Announcer: Welcome to Behind the Mic, presented in part by CAPS, the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. This podcast is dedicated to recognizing excellence in speaking through fascinating stories and interesting conversations with the people who make the speaking world come alive. Now please welcome your behind the mic hosts, Roxanne Durohage and Carl Richards.

Roxanne Derhodge: Let's go. Hi, everyone. It's Roxanne Durhansch. Welcome back to the second podcast for behind the mic with caps. Today, we have a very special guest, and my cohost, Carl Richards, will welcome her and tell you a little bit about her background.

Carl Richards: Thank you very much, Roxanne. Yes. Shahana Alabai is a TEDx speaker, best selling author of Feel Better, and A Family Physician. Shahana empowers individuals and organizations to improve culture, performance, and communication by optimizing emotional and mental health. She's a member of CAPS BC, and we are so thrilled she is speaking with us today.

Carl Richards: Shahana, welcome to behind the mic.

Shahana Alibhai: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Carl Richards: We are so thrilled you are here, and thank you for taking the time to join us and go behind the mic and share a little bit about what it is you're all about. So let's start there. Tell us professionally. I just gave you the short answer of in your introduction, but give us a little bit more than just the Coles Notes version. What is it that you that you focus

Shahana Alibhai: on? Yeah. It's a great question. When I introduce myself, more often than not, I'll say doctor, speaker, mother, but I really should put mother at the top of that sentence because as any parent knows, especially if you're a parent of young kids, which I am myself, they dominate most of my life and most of my every waking hour, including my five year old that still comes into bed with us every single night. So I have a five, seven, and nine year old, and most of my life after school hours is spent between hockey rink to hockey rink.

Shahana Alibhai: So at least the seven and nine year old are entertained. But in my professional world, I'm a physician as you mentioned off the top. I graduated from the University of British Columbia, did my residency there shortly after, and I've taken a big focus in mental health. So I'm the medical lead at the Foundry Abbotsford. Foundry is a concept for helping our adolescents, often the forgotten patients if you think about it.

Shahana Alibhai: A pediatric patient, hopefully, they're adults, so their parents are bringing them in. Us as adults can hopefully seek medical care even though finding a family doctor is a whole different story. But the adolescents, what happens to them? Right? What happens to them?

Shahana Alibhai: Essentially, they don't have parents who are willing or able to take them to see a physician. So we have the largest clinic in all of British Columbia. We see 500 new patients a month, so it's a staggering clinic. And we have a whole team of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, work at a school as well. And that was the basis of my TED Talk, How do we bridge the education system and the medical system?

Shahana Alibhai: Because especially as an adolescent physician, we're serving the same population, yet we never communicate with each other. So after that, it was really sprung to be, like, why not have a medical clinic within a school? And that has been happening since the TEDx talk. It's really exciting. We serve some of the most vulnerable populations in that school, but there's nothing like being able to see an adolescence within the school with the support of their teachers, their youth worker, and access.

Shahana Alibhai: It's all about access and making things as smooth and easy for them as possible too. So and the book Feel Better was born out of my ten years or now eleven years of working as a physician, working behind the scenes, and, of course, my own personal stories with mental health.

Roxanne Derhodge: Well, it's interesting. Right? Obviously, you're you're speaking, and I know you were just here in Ontario not too long ago when we connected. Tell us the path that you decided to go on to become a physician. Oftentimes, I think most of us can kind of go back to some kind of, significant memory or maybe you're from a family physicians.

Roxanne Derhodge: I'm just curious the background to what you got you to the space where, you're helping people in this nature.

Shahana Alibhai: No. It's a really good question. If you ask a lot of my medical school colleagues, it was exactly that. Ever since I was grade one, I wanted to be a doctor, and I started working my resume at grade four. That's usually kind of this trajectory of what happens.

Shahana Alibhai: Right? Save the world by grade eight and then Olympics by grade 12, and there you go. And that literally, we had people who went to the Olympics in our medical school. It's just we talk about the pressures that we put on our young adolescents. Now looking back, I was I could see that I was in that melting pot myself, but I was I have nobody in my family who's a physician.

Shahana Alibhai: My parents were immigrants to this country, not, like, very similar to many other people's stories. But I think because they were immigrants, it was education. So I was given the very finite options of engineering law, dentistry, medicine, and I said no to all of that, and I became a fitness instructor. So much of the dismay of my dad who looked at me and said that is not part of your ten year plan whatsoever to teach step aerobics out of everything, but I fell in love. I fell in love with fitness.

Shahana Alibhai: I fell in love with being in an environment that people wanted to be healthy. That led to a degree in kinesiology. That led to me thinking about chiropractic school or physiotherapy. But I'll soon realize that I loved hearing the patient's stories, but I was horrible with my hands. I was horrible treating them, actually doing the adjustments, actually doing the manual therapy.

Shahana Alibhai: My husband's a chiropractor. He's amazing at it. But I could talk about your knee and back pain all day long, but I'm not the one to make you feel better from that point of view too. I think that love could have transpired into many things. I think it could have been in social work.

Shahana Alibhai: It could have been in counseling. It could have been as a teacher. I think that's where we get into this stuck position that there's only one purpose. Like, I would have only been happy if I was a doctor, and that's not the case at all. In fact, medicine sucked away a a huge part of my soul.

Shahana Alibhai: Like, it really did because it is built it's the whole premise is built on shame and humiliation. You don't get it right. You're treated like garbage. That's and that's how they think that they're teaching you. I graduated ten years ago, and maybe things are improving, but that innate culture is hard to extract from a profession as well, and it's built on a hierarchy as well.

Shahana Alibhai: So because I fell in love with people's stories, I think that is why mental health, emotional health, all of this was the perfect breeding ground for that. And I felt like I could help by listening, by educating, by understanding, and, of course, diagnosing if that's the role that they need.

Carl Richards: I'm a firm believer in do what you're good at, and for the rest, hire somebody else. So Yeah. You've experimented with figuring out what you're not good at. And great that you have a husband as a chiropractor, by the way, because that that that saves a couple of steps to appointments and stuff. Totally.

Carl Richards: But, definitely, you've still managed to figure out what you're really good at within that space. And mental health is vitally important in in today's it's always been important, but it's really important now. So kudos to you for figuring out that's what it is, and that's allowed you to professionally just flourish and and serve and help and do that. What led you to what led you to speaking and wanting to take your message forward?

Shahana Alibhai: I think we were speaking about this a little bit offline as well, but I had my third son in oh my word. I was three months postpartum in 2019, so whatever that was. Yeah. And I saw an application for a TED talk or TEDx talk. I'd never spoken before, never spoken on stage before.

Shahana Alibhai: And I really thought in my postpartum stupor that I had created the concept of emotional literacy. I thought I literally sat

Roxanne Derhodge: on my computer and I

Shahana Alibhai: thought nobody has come up with this term. Well, little did I know a whole book was published in the nineteen seventies about this, but I had never heard about it because I kept thinking there's physical literacy, why not emotional literacy? And I just applied and that was the first time I stood on a stage and I spoke. I loved it. I absolutely loved it.

Shahana Alibhai: But I remember having to quickly go and rush and nurse my baby who was crying in the auditorium and that's all I could focus on too. And after that, there was someone in the audience that said, hey. Can you speak at my annual general meeting? And I said, sure. Let's speak about what?

Shahana Alibhai: What do you want me to speak about? And he said, just like what you're talking about, mental health. And I think that whole notion fake it till you make it, I had no idea what I was talking about. I just put something together and that and I meant they were for a real estate company. So I said, if real estates like my real estate agents like my message, why don't I contact other real estate agencies?

Shahana Alibhai: And I just went I just focused on realty for the first six months, then COVID hit. And then it was virtual, virtual, and maybe 70 podcasts during COVID. And that's what honed my skills because I was able to practice and make a lot of mistakes and try to tell a joke and it not land and do all of that over and over again until you say, okay. That's feedback. That's the reaction.

Shahana Alibhai: But it's also an art and a science. And whereas when I went to work, you know, yesterday in the clinic, the worst thing that I can do is kill somebody, and that actually can happen. If I miss a diagnosis, if I prescribe the wrong medication, the worst thing I can do with speaking is that you're not gonna laugh at my jokes or you're not gonna find myself make my it may make me interesting, and that's okay. Right? So I think this creativity, this ability to just color outside the lines whereas medicine is so focused in the box is allows me to feel like I can actually express myself.

Shahana Alibhai: So that's how the speaking career came to be.

Roxanne Derhodge: It sounds like you you also love the stories. Right? I think of when I met Carl, I I did some speaking events, like, where Carl was training speakers. This is going back a while. But that whole element, like you said, when you went into the to the schools and you start to line the gap, right, between medicine and the vital system, which is a school system.

Roxanne Derhodge: Yeah. I'm gonna my obviously, with my background too as a psychotherapist, it's fascinating what you hear about people's stories. And I often say that within that developmental stage, I often say when my son was going through it, I thought, now I kinda get it, but you don't get it until you're in it with that child. There's so much going on, and the stories that you must hear, I'm sure, like, in the clinic still. What spurred you to obviously, you have to be a great listener to want to take that path.

Roxanne Derhodge: Do you take some of those stories? Obviously, you could never use the person's identity and weave it, or did you weave it into that TED talk that you did?

Shahana Alibhai: Yeah. No. That's a good question. I my work at the foundry or the youth that I was it was just in its infancy during the TED talk. It was just kind of starting.

Shahana Alibhai: Ironically, though, there was a person in the audience whose son was someone that I had helped quite a bit during that time. And he came up to me afterwards and he's saved my son's life. And it wasn't because I prescribed a magic medication or anything like that. It was because I saw him week after week on a continual basis, develop that report. I think what that taught me, and we know now from the science that the single most protective factor for adolescent mental health isn't isn't their parents per se.

Shahana Alibhai: It's having one adult in their life they can trust. Right? So I think now being able to see myself in that role as a physician sometimes, as a coach always. Right? They don't always need a physician, but they always need a coach.

Shahana Alibhai: And a lot of the times, it's me just feigning dumb and going, can you tell me about that? Like actually really being genuinely curious and interested in what's going on in their life. I've learned more about Sephora makeup and makeup trends and all the rest of it. Like, and they'll often very proudly say that I was born in the I was graduated in the year they were born. So sometimes you can really feel that age difference.

Shahana Alibhai: But the stories themselves, wonderful as they can be, they can also equally be as heavy and hard. And sometimes I feel very weighed down by them. I often tell my husband, I don't know where to put this. Someone has given me this package of their story, and it feels like a boulder. And that can cause you yourself to feel cynical or elements of burnout.

Shahana Alibhai: And I think a way of processing that is through the art of speaking in some some ironic ways. So I think sometimes taking a lesson out of that, trying to figure out what that story taught me, or even just shedding light on the story to help others is a way of moving forward instead of always getting carried by the past.

Carl Richards: Are there, any stories that would how do I say this? Trying to ask the right question here. Any stories that you would just not even consider including into your talks? Like, if it's too heavy, you wouldn't include it, or if it's too not the right theme, and are there are are there ones that you think are easy entry? Just curious because everyone approaches the story differently, and they think of, okay, we have to put in some humorous stories.

Carl Richards: Yes. But what about the ones that are heavy? Would you exclude them, or would you handle them a little differently?

Shahana Alibhai: That's a good question. And to make matters even more complicated, I work in breast health as well. So I've done that for ten years and I'm our team, the four female physicians and I are the first to diagnose breast cancer. Right? So you have those very, very weighty and heavy stories.

Shahana Alibhai: I've learned the hard way. I've learned that by presenting some of these stories and you're going into an undifferentiated audience, you don't know what's going on in their life, and you don't know what you could be saying could also be triggering. So I've learned to kind of preface my talks that some of this stuff will be heavy. Having said that, I think there's also such a need and thirst out there to have real conversations and to go behind the door and to actually say, let's just gloss. Oh, it's not about having a bubble bath and going for a walk.

Shahana Alibhai: Don't tell me to get eight hours of sleep and drink enough water. Can we have to tell me the truth? And what people need is to see themselves reflected. The the joke that I always make is I tell my youth that you are as unique as a snowflake, but nobody wants to go to their doctor and say, oh, you had that? Ugh.

Shahana Alibhai: I've never seen that before. Like, you don't wanna you don't wanna rash like that and you don't wanna diagnosis like that. Because you wanna be common. You wanna be like, I'm leaning in. I got you.

Shahana Alibhai: And even if I've never seen it before, I'm gonna be there with you. And as someone who has struggled with a rarer form of a mental health diagnosis called postpartum OCD, it actually is a lot more common. We don't talk about it very much. That's when something pinches you, when it stings you, when you've walked that road, I think that's one of the biggest reasons why you become an advocate for it. Because when you've gone through the pain, you wanna take that pain and turn it into something.

Shahana Alibhai: And that was born out of my postpartum journey. So having felt that alienation, I don't wanna give that to anyone else.

Carl Richards: That in itself is a very heavy story, though, because it's personal. How long did it take you to figure out or structure that story so it's enough? Mhmm. And so it's you're not crumbling like broccoli on the state. How long did it take you to figure out what's the sweet spot?

Shahana Alibhai: Oh, so if you ever listen to my TEDx talk, I never utter the words OCD. I say anxiety. I say depression. I say panic attacks. Why?

Shahana Alibhai: The truth of the matter is that we live in a society where if I say anxiety, depression, panic attacks, we kind of lean forward. We go, okay. We got you. We got you. If I say suicidality, OCD, bipolar, schizophrenia, psychosis, it's like a big step back.

Shahana Alibhai: We have this invisible line of what is acceptable in mental health and what is too crazy. Mhmm. I can say that as a physician because that's true. Right? So what happened, the evolution of my podcast, if you hear the 70 or 80 podcast, it went from anxiety, which is a bit of anxiety, and then finally one to get a podcaster go, so tell me she used the words, tell me the truth.

Shahana Alibhai: And I told her the truth. I told her about postpartum OCD. And I had someone who is quite I I don't know who this person is, but they reached over to me from Instagram, someone who is quite famous in Britain and said as a new mom, and she's an actress, and she said, me too. Until I listened to your podcast, did I realize that this condition very much exists? That led to speaking at Yale University on perinatal OCD because it how many women?

Shahana Alibhai: I've known women who have ended their life, and I've known women who have lived in silence. If the matter is bigger than you, then you feel like you have a platform to actually speak about it. But just like as Roxanne will know, the minute that you are in your own mental health shadow, everything feels so alive in the dark. You switch on the light, and it's not so scary anymore. Right?

Roxanne Derhodge: And the fact that you can bring that space. Right, Shauna? To be able to it's one thing you're the physician and you've done the all the different work. But to be able to bring your personal space, like they say, name entertainment kind of

Shahana Alibhai: thing Yeah.

Roxanne Derhodge: And be able to say that as a, you know, as a mom as a new mom, you're like, okay. Everybody says, oh, you're emotional. It's just your hormones. So you got all that stuff. Not that Carl I'm sure Carl has heard this.

Roxanne Derhodge: I was gonna say Carl has not experienced this. But, you know, and then but when you realize it's so much more, to your point, anxiety, depression, those types of things, it's it's becoming more familiar. But when it becomes something outside of the normal, quote, unquote, thing that we can actually discuss over a kit like a a dining room table, that's when everybody goes, what excuse me? What what are you saying? So being able to bring that out to your audiences must be very powerful where they can and I like you said, you have to think about all the people in that room potentially that may have been touched by something that's maybe a term that people aren't comfortable with just yet.

Roxanne Derhodge: Right?

Shahana Alibhai: %. A %. So it's amazing how much courage you get when you stop focusing just on you. Right? That's the same thing with speaking.

Shahana Alibhai: Right? If I go up on a stage and it's all about me and how I perform, that is the most anxiety provoking feeling. But if I turn it to go, how can this message help someone out there who if I took them as a patient, close the door, and actually listen to their story, that's what I need to focus on. Right? And because I can play both roles, I can see that woman or man behind the door and go, tell me your story.

Shahana Alibhai: This is what you need to hear right now.

Roxanne Derhodge: So with with kind of what you're doing out there, tell us a little bit about the book because I think people need to know about the book, and we need to kinda know I'm sure there are schools. I'm sure there's lots of different women that for instance, women's organizations, lots of different places that might want to connect with you. But start with the book and then tell us a little bit more, and then we can kind of chat about where people get can actually reach out and and talk more about your services.

Shahana Alibhai: Oh, of course. Yeah. So people often ask me, like, where did the book idea come from? And it was speaking of stories, it came from a story. It came from asking patients this question.

Shahana Alibhai: Do you care about yourself? I didn't say love. I didn't say, do you really admire yourself? No. Do you just just care about yourself?

Shahana Alibhai: Over and over and over again, I would get the same answer often from male adolescent patients. I, excluding hate myself. Like and it was as if they'd all traded notes because they say that it was the same exlative and it was which by the way, my five year old just learned that word. Would not recommend a five year old going he was doing all the worms that ride with duck, and it was just a bad spot.

Carl Richards: Oh, mom. It's in the book. It's

Shahana Alibhai: It's like, rhyming is good to a point. Right? That's where we get in trouble. And I was like, oh my gosh. And part of me was really frustrated.

Shahana Alibhai: I'm like, you just want a prescription, which is which is fine, and I can help you with that. But is that it? Me writing a prescription for an SSRI takes about two seconds. That's not the hard part. The hard part is tell me your story and why now.

Shahana Alibhai: And it led to this thought in my head that we talk so so much about self awareness and self awareness being the bedrock of emotional literacy. But what about acknowledgement? What about having an iota of self care, self respect, not self love, but actually being able to honor your progress and see how far you've come? And the self loathing I saw in these adolescents was really unfortunate because not only they were telling it to themselves, people in their lives were also telling that to them. You'll never amount to anything.

Shahana Alibhai: You're never gonna graduate. You're just gonna be smoking weed all day on and on, or you're gonna end up just like me on the streets. Right? Imagine if that was the messaging that you got. And then I realized that and I'll call women out because that's the gender that I am, but I think a lot of the times women are the same.

Shahana Alibhai: We we keep trying to focus that this is I should be. I should be doing this and should I should be doing that, but we never look behind and see how far we've come. And I do the same thing in my mental health journey. So a big premise or a big through line of the book is that self acknowledgment precedes self awareness. You can't look into that messy closet that you've stuffed everything in over the last forty years until you actually respect yourself or even if not respect yourself, have the courage to say that I have improved.

Shahana Alibhai: I have made progress, and there's lots of exercises in the book that bring that to the forefront. And then after that, it's if that is that, then it's accepting your emotion and then it's being compassionate. So there's a bridge metaphor and crossing a bridge and being able to look back. So that's kind of the through line of the book, but filled with stories, filled with practical advice. And from the feedback that I've gotten, it's very down to earth.

Shahana Alibhai: It's not an academic read. It's not quoting this and that paper. This is real life, real stories, and things you can take away right now.

Carl Richards: I love it. And I have to ask as a guy, is it a book that, for example, you know, if Roxanne was reading it, is it a book that she should be sharing with with her spouse or, like, it's, like, just some of the things that are in it, or is it a personal read it yourself and and improve from it?

Shahana Alibhai: No. %. I've actually had a lot of my female friends buy the book, take it home, and then they've screenshotted, send me pictures of their husband picking it up and reading it. And they said I need to buy another copy now because I'll just kinda do this, like, the little flip through kind of thing. Like, I'm not really reading it, but I am reading it sort of thing.

Shahana Alibhai: So, yeah, I think it can be used for both. But the message that I say, I think the woman might buy, but the man might read. Right?

Roxanne Derhodge: Which is a triage point generally for any kind of mental health. Right? It's like having worked in mental health services at an executive level, what would happen often times, Carl, I'm gonna assume Shahana knows is that the female would would kinda go come and do the heavy lifting, and the man would come from the pragmatic, give me the facts, kinda give me the one book solution, blah blah blah. And then they both get to the same point, but just a different way of coming at it. And you're talking about young males.

Roxanne Derhodge: I I often say that because of socialization and so many variables, we could kinda open up and people not kinda look at us and go, woah. But, I mean, I have a son. And I remember when he was at at that age where the the juxtaposition between this beautiful little boy and then I put him in his hockey stuff being the typical Canadian, and I could see the metamorphosis that he had to get into. And then he would get off and he would be sweaty and all that, and he come by me. He was a teenager.

Roxanne Derhodge: He come He'd put his arm around my neck and say, love you, mom, and give me a kiss. And the mothers would say, he'd still does that? And I'm like, absolute absolutely, he does because there was kind of a thing that now we don't engage in that way in public or we don't touch our sons at a certain point. So this stuff that you're talking about, Johanna, is fascinating because I think, unfortunately, sometimes men aren't allowed the space that naturally would come to us as well. Right?

Shahana Alibhai: Absolutely. You're very good point. Yeah. I'm seeing it even in my seven year old who's playing hockey. Just get up.

Shahana Alibhai: There's no reason to cry. You know, you got this. Just get up. Right? So it's just it's it starts that early.

Shahana Alibhai: Right? So, no, it's very interesting.

Carl Richards: How can people reach out to you to find out more about you or if they're looking to book you as a speaker? What's the best way for them to reach you?

Shahana Alibhai: No. Of course. So you can come on to my website. You can spell Shahana. It's got lots of a's and h's in it, but doctorShahana.com.

Shahana Alibhai: I'm also on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, but send me a message on LinkedIn. That usually seems to be the best way to connect as well. The book is available on Amazon and through my website too. It has a free downloadable workbook as well, and it's there's a Kindle edition and as well as the audiobook, which I recorded myself.

Roxanne Derhodge: So what's important to know is that the spoken word is the spoken word, whether you're behind closed doors. And I love that you made that kinda draw on that. Right? It's really about the person in front of you. It's really about whether you're behind closed doors, whether you're on a stage speaking to many, or you're consulting, like you said, with some of these different organizations.

Roxanne Derhodge: It's about getting a message over. And clearly, you know, you had a message even be before you became a physician to share. And what a beautiful place to be in mental health, me being in mental health as well. I oftentimes remembering the times when you would clear the radius around you, when everybody said, what do you do for a living? And we're getting less so.

Roxanne Derhodge: So, of course, for anyone listening, please reach out. You know, we are CAPS members. We are the place, Carl, the place to hang out for the spoken word in Canada. And you can go to CAPS National and the website, which is oh goodness. I'm gonna forget it right now.

Roxanne Derhodge: Just Google CAPS National, and you can go on. We have so many people, but especially you could also find Shahana there as well along with all our other members, and we welcome you. Come check us out. Come check us our events and spend some time with us. Again, Shahana, it has been a pleasure.

Roxanne Derhodge: Carl, any last words that you have for Shahana Shahana before we let her go?

Carl Richards: I would just say Shahana. Oh my goodness. To echo Roxanne, I've learned a lot today for sure. And thank you so much for being our guest today. It's been a pleasure getting to know you.

Carl Richards: Next time at convention, we'll have to, if you're at convention, we'll have to shake hands. Yeah. It is in Halifax this coming year. It's so, in 2025. So, anyways, looking forward to seeing you and all the great things that you're doing in the speaking world, in the in the mental health world, and, of course, now in the CAPS world.

Carl Richards: So thank you so much for joining us today.

Shahana Alibhai: Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast.

Roxanne Derhodge: Take care. We'll talk to you soon. For everyone, make sure and hang out once a week because you've got us listen to Carl's amazing voice and, see what

Announcer: Thanks for listening to Behind the Mic, presented in part by CAPS, where members are driven by the four pillars of learn, share, grow, and belong. If you liked what you heard today, leave us a comment or a review. And so that you never miss an episode, please subscribe to our channel. Be sure to join us again soon for the next edition of behind the mic.

Roxanne Derhodge: Amazing speakers we have across Canada so that if you're looking for anyone to hire, please come out, check out Johanna and the others, that are, members of our Canadian speakers association. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.