Aakarsh Sharma: Welcome to the Human Layer AI, a podcast where we interview emerging leaders from different fields to get a sense of how they navigate with AI. With me is Ms. Saumya Sharan, and I think it's our second podcast together. What was the topic of our first podcast?
Saumya Sharan: So thank you for having me, Aakarsh And I remember the first, topic of our first podcast was how to spot a narcissist.
Aakarsh Sharma: Pleasure. could you ⁓ introduce yourself the podcast? Yeah.
Saumya Sharan: Thank you for having me Aakarsh. So I am Saumya Sharan. I'm a senior consultant clinical psychologist and I've been in this field for over a decade now. I work in aspects ⁓ as clinical psychologist. ⁓ I my private practice in Gurgaon at two two clinics. I also consult a few organizations. ⁓ I consult with National Institute of Design as their psychologist. I'm also working currently at a US based organization where I'm working on the team with diabetes management and reverses and the behavioral experts there. So yeah, these are a bunch of things I'm doing and I'm very happy and excited to be here.
Aakarsh Sharma: trust me, the happiness is mine. ⁓ The topic we are going to talk about is ⁓ burnout detection. But that, could you explain as a clinical psychologist what burnout means?
Saumya Sharan: Thanks. Sure. Burnout, so to be to to state it very simply, burnout is a chronic stress response which is characterized by emotional exhaustion, physiological depletion. So the impact of burnout is seen across majorly four main domains. It is emotional, is physiological, bodily, it is cognitive,
Aakarsh Sharma: Mm-hmm.
Saumya Sharan: and it is also to do with your personal efficacy. So emotionally you feel exhausted, but not your usual fatigue and exhaustion, but something that you feel like cannot be recovered by this. Cognitively you feel very disengaged. There are are signs like irritability, you can't concentrate. Personally you feel, you keep doubting yourself. feel... your competence or efficacy has been, efficiency has been compromised. And physiologically, I mean, you see people feeling extremely tired, something, you know, they talk about being wired, still tired, ⁓ getting enough sleep. It has an impact on their everyday functioning, the way they show up for the everyday life activities. So essentially to... ⁓ to make it a little concise and short, it's a chronic stress response, which is seen across domains of cognitive functioning, mental, how you're functioning, emotional functioning, physiological functioning, even social functioning for that matter, emotional functioning. it is something that, so if this is your ability to kind of work ⁓ your exhaustion levels, to feel recharged and replenished, it outweighs that. So no amount of recharging, resting, or replenishment is able to take care of that kind of fatigue or that kind of exhaustion that burnout presents itself as.
Aakarsh Sharma: So what can be the treatment for it?
Saumya Sharan: First of all, think first step is you can't treat anything that you can't identify or become aware of or make sense of. The first thing first, I think to just become aware that and understand yourself that is it the usual exhaustion that you're going through? Is it a stress response or is it manifesting as you know, like a chronic stress response, which is burnout. So there are signs of course that you need to look out for, whether it is in terms of emotional signs, like are you being on most days than not, are you being ⁓ irritable? Are you feeling numbness? Are you feeling too overwhelmed by even ordinary everyday tasks and demands? Is there a sense of reduced joy or satisfaction, which is not which is not getting better by anything that you're doing. There are's a sense of fatigue, meaninglessness that is not going away with rest also. Cognitively, you feel, you know, that there's brain fog, you can't concentrate, you can't make decisions well, your thinking's a little or creativity has been impacted. Behaviorally, there's procrastination, there's withdrawal from responsibilities, reduced initiative. If you see those signs, first of all, become aware that this may be a chronic stress response. And of course, the context matters. You know, how you have been functioning in the recent past, how you've been showing up for your work, for your daily responsibilities. Are you able to balance that with enough rest and replenishment? So get a context of that. And once ⁓ are aware that there is something in my everyday pattern, which is making me feel extremely drained, more drained than I usually feel, and it's not going away even with rest or replenishment. I think first things first, consult a professional is what I would always say. That seek help, ⁓ out. That's something as a clinical psychologist, that's the first thing I will tell you. But the meantime, while that's happening, Understand that there are a few things that you would need to do to show up for yourself, to show up for this kind of exhaustion. So first is, I think, to slow down, more than anything to slow down, to understand is there a match between what brings meaning to you, what is aligned with your competence, what is aligned with your daily demand, and what you're doing on an everyday level. So is there a match between that? If not, try and, you know, kind of work that out. Like I said, professional help will be very, very helpful here. Reach out to people. Social connections will be very helpful over here. And I think something that's very underrated nowadays is reduced stimulation. Which can be either in the form of reduced screen time or reduced. You know too much. too much stimuli or instant gratification to reduce that slow down in your everyday life, which is a difficult for all of us. We're too used to constantly getting that fix of dopamine and just going for our phones. So and trying to see in the present moment as much ⁓ possible. It's not easy. It's easier said than done, but it's a practice and it's a process. ⁓ Again, that's also very underrated, but these are things that I feel are very important to burnout. In order to treat you, you definitely to seek professional help, I would say.
Aakarsh Sharma: And does AI play role ⁓ as ⁓ burnout Like, you can see the signs and symptoms as a clinical psychologist. Can AI do the same?
Saumya Sharan: So I'll tell you, is here to stay. mean, I know we need to move forward with it and we can't reject it or we can't just run away from this. But we need to understand how to make it work for us rather than make it work against us. So the one thing we all know is AI is good at detecting patterns. AI with its pattern detection algorithm. So to an extent, it can aid in detection, but I won't even say that, you know, complete detection, you really need human presence and connection for that. So for example, if you're working somewhere and you deploy an AI tool, which is helping you to detect burnout. So it can detect patterns in terms of ⁓ you know, how many days you're turning up for work or how engaged are you with your work or the kind of emails that you're writing, the kind of work that you're presenting, absenteeism, your how present you are, your productivity hours. So, but understand that these are very, ⁓ you know, these are very kind of engineered metric aspects ⁓ that's where the human aspect needs to come. There are's also something very important that we forget when we talk about pattern, which is context. And another thing with this emotional nuance. So. For example, AI is working and letting us know that you know this person is this person is doing great and they are turning up on time and they are. Replying to all emails on time and the tone and tonality and everything is. look fine they're present most of the days, they're turning in work. But we also need to understand that we're not taking the context into consideration here. There are many high performing individuals that are very good at masking their emotions. So they may be going through burnout, but they may still be showing up as high functioning individuals. So we're missing the human nuanced context. where you need human beings, where you need clinicians, where you need psychologists. So I think context and emotional nuance, which one of the most important elements because we are dealing with humans is AI, ⁓ know, of needs to be there, but human led AI assisted is what I'd like to call it. It can help us. with bringing together data and making sense of some data. But the data in rich context, the emotional nuance, there are also some people and AI might detect that this person's not coming up, showing up for work, they're not replying instantly or they're procrastinating, they're missing deadlines. But would that be, can that be attributed to burnout only or maybe it's just potential everyday stressors? maybe they're going through, you know, some other form of emotional distress, which is not burnout. So that's why I would say context and emotional nuance are very important.
Aakarsh Sharma: So like you said, AI is here to stay. It's inevitable. I want to ask you from the lenses of two fields, A, employees, and B, ⁓ the How would the employees ⁓ be with the presence of AI? For example, what I personally feel, they must have a diminished sense of worth that I'm being replaced, I'm replaceable, or my value has reduced, an existential crisis, like what am I even good at? Uncertainty, will I be fired? Conversely, they can also think that ⁓ gives time to them to do ⁓ more productive things. So what's your take on that?
Saumya Sharan: I say as employees. Before that, I'd like to just state it out there that this is, I know the narrative that we're all dealing with that, AI is here, and it's here to replace jobs, and it is taking over so many tasks that were done by humans. But the thing is, the way it is being presented, to a point, I think AI, if we see it more as an assessment, thing and not as a leading thing. I think that's what will work more in favor of employees. The fear is, you know, I completely understand and the fear is justified and valid. But we also, we've forgotten that we live in a world which is, which is, you know, full of humans. we're making machines to make our lives easier, to make tasks easier. But ultimately, ⁓ dealing with human beings. And that's where AI can't step in. I think people need to remember that, that the emotional nuances, the context seeking, the context of ⁓ things, human connection, the emotional intelligence aspect, communication where human aspects are required that cannot be replaced by AI. You know that it's not a human. Of course the fear is very valid and real but I think the narrative needs to shift more on to how can it assist us while we lead the world. know humans lead the world. But AI is going to assist us. As in that's the narrative that needs to be presented out there for employees. Because otherwise, think, not just employees, anyone would, if this is the narrative we are presenting that AI is here to take all your jobs and AI can do it more efficiently or this is all that AI can do. Of course, humans are going to see it as an enemy or something that's that needs to be scared, you know, it's scary. But if we are to kind of present it, train it, and also work with it in a way that we understand we need, but AI assist, because there are some things that AI cannot bring in no matter what, and with this context, with the new answers, the emotional intelligence aspect. Emotional human aspect is not a precise time and AI is very precise at a lot of things. I think this is where we need to kind of present it to employees and employees need to understand this. And the more we talk about it and use it from that lens. I think that will be that will be much helpful. As a I don't think that there is anything to be scared of the whole aspect of therapy, the whole aspect ⁓ behavioral psychology or clinical psychology for that matter is human relationship. It's the therapeutic relationship. It's the presence of the human, it's the connection. It's how you show up to your clients. That is something which will always be done by human beings. So no fear that I don't think any any kind of fear that we can definitely use it to our advantage with, you know, I'm sure a lot of psychologists out there struggle with the administrative aspect of work and we can use that. So to for administrative tasks so that we can focus on the real thing much more, but I don't think any. any fear needs to be out there. But it's important to understand it's unexpected.
Aakarsh Sharma: So personally, do you use AI to help facilitate in your work?
Saumya Sharan: Yes, sometimes I do. Like I said, it's here to stay, but want to use it to work for me, not against me. So yes, sometimes ⁓ for little bit of administrative aspect, ⁓ I that. use it to find out, you know, sometimes there are things that you need to read. There are are information that you need to read and you know sometimes put it all together and I use the agent, the AI agent to put it together for me but at the end of the day it's who's reading it, it's me who's ⁓ sense of it, it's me who's ⁓ what I want to do with that information. I use it to structure things sometimes but But yeah, but it can't penetrate, it can't come into the humanness of what I do as a psychologist. I would say that.
Aakarsh Sharma: My last question is, what about assessment tests? Would it be capable? As you said, it's a pattern matching machine.
Saumya Sharan: whole process of assessment, we it as you just administer the assessment tool and you get the results. But there's so many other aspects to it. The whole assessment process involves assessment tools. There is history taking. There is a mental status examination. There are a lot to do with observation as a clinician. My instinct or clinical judgment based on my skills and years of training as a clinician. Which also needs to be, you know, which needs to be taken into consideration. So even if. Even if we are talking about assessment timing. But it's it's just let's say it's just even if we train AI to, you know, assess assess question head for that matter. It may give us the pattern, but then what context do I put for that pattern? What do I do with that results that I'm getting? How do I apply my own clinical skills, my own observation that I, and the time and the relationship that I've established with the client, where does that come into play? So everything put together will help me assess. A client. It's not just a tool which has a few questionnaires with a system and a structured secured form of coding attached to it, which I can train the machine for. Let's say you know. There are are ethical and. For example. Organizational guidelines that at some point maybe do allow it, but there's a reason why it does not. You know, ethically. You actually need to sit with the client and you actually need to administer this to the client because there are elements other than the tool that matters. is connecting with the client. It's your observational skill. is you understanding how the client is showing up for the assessment. What do you notice in the entire assessment process?
Aakarsh Sharma: So, could you tell us the services you provide and how to contact you?
Saumya Sharan: I I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, so I provide healthy sessions. I do take assessment. So to find I do also conduct workshops and. I do group sessions. I provide consulting services for organizations and corporate, so how to contact me is ⁓ I have Instagram page which is called the pink elephant. Because I have founded small called the Pink Elephant. For years, five years back now. So you can contact me through my Instagram handle. You can also contact me on LinkedIn. I can share my email ID. These are the places that you can drive to me and contact me. And I'm also on platforms like Practo So you can just. in touch with me.
Aakarsh Sharma: Thank you so much for your valuable insights.
Saumya Sharan: Thank you so much. I think this was very helpful, very needed. And the more we talk about it. Yes. I mean, like I said, like, I'm to stay, but do we allow it to, you know, kind of. ⁓
Aakarsh Sharma: Yeah.
Saumya Sharan: is take power over us or do we like I said human led but AI assisted is the way to go forward.
Saumya Sharan: So thank you for having me, Aakarsh And I remember the first, topic of our first podcast was how to spot a narcissist.
Aakarsh Sharma: Pleasure. could you ⁓ introduce yourself the podcast? Yeah.
Saumya Sharan: Thank you for having me Aakarsh. So I am Saumya Sharan. I'm a senior consultant clinical psychologist and I've been in this field for over a decade now. I work in aspects ⁓ as clinical psychologist. ⁓ I my private practice in Gurgaon at two two clinics. I also consult a few organizations. ⁓ I consult with National Institute of Design as their psychologist. I'm also working currently at a US based organization where I'm working on the team with diabetes management and reverses and the behavioral experts there. So yeah, these are a bunch of things I'm doing and I'm very happy and excited to be here.
Aakarsh Sharma: trust me, the happiness is mine. ⁓ The topic we are going to talk about is ⁓ burnout detection. But that, could you explain as a clinical psychologist what burnout means?
Saumya Sharan: Thanks. Sure. Burnout, so to be to to state it very simply, burnout is a chronic stress response which is characterized by emotional exhaustion, physiological depletion. So the impact of burnout is seen across majorly four main domains. It is emotional, is physiological, bodily, it is cognitive,
Aakarsh Sharma: Mm-hmm.
Saumya Sharan: and it is also to do with your personal efficacy. So emotionally you feel exhausted, but not your usual fatigue and exhaustion, but something that you feel like cannot be recovered by this. Cognitively you feel very disengaged. There are are signs like irritability, you can't concentrate. Personally you feel, you keep doubting yourself. feel... your competence or efficacy has been, efficiency has been compromised. And physiologically, I mean, you see people feeling extremely tired, something, you know, they talk about being wired, still tired, ⁓ getting enough sleep. It has an impact on their everyday functioning, the way they show up for the everyday life activities. So essentially to... ⁓ to make it a little concise and short, it's a chronic stress response, which is seen across domains of cognitive functioning, mental, how you're functioning, emotional functioning, physiological functioning, even social functioning for that matter, emotional functioning. it is something that, so if this is your ability to kind of work ⁓ your exhaustion levels, to feel recharged and replenished, it outweighs that. So no amount of recharging, resting, or replenishment is able to take care of that kind of fatigue or that kind of exhaustion that burnout presents itself as.
Aakarsh Sharma: So what can be the treatment for it?
Saumya Sharan: First of all, think first step is you can't treat anything that you can't identify or become aware of or make sense of. The first thing first, I think to just become aware that and understand yourself that is it the usual exhaustion that you're going through? Is it a stress response or is it manifesting as you know, like a chronic stress response, which is burnout. So there are signs of course that you need to look out for, whether it is in terms of emotional signs, like are you being on most days than not, are you being ⁓ irritable? Are you feeling numbness? Are you feeling too overwhelmed by even ordinary everyday tasks and demands? Is there a sense of reduced joy or satisfaction, which is not which is not getting better by anything that you're doing. There are's a sense of fatigue, meaninglessness that is not going away with rest also. Cognitively, you feel, you know, that there's brain fog, you can't concentrate, you can't make decisions well, your thinking's a little or creativity has been impacted. Behaviorally, there's procrastination, there's withdrawal from responsibilities, reduced initiative. If you see those signs, first of all, become aware that this may be a chronic stress response. And of course, the context matters. You know, how you have been functioning in the recent past, how you've been showing up for your work, for your daily responsibilities. Are you able to balance that with enough rest and replenishment? So get a context of that. And once ⁓ are aware that there is something in my everyday pattern, which is making me feel extremely drained, more drained than I usually feel, and it's not going away even with rest or replenishment. I think first things first, consult a professional is what I would always say. That seek help, ⁓ out. That's something as a clinical psychologist, that's the first thing I will tell you. But the meantime, while that's happening, Understand that there are a few things that you would need to do to show up for yourself, to show up for this kind of exhaustion. So first is, I think, to slow down, more than anything to slow down, to understand is there a match between what brings meaning to you, what is aligned with your competence, what is aligned with your daily demand, and what you're doing on an everyday level. So is there a match between that? If not, try and, you know, kind of work that out. Like I said, professional help will be very, very helpful here. Reach out to people. Social connections will be very helpful over here. And I think something that's very underrated nowadays is reduced stimulation. Which can be either in the form of reduced screen time or reduced. You know too much. too much stimuli or instant gratification to reduce that slow down in your everyday life, which is a difficult for all of us. We're too used to constantly getting that fix of dopamine and just going for our phones. So and trying to see in the present moment as much ⁓ possible. It's not easy. It's easier said than done, but it's a practice and it's a process. ⁓ Again, that's also very underrated, but these are things that I feel are very important to burnout. In order to treat you, you definitely to seek professional help, I would say.
Aakarsh Sharma: And does AI play role ⁓ as ⁓ burnout Like, you can see the signs and symptoms as a clinical psychologist. Can AI do the same?
Saumya Sharan: So I'll tell you, is here to stay. mean, I know we need to move forward with it and we can't reject it or we can't just run away from this. But we need to understand how to make it work for us rather than make it work against us. So the one thing we all know is AI is good at detecting patterns. AI with its pattern detection algorithm. So to an extent, it can aid in detection, but I won't even say that, you know, complete detection, you really need human presence and connection for that. So for example, if you're working somewhere and you deploy an AI tool, which is helping you to detect burnout. So it can detect patterns in terms of ⁓ you know, how many days you're turning up for work or how engaged are you with your work or the kind of emails that you're writing, the kind of work that you're presenting, absenteeism, your how present you are, your productivity hours. So, but understand that these are very, ⁓ you know, these are very kind of engineered metric aspects ⁓ that's where the human aspect needs to come. There are's also something very important that we forget when we talk about pattern, which is context. And another thing with this emotional nuance. So. For example, AI is working and letting us know that you know this person is this person is doing great and they are turning up on time and they are. Replying to all emails on time and the tone and tonality and everything is. look fine they're present most of the days, they're turning in work. But we also need to understand that we're not taking the context into consideration here. There are many high performing individuals that are very good at masking their emotions. So they may be going through burnout, but they may still be showing up as high functioning individuals. So we're missing the human nuanced context. where you need human beings, where you need clinicians, where you need psychologists. So I think context and emotional nuance, which one of the most important elements because we are dealing with humans is AI, ⁓ know, of needs to be there, but human led AI assisted is what I'd like to call it. It can help us. with bringing together data and making sense of some data. But the data in rich context, the emotional nuance, there are also some people and AI might detect that this person's not coming up, showing up for work, they're not replying instantly or they're procrastinating, they're missing deadlines. But would that be, can that be attributed to burnout only or maybe it's just potential everyday stressors? maybe they're going through, you know, some other form of emotional distress, which is not burnout. So that's why I would say context and emotional nuance are very important.
Aakarsh Sharma: So like you said, AI is here to stay. It's inevitable. I want to ask you from the lenses of two fields, A, employees, and B, ⁓ the How would the employees ⁓ be with the presence of AI? For example, what I personally feel, they must have a diminished sense of worth that I'm being replaced, I'm replaceable, or my value has reduced, an existential crisis, like what am I even good at? Uncertainty, will I be fired? Conversely, they can also think that ⁓ gives time to them to do ⁓ more productive things. So what's your take on that?
Saumya Sharan: I say as employees. Before that, I'd like to just state it out there that this is, I know the narrative that we're all dealing with that, AI is here, and it's here to replace jobs, and it is taking over so many tasks that were done by humans. But the thing is, the way it is being presented, to a point, I think AI, if we see it more as an assessment, thing and not as a leading thing. I think that's what will work more in favor of employees. The fear is, you know, I completely understand and the fear is justified and valid. But we also, we've forgotten that we live in a world which is, which is, you know, full of humans. we're making machines to make our lives easier, to make tasks easier. But ultimately, ⁓ dealing with human beings. And that's where AI can't step in. I think people need to remember that, that the emotional nuances, the context seeking, the context of ⁓ things, human connection, the emotional intelligence aspect, communication where human aspects are required that cannot be replaced by AI. You know that it's not a human. Of course the fear is very valid and real but I think the narrative needs to shift more on to how can it assist us while we lead the world. know humans lead the world. But AI is going to assist us. As in that's the narrative that needs to be presented out there for employees. Because otherwise, think, not just employees, anyone would, if this is the narrative we are presenting that AI is here to take all your jobs and AI can do it more efficiently or this is all that AI can do. Of course, humans are going to see it as an enemy or something that's that needs to be scared, you know, it's scary. But if we are to kind of present it, train it, and also work with it in a way that we understand we need, but AI assist, because there are some things that AI cannot bring in no matter what, and with this context, with the new answers, the emotional intelligence aspect. Emotional human aspect is not a precise time and AI is very precise at a lot of things. I think this is where we need to kind of present it to employees and employees need to understand this. And the more we talk about it and use it from that lens. I think that will be that will be much helpful. As a I don't think that there is anything to be scared of the whole aspect of therapy, the whole aspect ⁓ behavioral psychology or clinical psychology for that matter is human relationship. It's the therapeutic relationship. It's the presence of the human, it's the connection. It's how you show up to your clients. That is something which will always be done by human beings. So no fear that I don't think any any kind of fear that we can definitely use it to our advantage with, you know, I'm sure a lot of psychologists out there struggle with the administrative aspect of work and we can use that. So to for administrative tasks so that we can focus on the real thing much more, but I don't think any. any fear needs to be out there. But it's important to understand it's unexpected.
Aakarsh Sharma: So personally, do you use AI to help facilitate in your work?
Saumya Sharan: Yes, sometimes I do. Like I said, it's here to stay, but want to use it to work for me, not against me. So yes, sometimes ⁓ for little bit of administrative aspect, ⁓ I that. use it to find out, you know, sometimes there are things that you need to read. There are are information that you need to read and you know sometimes put it all together and I use the agent, the AI agent to put it together for me but at the end of the day it's who's reading it, it's me who's ⁓ sense of it, it's me who's ⁓ what I want to do with that information. I use it to structure things sometimes but But yeah, but it can't penetrate, it can't come into the humanness of what I do as a psychologist. I would say that.
Aakarsh Sharma: My last question is, what about assessment tests? Would it be capable? As you said, it's a pattern matching machine.
Saumya Sharan: whole process of assessment, we it as you just administer the assessment tool and you get the results. But there's so many other aspects to it. The whole assessment process involves assessment tools. There is history taking. There is a mental status examination. There are a lot to do with observation as a clinician. My instinct or clinical judgment based on my skills and years of training as a clinician. Which also needs to be, you know, which needs to be taken into consideration. So even if. Even if we are talking about assessment timing. But it's it's just let's say it's just even if we train AI to, you know, assess assess question head for that matter. It may give us the pattern, but then what context do I put for that pattern? What do I do with that results that I'm getting? How do I apply my own clinical skills, my own observation that I, and the time and the relationship that I've established with the client, where does that come into play? So everything put together will help me assess. A client. It's not just a tool which has a few questionnaires with a system and a structured secured form of coding attached to it, which I can train the machine for. Let's say you know. There are are ethical and. For example. Organizational guidelines that at some point maybe do allow it, but there's a reason why it does not. You know, ethically. You actually need to sit with the client and you actually need to administer this to the client because there are elements other than the tool that matters. is connecting with the client. It's your observational skill. is you understanding how the client is showing up for the assessment. What do you notice in the entire assessment process?
Aakarsh Sharma: So, could you tell us the services you provide and how to contact you?
Saumya Sharan: I I'm a licensed clinical psychologist, so I provide healthy sessions. I do take assessment. So to find I do also conduct workshops and. I do group sessions. I provide consulting services for organizations and corporate, so how to contact me is ⁓ I have Instagram page which is called the pink elephant. Because I have founded small called the Pink Elephant. For years, five years back now. So you can contact me through my Instagram handle. You can also contact me on LinkedIn. I can share my email ID. These are the places that you can drive to me and contact me. And I'm also on platforms like Practo So you can just. in touch with me.
Aakarsh Sharma: Thank you so much for your valuable insights.
Saumya Sharan: Thank you so much. I think this was very helpful, very needed. And the more we talk about it. Yes. I mean, like I said, like, I'm to stay, but do we allow it to, you know, kind of. ⁓
Aakarsh Sharma: Yeah.
Saumya Sharan: is take power over us or do we like I said human led but AI assisted is the way to go forward.
