 Welcome back, dear viewers of Imam Hussein TV. I hope you have a wonderful morning joining us this morning. The Daily Dwarth, as ever, beautiful. We were discussing the Ziyara of Father of the Zahara, so I hope you benefited from that. I personally did. And now we're going to be introducing and welcoming our next special guest on the specialist. You may recognise him from our previous seasons, Brother Bilal Ali, which is a bit odd because now I'm going to be interviewing him and having a discussion about various topics relating to our everyday lives, things like stress, you know, managing things, and that's a particularly good topic today. But in the future, days will also be looking into other topics. So, with that, salam aleykum, Brother Ali. Salam. How are you doing? Hamdela, good. Thank you, brother. How are you doing? Pleasure to be here. A bit unusual in this seat, but all the same. It's good. Well, you know, I mean, when we used to film together as presenters, I know that you have a wealth of knowledge to do with, you know, your background. And obviously you can explain perhaps to our viewers what you specialise in before we get into the topics. But it's nice to be able to hear your sort of input and expertise on topics such as stress. And, you know, we'll be going into things of how food affects us in the future mornings and other very interesting topics. So just briefly, what's your sort of background? I know a little stuff, not a wealth of knowledge, no pressure. But, yeah, my background is in mental health. So I am a psychotherapist and a trained councillor as well. And I've practised various psychological models of talking therapy. But mainly, what is a rational emotive behaviour therapy, but more commonly known as CBT, a branch of CBT, and also existential talking therapy as well. OK. So we'll be hopefully delving into that brain of yours and getting some information, hopefully can help our viewers. So today we're going to, this morning we're going to speaking about stress. It seems that it's something that coherently is impacting most of us in our daily lives. We're becoming busier, our lives are packed with activities and responsibilities and really the wind down of, you know, managing that stress and knowing how to manage it and even how to recognise stress. It's not something that we're, you know, it will come naturally to a lot of us. So if I was to ask you how, what is stress and how would you recognise what the symptoms are within yourself? So what is stress? We could describe stress as not being able to cope or not coping in a healthy way in terms of our life responsibilities and our life duties and just in terms of our daily living. We have this table in front of us and it's bearing some beautiful fruit, which is of a weight that is OK for the table to sustain. However, if we were to put objects of a heavier nature, a kettlebell, maybe 10 kilo kettlebell or of 100 kilos of weight or something of that nature, it may start to bowl, may start to show the signs of stress of, you know, towards cracking. And that's what happens to us as human beings as an analogy that we show the signs but we don't bowl as a table does. But we can also break, as we say, when stress is actually too much, you know, we have broken human beings in one respect in terms of emotionally, psychologically, cognitively, you know, people do break or people show stress. Understandably, because again we are expected to just cope, aren't we, carry on with life's demands. Demands and then any time trauma can come into our life. So how would somebody recognise, so that table, you know, it's such an obvious thing it would break, you know, that would not counter the, you know, the additional weight on it. But as human beings we're quite resilient and we can be quite resilient to understanding our own emotions and how we portray stress so we could even deny it to ourselves that no, no, I'm fine. How would somebody be able to recognise in themselves that perhaps I need some help here or I need to understand what I'm going through. OK, so let's go back, let's use another metaphor, another analogy. There's the idea of a stress cup that everybody has. And so there's normal challenges, normal problems, normal responsibilities, like living conditions, if you will depend on the type of lifestyle that we have. Some people have more triggers or more events that could cause or leave somebody's stress cup to become that bit more full and that bit more full and that bit more full. Now what we naturally have as human beings, religious people, people who are non-religious, but just as human beings in general, we have different ways that we relieve stress. Some are more questionable than others in terms of some people using various substances to relieve stress, which is another subject for the 21st century, which is a rise and which is causing more problems. But let's just think of a Muslim person, for example, a religious person, that they may feel stressed. They may turn to the book of Allah and read particular passages from the Qur'an to try and ease their psychological state, ease their heart because we think of the Qur'an as a medicine. Some people may exercise, some people may choose to share the negative experience they had with a loved one or a trusted confidant. And then these types of practices reduce the stress in that cup. But what happens is sometimes people either don't find an effective outlet to reduce that thing that is filling the cup. It's always a support network. Yes, exactly. A coping mechanism, coping strategy, support network. Or sometimes the event is of that magnitude a major life event that the person's stress cup may fill up and overflow and then they're unable to function cohesively. They're unable to live that productive life. In fact, they may go into, for want of a better term, regressive or unproductive kind of self. Okay, so you're saying that anything could happen at any point and when it's when the cup, almost another analogy is that when the cup starts to fill up and overflow. That means that's the sign of you not coping. We need to step back at that point and then just sort of see how we can recede that level of water, like if the cup is water in it. What it is is about self-awareness. Because the question is, do people know their triggers? Do people know when they're not coping? For example, because in many cultures, for example, not to make everything about gender but in terms of masculinity as men, we're taught throughout various cultures that regardless of the difficulties, we suck it up, we get on with it. And to kind of acknowledge our vulnerability is a sign of weakness so we can sometimes go into denial. So you find somebody having a major problem in their marriage, stress cup gets a bit more full, is a major event at work, maybe the possibility of redundancy or having to take a post either far away, which means more travel less time from the home or at less pay and we're already struggling or finding challenges financially. And that fills the stress cup that bit more. What happens is that a person doesn't seek intervention and trust with somebody that they can offload this stress, for example, or find a healthy avenue. If, for example, they decide to bottle it up and just get on with it, but then they're at night, they're sleeping less or they're experiencing broken sleep. Or instead of their normal between six and eight hours, which is recommended, for example, by the NHS, they start to sleep maybe two, three hours. They barely fall asleep at night and by time they fall asleep, it's time to get up. Or their sleep is continuously broken because they're ruminating and chewing over and mulling over these different stressful events and factors in their life. Now that lack of sleep, in terms of the top of the list, in terms of what can unsettle a human being is like poor sleep pattern or lack of sleep. So poor sleep pattern is one a sign for many people I'm not sleeping well. But also it can be another cause of compounding the stress. So it might not be an original issue, but it can be that sign, but also a trigger for more filling of the cup, so to speak. OK. So that's one recognisable effect of stress. What are the other things that are quite common that you come across in people that? Common. Things that I come across in my practice in my clinic is, for example, people having physical pains or conditions, but they've been, for example, checked out by their medical GP. And there's no physical reason why they'll be, for example, experiencing these type of back pains or shoulder pains or things of that nature. So in terms of physical aches and pains, people can even get stomach ulcers in extreme cases, but I'm triggered by. By stress. In extreme cases, loss of hair, people skin, poor skin, people break out in hives, or if they have, let's say, tender skin, a susceptible thing is I'm not sleeping when I've got these spots in my face. Not that they're breaking down in the extremist of sense, but these are like telltale signs that they are really under pressure. People can become low in mood. People can affect their self-esteem, irritability. So when probably most of us can recognise this, if we look back in our life at times when we were, we didn't maybe know it at the time, but we reckon, wow, it must have been pretty stressed because we would snap at things that, you know, react negatively out of thought. So because the cup is nearly full, it's, let's say the straw that broke the camel's back. So it's the thing that normally the children usually come in and ask, can we watch a particular programme, and you find yourself reacting with hostility to the children or snappy with your partner or the people closest to you, customers if you work in the public sector, whatever it is. These are signs that something under the surface is starting to come to the surface, but there's probably an issue going on. So that's quite, for instance, you could have various, like you're saying, a stomach ulcer would be diagnosed by a specialist, in terms of you could feel the symptoms, you could feel the aches and pains and understand the low mood. And that's quite worrying because that would impact your daily life, wouldn't it? On top of the worry that you already have that has triggered these side effects. But I think what's concerning about stress is that it can come in so many different ways, can't it? It can emerge in a person. So for instance, that was their all pretty much physical ailments that may not have a direct diagnosis, but as in you could have diabetes, you could have an ulcer. A stomach is a major place to have a major place. What about things like the impact on mental health or the fact that if it's impacted somebody, that means spiritually if their mood affects their faith, for instance, how would you say that? Do you see examples like that as well in your opinion? Yeah, and it can work in two ways because for some people, the human being is such a subjective creature, if I can put it that way, where there are common things which we can see as common stressors, a breakup of marriage, a bereavement, loss of a job, money. Money is a big stressor in the 21st century. I say 21st century, probably in the 20th or 48th, but in terms of resources, in terms of survival, in terms of maintaining your station, money is a big issue. But essentially, there are common stressors, but we're so subjective in terms of our interpretation of life or because of our psychological makeup, how we've been brought up, the kind of life events that we've been exposed to, our ability to solve problems, so our kind of psychosocial resources in terms of dealing with difficulties is quite subjective. But as I said, money, relationships, bereavement, those are some of the more common ones. Just quickly, I think we've just got under a minute left, but what would you say to somebody who recognises some of the elements you said and the signs, what would you recommend as a practitioner to what would people say? Recommendation, if somebody is feeling stressed, I think that there are, one, there's articles or there are apps available, there's information online in terms of for the more younger people in terms of those apps to deal with things like mindfulness and coping with stress. For people who are not so app and electronically orientated, I'm saying that it's good to speak to somebody that you trust just as a confidant. If you feel like it's a bigger or a deeper issue, seek professional help in terms of maybe a GP could be one of your first ports of call to see if you can be referred for, say, talking therapy for counselling or even just self-help literature that's available as well in terms of books that you can go through various things to, you know, coping mechanisms of exercise, watching what you eat, being particular about your sleep, taking time out for rest and to internalise. I know that the sallah is supposed to, ideally it's supposed to provide that for us, but sometimes stress can knock us off of our deal. And it's okay, isn't it? Because even these remedies that you're saying, they're part of the help that we have through theories and evidence. They are a part of that supportive network to get you back completely, and it's no harm or a shame to actually approach those remedies. But thank you so much. I think we're out of time now. Wow, that's quick. Always a pleasure though. Always a pleasure. No, thank you so much, and I hope that the one lesson people do take away from what you've said in the remedies is that not to ignore the signs of stress and really deal with it before the cup is really overflowing and things get worse. So, inshallah, we'll see you another morning. Have a blessed day. Inshallah, thanks. And now we are going to go and see what Fahima and Sana are cooking in the kitchen.