From Therapy to Social Change

Maryam Riaz in Conversation: Liberation Psychology, Islam, Psychotherapy and Paths to Social Justice

• Mick Cooper & John Wilson

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Maryam Riaz is a Muslim BACP-accredited psychotherapist and senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University. In this interview with Robbie Curtis, she shares her unique experiences navigating the world of psychotherapy training and academia and the relevance of social justice for counselling training and practice, a current Leeds Beckett counselling student.

As the only person of colour during her counselling training and the first person of colour to open a private practice in Bradford city centre, Maryam shares some of her experiences of racism and prejudice, and advocates for all counselling and psychotherapy training providers to embed themes of social justice and societal discrimination into their training programmes. Maryam offers perspective on working within a hospital chaplaincy team in Bradford, where she collaborated to enhance cultural and faith awareness in mental health settings. She brings to light how her foundations in Islamic psychotherapy have shaped her integrative approach, blending spirituality and pastoral care seamlessly into her practice.

The podcast explores the role of liberation psychology in personal and professional growth. Maryam discusses the need for therapists to address internalized oppression and biases, as detailed in her chapter ‘Social Justice Informed Therapy and Racially Minoritised Individuals’, co-authored with Nahid Nasrat, in ‘The Handbook of Social Justice in Psychological Therapies: Power, Politics and Change’ (Sage, 2023). Maryam highlights the challenges and opportunities of working in diverse yet often segregated communities, advocating for systemic change through genuine collaboration and inclusion. In going beyond tokenistic approaches to diversity, Maryam emphasises the necessity of empathy and non-judgmental support in creating a more inclusive therapeutic environment. In academia, Maryam illuminates the importance of merging academic research with community engagement to drive social justice and systemic change.

Maryam shares her insights on how diverse representation in education enriches learning experiences and prepares students for real-world applications. With a focus on social justice, Maryam emphasises the impact of diverse voices in education, and shows how embracing these differences can foster significant personal and professional growth for students.


This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents

Robbie Curtis:

Mariam, it's so lovely to have you on our podcast. Thank you so much. It's just such a privilege and a joy and an honor and I'm just so grateful that you found some time to to just sit down with us and and have a chat. Um, I think we've we talked just before we started recording that we're kind of going to do two parts, that there's lots of things I'd like to kind of ask you about and discuss and then you're going to kind of talk about from your perspective what it's like, um, yeah, to be, to be the lecturer. So for people unaware, as most people will be, mariam is the wonderful course leader on my course, um, one of the people that really. That's um organized a lot and and has has sourced out a lot and helped us with a lot of the, the joys and the challenges of counseling, training mariam's there and, yeah, solving all sorts of problems. So it's it's a it's a pleasure to have her and to have this dialogue between us.

Robbie Curtis:

I've got a couple of bits of just an introduction just to give people a bit of sense. No, you should, if that's all right. So you're an integrative, bacp accredited psychotherapist through Therapy for you with Mariam Riaz, which is the name of your practice. You're also a clinical supervisor and, obviously, a lecturer and a course leader, as you said at at leeds beckett university. You offer therapy in english, urdu, hindu and punjabi. Um, you were the first woman of color to start a counseling practice in little germany, in bradford. You co-authored the chapter of this amazing book, the handbook of social justice in psychological therapies. Um, and as I say so, I'm a final year. I've known my own for about 18 months now, um, and it's just been. It's just been a joy, um, and I've been telling her all about tusk and everything. We've been going on and yes, incredibly encouraging, wonderful work you do.

Robbie Curtis:

Yeah, yeah, and it's just been like tell everyone about this, and I think you called me out in a lecture once just kind of randomly, like robbie's been yes, we did.

Maryam Riaz:

We shared it with, and then you were very modest, robbie. You were very modest and I thought it's really important. I think, uh, you know any any kind of social justice work, uh, it's so important to share, uh and I'll talk a little bit about that later because it's a collective community issue, isn't it? And I shared it just recently. You came to speak to our first year students and I shared all the information about the work you do with them, so it's gone out to them as well.

Robbie Curtis:

Thank you, yeah, and for me, like I mean, tassie's great because it's a national community, but most people only know digitally, whereas I think this is the first time we've not been face to face and had a chat. So it's lovely to kind of and know that there's people in my, in my real world, in my, in my not on the offline world that care about these things as well. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah.

Robbie Curtis:

So I wondered if we might start around, just if you could just give us a sense of kind of your journey so I'm aware you were the only person of colour in your counselling training course what that experience was like, what you got into therapy and kind of just your experiences of being the racial minority in training and then afterwards.

Maryam Riaz:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So I guess my journey into kind of counselling psychotherapy and in particular my journey into kind of counselling psychotherapy and in particular kind of like my modality, working relationally and in an integrative approach, and also you know I've got a research interest in how we work with faith identities in therapy too, but really kind of started my whole interest in psychotherapy training was when I worked in the hospital chaplaincy team. So I worked in an NHS trust in Bradford for over 16 years and it was a wonderful, wonderful privilege to work in the chaplaincy team. And then I worked alongside our clinical health, psychology, mental health hospitals in psychiatry too, because at the time when I joined the NHS there there was very little cultural awareness and faith awareness around mental health. So although I was kind of chaplaincy based, we as a resource, we were kind of working as part of multidisciplinary teams across the hospital and in particular clinical health, psychology and psychiatry.

Maryam Riaz:

And for me the the interest in in kind of counselling and psychotherapy started after I initially did my training in islamic psychotherapy because that really supported my kind of spiritual and pastoral work um in in chaplaincy um, and I often, you know, feel that spiritual branch of islam um is is not always available, not always accessible. And I think when we look at psychological growth, psychological development, uh, it's a model just like any other kind of existential sort of philosophy. So for me it was a profound kind of learning journey, but also personal insight as well and my personal reflections, um, and self-development. And then that led me to kind of um, you know, put into practice the, the approaches and techniques into my chaplaincy work, um, and the beauty of the chaplaincy work was um kind of short term. So I felt, you know, it was like we were journeying with, so carrying very kind of um sort of messages and values, of existential kind of psychotherapy philosophy, journeying with um, you know, offering hope, um. And then that led me to to sort of counseling and mental health, because I thought it's often a bittersweet moment when the patient was discharged. We don't really see them again, but you know that their journey continues, um, so I, you know, entered like mainstream counseling, psychotherapy, training, uh, when I first started my course I was the only person of color, um, and it, I think, because I I also trained at leeds beckett before I started working there and I think you know the the course does address working with difference.

Maryam Riaz:

But often I I felt moments where it was almost a burden of responsibility. Being the only person of colour almost felt like being the spokesperson or representation for all kind of faith identities or kind of all people of colour or global majority identities. But it didn't kind of sink in until the professional practice training, when I went out onto placement that actually it meant that my journey as a trainee I had to work twice as hard. I had to work twice as hard to kind of understand, to be able to understand and articulate and work with psychological therapies and theories but then to be able to practice with them in a frame of reference that was culturally very different. So, for example, one huge difference is in western culture we talk about a very it's a very individualistic culture. It comes from I and the eastern culture the self is in relation to other others or other relationships or their families, so it's part of more of a collective culture. So I was drawn to kind of lots of existential theories and philosophies to help me align that difference. So, for example, I've got a huge appreciation for, like boober, I, thou and I it kind of relating and working with relational depth and I think I experienced that kind of working at I thou level when I worked with patients in the hospital um. So it was, it was wonderful that I could experience and those existential kind of understandings into my psychotherapy work um.

Maryam Riaz:

But, like I said, it felt like I had to work twice as hard um and I felt, when I set up my practice in bradford um very diverse city. Although it's wonderful, you know, absolute honor and privilege to be the first woman of color, first person of color to set up a counseling supervision um service in bradford, it's also a little bit sad to think that a city as diverse as Bradford didn't have that kind of provision for black, asian, global majority kind of clients and families. So I had a couple of options because I'd already trained in, like my Islamic psychotherapy. There were options that I could have just focused as like a niche service provider and just work with particular um identities. But my passion was um was to kind of embrace mainstream practices and mainstream services um and and it kind that's where my motivation started to kind of also come into academia because I felt that it should be the mainstream services, uh mainstream training providers, that adapt and adjust and accommodate for the different um cultural awareness, uh different cultural philosophies, rather than people like me train and then just work in a niche market. And the reason I call my practice therapy for you is because I wanted it to become accessible for everyone. So how mainstream. A BACP accredited course can cater for absolutely everyone. It can cater for people from different cultural heritage and faith heritage. So I set up my practice, really, really successful in running one-to-one and I think because I was the only person of colour, I often got work to work in the community sector. So I've done working with women's mental health, working with refugees. So it's been really, really humbling and I'm really grateful for all the clients that I've been able to kind of support and journey with.

Maryam Riaz:

But whilst I was in private practice, you know, it did kind of take me back to the days where I was the only person on my course and I felt if we want to create a systemic change it has to start with the training providers, because it's the training providers that are recruiting and sort of training the next generation of therapists. So having the next generation of therapists that are more diverse was really important Again, rather than, you know, people of different cultural and faith identities working in niche and independent services. I felt mainstream services should be able to create and should be able to cater for cultural differences. So I started working part time with Leeds Beckett. I was a part time tutor for a while and alongside running my private practice for a while and alongside running my private practice. But my area of interest in wanting to kind of decolonize the curriculum and sort of diversify our sort of student cohorts just grew more and more.

Maryam Riaz:

And then the opportunity came for a full-time post and I applied and one of the first projects that I was involved in was a scholarship program with a mental health charity in Leeds called North Point. So this was just after the pandemic, so the Black Lives Matter movement had taken place so there was more kind of discussion and dialogue about racial identities and representation and equity and inclusion. So North Point does work at the heart of certain communities in Leeds so it was a natural kind of relationship with them. So we started the scholarship to offer funding to recruit people from black Asian global majority communities. Because it was often recognised that one of the challenges was economical, so people couldn't afford to enter the profession because of sort of economic constraints and constraints.

Maryam Riaz:

And I must say since the last couple of years and myself and my colleagues at at leeds beckett are hoping to kind of um publish a piece of work on this. We have noticed the increase um in the student cohort in terms of diversity and representation since we've started the scholarships. It's absolutely remarkable and for me, I remember when I first started and I used to stand in front, you know and present and teach um when I was lecturing to a very white cohort with the odd a black or asian person. But now, uh, like your cohort robbie as well, it's very diverse and I think part of the scholarship is is the financial support that is offered students. But it's also raised awareness and I think that's the biggest thing for me. It's raised awareness if we're talking about kind of introducing systemic change. It's shown representation.

Maryam Riaz:

You've got me a woman of colour on the teaching team too and it's kind of inspired people and it's inspired kind of communities to think that this is a profession that they can enter, this is a profession that they can train into, and I think my kind of journey to that sort of does continue then with my passion for the social justice work in counselling and psychotherapy. So it feels like yes, now I'm here almost like a sense of responsibility, but not in a burdensome way, in, in, in, in more of a passionate way. Because I think you know one thing I ask, for example, when we do, when we do teach on social justice, is you know, the one question I ask all the students is whose responsibility is social justice? Um, and it's everyone's, because everybody wants to live in a society and live in a community that's fair and equitable. We want to offer our clients that fairness and equity and if we truly want to work at a relational depth and if we want to truly offer the core conditions like rogers would say, the client needs to receive your empathy, needs to receive the core conditions. If you truly want to do that, then it's hand in hand with our understanding for social justice. Because I feel and this is the message that I give to all trainees and students is that you should be able to work with anyone. If you truly want to kind of embrace that humanistic philosophy, then your work should be accessible to everyone. And that can be uncomfortable at times because it involves kind of doing that internal work on yourself, that personal, deeply kind of professional reflective aspect which we do on our course, but I think it's a huge part of the work and if we truly want to kind of live out the values of social justice, as well as kind of speak to them, but to actually live them out in our practice and bring them into the therapy room with a client, then that work needs to be done. That work needs to be done first and and one of the models that, uh, I, I've been drawn to and kind of, I'd say, had a huge impact on my life um, is liberation psychology, because at times when I felt marginalized, at times where I mentioned earlier, where I felt like almost a burden of responsibility, at times I did wonder, I didn't, couldn't contextualize what my experience, I couldn't.

Maryam Riaz:

There wasn't a book that I could pick up and read, there wasn't a. You know, yes, I have my faith, I draw a lot of strength from prayer and worship um, but to kind of contextualize it into a personal and professional development aspect which I have to do as a practitioner and also had to do as a trainee, and liberation psychology was that it offered me liberation and it made me kind of appreciate and understand some of the challenges and burdens that people of color have and that if I truly want to kind of work with equity and inclusion and want my therapeutic work to liberate my clients. I had to, you know, kind of do that work on liberation myself too. And there is a quote from the book on page 81,.

Maryam Riaz:

You know the heart of liberation psychology, you know the first starting point of it is, you know, know, in order to kind of liberate others, one must liberate themselves first. One must understand their own internalized racism, their own internalized oppression, um, of whatever marginalized identity that may be. Uh, and the deeper the work we can do on ourselves and liberate ourselves, the better attuned we'll be to to our clients. And I think if we, if that aspect is not done, I I would question, um, how attuned a person can be to their clients. Because if there's always going to be unconscious bias, if there's going to be projection, um, anything that gets away in, that really gets in the way of that relational encounter, is going to kind of get in the way of being kind of attuned to to your client's needs. And attunement and immediacies is really important when we're thinking of offering the core conditions to our clients. Yeah, I want to just acknowledge a long-winded answer.

Robbie Curtis:

No, it's amazing it's incredible that I found myself welling up when he was telling your story. The journey you've been through and the challenges is so inspiring. I think people listening will.

Robbie Curtis:

I'm sure people listening will be inspired and it's just thank you for sharing all of that um and just at the end of I think to me that's one of the biggest things we want to do, is is around on this podcast and in task in general is that thing of you know what can therapy contribute to social change and vice versa, and that work on your internalized oppression, your internalized um racism, or you know the internalized stuff that and for everyone, that's often you know if you can do that work first.

Robbie Curtis:

And then you know people do it in all sorts of contexts, but particularly in a political context of you know where do your biases come from. You know gender biases, you know it could be a trans bias, it could be all sorts of things. And then you bring that and then you know your client that's that's had real world experience of, I say, transphobia or racism or bigotry of any of any form. Then you can really, you know, maybe you've got some learning about, okay, I know what it's like to to have those prejudices, but also I've done the work on it and I can actually understand and and and and and. Then from you know, from the other point of view of, yeah, I get, this is a real problem. This isn't something that some therapists might kind of pathologize and might say, okay, well, that's. You know that's just transference, but actually this is a real world problem. Um, and how do you work with that in the room knowing?

Robbie Curtis:

you know, how the outside world exists. We're not just in this little, what is a microcosm, and it's just, it's just fascinating and and I think that liberation, psychology, that's the big, because there's lots of liberation, there's a theology, there's economics, but the psychology that's what, to me, that's the most interesting is because it really goes into what are the narratives you've been told in general, or, you know, in a country that has all sorts of long, long history of colonialism and oppression and racism yeah, yeah just, it must be and also it, like like many diverse cities and, um, it does have and I think that this is an ongoing debate and it's also been researched, uh, many times too is that it does then create kind of segregation.

Maryam Riaz:

We mustn't, you know, have just this sort of fantasy ideas, freud would say, of multiculturalism or diversity, but actually there is segregation. So there are pockets of the city that will just be one particular demographic, certain schools that will only have students from a particular demographic, and I think that was the shift that I didn't want to kind of go into. And the shift that I wanted to create is for, again, why should I as a practitioner, because of my cultural faith, identity, just work in a niche service and offer? I could do that. I've got the language skills, I've got the cultural context, I've got years of experience of working in sort of the mental health and and healthcare profession. So, and and working in the community setting too, I could have done that, I could have worked with just a particular demographic. But again, my passion was, if we want to create that systemic change and part of liberation, psychology is framing and recognising that liberation isn't like an ecological model. It requires systemic change, it requires personal change. It requires community collaboration and a community centered approach. So that's why I was really firm in kind of saying saying, actually we need to take these ideas to the mainstream course providers, we need to take these ideas to people like the membership bodies and the BACP to kind of recognize the importance of inclusion, away from just being like a tick box exercise, away from um. You know, because I remember when I first started um teaching, uh, and you know quite a common phrase and I'm sure you probably hear it as well it is I'm offering the core conditions, so I'm being non-judgmental, I'm being empathic, um, and I used to read that in the assignments again and again and it did make me wonder that's OK, that's what we want? We want the core conditions. Of course we do.

Maryam Riaz:

But you're not recognising, within the core conditions, the absence of empowerment. You know, recognising that there's power differentials, empowerment, you know recognizing that there's power differentials, inherently the therapist has power. So when you're offering the core conditions, if you layer that, if you look at it from an intersectional lens, you've got then racial differences, gender differences, socio-economic differences. So the core conditions should also kind of embrace and understand the power dynamics. And if we're talking about empowerment or, in the case of liberation, psychology liberation. We must address the differences. We must address the systemic differences, the systemic injustices that that people feel. And I think, out of all of the core conditions, congruence for me is the most important because, you know again, starting with that sense of liberating yourself is, you know, being congruent with yourself first, as a therapist, recognizing your own challenges, your own assumptions, your own prejudice and your own biases that may get in in the way of your client receiving your core conditions and recognizing the power dynamics, the systemic differences to be able to truly be present.

Robbie Curtis:

Um, so your client, as roger says, receives and receives the core conditions yeah, I'm really interested in kind of how those maybe models come together and then communities come together in terms of, you know, you're starting in the islamic model of counseling and then going on what a white course and maybe feeling part of both and I don't know, maybe not fully part of both and then kind of both on a kind of community level and kind of a friendship and colleague level, also kind of on a um, on a theoretical level of having the Islamic model but then having a Carl Rogers model. I don't know, carl Rogers is maybe more open to to political influences than there may be something more classical, psychodynamic, but I'm curious kind of how those fit with you in terms of holding both identities and being part of both communities today.

Maryam Riaz:

No, that's a really interesting question and I think the response to that for me and I think this is what is missed in Islamic faith identities and I guess, the kind of judgments I receive on a daily basis, in particular, if there's anything happening across the world that affects Muslim identities, because of my visible faith identities, I do become an easy target. I've been into shops, probably, and people have not served me because of my and this is you knoweds, this is the here and now. So it's kind of recognising that you know those differences do happen and I think, since Brexit et cetera, it's really brought to the surface people's kind of ideas of racism. To the surface is people's kind of ideas of of racism and, and for me, um, what it misses is the humanistic element of faith, the humanity which all faiths believe, all faiths, surely, at the essence and core of all faiths, it's about humanity, um, so the way I aligned my kind of understanding um, with my mainstream western, eurocentric models, was that actually my core philosophy? So one, as you know, um, you know you, one of your key theory assignments is for you to describe your practice rationale. So, describing my practice rationale for me it had to align with my sense of being who I am, um, and my kind of life philosophy, as you can call it, and that's my faith. That's my faith, identity and people often miss out that humanistic element of faith. So that's how I kind of reconcile the difference between western kind of eurocentric models and how it aligns with faith. Identity is that humanistic philosophy. However, the gap in that is that the Western, eurocentric models of psychotherapy are the ones that we teach.

Maryam Riaz:

And I think Lee Speckett you know I'm really privileged to work with a really great team that you know we're doing a lot of work in kind of decolonizing the curriculum and again, it's not just a tick box exercise of decolonising where we have books and references from different authors of different racial identities. It's making that epistemological change. So for me, how I reconcile the difference between Eastern and Western kind of philosophies, that got me through. However, you know, part of that critique in my work was that actually the theories that we teach need to make space for alternative and different epistemologies. So by that what we mean is how knowledge is viewed and shared, so eastern understandings of self, for example, you know and how that can align with mainstream. So for me that's a huge part of what we're doing in kind of decolonizing the curriculum, um, and liberation psychology offers that too. It offers an alternative kind of framework that recognizes people's lived experiences, recognizes.

Maryam Riaz:

You know, the first time I read about racial trauma, it was liberating for me because I never realized that I was carrying all of that from, like the examples that I've mentioned. Rather than being able to kind of bring it to the surface, it was unconsciously kind of internally being suppressed and leading to my internal oppression, and what that leads to is burnout. It leads to that sense of feeling burden, feeling responsibility. It can lead to illness, things like migraines, headaches, an impact on your body because, as we know, trauma is kind of carried in the body. So just reading about something like racial trauma was validating and empowering and that for me was kind of liberating. And then also recognizing that healing is is also collective as well as individualistic. Yes, that relationship, that therapeutic relationship you have, is one-to-one with the therapist, but it's the therapist recognising that somebody's healing is also collective. So collective in terms of addressing systemic injustices, social injustices, recognising the importance of what we call kind of radical healing and radical hope that comes from healing as being part of a community approach rather than just the burden just on the individual.

Maryam Riaz:

And I think the liberating aspect for me was to kind of understand the difference between, when working with things like racial trauma is understanding the difference between coping and healing the two very, very different things.

Maryam Riaz:

So often, um, when I was doing, when I started off my training, for example, so working with things like racism, homophobia, um, you know, aspects of oppression, was to kind of like coping strategies will empower the client and we offer the core conditions, um, but actually, if we look at, you know, if we look at alternative, like epistemologies, like I said, we we're looking at different um, theoretical frameworks, um, and for me, what liberation psychology offered was coping versus healing, because they're two different things.

Maryam Riaz:

If we want to truly make that systemic change in working with social justice, it's about recognizing that healing needs to take place. So this idea of what we call radical hope and radical healing so it's using radical, the term radical in an empowering context and not with all the negative connotations that we hear about it so it's a huge um, kind of what I'd say like epistemological shift in kind of coping versus healing, and I think that's where that kind of systemic change needs to be taking place in terms of our approach to social justice and working with oppression and working with um oppression, uh, and working with like prejudice and bias yeah, and I remember reading about radical hope, radical healing, in your, your wonderful chapter.

Robbie Curtis:

Yeah, um, and it's. It just seems so integral and like, yes, everyone needs to be talking about this today, right now yeah and and I love that, I hadn't really thought about that the the reframing of radical when it's you. You know, you know certain newspaper was always use it in the same way, but actually actually, you know, we can use it in a much more positive, constructive, proactive way.

Robbie Curtis:

And then you say of rather than coping, and well, and it's a different context of of coping and healing, I think. I think that's really strikes a chord. Yeah, and it's active and it's not just bearing things, but it's. We've got work to do and there's things to be done.

Maryam Riaz:

Yeah, and that's what kind of also creates that shift. And when we do talk about decolonising, that it's introducing, you know, alternative ontology to kind of look at how we view things in a different way, how we understand behaviour and how we understand oppression. How we understand behavior and and how we understand oppression, um, most importantly is kind of framing that understanding of oppression, that, um, because often you know, as a therapist, if you feel your client is being oppressed, do you want to rescue, do you want to offer them kind of build their resilience and offer them coping strategies. All those things are great and we do need them, but we need them alongside healing, that kind of internal healing too. And I think at the heart of the internal healing is what liberation psychology would kind of describe as like critical.

Maryam Riaz:

Happened that raising my critical consciousness, like recognizing and validating my experiences of racism and and sort of recognizing that it's not me, it's not, it's, it's actually a thing. If people do experience it, it has a psychological impact as well as like a mental and physical impact and and it it does lead to that kind of an internal oppression. And I think that's why I found personally, like liberation psychology is one of those aspects that really changed my life, that critical consciousness also. When you experience racism, it makes you doubt your own identity, it's almost like gaslighting. It makes you doubt yourself, it makes you doubt your identity and it just which marginalizes you further because you it's, you know, that's what othering does. You become kind of categorized, whether it's a faith identity, racial identity or sexual identity. And I think that critical consciousness, awareness and as part of kind of that radical healing was embracing that I can be proud of who I am, I can be proud of my identity. I can embrace that and still be, you know, working in a Western secular kind of institution and that it's OK, rather than feeling isolated and marginalized.

Maryam Riaz:

And often one of the things that people would do in those situations and it's quite common, and I'm sure that the the listeners be able to connect that people of color code switch, for example, so you kind of assimilate to the whiteness um, and kind of reduce any aspect of your identity that is non-white, whether it's the way you talk, the way you present yourself. But unfortunately for me I've got visible faith identities so I couldn't assimilate too much um, but I recognize, you know, again, part of my radical healing was that I didn't need to do that, that you know. It was okay, uh, for for me to kind of embrace all aspects of my culture, uh, too, because you you do then also, um, when you experience being marginalized and racism, doubt your culture a little, uh as well, and just kind of reconnecting with the heritage, um, to build your confidence, to build your critical consciousness. That it's it.

Maryam Riaz:

It's a systemic issue it's a social issue, and that's why we need an ecological kind of model towards healing and not just um kind of straightforward. I'm offering the core conditions, I'm offering resilience and I'm offering coping strategies for the client to get through.

Robbie Curtis:

I so agree and I'm really grateful. You shared quite a lot of personal things that you've you've gone through. I'm really curious, like, as we sit here kind of now, do you get a sense of kind of where you are in your journey, kind of healing and processing or whatever you do, and all of those horrible experiences and all that racism you faced. Is it kind of an ongoing battle for you in terms of I mean, I'm sure you still face racism or do you feel like you're quite open when that happens.

Maryam Riaz:

Yeah, it is ongoing, yeah, no, no, no, no, that's a really good question, robin.

Maryam Riaz:

I think it it is ongoing, um, but part of my work, like I said, was just, you know, finding a framing and understanding that, um, it's not just me, I'm not internalizing things, um, and and I think what supports me, uh, and what I'd say, say to everyone is, again, if you have an aspect of privilege in your identity, how you can support either you know friends, peers, or your clients is allyship, and I think allyship is so important.

Maryam Riaz:

If kind of moving forward, if you're able to kind of as as a person that's experienced racism, if I'm able to kind of as a person that's experienced racism, if I'm able to kind of move forward, then to kind of continue with that journey is having good support from allies too, people that I can share my internal oppressors with, people that can journey with that, that can accompany, and part of the radical healing in liberation psychology is this sense of accompaniment, like accompanying and journeying with people, and I think that's like allyship.

Maryam Riaz:

You can offer allyship to your clients too, whereas you can't share and be in their lived experience, but you can accompany, um, you can kind of um in spaces where people don't have a voice, you could be that voice for them, and I think that's not taking away people's voices. It's just sometimes, in, in certain spaces, in where there may not be um equity, uh, in terms of representation and inclusion, um, if you can be that voice for someone, um, that's liberating and that's how I think if we want to create that true kind of systemic change, um, in social justice, it's allyship is so important too yeah, and I wonder, have you had maybe good experiences of allyship or bad experience of allyship, like what's that?

Robbie Curtis:

none of the white colleagues or friends that have tried.

Maryam Riaz:

White colleague, absolutely my team is wonderful, like um vave you'll know them probably like we've got vave, uh, sable got to be sable. Um val fletcher. Paul fantastic course director and team leader. And Sue and Caroline you know all, all of our team Matt Matt is fantastic as well, and Katie, and anyone that I've missed, I apologize, but the team are fantastic.

Maryam Riaz:

And one thing because a lot of the team do have understanding of working with marginalized identities and are kind of like advocates for social justice too, they recognise, you know what allyship is, and for me, allyship is giving people a voice, not being their voice. That's the difference. I think being somebody's voice can be disempowering, because then you're taking away the power of somebody being able to have their own voice. But supporting somebody to find their voice, supporting somebody to feel empowered, to have a voice, that's real kind of allys, um, so it manages out the power dynamics and also, you know, the important person is the person that's being, uh, you know, nationalized and feeling oppressed, uh, and if you kind of come in as an ally and think that you're going to be their voice, um, then that's taking away their empowerment. So it's about giving somebody a voice or supporting them, uh, to find their voice. I think, um, that's good, yeah, and I think that that allyship contributes to that kind of radical healing, and that that's where radical hope is.

Robbie Curtis:

It's about allyship as well yeah, just conscious of kind of the time we're on, I don't know if we just want to kind of. We talked about kind of shifting a little bit and talking about kind of maybe our dynamic and and kind of what it was. It was it like to kind of be lecture, student and and kind of, and be on kind of a professional, semi-professional podcast and and yeah, I don't know, was there something you particularly wanted to ask or did you? Maybe? I just kind of share where I'm at.

Maryam Riaz:

I think, yeah, and I think and I'm really grateful for the opportunity, robbie, thank you so much because I think with work like social justice, it's you know who is it important for? Is it for the academics? We could write about it, we could publish, do research, which we love to do when we get the time, um, but really the the work is for the community, the work is for the professional community, uh, and it's also for for our kind of community that are seeking help um and and support. So I think taking academia to social roots is really important, so the social justice work, taking it to the heart of the community, and I think that's what I like to do. So, like, for example, I've done a lot of work in the community projects, like in Bradford I've worked recently with the Bradford Chambers of Commerce to kind um inform mental health practice. So it's kind of taking the knowledge to the community, to to grassroots um, so it has a social impact, um, because if we want to really create that kind of systemic change, um and really kind of live out the values of social justice, then I think taking the social justice to people or taking these new ideas and new learning to the community will create that shift and I think that's why I love my job and I think that's one of my passions of staying and working in academia is doing the research aspect. It's an absolute privilege to be in that place where we can publish, where we can research, like I said, when we get the time, but it's what we do with that research, that I also think the kind of social impact of the research is really important.

Maryam Riaz:

And if I could leave with like three top tips I'd say to like your approach. If you're new to social justice, social justice, are you new to kind of um, want to really sort of work in an anti-oppressive way? Um, and and really, you know, even adapt like, uh, approaches of liberation psychology? Do read our wonderful chapter. But three top tips I'd like to leave people with is, first of all, approach difference with curiosity. Um, rather than judgment, um, because or judgments, as we know, can lead to prejudice and unconscious bias, et cetera.

Maryam Riaz:

And I'd say, approach with curiosity and recognize the difference in the power dynamics. So, for example, often when we approach with curiosity is we don't want to make the client do all of the hard work because of their marginalized identity. So tell me a little bit about your lived experience, etc. But you still want the work to be therapeutic. So it's about naming and recognizing the difference too. So approaching it with curiosity and also just simple terms, like saying to your client, for example, I recognize that there is a difference and I recognise I've got some learning to do for it, so it doesn't burden the client that they have the responsibility of educating the therapist, for example.

Maryam Riaz:

So approaching with curiosity and not judgment, it will make your work a lot easier. It'll take the pressure off you because, you know, sometimes working with social justice, people have fear. Because, you know, sometimes working with social justice, people have fear, the fear they may get it wrong, the fear that they may embarrass or shame themselves or others, and the fear that they don't want to kind of get things wrong or be accused of any aspect of kind of racism or homophobia or anything like that. But if we, you know again, again, like it comes back to what I said earlier, congruence is one of the most important core conditions and if we approach, approach it with curiosity, um, and then the other, what the the other aspect is like be congruent, and it connects to this idea of if we want to truly liberate ourselves is work on your sense of congruence. And again, you know the more personal and professional development reflections you do, more inward kind of reflections. You do recognize where you might get things wrong. Recognize you have judgments. We all have judgments. We walk out the door in the morning and we have certain perceptions, certain judgments. But it's what we do with them and that's where congruence comes in.

Maryam Riaz:

So the second top tip would be remain congruent. So the second top tip would be remain congruent. And the last one would be because I think they all kind of connect them especially the congruence element is liberate yourself. You know, I'd love to give people the gift of liberation because I think that's where true empowerment is. It's a bit deeper than just empowerment. I'm empowering my client, I'm giving them, you know, coping mechanisms, strategy strategies, etc. Etc. They're wonderful for building resilience, um, to do the therapist, therapeutic work, but for long-term uh impact and to create, you know, even in your micro relationships, the small, small kind of practice that you might have, you can introduce social justice and you can introduce systemic and social change. And it comes with kind of liberate yourself too. So they'll be my top three tips just to end and end the session thank you so much, ma'am.

Robbie Curtis:

This has been my favorite um episode I've done so. It's incredible, and thank you so much for your time and it's lovely to see you and yeah.

Maryam Riaz:

No, it's been brilliant, robbie, thank you so much, and I'm sure just one thing that I wanted to end on actually is just as a student, how have you found it? Your experience as a white student, you know, on a course being taught by a woman of color, or or being taught things like social justice as well, how have you found it?

Robbie Curtis:

Yeah, it's been, it's, it's made it feel really relevant, like we could spend all day reading the theories and like, okay, that's cool, but actually we live in the real world, with real people, with real issues. You know my, as you say, my course is quite, it's quite diverse. There's lots of different people from lots of backgrounds and and to kind of to miss that completely in the training would have felt very weird. So it's been, it's been, it's been great. Um, being taught by women of color doesn't hasn't hasn't bothered me. My, my teachers were quite white, it was quite a white school in general. Um, but it hasn't, it's, it's felt, it's felt natural and and and most of the teaching you've done has been around um, I've been around western, I've been around other things yeah, so you've.

Robbie Curtis:

You've talked about all sorts of things, so I don't think of like, oh, mariam only talks about x, y, z. So it's I, I it's been yeah, that's important.

Robbie Curtis:

Yeah, it's been really encouraging and inspiring to see, to hear about your journey today and to meet you and to be on a course where you're, so you can give people so much because of because of the role that you've, that you're in and the amount of work that you do. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's. There's always more that universities can do, but the fact that you're where you are and the fact that you have been such an important part of my training has been massive.

Maryam Riaz:

Yeah, it's been well, thank you, and I think you know, just to end on this, it's been a privilege as well because I think, again, you know, part of the social justice work is that we've been able to have lots of dialogues to to unpack a lot of that learning in terms of what it will look like in practice and and kind of offer that feedback of how you can then take that into placement and work with clients. So it's been wonderful yeah, yeah, amazing.

Robbie Curtis:

Thank you very much. I'll let you go, but that, yeah, it's been a pleasure and thank you.

Maryam Riaz:

Thank you so much, great okay.

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