Emotional First Aid - Interview with Guy Winch - Tell Your Story

vodka - it'll harm me autonomy conquer sequel origin of a faster and guy winch Samaras very far after family the entire head expects talks ok travel problems in the book ok the Haram Valley doctor dealt or convicted emblem emotional first aid who become to handle or a Chancellor about the internet for best asset welcome to Sweden thank you very much is this your first time here it's my first time yes and I hope not my last No so do I so you're here and you came also be the first snow yes but while it's cold outside I hope I help people learn how to be warm inside yeah good so you're here to talk about very important and actual subjects emotional first-aid that he also wrote a book about yes yeah why is this book so important I think the book is very important because we all have really strong feelings and really strong reactions and yet while when we have something happen to us physically we know exactly what to do if you have a cut you know what to do if you have a cold you know what to do you sprained your leg you know what to do but when something happens emotionally it's not just that we don't know what to do which we don't we're not even aware that there things we can do to make the pain better to heal more quickly to make sure things don't get worse and there's a lot of science that psychologists have done over the last years about these very basic emotional daily experiences only there's no way or there hasn't been a way to bring this science to the public to actual people so because no one is going to the library to read scientific journals most people don't and so I wrote the book to be able to tell people ok now we actually know when you get rejected when you have a failure when you feel guilty or lonely there are steps you can take to feel better to make sure it doesn't get worse and here are these steps yes we're sitting here at the table with some happy tea and some sweets and food is for me and for many people food is equal with love but there is a back side of food can you tell me a little bit about it because you wrote some very interesting things in your book yes I think that often people use food to deal with emotions and I'm not just talking about eating disorders which is in which it's a very common thing that people will strongly deal with their emotions by eating but I think that even regular people when when you know you know a lot of times when somebody say oh my my boyfriend just dumped me and so I went and I got a lot of ice cream or I bought the cake you know in other words the the solution to that emotional problem was to eat and it's comfort food and so the comfort is there but the fact that you had the ice cream or the cake doesn't mean you still won't feel hurt the next day it doesn't mean your self-esteem won't still be bruised it doesn't mean that you still don't have to do something so we're using food because we don't have other tools so what else would we do instead of taking out the ice cream and the cookies what can we do so first of all take out the little ice cream and cookies that's fine just don't just do ice cream you know if it's all about the ice cream that's the problem but in general this is why I wrote the book because there's a lot we can do you first of all have to be able to assess in what way you feel injured the next morning and you're feeling better perhaps you don't need much more than a little bit and ice cream but for many people that wake up the next morning and the morning after that and three weeks later still feeling upset clearly there's an emotional wound there that you actually have to try and treat and you can and so the book helps people understand what is the wound that and what can I do about it to make it feel better but how do I know how do people know if they are emotional injured how can we know so in the book I try and give guidelines but just in a very very general way you know when something happens like a rejection or a failure or something like that it's normal to feel upset but can you are you getting better are you feeling better a day later or a week later if you been dating somebody for two months and you're upset for six months that's not okay you know if you have been dating somebody for two months and you're upset for two weeks but you start to feel better that is kind of reasonable and so it's not that we always have to do something often when we get a cold it gets better by itself but sometimes we have a cough that lasts and lasts and then we actually have to take more action so the idea is to see are you starting to feel better like any wound it should start it hurts a bit at the beginning and it should gradually feel better pretty soon if you don't feel it's improving or certainly if it's getting worse emotionally it's something that you can't shake you just you're in the office and all you can think about is this thing that happened and you can't focus on your work those are the kinds of signs that there's something there you need to address but is it enough to delay go and read your book and practice what do you write or should you go and talk to somebody how should you handle it so I think that's a wonderful question right because when it comes to physical wounds we kind of have a good idea when you get to cut most of us can look at the cut and know that needs a band-aid or that might need stitches we can actually tell the difference when we are sick we can usually tell the difference between I can just rest in bed and it should be okay as opposed to I need to go to the doctor we don't know how to do that with emotional wounds and psychological wounds and so at the end of every chapter in the book that I talk about I end every chapter with and this is when you might need to see a professional if this happens if you're feeling this way if you tried these things or if these are the thoughts so I really try and help people understand that for someone's you do perhaps need to see a professional but I think it's always best to try with the home remedy which in this case would be the suggestions I make in the chapter but why are we so bad and taken care of why don't we have more knowledge in general about this well who's teaching us in other words yeah to me that the problem is and this is why I wrote the book there's there's all this science and we'll be scientists that spend years doing all these studies and all these and finding really interesting amazing things but they write them in science journals that go in the library at the University not even in your public library not even down the street not in the bookstore and so who sees that the other scientists and that's it and there's there's no one who then goes and brings some journalists once in a while but even the journalists are not that interested in Psychological studies they're more interested in you know the new thing about this kind of trans-fat or this kind of you know physical thing but no one is actually looking at the psychological studies and saying oh we just discovered this here's what you need to know because this could be very useful and because there's a gap like that is why I wrote the book and the other thing is you know we children go to school for many years and we have them captive in school and we teach them all these all these things oh the math and the history and the literature which I think a wonderful things but most children are not using the math from the history and the literature these things these psychological ways of dealing these deep these ways of dealing with emotional wounds everyone can use and those are the things we don't teach which is such a shame I think so too because then after reading your book it's easier to understand why people are developing so via a different kind of abusing alcohol and food out and drugs right so it's a it's a really a deep issue and I am a mom I have a daughter how can I apply this for my child from the beginning how can I teach her those this important knowledge yes that's because this is very abstract for a child what you can see but what you feel right well actually it's not so abstract I'll give you one example you know and let's look at an example at every child most children who deal with let's say failure there's a chapter in the book about failure and what to do with when you fail now most I'm assuming your child is very young because you look young but she will at some point to be in school and and the thing is also when a child fails at the test you know they they come home they did really badly what what most parents can do is oh honey it's okay you'll do better next time you know they try and comfort them it's nice it's but it doesn't teach the child about how to deal with things I think that's a very typical Swedish parents parents all over the world all parents but if you actually teach the child is okay honey so here's the great news when something doesn't go well it's an incredible way to learn what you have to do differently next time this is where the teaching happens when things don't go well so yes it hurts a little bit it's a little disappointing that you didn't do well but now let's sit down and figure out what we need to do differently because now we know what we need to fix oh you see you started studying only a day before perhaps we need a day and a half or oh you know the way you studied is you just read the chapter perhaps you need to take notes or whatever the thing is but you teach them that whenever something bad happens great news it'll help you figure something out going forward and that approach as a parent when you teach that to a child the child doesn't come home worried oh I did badly they come home worried like now I need to sit down and figure what I need to do differently and so even that approach because there's no judgment in it there's no anger in it it's just very matter of that this is what failure means it gives you clues to figure out how to be successful and in fact people who are always successful sometimes don't learn how to deal well with failure because they've never had to figure that out so just as an example these are one of the tools I'll give you one of a quick example so your child didn't get invited to the birthday party and they're upset because they didn't get invited to the birthday party again most parents oh honey that's okay but we love you it's nice to the child that the parent loves them but they're more upset that their friends don't love them but if the parent came and said look it's very natural to feel hurt when you didn't get invited to the birthday party but I'm going to call the mother of your two friends and see if they can come over this evening you know without saying this to the kid to the child but to remind you that you do have friends who do love you who do accept you who are interested in playing with you that will do more to soothe the child's feelings then that's okay honey we love you anyway you don't believe that avoiding things that's not a good thing to do no no nothing when it comes to anything well some things in other words are that there's some exceptions but in general when you are avoiding something because it makes you feel bad or because it makes you feel anxious or because it makes you feel worried all that it does is it makes that thing that you are avoiding seem more worrisome and it makes you more anxious you know phobias develop slowly you know you know nobody starts with a phobia about an elevator but they're in an elevator and it shudders a little bit and then I'm a little bit worried so they take the stairs and each time they take the stairs in their mind they avoided getting stuck in the elevator although they didn't they wouldn't have gotten stuck in the elevator you know but so when we avoid things they become scarier and scarier and scarier because we started believing on it right we're building it up is something that we can't cope with and when you're telling yourself I cannot cope with the fear of the elevator the elevator becomes very scary as opposed to I'll get in I'll take deep breaths and you know it wasn't play that reduces the figure so avoidance in general is something that makes the situation worse how can we in our best way avoid avoidance well first of all to me to be clear about that because people in psychology in general are tendencies to find short-term solutions which create long-term problems and that's a great example the short-term solution is thank goodness I didn't have to go in the elevator long-term problem there are a lot of elevators in your life that are going to make you even more anxious now so we have to be aware in terms of our psychology that if we know that then we can say to ourselves it's best I take the elevator now because now is the least scary it's going to be if I don't take it it only gets scarier from here on so why not face it when it's least scary yeah your message in the book not least with the exercises you your messages that it's really important to not only think about it you need to write it down and I was just thinking that we are living in the digital era children are more and more using devices like this instead of handwriting mm-hmm why is it so important to write it down and that's it is there a difference of writing it on the computer or writing by hand there are certain things of writing by hand does well but for me the importance of the writing down is there are different areas in our brain that are responsible for language expression versus written expression when you're trying to put something in writing it's a different area of the brain you're using as opposed to speaking and that is the same whether you're writing by hand or typing written expression versus verbal expression so the value in writing it down is the more areas of your brain are involved in giving yourself a certain message the more comprehensive the deeper that message goes so if you're just thinking it that's one layer but if you're thinking it and you're saying it that's another layer and if you're thinking it and saying it and writing it it's even a deeper layer and what about the fewer read your own essay in different then like it's work at home out in the city at the friend's place would it make it even stronger in different places because I think so because you're associating it to different environments and different contexts again so you know our brain works by neurons connecting and creating all the time new connections so when you read it at home and you read it at work and you meet it out in the country these are different associations we are forcing our mind to make certain connections which will then have an impact we don't have to wait for our mind to do it by itself it's very I mean it's a challenge to live today because we are all the time exposed to so many messages and we need somehow to create a filter of what we want to see and hear and what we want to get influenced by absolutely and almost everyone is using social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram how does this affect us I think it affects us tremendously there is a lot of research about this I mean let's just look at Facebook an example so what most people put on Facebook is look how great my life is right so here's the picture of me on vacation look how happy I am oh here's me with my children look how great they are no one puts the picture of look how terrible my child is in this picture or this is a terrible terrible vacation or this is the party that I hated going to that's not what's on Facebook it's all the great stuff now if you're not feeling great if you're feeling lonely or if you're feeling rejected then when you go and look at Facebook everyone's life is better than yours it seems everyone is out there at this party you know people put the pictures that are you know no one puts a picture of an empty room look that's where I am so it gives a misleading - if we would start doing that I think it would be great you think that no one's gonna do it but I think it would be great because in other words what do you advertise in there I'm alone look here's my empty sofa in other words it's just not something we do but it makes people feel bad people on social media I used to say that in order to be rejected 15 years ago you actually had to interact with someone not today today all you have to do is put up your vacation pictures and you'll 533 friends don't like them and you feel rejected 533 times and even worse I like vacation pictures so now I really feel bad that she didn't like mine but the actual reality is she saw them she was just really busy and the next time she sees you she might say it looks like you had such a great time on vacation but you don't know that and so we tend to assume the worst because we didn't get retweeted they did look like my Instagram picture on my Facebook update and we tend to think so no one's paying attention to me no one likes me as opposed to people are busy they only check once in a while and so it's it's a whole new arena of a place where we have these strong emotional responses but it's hard because we are a social being all of us yes we need to be in our social context and we need to share and we need people around us and in that matter social media platforms are really great because they are connecting people I mean somehow this interview is said the cost of the social media so it's good as well but how can we how can we learn to pick out the good parts of the social media platforms and protect us from being hurt okay but you see that's a wonderful question and in it is the answer we need to use social media wisely we need to learn how to pick up the good parts it's not so in a sense it's not because you know I mean I'm sure you know many people who do this well let's say they feel lonely and they will or here's a better example you know somebody who just their boyfriend broke up with them and they spend the whole day looking at the base at the boyfriend's Facebook page going now they're doing this now they're dating this person now now what good comes a bit other than making yourself feel really really miserable what possible good now yes you're very curious but this is about using some wisdom you know and again when it comes when we have physical wounds we don't make them worse on purpose but when we have a psychological wound we don't have the sophistication so we will go and look at the Facebook page and make ourselves feel miserable for absolutely no good reason because the best that can happen is you see nothing and then that's a nothing but there's no good outcome it's nothing or bad and so we have to have the wisdom to use you know social media wisely and to make choices otherwise it's it's really interesting how you work because me personally if I have a really good day and I'm happy and I see my feed and my friends are posting all positive things I'm really happy for them and I'm happy to have them as friends but if I feel for example lonely or I had a bad day I have a bad mood and I see those happy updates yeah it makes me feel even more lonely all right yeah and my suggestion is when you're feeling bad don't go and face no because loneliness it's really a killer according to you first of all according to many scientists I'm I'm just bringing that news but yes loneliness is one of those things that people think of there's no you know it's a shame they feel lonely they don't realize that it impacts not just a psychological health but our physical health loneliness chronic loneliness increases your likelihood of an early death by 14% scientists believe that the health risks of chronic loneliness are the same as the health risks of cigarette smoking now cigarette packs come with warnings saying oh this will kill you but loneliness comes with no warnings people aren't aware that the minute the minute you start to feel lonely your immune system starts functioning less effectively immediately it read your blood pressure rises immediately these are very significant things and again with lots of science that no one knows about and we really need to know that because when we feel lonely we do need to take action it's not one of those things that we should just let go it's a dangerous thing so so part of the problem in dealing with loneliness is that it really creates a distortion in our thinking it makes us believe that the people in our life care much less about us than they do it makes us believe that the friends we have don't really care that much about us we really believe that in some studies they asked people who weren't lonely to evaluate their friendships then they asked them to remember a time where they felt lonely then they asked them to reevaluate their friendships and all the evaluations dropped they were just remembering a time they felt lonely and so when you feel lonely part of the thing that makes it difficult to come out is that you feel that oh if I call a friend they're not going to be interested in getting together or people will say to me well why should I call that friend because they haven't called me and but then when they call they're so upset or they feel so emotionally raw they'll say why haven't you called me for two weeks and of course if a friend calls you and says why haven't you called me for two weeks well it's not very you don't feel like oh break let's get together you feel like well you know but if you call and say let's have coffee or happy tea then they're much more likely to want to see you so the thing is you really have to be acknowledged and understand and this is a lot of what I explained in the chapter about loneliness your mindset is going to be problematic you really have to take a deep breath and even though it's very scary you have to try and be positive somebody who's lonely will say I don't want to go to the party because no one would want to talk to me and then they might say okay well I'll go but when they go they have such a bad expression on their face they stand in the corner looking like this at everyone and surprise surprise no one wants to talk to them in their head they're like you see no one wanted to talk to me and I try and say but look at the vibe you're putting out look at the you know it's not inviting if you go it's a poverty you know we're not in high school so if you actually just walk up to people and say oh hello I'm so-and-so how do you know the house they will chat with you but if you stand in the corner looking really upset why would they chat with you so you have to take action where do those responsibilities if is it you're your own responsibility yeah but how can we be better in treating people and take and make everyone involved you know I'll give you an example I don't know if you never had a sports injury I have we have to do physical therapy the one thing about the physical therapy it really hurts yeah you're actually the physical therapy the rehabilitation really hurts but you do it because you know you have to do it to get better so when it's a physical injury aware that sometimes it hurts taking off the band-aid can hurt I think the ointment can sting beacon tolerated because we know it's important it's the same thing with these kinds of psychological injuries it could hurt it can feel scary it can feel you know dangerous even when you're feeling lonely to show up at the party and it can be difficult to put on a smile but when you do when you're brave and you you can do that that's when you'll start to feel better because that's when the response will come back and you'll feel like oh yeah okay yeah but that's the same also with dating for example I mean it's doc only said there are more singles than couples in Stockholm yeah why is that is it because people are scared of rejection or a6m people are people are terrified of rejection one of the interesting things about rejection is that when we look at what happens in the brain the same areas of your brain get activated when you're rejected as when you experience physical pain exactly the same areas and so it is actually a really painful experience and the one difference from physical pain is if you think back at a time where your tooth hurt or you broke an egg your tooth won't hurt by the memory if you think back on a time that somebody broke your heart you'll start to feel bad in that moment it's not only that the pain is the same it lasts much longer and it can be reactivated very very quickly so they think you know is a dangerous sport because you run the risk of getting hurt all the time unfortunately there's no way around that risk you won't meet someone unless you take their errors because life is boring without it life is boring without it but also in general you fee want things alive you have to risk not getting them getting rejected and again right now it's scarier for most people because they don't have any tools to apply when they do get rejected but how can we date in a positive way in a healthy way without the damaging ourselves how can we how can we play this game in a good way so one of the things I suggest you know in the book is there are certain things you can do to boost your self-esteem you can use that if you get rejected you can also use it before the date to make you be more yourself because if you're going to go on the date and spend the entire time sitting there and thinking what do they think about me do they like me do they want to see me again do they think I'm attractive first of all you're not very present you're not really going to be yourself because you're just going to be a bowl of anxiety and worry but if before the dates you sit and you make a list of the things that make you a good dating prospect that you know you're loyal you're emotionally available you're a good listener you're supportive we make great suites and let's say you write you know a short little essay about one of those things then you feel um you know what I have things to offer and then you're more likely to go on the date and just be yourself and think about do I like the other person as opposed to does the other person like me so again there are tools you can use to make a scary difficult situation a little less scary and difficult and how do we treat ourselves if we are getting rejected if the date our life don't call back and don't want to see you again how do we treat herself the higher the date of a life well you know I mean if it's one day that really couldn't be a but part of the problem is that our tendency with psychological wounds is we get an injury and then we make it worse so most people after they get rejected one of the first things they do they start thinking of all their faults and shortcomings well I'm not tall enough I'm not rich enough I'm not attractive enough I know it's not enough I didn't have something to say there have this spot over here which probably they knock that and they didn't like in other words yourself the steam is already hurting and then you go and make it worse by thinking of everything that's not okay about you now that's a real problem because you'll make you're literally making the psychological injury worse and so we need to be able to build ourselves up after we feel rejected we need to be able to and not artificially not say I'm the best person in the world because we don't feel like it and you're probably not the best person if you have to believe it yourself you shouldn't say the things that you know are true say that you really are good at this and this and this that you really are a loyal person that you are a great listener I get great back rubs I great cook I can organize outings I'm always up for something spontaneous think of all the things you do have to offer to build yourself up which are true not the artificial things like the parents again say to the children oh but you're beautiful honey which child doesn't hear you're beautiful honey whether they are or not and the children who are not and everyone else in their environment is telling them they're not it doesn't help that the parents are telling them you're beautiful because they think not so much but if the parents are telling them what do you think you're great at and they're reinforcing that that has much more weight and resonance it has to be true the testament fruit or filled room yeah thank you thank you very very much

Channel: Digital Artist

Views: 24,734

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: Blogozine

Id: 29mBdr-Aktw

Length: 30min 20sec (1820 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 12 2014