Rethinking Mental Health: Real Talk, Real Healing with Dr. Ahmed Al-Katib

Rethinking Mental Health: Real Talk, Real Healing with Dr. Ahmed Al-Katib

[Music] This is your host Dr. Tony Mitchell from the mental health and wellness show. Today I have the pleasure of introducing Dr. Ahmed Alcatib. He is a boardcertified psychiatrist and founder of psychiatry in motion, a practice grounded in the idea that mental health isn’t boring, it’s just been told wrong. Born in Baghdad and shaped by life across cultures, he brings a raw global lens to topics most people tiptoe around. Dr. Alcatib speaks bluntly about the things that truly affect us. Gender roles, racial and wealth disparities, social media, and the quiet ways FOMO and loneliness creep into everyday life. His work blends science, story, and movement to help people feel seen without sugar coating what they’re up against. He’s not here to pander. He’s here to say the quiet parts out loud with care and clarity. With no further ado, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I had to smile when we were talking before we went live, well recorded, just many of our similarities. And I know especially for those who can relate to our stories, they’re in for a treat. And perhaps those people who are completely naive to the realities of some of us more melanated individuals face, it may be a eye openening for you or some may feel denial or feel uncomfortable, but that’s okay. We’re here to have a conversation and keep it real without sugar coating. Sugar coating has come up twice now. This is uh I’m gonna like it. I always say that people sugar coat the sugar coating. We don’t even sugar coat things anymore. We sugar coat the sugar coating like donuts. We were talking about donuts before. It’s like sugarcoed sugar. Then you throw in the calories in there. Now it’s only 420. Before it was 480, 4 500. It’s a good way of sugar coating also the fact that it’s unhealthy for us. But it’s, you know, no one just says, “Hey, you know what? It’s delicious.” If you’re going to treat yourself, eat it. But don’t do it too much. Well, and if you’re going to eat something, make sure it’s yummy, you’ll see. Because why have something gross? If you’re going to enjoy it, enjoy it. Absolutely. I tell people when I want to lose weight, all this stuff. Like the reason why most people don’t stick to diets or anything like that is because they go from I enjoy what I’m eating to now I have to eat this bland stuff all the time and everything. If you don’t like doing it, you’re not going to do it. So do the bland stuff, make it a little delicious, and then once in a while treat yourself. I love how you said make it a little delicious because I’m like the little the little voice inside of me, that quiet part, it’s called seasoning, bro. Seasoning. You can make it taste good. You can make it taste delicious. You got you can switch up. Add something else besides salt, pepper, and paprika. Maybe chili flakes. You could you could go you go wild. You add cumin. You can add turmeric. Turmeric is actually kind of good for you. I love turmeric. But just be careful. That’s going to get on your clothes and your pans and your utensils and everything else. But yeah, your counter tops. Be careful of that curry. I think you got you got all these spice blends. Just go crazy. It’s a little bit extra salt. Just drink some more water. You’re good. Exactly. Awesome. Is there anything you’d like to share with our listeners so that they can kind of understand you a little more as we dive into this conversation? I’m I tend to be all over the place. So, it’s uh it’s going to be on us to kind of get here. But for me in general, so I’m a psychiatrist. I’m Canadian. I grew up in Baghdad, moved to Canada, went to medical school in Poland. Now I live in Brooklyn, uh New York, and I’ve been here for about almost eight years. And I just started a private practice. And you know what the idea is called psychiatric emotion. The whole idea is if I think that if people move they learn things about themselves and they will feel better. Far too often we’re stuck just in our own heads not doing anything feeling stuck because we’re not moving physically, mentally, spiritually rel in in our relationships and we feel stagnated and then we’re like what do I do? But if you look at it from the grand lens, what you’re doing is you’re sitting in one place or in the same kind of habits and you’re just thinking and thinking and thinking. There’s no movement. Move your body. Get out of your head. And also like there’s so many metaphors between what you do when you move. You know, when you how you lament go waking up in the morning and going on a run or doing this and doing that and that’s just the same approach we take to everything else we do. a resident actually, was it a resident or student told me this um a few months ago, almost a year, she said she saw this on like a yoga um studios wall. It’s like how we do anything is how we do everything. Yeah, I’ve heard that many times. How we do one thing is how do everything. It’s so true, right? It’s so true. So moving, getting off our behinds, getting off the couch. It’s interesting how we have a society we watch all this like for example football or basketball all these die hard fans who are like could name every player every player I couldn’t name any of any above but they don’t move we just like we just bge as a society I think they say 90% of American kids don’t even meet the minimum required activity and that’s shocking especially when we were kids I don’t know we I did that minimum amount like a day just getting to school, right? Right. No, you got to you got to get moving. I mean, it’s also like fun to get out and move around. I mean, if we’re going to talk about kids, we’re going to be here for a while. The kids I I I’m scared for kids nowadays, to be honest. Uh but I mean, I guess every generation’s as they go on, they’re like, I’m scared for kids with the with the newspapers, letters, radios, TVs, internet, phones. So, I think it’s natural for kids right now. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, we’re humans tend to get through things. But I mean I I don’t think we’re all ready for what’s going to happen in the next, you know, 5, 10, 15 years. I mean, for the most part, I think what we’re really missing nowadays is like we don’t move too much. We care too we we know too much about what other people are doing. We care too much about what other people doing and think of us and thinking overall and we’re just just stewing in angst and anxiety and burning ourselves out. It’s a it’s a it’s a wild time to be alive right now. It definitely is. But you know, for those of us who are like taking maybe a holistic lens, who are have the knowledge and are practicing what we preach, it’s wild, but it’s almost predictable. Like, do you ever feel like you’re just there like sitting almost like in a movie eating a popcorn and you’re watching what’s happening and you’re like, “And this is what’s going to happen next.” And wow, that’s what happened next. Because these are predictable patterns. Like history repeats itself. psychology and sociology add all the all theies together and just you just know like we’ve been through multiple movies like you said you were born in the big bag I’m an immigrant too like I was born in Nigeria moved all over the world seeing lots of history seeing society change seen norms change looked at messaging in the world and how we’ve just so many things it’s it’s it’s predictable but not everyone sees that and that’s why we’re here having these true conversations that are not filtered not sugar coat about it. I’m not approved by any major news organization. We’re just being real. And I thought to ourselves, I mean, and that’s what people kind of resonate to and that’s I’m sure that’s why your audience resonates and and listens to you. And I think one of the best things I could have done was actually get into psychiatry. I can understand, sympathize, and empathize with everything any and I’m not surprised, right? you know, and you say the different backgrounds, everything else like I’m not going to get to political, but you know, the it’s the US, at least here, people like, “Oh, I can’t believe this is happening and that’s happening, this is happening.” And I’m like, “Well, you know what? This is I’ve seen this before.” I mean, you know, I was I was brought up in, you know, under Saddam, you know, I didn’t know too much, right? I didn’t know like, but you know, you had you couldn’t say his name. You couldn’t say anything bad about him or else someone would come in and snatch you off the streets and you’ll never get be heard from again. Or I mean this is the part that I hated him for the most and this is like a kid’s perspective. You know we would he would change the national anthem several times and before you get into class in the mornings you had to line up with your classmates and then you all had to sing and then we go around you know see checking your your fingernails if they’re too long or you know whatever it might be and you had to sing it. If you’re off rhythm or offbeat you get smacked. And I’m like dude can you stop? Just choose one anthem. Why do I got to learn different anthems for you just to feel good about yourself? Like I’m good. Like you know the last one was good. Last one had a nice beat. We we’re good with it. But it’s like repeating itself. And I work in ERS. I work in at Bri practice. You see the same pattern over and over again. Yeah. I’m very comfortable when someone comes in, I can just okay, this is what’s happening. And then they’re like, well, he just tell me what’s up. How, you know, what’s going on? And a lot of times they think if I just tell them what’s going on, that’s instantly it’s going to change. There’s there’s a little gap in there that needs, you know, change. Takes a while. Yeah, it’s it’s habits. It’s motivation. It’s repetition. It’s momentum. It’s failing and not fall into the same traps. And it takes a while. Yeah. No, there’s patterns. There’s patterns in nature. There’s pattern in life. And I agree with you. It’s not nothing is surprising me right now. Nothing. And I remember as a kid when Saddam Hussein was around and we used to chant songs about him. I was in England that around that time and more so I can’t Yeah, we Yeah. English love chants. The English love chant. They’ll ch Yeah. Every every team’s got like every like footballer or soccer team has like 1,200 chance. Every player’s got a chance. If something happens in the news, they got a chance. If there’s like a new like, you know, fish and chip spots that opens up with Kirby, they got a chance. Yeah, there was one from Maradona, the the football player. There was one for it might be during like an Iraq game or like somebody that has like a like a Arab name like what I’ll just go with it. Yeah, they’re they’re they’re a fun bunch in the UK. So yeah, no I I feel you and I and I know right now mental health psychiatry is playing out on a global stage, right? At least this is my thought. You can share your thoughts. But it’s we see what we see certain traits, we see certain behaviors and then we see actions because actions don’t happen out of a vacuum. Whether it’s leaders, whether it’s individuals who choose to move or not, it didn’t just happen like it’s not a surprise. It first starts here what we think of and then what we things we think becomes actions. So you know back to activity if I agree activity is so important. So many of us are not moving majority are not moving and it’s just feeding into so many of the crisis we have right now. Now back to the fun stuff mental health. I know when I was in residency, it was very clear to my attending that whenever there was a mental health patient, the attendings would like they would grown. They be like, “Oh, mental health.” Like my attendings like, “Come on, bro.” They didn’t even try to pretend like they didn’t like this topic. And it’s not surprising that many people don’t like this topic. But surprise, surprise, I’m one of the family doctors who currently embraces mental health in my practice. And that’s actually an area of interest for me. But people say that mental health is boring, right? They’re like, “Oh, psychiatry. You’re just a guy, you’re on a couch, patients on the couch, you’re like, you know, this Fidian kind of thing like talk about whatever.” What are we getting wrong? And how would you tell it differently? Because we definitely believe that the messaging is off. For sure. Yeah. I mean, so generally, you know, through medicine, oh, that’s that’s psych. Call psych. The the joke is patient has feelings consult psych and and funny enough that actually happens quite a bit bit of time. Mental health is huge now. I mean the pandemic caused an eruption and I didn’t know I mean you know when I went to psychiatric residency my parents kept asking me even in my third year like isn’t it too is it too late to you just just switch residencies you know just switch to another program like I’m almost done you know like especially coming from you know like a let’s say minority community or anything else but it’s exploding because people are now realizing slowly whether they want to or not that emotions rule their lives or can rule their lives and ruin their lives um but if harness and actually understood. You can actually, you know, get you good, get you right. But it’s being told wrong. You know, everyone thinks I got to be crazy. I’m not crazy. I also I hate that word. I hate that word. It’s like I I got to be crazy. I don’t want to see a psychiatrist. I don’t want to see the therapist. Oh, it just means this that. And part of the part of the problem is the messaging. You know, we think like you said, you got to sit down and, you know, someone’s got to evaluate you or you feel like you go there and someone listens to you or they just kind of just openly give you a hug. Oh, you know, it’s okay. It’s this, it’s that. Some people are really turned off by that. Yeah. Extremely turned off like, well, oh, I’m here to support you and all this stuff. That’s nice. It’s good for certain people, certain styles, just like any I don’t I don’t want I don’t want to use the word product, but it’s kind of let’s say let’s call it a product. It’s certain ways and formats are better for certain people. Yes. The other way is, you know, like everything’s okay. Everything you’re doing is okay, everybody everyone’s problem, you know, but some people just need to be told like, hey, you know, this is the problem. this is what you’re doing and this is emotions are destroying your life. Even for even for my patients that have had traumatic events happen to them like you know sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglect, all this stuff, they don’t even tell mental health professionals about it because they don’t want to be told, “Oh, I’m so sorry it happened to you.” Yeah, it’s this that they don’t want to feel pity. Yes. You know, people tell me it’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry that happened to you. That sucks. That sucks. All right. How do we fix it? How do we fix what you And they’re like, “Oh, I I want to get over it. Like, I want to like, yeah, I gotta talk about it. We got to talk about it. We got to make it like we got beat it down so that any the moment you think of it, it doesn’t cause this giant eruption inside you.” And then we repeat that over and over again and then you’re good. Yes. 100%. I agree. And I like how you mentioned how you don’t like the word the term crazy because people think, “Oh, mental health people, people have mental problems. They’re crazy. They’re the ones shooting people up and killing people and doing all these these things in the world.” No. As long as you have a beating heart and your brain is functioning, you will at some point have a mental health challenge because it doesn’t have to be diagnosible. It could just be like I said, we have feelings. That’s part of mental health and it’s normal. So what how we want to respond to these feelings or if we want to make these feelings like the defining moments or experiences defining moments of our lives, that’s a choice. We can actually like stay in that mode of feeling bad for ourselves, feeling pity for ourselves. which we’re not minimizing bad things happen to good people. Or we can take that situation, those situations, grow from it, learn from it. Someone once told me and in this training, he’s like, look at some of the hardest things you’ve gone through in life and ask yourself, what do I need to do to make that experience worth it? Now, he’s not necessarily talking about the worst things ever, but at least like the average garden variety problems that we have as humans. Like, what do you need to do to make that experience a positive experience? Not like something make something good from it. We’re not, again, we’re not minimizing challenges, but we can’t just stay stuck. It doesn’t help anyone. We can’t change. No, it it really doesn’t. It’s uh at the end of the day, our misunderstanding is out. We think that our thoughts, we think that we’re in control ultimately, right? We think, you know, just because we think and can, you know, control our bodies and pay with our credit cards, whatever it might be, that we’re, you know, we have control over our lives. We really don’t. For the most part, we’re just kind of floating along the river of life. And the mo what you could do is decide which direction you kind of want to go in the river. Uh if you want to stop a little bit, if you want to have a picnic, what you do on the boat. But at the same time, if you don’t know that emotions have control, can’t affect you, if your thoughts can’t affect you, and the fact that you know what we do, our habits do affect us, you’re in for a terrible, terrible, terrible ride, especially when very traumatic things or difficult things happen to you, whether that be loss of a parent, loss of a loved one, which is, I think, one of the most defining things in anyone’s life. Um I’ve recently lost my father last year and I learned that firsthand and I was like wow this is that grief is grief is rough and you said you know you know Victor Frankle has a a famous quote if you anyone has a why they can endure anyh how yes that’s so it’s and everyone looking for a purpose if you go through something why suffer through it if you’re not going to get something out of it yes and part of in order for us to even get to that stage, we have to number one admit to ourselves that we’re suffering and we don’t have we’re not equipped with the tools in order for us to get out of it. Whether that be just acknowledging that we are being bombarded and overwhelmed by emotions that we don’t even know how to name. And I don’t even want to get started on that. It’s like, you know, a lot of my patients, I give them a thing called a feelings wheel. It’s a it’s a it’s like three circles. a smaller circle uh in the middle then branches out and then the last one kind of has more nuanced and more descriptive terms for the you know the the emotions. Most people just tell me I feel fine, I feel good, I feel bad. Those are great judgments. Those are not emotions. And I’m really I’m on people’s cases about this. But if you master the ability, the awareness to kind of look inside yourself and know what emotion you’re feeling and know that that emotion is going to color the way you think, the way you act, and the way you move, you’re you’re already set. Like I mean you’re like 50% of the way there. That’s so true. People ask someone like, “Hey buddy, how are you?” They’re what? They say, “Fine. Fine. Good. Oh, you know I’m here. I’m here.” Yeah. It’s all good. The real dream. Okay. But the funny thing is in life is that I’ve done this before. I’m a little cheeky and I keep it real. People will ask me, “How are you doing?” And I’ll say more than just the fine. And it’ll be funny. People like, “Oh, I don’t want to go.” Like it’s like I just don’t really mean it. Like you know what I mean? We’re so weird as a society that way. We ask but it’s empty. It’s almost like a greeting. Like in the UK it took me a while to understand. It’s like, “Hey, you all right?” And I would I’m like, “I’m good. How are you doing?” And they just stop. It’s like, “Oh, whoa.” Yeah. You know. Yeah. And in New York, hey, how you doing? And then you just walk by. It’s just, you know, it becomes like, “Hey, I asked you how you’re doing. I don’t want an answer. I just want you to know that I said hello and I quote care and then I’m just gonna walk by.” Yeah. You know, that’s so true. definitely should have lived in the UK, too. But, you know, I often find and I’m sure you feel the same way that sometimes men seem to struggle with this and it’s because you’re you’re a dude, you get to speak for some speak for the men because we don’t often get male psychiatrists on this show. It’s usually female. Why do you think so many men struggle with emotional intelligence in their feelings? Now, I I say this with all due respect, but it it’s an important societal issue because men and women play pivotal roles in society, but I find like so many men are like emotionally constipated for lack of better words. Like they get that out like why I mean it’s that’s actually a good a good metaphor. Actually, recently I was I was walking in a park in in New York and I I stopped uh to ask some guy how he was taking he was recording videos and it was something about dating and then ended up recording something and it went pretty viral about emotional intelligence in men and I just said like emot men suck at dating blanket you know kind of term but ultimately it you know humans in general are like it goes back to what I was saying before humans in general don’t a lot of times don’t know how they feel they have a much we have a much better grasp on how other people might be feeling might be thinking than we do on ourselves. women tend to generally have better emotional awareness, emotional intelligence because that’s, you know, it’s more like expected like, oh yeah, women are are emotional, right? So then, fine, I’m going to I’m going to live my life and actually cater to my emotions. And you always see that in breakups, right? Women generally tend to do worse for a month and then they bounce back strong because they’re actually able to acknowledge how, you know, the feelings are hurt, the emotions, they’re hurt. The girlfriends come over with ice cream, you know, and they all start talking about sharing stories and commiserate. That’s healing, right? You’re admitting that you’re feeling down and everything else. I can’t believe he did this. I’m so sad. I’m so overwhelmed. Absolutely beautiful guys. Next day, you know, they’re going to the gym. They’re hanging out with their friends. They call their signal buddies. We’re going out. I’m I’m downloading five different apps. I’m staying up until 3:00 a.m. just swiping. Pretend like everything is fine. And then and then on the surface, you know, they’re going out, they’re traveling, they’re h, you know, hooking up. to maybe have a new girlfriend, whatever it might be. A month later, beard’s all the way out, haven’t showered like in like a week or two, work performance has gone down, has have no idea what’s going on. It’s like, I just know what it is, you know? And then they lean on substances to try to get them out of a funk just because a lot of times we’re just born and told that, hey, men up, sack up, don’t be a don’t do this, don’t do that. And if you do say, “I’m feeling sad.” It’s like you’re always feeling sad. It’s we make fun of it. And it’s society and overall, but I think it’s a life skill overall. Regardless of gender, regardless of orientation, regardless of whatever, it should be a life skill for you to identify your emotions and know how you feel because it’s going to set you far in life. Men in general just don’t have this awareness and they generally just know happy, frustrated, and fine. Yeah. Yeah. I’m angry and they know angry except they don’t admit that they’re angry. That’s true. They’re like I’m not Yes. That is so I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated yelling and I’m not angry in my voice. Yeah. That you’re frustrated. Okay. All right. I don’t want to see you like slightly, you know, dis disengaged or unimpressed or confused or sad or, you know, God behold, angry. I don’t want to see that. It’s like, oh, I’m never angry. I don’t get angry. I only get angry when my team loses. Okay. All right. All right, buddy. And the women around them are like, yeah, bro. Yeah, sure. Yeah. No, I mean, it’s it’s a it’s it’s a it’s a pandemic for the most part. And I think you know for the and now um you know this is has spread out a lot because oh it caused a rise in sexism. People like Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, people kind of monopolize on this and they say yo men have to be strong and and now there’s a rise of like I don’t want to use the term toxic masculinity because all of a sudden people are going to call me a s which I actually just realized I learned what that is like a like a few months ago. For the most part what is a simp? simp is somebody who kind of like sucks up, you know, especi especially to like the to women to the opposite sex and say, “Oh, yeah. Hey, you know, you gotta be this, you gotta do that, you gotta treat her with respect.” And everyone just kind of like rides them real hard. At the end of the day, you know, I tell kids all the stuff, I’m like, “If you if you’re trying to be like that player, if you’re trying to be that alpha male, whatever it might be, you will have many women fawning over you. If you’re actually able to maintain relationships, meet their parents, you know, be able to hold strong relationship with them, you can get any girl you want. any girl you want. Like obviously you still have to make sure you’re you know you’re you dress nice and you know your hygiene’s on point and smell nice. Absolutely. Like you know you know work out a little bit and you know have interest be you know be an interesting person. But if you’re able to add in the ability to have conversations to know how she feels and everything else they won’t stop chasing you. But instead you oh you know I got to just like treat them like oh they’re objects like oh I don’t really care. Oh, that’s really, you know, that’s she was talking too much, so I cut her off. Okay. All right. Good luck with that. Then, you know, when you’re 30, 40, 50, and you’re single or you like they’re lonely or they like like talk to somebody. Yeah. Or meaningless transactional quote unquote in not even a relationship because I believe relationship is both ways. It’s just transactions. They’ll just be this lonely dude who looks like he’s living the high life. People just there to get food, money, whatever, sex, who knows from him and go bounce because they never actually took the time to invest in the relationship. Yeah. And and and ultimately they they’re unhappy. You know, you could you could it’s it’s unhappiness. It’s and then it just creates more bitterness and everything else and then they wonder, you know, what it is. And it doesn’t have to be that way. It really doesn’t honestly like it it could be super simple for someone even in you know in their deep set ways to just say okay you know what you know emotions aren’t this like corny thing that I you know it’s like oh just for women and all this stuff it will make you better at work it’ll make you better at your play it’ll make you better during sex it’ll make you better during sleep it’ll make you better at anything right it’s like you know pretending that you don’t have a left leg and just trying to you know run with one one leg at a time yeah for yeah emotional emotional intelligence you know I I talked about emotional intelligence and leadership and how it’s so critical and I feel like people are so focused on other things but that like I feel like it’s it’s really really lacking and I don’t have stats for this but are you when it comes to feelings are you finding that yeah traditionally women were the ones who are expressing their feelings and be able to identify them identify them but I’m finding it less and less now I’m finding that even women are struggling with identifying their feel like true feelings they’re It’s like they’ve I don’t know. It’s just different. What are your thoughts? Yeah. I mean, there’s no in in essence there’s no superior sex in terms of like emotional awareness. It’s just more practice. Yeah. Right. We’re falling out of practice because we’re have we’re being inundated with other things and especially because you know I think we’re much more connected and we live in a much more connected world. There’s social media everywhere. There’s that sense of FOMO and there’s a lot of negative selft talk. You know, before back in the day, you got the, you know, magazine covers and the commercial and it caused everybody to feel 17. Exactly. And and you got to look like this. You got to do this. And that’s like, oh, wow. It’s causing a a pandemic amongst young women, eating disorders, all this stuff. Now, everybody’s getting that smoking. Even if you’re in like 70s, oh, look, you know, this that family took took their, you know, took their grandma out and they were caring for her and they call her. No one calls me. No one does that. It’s a pandemic in in that in that sense. And so we’re much more used to feeling less than sorry, sad and which are not emotions that we want to feel. And generally when we don’t want to feel certain emotions, we either block them out or we numb ourselves. And that becomes the process of how we do deal with other emotions, anger, confusion, happiness, you know, uh anxiety. And so then we become we dull our senses, our emotional senses just to deal with the world that we live in now. Yeah. No, I feel you. That’s it’s very very very common. So, you know, let’s let’s switch it up a bit because I know that, you know, in your bio you talked about, you know, how you are, you know, keep it real, you’re blunt about things that really affect us, whether it’s gender, racial disparities, wealth disparities, etc. So, let’s talk about this thing called race, you know, or maybe I even say D. Yeah, I’m just kidding. But, you know, let’s be real. The world is colorful. Anyone that says, “Oh, I don’t see color.” I just call bull on that. I think we all see color. Unless you are literally blind, then you might not. But we all see color. There’s consciously unconscious, it’s there. There’s biases. There’s there’s experiences that we all have to work through. Like for example, someone who grew up in a very overtly racist home who let’s say when they see someone of a certain color and certain explicits come out their mouth, right? And they were raised that way, but they chose later on in life as they become an adult that this is not right. But don’t get they probably still think those things when they see them. They just learn not to say it. they catch themselves because one’s upbringing, one’s experience really does shape one’s life. And for most people, they spend 50 years, 60 years trying to deal with the first 10, 20 years of their lives, right? In the workplace and in life, how do race, gender, and money show up in people’s life, especially in ways people don’t expect? And that’s what I want to talk about, the the ways that people don’t expect, the not so obvious ways. It’s easy to say, you know, that walking around with a blanket over your head and peoples for eyes is overtly racist or carrying a certain certain emblems are racist or or problematic. What about in subtle ways? Yeah. I mean, you we kind of you touched on a a giant topic. This could be, you know, three seasons in a row we can talk about this. And just I just want to make one and then maybe this is like the blunt part as well because a lot of times I feel like we think white people have are just are the only racist ones. That’s not true. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely not. So So my the white listeners out there, you know, like like you know, untighten your butthole. It’s it’s fine because here’s what I’m gonna tell you some truth. We have been humans in general hate on others. It’s us verse them. If you’re a different religious sect, if you have even even in the dark and melanated community, if you’re slightly darker Oh, you’re Yeah, you’re a little darker. Cast system color. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Like if you’re a Hanchinese versus non-Hanchinese, if you’re walking up, it’s it is insane. It’s everywhere. Yes. And throughout the history, I mean, we we’ve had countless genocides. Cambodia, you know, the Armenians. Listen, it’s it’s a we are not a peaceful species. I agree. We war with each other. We want to do all this stuff and like you said we are you know we are a product of our environments and upbringings and you for the most part if we judge ourselves for having thoughts that are like tough to break just similar to like you know having unhealthy habits when you grow up if you grew up eating cheesecake every Wednesday and then you’re like you know in in your 30s 40s 50s you’re like I got to stop with the cheesecake but every time you see cheesecake fat or something else you’re like oh yeah I want it and then we say oh no how dare you you should b yourself that’s not a healthy way of dealing with it. So, if you grew up and you’re, you know, your grandma, Uncle Dave, whatever it might be, dropping end bombs and saying, “Oh, you know, this and this and that.” And you’re primed, you’re kind of like, you’re gonna have thoughts that that that comes up. You’re like, “Oh, you’re going to drive around like a bad driver. Oh, oh, I knew she was Asian, right? There’s that she and Asian, right? Like it’s going to be in our head and then like and then we judge ourselves for either thinking that or feel vindicated that we were right.” Listen, your thoughts and emotions, these things just happen to you. You get to decide what to do next. And just exactly like you said, if that person recognizes that their upbringing was maybe more ignorant and everything else and decides, you know what, I’m actually going to do things that are going to be more equal and I’m actually going to recognize myself and push myself and expose myself. That’s it. If you The other part of it is like we are going to be ruled by unconscious tendencies and habits. So yes, if you go if you walk down the street and you see someone of color, all of a sudden you start grabbing your wallet, guess what? That’s that that is conditioned. Oh yeah. Right. That is conditioned. And but if you walk down the street at any night at night time and you see a young man of any whatever might be with wearing a hood and a mask, listen, I’m grabbing my wallet. I’m I’m crossing the street. I don’t care if it’s four o’clock in the morning and I see five guys hanging out. One of them like at a you know, one of them drinking all the stuff. I’m going to be looking for someone to call me something or try to swing on me or, you know, I’m not going to walk by and pretend, oh yeah, these are just it’s situational, right? Remove that aspect. If it’s, you know, if you’re in a different country and you’re walking around with a camera around and this and that and people around you are suffering and and, you know, have difficult life and everything else, yeah, likely, you know, it’s going to be much easier for you to be, let’s say, a victim of something because, listen, it’s it’s reality. That’s the that’s the world we live in. You know, we have the West and certain countries have excess and other people don’t and we tend to kind of forget that. So, I kind of want to make that point. And in terms of just how it shows up in day-to-day lives, it could just be something like, you know, saying someone’s name, right? Like, oh, I’m going to a lot of times, you know, like for my name especially, Ahmed is not is not that uncommon. Muhammad is not that uncommon. Ali is not that uncommon. Yeah. You could just say it and be like, “Oh, my bad.” And just just say it out loud. Just say it once and then get corrected. It’s fine. But don’t make a big show of like, oh, you know, I I just I don’t understand this name. All of a sudden, you’re making us, you know, feel so different that you’re saying, I I’m going to am I going to mispronounce? Is it Ahmed? And then you say it five different times. Just say it once, go for it, and then just and then follow up with it. It’s not that difficult, but a lot of times it’s a lot of negative self judgment. And sometimes when we try to overcorrect, it actually makes things way worse. Definitely. That is that’s a real thing. That’s a whole, like I said, it’s a whole new conversation, like the whole names and changing names to get an interview and all that stuff. It’s a real But I did your comment about the elephant in the room is that we always talk, we often talk about race as in, you know, white versus brown, Chinese versus this, blah blah blah blah blah. Often times we need to look inwards and know that a lot of this stuff actually begins within the same community because if we accept certain behaviors that are hurtful amongst our brothers and sisters, you know what I mean? Where it’s maybe it’s just a skin shade or maybe it’s a different racial I mean a religious background and we allow persecution and murder and all kinds of terrible things to happen. That’s a problem. Charity begins at home. For me, it really, it’s not surprising, but it’s saddening when I see countries who see their fellow country people being hurt and persecuted or even similar faiths and they stay quiet. They stay complicit. They they enable and I’m just bro for me, I didn’t I’m not jaded. I see something bad happened. It doesn’t matter what color, I’m sad. Like today, the day we’re recording, there was an Air India flight down and that’s awful. It’s awful. And it I think it went into our medical sto school dormatory or something and over 200 are presumed dead and who knows how many more injured on the ground like doesn’t I don’t care about the nationalities of where they’re from. Like human lives were lost tragically. Like it’s it sucks. Yeah. And when we can get to the place where we can all just see each other as I see as one human race maybe because I grew up sing listening to Michael Jackson you know make the world a better place for me the entire human race like we are literally one human race like when we go to medical school we’re not like okay this is a black body and this is how we do surgery on a black body versus a white body. No, like there may be slight nuances for like response to medications or certain things down the road, but like the big picture, we are the same. You know, we have a heart, kidneys, liver, brain, you know, blood that flows in a certain direction. Like it’s the same, right? Once we we need to stop tearing ourselves down because I think the rate at which we’re going, nobody’s going to be scared. Absolutely. I mean I I one of the things I loved probably one of the two or three things I loved about co Yes. hot take is that it caused us to be humans versus virus. All of a sudden everybody kind of forgot where you from where you look like all this all that. What’s your political stance? It’s like yo we got to be looking out for other people for I mean it was a short time when it first happened because it was like just a big a big thing. Uh, but down the line it’s gonna be, you know, I don’t want to get too sci-fi on you, but it’s gonna be us versus AI. Us, you know, and at least 100%. Not even down the not like in our lifetime, like 5 to 10 years. Yeah. You were talking about 30 40% of our jobs being eliminated in the next few years. Yeah. And it’s going to cause a lot of infighting and everything else. But, you know, it’s just kind of that example is it’s always us versus them. When us becomes humans, we’re going to have much less infighting. But that only happens when there’s something huge going. Yeah. Like like a worldwide pandemic. Does it have to be a worldwide pandemic? No. But that’s just that’s just how we are. It’s we’re tribal species. You know, it’s we’re community- based. Everyone that’s around you that you know you’re going to be protective of and the others are danger, you know, it causes it’s just it’s just how we’re brought up. is just where where genetics is just what who we are. Uh and that translates to from immediate family members and who you live with to towns to sports teams to religions to states to political leanings to skin color everything else. That’s that that is it’s just how we conceptualize ourselves and the by and large probably I’m not going to give you a number here but like a very large majority of the population of the human and human history in general does not see that we’re following these patterns. Oh, I see. There has to be some major glo like global catalyst for change. And in order for us to take have sustained change, there has to be key players. Look at George Floyd 2020. Like there was this old oh this was terrible. It was terrible. Like it was traumatic. It was wrong. It was murder. We’re going to make all these changes. Look at us now. Still the actually the rates are actually gone up. Police murders have actually gone up in the in the US. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Look, we don’t we don’t have a we don’t have a very good attention span for these things, you know. Uh that was a little bit more sustained. We had a lot more times on our a lot of more time on our hands during that time period, which I think Oh, yeah. We’re on lockdown. Yeah, exactly. So, people like this is I mean, we’re barely trying to breathe and this man is just putting in, you know, putting a knee down and and and actively not trying to make a man breathe. And we were it was us humans versus them virus. And like what are we doing? And so we came to our senses briefly, but then some lockdowns kind of went away. We were able to do this all of a sudden. Yeah, look at me. I’m going out whatever it might be and we forgot about it. And it’s it’s and also like I don’t want to bl I don’t want to seem like I’m blaming us. But that’s just our patterns. You know, we’re tend to forget. I you know I have a very short attention span. I will start something get get to it on like a few days and then a month later like what what happened to that one interest? Like today I was looking at my microphone. I’m like oh yeah I bought all this stuff. I was going to do like social media stuff and that quickly faded after two or 3 weeks. It’s just my pattern and I don’t judge myself for it. I just know it. Well, that’s that’s human nature and in order for us to like break those patterns, there are things that we have to do in in our world like in our environment to kind of keep us on track, right? So from the psych psychiatry um reference points, even from a coaching reference point, what would you say? Like people have been listening to us for the past like 45 minutes. They’re like, “Okay, we hear you, but what do we need to do? Obviously, our attention spans are like that of birds. Obviously, we emotionally constipated. Yeah, I get it. We can be really mean to to each other. What are we going to do differently? Like what is next? What’s next? What’s next is move, right? Like if we sit here and just kind of just think about all these things, we can have these this I mean this is an active conversation you and I are having about this is a good medium for these types of thoughts and expressions to be in and percolate. Not inside your head, not when you’re trying to sleep, not when you’re at work, not when you’re, you know, when you’re out and about, right? So just recognize that you are an animal. Mhm. You are prone to habits and we are generally in a society that is allowing us to not move as much. We’re going to be doing more and more thinking which is unhealthy. So you got to move. And when I say move, you know what? You know why I tell people move? Because you are now activating your body. You’re using your nervous system to have spatial awareness, vibrations, weight, coordination. Your brain is like, I don’t have time to think about what Courtney, what Mike said, what, you know, Jamal told me last week, and you know, why my mom and what my girlfriend, like, I don’t have time for this. I I got to I got to move. I got to do that. I got to focus on my breathing. My god, I’m tired. Like, all these things are going to give you a little reset. Go in nature, right? Go in nature and just be expansive, you know? Just listen to the waves, listen to the birds, listen to a hummingbird, you know, watch some sand fly off the edge of his hand, dude. Yeah. And just use your senses. Once you use your senses, your brain stops working as much and you can prioritize better your and you got to recognize your, you know, your your rhythm. Some people have a cadence where they need to move. I mean, I need to move every day. Every day. Me, too. I break a lot of things. And when I break a lot of things, my mind goes over overdrive. And, you know, when I recover from injuries, it’s it’s it’s hell for me. It’s healthy. I I become I become so annoying internally and externally. But I know that I know that about me. So I account for it. But but we just got to move and and get off your phone. Get off your phone. If your screen time’s over three hours, you got to you got to look at you got to look at way you can cut that down. 100%. Yes. Move. Talk to a real person and living color like Yes. Talk to have a conversation. Have a conversation. Have a difficult conversation. Talk about difficult things. Get talk about talk about race. Yes. Let’s talk about difficult conversation because you think put I always say you can only push so many things under the rug until you eventually start tripping over them and most of us are just tripping because we’ve been pushing things under the rug thinking it’s no big deal. That didn’t bother me yet. But it’s you’re acting out like a little toddler having a tantrum. You are acting out. You might not see yourself that way, but you are. You have to, you know, talk about your feelings. Like I have toddlers. Well, not not to Well, a 5-year-old is a toddler, seven-year-old, not so much, but I mean I talk about feelings. If I get them to watch like little YouTube videos on coping with emotions because kids these days going to school and friends and clicks, they have feelings. They need to know how to breathe and regulate themselves and identify these emotions and learn how to have good strategy so they don’t live inside their head. I think that’s what you said. When we live inside our head and we don’t let things come out, it’s like garbage in doesn’t come out. Garbage in doesn’t come out. It’s toxic and it’s manifested as disease, illness. We give it names when if we just keep it simple. It’s a life happened. Let’s process it. Let’s talk about it. What are we going to do about it? How are we going to reduce our reactive response to this situation in the future so it doesn’t, you know, steamroll us and move forward. But movement, I love to move. I at work I don’t I have a desk but it’s like a standing height so I stand most of the time. I have a stool I can sit down on but I I love to move. I I love to dance. I love music. I love laughter. I love keeping it real. I it and it makes a big difference. And from myself growing up in the country or places where I wasn’t allowed to really talk much and we had to stay quiet like you got to know the anthem every narcissistic side I’m insane. Killed me. I know. I know. Now you’re a freak. But the thing is you see it once you you can’t once you’ve seen it you can unsee it and you can recognize pattern because nature is beautiful. It teaches us in patterns that if we’ll just stop, put our feet in the sand and like learn and listen and do something, life would be so much better. It absolutely would be. I mean, I think the the general thing is also like we just, you know, as you were telling me breathe and this and that. In my head, I’m like, “Oh my god, it’s so lame.” Because I’m been conditioned to do this. I’m I’m in the field and I tell people, you know, like when people have panic attacks and I’m able to get them through it just by paying attention to what their butt’s doing and the gravity’s doing and and then breathing and then they get out of it and like what I know. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s it. That’s that’s pretty much it. Like you just got to they wait hold on. Are you serious? I used to jump out of a moving car. I used to take stairs to the 20th floor and you tell me if I just pay attention to my senses and breathe I get Yeah. And that’s what it takes for people to buy in. That’s the level of of like suffering that it takes for someone to buy into that. And it’s the same as you know it’s the same thing with physical health, right? So what you know part of my other many ideas is to kind of change mental health to mental fitness because if we think about Yes. physical health and physical fitness, right? Physical health, everyone tells you, yeah, you know, you got to make sure that you eat healthy and you you move around and you do 20 minutes of that. It’s like, okay, buster. Yeah, I’m good. But like, hey, listen, there’s the new CrossFit gym. Uh, there’s a class. It’s gonna kick your ass. It’s gonna Oh, the solid core. Oh my god, my abs are killing me right now. All of a sudden, there’s, you know, competition. There’s a sense of community. There’s this thing of that. So, we just have to package it in a way. Yeah. That you could you could actually kind of do it in a community fashion. There’s something to get out of it. There’s networking. Uh maybe you get a few dates, maybe got a you know, whatever it might be. Yeah. Free food, all the stuff. Like, just make it fun. 100%. It’s a mental health has a PR issue. Oh yeah. So a major PR issue. So yeah. Yeah. That term mental fitness was I recent well a couple years ago I first heard the term through I think this work through Stanford positive intelligence to talk about mental fitness. Mental fitness you know they’ll bounce back to see something negative and turn to something beautiful for lack of better terms. But yeah you’re right. I you know it sounds so basic breathing grounding oneself you know diaphic breathing pausing but it doesn’t have to be that complicated you don’t need to have a ice bath in some really cold sea in some remote area to relax. Yeah, you do. No, you you really don’t. But I mean, at the end of the day, if you know, it’s like people also like are now just burnt out 24/7 for the most part, especially professionals, especially all this stuff. They do too much. You know, their scales are off. And you know, they don’t know what that’s like. They don’t know why they’re unhappy. They don’t know why they’re not getting work done. They don’t know all this stuff. And I asked him, “When’s the last time I had a vacation?” So, what? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There’s my diagnosis. That’ll be That’ll be a thousand bucks. Yeah. No, I’m kidding. I wish I would charge a thousand, but like it’s it’s super you see it on from from the get-go. Like this person has the capabilities to live their best life ever. They’ve just been ignoring signals 247 and they’ve been burnt out to Chris. 100%. I’ve been there, done that. Wow. Yeah, I’ve been there, done that. But never again. God help me. Never again. I can say never because I’m like, nah, cuz that’s a dark place. Well, because you you like you gave it meaning, right? You gave that suffering a meaning and a purpose and it’s changed your life and that’s what we should aim to strive for. Yes. 100%. I actually booked a vacation yesterday so I feel proud of myself. Congrats. Congrats. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can’t leave the country, but you know, go for No, you can’t. I can’t I can’t leave. I actually I legit my lawyer told me I cannot leave the country. No, you cannot leave the country. Yeah. No. No. It’s like I I’ll I’ll stay here for a little bit. Yeah. I’m I’m joking around and talking to people. I’m just going to knock on their doors like ice baby. And I’m gonna make that my new ringtone. Actually, just gave me a really good idea. Like, I’ll just see people panicking around me. Like, whoops. I mean, they if listen, if you’re gonna be mass and do all this stuff, at least make it kind of funny. Like, if you get the National Guard with you and everything else, go rock around, get vanilla ice on board. Get him get him some money. He’s he’s he’s not doing too well, is he? I don’t know, actually. No, I mean, you know, the one hit wonder, man. Like MC Hammer, one’s hit wonder. It’s not easy. Yeah, I think I think he’s probably doing well. Like he has head on his right on his shoulder. If not, you know, he can reach out to me. Listen, Ice, I I got you. I I’ll give you two free sessions. So true. But you know what can you do? I always say laughter is medicine. It’s one of my takes. Laughter is medicine. It’s important. It’s good for the soul. What can you do? The best make the best use of it. I mean that that’s one thing that’s like a takeaway. If you are com even if you’re like in the midst like you know when I when I lost my dad and everything else finding moments to laugh followed by cry followed by laugh whatever it’s it’s very cathartic right like we humor feeling feeling happy finding something slightly amusing is a release it allows you to actually tap into something and then you know other ones can can fall out you can laugh in a difficult situation it’s cool it’s all right go for it oh I totally agree I’ve definitely had my share but anyway thanks so for being here today. I’ve enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I like the flow. We were kind of like all over the place. Different questions and a hot mic, but I mean the message was clear. We’re very similar as humans, even though give ourselves different labels and motion. Move. Get up your ars. Like legit get up. Don’t overthink it. Don’t overthink it. Just move. You’re good. Don’t you don’t need like a fancy membership. You just need limbs that move. That’s it. You can go around in your living room. I’ve done that during the pandemic. Going up and up and down my stairs down like use your body weight as resistance. Like move, play me. I love music. Music music like Yeah. You you’ll feel better. Just just start moving less thinking, more movement, you know? That that’s my takeaway. Yeah. I wish to all the leaders of the world, please move. Yeah. And move over sometimes, too. Some of y’all stayed way too long. Way too long. Right. Yeah, we don’t need we don’t need we had two chains. We don’t need three chains or three terms. Thank you, Luda. That’s I think that’s what Lud’s talking about. Just shout out to Luda. Ludf also, you know, you’re not doing too well. No, I think Lud doing well. Lud’s doing well. He’s a He’s a good cat. He’s a He’s a good man. He’s probably having a few more babies, but you know, it is what it is. This how you know it’s the end of it. Like, I’m really trailing off now. My patients today are going to be like, “Listen, you are wild. What’s going on?” I know. I’m going to go see patients pretty soon. Be at the office. But anyway, everyone, thanks for your time. Thanks for listening. For those who want to get a hold of you, since you’re going to be, you know, have all this free spare time, you’re not traveling anytime soon. So, how can people get a hold of you, Duck? So, yeah. So, I’m uh I’m trying actively to go on social media. So, my handle on Instagram is NextGen Shrink, which is going to my YouTube, and ideally, I’m going to be posting some things. But, yeah, just, you know, and if anything, it the fact that I’m even saying this out loud now, I feel like I have accountability. I got to do it. Oh, yeah. You got to. It’s It’s I’m going to amplify it, too. So, okay. All right. But where is Shami? That’s you know, pressure makes diamonds. Exactly. So, shine like like shine bright like a diamond. All right. I got Rihanna on board. Oh, yeah. Ria, you’re She’s in your neck of the woods. So, bro, collaboration. I’ve also been to Barbados, so I can be like, Rihanna, I’ve been there. Yeah, exactly. All right, listeners. Thanks again for sharing your most important resource, which is your time. I don’t take you for granted. Like, share, comment. Let’s amplify this message. Let’s keep it real every day. Smile, laugh. Absolutely. And And get on my Get on my ass. Get me Get me doing some more things, please. Oh, yeah. Oh. Oh, you careful what you ask for, bro. I know. I I’m fully aware. The more impression. Listen, I got to do I gotta do it. I gotta do it. If I got to plan it. Oh my god. If you haven’t noticed by now, I have ADHD. I kind of figured I all the broken limbs and everything else. I didn’t know until I was later. So like all the stuff that I say is for the most part like true and tried. It’s all good. Live life through a colorful lens. All good. Anyway, thanks for being on the show to our listeners. Till next time, this is your host Dr. Tor Mitchell from the Mental Health and Wellness Show. [Music]

In a world overflowing with quick fixes and overcomplicated solutions, what if the key to better mental health was much simpler—and more human? In this episode of The Mental Health & Wellness Show, I, Dr. Tomi Mitchell, welcome psychiatrist and mental wellness advocate Dr. Ahmed Al-Katib for a refreshingly real conversation on what it takes to feel better—and think clearer—in a chaotic world. Drawing from his diverse background growing up in Baghdad, training in Europe, and practicing psychiatry in Brooklyn, Dr. Al-Katib cuts through the noise to focus on what truly matters in mental health.

We dive deep into how movement, environment, and community affect our emotional well-being and why burnout and disconnection are more widespread than ever. Dr. Al-Katib challenges traditional views of mental health and offers practical, down-to-earth strategies for improving focus, regulating emotions, and fostering meaningful connection.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why movement is essential for resetting your nervous system and how physical activity supports mental clarity and emotional resilience
The difference between mental health and mental fitness, and why we need a more engaging, relatable approach to emotional well-being
How burnout affects high-performing professionals and what to do when rest and self-care feel out of reach
How social media and screen time feed feelings of inadequacy, disconnection, and anxiety—and what to do about it
Why having real, authentic conversations—especially about race, gender, and emotional vulnerability—is key to long-term healing
The impact of racial and gender disparities on mental health and how to start addressing these issues without defensiveness or shame

Dr. Ahmed Al-Khatib is a board-certified psychiatrist, founder of Psychiatry in Motion, and an advocate for raw, real dialogue around mental health. He believes that when we move our bodies and open our hearts, healing follows. He encourages a shift from diagnosis to connection—and from isolation to community-based support. His work dismantles the stigma around mental illness by making mental wellness something we practice, not something we only talk about when we’re in crisis.

Join me, Dr. Tomi Mitchell, and Dr. Ahmed Al-Khatib for a lively, honest conversation that will help you rethink what it means to be mentally well—and show you how small, intentional actions can change everything.

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