Good day people it's Therapy Natters time again. Each week, myself, Richard Nicholls, and co-host Fiona Biddle are gonna sit with you for half an hour or so to see what psychotherapists think and talk about when their clients aren't around. Hello Fiona,
Hello, maybe in slightly more sombre note today
Yes. Yes.
maybe.
I'm a fairly bouncy kind of guy. And, I have to read the room and recognize not everybody's gonna be in a great mood this week. There is literally a mourning period that we're all told we are supposed to experience. 10 days? I think everybody's been told you must mourn for 10 days. The country will mourn for 10 days
Well, I think it's seven days beyond the date of the
oh, crikey. So we are expected to remain slightly mournful, slightly sombre for a couple of weeks by the sound of things. I gotta take my hat off to Spotify. when I was driving home last night, Thursday night, which was sadly the day Queen Elizabeth the second shuffled off this mortal coil. Planet Rock was not playing rock. They normally do. And even this morning, they were just playing very low-fi soft rock mournful, soft rock. It was quite nice.
But last night they just played Rachmaninov piano, minor key music. I'm like, ah, this is dragging me down. Come on Spotify. So I just shuffled just said, show me anything. They know, I like rock music, play me rock music, shuffle. Three songs in, they played God Save the Queen by The Sex Pistols. Now after chatting to somebody who works in algorithms and things, he said, it's probably because a lot of people were searching for that title.
And Spotify thinks everybody wants to hear this, this particular song. Maybe they didn't wanna hear the sex pistols version of. It's not that flattering to old Queenie, but it's more of a reflection on the government, I suppose, at the time. Maybe it'll be due a re-release oh my God, anything good happen.
Times were very different when, when that was released. And it was, it was shocking to the extent that it would not be now, probably wouldn't even burst through any sort of awareness. Yeah,
It'd be on Radio 2 .Maybe not for a long time yet. We'll give it a year or so, but although it might've fell off the playlist now And it is sad. And we're gonna see this over the next couple of weeks that people are gonna bring it into therapy. It is going to have an effect on the way people think and feel because even though very few people listening will have even met The Queen, let alone know her.
She still meant something to so many people, millions, if not, if not a billion people, maybe more for all I know. But many, many millions of people felt a connection to her because of what she meant
It's a very strange thing about how we do as people sometimes connect to those that we don't know. I think we can look at it through the lens of Jung's archetypes. But we can also look at it in terms of role models and how we just do have a tendency to look at other people , and see what they mean to us. But the archetypes are fascinating in that his theory was that we have a collective unconscious, as well as our personal unconscious.
Can't quite remember if we've talked about collective unconscious before on here?
I don't think so. It's a bit wacky.
Yes, it's a bit wacky, but then most people will, when you get into it will say, oh yeah, yeah, I know that. So one of the things in the collective unconscious is synchronicity. So the connections that we make. Coincidences, but a little bit more, How did that just happen in that way? Maybe the tune on Spotify is the synchronicity,
it could be, that was always gonna play after on the, the third song. No matter when I listen to it possibly, but , maybe not. Maybe Spotify is connected to the collective unconscious, which is, you know, the digital version of the collective unconscious, which is, this is what people want to listen to. And I know it. I just know it. And I'm going to show you. The way memes are spread around culture.
maybe Jungians now would think the collective unconscious is just memes being passed around through popular culture or maybe they think our brains are
I, I don't really have anything much to say, cuz I only vaguely know what a meme is . I sort of do, but I sort of don't know that I really understand it. Can you, can you enlighten me? How does meme fit with the idea of the collective unconsciousness and us all sharing in something.
Well, I first came across the word meme at a conference when somebody was describing how phobias get passed down, not necessarily through genes, but information through culture, through society, him saying that spiders being frightening is a meme rather than something that's passed down through genes. And, he developed the perception, the idea that spiders were scary, cause he saw James Bond on a Bond film frightened of a spider. So therefore spiders must be scary.
And that information was never explicitly said, you need to be frightened of spiders, they're scary. It was implied through the behavior and body language of others. And I think , that's a meme. And then you've got modern memes, which are just information passed around the internet without actually being told to anybody. It's just digital information that's passed around and is almost separate to, to, reality.
Okay. So it does, it does link into the idea that, the suggestion is that it's across cultures that all cultures, or maybe most, I don't know, have certain figures, certain elements to the culture that. are generic. So The Queen in this instance represents the archetypal mother and that extends to grandmother and so on. But if you think about suddenly for our lives and most listeners lives, she has always been there as that constant mother like figure. That doesn't change. Doesn't vary.
Doesn't wobble. Doesn't get angry. Has the consistency that, that no one's real mother or grandmother will have. And there's, there's the elements of warmth that she was able to express, the strong values that she was able to demonstrate. Really, really to great depth. And so we just always knew she was there. Not that most of us probably spent much of our time thinking about that,
Mmm.
but it was there and now it's not. And I think that can cause people to feel a little bit unsure unsteady. And then people are then reacting of, well, why am I feeling like this? About an old lady I didn't know. But that explains why you're feeling like that about an old lady you didn't know. Because you knew the version that you had of her in your own head. she was there
I think these collective grief experiences happen whenever somebody who is well known to us and means something that we have a particular value that we see in them. That we feel that we need. We see it even when musicians die, especially if they die young. When bands break up, when the Beatles broke up, there was a mourning period that people went through, let alone when John Lennon was murdered and it all came back again. Whether we like it or not, we are connected to each.
Whether we think of ourselves as independent and strong and resilient, we still have connections to other people that at a, maybe at a biological neurological level, certainly at an emotional one. They help complete us. If that makes sense, they are part of our lives. And like you say, there, some people are a constant and when they're not, when they're not there anymore, it's gonna shake us. It absolutely is going to shake us. Our brain will say, I've got a Queen shaped hole in it right now.
And if you think about these things, if we go back in time these people, we would've had myths about people. So the, the stories that would've been told by Homer would have the same sort of characters that provide the constancy, but from a storytelling or a mythological perspective. But now we can connect to them in reality. In therapy, we sometimes do an exercise we call modeling, which is where you get the client to think of somebody they really admire, or that they really don't like.
And look at what it is about that person that they like or don't like, and then see what that means about the client. What we are always seeing. And it's really important to recognize this is we are always seeing just our own version of the person. Now, when it's somebody like The Queen, she had such a mixture of personal and private.
She did let us in to know something about herself from time to time and people will give us, little insights and tell us about jokes she made and things that she likes. And doesn't like, and those we get a bit of a picture. That's not just what we see on the screen. Although, of course, that, wouldn't have been the case when she started out as Monarch. We gradually became apparent. We gradually got to know her, but we are still only seeing the version of her that we create in our own minds.
And that applies to anybody who we know from, the public eye that we don't know personally. And then even then personally, we only see what people want us to see. I remember doing a modeling exercise with a group of students once and one lovely lady in the group said that she couldn't do modeling exercise because there was nobody that she felt was, good enough to be modeled.
She said, well, perhaps Jesus, but other than that, she couldn't think of anybody, but what we were saying, oh, hang on a minute. You've misunderstood, we're not looking at the whole person. We are looking at the aspects that you see in that person. As to be the ones that you admire and want to take on, or on the other hand aspects of somebody that you don't like, what it is that you don't like, and why do you not want to be that person?
And I think doing that work can be quite useful from a personal development perspective to help us to get to know ourselves. Certainly helps us as therapists. I think any therapist listening, if you can get to know yourself, your shadow self, all of yourself, then you can be congruent. And I think that's an often misunderstood facet of being human, being congruent, being yourself.
As therapists, we are kind of used to it, um, being so comfortable with ourselves that we can be ourselves in the therapy room and help the client to feel safe. But outside of the therapy room, how often are people themselves? we know surely the, the aspects that The Queen showed us, would've been filtered.
She'd been practicing a persona all of her life to show the country and the world, what they wanted to see, which was something that embodied honesty, strength, resilience, warmth, all the things that might potentially be missing in people's lives. And now it is missing. And that is gonna be painful for a lot of folk. Somebody said on Twitter, this was, um, yesterday morning. So it was before we'd found out that she'd died.
I won't say who it was, but somebody put onto Twitter, it was a writer. They said something along the lines of I'll paraphrase it. If you are sad that a 96 year old woman that you don't know is dying, then there's something wrong with you. And I thought, uh, I both agree and disagree with that at the same time.
Because I don't think there's anything wrong with somebody, if they're sad that somebody's dying, it's it is sad because there's people that are gonna be left behind mourning and, and grieving for that. Of course we can join in, in that.
I feel they were probably trying to show off, in some way of I'm better than you, cause I can control my emotions than you can. You weak person being sad. You horrible person being sad. I I do find it really, really interesting. I mean, I've cried quite a lot since I heard the news. And for me, it feels completely appropriate, but there's something different because I've lost let's say grandparents, who've been well, not as old as that. And didn't feel.
As upset as I felt about this, because then there was something about, well, I knew that they were coming to the end of their lives, that were, uh, you know, in some level of discomfort, whatever, varies from person to person, of course. But that time was right. And they'd had a good innings as we like to say. And it's okay. So I'm, I'm speaking just for, for myself personally right now, but I don't feel that that's what I'm tearful about. Because I can switch that bit on very easily.
You know, she had a good innings. There's no question. She did what the there's scientists who give it some name. And I can't remember what the name is, but where you keep going and you are well, well, well, and absolutely fine and pretty much. Okay. And you find, and then you drop off the edge of the cliff and it's bump and so good on you, Mam you did it really well. Archetypal loss is what she represented and I think that's, well, I know that for me personally, that's okay.
But I think it's also perfectly okay. If you don't feel it. And I would hope that people aren't feeling, oh, what's wrong with me. I'm not feeling upset. That wouldn't be right either because everybody's, everybody's entitled to feel what they feel. I think, if we look at other deaths, you mentioned about, John Lennon and there's other people, and of course, Diana, it was 25 years ago that she died.
There's something different about when somebody dies young, when she was 36, John Lennon was 42, I believe. They'd got so much more to give. So the, the sadness has a different edge to it I think it's helpful to be able to see the edges, the context, the feel of the sadness that you have, all the feelings, whatever they are, to get a context of the, those feelings for for
Yes, and we are all different. My, my sadness about, losing people in the, in the public eye. strangely it's, it's the comedy characters. It's people like Victoria Wood and Rick Mayall every now and again, I forget that they've died and I'll see something that they've they've written or something that they've been in. And it just reminds me, they died. I think oh, damn. Yeah, they did. And, it was shocking at the time for me. And there is still a sense of sadness.
When you grow up with somebody, like I know I grew up with Rick Mayall and Victoria Wood. As a kid, I wanted to be an actor or a standup comedian. I settled on radio DJ and then settled on therapist and podcaster. So I'm sort of getting all my needs met really but those characters meant a lot to me. And in the absence of those two, where would, where would that affection go? It would've gone somewhere else.
And for many, because she's been literally on every bank note in most people's lives, everywhere, her face, everywhere. The Queen,
Oh gosh, they're gonna have to redo the post boxes.
Like we're not paying enough tax
Oh, do they? No, because it, no, they don't redo them. Do they? Cuz there's still some that you have G on them. So they they'll just, yeah. They'll, they'll just replace 'em as they
yeah, yeah, We'll keep, we'll keep those pillar boxes for just that little bit longer. but when, whenever anybody uses the phrase The Queen, and I can't remember what film or TV show it was in, when somebody referenced the queen and some, and somebody replied with which Queen? What do you mean which Queen? The Queen and it wasn't a British, I don't think it was a British show or film. It was, I can't remember what it was, but it was just she's The Queen.
And there are other countries with the monarchy going Hello, I also am a queen, but there's just something about the British Royal family, I suppose. That captures people's imaginations. Uh, there are those that say it's for the wrong reasons. And those that say it's for the right. There is no right and wrong when it comes to having an affectionate feeling about somebody. And then when they're gone, it's perfectly okay to mourn for them. Even if they are a 96 year old woman who you don't know.
That's okay. So, like you were saying, I don't want people listening, thinking what's wrong with me. Why am I getting upset over this old lady that died. Because of what she means. What she might represent. Maybe she represents our childhood, our youth, our mortality, ourselves who knows. There's a lot to explore and it's okay to feel it.
Yeah. A few weeks ago we discussed existential angst and of course there's, there's something I've heard several people say it, in the last few hours of thought she'd live forever. And, but nobody really thought she'd live forever, but it sort of there, and that ties into the archetypal idea of immortality, the goddess almost,
In the beginning, there was two The Queen was one of them. other one was David Attenborough.
Oh, gosh,
oh that would set me off. Oh my God. oh mate. He is the world's Granddad. Isn't he?
It has a very similar feel. I felt that it was important to just touch on the emotion that comes from, an immense cultural change that this is. And to allow it to be acknowledged, I guess that it's okay. But it's also okay whatever. It's alright. Nobody should feel that they have to go and waste a fiver on a bunch of flowers. That's going to get wasted. But if you want to that's okay too. I actually only gave flowers for Diana last week.
Well, I did, when she, when she died, I , I lived in Exeter at the time, put some flowers outside Exeter, cathedral. It wasn't a big football field full of flowers, like Kensington, Palace, but we're a Fairview. But I happened to be in Paris, on the day after the 25th anniversary of her death. And I'd never been to the site. So I thought, Oh, well, I can, so I will. So I did. And that was, that was just quite a nice thing I think the flowers were two pound 50. I didn't waste that much.
Were there many there? Flowers? That people paid respect?
yes, no, not, not huge amounts, but I mean, mine was certainly not on their own.
Hmm.
Yeah. There were lots of, um, photos and, little cards, written pieces and flowers. Yeah. And quite a lot of people milling around.
Mm.
So it, it certainly has not been in any way forgotten, but it was the 25th anniversary. I dunno what it's like on an ordinary but yeah, I just thought, I just thought, well, that's a nice thing to do, cuz I can.
Hmm. It's interesting that all these years later the Diana shaped person in people's minds was still there. The queen of hearts. Because everybody wanted it to be Queen. And maybe there's a, there's some, there's a lot of sadness about the marriage and the breakdown of it and how it happened and shouldn't have happened and did, but didn't, but did, and the shifting that there is nowadays certainly within the Royal family. There's a there's a lot more. Hmm. Love seems a lot more real nowadays.
It's not for show. It's not for land. It's not for a public face. And maybe it was for generation after generation, after generation in the past. And going back to so many Kings and Queens that were just arranged. Now it's not, there's a big jump, a big shift. And it's our generation. That's seen it.
They, it feels to me like they got caught in the middle of that shift.
yeah.
that Charles was on one side of the divide and Diana was on the other and they fell into the hole
Mmm.
in between for me, the main thing is it's just that, you know, young mother taken, for. No. Well, no apparent good reason. I don't tend to put reasons on these things anyway, but that's, that's how it was. And that's just tragic. And so she did leave a hole, I think, for an awful lot of people. And I think perhaps it's being filled. In Anon tragic way. Because she was a bit of a tragic heroine. You know, even before her death, wasn't she, she had that archetype of the tragic heroine.
So we will see what the future has to say. About the current members of the family.
I've not had any clients today as it's today's my podcast day, which all my notes I've had to scrap What my Monday podcast is gonna be about I will decide on after this and I'll be working on it over the weekend because today's been all over the place for, for everybody. And I, I don't tend to see very many clients on a Friday anyway, and today I, I haven't had any, all all I've had is the public's experiences that they're showing through social media.
And listening to the church next door bonging at 12 o'clock as it did. And I went out and took a little video and put it on social media and said, Ta ta Queenie here's to you. And I'm not a, a royalist. I've never really thought of myself as being into the monarchy.
It's just an alternative to a presidential system that is slightly less flawed, even though I'm a big Democrat, you know, I'm very interested in democracy, but hmm I still think Royal family might be a better idea than the presidential system compared to certain presidents that the world has seen over the last decade or so. The queen. Despite being able to do to a degree, whatever she wants, because F you I'm The Queen. Try and stop me. They're my swans.
Does that mean we can now punch swans again. I dunno, not that I was planning on it. Maybe we can punch a Swan now. Please don't punch Swans people. But she could have been whoever she wanted, but having watched The Crown, not that much of that is gonna be based on, on the real world. It gives you that connection. And I think it did. I, I think the, I think The Crown, the TV show was, was popular because The Queen was alive and we were connected to her.
If they'd set it in a previous generation, I don't think the program would've been much of a success because it didn't have The Queen in it. It had to be about her. It's called The Crown, but what's it really about it's about the Queen. Isn't it.
Yeah, I think they did exceptionally well to make The Queen so so. relatable and unrelatable at the same time, which is what she was. Wasn't she? I mean, I think that sort of summarizes it. You could, I mean, I'm seeing Claire Foy in my head right now, her version. I just, I feel, I really hope that The Queen was her. Not that she was Claire Foy. I mean, I hope when you're saying that the queen could be any thing she wanted to be. I hope that she chose to be herself because that feels right,
Hmm.
hope that's how she felt.
Yeah. It's a little sad. It's a lot sad.
And I hope that Charles can be himself in his role as King. Cause you know, it's gonna be a different challenge for him. In that, you know, he's had a very long time building up to this his personality has been somewhat different. And he will have to reign some things in, but I hope that he can still be him
Mm.
be himself.
Yeah. And I hope we all can.
Cause that's
I want, Yeah. Yeah. To be okay. Being you. Warts and all. So, today's been a different episode. This wasn't a topic we were expecting to talk about. We had some questions submitted some from some listeners, and I just thought we were gonna talk about those. When I saw those questions yesterday, I was like, oh, I've got some questions here to put to the Therapy Natters podcast. Fantastic. And then boom, get side swiped. And I think we've all had the rug pulled out from underneath us today.
I suppose I'm left with the feeling that it's, actually okay to have the rug pulled out from under us and to be sideswiped and to have fallen a little bit awkwardly and a little bit painfully and to sort of be okay, right, let's get up and, um, you know, soothe these bruises and recognize that, yeah, that's that, that hurts a bit and that's okay. So I suppose. Happy to be sad is what I'm feeling. I'm happy to be sad and I hope that that's that's, uh, whatever you feel,
Hmm.
any, any, listeners I hope that they, they they're okay with what they're, what they're feeling. Cuz we've talked about negative and positive emotions before. This sadness is not negative.
Mm. Yeah. Yeah. It's not distress.
No,
Mm. I think it's okay. If somebody cries to recognize, you know, these are happy tears, I'm sad, but I'm happy. be sad.
It's the right feeling to have.
because we can be sad because somebody existed to us and for us, and it's their existence that made us happy to a degree. And we will feel a sense of loss because of that. Whether it's a cancelled TV show or whether it's a Monarch that dies and everything in between. It's okay to feel what you feel about something. Even if other people don't. Nothing's a problem, unless it causes problems. Literally in the last minute of the show
Yeah,
got round to saying it
it is appropriate. Yes, because if you think about that, um, archetyping in a sense, it doesn't even really matter that she's not there cuz she can still fulfill it.
And, and will do for, uh, a generation to come, I'm quite sure. Well, I guess we need to love you and leave you folks and hopefully. the next time we speak, there'll be less of that somberness and we won't quite have an entire nation in mourning for something.
Well, at the time of recording, we don't know when the funeral's going to be do we? But I hope I hope that they will do it. I'm sure they will. As a celebration of life,
Hmm.
it's not gonna have the characteristics of Diana's, for example. The awful thing with the children, you know, it's not gonna have that, so it can be celebration and people from all over the world coming together, that will be, that'll be lovely to witness.
it will at the minute, I think that's, that's genuinely something that we all want and need that will really be, that will really be good for us. Well, if you have any, any comments or questions or there's something that you want to add about this. Please feel free to get in touch with us as always a link to send us a message and fill in the form is in the show notes. Tell us what you're thinking. Tell us what you're feeling, and if you wanna connect on social media, just look us up.
I'm all over the shop. Fiona doesn't bother cuz that's not really your thing at all. And that's fine, but I can pass anything on I'm I'm all over the place. You'll find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. I've got a LinkedIn profile, but that's not something I've used in about 10 years. I don't think I've posted anything at all, but Hey LinkedIn people I'm on there somewhere. If you need us, you know where to find us. You have a nice week everybody. Take care folks.
everybody.