🧠 Mind Flossing for Dental Professionals with Dr. Mahrukh Khwaja of Mind Ninja

🧠 The Season 5 Finale of Kinda Different is here! Tune in as Dr. Matt Allen chats with Dr. Mahrukh Khwaja, who shares her journey from being a dentist to a workplace psychologist, emphasizing the importance of mental health and resilience in the dental profession. She discusses her experiences with burnout and depression, the tools she discovered for mental fitness, and how she founded Mind Ninja to support dental professionals. The conversation highlights practical strategies for overcoming stress, the significance of creating a kinder workplace culture, and the role of mindfulness and gratitude in enhancing well-being. Mahrukh also provides actionable insights for dental practices to foster a supportive environment for their teams.

Watch below or tune in on Spotify/Apple Podcasts:

You can get in touch with Mahrukh here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindninja.wellbeing/
Website: https://mind-ninja.co.uk
Mindflossing Cards: https://www.mind-ninja.co.uk/mind-flossing
Resilience and Wellbeing for Dental Professionals: https://www.amazon.com/Resilience-Well-being-Dental-Professionals-Mahrukh/dp/1119814502

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Transcript
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to the season finale episode of season five of Kinda Different. It's crazy that we have passed the end of season five here.
And I mean, it seems like yesterday that we were starting this podcast, and here we are at the end of season five. When I look back at the number of guests that we've had and the people that we've got a chance to chat with, it is mind blowing to me. I have become a better person throughout all of it, and I hope all of our listeners have as well.
And today is absolutely no exception. If you wanna talk about personal development, understanding yourself, today's guest is absolutely gonna knock your socks off. So thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to have with us such a great guest for the season finale of season five of Kinda Different.
I am Dr. Matt Allen, the CEO and co-founder of DifferentKind, and your host for Kinda Different. And today, I am thrilled to have a dentist, psychologist, person who really understands my heart in some of this work and is excited to share some of her perspective. So Dr. Mahrukh Khwaja, I think I pronounced that right, doing my best here, thank you.
She is a workplace psychologist, she's a dentist, she's the founder of a company called Mind Ninja. She is from the UK and she's got a great accent, and she is gonna share with us today some really amazing things about how she was a dentist and kind of came to understand some of what she teaches now and how she thinks about the world. So Mahrukh, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, and I would love for you to share a little bit more about yourself with our listeners.
Thank you so much, Matt, for the really kind introduction. I'm really excited to be on. So yeah, just a little bit about me.
I'm a dentist. I graduated about 13 years ago, and prior to that, didn't have any specific well-being challenges, but maybe three, four years into practice, I was working in an environment which was very toxic, so some bullying and civility, as well as I was going through some personal bits as well as going through a divorce, and that period was really, really tough. I experienced both burnout and depression, and I struggled.
I was constantly time-traveling into the future, which felt like a very anxious space, and I was also chewing over thoughts about the past, and I was ruminating, excessively worrying, and I found myself really hooking onto unhelpful thoughts, and not really having the tools to help support me. Luckily, I didn't feel the stigma that so many of our colleagues experience in terms of seeking help, and I did go and see a therapist privately, and I discovered a vast amount of really cool psychological tools. And actually, as a dental student, I did a BS, and so in the UK, you have this opportunity to do a BSc, during your dental degree, you take a year out of dentistry, and you get a chance to do something different.
Most dental students do not do this, but I thought it was a great opportunity to get out of clinic for a while. So I actually had a psychology BSc under my belt, but I didn't really, I had a textbook understanding, but I didn't really have an experiential understanding. So it wasn't until I went through my own kind of personal journey and discovered these amazing psychological tools, from mindfulness to cognitive behavioral therapy, self-compassion tools, compassion-focused therapy, all of these really kind of useful life skills that got me really thinking that, look, there is such a need for prevention and there's such a need to really draw upon mental fitness before you're unwell, because it's quite hard to access these things when you're unwell.
And so after recovery, I started kind of pivoting and thinking a little bit more about how I can support the dental profession. Because as we know, the burnout rates are very high, suicide rates are high, and at least in the UK and I know in lots of other countries, we have services set up for crisis point, but nothing preventative. And so I founded Mind Ninja, my well-being service really to bring evidence-based tools to clinicians and the team early on so that they feel happier and healthier and that there is a bigger emphasis on the positive well-being markers, like feeling engaged at work, having a sense of meaning, life satisfaction, positive emotions, resilience, all of these kind of factors that are generally missed when we talk about mental health and dentistry because we do focus on those crazy stats.
But there is another way of addressing the problem, of course, and that could be through well-being education and also making organizational changes and working on the culture side of things.
I love it. It's such a great bookend actually for season five. Talking about how this spans cultures and countries and all of that stuff.
The first guest of season five for us was Dr. Brett Kessler, who's the ADA, the American Dental Association President. He has a very compelling story and that he shares a lot of how he overcame addiction as a dentist and really how that changed him and how he supports dental professionals on that road now as well. So I'm sure Dr. Brett would be here, head nodding along with you as well about the importance of that, because I know that from his story that if we had some of these tools more earlier on in our dental careers as students, as people, if we're developing good people, we're going to be better dentists when we show up to work.
And so I'm super excited to dive in. So let's start where we always do, which is in innovation. And I think one of the things that I've always felt as well as somebody who cares about communication and psychology of change, especially, and some of those things, that that still feels like it's kind of maybe not on the forefront of people's minds, especially in dental school, especially as we get trained.
Why specifically does this work still have to be innovative? I guess, is where we should start. Where are we coming from that has led us to say, hey, this work should be foundational for who we are as people and whatever.
But for some reason, that hasn't always been the case. So maybe if you could just kind of explain why this work feels innovative based on the history and kind of your understanding of where we've been as a profession, that would be, I think, a really interesting place to start.
Yeah, I mean, this work is really fundamental because, as I was saying earlier, you need those tools. As clinicians, we're working with patients, right? So we are more prone to certain occupational hazards, things like burnout and compassion fatigue.
And so without those tools, we're just not really able to not only kind of cope with the stresses, but actually perform better. I think this is really a performance kind of conversation and engagement conversation. So from my perspective, it's so, so fundamental.
At university, as well as postgraduate, I would say, there is a big emphasis on the clinical side of dentistry. We want to learn skills and we want to upskill, and it's the clinical competencies that get all the attention. But the non-clinical stuff, as we know, working in the field of dentistry, right?
I still see patients every month, I see them six days a month, so I'm still practicing. We know the importance of those, we call them soft skills, but they're such crucial skills, communication, leadership, and then of course, the wellness of you as a practitioner. You can't give 100% to a patient without actually looking after yourself.
So in that respect, it really is fundamental. And then it's innovative because there just hasn't really been any kind of emphasis on this. And from my perspective, what we tend to do in the clinical side of things, we draw upon the evidence base, right?
So with me, kind of creating Mind Ninja, I really wanted to go about it in the same way. So I'm drawing upon the current research in the field of positive psychology and resilience and kind of bringing those insights that we know from psychology to us, so that we can start kind of applying them in a practical sense. So yeah, I think it's innovative in that way.
There's an obvious kind of gap in the market for it. And also, like I was saying earlier, those positive well-being markers are so, so important. We don't want to just earn well and do well for our patients and not have depression and anxiety.
We want to feel happy and we want to have that sense of enjoyment and purpose and have good relationships with our patients and our peers. And that's what makes dentistry worth doing as a profession. And so, yeah, I think bringing that to the fold.
And then I guess another layer to that is trying to make education fun. And that is a mission in dentistry, because I have, you know, I've done a lot of upskilling over the years. And so in the workshops and the programs, whether that's online or face-to-face, I will make it as engaging.
And that might be using Lego to, you know, work through a different activity and have dental professional story tell and actually connect with this and to share, because it is understandably hard to kind of share some of these details around your own wellbeing. So how can we make education entertaining? That's a big kind of question I'm constantly asking myself.
Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I think there's so much there that we can unpack, right? In terms of, I think probably the UK is similar enough to the US in terms of just like the style of, you know, the pedagogy, right? Of like how we're being taught.
But I do think that that's changing, right? When I see things like, you know, the Center for Healthy Minds here in the US and some of that work that's come into schools, right? Early mindfulness training, first grade, kindergarten, you know, very early grades here, you know?
And so I think we're kind of in that, you know, that interim spell, right? Like, I don't know. I don't know how exactly old you are, but I lived prior to the internet, right?
So like, I'll always be that person who like understands the world prior to the internet and post-internet. And I think that like, we're probably in the same space of like, we probably will live that world of like, hey, this was never taught and now it is taught. And hopefully, the kids who are growing up now will never know a world where some of these tools and skills have not been a part of their like, very early childhood education.
But for so many of us, it hasn't been a part of it. And so the work that you're doing is so crucial to, you know, be able to bring that to not just dental professionals, but humans in general, right? It's, I love, I absolutely love that.
Yeah, I think one of the things that I always think about here is, you know, I'm curious to your perspective, just I guess to from the UK, you know, how this might be different too. But one of the things that we tend to kind of see is that dentistry is behind medicine in some ways. And so, you know, I would say here there's probably been a realization a little bit earlier that like, hey, you know, this, you know, doctors have burnout and it is challenging to people.
And that conversation I would say has been going on for a little bit longer, though I think dentistry is, you know, catching up quickly. I think our job is very hard in a lot of ways that medicine is not even. So I just I wonder if there are things that have maybe happened in the UK or just from your observation in general around like, hey, have we learned anything from medicine about how we can apply this to dentistry?
Is dentistry unique in any way? Or if not, just like, hey, what, you know, what what lessons can we apply to say, hey, here's how we can take steps forward together as health care professionals.
Yeah, that's a really great question. When I first started thinking about creating my programs and training, like I said, I wanted to draw upon the research. And as you were saying, dentistry is behind, not just in terms of the courses available currently, but even in terms of the research on dental professionals, right?
So I had to broaden my search and look at health care professionals. And actually, there is a vast amount of research from the medic population around psychological interventions that can help in terms of increasing those positive well-being markers. And it's those mindfulness-based programs, there's cognitive behavioral programs, resilience training, positive psychology programs that particularly caught my eye.
I think we can learn a lot from those interventions and modify them so that we can apply that to dentistry because there are quite a few similarities in terms of working obviously with patients, the high stressors, if you're a hospital dentist even more so. But there's even research on GPs as well. And so we can definitely draw upon that.
And so from my perspective, when I was, for example, designing the resilience training for NHS Midlands, I definitely took inspiration from the research and then thinking, okay, well, how can I apply this to the specific well-being challenges that dental professionals face? And I think as a GP, you're quite similar to a general dental practitioner. So there are quite a few similarities there, which is really kind of nice to be able to draw upon.
I mean, even having said that, I don't think, so I guess I'm thinking mostly around UK. So I have a younger brother who is a consultant. So he's gone through that windy road of all that training that you do.
And they do have more awareness around mental health and they have some support, but it still is very crisis-based. And so they don't, like I said, the universities, maybe there is a little bit more of an emphasis than 10, 15 years ago, but there's no way enough. And there certainly isn't a dedicated kind of program that I'm seeing.
And so, yeah, there is a big, big space, as you were saying, to grow. And it will, this is the direction that we're going in. So in the next kind of 15, 20 years, we will see that shift.
Yeah, and so I'm quite optimistic that will change over time.
Yeah, I love it. Awesome. Well, let's move on to, obviously, you're a fascinating person, given your background and even some of the stuff you were sharing at the beginning.
So we'll always love to connect with our guests a little bit and just kind of learn more than you could find on LinkedIn or your website or whatever. So you've talked a lot about burnout, right? And stress and some of those things.
What are some of the specific practices for you that help you actually overcome those things when you're feeling those things? And so you've talked a lot about it. So this is kind of a dual question almost, right?
Because it's probably some of the things that you teach, but it's also probably some of the things that you're just applying when you're feeling those same emotions and feelings yourself. So I would love to hear for you, like, what are the things that help you overcome in those situations?
I think the biggest thing for me is firstly checking in. Prior to having experienced burnout and depression, I just hadn't zero well-being activities that I was doing intentionally. I wasn't checking in, so I was constantly feeling probably on edge and not really aware of it.
So I wasn't able to support myself. And that self-awareness piece is so crucial. So for me, it's taking a moment, taking a deep breath, just asking myself what's going on with my mind and body, especially before I bring my next patient in.
And I get it, I have got patients back to back, and sometimes I'm double-booked, and so it can be quite difficult. You feel like you're a slave to the time and the clock, yet it's just not fun that way. Like it kind of sucks all the joy out of it.
And so from my perspective, I think it is important to slow down, even when you're busy, and to just ask yourself, you know, what's going on for me? How can I support myself? And it might be that you need a water break, or you just need like a little moment to yourself, and you know, your nurse might need that too.
So that kind of check-in aspect. For me personally as well, I like to journal, and I've just find it very useful. And the research supports this as well.
I like to kind of have a routine in the morning, where I do spend, you know, five, ten minutes journaling around how I'm feeling, or any kind of plans for the day, or I include gratitude in that as well. So it might be kind of writing sweet, you know, sweet things, and great for and why at the end of the day. It could be even playing Gratitude Ping Pong.
So this is something I really love to do. So the thinking of like, how do you make these practices more fun? And so Gratitude Ping Pong is basically doing this with your partner or your team, and going back and forth, sharing small wins, especially on those bad days, like that's when you need it the most.
And it's a practice I do a lot with my husband. Like I said, especially on cold winter day, like it is in the UK, but you just feel so miserable and you feel like things aren't going to plan. And our brain has this negativity bias, and so it is actually helpful to hone in to what's working well and to celebrate wins.
And so that's been really useful. And then the last thing I would say is mindfulness. It really did change my life.
And that sounds very dramatic, but it's absolutely true. And the reason why I say this is it just really helped me firstly, not only to be able to kind of sit with the discomfort of uncomfortable feelings and to sit with them and to process them. So firstly, it kind of taught me that.
But it also helped me to stay present and not fuse with the story of my thoughts. And that's been like really quite helpful. And then of course, the positive side of things like feeling a bit more present and focused and energized.
And so in terms of peak performance, I think it's very, very helpful. And I really love learning more about what athletes are using to help them perform well. And often they use mindfulness.
And it doesn't have to be meditation. From my perspective, I may turn to a specific meditation that will help me. But also it could be through informal ways.
And that's what I like to teach the most when I'm helping dental professionals. Because quite frankly, we are so tight on time. So whether that's taking a mindful, deep breath whilst you're delivering local anesthetic or waiting for the allergy to set, or taking the first three bites of food and honing into the five senses, or grounding yourself by honing into the five senses during a nature walk.
These are different activities we can do that just don't take that much time. And so we kind of enjoy them more. And I find mindfulness particularly fascinating because it's not just this skill of honing into the breath and a stress management skill.
It's very much about nurturing a new relationship with yourself. So really honing into gratitude and self-compassion, so inner kindness in a way that I hadn't done before, even curiosity and going with a beginner's mindset and noticing what's going on rather than being on autopilot. That was new for me and that I feel really enriches my life.
And it's those attitudes, like I said, gratitude, self-compassion that are a bit life-changing because especially in our cohort where we've probably got high levels of perfectionism working with patients, we want to do our best. We sometimes have very harsh inner critics and the data really supports that. Actually developing a kinder inner voice will help you go much further in terms of persisting with behaviors in terms of even your physical health, in terms of your relationships.
And so it has this beautiful 360-degree benefit. So for me, the mindfulness and the self-compassion aspect, like life-changing and also a tool that really resonates with dental professionals more than the cognitive variable therapy aspect actually. Because I think we can all access it.
So I think that's why it really resonates.
I love it. There's so much that we've talked about over the course of various kind of different episodes. I think one of the themes that I would say that I certainly draw out of them is this idea of intentionality, which I think is probably just a different way of talking about mindfulness.
That idea of like, hey, if we're being intentional about how we're living life, instead of just letting it happen to us, we're going to go so much further. So yeah, I love that. And I think there's so much there that we could unpack in terms of dental professionals.
Probably not having the kindest inner voice based on that perfectionism, but also probably being pretty judgy in general of like, can we just be more curious and whatever? So yes, 100%, so much fun. We could have a three-hour conversation here.
And we keep these relatively short so people can listen to them. So maybe we'll do this more in the future. But let's move on to making dental care more human, which I think is a big part of the work that you're doing, at least from my perspective, in terms of helping people be their best self so that they can show up with their patients as their best self.
One of the things that I'm always curious about here is, how are you thinking about this from, obviously our company is called DifferentKind, and so how is your work making dentistry different and how is it making it kinder? I would be curious to hear if there are specific examples or things that you're working on right now. We're like, oh, here's a project that is something that we're doing that is helping make dentistry different and work.
I think all my training is focused on that. It's focused on how do we create a kinder culture and a kinder environment so that the whole team can flourish, and how do we put more of an emphasis on that so that we get buy-in from senior leaders and principals, so that we really get that that really feeds into the whole business. You know, a happier team is more profitable, more productive.
So in terms of a specific example, the NHS Midlands programme, I think, really nicely ties into this. I've been working with foundation dentists around teaching them resilient skills, but also with the trainers. And this is very much focused on how to build a positive culture.
How do we have difficult mental well-being conversations and start detecting those early sort of poor mental health? How do we create those kind of more compassionate spaces? How do we build psychological safety within a practice, so that, you know, dental professionals, associates, the whole team, you know, from the nurses to practice managers, feel like when they have a concern, they can raise it without the fear of reprimand?
And I think that's really a big one. And even the basics, like, how do we avoid bullying and instability and create a culture of coaching and mentorship? Those aspects are so, so key.
And I've had really kind of great data from those programs. I'd love to see more of that developing. Because sometimes I've noticed that when organizations do connect with me, they do want an employee program.
And I have to really remind them that it's putting an emphasis on the culture and organizational issues probably make the biggest change in terms of well-being. And so, yeah, from that perspective, I'm hoping that people will get that more and more going forward.
I love that. Well, I think there's so many analogs that we see too, even just in like tech companies, right? Where like, I know that there's like software companies for Slack, specifically for software engineers, where it's just like a check-in product for them of like, are you red, yellow, or green today?
And it's like showing these incredible results and whatever. And so, yeah, it's great if we can do that ourselves, but if we can shift the culture so that it's happening for everyone, if we can lead in those ways to actually show, hey, this is okay. This is the kind of environment that we want to operate in, not where you have to go do this in the corner by yourself type of thing.
And we're all gonna be way better off. So I love that. And I love that you're getting a chance to work on that specifically with NHS, which is obviously such a place in terms of...
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think it's so crucial. And one point I forgot to mention was just even the basics of gratitude and recognition.
We're just not sharing thanks to our team. And it isn't necessarily that everyone needs a raise and it's just about money, because that's not a big... In the research, we know that's not the biggest motivator for us staying in a practice with a team.
Just feeling like you belong and you matter is so, so crucial. And so these little touch points where you do share thanks or having a gratitude board, or sometimes there's even a WhatsApp that's dedicated to all the wins and gratitude, really helps to lift those positive emotions and morale. And you just feel really good about coming in every day, feeling like what you're doing is making a difference and the team get it and my boss gets it.
And sometimes that's missed. And it's understandable because we're all busy, but it just makes a big difference to the workspace that we're in.
Totally. Well, you've shared some great tools, things for us to kind of consider and how do we implement these things in our workplaces and whatnot. I'm curious just from your perspective, like what's one, like if you had to kind of maybe one is a hard number, but maybe three, like if you had to be like, hey, we're not doing a lot of this now, but we see the benefit of it.
Like what are three kind of easily, the most easily implementable from your perspective things where you're like, hey, people should really consider this. Maybe just give it a try, try it for a day and a week and a month and see what happens. If you had to kind of say, hey, here are the top three things that I think organizations could do to kind of promote that type of culture, what would you say?
So in terms of organization, so we're talking about the practice managers and the principals and the senior leadership teams. What they could be doing is having a mental well-being champion. If that's a possibility, that would be fab in every practice.
So this is someone who is trained in mental health, first aid, as well as suicide awareness, who has an interest in well-being, might be interested in creating well-being, bonding days, or putting well-being on the agenda. Ideally, if you could as well, if you could have everyone trained in resilience, training, well-being training, as well as mental health, first aid, that would be absolutely amazing. That would be like the gold, if that were possible.
Having that training aspect, I think is really, really important that teams could be doing. And then the other aspect, I would say, is introducing mindfulness into the workplace. And that could be through different ways.
It could be through just empathetic mindful listening to your peers. And that's something that we could all probably get better at. So, listening with the intent to kind of pay attention rather than to respond straight away, I think that would make a big, big difference.
And that compassionate listening. So, trying to be, trying to focus with empathy and compassion and kindness rather than kind of jumping to conclusions. Part of that means that there needs to be an emphasis and a self-awareness from the principles and practice managers themselves.
They need to look after their well-being as well and not be stressed. So, obviously, there's that aspect. But I think really leaning into that kind of leadership where actually, I want to listen to the team.
I'm going to try not to get defensive. I'm going to take everyone's opinion. I'm going to have an open door policy.
I think that makes a big difference. And then the last kind of quick thing that one can do is check-ins with the team. So, is there an opportunity where you can have a morning or afternoon huddle or meetings?
You could do that check-in at that point. But if it could be something more regular where you're just asking, your team, how's everything going? Do you feel comfortable, anything I can help you with?
Just really kind of touch base. Sometimes in those afternoon, morning huddles or meetings, what I find is that we're really lost in the gender of the meeting. It's very much focused on what's not working well and how do we fix it.
It's not really around amplifying what is working well or even checking in. If there was that opportunity where we're baking in those checking in moments. That can be done in a very straightforward, easy way in terms of having the practice manager come into your surgery once a day.
This might be something you're already doing because you're having that open communication around referrals or booking patients anyway. Just having those moments where you can connect and check in, I think will make a big, big difference.
I love it. Well, I think one of the things that we see here in terms of, as we talk about, creating culture, not that doing activities as a team where you go to top golf here in the US, or whatever, some bowling or whatever the activity is. It's like, oh, this is going to create team bonding.
But into your second point around, if everyone could be trained in this, I've seen those kinds of situations obviously be really effective in terms of like, wow, we got to a deeper level, we understand each other more. Now, we're able to do some more of that stuff. I mentioned that only from the perspective of, as we close up our episode today, people are looking for that kind of training, because I think they are dedicating days or at least hours of training times and blocks and schedules and whatever.
If they want to learn more about you, about Mind Ninja, about you have a book, which if you have, we'd love to hear about that. Where can people go to learn more, get in touch with you, bring some of this work into their organizations?
Yes, I have a website. It's mindninja.co.uk. You can also find me on Instagram and I can share those details with you too.
Then in terms of the products, I have the Mind Frosting Toolkit, which is basically a deck of well-being cards. The idea is to pick a card and do an activity a day, and you can do this with your team. Then I also have a book, Resilience Wellbeing for Dental Professionals, that I published with Wiley last year, which is essentially a workbook covering all different aspects of well-being.
They could be quite useful. But yeah, absolutely. I'm available for workshops or programs, conferences, those kinds of things.
But even if you want to just touch base and talk about something, I'm happy to speak and help support you.
I love it. I love it. There's so much good there.
I'll put links to some of those products in this show notes. So people are looking for them. They find them very easily.
Mahrukh, it's been a really, really pleasure to have you today. I feel like again, this just ties together so many threads in season five of Kinda Different. So thank you for being our guest for our season finale episode.
We really appreciate it. Really appreciate you doing the work that you're doing in the profession to bring awareness around this to dental professionals in general. Thank you so much.