Why Has Nobody Told Me This?

and Downs? And I think that's just a nice note to end on why has Nobody told Me This Before?

I think that could be said when you look back on all my guests, from therapist to dr is, to internal medicine doctors to neuroscientists, artists, authors, researchers, all of the information that they present has been around for decades, and yet there's this if the first time you heard of some of this information was on this podcast that a former comedian and comedy writer currently hosts, It's like, why is that person the one that brought this information

to me? Why isn't this taught in schools? Why isn't this just I don't know, known, you know, and so I just love I just love book ending it with why has nobody told me this before? And I feel that way about a lot of things when I learned them for the first time. There's this notion that, oh, well, I fad had this information sooner, Well, I really would have nailed it it life. But I don't know if

that's necessarily true. I don't think we should take an opportunity about learning something new to beat ourselves up for Oh my god, imagine if I'd known this. That's more like, thank God, I know this now, But yeah, why has

nobody told me this before? So obviously in Dr Julie's book, there are things that you know, we've gone over in this podcast, but she had a few chapters that I thought were really important messages to leave you all with that I don't even necessarily have to do with you have some diagnosed anxiety disorder, or you have this, or you've been to therapy, but just ways that you know, um, having a maybe an undiagnosed mental health issue or a diagnosed one that you're working on, or whatever it is,

that it does affect more than just your behavioral responses to said mental health issue. Right, like to put it very simply, if you had obsessive compulsive disorder, you might be very focused on how do I get these thoughts to stop? How do I stop ruminating? And then you

might be focused on the treatment for that. But a lot of times there are ways that having a mental health issue, you know, whether it's a history of depression and history of anxiety, that it really affects a lot of our parts of ourselves that we don't normally think have to do with taking care of our mental health, like our self esteem and our confidence and the notion that we are not our mistakes and and so I wanted to talk to Dr Julie about these concepts, and

I think there's a lot of everyday tools that you can take right now out of my interview with Dr Julie.

And I also wanted to talk to her about the fact that she is something of a tech talk celebrity because she has these wonderful, easy to understand, colorful, you know, well produced, beautifully filmed videos where she usually shows with some kind of object in this very creative way, how our minds work and how we can reframe the way that we see things when we're taking care of our mental health, and you know, there is a whole new world out there for people who are therapists, who see clients,

who are psychiatrists and doctors to put themselves out there on social media and have to navigate this new landscape well maybe dealing with criticism that you know, they shouldn't be doing this, they should be more of an anonymous

person or whatever. And so I didn't want it to pass us by that I was also talking with someone who deals with herself what it's like to be out there in the world on social media and what she does in order to keep herself in the right headspace, you know, in terms of putting herself out there and on there and mixing it up in the internet world. So I hope you enjoy my interview and com station

with Dr Julie Smith. Will see you on the flip side of that interview where I will give you takeaways from this episode and some takeaways my own thoughts about what it's been like posting this podcast, what I've learned and what I haven't learned. So Dr Julie, I absolutely love your book. Why has nobody told me this before? And before we get into some of the great coping

skills life skills that are in this book. Was there any personal reason besides the fact that you are a doctor and you want to get this information out there, why you framed it this way and called it Why

has nobody told me this before? And yeah, I mean it's a good question that the title actually came out of the reason I started doing any of this in the first place, which was I was I was running a very small private practice, and lots of the people coming through for therapy once they had the educational aspect a therapy, so they learned a bit about how their own brain works and how they could impact in their own mood and their own emotions and things like that.

That once they had that information, so many of them were raring to go, and they were saying, Wow, how how has no one told me this before? You know, it's not rocket science. I can put it into my life fairly simply. But when I do, it's having this

impact and my life is getting better. So this is probably you know, And these are the things that people would find really helpful and take away, and they were the kind of the tools that they would keep hold of that increase their confidence to be able to manage whatever came up. So rather than needing to know that everything was going to be okay, these seem to be the things that helped people to know that whatever happened,

they would be all right. And you know, it was the sort of so the title really came out of an amalgamation of what people used to say to me. How have I not learned this in school? Why has nobody told me this before? This is really helpful? So it was me wanting to kind of put all of those things into one place so that people didn't have to You know, lots of people can't have access to

therapy for many of different reasons. Um, but I don't see why people should have to pay to come see people like me to find out that basic stuff about how their mind works. And you mentioned self confidence, and

I think we'll start there. I have been trying for the whole time that I've I've done this podcast all year to infuse little moments of my belief which it didn't come up with myself, obviously, but from learning and working on my own anxiety that once we start to build confidence and do things that give us self esteem, that becomes addictive. So it brings me to this part of your book, this little mini chapter that's part of a bigger chapter, why you don't need to work on

your self esteem. I love that. Obviously it's a very

provocative heading. But tell us what you meant by that. So, I think self esteem it's one of these concepts that's been um sort of talked about and promoted as um, you you just have to tell yourself that you're okay, and and that you have to just you know, like yourself and praise yourself in a way that is always positive and sometimes you know, I think self seem is more helpful if we look at it in terms of the way that we feel about ourselves can be information,

So it can be you know, whatever we're feeling towards ourselves, whether it's positive or negative. Something that we do in therapy is always turned towards feelings with curiosity. So rather than just trying to change it, we look at what is and then we get to work on understanding why it is that way and how that can help us or whether it's hindering us. So, I mean, it's it's

not UM, it's not unhealthy or disordered. If you reach a period of your life where you're not okay with the person that you are or the way that you're behaving. You know, to have constant positive self esteem would suggest that you've never made mistakes. Well, you've never um done less than you're capable of. And so I think it's okay to say, do you know what I'm not I'm not being at my best here, or I'm not doing my best for myself or for my family, or for

my career or for whatever that thing is. It's okay to feel that dissatisfaction and then look at it with curiosity and learn from it and move on and progress. If we're intolerant of the dissatisfaction with ourselves and we try to sort of convince ourselves that we are we're okay as we are, then then sometimes that can hinder our ability to progress and move forward. I think we have to make it okay to look at um those feelings that we're not quite satisfied with how things are

at the moment um. So yeah, that's really sort of what that was about. And and there's a part that says, you know, someone might tell you who's trying to help you increase your self esteem, that you know, just make a list, make a list of what you like about yourself, and you know that's that's going to help pave the road to your belief that you can become a success in the world. And you say that, well, okay, but

we have to go even further back than that. That societally right, we have a problem with the concept of success and I you know, we think it means wealth and winning and standing out. And I have to assume that someone with anxiety the you know, I had someone say to me once, stop comparing yourself to people way

above you. First of all, don't compare yourself to anyone, but stop looking at people way above you, and look at people underneath you, not to to um feel better than them or say they're doing something bad, but just to look how far you've come. Well, how many people would want to be in your situation in life, whatever that situation is, Like, what is our definition of success? I don't think that's a question. I was babbling, But if there's anything you want to step go into that. Yeah.

And the comparison thing is is tricky, isn't it, Because we are we are built to do that to a degree. You know, we're social beings, and so if we are brains sort of naturally, you know, look outside of us and compare uslves are we living up to the expectations of this community or this group that I'm living in, Um, where do I sit in the hierarchy? And you know, um, those kind of things. They're all really useful things for your brain to pick up on, and in terms of

being a social being living in a group. But in you know, today's society where we have you know how many billion people at our disposal who have put their best foot forward on social media or something else. Um, the things that we would never exposed to before. I mean, you know, the comparison thing, it's really adaptive for you know, when we used to live in smaller groups and communities,

it was a survival thing. It helped us to work out whether we were safe in that community or we were about to be you know, rejected from it, which was a real survival issue. And so you know, we can't eliminate comparison. It's going to naturally happen. And what I often work with people in therapy on is is stepping back from that and noticing that natural urge to do that. So noticing, oh, look, I am comparing myself, what kind of people am I comparing myself today to today?

So you know, am I comparing up? Where am I comparing down? What's the impact of that on me? And why do I feel the need to do that today? What what's going on there? And always again coming back

to it with curiosity. So rather than setting yourself the standard of I must not compare myself to anyone, and or I must only compare um to people who are worse off than me so that I feel better, or you know, those sorts of things I think, you know, those sorts of standards can sometimes set us up to feel like we're failing all over again, um and and it just sort of leads to this internal argument where we're trying to think certain things and not others, and

and actually thoughts just arrive, so that the most helpful approach, I think is to step back, notice which thoughts arrived, notice whether they help you or hinder you, and then practice that ability to to let them move on or

to hold onto ones that are helping you. So, getting back to what you said about curiosity, Well, before I say that, I'll just make a quick comment that when we're talking about comparing up, comparing down and you're writing this book based on you know something, you're your patients said, I get so many emails on this show, and there's always this time and age obsession, and everyone is saying the same thing no matter what age they are, it's

too late. You know, someone twenty things it's too late. So when sixty thinks it's too late, it's too late to change. And it's like we really just make things up to live by, you know, like there is no concept of time in terms of getting better or getting some thoughts. There's no it's too late or you can't do it because your generation has a little harder with you know, the economy or something. It's just you can't

either have to do it or not. But yeah, and the more we kind of buy into those narratives, the more powerful they are, whether they're helpful or not. And I guess if you I mean, I love to think of sort of psychology in terms of um professional athletes. So we all we all want to function well in our lives and thrive and be at our best in a similar way that athletes do. But athletes apply that to one specific performance, one specific action. And you know,

if if you take I don't know. We've just had Wimbledon in England. So you know, let's say a tennis player who is on their way up through the ranks and they're doing well, but they have a way to go. If that person starts to you know, let's say that they take on a coach, if that person started to tell that athlete that it's probably too late. Um. You know,

it's harder these day to progress in tennis. And you know, maybe you're ranked it you're you know, one hundred, um, but you know, let's compare you to the number one, number two seed. Actually you're really far behind that. That kind of approach a decent a decent coach would never ever do, right that because that's going to be unhelpful. That's going to make that person feel less energized, um, less motivated to work on their craft. They're more much

more likely to give up. So you have to think about, you know, what results you want in terms of how you want to feel, how you want to be living, how you want to be moving towards things in your life. None of us can guarantee how much time we've got. Is just one of those aspects of life that there is uncertainty there, but we have to live as if

there is a future the same time. So, you know, if if you want to be applying yourself to life in a way that enables you to thrive and do something of purpose and meaning, then we have to start treating ourselves in the way that a coach would, you know,

and thinking about what kind of results do I want? Well, you know, actually the way that I speak to myself and the narrative that I'd bring up for myself is is going to have a powerful impact too, whether I even feel like I can apply myself let alone, whether I go ahead and do it so, you know, I think, and that's what happens, you know, in in therapy again, when when people come along, no matter what their goal is or the thing that they're trying to achieve, if

if those narratives come along, what we always do is we kind of say, wow, that's interesting. Did you notice that? What's what's that narrative? What's the impact of that? How does that leave you feeling? You know, is it always this way? Do you ever speak yourself in a different way? So we just turned towards it with curiosity. But when you do that, you get this kind of bird's eye

view of things. So rather than being in it and accepting that narrative for fact, we kind of step back from it and we look at, wow, that's one approach. How how impactful is that? How effective is that is that getting you where you want to go? And if the answers no, then we can start to look at more effective ways at you know, working with yourself and relating to yourself that that can help you. And this brings me back to my original question that I've been

not asking about the curiosity thing. So I'm going to jump into the mind of a listener who hasn't done any kind of cognitive behavior therapy work and they have anxiety that maybe have depression, but they you know, then

that's affecting their self esteem. So when you say, you know, don't, for the lack of a better term, like, don't beat yourself up, but look at these thoughts of curiosity, I assume that that might be hard for someone to do unless they're being led in a session, because you know, even looking at something with curiosity to be kind of left your own devices, it might still be done in this maladaptive way. So giving a free tip for everyone listening.

I liked how you just gave a concrete example there of saying, oh, you know, that's interesting, look at that. And if someone is let's say, sitting there worrying I can't get help because of this or that, or you know, you know I should be further along in life or I whatever that is, for them to stop and look at that with curiosity, what's a question they can ask themselves to begin doing that in a way that is helpful and not more beating themselves up. Yeah, I think

I think you're right. It's really key. It's one thing to be able to um go into something and and talk about it. It's another thing to do that in a way that's productive rather than um just stressful or retroubishizing. And so I would say, you know, it can that stuff can be with a therapist. And I think if there's really complex, different stuff to to talk about, then it's always recommended. But actually, you know, we've been helping each other through difficult things for you know, the the

entirety of of our ability to use language. So we do that through connecting with other people in in a good way, you know, finding somebody that you trust that you can talk to and and starting to use words between you and um. And if you don't have someone in your life that you can talk to all that you you know, things that you don't want to share

with another person, you can write them down. You can um, you can record them in somewhere, whether that's you know, writing down pen and paper or into your phone or computer or whatever, or even voice notes to yourself, one way of kind of getting it out of your head and in front of you so that you can start to see it for what it is. Because actually, what we don't want to do is add perfectionism to the whole process and say, oh gosh, now I'm being self

critical again. I'm such a being self critical And you know, you can kind of get into this internal argument for for having had the thoughts in the first place. It is really hard to see the wood for the trees when you're in it and you're feeling strong emotions and all the thoughts are there. We learn first through hindsight, so you know, if you start to develop UM, yeah, it's just so so helpful to do something like journaling.

You know, once a day, however many minutes works for you, whether it's fifteen minutes, half an hour and hour whatever. That is just spending time looking over, Okay, what was if let's say you're trying to be less self critical, whether any moments today when I was self critical? What were those things? What came before that, what led up to that um and and how did it then make

me feel afterwards? And just just by doing things like that where you start to look at it with a bit of a bird's eye view, then you build up that It's almost like a sort of mental muscle, so the ability to see that for what it is. And that's easier to do in hindsight because the emotion has passed by the time you sit down with pen and paper. But over time you do that and off and you start to build up the ability to see it for

what it is in the moment. And when we start to do that, then we open up the opportunity to choose something different. But it has to start with, okay, so what happened today, what happened this week? What you know? And working through it when we've passed all the sort of high emotion so that we can do that clearly. We build up the practice by doing it that way, and then we build up our ability to do it

more in the moment over time. So I'd say, you know, don't don't feel like you have to suddenly just be able to do all this stuff. It's difficult. We'll be right back. You have a chapter in your book being Enough. And this is an expression that when my therapist used to say it, I would go crazy because I would think, I what does that mean? It sounds you say that some people I think that self acceptance is going to cause laziness and complacency, And so what what does that mean?

When when a therapist tells us that we have to accept ourselves and know that we're enough? I think, UM, For me, it all comes down to um. Not necessarily sort of being enough for everyone else or society. But it's a it's a having a sense of worthiness based on the fact that you're a human being. So it's having that compassion for yourself that UM. So it's not it's not lying to yourself. It's not telling yourself everything's fine, you're doing fine, when maybe you're not. You know, UM.

And I mean, let's say, let's take an example. Let's say my best friend sort of goes off the rails for a bit, doesn't study for an exam, takes the exam, fails the exam, and it was so important to her to pass that in order to get into her in career. If I'm going to be that really good friend who is compassionate towards her, I'm not going to say, hey, don't worry about it. You know it's fine, You'll be okay,

and that's not not not helpful to her. Actually, the most helpful approach there is going to be one of honesty, but with kindness and support. So it's gonna say, Okay, you know you're upset, this is this is not the place you wanted to be at. There have been mistakes along the way. We can get through this together. So let's you know, it's saying I'm still here for you. I'm still you are still worthy to me, whether your behavior was its best or not. It's saying, let's work

through this. It's you know. It's so it's acknowledging that your worthiness is not based on whether you get everything done perfectly or you achieve you know, and you become the best of the best at whatever it is you've chosen to do. Is saying, Okay, I'm here with you, and I have your best interesting heart. So I'm going to help you, um and support you to be the best that you can be. And I guess that example is from one person to another, but we can also

do that with ourselves. So it's saying I will have my own back no matter what, because you know, I'm with me my whole life and we've got to get on well. Um. But also but also I'm going to be my own best coach. I'm going to be super honest with myself. You know, when we talked about the tennis example, if if I'm a tennis player and I miss a few shots because I've made some mistakes, I want my coach to point that out to me when I then don't win that match, because we want to

win the next one. Okay, if he lies to me and says, yeah, you're doing great, you're the best player ever, it just didn't go your way, then I'm not going to learn from that experience. So it's about excepting, Yes, I believe in you and I want the best for you, and I'm going to also help you learn from this experience.

So I think, yeah, I think self acceptance isn't it has to be something very different to self indulgence or anything like that to be have my own best interests at heart, because I am I am worthy, and I'm you know, worthy of love and belonging and all those things. And I'm also going to push myself to do the best I can do, even when that's the difficult thing

to do. Right And using our example of this coach, there's a chapter in your book about you are not your mistakes, And I think what you've illustrated just there is perfect because Okay, you made some mistakes in this game. We have to acknowledge them so that we can get better. But you, inherently, yeah, um, you made mistakes. You are not a mistake of a human being. These mistakes were made having nothing to do with who you are as

a person. It could have been the grip on your racket, the weather, a choice you made, maybe you psych yourself out, maybe just it happened. You know, there's going to be those kinds of mistakes too that we can't always control. But I love that notion of teaching people that never thought about this before. Yes, you made a mistake, but you are not your mistakes. And it sounds nice, But what if someone asks you, well, what is that. I mean, how could I how could I not be my mistake.

I'm the only one who made it? Like, how do you wrangle that desire to think that from them? Again, it's it's separating that sense of um of worthiness as a human being from behavior. So, you know, behaviors and the things you do are a set of choices that you make. And sometimes you'll get that right, and sometimes

you'll get it wrong. And when they're doing all this stuff on AI and and they'll they'll test a computer against a person in terms of like problem solving, right, and and a person is always more likely to give up before succeeding because each effort towards you know, solving a problem lum essentially, you get it wrong a lot of the time. Right when the computer gets it wrong, they see that as just a sample. It's just one effort. That one didn't work, Try the next one. That one

didn't work, try the next one. So they keep trying different things, right, so their effort continues the same all the time. But they're just constantly trying different ways to solve problems, and the human being at some point may start to think, I'm no good at this, I'm not made for this this, I'm terrible, right, So so we start that, that narrative begins of I'm not good enough for this, I'm never gonna be able to do this,

I'm terrible whatever. Whatever that narrative is, that then makes us more inclined to give up and when actually we if we were to keep going, we're more likely to get there. And I think that's a sort of nice metaphor fusing throughout life that along the way, you know, no one gives you this manual forul this is how to live perfectly right, This is how to get everything right all of the time. So the reality is we're

going to make mistakes along the way. We're going to make mistakes and relationships and work in learning in whatever things we apply ourselves to. If we if we hold onto okay, whenever I make a mistake, it says something fundamental about who I am as a person, am I worthiness as a human being, then you're more likely to give up. Whereas if you're able to separate your worthiness as a human being from efforts and behavior, then you're more likely to learn from that experience and try again

with something different. And in the book actually include a section on values check ins where we look at Okay, well, not what you want to happen to you, but what kind of person do you want to be? And how do you want to apply yourself to life? How do you want to come at good times and bad times? And And I think that's sometimes a really nice way of coming back from Okay, I've I've made him say, I've done something that I feel terrible about, and I know I shouldn't be that way. So I'm going to

come back to my values. Actually, what are my values about the kind of person I want to be? In that sort of situation? Did the way I behave match up to how I want to be? No? So how can I how can I start moving towards that? What could I do to shift back towards this value that I have about the sort of person I want to be or how I want to show up in my

relationships or whatever that is? Um Which is a nice way of just getting clarity, because if we haven't got a direction to move towards, then we kind of feel a bit lost. I feel like we don't give ourselves that raise, that moment to allow ourselves to ask ourselves that question. We're so caught up in the minutia of I made this mistake, I felt this way during it, I felt anxious, I felt this Yeah, absolutely, I mean, you're right. It's if we if we see life as

a test of was I born perfect? Or was I born enough and as good as everybody else? You know, if we see it like that, then we're always going to come up against failure and see that as confirmation that we're not good enough. Whereas if we see life as something we can constantly work towards and adjust. So I mean I distinguished in the book between sort of goals and value. So goals will be something that you

can achieve and once you've done it, it's finished. So you get there, you know, you pass, your exam, is done. Whereas a value is more like a path that it

never ends. It's always there, but it's a path that means so much to you always want to steer close to it, and life pulls you away from those pasts at times, right, it just does that, So you know you might have a value around I don't know, uh, parenting for examples, the kind of parent you want to be, but you get pulled away from that for whatever is it?

Maybe maybe your boss gets really demanding and work gets really heavy, and you've not been around as much as you want to be, and so that you notice you're being pulled away from that value. And and then life becomes this process of noticing you've been pulled away from You know, you're you're getting too far away from that path, so you've got to slightly redirect and come closer to it. And it's accepting that you'll never or you you know, won't always be perfectly on that pathway, you will be

You're pulled back and forth. It'll be a windy road. But but it's always noticing where is that pathway? Can I get closer to it? Can I live more in line with my values? Um? Given sort of limitations of my life? Um? And so it's a constant adjustment. So then you don't need to berate yourself for oh gosh, you know, I'm I'm I'm not living in line with that. It becomes a learning experience. Actually, no, this isn't how I want things to be, because that's really important to

me too. Um, you know, parents in that kind of way or whatever. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna makes some adjustments to move closer towards it. You've given a great example of how mindfulness meditation for those listening that. Um, I've done a few episodes where people have mentioned meditation. But that's a great way to get into that kind of practice where we're not trying to not if that's in our head, which is trying to notice them and and and let them go. And um, we're you know,

there's no such thing as not making mistakes. It's it's just how do we move on from it? And that's that very practice is kind of what living is. I know people don't like to hear that. They want like a big fix for everything, but yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah no. It's like that with kind of self criticism and stuff in therapy. You know, we we don't eliminate it. We we start noticing it for what it is. Um, we say, you know, sometimes we'll even name it with with um.

One of what people who've had sort of almost relentless self criticism, Well, what we need to do is diffuse from it and see it as one possible perspective that's not a factual, you know, um, reflection of reality. So um, sometimes we'll you know, give that voice and that critical voice and name. You know, it's I don't know, um on eld girl or whatever it is, and you kind of and so that when when you start to be self critical, you go, oh, there she is again. That's

that's that's our critical voice, that's the one um. And just by doing that, just by stepping back giving it a label in that way, you you enable yourself to see it for what it is, which is just one perspective and often a really really unhelpful one that holds you back. And you know, if you're it's a bit. By by giving a name or even a sort of um a person's name, it kind of it enables you to see it in a way that I don't know.

Let's say you're you're with your family and you're all around the table at Christmas time or whatever, and and there might be someone in the family that always voices opinions that that maybe the rest of the family don't quite agree with or that feel it appropriate, and and you can't eliminate that, and you wouldn't want to eliminate that person, but you you kind of are, yeah, that's you know, that's Auntie Janet or whatever. That's what she does.

You know, by by just kind of giving it that label, you enable yourself to sort of accept that that narrative that that it comes along, but you're kind of removing yourself from it, and you're not getting yourself tied up in whether it's right or wrong or making it go away. You're allowing it to be there, and you're allowing yourself to kind of be slightly more free of the impact that it could have on you. I love this part in your book when you say confident is not the

same as comfortable. Can you tell us what what that exactly means? Confident is not the same as comfortable? Yeah, I mean probably A great example is UM. More recently, I've been going on live TV a few times and talking about mental health and things like that, and because it's brand new to me, UM, it triggers the stress response. Right you go into a studio, you're not familiar with it.

There's a lot of sorts of you know, loads of people and big equipment, and so it triggers off your stress response and you feel, you know, all of those symptoms of anxiety, heart starts to pound and those kind of things. And then once you're in that bonts you're more likely to catastrophize, so I might you know, they're counting down five, four or three am I gonna go live? And there's some catastrophizing thoughts say this could go so wrong.

And and while I feel the anxiety, I know that that stress in my body is my body gearing up to bring its a game and to perform. And without that increased alertness that that stress gives me, I probably wouldn't be performing with as much energy as if I was just completely chilled out. And I know it's because it's a novel new experience to me that my brain is saying, Staler, you don't know what could happen here,

and so um. But I'm still confident in that situation while experiencing that anxiety, because I know that I know what I'm doing, So I know that I know my psychology, so I know I can talk about that kind of thing, and I've been talking about it for you know, for years, and so I trust in my ability to do that. But I also don't need everything to go perfectly right

to be okay with it. Let's say you know, some I don't know, something awful happened and I tripped over our live TV and my dress ends up over my head or whatever. I know, you know, I know that I am not going to use that as fuel to get down on myself and um criticize myself and hate myself. I know that I will whatever happens. I have committed to having my own back, so I will do what I need to do to look after myself whether things

go right or wrong for me. And it's that it's that ultimate kind of self compassion that enables me to be in really difficult circumstances with this sort of inner confidence. It doesn't mean I don't feel anxious about oh, something could go wrong here. That's still you know, that's your body doing what it does best. That stresses is positive in that sense, but it enables me to just carry that confidence that whether something goes wrong or not, I will deal with it with the best side I can.

We'll continue the interview on the flip side of a quick message from our sponsors to make you an example, which I know you just gave me an example. But when this book was finished, and you know they were printing it up and printing it, did you have a feeling that it would be this huge international best seller? And did that affect you in any way where you had to do some work to get ready for the possibility of all of this attention. And then, of course

I assume with that much attention brings criticism. You know, I wrote that book twenty years ago. No one cared, do you know. Whatever. People get jealous and they say things, did you have to do any sort of emotional or psychological prep to get ready to receive the spotlight or even the possibility? Oh my god, what if it just makes it thunk in the woods and no one hears it? And now, yeah, I mean it's super scary, right, It makes you really vulnerable, um, you know, putting things on

to paper and putting them out into the world. And so it was. It was a really interesting emotional experience in that sense. And and yeah, I guess I did um look after myself in a sense that I always stayed close to that that original idea for doing any

of this, which was to be helpful. There are some really great insights from therapy that just don't make it outside of the therapy room door for whatever reason, or or some of them do but aren't necessarily explained in a helpful way or a way that I would find interesting or engaging or you know, approachable. And so I felt like that that my piece of writing was about me trying to just share good information and be helpful. And so again, it wasn't who I am, it was

it was something I did. And um, I probably looked at myself by staying away from things like reviews for a while. I think my husband looked and stuff. But but it would have been it would have been me trying to get confirmation that it was okay. And actually

it was privileged. I kind of saw it as privileged enough to be able to given given the opportunity to write a book and have it published was enough for me and um, And so I didn't then want to experience that kind of roller coaster of putting myself worth into the hands of other people based on based on reading something I wrote. You know. So um that definitely helped UM. But yeah, I guess nothing can can prepare you for um the way that it's just sort of yeah,

taken on a life of its own, this book. It's that's wild to keep it going to the old. Those are two really important things, because you're not saying, oh, well, yes, you know for six weeks. I got a bit six am and I meditated and I didn't eat sugar. It's just sort of you know, you're living your values. You you've already set the intention, which is I'm trying to put things out there that are going to help people. It goes back to what you said about defining your values.

You know. It's these it's these almost like big girl grown up things that you talk about in your book that really are such I think what goes hand in hand with cognitive behavior therapy and anxiety work and breathing and all that, it's it's kind of just growing up a little bit. I feel like this you've given the closest thing that we have out there to a manual of kind of how to how to grow up, even no matter how old you are. You know, and I think you know that. I think the whole thing was

probably helped by um having children. UM that I when when I'm facing something that I probably have the urge to avoid doing altogether because it's scary and it makes me vulnerable, I it really helps me to return to that sense of sort of deep compassion that have for my children. So in thinking, okay, if my daughter was going through this. What would I want her to have the strength to do or to say to herself? How

would I want her to treat herself? And how would I want her to feel about you know, other people's opinions, positive and negative, and and that always helps me to just um, sort of re engage with this idea that UM, I don't I don't get too wrapped up in the you know, I appreciate all the positive stuff that's come out of it, but I don't I don't allow it to change my view of myself in terms of I'm no better, I'm no different and um. But at the same time, if somebody picks up the book and hates it,

I'm no better or no different than either. It's just a piece of work I did, and it's something that I did with good intentions, trying to be as helpful as I can UM in the world with what I've learned so far, and um, and I guess it's that that sort of solid um confidence that I would want my daughter to have, you know, I want her to um be UM, not too rocked by how mean or how wonderful other people can be. It's just to be certainly okay, I'm gonna make my contribution to the world,

and and and then so be what what happened? What happens. I'll look after myself that kind of thing. And lastly, I do want to talk about your social media presence and and just social media in general as of course for good um and I'll be promoting your videos in the talk up intro that I do. But your your videos on TikTok are so great. First of all, they're beautiful. There's so just colorful and really cool to look at.

But you have these succinct metaphors and analogies and helpful ways of talking to people about different things they may be experiencing, whether it's stress or grief or self doubt or whatnot. And look, I know we all have to be on social media as authors, performers, whatever. I'm on it too, and I always say I would not be here if I wasn't trying to promote something. But you know, I don't always think it's that that cut and dry.

I mean, obviously you want to promote your book, but I think that obviously, as you know, because you're the one doing it, these little videos exist on their own. If if for some reason it didn't duna mean, you had this book, those videos give me a piece of advice you know that I can use that day or whatnot. And to do that, I think is I think great to flood the internet with things that are helpful instead of us all going on the internet got out of control.

Is I'll just take our ball and go home. So do you have any opinions or passions about putting help on the internet, because I know, not everyone has access to a therapist, some people may not even think they need one, there may not be one available, whatever, But do you think that giving kind of mental health um advice or talking about it on the internet can be

a force for good? Yeah, I mean I certainly. I was showing videos for you know, um almost two years before the book came out, and and so it started without thinking of it as a sort of any kind of marketing tool. But it started with Okay, there's this really helpful stuff in therapy that I'm teaching it to people, and it feels like they're they're learning this for the

first time, and people should have access to this. So it really even joining social media started as this kind of project where it felt like a good thing to do, to to share this information for free, and where is everybody's attention, Well, it's over there on that free platform. So let's try and put something on there. And and then it became a bit of an experiment to make it as creative and engaging as possible so that you know, people were there with their their thumbs or fingers waiting

to kind of scroll onto the next video. And so it became a bit of a challenge to you know, with probably the least sexy subjects going, you know, how can I talk about mental health and keep people watching and keep people engaged when they might not usually, So um, yeah, it became a it became a sort of real challenge. And but obviously in the world of therapy, where a lot of therapists just aren't even on social media, it

felt like I was domming against the tide professionally. But I kind of felt like, you know, I can sit in my office and complain about you know, potential misinformation or whatever it is that people are accessing on social media, or I can get in there and like say, add something positive to the mix and slightly increase the chances that anyone with those sorts of problems could come across my information, which is evidence space and you know, from

therapy and things so um and and honestly, I thought it was going to be one of those projects that you just did for a while because it felt like a nic thing to do, and then it would fizzle out. I thought would be a couple of months max. And but that the flood of messages and emails that started to come through instantly every day, I was just overwhelming it. You know, people say, wow, that's I never thought of

it like that before. This has really helped. I'm sharing it with my mom or my sister, we're working on together. Thank you so much. What's their next bit? And people kind of asking for more and more and more. And it was that realization, actually, this is reaching real people, and it's having enough of them an impact that they take the time to find out what my email addresses, send me a page about how it's impacting on their life. I can't stop now, I've got to, you know, I've

got to do this. And so it all started with that idea of it being kind of free content, and I still do all of that. You know, we put out you know, several videos a week as men as we can um and and the book just became really that kind of add on where people were saying, this is really helpful, what's the how to, what's the step by step, what's the details. Of course, short form video is a great way to reach lots of people, but you've only got sixty seconds, so I can't get the details.

So the book really just became about getting the detail and for the people that really wanted to take it seriously and and put it into their lives. But I think that again, being able to convey messages on short form media like TikTok does prove that you are talking about simple but not easy, but simple concepts. It's there's no real mystery here too taking care of your mental health. It's just it's available to us, just a matter of

if we want to do it. And I do think it's a great resource also for people who do know a lot of about this already, but maybe they want to find a palatable way to show it to someone they love instead of saying, here's a book. You you seem like you have some anxiety. I imagine it must be difficult for in the professional space. It's like, but you're not recording client sessions on a hitten camera like you're just talking about what you've learned. Nothing, you're not,

that's it. It's just educating. And I think the more that we, you know, use simple things like that to um start conversations about mental health, the more we see it in line with physical health. You know, it's not embarrassing to work with your physical health. It's not embarrassing to say, do you know what, I've got a dodgy nie. So I'm doing these exercises each day, and then I'm going to go and visit my my doctor at the end of the week. That's not embarrassing to do. People

do those talk about these things openly and freely. It should be the same if you know, I do know what I've been feeling X what I said this week, and so I'm going to try this, this and this, and I'm going to go intee my therapist. People should feel just as free to talk opening about those things with people they trust as they are with their physical health. So I guess that's the dream. Anxiety Bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of

our sponsors. Heyy, thanks for sticking around for this part of the podcast. I will be giving some audio bullet points um of things that we learned from Dr Julie Smith today in our takeaway portion of Anxiety Bites. If you want to read the takeaways, you may visit my website Jen Kirkman dot com click Anxiety Bites and yes, the direct link is in the show notes on whatever app you're listening on, and you may look at takeaways from every episode of Anxiety Bites all there on my website.

So key points I think to take away from today. The obsession to have good self esteem may not be that helpful. Self esteem is helpful in terms of the way that we feel about ourselves in terms of that that can be information. However, we feel about ourselves can be information, whether it's positive or negative. It's important to turn towards our feelings with curiosity before we just reflexibly

try to change them. We should look at what we feel so that we can get to work on understanding why that is and how it can help us or whether it's hindering us. Now, you can do work like this in therapy. If it appeals to you, you may want to ask your therapist if you can work on getting help with learning about how to look at your thoughts and feelings with curiosity, and if you don't have a therapist once again, you can get a copy of Dr Julie Smith's book, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?

And then even just going back and listening to this episode and listening carefully to these takeaways and visiting my website, you can see the kind of questions that Dr Julie Smith has her patients ask themselves, and you can start there with just a daily practice of asking yourself, either in your mind or in your journal these questions. To have constant positive self esteem would suggest that you've never made mistakes or done less than you're capable of. It's

not unhealthy or disordered. If you reach a period of your life where you are not okay with the person you are or the way that your behavior, it could be a moment to admit that you're not at your best or doing the best for yourself or your family or your career. It's okay to feel dissatisfaction and then learn from it and move on and progress. Comparing ourselves to others is tricky because we are built to do

that as social beings. Our brains do this to see if we are living up to the expectations of our communities. It was once a survival instinct. However, we are in a new moment where we have access to billions of people on social media and can wrap the compare ourselves to many people who are only putting their best foot forward. The need to compare ourselves to others was more adaptive when we lived in small communities and again when it

was a survival thing at the time. We can't eliminate comparing ourselves to others because it does just happen naturally. But what can be worked on in therapy is stepping back and noticing that natural urge. Ask yourself, what kind of people are you comparing yourself to today? Ask yourself if you're comparing up or comparing down, and what is

that impact on you? Again, coming at this with curiosity, and then practice the ability to let these thoughts move on and only hold on to the thoughts that are helping you. Language is important in helping us heal, whether that's connecting with other people, finding somebody you can trust to talk to, or you can write your thoughts down, whether with pen or paper, at your computer, on a voice memo. As long as you get the thoughts out of your head and start to see them for what

they are now. I know I said on a voice memo, as though you write on a voice memo, but speaking it into something that is going to record your words so that you can listen back to them later and here where you are at on a certain day, or hear what you're thinking sounds like because I'm just interjecting. Our thinking can seem pretty normal to us until we see it on paper and sometimes hear ourselves say it. And again that's if you, um, I want to do that on your own, if you want to talk to

a friend. A lot of times just we need something to reflect what we just said, especially if what we just said is something that is really destructive in terms of how we talk about ourselves and think about ourselves, and a lot of times things that just aren't true

that we say to ourselves. If you're trying to be less self critical, ask yourself at the end of the day, if there were any moments when you were self critical, what were those things, what came just before that moment of self criticism, and how did it make you feel afterwards. Being quote enough means that you have a sense of worthiness based on the fact that you're a human being. Worthiness is not based on whether you get everything done

perfectly or achieved being the best. It's a way of saying to yourself, I'm here with you and I have your best interests at heart. When we make mistakes, it does not mean that we are a mistake and that it says something fundamental about who we are. It's okay to say that you've done something that you feel terrible about, and then it's time to come back to your values and think about the kind of person you want to

be and how you can start moving towards that. Having self compassion means that you're committed to have in your own back whether things go right or wrong for you. Once again, thank you to Dr Julie Smith for coming onto the podcast. You can get her book Why Has

Nobody Told Me This Before? Wherever you get books and visit the show notes to find her TikTok account and her Instagram account where she does really great, short, really visually stimulating, colorful, helpful videos about all aspects of mental health and the way that we think about things and and these videos give a a quick lesson in how to reframe a lot of situations that we're in in life, and on this last episode of Anxiety Bites, I I

don't have any deep, profound thoughts about what this experience has been like, but I've been completely blown away. And thanks to my producers j J and Dylan for booking such incredible guests. But that that the guests said yes to my request for them to come on the show, I was really honored and talked to a lot of people who have long been heroes of mine and teachers of mine, you know that had no idea they were

teaching me. But one thing I found interesting during Anxiety Bites, and it had nothing to do with actually getting on the microphone and doing this podcast itself, was some of the questions that people asked me. And these are people I know. A few people I know asked me all separate times. Is doing the podcast every week something that actually makes you more anxious? And honestly, I wanted to jump out of my skin and just I was almost

a little mad at that question. No, first of all, on nineteen levels, right, you know, you think someone who knows you a little bit went understand that I started this podcast because I felt like I had something to offer. I felt like I had enough anxiety recovery to be able to speak intelligently to my guests who were going to be talking about some of the things I had gone through. But I didn't want to be the expert

and be telling you all what to do. But I wanted to be able to kind of keep up with my guests and not be learning everything for the first time, although I did learn a lot for the first time through all of my guests, of course, But if it was something that made me anxious, I would have talked about it on the podcast and had you you know, I would have wanted you all to experience me walking through that anxiety to see what it would look like as an example of what it looks like when we

walk through anxiety. Now again, the people that know me that asked me that maybe they don't even listen to the podcast, and that's fine, but and and one person that I don't know very well, but they asked me what I do, and I said, I'm a writer, but I also put podcast and they wanted to know what the podcast was about. Blah blah blah. So they asked the same question, and I think, what's so frustrating about it is well, first of all, as we know, I

can be easily frustrating. We've talked about my a d h D diagnosis, and how you know, there's that kind of like quick to react things. I mean, I didn't react, but I only reacted in my heart. But it's frustrating because talking about it is exactly what we need to do to lessen the anxiety. And and by the way, maybe we don't even need to think about why we need to talk about it, oh, because it will bring down all of our anxiety because we're already putting too

much expectation on it. We should just talk about it because we should talk about everything. We should talk about everything that we are experiencing as humans, because all too often, even the smartest people have told me that they think they're the only people who feel a certain way. And it's just almost impossible that you would be the only human being on earth to feel a certain way. And if that's true, then you should be being studying in a lab and you, you know, get an award you

the most unique person who ever lived. But no wonder people think this because we don't talk about anything. We don't even talk about our feelings, whether we have a diagnosable anxiety disorder or not. We just don't talk about feelings. My biggest annoyance in life is small to right. So think of how many times a day and he goes, hi, how are you and you got good? That's not true. I mean, maybe you're good, maybe there's many details to it.

Maybe you're good because you just had therapy. Maybe you're good because you just had a change in perspective on something, but this morning you weren't whatever. I mean, it would be so interesting if we answered this question honestly. I mean, it might be time consuming, but in general you can just see little examples like that of how we're just cultural.

You taught two just say good, keep moving. And so for me, it's like again, if if talking about anxiety on this podcast caused me anxiety, I would have mentioned it to you and talked about that. But in general, we're not trying to avoid anxiety because that only feeds it. I mean, most of our problems, if we were anxious, comes from not just the anxiety itself, but we keep the anxiety going, like throwing five logs onto a fire.

We keep the anxiety going when we use our maladaptive skills, which a lot of times involve avoiding something that makes

us anxious. Whether it's you're avoiding driving over a bridge, or you're avoiding talking about it, whatever it is, it often involves avoidance, sometimes avoiding even thinking about it, which is why a lot of people are hesitant to do, you know, like more kind of exposure therapies like we talked about on the O c D episode and so no, no, no no, And even if talking about anxiety on this podcast made my anxiety worse, I would still do it because it's like I talked about with Josh Anxiety Josh

from the UK on an earlier episode, when I told him that I'd been avoiding going on this subway line because it goes over a bridge outside and I just don't sometimes don't like that feeling, or I'm I'm worried. I won't like that feeling, even though I love being on a subway and I don't mind, you know, it's a small height, I don't mind looking over the bridge over the city. It's really cool. But it was like I was worried about panicking. I wasn't even worried about

the actual thing I was doing. And he said, then you get back on that subway and you practice, you practice sitting there having a panic attack, You practice the feelings of de realization. And again, so any time that something we're doing is causing us anxiety and not the kind of anxiety that's really you know, a red flag

and is telling us this is dangerous. But but but what people were asking me about, oh, doesn't it make you more anxious, It's like, no, it's always an opportunity to practice sitting with the anxiety, letting it do its thing. And however you have been um working on it too, let it dissipate or just let it be with you until it's okay. Because we're going to have anxiety, we're going to have panic attacks. We're going to have even if you don't have anxiety or panic thoughts that plague

us whatever it is. I'm not saying the answer to everything is to just talk about it and sit with it. But for sure the answer is not don't talk about it and don't do a podcast about it because it might make you more anxious. And I also think what they don't realize they were asking is aren't you over analyzing it? That's what I really I felt there was no I don't think they were aware of it, but like an accidental almost judgment on their part. But but again,

I don't think they were judging. I don't think they would think they were judging. But it's that the thing I've heard before from people when when they would find out, you know, or you go to therapy every week and you've been going this long, and it's like, aren't you done over analyzing everything? It's like, well, that's for somere

not analyzing anything. I'm speaking about things and someone is helping me make choices about how I want to work through them or how I want to look at things so that I'm not actually a burden to myself and others, so that I'm able to get the coping skills I need to be a productive member of society. I mean, there's this notion like the more therapy or in the worst, it gets, which is just not true unless, of course, you are having some kind of psychotic relationship with your therapist.

But in general, there's this notion of if we look at something, it gets bigger, and I believe it's exactly the opposite. It doesn't necessarily get smaller, but our perception of how big it is might change. So that's my parting wisdom, which is although I will not be here for the rest of the year, you will not hear new episodes of Anxiety Bites, you can still talk about anxiety, and I would be honored if you use this podcast as a way to bring up talking about anxiety with anybody.

If if you relate with any episode, you want to pass it on to someone in order to say to them this is what I have or this is how it feels to be me. That's another great way to use this podcast. The episodes will be up and again all the takeaways will be on my website. And if you want to look at audio grams, which is you know, um anywhere from one to three minute audio lips of every episode and in the audio gram it will tell you who the guest is, what the episode number was.

You can find all of those on my Twitter which is at Jen Kirkman. They also exist on my Instagram and on my TikTok. All of those accounts are at Jen Kirkman and you can scroll through and listen to little bite sized ones anytime that you want. They're also on my YouTube page. Um so again. If you click the link in the show notes to my bio link, you can get access to all of my social media

and find out where else you can find me. If you grew attached to me, I would like to keep up with what's going on with me outside of this podcast, So thanks again for listening, for subscribing, for all of the great feedback I got, and remember anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.