This episode is with the musician, author & mental chiropractor & Palestine advocate, Daniel Mate. Daniel co-authored the renowned best-selling book, The Myth of Normal, with his father, Gabor Mate. The illustrious duo also run the workshop series, HELLO AGAIN: A Fresh Start For Parents and Their Adult Children and are co-writing a book by the same name. With an indefatigable mission to help heal others, how do the father and son duo retain a healthy and compassionate relationship...

Hadar Cohen is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic and artist whose work focuses on multi-religious spirituality, politics, social issues, and community building. She is the founder of malchut, a spiritual skill-building school teaching Jewish mysticism and direct experience of god. she teaches and consults in a variety of settings and formats, from one-on-one coaching to online group classes and in-person retreats.  Her podcast, hadar’s web, features community conversations on spirituality,...

Hana is a British-Libyan multifaceted creative, grief counsellor and end-of-life carer. She runs monthly grief circles called Permission to Grieve and works with clients 1-to-1. Using a holistic approach, including vibrational sound medicine, Hana strives to create a safe space for people to address & heal their loss.  Hana draws on her own personal healing journey and the many losses - her brother, her marriage, her identity, her country, to name a few - experienced in her life to...

Alya Mooro is the Egyptian born, London raised writer & best-selling author of The Greater Freedom: Life as a Middle Eastern Woman Outside the Stereotypes.  Many of Alya’s Instagram followers will be familiar with her The Greater Conversation newsletter & community (& if you don’t, go sign up!) but did you know that Alya is also a TV producer with a number of exciting projects up her sleeve?  Tune in to this Third Culture Therapy conversation & find out about Alya’s journey...

This week’s conversation is with Palestinian-Polish @thehumanitariantherapist, Tasha Matar.  Tasha is therapist living in Canada who specializes in generational wounds, including struggles with belonging, diasporic grief and complex trauma.  Raised in Canada to a Polish mother and a Palestinian father, Tasha understands the third culture life and its challenges well!  She draws on her own cultural awareness and a decolonial perspective to connect with her clients - many of whom are...

Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan is a British Egyptian paediatric neurologist and humanitarian activist who has been leading a global civil society movement for the protection of healthcare workers in Palestine amid the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces.  In this episode of Third Culture Therapy, Omar talks about the mental and emotional toll witnessing the horrors emerging out of Gaza has had on him and shares the advice an expert in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) gave him on how to...

In this episode, I share some of my reflections on my recent trip to Damascus, the place my mother was born and raised in, the place I spent all my childhood summers, the place I have some of my most loving and joyful memories and the place that is at the heart of one of the worst wars of the past century. Here is where I answer some of the many questions I've been asked about how Damascus is today - the good, the bad, the ugly and the painful. You'll hear about: My enduring love...

Amir Bozorgzadeh is the cofounder and CEO at Virtuleap, a startup that combines neuroscience with virtual reality (VR) to help increase attention levels and address cognitive disorders, such as ADD/ADHD, addiction and phobias. Born and raised in Canada to Iranian parents, Amir worked in the UAE for over a decade and is now based in Spain. In this episode: Amir shares his feelings of nostalgia for his ancestry's ancient culture and how his internal Canadian 'software' proved challenging...

Dubai-born Reema Baniabbasi is a USA-trained counselling psychologist from the United Arab Emirates. On this episode, Reema shares how she felt a "raw disintegration" after returning to her city of Dubai following 10 years abroad to find it dramatically changed. The therapist reflects on the ongoing developments within the mental health space in her country and reveals what some of the common issues her clients come to her with and how a 'narrative' form of therapy can help people better...

Hazara-Brit Roh Yakobi fled Afghanistan as a young man after being tortured by the Taliban and is now a UK-based activist and journalist and is currently standing to be selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Shrewsbury and Atcham.  In this episode, Roh talks about running from danger, the struggle to find inner peace in safety and how his political activism gives him purpose and sanity.  Roh is a member of the ethnic minority Hazara community in Afghanistan, who have...

Where I share my thoughts on Karina's conversation about what it means to be Russian and where I reflect on my own assumptions and hang-ups about Russia. I also reflect on the emotional and mental burden of being associated with your country's politics and leaders, particularly when they aren't popular, and the effect that has.

Karina Carter is a Russian-Dutch-Brit who has called 9 countries home! She’s actually just about to make Indonesia her next stop so glad I caught her while I could. Karina grew up in 1990s post-Soviet Union Russia at a time of widespread crisis and misery. Her grandmother died by su!c!de, her father left the family with mountains of debt, Russian mafia were threatening her family and all around her were stories of trauma and bare survival.  On this episode, Karina tells Third Culture Therapy...

This is where you hear me, Layla, share my musings. I round-up what Bhanu shared about growing up between cultures and not completely fitting in either 'back home' or in one's adopted home. I also question what societal 'norms' really are and where they come from with a look at how many of our contemporary beliefs or views, including about homosexuality, come from colonial laws or foreign oppression that don't always reflect honestly on local culture. Like Bhanu said, it is time to decolonise...

Bhanu Bhatnagar is your textbook Third Culture Kid. Born in Sweden to Indian parents, Bhanu was raised between Stockholm and Delhi and has lived around the world. A former journalist for over a decade, Bhanu is now in charge of press and media relations for the World Health Organisation's regional office for Europe. In this episode, Bhanu talks about the challenges in finding belonging as a ‘brown kid in Sweden’ and then later as a ‘foreigner in India’. He also shares his struggles with not...

This is where I summarise some of what Louisa said in her episode and where I share my personal journey with Ayahuasca and what I experienced and discovered along the way.

In part 1, Louisa spoke about her youth growing up in Iraq amid two wars, seeking asylum in The Netherlands as an adult and her later struggles with anxiety, PTSD and addiction. In part 2, Louisa talks about her healing journey with the ancient South American psychoactive brewed drink, Ayahuasca, and how it helped heal her mental and emotional health. She also shares details of the two-year training she did in Peru to become a shaman and what she has learned over the hundreds of ceremonies...

Louisa is an Iraqi Ayahuasca shaman and healer who trained in the Amazon jungle of Peru. After fleeing Baghdad during the first gulf war, Louisa sought asylum in The Netherlands. Louisa’s traumatic experiences of war and an eight-year asylum process in Europe impacted her mental and emotional health for many years, and she suffered from paranoia, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She later became addicted to cannabis, which she had first started using to self-soothe but...

Where I reflect on Jihad's episode and share my own story of grief after losing my father to cancer in my 20s and how it took me a long time to properly heal from it.

Jihad is a British-Lebanese multimedia producer who was raised between Sierra Leone and the UK. In this episode, he talks about the intense grief and depression he experienced after his mother’s death from cancer, and how therapy helped him overcome the symptoms of PTSD that followed. He also speaks about surviving Lebanon's many compounding tragedies and how living among a distressed population helped him deal with his own grief in what he calls 'a kind of national group therapy'. Finally,...

Where I share my thoughts on Tania's episodes and the parts of it that resonated with me personally, including the challenges of balancing different cultures and taking on adult duties as a child of immigrants.

Tania Khojasteh is a UK-based Iranian-Canadian entrepreneur, educator and professional coach specialising in emotional intelligence. Tania founded Uber Tutors, a tailored and online private tutoring company, in 2012 and ten years later launched her second company, Fearless Knowledge, an academy and consultancy that provides intersectional emotional and social intelligence training to individuals and businesses. She also hosts a podcast called Fearless Knowledge which explores themes related...

I share some of my reflections on what Omar Lababedi said about managing the inner critic, the importance of men's work and man-to-man connections and how I have used some religious practices to help ease my anxiety

Omar Lababedi is a British Syrian entrepreneur and men's work coach who was raised in France, Syria, Lebanon, and Nigeria. After years working in the real estate investment and construction sectors, Omar was professionally unsatisfied and personally unhappy. Deciding he needed a change, he left his job and embarked on a journey of self-reflection and personal development work in search of his purpose. With the help of daily practises, professional coaching and a men’s circle group, Mankind...

I share some of the thoughts and feelings that came up for me after my conversation with Layla Al Ammar, in particular how being connected to a region that is in constant socio-political turmoil impacts personally and why reading and writing go some way in easing the pain.