EP#1: Marking the beginning of the Podcast

Host: Pham Thai Phuong

Guest: Ms. Thanh Hoa – Psychology Expert

Duration: 17 minutes

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Welcome to the first episode of The RightHand Podcast – A place to share stories about how good deeds come to be. I am Pham Thai Phuong, host of this Podcast series. Coming to the first episode is Ms. Thanh Hoa. Ms. Hoa is with us today and will provide information about running projects as well as professional experience in the field of mental health care as President of the PsychoHub project, a Psychology project belonging to the Cong Community.

Hello Ms. Hoa, thank you for joining us today. Can you introduce a little bit about yourself for our audiences?

  • Hello Phuong, hello audiences, my name is Thanh Hoa. Thank you Phuong for having me today in a very meaningful podcast session of The Right Hand. Hopefully we will have a fun and meaningful conversation.

So that everyone can better understand you and the organization you are accompanying, can you introduce PsychoHub more clearly?

  • PsychoHub is a project on the topic of Psychology for students, founded by the organization “Cong” Community, created as a place for young people to share their love for psychology. Physics, so that they have the opportunity to develop themselves, develop many skills and spread the values and knowledge they have acquired from the project to the community.

Yes, I feel like every project has its origin from something that motivates its founder, so that the project is formed and spreads meaning to the community. So for you, what led you to this project?

  • Perhaps the story needs to be told since I was in my second year at University. It was also close to the Covid season, when I had a period of time learning some knowledge about psychology in the classroom. I want to continue participating in clubs or organizations where I can continue to learn more about the field of study I love. One day, I found information about PsychoHub on Facebook. When I joined PsychoHub I realized, oh, this is my second home.

So during the process of running this project, is there any story that you feel is really impressive?

  • The most impressive thing for me was probably when we were planning to organize an event and we were hit by Covid-19. That was the first time we worked together as members of PsycoHub, and I was also the President of a non-governmental project. At that stage, with a small number of human resources, we worked extremely enthusiastically and hard. We are not allowed to meet in person, because this is a time of quarantine across the city, everyone can only meet online. However, the final event went quite smoothly, it was a talk show series that lasted for 2 to 3 months. During the process, everyone learned a lot, not only physiological knowledge but also leadership skills, event organization, foreign affairs… We are truly grateful for those experiences.

I hope you can share more about this talk show, such as how it is organized, and whether it is still being watched again or not?

  • At that time, due to Covid, live events could not be held, so we chose to organize them online. We have invited expert speakers to share with young people about topics that are considered, I mean, can help young people heal themselves during the quarantine season. And like that, I-HEAL was born. I-HEAL carries our wish that everyone, through participating in talk shows, can find joy for themselves during that sensitive time. The topics of the talk revolve around personal identity crisis, or from FOMO to JOMO, toxic positivity…

Among the speakers invited by the project, is there any speaker who left you with a lesson that you really liked and still remember?

  • Among those actors, there was Mr. Thai Phap Ngo Toan, who holds a master’s degree in psychology and is also a Buddhist. Despite a significant age gap between him and the participants at that time, his way of conveying knowledge was very approachable, especially with his soothing Hue accent, which made the conversation very warm and cozy. It was the most profound conversation for me. On that day, we discussed the topic “From FOMO to JOMO,” which means the fear of missing out and the joy of missing out. During that pandemic, negative information about the disease situation and the economy kept pouring in, making everything very complicated and tangled. Sometimes, the fear of the pandemic could cause many young people to worry about missing out on various experiences. The conversation with Mr. Thai Phap Ngo Toan left a strong impression on me and greatly helped me in facing the challenges.

Except for FOMO which is Fear of missing out and JOMO which is Joy of missing out, I also heard you mention the concept of personal identity crisis. Please explain this concept more clearly.

  • We will have to start with the term “bản sắc.” We translated “bản sắc” as “individuality,” “identity,” or “self” depending on the translator, but we preferred the term “bản sắc” the most. For me, it was quite special, containing the “personal colors” of each individual. It’s a combination of personality traits, beliefs, core values, interests, social roles, and so on, which each person has to define for themselves. The crisis of personal identity, as defined by psychology, is an effort to determine “who am I?” This is a question that surely many young people at our age at that time, or even younger, when facing important crossroads in life, would contemplate. They would wonder who they are, what they want to do in the future, what kind of person they want to become. These questions are related to choices like which school to attend, which path in life to take, whether to go to college, pursue vocational training, or start working. So, “bản sắc” is precisely that, and everyone will encounter these questions in life, multiple times and at different stages of life, even into old age. However, when we are still young, these questions are very challenging to answer, and that’s when the crisis of personal identity becomes negative.

Through your words, I also partly understand how important personal identity is. However, what happens if a person cannot find personal identity? What difficulties will that young person face and how to overcome them?

  • There was a study conducted in 2015 that found 37% of teens were struggling with personal identity, and 95% of teens said they had felt self-conscious at some point. Identity crisis is a process that most people will face. Some people can get over it quickly, but some people will have more difficulty. It can lead to things like low self-esteem, or thinking you’re not good at anything and have no abilities. These things will cause the person to get lost and encounter peer pressure. When those worries and fears become too much, too big, affecting daily activities, that is when the personal identity crisis becomes a problem that needs to be solved.

Do you think the projects can have a good impact on the process of finding personal identity of the participating members?

  • An interesting thing that Mr. Erik Edison, the creator of the term “personal identity crisis”, brought up is: to find your identity, you have to try a lot. “Failure is the mother of success”, the more roles you try, the more things you do, your knowledge will increase, your experiences will be enhanced, and from there people will gradually know who you are. Who, what do I want to do, what am I good at? Community projects, school clubs, non-governmental organizations.. I believe they were established as an opportunity for young people to learn more skills and improve their knowledge. to learn more about yourself. So that later in the process of personal development, when they come to important stages in life where they need to answer the question “Who am I”, they will have enough equipment to overcome it.

Regarding you and your life journey, as someone associated with the PsychoHub project, do you feel that this project has also helped you find your personal identity?

  • Absolutely yes. I went through this identity crisis before, and at that time no one supported me. I don’t know how I overcame it, but yes, perhaps it was also thanks to the Psychology path. When I have to stand at the crossroads, “What should I do?” While my friends were rushing into economics, business, IT, tourism… I sat alone in class and worried a lot while filling out the application form. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I also didn’t know what I was good at, so that wish list was essentially my parents’ wishes, with only Psychology being out of place in it. My parents did not know about this aspiration until I passed the exam. Participating in PsychoHub is a big challenge for what I pursue. Ok I like Psychology, so what do I do with it? At that time, when I joined PsycoHub, participating in the project gave me a strong desire to spread what I learned to help many people younger than me, so they could overcome their identity crisis. Theirs is easier than mine.

You mentioned the difficulties of running this project, so can you tell us more about the specific challenges that you, as President of PsychoHub, have had to go through?

  • Um. At the time I was nominated by the Founder of Cong Community to the position of President of PsychoHub, I was a bit shocked because I had never taken on such a great responsibility. I usually only do small roles. But as President , I felt a huge burden and pressure about making this project bigger, reaching more people or how to lift morale, helping everyone continue to accompany the project. At that time, I encountered difficulties regarding lack of knowledge, lack of experience, and lack of skills in leadership. Luckily, the founder was very supportive, he told me that as a President, I don’t need to be good at everything, I just need to know everything and know how to motivate everyone. people, knowing how to engage people, and planning. He helped me in the institute by providing professional knowledge and sharing experience in running projects so that I could understand how to handle situations while working. There are many difficulties, but with such great support from the Cong Community, PsychoHub has been able to develop until now, 2 and a half years. Throughout my student life, until now after graduating and working, I have continued to accompany this project.

I thank Ms. Thanh Hoa for coming with us and sharing with us your story. This answer also closes the first podcast episode of The RightHand Podcast. To watch the first episodes, we hope the audience will like, share and follow to support our development. Thank you very much for listening and see you in the next episode.