Soul of A Believer

Sumayya. 22. Twitter: @sumz96

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The Month of Ramadhan

The Month of Ramadhan

For those of you who don’t know, we are now in the month of Ramadhan, a month which is celebrated by all Muslims around the world. People commonly know it as the month where we fast from sunrise to sunset, refraining from food/drink (no, not even water), but also from things like swearing, losing our patience and arguing. For Muslims though, it is a lot more than that.

(There’s a wonderful article

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Collective Resilience

I revisited one of my modules from my MSc the other day – disaster response and prevention. I remember picking it because it seemed so obscure in comparison to my usual interests and it ended up being my favourite module. It was basically all about how people respond to disasters (natural disasters e.g. Hurricane Katrina, but also attacks e.g. 9/11 and pandemics/outbreaks e.g. SARS), public…

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Productivity (Or Lack Thereof)

I’ve had a conversation on productivity with several different people over the last few weeks. The consensus is that no one feels as though they are being productive enough whilst in lockdown, myself included, which I thought was interesting given that we are in a pandemic.

Life is so fast paced. We are constantly working, planning and striving to achieve in restricted time frames. It’s…

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Loyalty

Having more time than usual on my hands, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Just to put it out there – this is not a good thing. I’ve been spiralling a lot when it comes to thinking about past relationships (mainly friendships) and their breakdowns (usually for one reason, but let’s not open up that can of worms today), and I have come to the major realisation that in the aftermath of these…

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Managing Anxiety

Naturally, everyone’s anxiety is pretty high at the moment. Many people are working from home and self-isolating, and everyone is (or should be, lol) social distancing. It doesn’t matter if you’re anxious about catching the virus yourself or passing it on to others, the anxiety is real and intense. We have been gathering anxiety management tips to pass on to our patients at work (and to use for…

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The Self-Isolation Life

I thought I would add to the plethora of posts about the craziness that is currently going on with COVID-19, and write a little about how self-isolation is going for me. For some context – we are on a temporary rota at work so we work one week from home then the other we are based in the clinic.

I made the decision to not go home to London to stay with my family, mainly because I am still going…

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Valid Pain

I planned for my next post to be about culture clash, in some attempt for a theme around my move. But to be honest, this is going to be one of those impulsive rambles that I need to just get this out of my system as a reminder to myself. I have this vague rule for a vague reason of not really looking through things I write in my journals unless I absolutely have to, so here we are.

I really need…

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Moving On

Okay, a lot has happened. Make a cuppa, get comfy and let me give you a lovely little update on my life.

So as part of my very structured ten year plan I’ve had since I was 16, getting a job as an assistant psychologist has always been key to my career goals, knowing it will be a huge part in hopefully getting me onto the doctoral programme qualifying me to become a clinical psychologist. The…

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Self-Advocacy

Recently, I’ve realised that I have been really fighting for myself. I don’t think I’ve ever been the kind of person who let people walk all over me, but I have had times when I have gone along with what others seem to think is best for me, rather than standing up for what I know actually is. But no, I’m tired of that now. I’m tired of letting people think that they can make decisions for me,…

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Being An Adult

This adult life has hit me all at once. Full time work is weird. What’s weirder though is how much I’m loving it. I’m working with adolescents in an inpatient psychiatric hospital and boy am I loving it. I mean, it’s hard. I cry a lot and very rarely leave things at work but I’m learning.

I’ve been thinking – this might be it. I think this is my calling – working with teens. As if I don’t get…

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The Think and Judge Cycle

The Think and Judge Cycle

Recently, I’ve been overwhelmed by self-judgement. I feel like every time I do something, I’m filled with negative thoughts, judging myself for every movement I make. Example – you know that horrible moment when you think someone is talking to you but they’re talking to the person behind you? Right, so I was just at the wedding of one of my closest friends and had that moment when I thought my…

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The Trouble of a Fixed Mind

Following on from my last post about my summer job on NCS The Challenge, I wanted to write more about something I was reminded of in one of the workshops. The facilitator – Ingrid – led a public speaking workshop and managed to engage 60 young people stuck in a classroom for about 6 hours. She also managed to engage me, and all of the staff. She briefly spoke about fixed and growth mindsets,…

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NCS The Challenge

This month, I worked on the National Citizen Service programme “The Challenge” as an assistant programme leader. My role was largely pastoral care and behaviour management, making sure that 60 young people, aged 15-17 years, were all supported, included and happy during the two residential weeks. The first week – Cornwall, activity centre in the middle of nowhere, camping all week, water sports,…

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How to Love

So recently I read this book – “How to Love” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

It made me realise something – I don’t love as deeply as I thought I did. I think I’ve talked about how I care for people very deeply, almost too much and how intense it can be. But on reflection, do I really love? Do I love mindfully and unconditionally? I don’t think I do.

There are so many things that we do in our daily lives and…

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Messing Up Pt 2

Messing Up Pt 2

So it turns out that I’m getting better at messing up, hence a part 2 for this. Someone told me the other day that I have very high expectations of people and that might be why I have so many unstable relationships. I’ve put a lot of work into developing my understanding of boundaries, both professionally and personally, but I still struggle to form “normal” relationships. I put everything I have…

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Who Am I?

Sometimes, I wonder who I am. Identity has always been a pretty big thing for me. That’s why for my undergraduate dissertation, I partly studied the link between religious identity and psychological well-being (something I try to go on about as much as I can so it doesn’t feel like a wasted 6 months. In case you were wondering, my results were significant – exciting times). I guess it is…

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Small Talk

I know I’ve been talking a lot about meaningful relationships and conversations recently, but it’s just such a huge thing in my life at the moment. I was at a university event the other day, mainly because my friend was co-running and there was free pizza, for mental health awareness day. It was basically a chance for people to just sit and discuss anything. It was so nice meeting people who were…

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