And hello to you. It's Therapy Natters time. If this is the first time you've listened. Thanks for coming on board, take a seat. Chill your boots. Therapy Natters is a podcast where myself Richard Nicholls and my friend and colleague Fiona Biddle have a natter about therapy, cuz we're both therapists. You see. So we like to think we know a little bit about all of this and we try and answer your questions and see if we can help you along your way. How you doing Fiona?
It's uh, it's Wednesday again, he says last. It is and it actually is. said last week that we record these on Fridays, we are recording this one on a Wednesday, but yes, life it's complicated business. Isn't it. You have to change days and all sorts of things, but yes, all fine. Yeah, well, it's simply I'm going on holiday. So we are getting two in this week, so we can, we can catch up so that we don't get far behind on holiday? Really?
I mean, it's, it's it's, I've not been away for three years. Is. Gosh. Wow. I was supposed to be obviously like a lot of people was, was going away in 2020 and it was canceled. And so, uh, the flight was delayed for two And I am completely joking cuz. it's only about two months since I was went away. So Aha, you do deserve a holiday Thank you. How do you decide where to go when you've got everywhere in the world to choose from? Uh, it's a good one. Isn't it?
Um, I've been discussing with my kids recently about going for a weekend break in October, and I said, come up with three possible places. Each of you, there's four of them. That's my sons and the two or one wife, one fiance. one of them came up with three places. The other three didn't come up with anything, but on my list of three I had 38 places. What, well, it was my, it was my decision to say three, so I didn't stop. I had 30, I'd still do have 38 places on my list.
And strangely the first one on Greg's list was not on mine. Which was Lisbon so got you got between us. So yeah, when you're making a choice between all these places, and this was limited to Europe, I said, Europe only, cuz it's just as it's a little break, it's not a proper big holiday. So I had 38, so 39 places. So how do you choose. I'm reminded of the what's often referred to as the jam experiments. Have you heard about the jam experiments? The jam Go on. it's often called the jam studies.
It was done with a few different supermarket items to cut a long story short. Cause I don't wanna bore everybody. Supermarkets will sell more stuff. If there is fewer choices, if you've got 14 different types of jam on the shelf, you'll sell fewer jars of jam. Then if you just have three to choose from, because if there's too much choice, it's a problem. And we just get decision fatigue. You can go, no, can't do this. I'll have no jam. And we just have nothing.
So when you've got 39 places to choose from, if you're not careful, you end up not going anywhere. Choice is a fascinating subject. We touched on it last week in terms of the existential freedom to choose. And we said at that point, that we'd discussed choice today. I think the basic premise that I tend to start with from on the subject of choice is really the definition of the word. If you are choosing then by definition, there is something good about the options that you're choosing between.
Because if there's nothing good about option A, then you will just do B and it's not, it's not a choice. So for most people, when you get up in the morning, well, actually just that you have a choice get out of bed in the morning or not. Most people aren't lying there and thinking, oh, I have a choice now get up or not get up. Then you have a choice. Do I brush my hair?
Or don't I do I clean my teeth or don't I, these aren't real well, they are choices because you could do the opposite, but they're not because the choice is so obvious. So when it becomes a choice, Like let's move forward and look at a breakfast scenario. Should I have Marmite on toast or crunchy nut cornflakes? Then if you choose one, you are losing out on the benefits of the other, and that's the fundamental principle of a choice. But there has to be regret in some way. There has to be a loss.
There has to be, you have to be losing something. And the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin wrote about this, about the loss of choosing A rather than B or B rather than A. That's Isaiah Berlin, not Irving Berlin. So that's existential regret. I suppose he would've called it or somebody called it. That's a familiar phrase. That's not one I've made up. I don't think. The number of times that I have found, it's almost like you can hear a penny drop with a client.
When you talk about this, when they're trying to decide what to do in a decision in their lives. Now, most people think you'd probably agree with me, Richard, but most people don't come to therapy to decide whether to have Marmite on toast or crunchy nut cornflakes. Most people come to therapy for bigger choices. One of the standard phrases that we use is should I stay or should I go Ha The clash. The Clash. And that, that tune always, I've got another tune coming up in my head.
Another one of these, but that, that choice should I stay or should I go if anybody's in that position, there are going to be pros and cons of both. Look at both sides. Often when somebody's trying to make a big decision in their life, they'll look at the pros and cons of going, for example, if they're trying to make a decision about change. So let's look at the pros and cons of going. They also might need to look at the pros and cons of staying. Look at both sides.
And then you might find that you are unconsciously or emotionally drawn to one way in particular. I was actually talking to somebody yesterday who was saying that they'd stayed in their marriage for 40 plus years. I won't go into the details because I wouldn't want the person to be able to identify themselves. But specifically it was for a reason. This wasn't a client. It was outside of this realm. But if they were going to therapy to look at the pros and cons of staying and going.
Because this particular reason was being given so much weight. And that's another thing, you know, you can do pros and cons lists. My, son's fiance was doing a pros and cons list of wedding venues the other day. And that's fun. Nice thing to do, but you also have to recognize that there are weightings to it. So. might find the most perfect wedding venue, but it's in, well, let's just say somewhere completely inconvenient that nobody can get to.
So that con would completely outweigh all the others. Or you could have an absolute pro, that the celebrant of the wedding was going to be, oh, who would I choose? Uh, Stephen Fry, I was actually going to say Hugh Laurie huh? That's funny. of, of them, both of them. even better. If I was to be offered a wedding with those two as the celebrants, I would, I would even try. I would find somebody to marry in order to, to do that, that wouldn't be that strong a pro Yeah.
I think even my wife would agree. We could renew our vows. But the, the weighting of the pros and the cons is important when it comes to choices, but so often people do have tendencies to either make choices too quickly or too slowly. And when I say that I not being judgemental in that. I'm just saying for their own benefit, that for a lot of people taking a little bit more time to make a choice can be helpful. Yeah. We don't wanna make big decisions when we are too emotional.
Cause we can't the area of the brain that helps us to formulate our future and look at the pros and cons. It goes to sleep if we're anxious or stressed or angry or something like that. So we really need to wait. That's why people say sleep on it. It doesn't mean wake up and you'll know, the answer to the question, but it means let your brain rest first and it's easier to make a decision one way or the other, especially if it's so big about ending a relationship.
And yet, because of all those defenses that we put up, those defense mechanisms, sometimes we just walk away unnecessarily. Well, that's it. We are done. Aren't we? Well, we are now and it didn't have to be, we need to sleep on it sometimes. Now, we had a question didn't we on this. almost on sort of the other side about not making choices. Should I read it out? Hmm. Yeah. Go Hmm. It's from Naomi, from Warrington. How can I improve my overthinking? When it comes to purchases?
If I need a new laptop, I can spend weeks getting bogged down by the details, comparing prices and specifications, reading reviews. Yet we'll often end up buying the first one I came across anyway. I do the same even in restaurants and can spend so long looking through the menu that the stress of it stops me from wanting anything.
Now, I think that does tie into, and in one sense, compared to the ending of a relationship, it might seem a little trivial, but it's the same, it's the same sort of process that it's, it's not knowing how to weigh up the evidence and come to a decision. Going back to what I was saying earlier about, well, it's always something to lose. If you're looking at a new laptop.
as far as I'm aware, unless you've got well, even if you do have thousands to spend there probably isn't one that's going to tick every box. Because even if you've got a Mac versus PC decision. Can't have everything from both. So you're always going to lose out on something. And meals in restaurants. I actually, before I saw that question, I'd written it down on my little list of things to talk about. Just in a restaurant most of the time there is going to be a difficult decision to make.
Yeah, And I know that for me, I usually focus on the thing that I missed out on. But then if it's with my sons, I'll pick it off their plate anyway. They did that in the extensions to those jam studies. They did it with chocolates and they gave people a choice. It was just a, a taste test thing with some chocolates. They didn't know they were taking part in a psychology experiment. They just thought they were giving a questionnaire about what chocolate tastes nice.
But what they found is if they give somebody a choice of say, I think it was 12 chocolates to choose from. And then they rate it on a scale of one to 10, about how it felt in the mouth and what it tasted like, how pleased they were that they chose, the one they chose. if there were 12 chocolates, then they rated their opinion of the chocolate lower. There was a bigger sense of, eh, I'm not so sure about this.
If there was only three chocolates, they rated the chocolate as higher because there's less chance of a regret if there's 11 others, they're thinking, well, I wonder if the one with the hazelnut in the middle was better. Whereas if that wasn't a choice, then they enjoy the one with a caramel, for example, more. So less is more. It really, really is. It allows us to be grateful, always down to that gratitude foundation to mental health. I think.
I wonder how that relates to choice of partners and, you know, starting from choosing who to accept a date from or who to approach something. Cause if you think about that decades, hundreds, whatever long time ago, People wouldn't have had very much choice as to who their partner was going to be. Would they in most circumstances?
I mean, I think probably if you were living in ancient Rome in 100 AD, you probably did meet quite a few people, but most of society throughout time, you wouldn't have had that many choices. Mm. Whereas now I've noticed it with clients, see whether you, too Richard that always the grass is greener. Yeah. Because of the advent of the online dating world. It's so much easier to say yes, no, you just swipe one way. You swipe another and, rightly or wrongly, it is a lot easier to set up dates.
You could easily have three or four dates a week and it wouldn't be a surprise for people to, to come to therapy and tell me that that's what they're doing. It happens a lot. And I, I have met people who have that decision fatigue when they have all these dates. And now you've got 20 people that you're chatting to, trying to decide. Well, I, I can't possibly get to know all of these people to see if they are gonna be a good partner for me. I've gotta whittle it down.
Cause there's only seven days in the week. People are gonna get stuck cause they'll just do nothing. Because that's the answer. I can't decide what to do. I'll do nothing. I can't decide which laptop to buy. I'll buy nothing. I can't decide what to have off this menu. I'll have nothing. My wife did that the other night. Took Billy to the cinema and his girlfriend went to watch Thor movie again at the cinema. We just went to the little pub around the corner and the menu was just huge.
I was like, oh, I dunno. There's just too much. And, and my wife said that she went, oh, there's just too much. I dunno what to have. I went, well, just have either that, that, or that just pretend that there's nothing else on the menu. And she went way, but I was quite drawn to that. We'll just have that then. Oh, I dunno now. Ah, But then on the other side of that coin, there are the people who always choose exactly the same thing. And don't look for the.
Do you know what I saw a study that said that, that is literally, you know, we always talk about variety being the spice of life. Actually, studies seem to suggest that we enjoy the familiarity of what is safe more. If you really like lasagne and you have lasagne everywhere you go, but you know what variety is the spice of life. I've I'll have something else. gonna be disappointed cuz you didn't have the lasagne. Yeah, that's right.
And I think that there has been some studies that suggest just go with what you normally have. It's okay. It's fine. Just have the same thing. It's not boring. If you like it. She had the scampi in the end Yeah. I suppose to me, it's about it's, it's that word balance that I often use. it's about that. It's about being open to having other things, but not feeling that you have to. So if you want to have lasagne, which is your usual thing, then that's absolutely fine.
But to not feel that you can't try something else. So to consider it, I suppose, is the thought. And just that you're talking about the the indecision bit of not doing anything, this, where does it come from? The idea of The donkey that's stuck between two bales of hay, Ooh. not sure where that comes from, but the, the donkey starves to death, because it's equidistant between two bales of hay and it has no reason to choose to eat one rather than the other.
Well, that's natural selection at play there. Isn't it. But you can see the point. You can yeah. point. Well, how does it choose the one on the left? Because the one on the right is just as good. So choose the one on the right, but then it, oh, it's how much do do people do that? And I think that's where routines are useful for people that if this is what I always do, I always go to the hay bale on the left. It's just what I do. And if it's not there, cuz it's run out.
Then I go to the right one. It's no big deal. I'm open to the idea, but I'm gonna go with, what's familiar a bit like how Steve Jobs, who, when he run Apple. He always wore the same clothes every day. And he had, I dunno, maybe he had a dozen black polo necks in his wardrobe and he just went out to his wardrobe, put on a black polo neck, put on a pair of jeans and off he went to work.
He didn't have to think about it cuz the routine, which some might say is a little dull and boring, but you know what it's harmless. Although. I say harmless, but we do have a bit of a cultural problem when it comes to doing that sort of thing for women particularly. Men, not so much. So I think for men, men, don't talk to each other in a pub and go, oh, Hey, you wearing that jumper again? I saw you in that last week. No one gives a crap, but women, I think we do live in a culture.
That's a little judgemental to women when it comes to variety. And the way they look, my wife has, I think I counted her shoes the other she's moved her shoes. Her shoes used to be in this office cuz it's got the highest ceilings. So there's a, there's a Billy bookcase. She's got a new, new room, shoe room. She calls it. She must have, I think she's got 90 pairs of shoes. I think there's 90 pairs of shoes. That's a lot of shoes for two feet and they are, they do look gorgeous, not gonna lie.
Some of them are just almost ornamental. She's probably never gonna wear them and they look gorgeous, but she's got a different pair of shoes for every occasion, every situation, a different movie, a different theater trip, a different anything. There's a special pair of shoes for it. And I think women are cultured into making sure that they live that way from when they're young, when you go into the clothes shop. Yeah. I mean I got rid of an awful lot of shoes when I moved to my new home.
, but I've still the drawers under my bed are my shoe drawers and I've got a boot drawer, a winter drawer, a summer drawer, and a trainer drawer. So. There's there's a lot of shoes in there. There wouldn't be 90 pairs, but there's a lot and a lot will never get worn. But I noticed this and I will admit to it, cuz I have no problem admitting to it. At the time of recording, we are in the midst of the, leadership election for the Tory party for our next Prime Minister.
And when I saw Penny Morden wearing the same outfit, two interviews in a row, several days apart, I did go openly. I didn't was just in my head. I said it to somebody I was with, I said, oh, she's wearing the same thing she wore the other day. I didn't say that about the male candidates. No. I said it about her. I just wanted to go onto the idea about choices in terms of the fact that we are constantly making choices.
A way that it's often looked at in life is that we get to a fork in the road and we choose to go down this path or that path. I think it's worth thinking that there are actually much more than just two paths. So when people are deciding what to do. What subjects to take, if they're going on at 16, what to do after that? Do they go on, do A levels? Do they do apprenticeships? Do they do this? Do they that do the other? Let's say just for example, they go on and do A levels.
Then they might want to go on to university. Then they could go to any one of the hundred or whatever it is, universities that are in the UK. They could do any one of X number of subjects when they go there, they go into a hall or they don't. And they, some of that could be random. They might not have a choice, but they meet different people. And then they go out with different people socially. Uh, they meet people on the course.
They get to know people making choices, constantly that lead down different paths. And this is the other song that came into my head was I think it's a George Michael one. We turned a different corner and we never would've met. If I turned a different corner, then we never would've met. I can't So there's no chance I'm gonna sing it. But I think it's a George Michael one Sounds familiar.
a bit like the I'm thinking of the, I've not seen the film, but I know that I'm, I'm aware of it in popular culture. The film sliding doors, is what was the next thing on how was it? Oh, we should have chatted about this beforehand. because. Well, you've already got it on your list. Haven't you? So I'll let you mention that.
no, go ahead cuz that's all I know is that it a, No, I haven't seen it either, but I love the idea that there is this, alternative life that you led because you, just took a different decision one day. Or missed a bus, or I think that film is about missing a train. Hence why it's called sliding think. Yeah. Tube train her day turns out differently. So her life turns out differently just because of that one change in her day. And of course, yes, that is the case. And we have to be okay with that.
that shouldn't be something that causes an anxiety that, well, if I'd have gone to that school or took that job or met that man or that woman or whatever, then my life would be different. Yes, it would. But this is the one we've got, and that is okay. But I think a lot of people do live in this regret. Don't they. They do live in regret. And the thing is that if you just look at the creation of human beings, I think that's quite an interesting one to look at.
We were all, well, some people who were listening, would've been created by IVF, but most people through history of the world have been created in the same manner. And if that couple who created that baby had waited a day. Somebody had a headache or there was something more interesting Or one of them got cramp and had to wait five minutes. Showing my age now. That person that you evolved from that occasion would be a different person. And that's everybody.
Who has ever existed is a result of a decision. Hmm. Sometimes not both parties decisions, but a decision, nevertheless, in some way, shape or form, and a slightly different decision would've resulted in a different outcome. Yeah. I mean, I I've got quite an overactive imagination, so I'll do lots of daydreamy weird stuff when I'm getting ready to fall to sleep. and sometimes in my mind I can travel time. , and I go back to nine months before Hitler was born and kick his Dad in the balls.
And it's just a daydream, but it's just something to do with my imagination to help me sleep. And then it sort of delays them, delays his parents, having sex for 48 hours or whatever, cuz he is a bit sore. And so it's a different Adolf Hitler potentially. But it's always just potential. We do not know. And that is okay. We do not know that alternative reality and that's okay. Cuz this is the reality. We've got. And we are in this reality at this moment in time.
Whether that's as we are recording it, or as you are listening to it. And in the next 24 hours, just think of all the choices that we all have, every single person on this planet has. And that can feel really overwhelming, but I'm not saying it in terms of being overwhelming. I'm saying it in terms of, we can just let it. Hmm. And just think, well, we make the choices that we feel are the right things to do at the right time, with the information that we have at that time.
And to give ourselves that bit extra time when we can. But if we don't have time, if there's something that needs urgent action, then we do our best. So many people will say to me, About their past something that they've experienced or didn't experience. And they'll talk about regret and, and they'll say, why did I do that? I dunno why I did that. I don't, I don't want that in my past, but it it's a path that I went down. Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Or whatever?
And the answer's always the same because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It seemed right at the time, like you're saying with the information you've got available, that was the decision you made and it seemed right. Now people have hindsight because they see the results of that and they then feel guilty and blame themselves and go, but if I hadn't have made that decision, but you didn't know, you didn't know.
So that word regret is really important to look at if when this feeling regret to look at it and see, well, would I have done anything differently? Chances are probably not. Or it's 50 50 call or whatever, in which case. Whatever it is, don't blame yourself. And if, if you would've done something differently, well learn from it. And that's all you can do cause to use another bit from popular culture, but a long time ago, the It's A Wonderful Life. Or is that what it's called?
Yeah. It's a wonderful life. Christmas film. yeah. That's going back and changing time and Back To The Future. I saw the back to the future musical, the other. Woohoo. Wonderful. Oh, it's brilliant. Definitely go. Definitely go, if you can. But those are, I'm sorry, if this is a spoiler, fiction. We can't go back and change that mean I can't kick Hitler's dad in the balls? Ah, lucky him no, cuz he'd probably agree with you. But we can't change the past.
So regrets I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. And a bit like, like the listener that wrote in talking about the sort of decision fatigue about electronics and things like that, the overthinking that comes from it. I think she hit the nail on the head in the question and said, I always end up going back to the first one that I saw anyway, then, you know, you don't need to worry about it. It doesn't matter.
and if there is some regret, you can forgive yourself for it because it doesn't matter. I do think she could. Proceduralise her process. Does that work? Does that as a phrase, no, it to make sense as she could have a little spreadsheet and put the pros and cons and the weights of those pros and cons down. And if she knows that that's something that she does then do it properly and smile at herself for doing it. Why not? There's been this trope for years now.
The idea that if you're not quite sure what to do, just flip a coin because you'll know. You'll know when that, when that coin is a particular way, you'll know whether there's, oh, actually that's not the way I wanted it to go. And somebody I spoke to recently, it was actually Andrea McClean of the Telly. And what she would suggest is you flip the coin. Once it's in the air. if you go into your heart, you know, which way, which way do I want this coin to land?
I think I know which way I want this coin to land. And then you can just leave it. You haven't gotta look at it cause it's just being in the air and there's those two choices, but which way am I drawn to? I just let it fall and then don't look, but you know where you know what you want then. It's certainly a technique I use. If I can't decide whether I want, for example, a Chinese or an Indian takeaway, I'll send a WhatsApp message to my sons and say, which should I have?
And they come back and they say Chinese. And I say, oh no, no, I want an Indian, I didn't know that until they told me I wanted that I should have a Chinese. So yeah, absolutely. These things do work. And then we can just accept. Yes. And that, that, that word accept, acceptance. It crops up in so many of these episodes.
and I, I hear it in, in the sessions with clients all the time, because there's often common themes that people bring into therapy, but the questions that we've had submitted over these few months, they all been quite varied. And the topics we've been talking about have been relatively different, but still those foundations are often the same. Aren't they learning to accept what is. Because as, as the phrase goes, it is what it is about so many things. It is what it is.
You've been watching love island I, no, no I haven't, but I, I I'm genuinely, sorry. I've never seen an episode of Love Island and I know it's a big part of popular culture and I should be on board with, with all these things, but it is. It is funny how they say that at least twice every episode. But it's the same, it's the same phrase that we've always had just in different ways. We used to have, ce la vie or que sera sera. Yeah. I I've often say it is what it is.
I think I even had a podcast episode called that once, maybe it was a patreon one I don't know. Hey, join me on Patreon if you want to hear more from me, you know, uh, just plug that in But, like with love island, we can't watch everything. We have to be okay with choosing, what am I gonna do with my evening? Am I gonna finish watching Stranger Things? Or am I gonna start watching The Boys.
But we have to be okay with the regret that comes from well, I'm missing out on something else whilst I'm watching that. I'm not watching that drama that's on BBC and people will talk about it at work the next day and go, did you see that? Did you see that? Wasn't it great. No. I have to be okay with missing out on that and not being part of that I don't think that Stranger Things versus the Love Island was on Isaiah Berlin's radar when he was talking about it, but it still absolutely fits.
We cannot do everything. We cannot choose everything. we have to exclude, we cannot have both Chinese and Indian takeaways. Well, I certainly can't. you cannot choose everything on the menu. you cannot have every date. to be every job every, every, laptop every option, every laptop, we have to choose and it's recognizing that by choosing one, we lose on the other Fiona, I've just noticed the time the time. We need to disappear away for another week, but we will be back.
Dunno what we're gonna be next time yet, but I'll have a peruse through the questions that we've had submitted and we'll see what we've come up with. In the meantime. Take it easy, relax. And, um, don't worry too much about the choices you've gotta make in life cuz you know what it'll be okay. It's okay. see you soon everybody Bye.