Ali Ilyas

Early life and background

Ilyas says he is from Pindi. He completed matriculation and FSc, and did not see engineering or medicine as a fit for him. Looking back as an adult, he found that stage of schooling torturous. He says he did not come from a very rich background. [1][4][11]

A cousin gave him a book, The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. He found the ancient Greek theories of mind very interesting. He says he became very attracted to psychology for personal reasons. [1]

Education

Ilyas says he studied social science and psychology. He applied for a master's in clinical psychology at NUST, and says his time at NUST was an intellectual experience that shaped him. He says he holds an MS in clinical psychology and practices as a psychotherapist. [1][11]

He studied developmental psychology. He says he is trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and is being supervised in relational psychotherapy. He became interested in interdisciplinary work toward the end of his master's. [1][8][9]

During his training, he went out once a week and spoke with women and men as a psychologist. He talked with people in shops about using contraceptives. He says family planning conversations were hard because using contraceptives is seen as wrong where he worked. [8]

He has not studied for a bachelor's or master's abroad. He says the most useful part of his bachelor's was building a habit of self-education and reading. He says that without a drive for self-education, a student can do little even at a top university, and that a colonial mindset makes people think a degree from abroad is better. [1]

He says no one taught him financial management, and that his university did not teach it either. He is learning it on his own by reading Rich Dad Poor Dad. He says the book has taught him to think differently about liabilities and assets. [11]

Career

Ilyas is originally from the IT world. He says he worked in social media marketing and social media strategy for about three months. He did a project management internship and volunteered with a student exchange organization. He says he was paid for his internship and for the job he was doing, while his psychology internships were unpaid. He says he would probably have worked at one internship even if it were unpaid. [6][11]

Ilyas says he was deeply involved in the development sector circuit from 2012 to 2014. He says that during that period his views differed from the liberal outlook around him because he looked at things critically. He says he argued that a secular nation is undemocratic in a country where the majority follows religion. After voicing these views in several places, he says he suddenly fell out of that circuit. He says he later softened his approach and went back into that circuit. [12]

Ilyas says he once did an internship with almost 100 people. He says the interns at that organisation were told to get a thousand Twitter followers, and that they were told they were being monitored. He says the internship's follower drive was propaganda, reaching 100,000 people in six weeks. [12]

Ilyas says he wanted to widen his skill set beyond psychology. He says he wanted to grow in different directions and branch out in as many places as possible. He says he has not reached all his goals and is still at the start of his journey. He tells students that he is at the start of his career and does not have all the answers. He says a lot of luck was involved in his path. [1][11]

Ilyas says reading and verbal communication are the two skills that helped him most. He says spoken word may now reach as many people as written word, which may be new in human history. He says many things improve by asking better questions, even when the answers are not found. He says he is planning to apply for a PhD abroad, but is more likely to stay in Pakistan because his family and life are there. [1]

Clinical practice

Ilyas practised under the supervision of a senior clinical psychologist. He started by taking clients online under supervision. He has described being in his third year of practice, and has also said he practised for about one year. He also says he is still very new in his work. [1][2][16]

He says psychology practice in Pakistan is not regulated by law, so supervision is an ethical obligation. He says psychotherapy is neither commonly understood nor commonly available in Pakistan. He says clients have come to him after seeing therapists with only a bachelor's degree in psychology. He says people who start psychotherapy practice after a bachelor's degree cause harm. [1][9][11]

Ilyas works as a therapist with clients, and says he has worked with a great many people. He says he works in therapy and deals with a lot of trauma. He says he works with any sort of trauma, including what he calls big T traumas and small T traumas. He has worked with people who have been through sexual assault and says he has seen how it disrupts their lives. He says he sees anger, frustration and rage in his clinic, and that a lot of people come to him with anxiety. [2][7][15][16]

Ilyas says people at his clinic sometimes downplay their own problems. He sits with clients who are crying about the loss of a loved one. He says clients often ask whether someone else can take their emotional pain away. He says he sees many people who have many friends but are still inherently lonely. He has said he made a mistake with a client and apologized to her. [5][9][15]

Ilyas says he is self-employed, working for himself and not for any organization. He says he consults for a few organizations but does not work for anyone per se. He says he moved into self-employment in psychology. [7][11]

Ilyas says he first planned to try his work while still applying for other jobs, but that it went so well he dropped the idea of applying for a job. He says the step was scary and he did not know whether it would work. He says building clients was not easy when he started out, and that he has had his share of failures over the past year. He says it has been about eight to nine months since he last worried about where clients would come from, and credits content creation and generating demand for himself. He says he has done far better than he ever thought he would. [11]

Ilyas says opening a clinic carries a risk that people have to accept. He says taking risks and pushing into scary things can really pay off. [11]

Mental Health with Ali

Ilyas says he began posting on his Mental Health with Ali platform, not to get business. He says the platform was built to lead people to decide to see a therapist. He says he is no longer very active on it. He has said he now has his own small public platform. [1][4][15]

Ilyas says many psychology students message him on his platform about careers, and that he gets many questions about careers and career counselling. He has run live sessions on IGTV for psychology students. He has an Instagram account and once ran a live session on it. He goes live on Instagram, where viewers often ask him for body language tips. [1][4][5][6][11][12]

Ilyas has said people who follow his page often ask how to help a friend stop being sad, and people ask him on his page about friends and relatives who are grieving. He says people often ask him what to do when a friend is depressed. He says more and more people from his platform are open to seeking therapy. He says that, as an influencer, many people reach out to him. [2][4][8][9][12]

Ilyas says Instagram and YouTube audiences need separate effort. He does content creation and may hire someone for social media later. He says he runs his own page and practises perception management. He posted that the best way to know what someone thinks is to ask them. [6][11][12]

Training and consulting

Ilyas has given mental health trainings at a range of organisations, including Unilever and Daraz. He says he still gives mental health trainings now and then, though he is not very active in them. He has said organizations invited him to speak about stress management during COVID. He has said he gave a training titled The Modern Denial of Emotion. [1][2][15]

Ilyas says he ran an assertiveness training workshop about two months before the lockdown. He says it was limited to 12 or 13 people and was titled Assertiveness Training: Learning How to Say No. He says that when he asked who was passive, 11 of the 12 participants raised their hands. He says many people approached him afterward and that it helped them, and that running it was very gratifying. He says the nudging he used in the workshop could be called manipulative, but that is what marketing is. [12]

Ilyas said he had been consulting for a company for about four months. He uses neuromarketing and consumer psychology research to help a company he consults for with its branding and focus groups. He says his team does not yet have neuromarketing equipment and is trying to get a pupilometer. He said he was re-engineering a restaurant menu as part of his work that day, and says menu engineering uses the psychology of design to nudge purchases. [1]

Ilyas says neuromarketing combines psychology, neuroscience, marketing and behavioral economics, and does not assume that customers know why they want what they want. He says much marketing in Pakistan pushes the product hard instead of engaging the consumer. He says his group wants to avoid the same marketing that everyone else does. [1]

Ilyas says he gave a TEDx talk this year. The talk covered integrative complexity, a topic he says he is passionate about. He says integrative complexity means looking at a problem from several perspectives, and that developing it makes a person very open to being wrong. He says people who move toward violent extremism tend to lack integrative complexity, and that black and white thinking is a strong indicator of a path toward violent extremism. [1]

Forensic psychology research

Ilyas says his area of interest and research at the end of his master's was forensic psychology. He says it is his area of interest and that he is conducting research in it, with a few more projects coming up. He says he is not a forensic psychologist himself, and that the only research he has done so far is in the area of prisons. He says his forensic psychology work involves a lot more numbers than people might expect. [1][16]

Ilyas reached out to a forensic psychiatrist and consultant psychiatrist whom he describes as brilliant. He says an organisation was established to provide mental health training to prisons, police, the judiciary and university departments. He says the organisation is interested in prisons, police, the judiciary, and psychiatry and psychology departments at universities. [1]

Ilyas says he became deeply involved in the bomb blast data and read articles about it. He says his own field is psychology and that he does research in this area because it is his own research interest. [10]

Ilyas describes forensic psychology as psychology in relation to the judiciary, courts, police and prisons. He also describes it as the application of behavioural science research to the judiciary, policing and prisons. He says there are many arguments over how forensic psychology is defined. He says a criminal psychologist works mainly on crime, which is narrower than forensic psychology. [1][16]

Ilyas said forensic psychology was a field that did not exist in Pakistan. He says Pakistan has few forensic psychiatrists and forensic psychologists, which is a specialty. He says forensic psychiatry, forensic psychology and criminology are not well established in Pakistan, and that Pakistan has very little forensic psychology, psychiatry or statistical data. [1][10][16]

Ilyas says a person who pleads insanity is usually assessed by a board of psychiatrists. He says psychosis, with hallucinations and delusions, can push someone toward a crime. He says an explanation for a crime does not necessarily excuse what the person did. [1]

Ilyas says profiling does not necessarily have to be negative, and that a profile is meant to show probabilities and does not eliminate other possibilities. He says he was not calling the people he described good or bad, and that the profile he described could be right or could be wrong. He says criminal profiling in forensic psychology has become very sophisticated today, and that the way a victim was shot can reveal a lot about the shooter. [10]

Ilyas says marketing has become more sophisticated partly because of science, and that profiling used in marketing is not far off from profiling used to understand crime. He says it is no longer possible to live without being profiled at all times, and that profiling now lets people very accurately control and predict where things are heading. He says social media now has much more control over who people are and what they like. He says predicting crime from a person's conduct raises a privacy concern for him. He says science is largely about classification, organization and profiling, especially in the social sciences. [10]

Ilyas says he is not sure Pakistan's federal agencies and police have the resources for profiling at that level. He says some intelligence agencies have psychologists, but he does not know what they do. He says that, as he understands it, police psychologists mainly work in the prison police for rehabilitation. He says profiling in Pakistan is not as sophisticated as in the West, and that the public does not yet understand profiling in the way he describes it. [10]

Views on psychology in Pakistan

Ilyas says psychology is a very underdeveloped discipline in Pakistan, and that it is at a toddler stage there compared with its teenage stage worldwide. He says Pakistan needs more indigenous research in almost every area, and that research on social issues in Pakistan is guesswork until it is properly done. He says research in Pakistan is very limited to some particular areas, with very little on consumer psychology. He says he hopes Pakistan's policies become more research-informed. [1][12]

Ilyas says psychology students in Pakistan have little guidance about their work. He says many psychologists in Pakistan seek stable government, army, air force or navy jobs. He agrees that psychology jobs in Pakistan are very low paying. He says mental health awareness is much higher in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. [1][11]

Ilyas says WEIRD stands for Westernized, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies, and that roughly 80% of psychology research comes from such societies. He cites the 2010 article The Weirdest People in the World by J. Henrich. He says clinical psychology is one of about 100 sub-disciplines of psychology. [1]

Ilyas says polarization in Pakistan has become increasingly visible in recent times. He is optimistic that Pakistan can improve in public health, and says Pakistan handled COVID better than many first-world countries. He says there are many innovative people doing good work in public health. [1]

Views on education, work and skills

Ilyas says a degree is only a prerequisite for applying for jobs, and that a person should first identify the problem statement before choosing a degree. He says an individual should identify their own worth and work to raise it, and that in a capitalist system people are paid for the value they provide. He says any degree can theoretically have scope if its holder knows how to create demand, and that demand can be engineered if you know what you are doing. [11][12]

Ilyas says demand is generated when people hear a problem stated and think it makes sense. He says the lack of visible demand for a field does not mean people cannot generate demand. He says that after the dollar fell, workers became a very cheap resource compared with India and China. He says many people who claim to be jobless in IT do not have the skill set the market needs, and that weak people skills can stop a skilled person from passing interviews. [11]

Ilyas says some hiring systems are unfair and need to be improved, and that exploitation happens everywhere. He says the only thing a person controls is how well they cater to themselves, and that people should not sit idle. He says a skilled person far from major cities faces inefficiency rather than unfairness. He says young doctors often do not get proper salaries and face repeated strikes. [11]

Ilyas says his view is to be a jack of all trades and master of one, and that people who want independence need several skill sets. He says formal education was never meant for the job market, and the job market has damaged it. He says public education was built for research and that university is more of a research-oriented space. He says health-related fields require passing through formal education, and that he thinks self-employment is becoming more common. [11]

Ilyas says reading is a life skill that everyone should have, and that a book can pass years of experience on to a reader in a few days. He says schools do not teach life skills and that conditions in the education system are very bad. He says the only people who succeed are those with a vision for their own lives. He says people should explore, and that most people he knows follow a hunch rather than waiting for a eureka moment. He says awareness comes at a price and does not make things easy. [11]

Ilyas says people in Pakistan are not taught stress management or anger management. He says teachers are not to blame, because they were raised and taught in the same system, but that teaching cannot improve without training teachers in a specific way and paying them more. He says many teachers are university graduates from other fields who took up teaching, and that teachers are hired without any training. He says the school system shuts down a child's research and curious mind when they go beyond the syllabus. He says changing the education system is an evolutionary process that will take decades. [5]

Views on marketing and consumer behaviour

Ilyas says segmentation is the basic principle of marketing. He says an influencer alone cannot create a marketing identity, and that Toyota's choice of influencer makes sense because that influencer's audience can afford Toyota. He says brands waste money on ads because they do not use behavioural science research. [12]

Ilyas says he is tired of ads that only show a product with people around it. He thinks a brand has to be emotionless and follow fixed rules. He says the processes behind customer service are designed without any feeling. [12]

Ilyas has said he wants to help people understand how organizations and pricing affect their buying behavior. He has said behavioral economics shows through multiple studies that people are not as rational as they think, and that companies expect people to act irrationally in predictable ways. He has said people build an anchor in their minds from the first or last time they bought something, and that anchoring also shapes the value people will give something in the future. He has said a willingness to pay a given price shows the buyer is anchored somewhere below that price. [13]

Ilyas has said that if a jeans brand launched a line almost double its usual price, its loyal buyers would probably not buy it. He has said people value free items irrationally, even when a cheap paid option exists, and that a 125 price point can serve as a dummy price. He has said shoppers compare the two options closest in price rather than the cheapest one, and that people make comparisons when they buy, often without knowing what those comparisons are. He advises people to notice what they are comparing a purchase to before they buy. [13]

Ilyas has said what counts as wasteful spending is very subjective, and that the perceived value of human effort and labor in Pakistan is very different. He has said the psychology of money is really the psychology of judgment and decision making, and that the partner a person chooses is also based on an anchor. He has said media plays a huge role in how people perceive what a relationship should look like. [13]

Ilyas has said the average US CEO was paid about 36 times more than the average worker around 1976, 131 times more in 1993, and 369 times the average worker by the mid 2010s. He has said CEOs began comparing their pay with other CEOs, which he describes as anchoring. [13]

Ilyas has said he read a study about the appeal of zero cost, and read about a pricing experiment in Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. He has said he is not an economist. He has also said he is still learning about this subject and likes to share what he learns. [13]

Views on propaganda, news and skepticism

Ilyas agrees that a society cannot function without propaganda. He says good propaganda is propaganda that people do not see, and that some people are engineered to believe a certain way and then sell someone else's propaganda. He says he is sure he has fallen victim to propaganda in many ways. [12]

Ilyas has said many people act because society or the media told them to, and that self-reflection helps people break free of things already set in their minds. He has said that strategic skepticism is necessary, but that asking why about everything can end up hurting a person. He has said people who doubt everything should not then believe things and pass judgments. [13]

Ilyas has said he does not believe news reports at face value. He has said each news outlet reports according to its own region and politics. He has said he reads several news outlets to compare what each one reports. [13]

Views on social media, public figures and cancel culture

Ilyas says cancel culture now focuses less on outrage and more on the idea of cancelling someone. He says outrage is warranted over illegal acts, that some matters fall into a moral grey area, and that criminality is a separate matter from cancel culture. He says public pressure probably played a significant role in justice being served against Harvey Weinstein. [14]

Ilyas says the collective power of the internet can do a lot of damage to individuals, and that social media does not exist in a vacuum. He says many well-meaning people take part in outrage without knowing what it does, and that most people involved in cancel culture have their best intentions at heart. He says people at the centre of a debate tend to be attacked the most, and that online support goes to what a person represents, not to the person. [14]

Ilyas says words can be phrased in ways that do a lot more harm. He says humour can hide how a person feels while also showing it, and that humour of any sort has to be very well timed, especially in public. He says social media gives people a great deal of access to traumatic incidents. He says he would rather pose two research questions than give an answer. [14]

Ilyas says his view of the internet moved from expecting it to change the world to expecting it to destroy the world. He says the present is one of the most peaceful periods in human history, and that crime is at its lowest level and poverty was at its lowest before the pandemic. He says the standard of living of the ordinary person in Pakistan has changed a great deal over 20 years. [14]

Ilyas has said the data clearly shows increased social media use is not good for mental health. He calls watching social media without posting or talking passive social media usage, and says one factor shapes how healthy or unhealthy social media is for a person. He has said higher levels of envy probably have a negative impact on mental health. He has said screen time rose significantly during COVID and sleep patterns worsened. [15]

Ilyas advises people to put away their screens at least one and a half hours before sleep, and says phones emit blue light that blocks the release of melatonin. He has said stress is physical, not only mental, and that the more stressed a person is, the less well their immune system works. He has said unfollowing someone is within a person's control and is about mental health, not maturity. [15]

Ilyas has said public figures are not allowed to be human and that mistakes happen in every human relationship. He said a client told him that when a god makes a mistake, their followers become atheists. He has said going all in one direction or all in the other is a cognitive distortion, and that idealizing people leads to dehumanizing them. He has said relationships grow stronger when a problem is worked through in a healthy manner. [15]

Ilyas has said the reality about influencers lies somewhere in the middle, and that influencers carry some responsibility and also do some good. He has said Gary Vee has a positive and uplifting attitude. He has said smartphones and social media have changed the game entirely. [15]

Views on emotions and toxic positivity

Ilyas has said toxic positivity is positivity that dismisses difficult emotions. He says there is nothing wrong with positive thinking and that positive thinking is very important for a human being, but that it becomes toxic when it tries to dismiss a person's other difficult emotions. He says there is a difference between being positive and having a positive outlook. [2]

Ilyas says a person who denies that negative emotions exist falls under toxic positivity, while a person who accepts that negative emotions are okay is not dismissive of emotions. He has given examples of toxic positivity statements, such as 'don't think about it' and 'everything is going to be fine'. He says people arbitrarily throw around new terms such as toxic positivity. [2]

Ilyas says the more people try to avoid negative emotions, the bigger those emotions become, and that avoiding suffering causes suffering. He says distraction means pausing a feeling to deal with it later, which differs from avoidance. He says people are taught from childhood to dismiss difficult emotions, and that people in his part of the world constantly dismiss anything negative, as a personal view. [2]

Ilyas described a research study that used 60 people. In the study he described, the group taught to accept emotions saw their sadness drop sooner. He says anxiety work puts particular focus on negative thoughts, and that Steven C. Hayes created Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. [2]

Ilyas says online culture shows people either toxic positivity or toxicity, and that watching Instagram posts creates wrong expectations. He says people need to retrain their social media algorithm. He has described his society as very negative and said there is a need for overall positive thinking in society. He says people his age often feel anxious because they do not know what is expected of them. [2]

Views on grief and loss

Ilyas agrees that grief is the price people pay for love. He says grief shows that a person cared about someone who mattered to them, that grief is beautiful rather than depressing, and that grief is an emotion like any other and is not essentially a bad one. He says losing the possibility of a future with someone is a form of grief. [3]

Ilyas says tears and sadness after a breakup show how much a person cared, and that the only way to feel nothing after a breakup is to stop caring. He says no pill, technique or meditation can stop the pain of a breakup from coming, and that the only thing a person controls is how they deal with the pain. He says the only choice a person has after a loss is how they deal with its emotional impact. [3]

Ilyas says people he sees after a breakup often self-sabotage when it comes to anything long-term. He says it is okay to take your time after a breakup, with no hurry, that rebuilding after a long relationship requires a lot of time, and that a person should rebuild one day at a time. [3]

Ilyas says people should allow themselves to sit with emotions for long periods, and that emotions are not something to be solved, though they can sometimes be resolved. He says the most important thing he learned this year is the importance of slowing down. He says sitting quietly with yourself is what people call mindfulness or meditation, and that people are becoming worse at sitting with themselves because of constant distraction. He asks when a person last sat for five minutes doing nothing, and says most people would have a hard time remembering. He links productivity culture and toxic positivity on social media. [3]

Ilyas names Irvin Yalom as one of his favorite thinkers in psychotherapy. He says Yalom believed everyone experiences death anxiety, and wrote a book on death anxiety called Staring at the Sun. He says losing someone close can trigger a person's own death anxiety, and that realizing one's mortality leads a person to re-evaluate their life. He says working through death anxiety can lead to a richer life. [3]

Ilyas says death can be a logical next step for a spiritual person. He says many people lost parents and relatives during Covid, often suddenly, and that many people are still shocked by losses after Covid and have not got over them. [3]

Ilyas says therapy helps over the long run with grief and loss, and that the period after a loss is one of the best times to enter therapy. He says grief mixed with trauma needs a completely different way of dealing with it, and that working through trauma is a long-term process. He calls A Grief Observed a wonderful book. [3]

Ilyas says grief and depression are very different, and that grieving the death of a loved one is a natural human response and not depression. He says society does not grieve people who have died properly, and that telling people to suppress their grief and not show emotion is very harmful. He says the tears of someone grieving are physical proof of how much they cared. He describes the death of someone close as an awakening that makes people re-evaluate their whole life. [9]

Views on anger

Ilyas says change depends on trying to change, not on the calendar, and that people should not postpone change to a later day. He says there is nothing wrong with anger and that anger can show a person what is acceptable in their life. He says anger can become unhealthy if a person loses control over it. [4]

Ilyas explains anger as an arousal cycle, to show how anger forms and peaks. He says anger triggers can be internal, such as a sudden memory, that the body prepares for fight or flight during escalation, and that judgment is impaired during the crisis phase. He says the recovery phase is when the body recovers after an anger outburst, and that post-action depression follows it. He says people with anger issues have usually been through the anger arousal cycle many times. [4]

Ilyas says genes may set an upper and lower limit for a person, and that gene expression is related to the environment. He says he was taught that genes load the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. He says he has not read in great detail about the neuroscience or genetics of anger. [4]

Ilyas says research shows that letting anger out does not reduce anger, and that venting anger can make getting angry seem more glamorous. He says the point at which a person loses control of anger differs for each person. He recommends walking away when anger nears 3.5 or 4 on a scale of 0 to 10, and progressive muscle relaxation when anger gets close to the limit. He says most people clench their hands when they are angry. [4]

Ilyas advises telling an angry person that the conversation can wait, and walking away. He suggests the bathroom as a private place to feel emotions, and recommends the Headspace meditation app. He says people who block online haters often return with a new profile. He says individualized anger has many different triggers, and that mental health problems, screen time and depression rates are rising worldwide. [4]

Views on listening and communication

Ilyas describes passive hearing as listening on autopilot, and active listening as giving someone attention, absorbing their views and trying to understand them. He says in active listening the focus is on the other person, not on oneself, and that it is a skill that can be learned. He says active listening improves a person's ability to interact with others, and that relationships deepen when someone feels heard and understood. [5]

Ilyas says communication is probably 50% of an entire job, and that people with the same technical skills are told apart by their soft skills. He says developers often cannot understand what a customer is asking for, and that wrong requirements lead to a wrong program, however skilled the developer is. [5]

Ilyas says it annoys him when someone looks at their phone while he is talking to them. He says people stop wanting to continue a conversation with someone who does not actively listen, and that constantly planning what to say next means missing information the other person gives. He says the aim is to have the active listening skill ready when it is needed. [5]

Ilyas says online arguments are very frequent in Pakistan, and that people in a discussion want to speak rather than listen to the other perspective. He says that when he disagrees with someone, he asks questions instead of giving a counter-argument. He says people who share something personal often just want to be heard. [5]

Ilyas says people often downplay their own emotions, and that people compete over whose trauma is bigger, which he calls the trauma Olympics. He says what looks better in other people's lives is often just the grass being greener. He says a person does not need to be a therapist to be therapeutic, and that some friendships can have therapeutic qualities. [5]

Ilyas says mindful listening is one step beyond active listening, and describes it as considering how what another person says affects oneself. He says acceptance and commitment therapy is a form of psychotherapy and that its exercise helps with mindful listening and mindfulness. He explains the leaves on a stream exercise: put each thought on a leaf and watch it float away. He says the exercise helps people see thoughts as just thoughts, not necessarily reality. [5]

Ilyas says negative thoughts tint everything a person sees, and that people often hide negative thoughts, which leaves them going back and forth. He says the goal is to notice negative thoughts without being fused with them, and that, from his reading, people aim to move toward cognitive defusion. He says meditation is not an easy habit to create, that even three or fifteen minutes of this practice a day really helps, and that a person's relationship with their own thoughts changes over time. [5]

Ilyas says clearing the mind for 15 minutes takes effort at first but brings a sense of calm. He says Buddhist practice aims to reach a state with few thoughts, and that it is very difficult for an ordinary person to reach a state with no thoughts. He says children in the past had few toys and made do with what they had. [5]

Views on body language and trust

Ilyas has said body language is not an exact science, and that it is a big part of communication but reading it is less exact than people think. He has said that looking at someone alone tells him very little with any accuracy and that body language on its own is not enough to learn much about a person. He has said accuracy improves when you understand a person's baseline. He has said he was once very interested in body language and still is. [6]

Ilyas has said therapists get to know a person over time and build a clinical judgment from baselines, and that therapy training is not just about reading people. He has said only the person thinking something can truly tell you what it is, and that he asks a client what a change in eye contact means rather than assuming. He has compared being asked to read people to a magic trick. [6]

Ilyas has said the idea that eye direction reveals lying comes from a myth in neuro-linguistic programming. He has said research finds police officers are no better than others at catching lies, but they are more confident. He named the Truth Default Theory as a well-known communication theory and said the truth default is the natural position for most people. He has said a micro-expression lasts about a fifth of a second, and that micro-expressions are a true representation of what a person feels inside. [6]

Ilyas has said vulnerability always comes with the risk of being hurt. He has said Pakistan's recent generations were shaped by not trusting people outside their tribe, and that Pakistan will need experts who trust each other to scale. He has said feedback from new people is just data to him, not something he weighs emotionally. [6]

Views on family and intergenerational trauma

Ilyas says many therapists would agree that a person's relationship with their parents keeps reappearing in their other relationships, and that parents often come up in therapy over time, even when clients do not raise them at first. He says people learn how to seek validation, emotional support and comfort from their parents or caregivers at the start of life. He says an implicit message from parents keeps working whether or not the child notices it. [7]

Ilyas says that as children grow up, what parents ask and advise creates scripts for how life should be lived, and that trying to get free of these parental scripts causes a lot of problems. He says a passive communication style learned at home tends to carry into friendships and other relationships, and that people wait until things are badly broken before they speak up. He says self-sabotage, such as eating excess sugar with diabetes, can count as a form of self-harm. [7]

Ilyas says people learn much of their temperament from their parents, not only inherit it. He says a person's first relationship, usually with a caregiver, shapes how they interact with the world, and that a stressful relationship with a caregiver may lead a person to constantly look for validation as an adult. [8]

Ilyas says unmanaged parental trauma can be passed to children on biological, genetic, psychological and social levels, and that children learn from the people around them how to express and handle pain. He says getting therapy for yourself is one of the best gifts a parent can give their children. He says he has seen little research on intergenerational trauma in Pakistan, especially in his field. [7]

Ilyas says he is sure that intergenerational trauma from the 40s, the partition era, still exists, and that African Americans still face intergenerational trauma from slavery. He describes Pakistan as a country in its 70s that went through partition, which involved many atrocities. [7]

Ilyas says that, looking back, people had become desensitised to attacks, and that he knows many people who have lost someone to terrorism. He says the APS attack was a major symbolic loss and that terrorism will go anywhere and everywhere it can strike fear. [7]

Ilyas says that, as a therapist, he cannot make the decision for a client about whether to give something up. He says a path that leads a person toward bitterness can damage their relationship with their parents, and that people who move toward a healthier role in their lives should expect resistance. He says conflict can be a chance for a relationship to become stronger. [7]

Ilyas says explaining your vision to your parents can lead them to let you move one step at a time. He says that if a person's socio-economic needs are catered for, pursuing their own path is worth the risk of upsetting parents, and that finishing a degree first gives a person a safety net. He says the chain of intergenerational patterns will break sooner or later. [7]

Ilyas says children should be allowed to make mistakes and get a little hurt. He refers to Jonathan Haidt, a famous American social psychologist, and says Haidt argues that children should be allowed to play a lot. He says children who are shielded from every bruise can struggle to deal with the world later. He says parenting is not his line of work. [7]

Views on depression and suicide

Ilyas says that clinically, depression is a disorder marked by very low mood and thoughts of suicide, and that it exists on a spectrum, from mild to severe. He says anhedonia is when a person no longer enjoys things that once gave pleasure. He says depression has psychological, sociological and biological indicators, and that psychiatrists and psychologists usually use the bio-psycho-social model when they discuss depression. [8]

Ilyas says almost all illnesses, mental and physical, come from a combination of genetic and cultural issues, and that the onset of some genetic illnesses, such as Alzheimer's, can be delayed with good appetite and good exercise. He says depression can hit anyone, at any time and in any place, and that a person can be depressed even when they have everything in the world. He says the causes of depression are sometimes internal, such as very low self-esteem. [8]

Ilyas says depression in its worst form can lead to suicide. He says that, according to the World Health Organization, about 800,000 people die by suicide a year. He says suicide is criminalized in Pakistan, where the Pakistan Penal Code makes it a crime punishable by imprisonment or a fine. He says suicide is under-reported in Pakistan because it is treated as a criminal act and becomes a medico-legal case. He says suicide was criminalized in many places around the world for religious reasons, and that it needs to be decriminalized first. [8]

Ilyas says the government banned PUBG after a child died by suicide. He says women make more suicide attempts, but men die by suicide more often, and that single, unemployed men are more likely to die by suicide. He says married women with domestic issues are more likely to attempt and die by suicide, and that financial dependency and issues with in-laws are risk factors he read about for women. He says unemployment is only one of many factors and does not on its own lead to suicide. [8]

Ilyas says many women go through postpartum depression after childbirth, and that he thinks it is more chemical than anything else. He says it is not discussed in Pakistan and that many women suffer in silence. He says the main advice for husbands during pregnancy is to keep their wife's stress low. [8]

Ilyas says the one thing a person can do for a depressed friend is listen, and that people dismiss a friend's depression because they feel anxious and do not know how to handle it. He says a friend does not have to be a therapist to be therapeutic. He says that for clinical depression with self-harm, the best a friend can do is persuade the person to see a professional. [8]

Views on therapy

Ilyas says therapists need to be in therapy often, and that a therapist cannot sell something they have never really used themselves. He says he has been in therapy himself. He says therapy involves a lot of self-exploration and self-discovery. [9]

Ilyas describes cognitive behavioral therapy as applied stoicism, and explains stoicism as the principle that you cannot control what happens to you but can control how you deal with it. He uses a car analogy in which the client drives and he sits in the passenger seat. He compares therapy to someone walking with you through a forest. [9]

Ilyas says therapists do not give advice in therapy, and that the sleep and habit suggestions a therapist makes are recommendations, not advice. He says therapists do not tell clients how to make major life decisions, and that therapists respect the individual's autonomy and ability to make decisions. He says the first few sessions of therapy are usually spent explaining how therapy works. [9]

Ilyas says everyone needs therapy, but not to the same intensity, and that no two people receive the same therapy because their histories differ. He says a person does not need a disorder to go into therapy, and that most people will probably need therapy at some point, so starting early makes sense. He says some clients start to feel much better after two or three sessions. [9]

Ilyas says people in these cultures keep a different face for each person they know, and that vulnerability is largely missing from people's relationships. He says people are often not vulnerable with family because they fear judgment, and that therapy can teach people how to form connections and relationships. He says the relationship with a therapist affects a person's other relationships. [9]

Ilyas says expressing feelings in a comforting space is therapeutic, and that it is not easy to admit that something you thought had no effect on you does. He compares bottled-up stress to a shaken Pepsi bottle that bursts when poked with a needle. He says well-intentioned attempts to fix a friend's problem often do not help, and that people sometimes share a problem only to make sense of their own thoughts, not to get advice. [9]

Ilyas describes the medical model as going to a doctor, describing symptoms, and receiving medicine, and says therapy is different from the medical model. He says the work of therapists can be emotionally difficult. He says mental health decline is slow, so it often goes unnoticed day to day, and that a disorder is anything that interferes with a person's personal, social or professional life. He says undealt-with emotions are a reason many people are generally negative, and that he feels society is built on shortcuts. [9]

Views on trauma, sexual violence and justice

Ilyas says many people believe the myth that rape is the victim's fault. He cites a 2015 study in which 60% of people who reported rape could not identify that they had been raped, and says that, of reported cases, only 40% of people identify that they were raped. He says he has often seen people who know they were raped still believe it was their fault, and that in therapy he helps people see that the trauma was not their fault. [16]

Ilyas says feminist theory in the 1970s brought a lot of change in developed areas such as North America. He says the requirement for four witnesses is, without doubt, a reason rape was hard to report or prove. He says the bystander approach is used more often in colleges and private schools, and that Pakistan needs the bystander approach at a policy level. [16]

Ilyas says the reproduction chapter in his biology book was never taught. He says doctors often do not take sexual histories because the subject was skipped in school biology. He says education on good touch and bad touch is very important for children. [16]

Ilyas says he does not support the death penalty, but does not object to people calling for rapists to be hanged, because he understands the pain behind it. He says he has a problem with simple answers to very complicated questions, and that the problem is multi-faceted and has no blanket solutions. He says he repeatedly calls for much more research. [16]

Ilyas says victim-centric services such as psychotherapy are very important, and that helping victims and reducing crime are completely different tasks. He says reforming the justice system would need technocrats, MNAs, the National Assembly and the Senate. He says deciding right and wrong in the moment creates a grey area in which offences get let go, and that being blunt does not make a wrong statement right. [16]

Ilyas says he feels shaming can work in a certain way, but that shaming can backfire on people with a regressive mindset because it strengthens their argument. He says protest culture in Pakistan is becoming accessible to many more people, and that educated classes have started to differ in their views, and some classes have had no exposure yet. He says comments on viral posts differ between English and Urdu. [16]

Ilyas says people learned right and wrong from content, based on shaming, and that when the cool kid at school or college repeated wrong behaviour, others became normalised to it. He says opinion leaders include parents and close friends at home. [16]

Views on society and politics in Pakistan

Ilyas believes Pakistan peaked in intolerance and non-critical thinking in 2015, and links the peak to the APS attack of 2014. He says the APS attack shook the whole national soul. He says urbanized young people have started to switch their views, and that intolerance is now discussed openly, though society was as intolerant a decade ago. [5]

Ilyas says information in Pakistan used to be controlled by the top 1 percent, and that information now reaches people through TikTok and groups. He says what people now see online is something they are seeing for the first time, and that the masses were dictated to by the party above them. [5]

Ilyas says Pakistan's system has killed debate, including by banning student unions, and that the intellect shuts down when aggression and emotion are brought into a debate. He says a healthy debate has good points on both sides, and that he counts as an intellectual someone who can argue on the basis of logic. He says public intellectuals are rare in Pakistan, and that the lack of diversity of thought is the scary part for him. [5]

Ilyas says subjective experience has value, but it is hard to measure. He says Generation Z is edgier and asks more questions. He says Pakistanis thrive on hopelessness, and that message has been sold in mainstream discourse. He says Pakistan is anti-innovative because people keep doing things the same way. [5]

Ilyas says every person has equal weight, which he calls democracy. He says he supports gender parity but rejects the view that it requires putting everyone into the workforce. He says he sees millennials who are extremely tired. [12]

Personal life

Ilyas has a younger sister, three years younger than him. He says his sister has two young daughters, and that he and his sister find it very hard to lie to each other. He says his niece sent him a ring, and that he asked for one made of tungsten carbide. [5][6][14]

Ilyas said he was about to turn 31. He has said his routine is to work from 12:00 until 10:00 at night. He has said he sleeps eight full hours. [2]

Ilyas says New Year does not change how he feels, and that he sets metrics and goals for each year. He says that at the start of each year he picks a skill to build, and that he does not wait for the year to end before working on himself. He says he sets short-term goals to reach long-term goals. [4]

Ilyas says that when something bad happens to him, he withdraws instead of talking to others about it. He says his close friends respond to his problems by saying that it sucks, and that he sometimes stops telling friends about his problems. He says he thinks about death a lot. He says that when he lost someone, he was told to be very stoic. [3][5][9]

Ilyas said that last December he posted his finances in his social media story. He said many people messaged him to say the post was transparent, and that people close to him messaged to ask whether he was sure about the post. He says he was once introduced as a motivational speaker. [2][3]

Ilyas has said he started asking why about everything in his own life, and that he no longer comments online about things. He says he realised that many of his needs were shaped by social acceptability, and that he felt no need to buy new clothes when someone he knew was not buying any. He says he makes an active effort to follow only people who do not bring a toxic mindset. [2][13][14]

Ilyas has said his first phone was a Motorola L6, which was not a smartphone. He says he was reading the book Staring at the Sun, and that many of the documentaries he watches take a behavioral perspective. He says he recently spent ten days in Turkey, and that a stone-throwing exercise he tried on a trip felt silly at first but worked for him. He has said he attended the 23rd March parade. [5][6][8][15]

Ilyas has said many people around him dismiss emotions, though they mean well. He says he has not fully worked out these questions himself and keeps learning. [2][3]

Timeline

2012

Began a period of deep involvement in the development sector circuit that, by his account, lasted until 2014[12]

Appearances

Frequently asked questions

References

1. Why a psychologist refuses to look at one problem through one lens . Thought Behind Things , 2022-02-02.
2. When positive thinking becomes dismissive . Thought Behind Things , 2021-01-13.
3. Grief is the price you pay for love . Thought Behind Things , 2021-01-06.
4. Anger and anxiety: what 2020 revealed about mental health . Thought Behind Things , 2020-12-30.
5. Hearing is not the same as understanding . Thought Behind Things , 2020-12-23.
6. The best way to know what someone thinks is to ask them . Thought Behind Things , 2020-12-16.
7. The invisible inheritance from our parents . Thought Behind Things , 2020-12-02.
8. Depression is a spectrum, not a consequence . Thought Behind Things , 2020-11-25.
9. Why you probably need therapy before you think you do . Thought Behind Things , 2020-11-20.
10. Data profiling now predicts behavior across marketing and crime . Thought Behind Things , 2020-11-11.
11. Creating demand beats waiting for the job . Thought Behind Things , 2020-11-02.
12. How propaganda exploits unconscious desire . Thought Behind Things , 2020-10-21.
13. How anchoring shapes what we buy . Thought Behind Things , 2020-10-14.
14. The psychology of cancel culture and symbolic self-completion . Thought Behind Things , 2020-10-07.
15. The authenticity trap for public figures . Thought Behind Things , 2020-09-30.
16. Why trauma doesn't follow the timeline we expect . Thought Behind Things , 2020-09-23.