Psychologist REVEALS The Key Tricks To Instantly Reduce STRESS & ANXIETY | Julie Smith

why should people have to come see me to find out this stuff why has nobody told me this before this is not hard it's not difficult to learn but when i do it every day it makes a big difference lots of little skills when you put these in to practice every day they do make a difference and they make life easier [Music] let's talk about stress because it's a term that gets bandied around a lot these days along with stress a lot of people talk about fear and anxiety so when you think of those three things stress fear and anxiety how do you see them and how do you make sense of them i guess for you but also for your for your clients sure so um i always like to think of a um when you think of stress you have that increase in your level of alertness don't you and and that's to help you deal with situations so let's say you are um you're in the queue at the post office and you've given yourself 15 minutes to go in and get this done and then you've got a meeting to get to and you get there and there's a huge queue and and you have that kind of rush of that feeling of stress and that's your brain you know allowing some extra resources to increase your level of alertness so that you can work out do i need to re-prioritize here um is it going to cost me something if i keep on this path or do i need to go and prioritize that meeting for example so you feel that kind of stress you wouldn't necessarily experience that as fear um unless there was some sort of threat to you know to a degree so um you know anxiety tends to be we we associate that more with fear and really there this they're one response you know we have that one threat response but we conceptualize it differently in different types of situations so we tend to associate anxiety with threatening situations and and fearful situations whereas you know stress tends to be those other kind of you know the post office type situations that we talk about what i see in all of your work whether it's the online videos or in your book is this kind of message of self-empowerment of helping everyone understand that actually there's a lot that i can do myself i don't necessarily have to be reliant as you say on a professional or someone else to give me the tools i can learn the tools and apply them myself is that something that's really important to you yeah absolutely and that was the reason for getting started you know there's a lot about how um therapy isn't accessible for everybody for lots of different reasons and reasons that i perhaps didn't have the ability to control or affect and great and a great degree um but they're you know i was sat in this therapy room with access to the research and the techniques that help people and i was seeing people you know one at a time and and so there was that sense of you know i would sort of finish a day of therapy and going to my husband and say why should people have to pay to come see me to find out this stuff you know i mean there's a lot to therapy that isn't edu these isn't the educational part so education is one aspect of therapy where you can learn a bit about how you can affect things there's this other sort of part that you can't necessarily hand out in a video online um that you have to experience in the room one-to-one with someone but the educational aspect was so helpful um in in enabling the people i was working with to manage week to week in between sessions you know and a lot of them were saying i mean that's where the title of the book came from a lot of people were saying why has nobody told me this before this is not hard it's not difficult to learn but when i do it every day it makes a big difference and that wasn't one specific kind of you know bullet thing that made the big difference it was lots of little skills that when you put these in to practice every day they do make a difference and they make life easier you've seen a lot of people over the course of your career i know you started off in the nhs and you moved to private practice what are the common things that you would see repeatedly you know are there are there common kind of tendencies that people have that even if they came in with slightly different problems were there some underlying themes that you saw actually were pretty universal um yeah often there was a lack of confidence in people's um belief that they could manage their mental health so a lot of people will come to therapy and they they imagine that you're going to fix them and you're going to make it all better and that you have the key to that and and while you have the information available that helps other people you're not going to do it for them and so there's this sort of process in therapy where people um build their confidence and their ability to manage but often i think that is a really common theme at the beginning of therapy that but often because of you know you get to the point in a problem where you feel like nothing's working and i'm out of ideas so i'm going to go and seek support and so when you're in that place you naturally imagine that you don't have the answer and there's nothing you can do somebody else must have to do something to you or for you um to change it um so often there's this sort of rediscovery of your own abilities i guess it's that empowerment piece isn't it that's it's fascinating to to see how you have just blown up in what two years when did you post your first video do you remember yeah it was the november before the first locked out it was the november before the pandemic started so it's like a month before we worked out that something was going on so in 2019 yes yeah so what are we now we are say 2021 so that's not long but it's about two and a half it's not even we're coming up to two and a half years i think it's the middle of april now so it's almost two and a half years in that time you have i don't know are you one of the most followed people on tick tock is that right uh i have no idea i'm not sure i mean there's there's um yeah three million of them on tick tock and about four million of us across platforms and things so and i don't think it's because of me you know my early videos were terrible but i was probably at that point the only person on that platform offering education of of that sort and so i think really it was a reflection of what people needed and and what people were struggling with and nobody was talking about i mean when when we discovered tiktok there was loads of great dancing and comedy and it was a fun place to be and there were also lots of young people expressing their distress and saying i'm not okay and but there was no professionals on there going here's what you could do here's some ideas or you know and go and seek help or that kind of thing so um yeah it felt like we were kind of swimming against the tide hugely um but yeah so i think it flew up because it was what people needed to hear or wanted to hear how's that being for you because you said over four million people across all platforms now follow you and all the content i've seen from you which is brilliant on social media but all the content i've seen is it's very visual you are front and center right so there's a huge recognizable piece like you know over four million people around the world probably know what dr judy smith looks like and i've heard you describe yourself in many interviews as an introvert so i'm fascinated by that you know three years ago you did not have a global social media profile you never posted a video for your professional work what was life like then three years ago compared to what life is like now because i i suspect there may have been a roller coaster maybe moments of self-doubt excitement but also then worry like can you can you share a little bit about that journey yeah i mean for sure for me it was it was exciting at first but i didn't really um see the potential of it or where it was going to go i really genuinely saw it as a temporary project that would be an interesting way to get some education out there um that people in therapy were saying this is really useful so i wanted to make that accessible and when it started to blow up um and we saw the numbers it was just numbers it was just numbers on the screen and then my husband said to me imagine if you lined all those people up like next to each other and you saw them for real and that's when i thought oh gosh yeah because actually um you know i'd been working one-to-one with people in my little office and and that was comfortable i live in a small town i don't you know that was fine for me that kind of life and um i didn't have any ambitions to be public and so the idea of being public really got me questioning okay is this what i want for me is this what i want for my children um it was also zapping loads of my time because social media as a content creator it will gobble up as much time and effort as you're willing to give it and and it rewards you for that so you know it's just as addictive for content creators as it is for the consumer because um the more consistent you are the more content you produce then you know the more um traction you get and so um i had to really there were times when i had to really kind of stop and think what do i really want my week to look like what want my lifestyle to be and and how does that fit in with family life and things like that and so you know i've said no to a lot of staff based on the fact that i don't want that for my family and for myself and i've had to stay really close to the reason i started in the first place i think that's helped me all the way along to deal with being public or my face being seen is because each time i would do a video there would be this bunch of people that would contact me and say i just want to say thank you so much it's you know i even had people messaging me to say that that it saved their life in a moment where they were thinking of something terrible um it it turned and turned things around in that moment and now they were going to go and seek some help and and so for me that was a real driver wow these are real people uh watching this stuff it's having an impact if i could shift someone's direction in a positive way well that's so worth it but um so i didn't want to lose sight of that i wanted to keep that at the core and so that's helped me i think deal with the sort of the vulnerability of being public i mean what you're speaking to there for me is values and you write about values in the book i want to talk about that shortly because i think knowing our values and reminding ourself of them regularly is such a valuable tool to navigate the inevitable stresses and obstacles and pushes and pulls that life throws at us and it's interesting to hear you describe that because i'm hearing julie clearly knows her values and so when she is getting pulled or pushed she keeps returning back to that value which i think is it's great to see you putting into practice something that you you write about what what were some of those moments i mean can you describe them where you're making videos you're you're just your numbers are going up you're you're feeling that poor oh we need to make more videos right uh this is helping people what was the report where you realize wait a minute i haven't hardly seen my husband or my kids this week like i've been here before you see so i'm very fascinated can you describe some of those moments for you has it has it been tricky at times did you think i need to just shut down my accounts like i don't want this anymore how has that been i think uh yeah i'd be lying if they're saying there weren't those moments of thinking i just want to go back to the way things were because there was a time where it just felt lots of pressure and you know suddenly i've got to adjust and and i don't think i mean it's not like a you know i've turned into justin bieber or anything i'm not being hounded in the streets i live in a small town and and stuff like that so there hasn't been a huge change on that front um do people stop you uh you know i had uh very early on i had a couple of um young girls sort of follow us around the supermarket and then and then wait at the door and said i think i think they want to have a you know selfie with you and and i was all sort of embarrassed about it and my daughter said mommy you need to do this it's never going to happen again so okay then so we did that and um but yeah really it hasn't happened again well no i'd lie a couple of times it's happened but often it happens you know what it happens because the type of content i do the people that come up and say something are the people who have found the content learning form i'm not an entertainer i'm not you know exactly anything like that so the people that come up are saying lovely things that that give me that drive to move forward so actually it's been a really nice experience when it happens um but it's also nice that it doesn't happen a huge amount you know i'm not living in the center of london or anything and and seeing lots of people every day so you know i do the school run then i go back to my therapy room and start filming videos so it's actually a pretty quiet life in uh to a degree so yeah if that's really really interesting you as you've been talking about your experience there something that you write about at the start of the book really came to me which is this idea that you know we're not our feelings our feelings are not facts our emotions are not facts um i love the way you've articulated that and it it kind of sounds as though again through this experience that's been your life over the last two and a half years um you've had some bad days some days where you've questioned what what am i doing why am i doing it other days you probably felt really good so you've had that experience in the supermarkets there's a kind of rich tapestry of emotions and feelings that are part of normal life yes yours happens to be on a big public scale because of tick tock and instagram but everyone goes through that don't they in their own life in their own way so this idea that we don't always have to act on those feelings like you didn't deactivate your account and go right i'm done right you knew that let me just sit with this and make a make a better decision in a few days once i've just thought about things i don't know i mean this seems to be a key idea that i see in a lot of your work online and in the book that thoughts and feelings they come and go don't they they're not fat we don't have to act on them yeah and and and like you say when i'm doing this kind of work yes i've been those kind of the highs are great i get to come meet people like you and and do amazing stuff like this and and there are also days when i get home after the school run and i think oh i've got to think of a video and i oh gosh i really just do not feel like doing this today and but then actually when i think of you know when i was working in nhs there were days when i felt really good about something that was going really well and there were days when it all felt too much and i really didn't feel like doing it anymore and um and so you get those days whatever is going on in life don't you and and yeah you get to choose i love that kind of idea that you know you're one decision away from from a different life and and and that gives you that sense of freedom to a degree um but but yeah you don't always have to act on it so that you you know we have um a sort of a feeling that that will come and it will it'll come with an urge so you'll come you'll you'll have an urge to do something or um do a certain act and but you don't have to go with it so i don't know if you wake up in the morning and it all feels too much and you have that urge to just pull the duvet over go back to sleep and and switch your phone off hide away from the world you could go with that urge and you're likely to kind of feel terrible at the end of the day or you could act opposite to that urge and push through that moment with the possibility that once you were up and about you could feel a bit better or a bit different and and often in therapy we'll play around with that idea that okay so when you went with that urge what happened how did you feel after that and when you went opposite to it in another situation what what did that lead to and and so you can kind of learn as you go by just reflecting on these sorts of experiences and often we i love the idea of a kind of a basket so you know you have all of these different aspects of your experience but they're really like weaves in a basket and we don't experience each week we experience the basket you know you have this experience but in therapy what we do is we start taking it apart and we look at the different aspects and the sort of minor detail of different experiences so that we can see where we can make different choices you write this section about motivation you split up as you're saying to urge in action i found that really really interesting a lot of us we act on our urges you know we don't want to get up so we just stay in bed we feel like some sugar so we go and open the cookie jar but a lot of your work is helping us understand that actually you don't have to act on that urge how can people i guess train themselves or teach themselves that they don't have to because i think for some people that's that's like a deep realization that i feel this word i don't have to do it yeah yeah and you know we i mean that's taught in um dialectical behavioral therapy so dbt um uh in in but that's a very specific therapy that's for people um who perhaps have unsafe coping strategies and things like that so it's not really freely available to lots of people but it is one of the skills that's taught in that therapy is um to build your awareness of urges and practice um not going with that urge for doing something that's based on your values instead of the feeling so um you know you can play around with that in light-hearted ways in the book i talk about you know when we were kids my sisters and i used to get a packet of parliaments and you the trick was you know you hold it in your mouth and who's going to crunch it first you've got to not crunch the polo and there's this incredible urge to kind of crunch the mint and and really it's just a light-hearted way of of demonstrating that you can have this urge to do something and you can it sometimes it's excruciating not to go with it it's really hard and other times it's easier and but you can kind of really play around with it in terms of building your awareness with those like light-hearted things um like food and stuff like that it sounds like you and your sister then a very young age were preparing for you to be this tick-tock global star with with their sucking you know mints in the back of the car what do you know and it's kind of you know you fast forward to today and and i was saying to you earlier you know just got back from holiday and um i've had a lifelong fear of heights and because i don't i live in a small town there's no built up areas and i i don't get the chance to to challenge it on a regular basis so whenever i do the feeling always comes back and um and we went on holiday and we are going up these really high buildings we went up the frame in in dubai and it's so high and i'm determined not to pass on that fear to my children so i did a huge uh practice of acting opposite to the urge because my urge is to say no way am i doing that i am not going up there i i'm gonna die um i had to kind of hold on to that not go with that urgent and and go along with it but also when we're in that situation and we you know go up in this lift and we come out and there's a glass floor and oh god you know and just i'm the the stress is is high and um and my kids are running around on this glass floor and enjoying it not a fear in sight you know from anyone and so my urge to quickly get to the other end get in the other left and go down again i had to hold back hold back hold back and and you know you you practice with those light-hearted you know don't crunch the mint exercises and they do start to translate into hang on i know i can do this i know this is an urge um and i know that i don't have to go with it and so i was determined in that situation not to be the person to say let's go let's go and and sort of you know halt everybody's fun um but just to hold on to that fear practice my breathing and stuff like that yeah um to keep my stress response down um and and it worked it it helped hugely that that's a very powerful example i guess the key thing for me there is that you don't practice this for the first time when you're at the top of the building right in that fear states exactly it's kind of what are the kind of low-risk activities in day-to-day life that you can practice so that in that real life scenario you can now implement in a different way yeah so apart from sucking a polo meant um what are some other ways that people can try and practice and is this what you talk about in the book as you you there's a term i'm not familiar with metacognition yes does this sort of fit in here so that metacognition is the sort of core um sort of method used in psychological therapies really so you know your brain has the ability to think and have thoughts and but it also has this incredible ability to think about the thoughts that we're having you know so so we can be in this conversation talking to each other and there can also be this other part of your mind that's kind of watching the conversation and thinking about the things that are being said um and and that's the the sort of ability that we really tap into in therapy so that we can reflect on experiences look at them with a bit of um a bit of a bird's eye view and then then you get this this degree of sort of diffusion from your thoughts so you can kind of um see them for what they are rather that you know and i'm i talk in the book about um remember the movie the mask with jim carrey and he kind of has finds this old wooden mask it doesn't look like anything and when he puts it on he holds it here it kind of grips around the back of the head it affects everything he does everything he thinks and um that kind of thing um but when he takes it off and he holds it just to arm's length it's just a mask again and i think of thoughts as as like that you know when when it's here and it's all you're looking at then it's really hard to have any degree of kind of control over that and it will instead it will control you so it will impact on how you feel and how you act but when you get a bit of distance from your thoughts you go yeah gosh that's really that's a lot of self-criticism right there it takes some of the power out of it just by holding it on the length so you don't have to not have negative thoughts you just have to give yourself a bit of perspective on them and hold them back and see them for what they are yeah i love that this idea in in my new book called take a daily holiday and the idea for that was essentially where one of my mates said to me that um in a workplace he used to work at the the boss or one of the managers had a counter on his desk saying oh only 66 days till i'm in florida on a beach oh these 65 days like i thought this is interesting isn't it this idea that someone's trying to live understandably in the future there's nothing wrong with looking forward to a holiday but this idea that oh my life will be great on those seven days when i'm on the beach in florida things are gonna be great and i'm gonna count down so this idea that we're you know i really thought about what is it about this holiday that that got this guy excited got him counting down what is it about holidays that gets us all excited and my conclusion was what you know i asked myself what is the holiday what what does it offer us yes it can offer a son it can offer us um time with our family and our friends i know you've just been on holiday there's all kinds of things that we love about holiday but i think one of the big things that gives us this perspective you know i've often found that when i take off you're on a plane let's say you start to put your life you get the 30 000 foot view on everything in your life literally straight away and i'm thinking why was i bothered about that that's nothing it doesn't really matter in the context of things so i think perspective is a key thing and then i sort of thought well why do we have to wait for one week a year to get perspective on our lives why can't we do that every day and say one of my recommendations to my patients and and and people is take a daily holiday take even if it's 10 minutes 15 minutes where you step outside your life to give you that perspective and i i see a very similar idea what you're talking about it's like well if you never step outside your life you think you are your life you think you are your thoughts you you you can't see any separation but there's all kinds of practices i don't know journaling meditation mindfulness all kinds of things that we can use a walk round the block that gives us that perspective um i mean that's certainly how i see it would you agree with that do you have a different perspective on that yeah no for sure i mean i i noticed that as well when um i mean going on holiday is dangerous for us that's when we when we had the idea to make some videos and put them on social media so now i've been nervous about going all day but uh yeah we often get that kind of you you calm don't you and you reset but actually i also whenever i go to the beach for the day with my family just walk on the coast i get that same feeling but in a much less time so you know a couple of hours at the beach my family i can come home and feel reset or sort of recharged in some way um that potentially i could you know lucky enough to live close enough we could do that once a week if we prioritized it um so yeah yeah and and again i get that with kind of exercise if i go for a little jog around the block or you know down to the woods or something i i feel that feeling again and it might not be to the same degree as a couple of weeks on holiday but if i do that every day it adds up to more than a two-week holiday anyway yeah so um exactly so you're getting even more perspective than you would have done just on that that holiday one of the funnest parts of the book for me was when you described you as a trainee clinical psychologist and you guys were being taught mindfulness and i think you were talking about how skeptical you were you thought there's no way i could do this there's no way i'm going to talk about this with people who come to see me and help and then you explained how you once went running and how it completely changed your perspective on it so maybe let's dive into mindfulness what is it why were you so skeptical tell us about that run and um you know how how is it useful for people because it seems to fit in here which is this idea of you can observe those thoughts and not necessarily act on them i think mindfulness helps with that doesn't it yeah absolutely mindfulness is that process of um staying in the presence so observing the thoughts that come into your mind not trying to stop having any not a lot of people think that mindfulness is the ultimate in concentration and if you i don't know if you're trying to be mindful of this glass that the minute your attention is not on that glass you've failed and you've got mindfulness wrong and it's really not that it's you know your mind will wander to this thought and that thought and it'll bring up stories and memories and it'll hear the car outside or all that kind of thing mindfulness is noticing that your mind has gone somewhere and then guiding your attention back so i love to think of mindfulness as a spotlight so if you say um you know your mind is a theater and actors are you know your thoughts so different actors will come on stage you can't control who's coming on stage or how long they're going to be there but all you have is the spotlight yeah and you can choose which ones you're going to focus on and for how long and and so mindfulness is that process of uh choosing what you're going to focus your attention on and allowing everything else to come and go um and yeah when we were trainees and it's it's almost embarrassing now to even think that that we behave like that you know we were supposed to be so open-minded but it really makes you think this is really difficult stuff to teach people because it does give you that sense of well this sounds really weird and not helpful at all and i absolutely had those judgments in the beginning and and it was only once i started using it that i had that oh right yeah this is helpful um moment did you enter before that run which you speak about in the book where it really seemed to showcase to you what mindfulness was had you planned before that run right okay i'm going to have a mindful run now or was it just i've gone for a run because that's how i unwind and oh i oh i get it oh this is what they thought you know tell me a little bit about that experience yeah so uh it was you know exam season stress was high i had lots of work to do um but i just needed to get out i've been studying all day i needed to get out the house so yeah i went for this run and it was a really long kind of gravel path and and i could film as i kind of started the jog i kind of felt just so you know i was just full of kind of i should be doing this i've got to do that when i get back and i could feel the stress and um i thought you know i'm just going to try i'm just going to see if this will help i'm just going to you know try and be mindful so i focus my mind on the sound of my feet on the gravel path which is that quenching crunch and crunch sound as i went along and my mind left that sound a thousand times you know i would think oh that email i got to reply to i need to do more revision on that and haven't added that to my you know whatever oh you know my mind went off to lots of stressful things and each time i just brought it back and and because i was moving my body and i was outdoors and there was lots to bring me to the present and the sound as well of my feet on the gravel um i was able to keep doing that and and i did that process maybe a thousand times i don't know how many um during that run during the run yeah and then by the time i got back um i i noticed that i had spent that run focusing on the present you know that obviously there were these little moments where my mind would go off but actually i had more time feeling calmer and and focused on the here and now than i would have done if i had just gone through my to-do list while i was running um and that's when i thought oh yes i had these little micro moments of of of peace and and actually you know mindfulness isn't about making you feel calm and peaceful it's not a relaxation exercise it's practicing that sort of mental muscle if you like to be able to choose which thoughts you're going to pay attention to and which ones you're going to let pass and that is an incredible skill to be able to utilize i think it may well be the most important skill for any of us to learn because i think a lot of us don't realize i didn't for much of my life realize that your brain is literally taking in so much information all the time and actually what you're focusing on what you're thinking about is just this small fraction and your brain is actually helping choose for you what's important but you can actually train that skill and therefore you know so you know that thing about urgent action there's that there's a space between urgent action and you can choose what you're going to do with that i would say the thing that's helped me the most in my own i was going to say mental well-being but i'd almost say physical well-being as well is this idea that you know between stressor and response is a space and you can train so that that space in your mind becomes bigger and bigger like these days i really feel i feel i've got minutes to make a decision even though it's microseconds but i didn't five years ago and i think it's through doing these regular practices we're definitely going to get to some of these regular daily practices you know what i found recently like you on holiday at their sort of fear of heights and this scenario you thought oh wow i can i can do this differently here um i literally two weeks ago because as we're having this conversation my book certainly just come out i think two weeks ago and i was due to go on bbc one morning live to talk about it and i got up early and i was due on i don't know about 9am or something and the taxi was used to pick me up at about seven and you know i'd showered i'd shave because i was gonna be on telly i thought i should have better shave for once and the tattoo had gone like and i thought oh i know the old rongin would have in that moment i would have made myself sick with thought oh no i'm going to be late this is going to happen and i was just totally calm i thought oh well i guess taxi's gone um i guess i'll just phone a couple of local firms and if i can find someone great if not well so be it and i know that sounds ridiculous and to me five years ago that would sound ridiculous but i see a lot of the tools that you're teaching people about there can be a starting point where you then practice regularly and then some of them start to become automatic do you know what i mean like i've like it feels really good in a real life scenario we go oh i've chosen a different response here five years ago i would have got stressed out by this there's nothing wrong with that but oh this stuff's working like in that moment you just didn't allow yourself to make yourself sick with your thoughts you know how did does that make sense yeah and i think um you know lots of it becomes automatic the thing that you do all the time your brain will be brilliant at automating for you right and if you can just repeat it enough time it will get easier to do but also um it won't always happen so i mean a lot of it is a toolbox um but imagine if you had a toolbox and and there was i don't know some job to do and you had to put a picture up and and you were kind of trying to um do the tour with something else and and because it was quicker and easier than going to you know get your tools that you need um sometimes you'll you'll you'll use the tools and other times you will try and you won't you'll the situation won't feel like um you have access to it or maybe the stress will be higher and you know maybe if um i don't know maybe if you're going to visit the queen you would have been more stressed and and that's okay you know i think yeah um a lot of what i try to teach people is it's not going to make you perfect in every situation um but the tools are there as and when you need them and sometimes you'll use them to good effect and sometimes you won't and that's okay and i think you make that that case very well right at the start of the book you say that these tools are not going to mean that your life becomes perfect and you don't have any problems anymore not at all you just you you're equipping people with the skills that when those things happen they've just got a better toolbox to approach him yeah i think it's um i never want to give the impression that um you know because i have access to this sort of knowledge that everything for me is perfect and and i you know have some sort of subhuman existence where i you know no problem ever phases me it's just not real um their tools and and they help when you use them and they help they're easier to use when you use them all the time but um life is still really tough for everyone yeah and it's i think that's a powerful message because we can know stuff but we're all human as well so you can be an expert in this area and share tools it doesn't mean you're going to be perfect at applying them and i think sometimes we you know i i think about the summer through the lens of sports and i think of let's say tiger woods regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time like tigers had a coach for much of his career now his coach can't play as well as tiger or he'd be playing yeah he'd be tiger woods but no but he can see tiger and he can help him go oh tiger actually you need to you know this is why your shot keeps going right because you're doing this right and i think that's a really useful way because sometimes i think we expect our teachers and our educators to be perfect but that again is setting up a kind of false reality for us where we think if i can't be perfect then i'm failing i know you do talk about failure in the book but having a good relationship with failure is kind of important isn't it as well because you know we all fail from time to time depending on how we define failure um why did you decide to write about failure in the book um i think it's it's just a huge subject that no matter who i've worked with over the years you can't you can't go through a therapeutic process of someone without uh experiencing a failure along the way right you know if you're trying to make some sort of change in your life failure is going to be a part of that learning process because it is that's how we learn you know we learn through trial and error and so um when we have a culture of it's not okay to fail or that failure says something fundamental about who you are as a person and your worthiness as a human being um then that develops a sort of defensive way of living where um you know we we stay back from risk we don't we don't do anything that might um even give us a sign that we're gonna fail and when we do that and we kind of hold back and our life just shrinks and you know we say no to things because they have that element of risk of failure um and we never find out things kind of could have gone okay have you ever had those tendencies yeah i mean um i guess you know this whole journey on social media has felt um extremely vulnerable in terms of you know you anything that you say um if if you do something wrong or you know you kind of embarrass yourself in front of potentially millions of people um that has to challenge that that relationship with failure and and i think for me um because the account was never about me that helped a lot because it was based on i want to share this information it's not who i am it's just something i'm doing because it seems like a good thing i've got access to all this great psychological research and these techniques that i know help and i know how to apply them so i'm going to share them it's not about me searching for validation in the world and and actually you know when i talk to my daughter who's nine about you know followers and things you say how does it feel to have all these followers i'm just i'm still minnie it's still just me it's not uh i'm not any different um i'm no better or worse if i switch that account off tomorrow i'd still be exactly the same person and and so it doesn't mean anything about who i am as a person which enables me to to be vulnerable and and um make videos and um and share that kind of information but i think as soon as we attach our kind of sense of self-worth to something then failure can feel catastrophic i mean what you just described there has been a huge part of my life you know i i realized recently before i did an interview with someone called elizabeth dave has a podcast called how to fail and you have to send her three failures in your life oh man that was a stressful experience to me because i realized i'd kind of known this anyway for a few years but as i had to really articulate things for elizabeth before the conversation i realized that i'd been so scared of fading my entire life that i wouldn't put myself in situations where fed was an option so i would very skillfully avoid things i would only play sports i knew i could be the best at like i wouldn't i wouldn't play them otherwise it's like oh no no i'm not going to be great so it's it was it felt too painful because for most of my life i'd say until maybe five or six years ago i've got my value of who i am from success or external validation which is a very lonely place to be it's a very toxic place to be as you say it shrinks your world you know you you don't sample all the wonders that the world has to offer because you don't want to risk failure um so when you said your platform is not who you are that's very powerful really powerful has that ever been challenged whilst you've been doing it is it you're talking about it now with the real detachments which is wonderful like you know i know that's just a part of me that's my role as a psychologist i'm sharing those tools it's not who i am did you always have it okay with that or have there been times and that where you you got sucked into oh man i've got some negative comments you know people are saying that video wasn't right or that can be triggering i don't know you know has that happened and have you had to remind yourself of these things yeah and and i think what's helped is that i have started this stuff um later on you know i'm kind of in my mid 30s i um already have a family i think if i was starting something like this much earlier in life i wouldn't have the sense of self um firm um and the kind of the sense of identity that i perhaps needed to solidify before i made myself vulnerable in that way um and so i wouldn't recommend it to everybody um but yeah i mean there's been time and and you get you can get kind of sucked into this idea that you know i don't know you could be in a situation where you get invited to something and and it's all very grand and you're made to feel very important and and you know this is very nice and then you know you go back home and you're picking up dirty washing off the floor and you know you kind of what what is this and and and you have to be able to step back and see it for what it is and and see that you are consistently you throughout and um because it yeah i imagine it could be a really difficult experience to i mean i i wouldn't like to feel a sense of fear that this could all end tomorrow you know because then who would i be i know i am that place where i know who i am and then um because it's all happened so quickly um i know that i can survive without it and that life would generally be okay if it will end tomorrow and i'd have these great stories for my grandchildren can you still remember life pre global tick tock status can you just ha do you ever go yeah you know i quite like to get about that i mean can you actually remember or is it you know we very quickly adjust to our new reality don't we yeah so i mean yeah i had more time back then um you know i was i had this really nice balance i was working kind of part-time and doing it around the children and my i had my my third baby and so i had um time to like you know go for coffee once a week with my friends who also had young babies and and those lovely times that felt um well i think the pandemic took those away as well but um it suddenly became really really busy and and so that was a part of it that i was a bit sort of you know oh i already want some of that balance back but actually um that i think was temporary and i've now got to a place where i feel more able to say no to certain things and and keep that balance well that's again i think that's a lot of take-home for people listening or watching that you had made a decision around your work to have more time for your family you know you had this private practice you do it around the school pickup and so you you got that balance and then you blow up on tick tock and so everything shifts again and now you're refining that balance yeah and i think that's a powerful message because i think even when we say work-life balance it sounds sometimes to say this is a destination at some point i'm going to get to that mythical work-life balance place but it never comes it's always a moving target and so i guess that metacognition that awareness of knowing when you're moving out it's so important to kind of bring you back yeah yeah because i also know i probably wouldn't be super happy if that if i had nothing to do so you know it's always um like you say a constant sort of balancing act you never find that perfect center and stay there life pulls you in different directions so um it's about constantly being aware of is this you know this kind of week i'm having is this the kind of week i want to have all the time and if not how can i make a change for next week even if that's a really small change and so i can head in that direction but it's a constant re-evaluation readjustment i think i love what you said about the fact that this happened to you in your mid-thirties yeah late thirties it's probably been a really good thing and this is something i've spoken about i didn't think on the podcast before but with friends or people i meet in professional settings i said i'm glad that when i went on bbc one with my own show that i was happily married and i had kids it's very grounding isn't it because as you say you know you know you're still picking up dirty washing and you know trying to clean up the kitchen and you know my wife she doesn't give two hoots about any of this stuff she never has even when we met doesn't give hoot about it and i think that's so grounding isn't it yeah yeah and and and i think it is protective in its own way because you can um you know these sorts of things can disappear as quickly as they arrived and and so if you know that it's not about trying desperately to hold on to it it's about knowing that whatever happens you could survive it and you would be all right and that gives you that grounding to be able to sort of walk into something with confidence and um and so i guess for people who are sort of aiming for different things patience is is a really good thing to hold on to because it doesn't have to happen today and and if it happens in 10 years down the road down the road you'll be more ready for it for sure values is something that's come up a couple of times in the conversation there's a whole section in the book on values and and i really get this strong sense from talking to you today julie but also beforehand in my kitchen that you seem to me as someone who's very grounded who knows what's important to them and therefore it helps you navigate you know all of these potential pitfalls with a lot more self-assuredness um what are values and when did you start going through that process of kind of trying to define what they were for you sure so um there's a therapy um called acceptance and commitment therapy so act for short and a big aspect of that therapy is is really looking at your own value system what's important to you what matters to you most in your life and and there are these lots of different ways to kind of just um literally kind of map it out you can actually put on paper the different aspects of your life so it might be health family intimate relationships friendships lifelong learning career whatever creativity and you can kind of put all of those different areas of your life on a page and just start to bullet point what matters to me in that area of my life and and why and um not not what do i want to happen to me but what kind of person do i want to be in the face of anything so you know um how do i want to come at this area of my life what kind of attitude do i want to have you know what kind of friend do i want to be what kind of partner do i want to be or mother or father um and you and you get these kind of uh these sort of buzzwords or different kind of bullet points that just ring true for you as a person and then you can really look at um you know these check-ins and stuff that i include in the book you can just just give it a number you can rate okay how important is this area of my life to me and you might say 10 out of 10 you know it's so important and then you can also rate okay how much do i feel like i'm living in line with those values at the moment and if you rate it as as high then fantastic you know you're kind of doing well and and if you rate it as low it's not necessarily an opportunity to be self-critical but it's an opportunity to go okay that area of my life really matters to me but i'm not living in line with the values that i hold around that what what's pulling me away from that what why am i not doing that at the moment and how could i steer towards it so that that you know those numbers come closer together um and so that's a really great way of kind of looking at your values and values are very different to goals um so a goal is something that once you get there it's done so a goal might be i want to pass my exams and when you pass your exams you've done it and it's finished but your value you know your reason for taking the exams might be because you always want to challenge yourself and learn as much as you can about the world okay so the exam becomes a part of that path so goals can pass you by and sometimes mean less because they are part of the path so you know you can overcome um sort of failures and things along the way if you've got a very clear value around it um yeah the values change or are they always the same for people yeah absolutely um they they change depending on what's going on in your life what the situation is um uh you know i could never have imagined that what my value system might have been like before i had children you know it changed virtually overnight and um and that's okay and actually a conversation i was having a little while ago uh with someone was around you know um how what if i'd had known when i was younger the values i needed to have in order to be okay and be happy and be successful and and it's like well you could never have known that you know that i don't know fame fable fortune wasn't going to bring you happiness you had to experience that to then learn from it to then adjust your value system and so it's okay for values to change because um a value system is neither correct nor incorrect you know it's not finding the perfect value system it's working out what matters to you at that point in your life so that's why i kind of advise people to keep doing the little check-ins you know and just go back to your values at any one point because i think a lot of people that come along to therapy who have that sense of i don't know really what the problem is but things just aren't enough things just don't feel right and and so they can't really pinpoint that problem and it's often because life has pulled them away from a set of values for whatever reason life has pulled them away from something that actually means a lot to them um and so um i just found find it really kind of valuable tool i think this idea of values changing and that it's okay to change and there's no right or wrong they're your values right you know do they feel right to you i think it's very empowering and when i think of them changing you can think of certainly i can think of a couple of scenarios where sure as you mentioned different stages in your life like your values as a teenager may be different in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s right so time-wise i think values can change but even within let's say let's say one of your values is i don't know family and friends or no relationships nourishing close relationships for example and you know that's important to you and you score it as you know 10 in importance but when you look at it you're like well i'm only giving it a 2 out of 10 at the moment in terms of my time but you may also go yeah but my job isn't going to be this busy forever but for these three weeks there's this kind of project that the whole company had been looking at for the last year so yeah for the next three weeks i know it's going to stay a two but as soon as this project's over i'm going to get it back up to an eight or nine do you know what i mean so i think it can change in many different ways and it comes back to awareness and this kind of metacognition and that's where it needs is so crucial that it doesn't become a tool for being self-critical and getting down on yourself it has to be a learning experience and a mapping out of your life you know am i in the place i want to be and being the person i want to be and and if not how can i adjust um because like you say there are nuances aren't there and and sometimes you know life will pull you away from different areas and sometimes that's because that's the path and and that's okay um so yeah you've got to look at it with always with curiosity rather than criticism and and self-attack are you able to articulate what some of your values are in life um yeah and i guess when all this has happened in a big sort of life change for us the values that i've held on to um have been around being the parent i want to be and i think that became really salient for me because um because it pulled away so much of my time and and i made efforts in the beginning to try to um not let it affect the children so i was getting up at like five in the morning to make a video before the children got up and things like that so that it didn't affect them and of course that had an effect on my health you know i was just completely exhausted and so it wasn't sustainable and so we tried something else and then we tried something and and so you just constantly make adjustments and and we are getting there um but yeah i think um a key part of my values at the moment is around um being the parent i want to be in and that involves being present um a lot of the time and how i can balance that with um this other project about you know making psychological um techniques and and insights from therapy accessible to people um so sort of um managing the two of those um and come you know the kind of different um values that people not might not kind of imagine our values but um i have just sort of different words in my mind so i'll often have because i'm quite a kind of introvert quiet person who's always been used to kind of staying small and quiet um one of my values over the last few years has been enthusiasm so come at everything with some enthusiasm whether it be my parenting or the work that i'm doing um and i don't always manage that you know it's not always doesn't mean i do it perfectly and it's always there but it's just a word i like to come back to because i find that really powerful that yeah i love enthusiastic people and i love to um experience being like that so i kind of tried to keep that as whatever i'm doing try to do it with some enthusiasm it's a powerful word that you know as you said enthusiasm i could feel my body language change it is it kind of evokes yeah a really good feeling you know because what i love about that as a value and obviously it's unique to you but i suspect there's going to be a lot of people listening or watching you go yeah quite i might say that for me i might borrow that one for me um but it's a value that you can apply it's not dependent on your job or where you are in life it's something you can you know it it goes across everything so you can be enthusiastic with the barista at the cafe you can be enthusiastic when you're making a video yeah you'll be enthusiastic with your kids like it's it's kind of as you said before the number of followers you've got is not who you are but i guess your values are kind of who you are right yeah there there are there are sort of a vision in your mind of who you want to be and how you want to come at life and whether that's a you know a good or bad situation for you um so yeah it's almost like a sort of something to hold on to and i like to kind of see it as a path so it's something it never ends it's not done it's never done perfectly and it's never complete it's just this a never-ending path that you always try to stay as close to as possible as you you know go through your journey of life as it were and um and sometimes you'll be pulled away from that you know maybe your health will you know fluctuate or um something awful will happen in your life and it will completely pull you away from that and and it's always about um you know repeatedly reevaluating and trying to steer back towards it when you can yeah i think this awareness piece for all of us is important isn't it life is not perfect that things are going to happen where it's not rolling the way we'd ideally want but even just being aware of that it just makes it much more likely you can shift and change the direction on that compass a little bit over the coming weeks i've got an exercise um that i've written about that i've tried on a few of my guests and it's always gone it's always been really interesting for you and if you're up for it because it's i i'll try not to pre-judge going in i suspect you're someone who's pretty in tune with life and what's important that's my strong sense from you uh but there's two parts of this exercise the first one is uh i would ask you i would ask you i'm going to ask you right now um what are three things that you could do this week that would truly make you happy um go back to movement and exercise um it's something that has not been prioritized while i've been so busy you know the book and going away and trying to spend time with the family and be present i haven't prioritized that but i know it makes me happy almost instantly you know when i'm out and i'm running and and i can feel on top of the world so yes that one absolutely um making contact with friends that's another thing that that goes down the pan when i'm really really busy you know weeks can go by and you think oh we haven't even spoken um but it always always um makes me feel much better having some social contact um [Music] and um what else could i do would make me happy um probably you know we've been on holiday eating all sorts of theme parks and and actually um returning to a sort of healthier lifestyle and and focusing on eating well and nourishing my body always makes a difference as well so um yeah focusing on good nourishing food will i know make a difference for me yeah so i love that so interesting and the second part of the exercise is called write your own happy ending so this is now you know fast forward to the end of your life and you're lying on your death beds looking back on your life what are three things you will want to have done or achieved i guess um i will want to have have got my children out into the world with all the skills that they need to um to be able to face everything that they're going to face um and i'd be you know super content and happy if i felt that all three of them were in that place too you know if they were um happy and and had good quality relationships and felt that they could face anything that came up for them um that's probably the the biggest thing for me um what else would i be happy with um it just it always comes back to relationships doesn't it everything in my mind is times you know good times with friends and and you know we had we had a really small uh gathering when um when the book came out and it hit the sunday times and and my husband did a little surprise where he kind of i was getting ready to um apparently go out with a friend uh says and and every all of our kind of local friends came and sort of filled the therapy room in the back garden to have a little surprise party and oh gosh after you know two years of of being isolated away from everybody and our old friends all got together and we had a really good chat and um some food and wow that feeling of connection with people that you care about is just incredible and so you know almost there and then we said we have to do this more let's get the barbecue out let's have a you know let's make more time for for just being with people that we care about so um yeah that's the sort of having been just grinding and working working working that's a real shift for me i think sorry interrupts if you are enjoying this content there's loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification bell and now back to the conversation yeah i love that i thank you for sharing that um the the idea behind that exercise certainly the way i use it with with patients or the way i've written about it is again about awareness of bringing intention to your life like you know the idea really for people to think about what three happiness amps could i do on a weekly basis um if i do those happiness habits will i get that happy ending that i've just defined that i want and it i guess it speaks to some of the things we were talking about with valleys like as you say it always comes down to relationships on the death beds we are almost certainly going to say because we know from palliative care nurses that's what everyone says i wish i'd spent more time with my friends and family and therefore certainly for me doing that exercise has been really powerful because i now have it in my mind i've got a specific number like i have as a weekly happiness habit when i'm working and not on holiday i want to make sure that for at least five meals a week i've been fully present with my wife and my kids i know if i'm doing that that i'm nourishing the most important relationships in my life which means if i do that week on week yeah well at the end of my life i'm gonna get that part of my happy ending i'm gonna get that oh yes i have nourished those and so again it's just another way of bringing intentions to people's lives where they might go yeah at the end of my life i want to have nourished friends and family but oh i have no time weeks a week to do that i'm so busy with my work and again it's not about making people feel guilty or shameful it's like that values exercise and i love your happiness habits they were kind of they're quite unique to where you're at in life at the moment because you've just been away and been eating all sorts of theme parks you're like actually at the moment a happiness habit for our family is let's eat a bit better yeah and again these things are fluid and they can change can't they yeah yeah and actually you know i i was only sort of saying on my instagram stories last night that i've just sort of been um away from uh the platforms and being on stories and things like that because i wanted to when we're away be present with you know it's my time to really be with the children and just play and and not be constantly checking my phone or you know having it beeping and so there were whole days where i didn't really have wi-fi and that was great because it just stayed in the bag and and i was able to be present that meant so much so um yeah those sorts of things are you know you don't don't ever regret that kind of experience you never regret spending less time on your phone never no um i've heard you say that if there was one practice you could prescribe to everyone in the world it would be journaling yeah now again i if i've got that slightly wrong or that's taken out of context feel free to correct but what is it you like so much about journaling and is it one of those kind of you know i'm interested as a therapist are there some universal practices that yes we're all unique we've all got different preferences but are there some things that you found time and time again that always seem to work with people and it i guess is journaling one of them yeah and you know i guess for people who are able to access things like therapy or counseling and go to see someone and and see that as something that's possible to them is fantastic and there is so much potential in that but there are also this huge group of people that don't see that as an option for them um maybe maybe they're just not able to talk about things and so that's really where the idea of you know for everyone actually journaling is an option and and even when i think about back when i was really young any time that i felt kind of full of emotion or something that i wasn't really clear on or able to understand i would write stuff down and and and i would always have that experience of you write for long enough and you get this kind of oh yeah a bit of clarity on it and and back then i didn't have any guidance or knowledge about how to do that it was just kind of expressive writing i guess i always found that useful because i wasn't a big talker and um now that i have you know um the the knowledge around the research around you know the research on on expressive writing and and journaling in recent years has really opened that up and shown the potentials for it and and so when it's guided with specific questions maybe questions that therapists would ask you it enables you to then open that up in a private space and be able to get some clarity on things that if you didn't have access to a therapist for whatever reason you might not have had access to so that's why i think jungling is is you know really useful to when people want to journal or they think okay i like that uh julie i wanna i wanna give that a go a question i often get asked is what can i just write them in notes in my phone as opposed to write them out on paper if people ask you that what do you say um if it's the difference between doing it and not doing it i would say just do it whatever your medium um and i always get hassle for being such a pen and paper person i'm gonna be such a dinosaur um people keep saying to me you know put everything into electronic diary and i'm like no i want my pen it's all it's handwritten i can't do i can't do this so i see other podcastos with their fancy ipads and some knee i'm like i can't do that i'm totally old school like that when i was writing the book have pain you couldn't see the desk because there was paper everywhere with notes and stuff and it's just how i like to to do things so um you know i can't judge anyone for being on the phone but actually if you're on a device the reality is um if you want some quiet protected time um that time's not going to be protected if you're on a screen that also has social media apps news apps going ping telling you know the news news headlines that kind of thing it's all going to distract you so i think if you want protected time then you know put your phone in the other room and go into a different room with a pen and paper and see what comes out and and see but you could explore the difference it would be an interesting experiment right to see if you journaled with one and then the other for a week um how that experience was different um so you can play around with it i guess yeah i think that's a great point that if it's the difference between doing it and not doing it okay do it however you can do it but yeah i love that idea that it's gonna be hard on a phone for it to be protected you know you're gonna have to then be using up willpower and motivate you just you're making it harder most of us are making it harder than it needs to be and i know there will be some people going oh i yeah finding it okay great i did read some research a few years ago i can't remember where it was from at the top of my head now but there was something about i think some researchers compared doing it electronically and writing and i think i think the conclusion was that writing on paper was much more powerful and they thought it was to do with the speed at which we process in our mind kind of echoed the way that we writes like i don't know if that's been validated or replicated again but i find that really interesting because then you think on an evolutionary level well we've been kind of writing stuff down for thousands of years so we probably adapted there's some sort of i don't know we're used to doing that as a species aren't we right we're not really that used to yet just quickly with our thumbs typing something down maybe that's quicker yeah i mean there's something about that i think yeah and there is a sense of if you're doing it on your phone maybe it's because you're going to try and fit it in in one of those little in-between moments for five minutes and not really give it your you know full um undivided attention as well i guess um you know if you're going to try and speed it up then that's probably not you know you have to kind of give it its due and protect some time whereas like you say if you're doing it on a screen you maybe you're trying to do that fast and um yeah these things take you know self-refle good honest self-reflection takes a bit of time and space if someone's thinking okay i want a journal right i get it i'm not gonna do it my phone i'm gonna do on a piece of paper i might go and treat myself two-way journal how can they start because there's many different ways in which they can do it i know the book has lots of examples for people but have you got any sort of helpful ideas for people in terms of what what are they going to start writing yeah would you know something that um we often kind of talk about in in therapy when we're getting people to sort of reflect on experiences is we just we just start by you know talking in hindsight about what happened what happened yesterday and and then we begin to tease it apart so that might start whether he said she said or i did this and i felt that um and and a therapist will always try to get you to distinguish between what you thought so the kind of words or pictures in your head and how you felt and where where you felt that feeling in your body and you know the physical sensation of that and and what that's doing is it's sort of teasing apart you know we talked about the weaves in the basket and you experience um something as a whole and then it's really hard to see the word for the trees and think about well you know i don't know why i then did that thing that i did next and and so you kind of trace it back and look at what did i feel what did i think what what were the urges and did i go with that or did i go against that and what was the impact of that so really just kind of um teasing apart the different aspects of your experience um to look at which parts influenced each ot each other so when i'm when my mind is focused on um the worst thing that could happen how do i tend to feel um and when i'm focused on um you know feeling excited about something um that i'm going to enjoy you know how does that impact how i feel so you kind of um there's no kind of set specific thing that is going to make journaling a success and make you do it right i would say just reflecting on experience and trying to break it down to detail will begin that process of seeing connections between things yeah it's that awareness piece again isn't it because once i guess i don't know let's say someone's had a argument with their partner the day before and they decide to journal and go you know even certain things might start to become clear like oh i hadn't slept well the night before maybe that's why i got triggered or you know when my partner said that i interpreted that like that but i you know what maybe he or she meant that and i had i interpreted it like that i wouldn't have reacted like that i guess i mean to me when you do things like that it means that the next time you're in a scenario like that you've done a bit of kind of mental training you know oh you know last time i last time that happened i i can i can choose a different response this time yeah you can start to just pick up on themes and and actually the process of just putting something down on paper um is is a helpful way to sort of diffuse from the thoughts you know when we talked about kind of taking the mask off and just holding at arm's length if you kind of you know get your thoughts out onto a page you can see them for what they are sometimes and and and just that process is helpful in itself um i would be less concerned about getting it right and writing the right things and just focus on getting everything that's in here out onto the page yeah i see journaling as having a conversation with yourself that you're it's very hard when you're in your thoughts and your mind to have that kind of that detachment from it so i think journaling's helpful something i've also found to be really helpful both personally but also with patients is what's up voice messages like i found some people say that when they um and if i've got a friend who who literally figures stuff out as they're leaving me what's that voice message they start off and at the end of the four five minute message there's something about the words and hearing them say this stuff they go oh i get it i like do you know what i mean it almost feels a bit like verbal journaling but does that make sense yeah yeah and there's something quite powerful about voicing something and um obviously you get the benefits of in therapy but um might not from from purely just writing something down so um yes speaking something out loud is pretty powerful you talk in the book about words being so important and i think you referenced a study at one point where you say that our ability to even express and label negative emotions is related to depression after stressful events i thought that was really powerful so maybe you could talk a little bit about that why words are so important and how can we increase our yeah emotional vocabulary yeah and and um there's a brilliant researcher in america who talks about it she calls it um emotion granularity and this ability to um you know find words to describe um very specific emotional experiences and and often people will message me and say how do i know if it's anxiety how do i know if it's um fear how do i know if if this is you know sadness and and i think it's it's more important to have a name for an experience that you have than it is to match that with everybody else's so you know the word is for you and so if you know that you feel a certain way and so i mean um it's felven barrett is the lady who um who talks about emotion granularity and she'll say that you can um you can even use words from other languages if there is not a clear word for the type of feeling that you're trying to express um but the process of being able to describe how you feel um you know attach it to different scenarios means that you can predict when those feelings are going to come and and you you can develop a sort of concept around when i feel this i know that if i do this or that it has this effect and so it's really kind of mapping out your experience of life and beginning to understand it in real detail that that's such a fascinating idea it took me back to many years ago as i don't know if i was a medical student or a junior doctor at the time and i went to a lecture with this professor and he was talking about different languages and how they express different things and actually some of the symptoms that we get trained in western medical schools to ask our patients about the way we ask them that language doesn't exist in another culture i i think it was to do with gas or indigestion i can't remember what it was exactly but i found it so helpful because i thought oh in some practices i've worked at where there's a huge ethnic diversity of the patient population i realize that a wrong and you can keep asking these questions in the way that you understand it but if that patient doesn't unders doesn't get what you're talking about has a different kind of vernacular for that it's just really fascinating isn't it and i guess it's about that wider perspective and this idea that actually not everyone sees the world in the same way that we do um i i found that very very powerful i found it really helpful in clinical practice yeah and you really you really get that in the therapy room as well you know you're kind of um people will will you know come on in and describe their own experiences in their own way and then as you move forward you know a good therapist will always use that language as they move forward they won't then turn it into some sort of clinical experience you use that language because that's what means something that's what resonates with that person that goes beyond the therapy room there doesn't it that's really good communication i guess that applies with your kids or your partner or your friends right it's when we use the language that is currently being acceptable they've said that that's how they see it it's just a good communication skill i think yeah absolutely and it would work in in any kind of situation that if you're using you know lots of people like get asking questions around how can i support someone and how do i say the right thing what should i say not say that kind of thing um and yeah and that's absolutely a great skill for kind of supporting someone or talking to someone and helping them to feel understood and heard is use the language that they're using and reflect that back to them and and enable them to um to feel that they've really been listened to and really been heard a lot of the way we think about the world of course comes from some of our earliest experiences often in childhood and i really i really love the way you've articulated so many ideas in the book one of them was that look this these are life skills they're not really yes they're skills you may learn in therapy but actually their life skills that we should all know what emotions are what thoughts are you know there's a space between urgent action all these things and you know i think wouldn't it be great if schools taught this stuff you know so kids grow up knowing this there's a section in the book where you spoke about attachments run really interesting because i i guess this is reflective of the journey i've been on personally which is understanding how many of my behaviors in life how many of the things that used to trigger me you can clearly see where they've come from in my childhood the way i was brought up the experiences i've had and of course you don't need to go there to have better emotional regulation but i've certainly found that when i have gone there and made peace with it and changed things that actually i've i've cut off so many downstream consequences almost at source if that makes sense um attachment styles i hadn't read much about them before and i really enjoyed that part of the book can you speak to a little bit about our childhoods how important they are in terms of how we view the world and then what these various forms of attachment mean and what we can do about them so attachment's probably the only section of the book where it talks about the impact of the past and i feel that was a kind of conscious decision in that um i feel like it's almost a whole other book you know talking about past experience and and how that can kind of impact but actually um you know attachment styles and things like that is quite it can be quite a quick way of just working out oh actually am i more inclined to this way or that way and um without having to sort of you know go back through past memories that might be traumatic and stuff like that you can kind of look at okay am i more inclined to um you know withdraw and step back from people or um do i try to kind of you know seek um lots of care and attention when my partner moves back and avoids and and so i you know just distinguish between um some different sort of attachment patterns um in the book and you can go through and kind of look at the different um sort of criteria for reach and see which one feels more and often you can kind of very quickly go oh yeah that one's me you know maybe i'm an avoidant attachment style or maybe i'm an anxious attachment style and and the attachment style again is not um is not a suggestion about your worthiness or you know who you are as a person it's a style of attaching to people that you learnt very early on in life based on the situation that you grew up in which no one gets to choose right um and so um but those the the ways that we learn to cope with the situation we're growing up in in early in life then get reflected in our adult relationships later in life but they can often be so the ways that you learn to to cope early in life are often useful you do what works in that situation what gets you through it but then when you're an adult and you're in a different situation if you're still using the same tools um then it can be more destructive so if let's say um it was safer for you to be um sort of an avoidant attachment start you had enough sort of avoidant attachment style with your own parents and you tend to hold back and withdraw um and shut down because that was safe um and then you find yourself in an adult relationship who with someone who is anxiously attached so someone who um is constantly worried about whether you still like them and whether you're going to abandon them but actually your your way of doing things all your life has been to step back and close off from people and keep yourself safe then you can see how that would lead to some problems in a relationship so i guess i you know i included it in there um because it's one way you can kind of quickly look at oh yeah i roughly do things like that and how would that affect me today and you know so it's just a sort of way of starting to look at your own behavior i guess yeah i think it's i think it's it's really i think that's really helpful for people to just again it just builds that awareness oh that's why that happens oh i don't oh and i can change that if i want like i can essentially go through it may be tricky it may take a bit of time i'm i'm deeply fascinated in this area i guess why i'm so drawn to psychology there's a patient i write about this lady who had these really vague symptoms and she's seen multiple doctors before like vague i think it was abdominal pain bilateral upper arm pain and she tried all kinds of medications with various cells nothing really she'd made changes to her lifestyle so actually she was eating great she was moving her body she was sleeping well and you know she turns up to see me and i can't remember exactly where i got a sense of this but i always try and inquire about people's wider lives you know what's going on and what's really interesting is that she had got into a pattern where she would always end up in relationships with older guys who wouldn't treat her well who were often married this was a pattern and you know i'm not a psychologist i'm not a trained counselor but i remember talking to her really building up a report with her and you know it came out that at a young age she felt strongly that her older sister got much more attention than her and i could really see this pattern with her where she had uh in many ways learned to accept not having enough attention and it's you know and allowing people to treat her a certain way you know i'm kind of trying to overly summarize this story but it was only when we kind of started to tackle that and made her aware of it and she didn't actually end up seeing a therapist but i gave her loads of self-compassion exercises to do and i i'm all for therapy so i think i recommended it and i could for whatever reason she didn't want to engage but literally you know it took a while but over six nine months you know she ended up in a relationship with someone of her own age for the first time who treats her really well a few months after that her symptoms went like completely went so i guess my interest is is several fold but i've also found that understanding some of these kind of childhood patterns and you know often directing people to get therapy or see a psychologist or you know whatever they have you know that they can they can access either through the nhs or privately i find it helps with many people's physical symptoms as well yeah it's quite incredible isn't it and i think it's been a neglected area for a long time but i think more recently the research is really moving forward on it and we're really starting to bring together all these different areas and and it's incredible that kind of story it really shows the power of just building that self-awareness and having that chance to get a bird's-eye view on things and because sometimes it is about just noticing the cycle and enabling yourself to recognize that you there's a choice to do something different and and it's not always that easy but sometimes it is sometimes the awareness is enough to to cause someone to sort of make a different choice and and just be aware of what makes them vulnerable and and you know that's the incredible the part of some of this you of course push yourself out of your own comfort zone going on to tick tock and then i guess writing this book what is what in the book done for you and i guess specifically i'm interested is do you think writing this book has made you a better therapist oh um good question i've never asked that before actually um because i guess i'm doing less therapy than i was um because i'm you know busy doing all this kind of stuff um yes i i hope so i hope it's made me a better therapist because it's certainly enabling me to keep really up to date with the new ideas and research that's coming out um and yeah i mean i don't know how i'm going to navigate that part of my life now really because before i was you know just running a little private practice from my home and it was all very kind of small low-key stuff i don't think i can do that now um so yeah i need to that's something i need to kind of navigate and work out how i can kind of manage that as we move forward because i think i i would miss it so much if i didn't um there's something quite um quite moving and profound about the experience of therapy with people and sitting in a room with someone developing that that unique um but so close um kind of relationship with someone you know people come and tell you things they never told a soul and and the therapy room very quickly becomes their sanctuary and their safe place to come and just be completely themselves and um and so yeah i do love that and and i you know i i love when it goes well you know i just get such a high from when it goes well and and people imagine i think that you know therapists just you know see people you know time after time and then never remember them again but but you do you think about them for years afterwards and wonder how they are and and you know it's so brilliant if you kind of manage to spot someone out and about and and you know they look like they're doing well and you think yes go on it's great it is special and it's it's not easy it's not easy trying to get that balance for sure um self-soothing it's a lovely section in the book that i liked um this idea that you talk about when our threat response is triggered we can feed our brains new information this kind of there's a two-way system it's you know we can change that environment we can change the environment that our brain is kind of processing by what we do there's all kinds of examples that you've given in the book and how we can do that i like the one on scent and smell i thought that was really interesting yeah it all comes from dbt dialectical behavior therapy and it's a distress tolerance skill so um you teach people who have um you know very intense emotional distress and often have kind of dangerous ways of coping with that how to to get through those really painful moments and self-soothing is one of those skills so it's really about um allowing that that emotion to pass but while you're doing that um soothing your way through it so um allowing you to kind of feed information to the brain that you are safe um you anything that can comfort you along the way and and yeah so you can use all of your senses to do that so things you can see things you can hear taste touch smell and smell is the one that um you know it's so fast acting you know if you um i've had people before who kind of use um like their mother's perfume from when they were a child and something that they really associate with safety that if you can have access to that when you're in a really tricky place or in a really dark place i can help you just soothe your way through it while it's passing um and i've had people as well use um you know the little keyrings that are like cuddly toys and people unstitch them fill them with like lavender or something that they associate with calm and and then sew them back up put it on your keys so if you're out and you find yourself you know really distressed maybe people that struggle with panic attacks and stuff like that you can you can just hold your keys up and you're you're getting that scent um you're self-soothing through it no one even needs to know what you're doing um it's you know these great tools for kind of managing through really tough times yeah that's brilliant that's such a helpful tip for people isn't it because as you say no one has to know you're doing it you're just sort of playing with your keys but you can smell it and you know i think we know how quickly a candle for example being on can change the mood at home yeah you know or we know it can help people sleep certain sense um you know for me this studio it's very important that i try and create an environment of you know intimacy and warmth where people can open up and we can have deep conversations so you know we always put a candle on and we you know it's yeah yeah it's not that i hope no one's threat response is triggered when they're in here certainly having a conversation on the podcast but i don't know smells and and ambience in our environment it kind of matters doesn't it yeah and you can really personalize it as well so if you're thinking about creating like a self-soothing box um you can put things in there that you associate with safety and comfort um so it doesn't have to be anyone else's idea of of those things it's got to be yours so that that you know if it is your you know your mother's perfume or a photo of a holiday you had that always makes you feel lovely and warm and and then you know use those things that that that work for you i'd say julie i've had so much fun talking to you i could talk to you for hours there's so much we haven't covered but of course people can get the book and and read all about all of these ideas and practical tools in them um this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of life clearly the tools that you are teaching the world through your online accounts are helping people think better process negative emotions better which of course in turn is going to help them get more out of their lives at the end of this conversation there's a lot of people out in the world as you well know who are really really struggling with anxiety with fear with negativity with the seemingly uncontrollable nature of the world around them right at the end of this conversation have you got any final thoughts that you want to share or you would like to share with my audience to help them um i i guess sort of taking it from [Music] you know the the darkest place that people can be is is um there is always a way through you know eve and the thing is when when you're not doing so good and you're not feeling so great your mind convinces you that you are the only one and there is not any possible way that you could do anything about it and it's just not true um i know i've worked with people who who don't want to live and they see no way out and and at times when professionals around them are wondering how we can ever get someone through this and i've seen people pull themselves from places you imagine people could never come back from and they have they've turned their lives around it takes time and it takes effort it's a marathon it's definitely not a sprint um but there are ways through and so um you know getting all of the support that you can along the way is essential and helps profoundly but also you have this potential to educate yourself about all the things that are going to help and you know read a lot and and watch a lot and there's so much available now um try to go to credible sources like yourself you know people that that you know have have uh looked at the research and only kind of share things that they um they see as credible and and just start learning because step by step things can begin to change an empowering message julie you're doing incredible work you're helping so many people thank you so much for coming at the studio and uh i hope we get to do this again at some point in the future definitely thanks having me if that conversation resonated with you here is another incredibly powerful one that i really think you're going to enjoy so many people get stopped by procrastination you know what you need to do the issue is how do you make yourself take actions

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 86,912

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: gryh7KhjtMA

Length: 94min 43sec (5683 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022