Speaker B: If it was in some mental health crisis, it would have been something administrative. If it wasn’t that, then maybe I would just travel to find some time to get therapy sessions in, you know? Yeah, a lot of that.
Speaker A: So kind of like, let’s fast forward in time a little bit. So now you’re working, are you working in like a private practice with your.
Speaker B: Own practice now working with an organization? It’s a tiny organization. It functions like a group practice, but we just call it a private organization. Yeah. I chose this organization with a lot of intent because I liked the team, I liked the work culture, and I really liked their efforts for sustainability. I’m expected to see around 20 clients per week, and I can modify my own schedule, which is amazing. It really helps to have a life outside of work because of that modification. I’ve got supervisors who are considered of my own mental health. So I’m in a much better space right now as a therapist. And I’m really glad because I’ve completed over a year in the organization and just having this space to focus on therapy without other things coming in, without having to deal with fires, without having to deal with other tasks that only mental health professionals can do. I can just zone into therapy without having to worry about anything else. And that’s been really refreshing for me.
Speaker A: That’s great. That’s great. Yeah. And I’m just curious, like, you know, thinking of a therapist who might be in the midst of a burnout recovery, like, and they need some support. What things did you do to help yourself through that situation? What were kind of the pieces that helped you get through burnout?
Speaker B: Please get a home ******. Please get a therapist. Ive been with my therapist for over three, three and a half years. And when I tell you that women helped me save my life, i’m not joking. I needed a resourceful therapist who could be there for me. And I think that’s the best thing I’ve done. That’s easily the best investment of my money and my time.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker B: Can’t emphasize on this anymore. But, yeah, I think as a high achiever, I know it’s difficult to ask for help, but that’s one of the smartest things to do. And when I say ask for help, it’s all hands on deck. My mom and my grandparents that were phenomenal in helping me get through my point out. They knew that I have this tendency to want to be the best, to get everything done. And they were like, just focus on finishing your program. We will figure everything else out later. But just get yourself through this. Do the bare minimum that you have to get yourself through this. I had to rely on my friends a lot. I remember this one day where I was on the verge of tears, and my friend was just helping me through my dissertation because I couldn’t understand a single word. There was so much of brain fog that I couldn’t read a sentence without confusing myself. And this is really strange to me because I get things really quickly. That’s how I function as a high achiever. And this is like, am I brainstadz alive? Am I okay?
Speaker A: Yeah, I think you’re not alone in that. So I am a brain injury specialist as well. I came from a neuro rehab background, and so I worked with people with concussion and brain injuries, and I did this whole, like, episode on. Check it. I don’t know which one it is, but I did an episode on neurocognitive changes associated with burnout. It is real. So it is completely real that we are dealing with some cognitive difficulties as a result of burnout, because essentially, we have to think what our body is doing to help protect us. So we have put ourselves into chronic burnout and chronic fatigue. So our body is basically doing a dorsal vagal shutdown. It is like we are shutting down the inputs and you’re not reading anymore because we are done. You’ve put us through too much. So it’s. I think it’s largely like to think of, like, your body is trying to protect you. It is not your fault that your body wants to do that. Just a little aside. Sorry.
Speaker B: No, but that’s helpful, right? Because anything to reduce the blame that we feel, anything to reduce the pain that we feel for not being able to do what we’re supposed to do. Which kind of brings me to my next point, which is reduce your expectations. We’re not supposed to be having so many identities up and running at every single time without breaks. Do the bare minimum. And I know this comes from a place of privilege, because a lot of people can’t afford to do the bare minimum. If you have to work, you have to work. But do the bare minimum. Say you can. I really think my burnout forced me to look at what I was expecting out of myself and really assess if I needed that in my life or not. For example, an employer isn’t going to hire me just because I scored ten marks more in an assignment. They’re going to hire me because of what I bring to the table of who I am as a person, of how competent I am as a therapist. Why am I waiting for first place? This is no medal of honor.
Speaker A: Yeah, it’s so interesting, like, you know, being licensed, you know, post, like ten years now and, you know, when I, my burnout hit, I closed my practice and I applied to some jobs and like, no one asked for my transcript, so no one knows, like my grade point average. They wanted to know, are you a licensed professional? What is your experience? And then what do you like to talk to? Like, how are you as a person? You know, how is it nice to talk to you? Do you seem like you would fit into our culture? Right? It’s not about the grades, it’s not about our resumes.
Speaker B: You know, I wish I heard believe that when I was with my masters because it was so hard to let go of that. And my burnout was just like, no, that’s not happening.
Speaker A: I really like those recommendations, you know, like, so let go of those expectations. I often tell people, like, we need to figure out what you actually, you need to let go of first before you can think of what you’re going to move to. So that’s kind of falls right into that with knowing that getting a therapist, asking for help, that was also like part of my mix too. Like, I still see my therapist, she’s shout out, you know who you are if you listen to my podcast. I don’t know, I totally showed her my podcast and I’m like, you know, I won’t name you or anything, but you’re awesome. So, yeah, all of the therapists, of therapists, you’re awesome. Thank you for supporting our work because it’s a trickle down. Like, all these ripples are going through the therapy world. So I think it’s beautiful. Unfortunately, we have to wrap up today. I can’t believe it. It’s just been so fun talking to you, but I usually, and this might be a time to talk about play.
Speaker B: I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Jump in one last thing. All you high achiever therapists, I need you to not read up on productivity. Please do not go deep into productivity Reddit and figure out how to improve your performance at this time. Burnout does not mean that you’re supposed to push harder. That’s it.
Speaker A: Yeah. So ditch productivity. It’s not for you. And burnout, it’s not. I always tell people, like, how are you going to find some ease in your day? How can it be easier today for you? That’s what we need if we’re burnout. I want you to answer that question.
Speaker B: So when I was bang in the middle of burnout, I had this series called 100 days of something nice. And every day, I would take a picture or a video of something nice that was happening around me again where in the middle of the pandemic, there’s not a lot going on. Things for me that was something nice for me included a good cup of tea, a conversation with my mom, maybe something I doodled, something funny that I saw, right. And I would post those photos on my personal Instagram every single day. It was just about finding those little moments in your day. That was what, savoring, experimental, experimenting a little, just being curious, leaning into what’s happening and what’s working for you. So I knew in a day, if I could figure out one thing that was working for me, that was it. That meant the day was productive. I had achieved everything I needed to achieve, and everything else was a bonus. I love that myself, out of a burnout, through those systems, through those projects that I had for myself, bare minimum, easy, and most importantly, something fun and playful.
Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. So my last question is, how are you finding joy today?
Speaker B: Unlearning everything I’ve learned. We still let go of things that don’t serve me, and that’s really hard because I want it all. I want to do it all. I want to sugar it all out. I’m focusing my energy on things that work for me and things that really align with what I’m doing, which is being a therapist, teaching at a college, writing on LinkedIn. Right. And I want a life apart from work. And that’s my biggest source of joy. I go to the gym. That’s a lot of fun. Sometimes I suck at it, but that’s okay. I make really amazing cups of tea. I add ginger, add lemongrass, and indian chai is different, and it’s amazing.
Speaker A: It sounds amazing.
Speaker B: If I could make a cup for everybody in the world, I would.
Speaker A: I think that could be a therapy. You know, like, I will make you the best cup of indian chai you’ve ever had, and we’re just gonna have it and, like, savor it in that. The whole therapy?
Speaker B: Yes, I’m going to do that, actually, now that you.
Speaker A: That’s a whole intervention. Yeah. I mean, that’s great.
Speaker B: I do well.
Speaker A: Where can people find you if they want to reach out and talk with you about your story and about what’s going on with you and your world?
Speaker B: LinkedIn. I’m predominantly on LinkedIn, and you can find me as Arya Prasad. I can send a link across if that’s easy for you.
Speaker A: Yeah, I’ll put a link in our show notes so that people could, could find you there and follow you. And I love the conversations we’ve had on there. They’ve been great. And I love what you’re putting out into the world. So thank you so much for being on the show today. I’m sure that people are going to get so much out of this.
Speaker B: Thank you, Jen. This is really, really fun for me. Thank you for listening to the joy after Burnout podcast. Be the first to hear new episodes by following the podcast in your podcast player. This is an informational podcast only.
Speaker A: Any information expressed by the host or.
Speaker B: Guest is not a substitute for legal.
Speaker A: Medical, or financial advice.
