Welcome one. Welcome all. This is the Therapy Natters podcast series with Richard Nicholls and Fiona Biddle. Psychotherapists on a mission, a mission to natter debate, and occasionally waffle. Although that's mostly me, but hopefully as a side effect, you can learn something new or see a different perspective. Good day. Fiona. You're on holiday.
I am on holiday and thank you for the implied compliment about me not waffling, but I do waffle as well. It's sort of part of the job, isn't it? But yes.
it's raining and wet here, but not there.
no here. It's beautiful, sunny skies.
Love it
which is why I'm here.
Yeah, there's something nice just about, about the way it's, it's, it's no coincidence that the way the sun feels on us makes us feel good. You know, we've evolved out of this planet with this great big nuclear fireball in the sky and it kind of fits us.
Yeah, so there's the feel of the sun on the skin, but the sights of the palm trees and the smell of the sea.
Absolutely love it. I always associate holidays with, I think it must go back to when I was a little kid. Coconut. There's, I think, suntan lotion always used to be scented with coconut, and I think it, a lot of it still is nowadays, and every time I smell coconut or even Malibu, takes me back to being a 10 year old on a holiday that I went when I was young, when the first sort of big family holiday, and it was warm and it was different and it was exciting and everything smelled like coconuts,
I, as soon as you started saying about the smell of the sun tan cream, I could immediately smell just a hair conditioner. But I had on a holiday when I was 16 and it smelt of peach, fake peach, of course, but that sort of peachy smell and I can, I can smell it now and it takes me straight back to that.
Yeah. It's a trigger. It's triggering, and people use the word triggering nowadays for mostly negative reasons, but we, we must recognize that the brain that makes these responses doesn't just do it for the negative emotions as well. It does it for the positive ones. Good things can be triggering. Absolutely can be. And we said last week that we were gonna talk about anchoring and this is part of it. I was waffling with my patrons on patreon.com.
Feel free if you enjoy our content to support me on patreon.com/richardnicholls, where I make content every week. There's some hypnotherapy things that I do on there every Monday, and I was asking my listeners, you know, do you value what I do? Do you really like this? Overwhelmingly people said they did, and I got some comments from people asking a bit more about it and I wanted to give them a bit of a shout out cuz it's only fair, you know, they pay me a fiver or a month.
I, I ought say hello to them. So Elaine says, love your hypnotherapy content Richard. It's so relaxing. I wish I could just click into it anytime I liked. And Steve also said, if you're making any new hypnosis recordings, Richard, I would love one for presentation nerves. Well, I'm going to look at those two topics and see what we can put together, and they both kind of rely around the same thing that you can create a feeling. I mean, maybe there's some reframing in the presentation.
This thing about excitement versus anxiety and acceptance of emotions and sensations in our body. Cuz, we're supposed to feel stuff we're humans, but certainly we can draw upon experiences that we've had in the past where we felt quite good and bring them back into the present day. I'm having a new bathroom put in at the minute.
When they were doing some plastering yesterday, it took me back to being a kid because my dad, for a brief period was a plasterer, and there was just one or two occasions during the summer holidays when I went to work with him and I was hanging around all these grownups in these, this building site and the smell of the fresh plaster. It made me feel that I fitted in, that I belonged.
And just the smell of the plaster, even though I really don't have anything to do with the construction industry, it just gives me that strange feeling of, yeah, this feels good. And yet at the same time, I'm not allowed in the bathroom, and I might need a wee, , and I'm really uncomfortable, but no, this is good. This is good. So you can feel two different things at the same time and still feel good. Strange
We all experienced dichotomies of beliefs. Why not have them with feelings as well? Yes. You can feel good and bad about something at the same time. It's, it's very normal. So Elaine , and her idea of how can she switch into it immediately? Well that would be very easy to set up an anchor for that. But for Steve for presentations.
Whenever I do presentations, I always used to get myself into the right frame of mind in order to do it, cuz it's not my natural place being in front of an audience, but I can do it. But I use anchors. But we've sort of described what they are, but I think it's really important to recognize that they can be positive and they can be negative. As you were hinting with the triggering idea, people do tend to use that word. Oh, I was triggered by it.
Well, they don't say that when they've got a bit of sunshine on. I was triggered to feel good. No, but it's the same thing. It's something external to us takes us to an emotional place within us. These happen naturally, like coconut and plaster and sunshine. And those are all positive ones, but they happen naturally, negatively as well. But you can override a negative one and we'll talk about how, and you can create positive ones.
So there's an awful lot of control that each of us can take with our anchors. To take control of how we feel a lot of the time.
Hmm. And doing that is one of the first things I think that I learned as a hypnotherapist. The idea that Elaine was talking about, which is, I wish I could just click into this feeling anytime. Well, that's often what we do in somebody's very first hypnotherapy session is we teach them some very, very brief relaxation exercises. Whether it's through physical relaxation or mental focus.
Either way, their mind is just sort of captured and and focused just for, even if it's just for a couple of minutes where you've got their attention. Cuz you're talking to them in a way that they're interested and they're listening and they're focused on you and their heart rate slows down maybe and their brain slows down you simply give them the suggestions that you can return to this feeling anytime you like.
Anytime you like, you just need to close your eyes, let your mind relax and you can bring yourself back into this comfortable state of mind and body or whatever is appropriate. It's what we do really pretty much in everybody's very first session, I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but that's what I give people as homework. Go and practice that. Do that every couple of days if you can, and we'll continue where we left off next week when I see you.
And sometimes on rare occasions, that's all people need, depending on their mental health state. I mean, people don't tend to come to hypnotherapy for severe depression or lifelong personality disorders. But if somebody's got, you know, some little niggly problems and they go and see a hypnotherapist, sometimes that is all we need. Just to know I can click back into this feeling just by remembering it. And sometimes clients will listen to my podcast recordings.
Not my hypnotherapy stuff, but just me. And it's my voice and it's familiar, and they go back to it. Even though on my podcasts, I'm all, hello, isn't the world great? Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy, bouncy. Even though I'm being really energetic, they hear my voice and it reminds them of that time the other week when they were rested and relaxed, and it just takes them back into that comfortable feeling.
But talk about a dichotomy. That's, that's a lovely dichotomy. You can, when time is appropriate, you can hear bouncy, bouncy and feel really relaxed and calm at the same time. That's a lovely combo, isn't it?
yeah. Just goes to show, actually, you could be walking down the street eyes wide open, and all you've gotta do is just remember that you have the ability to slow yourself down. You don't have to close your eyes and go and lie down in a dark room somewhere to bring back those comfortable feelings that it's a natural part of who you are, and might need a little bit of practice, but it might only need just one or two goes at it.
Should we look at some other examples of anchoring?
Absolutely. Do you have some.
I have some. I asked my sons and their girls for some examples from then, and then I might give one or two of my own, see what happens. But Greg said, Sundays at the rugby club have quite a distinct smell,
Yeah.
Hard to describe, but it's a mixture of chips, bacon, ketchup, and a hint of mud.
Yeah.
Now, Greg didn't tell me what feeling that led to, although he did say he doesn't have it now, but now he's a referee. When he was playing at the Rugby club, he was a teenager. So it's belonging. I would say it's giving him that real sense of being part of something and it's a, obviously, it's a good feeling. So he gets that feeling when he goes to Rugby club, even though now he's refereeing, which is a different sort of thing, although they do tend to include referees in Rugby.
Oh yeah, rugby's. Very different. Yeah. Different level of respect, isn't there? Yeah.
Yeah. So, so that was one. And that was on smell. Smell is really, really powerful when it comes to anchoring. Remember a friend of ours, Shaun. Shaun was at a conference in the States and he was waiting for the lift or the elevator. And when he got into the lift, a woman got out and she sort of left us the smell of her perfume behind in the lift. And it was the same perfume that Sean's first girlfriend had worn.
Ah,
He just, I dunno for how long he probably exaggerates, but he stayed in that lift for quite a while. Just going up and down, up and down. Cause he was just transported back to that feeling of his first girlfriend. One for me is the smell of English tea, ordinary tea. I don't drink it. I've never liked it, but my grandparents used to have a cup of tea in bed in the morning. They'd retired, so that was part their routine.
And my brother and I would go in and play in their room whilst they were having this tea. And the smell of that tea makes me feel very warm and secure. And loved. Because I'd play in there and go through nannies cupboards and take out all these little things that she had hidden in her cupboards and things. it's a nice one. So I like the smell of tea.
Greg reminded me of one that I, I haven't had this one for a little while cuz things have changed since the smoking ban. But, I used to be regularly transported back to being a seven year old, eight year old, walking past a pub on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe I got into town with my mum and she was holding my hand and we were walking through Bedworth town center, as it is. And there'd be a, combination of the senses, so there'd be the noise from the inside of the pub.
All these men There was, it the creaking of the door and there's the smell of the beer and the cigarettes, so the mixture of the cigarette smoke and the beer smell, and the sounds of all the, all the men having a nice time and the creaking of the door, and just the change of the, of the sound from it being muffled behind the door. There's that just a click bang.
until the smoking ban I had that every time I walked past a pub, it'd just take me back to being an eight year old who felt that the world a little bit naive, but felt that the world was great and everybody's happy, and I've got no reason to be upset, no reason to be sad that everything's gonna be fine. And. Yeah, that's gone since the smoking ban because pubs don't smell the same anymore, which is good cuz instantly overnight, suddenly the world got cleaner for us in my area.
But I wanted, yeah, I'd like to reproduce that. I might I might have a little bit of a hypno session with myself and get some of those feelings back. Cause we could do with a little bit of is the world is actually quite good and people are kind to each other deep down. We could do with a bit of that lately.
We could, we could. But I just wanted to point out that for some people that would probably provoke a completely different reaction if they found that that sort of place wasn't safe. And I've got one that's quite similar. And for me, this provokes really similar to the tea feeling of security and so on, but it could other people be completely the opposite. My parents they didn't smoke or drink and they didn't go out very often, but when they did go out, my mom would wear a perfume.
She didn't wear it any other time and it wasn't a particular brand or anything. So it wasn't like Shaun's experience, it was just she put on some perfume. But when they came back from the night out, they would come and give me a kiss goodnight. I'd be half asleep probably. Cuz I'd probably stayed up longer than I was supposed to try it on with the babysitters to pretend that I could stay up later. They would come in and it was the combination of the smell of perfume, booze and smoke.
That combination of smells made me feel really secure. They'd come home. I mean, there was never any doubt in my mind that they would come home, but it was still that it was that lovely feeling.
And this is why as therapists, when you see people face to face we don't wear perfume. We don't wear aftershave. And our deodorant is antiperspirant with no perfume in it. Cause we don't want to be triggering. We don't want to create the wrong emotions in people. We have to be blank for a bit.
But there are other things that we can't help. I mean, there's, I've got one from Ellie, which is a visual one. She says there is a certain point on the M1 motorway that I would wake up at every time we would go to see my grandma. Even thinking about that junction, I feel the same excitement and comforting feeling.
Yeah.
So all she, all Ellie has to do is she wants to feel that excited and comfortable feeling is think of a junction on the M1
Wow, that's amazing.
I've got one about the sound as well from Jack and music is what I use when I'm doing the presentation. So, sort of along the same lines. Jack says the Robbie Williams album, Swing When You're Winning. Any song on that takes him straight back to playing darts in the garage. He says, and I can smell it too And I asked him what the feeling was. And it was basically just excitement being a kid and Christmas excitement. So again, a good feeling.
But they don't, as I said, they don't have to be good feelings that we get. I expect most people have got triggers or anchors for uh, foods that have made them ill at some point in time.
Oh yes. Certain alcoholic drinks yeah. One of the reasons why Dawn is tea total is cuz she was sick on Brandy when she was about 19 and I just met her, maybe she was 20. She's not touched it since, you know, she just, no, just the, just the thought of it makes her feel sick. She says
That's very
just the thought of it. And that's, yeah. Very sensible. The brain learns, don't do that. It makes you sick.
We can also have anchors to names. I probably shouldn't say but there's a particular name of of somebody who was not very nice to me at one point in my life. And so I don't want anything to do with anybody with that name.
Oh.
And if you think about it, we, we often name our children after people we really like and admire. That's cuz we've got a positive anchor with those. But we wouldn't dream of naming our children after the person we didn't like at school. Because we've anchored the name to it. But what do you do then if um, your grandchild, for example, is named one of those awful names? Or you, you really do, you really do want to eat that food again or have some brandy. You can break these anchors.
It would be a question of think of the bad situation, the bad, whatever it is. Let's say it was a song. Let's say there was a song that was linked to when you got dumped or something like that. And so every time you hear that song, you feel sad.
It, it takes you back is
takes you back. Yes. It takes you back. Listen to that song, but think of things that are really, really positive and mentally deliberately connect that song to the new feelings and it'll overwrite the old anchor.
Yeah.
It was a time, it was a silly, it was a silly thing, but it was logo that was used on some sports tournament on the TV a few years ago, and it was really annoying and it would come up between every little segment, so very regularly, this silly little logo, and it was driving me nuts and I thought, oh, I know I'll create a positive anchor to it. I can't remember exactly what I thought of. I thought of some really, really nice time in my past and linked it to that.
So then every time that logo came up, instead of feeling annoyed at this silly little thing, I felt the nice feeling come back.
Mm. Linking things together is a really good idea. If somebody's got a phobia of something. If we can associate the, the thing, as long as you know it's not something particularly risky or dangerous. If somebody's got an odd phobia, like maybe lifts clowns, that was a common one since Stephen King's It story. if you can begin to associate it with something that you like, that you trust, something that is safe, something that is funny. Even silly music.
I will talk to clients sometimes about the silly trombone sound. Mm, just that, and they'll see me pull a funny face and they'll see me do the trombone action. And they'll, they'll be a little smile on their face cuz you know me, I'm, I'm a bit of an amam. Let's let's be silly sort of person. Yeah. And so he puts a little smile on their face and, and I say, I want you to think about that sound.
And I want you to think about that trombone noise and even my silly little face pulling that trumpet face. I want you to think about, think about the lift or think about the spider or think about the clown or whatever, but hear that music over it, whether it's a cartoon that they liked or something different. So if you can stitch these two things together, what started out as a fear of a lift, whenever they then think of a lift, they think of the thing that makes them smile and, and it does.
It overrides it. And that doesn't take a great deal of practice. You've only gotta do that a handful of times, and the brain soon sticks them together. It really, really does.
Yeah, so what we're saying here, it might sound really simple. That's cuz it is actually very simple. If you think of how easily these things can be set up, you only have to hear a song once at a bad time. I know there's, there's a song and. I don't think we should actually name particularly any of the negatives, cuz it might lead to people having a, having a, a link. But there was a particular song that was around at the time that I had to take my cat to be put down and I cannot listen to that.
That was, that was 20 years ago and I cannot listen to that song. Still, I could change that, but actually I don't really want to.
Mm-hmm.
it. It's not the sort of song that's going to be played. much, so it's not a problem. And that's another thing is these things aren't always, even if they're negative, they're not always a problem.
Mm,
Things are only a problem
if they
cause a problem.
Yeah. Haven't said
So obviously with, with, well we haven't said it for a few with Dawn's Brandy one, that's probably a good thing. So it's a negative anchor, but it's a good response.
As far as her brain and body is concerned, it's kept her safe.
Hmm.
What causes problems because emetophobia, which would be the, the fear of sick, of being sick, that can be quite triggering because obviously it's such a great loss of control and such a great fear of it. And because anxiety makes us feel a little bit sick anyway. If you've got any triggers that you associate with nausea, that can be quite a hard thing to override that, that does take quite a lot of practice being okay with that feeling. But again, it's it's done in the same way.
But word of advice for therapists and clients who are trying to override something like that, you have to tread very gently, be very slow with a emetophobia because you can't work it in the same way that you would with other phobias of systematic desensitization of just, well, let's just look at these images of people being sick. Cause there is no graded exposure. You go from zero to a hundred percent.
So you've gotta be very, very gentle with, if you're gonna use images for that sort of thing, you've gotta be, those images need to be very blurred. Just the word.
Yeah, and it, probably sounds really obvious, but some things that people are afraid of are actually dangerous or negative and other things aren't. So it's. Being sick is never, I mean, it's a good thing if it is actually clearing out a poison, but you know, it's not a good thing, not a good, good thing. Whereas if you're afraid of clowns, there's really no needs to be afraid of clowns.
Yeah. That serves no purpose, does it?
Clowns are supposed to be positive things.
And they always were. They were, until Stephen King wrote It
I think there's something that children can't relate to them, so they don't quite know what's going on. I think there's something, but that's not the intent anyway. Generally speaking,
Yeah. Steve was asking about presentation nerves and I think that can be quite a useful thing to, to explore. Because it is normal to be nervous about being the center of attention. I think of myself as a relatively confident guy when it comes to being the center of attention, but I still feel nervous when I've gotta do something, especially when it's my own words.
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and sitting next to the best man before he had to give his speech that to give him a, he said, oh, Richard gave me a good pep talk and he got me, got me through it. So it was good. I suppose I did. We were just, we, I was just talking really. It was just, and I guess I did explore the, the time you know, when he got married and how he felt when he had to do his speech and how he was excited about it.
But he was proud and actually it was, he gave a speech, he had the entire rooms in tears. It was gorgeous cause it was his brother, as he so often is. And it was really, really nice. It was so sweet. Of course he was, he wanted to get it right, so he was nervous. Before we have to do something like that. I think it's useful to remind our body, first off, that it's okay to feel the way that you feel your feelings are valid. That's, that's okay.
If you feel anxious, it's because this, this is important to you. That's okay. And it's okay to tell yourself. I want to do this. This is important to me. With a bit of clever wordplay with yourself, you can maybe remind yourself that you're excited about this because there's nothing worse than telling yourself. And this is a mistake that a lot of people make with affirmations. They're trying to override their affirmations with the, with a completely opposing feeling by saying, I am calm.
I am calm when they're not. And we know study after study shows that if you tell yourself, I am calm, when you are not, it makes you more anxious, But if you say, I'm excited.
Because the unconscious mind is just gonna say, no, don't be ridiculous. Of course, or not. No, don't be daft. And with more fruity language than that, if it's my unconscious mind, it tells me exactly
So it's okay to be excited about something. What I would suggest is that you remember times in the past when your body felt that way and it was a good thing. When you had that funny feeling in your tummy or you had that spike in your heart rate and it was a good thing, remember that. Remember what it felt like to be excited. Remember what it felt like to look forward to something and be enthusiastic about something and like something. And remember that.
Even if you have to close your eyes for a couple of moments before you have to give your presentation speech and get really into that memory from when you were 10 years old and you did something that was great or Christmas day or what, whatever it is you take yourself back to. Just have a think about those feelings and remember and step into that memory if you can.
Whether it's a memory that you can smell, a memory, that you can see, a memory, that you can hear, a memory that you can feel, get into it for just a couple of moments before you then need to give your speech. But what we can do is we can associate that with a particular action. Something that can be quite simple, a lot of people do this. Is the thumb in their finger, the thumb in their forefinger.
Squeezing it together as you remember that memory, and then when you go and give your speech, Squeezing your thumb and your finger together can bring those feelings back in a good way. Thumb and finger is quite good. For some, it's holding their hand in a tight fist, but I always think that's a little bit aggressive. But for some that works depending on the situation. Holding your hand in a tight fist.
For some, I've used, I've used this with clients and it's putting their tongue to the roof of their mouth in a particular position where they wouldn't normally do it. So it's not something they're gonna do that often, but in a, in a different position that they normally would. So it's innocuous. Nobody knows that you've just done that. It's not aggressive in any way, but it trains the brain that every time I do this little action, it takes me back to this positive feeling.
And that's a great way of overriding negative associations you've got with a situation with a stimulus.
If you want to get really serious with anchoring, there's a way to do it to put up to eight different things in almost at the same time. Well, two lots of four, which is by putting cause Richard's right in front of me, I can demonstrate it, but to explain it as well, it's to put the fingers of one hand on the back of the other hand and anchor in a different feeling with each finger
Touching each knuckle.
and what I sometimes do touching, well, it's perpendicular, one hand, perpendicular to the other so that you're touching different places, sort of from the wrist up to the, the bottom knuckle of your finger and four different places is . What I do is I go one hand as a being hand. And one hand is a doing hand. so you've got then eight different points.
So being is things like being confident, feeling loved, feeling safe but you work them out with your client, work out what they need and people listening can do it themselves. This isn't complicated stuff. And on the doing one, it's things like feeling competent and then more specific things, depending on what it is that they, so the presentation, it would be things like, I am clear, I speak nice and slowly. So you, you can have a being hand and a doing hand.
And the thing with that is that you can sit or stand wherever you are, tap the back of your hands. Nobody would ever know what you're doing. Whereas as you say, if you're clenching your fist, people are going, what's he doing? And if you do the thumb and forefinger, people go, oh, they're
Well, Johnny Wilkinson used to do that, but he'd cover, he'd cover his hand before he took the shot, wouldn't he?
And I think the, the place kickers on Rugby are are definitely anchoring. But so, What it really comes down to is when you just gently tap on the back of your hand. When you've set your anchors, you get to, you feel good. They all combine. You don't sort of say, oh, right at this particular moment, I need to feel safe, so I'll do that as the second finger. Is it, or is it the third one? I'm not quite sure. You just do them all and nobody's ever gonna think, what are you doing? Just tap.
It's just nobody would ever notice it. And then you're just building up, building.
Yeah, and the more you do it, the better at it. You get.
And because I've just been doing it to demonstrate it to Richard here um, I feel great . Cause as a therapist, I dunno if you do this, but when I'm ever setting anchors with a client, I always do mine at the same time because you might as well.
I remember watching, it was a Darren Brown show, must have been 15, 20 years ago, something like that, back in his early days, and he was teaching people confidence and he did it by anchoring a confident feeling with them rubbing their legs. It was an interesting one.
I think he'd just done lots of practice with people and found that if they just rubbed their legs, but then at the same time he played a piece of music and then tricked them later on by having a van drive by him playing that piece of music and it just took them all back to that confident I can do anything sort of feeling. And it was a strange one cuz in those experiments that he did, he got people to pull a gun on a security guard and try to rob the van, which was a weird one.
But, and I'm always a bit skeptical about stuff like that and what edits there is and what was taken out, what didn't work compared to what did, but yeah, you know, you can, you can go quite far with your confidence, But that was a very specific situation. He got a load of people in that were willing to take risks and filter out which ones would shoplift and so on. So he knew what he was doing. Smart.
Yeah, very smart. Good telly but I, I thought that the rubbing the thighs was a, a, a known sort of comfort motion anyway, isn't it? You know, if you see somebody rubbing their thighs, aren't they sort of self comforting generally speaking? Maybe they've just got an itch
It depends on the context because anybody that, that grew up in the, in the nineties watching Vic Reeves on shooting stars, rubbing his legs at the attractive women have got a comedy association with that that it's just, it's just a creepy man. . There you go. But my generation probably would, whenever I think of somebody rubbing their legs, I just think of the Vic Reeves character that Jim Moir did rubbing his legs at Ulrika Johnson because it's the meaning behind it.
So I think we've, we've covered a lot here
I think we have.
And I hope that people will be able to go away on their own and set some and break
Yes, absolutely.
and notice the ones that you've got that are positive. Use them. Notice the ones you've got that are negative break
them. just the job. Excellent stuff. Well, thank you Fiona. What a lovely matter we've had today.
we have indeed. I'm off to the pool.
Yes. I'll, I'll leave you to your, your holiday. How long are you away for when you back?
Oh, it's a week. Yes. I'm back next Wednesday.
Well have a super time and for everybody out there in listener land, I hope you have a super time too. If you'd like to submit some questions or some topic ideas. There's a link in the show notes to a form where you can send us some suggestions and we'll see about featuring you and your question here on the Therapy Natters podcast. Have a super week, everybody. Speak to you next time Bye for now.
Bye.