Hey there podcast fans. It's time for another episode from the Therapy Natters team I'm Richard Nicholls. And with me is fellow psychotherapist, Fiona Biddle. Welcome if you've never heard the show before. Welcome back, if you have, Hey Fiona, here we are again. This is episode 23.
I can't believe it's episode 23 already. I feel we've only just started, but.
Well, we started talking about doing something like this a couple of years ago. Maybe.
was a very gradual
I dream that?
idea. Wasn't it of, oh, that's maybe, maybe, yeah. We both got stuff in our heads that we wanted to get out.
I mentioned to a, a friend of mine. Who's a psychotherapist. Purely coincidentally, she's a psychotherapist. I know her through the other circles. hadn't seen her for ages. I went, ah, guess what? I've got a new podcast project I've been doing and she sort of clapped her hands. I went, oh, what's it. What's it? What is it? What is it? What is it? And I, and I said, oh, it's me and my supervisor, Fiona.
We turn the mics on, and we take questions from the public and we just have a natter about the things that are on our mind and about therapy and stuff. And she went, oh my God, that's fantastic. Because sometimes I wish I could record my supervision sessions because that's when some of the most amazing content comes out. The, the most amazing perspectives on things that clients have brought in and as well as our own personal development. Oh, I love it.
Hello, Meg, if you're listening I hope you are. But we're not allowed to record our and publish our supervision sessions. That would be crosses the boundary.
I do a lot of supervision, you know, sometimes, they're very challenging. And, if I had the pressure of them being recorded, as well as trying to say the right things, that would be, yeah, no, definitely too much, but it is a very creative space.
It is, but it's also a very private one. For those that, have never seen a counselor or psychotherapist, supervision is one of the very, very few places where anything that your client would, would bring in is one of those few places where it would be talked about elsewhere and on your very first initial session with your counselor or psychotherapist, they will say, this is my confidentiality protocol. These are the ethics. What you say goes nowhere.
I will not disclose anything about you to anybody else except in these circumstances. And then we have a conversation about people who might be, in harm's way and court orders and things like that. And one of the things I specifically drop into my sessions is, although I won't mention you by name, there might be things that you bring into this session that I will talk about with my supervisor. This is her name. This is who she is.
She holds the confidentiality agreements in the same way that I do. And it's, it's, it's a wonderful resource. Supervision is great. Nobody ever complains. Don't talk about me with your supervisor because that's, that's not, that's not, that's not good, but there's a reason why anything to do with mental health or health in general really is private. It's personal because it's nobody's business, it's nobody's business what you bring into therapy.
It's nobody's business that you're seeing a therapist or a counselor. And this is what we were talking about briefly before we turned the mic on. I, I have a phrase that I'll say regularly. Oh, I was talking to my therapist the other day, or I was talking to my counselor the other day. And I'll say things like that. I've never heard anybody else say that unless they're therapists themselves, but maybe my world is filtered.
I think there's, a sort of American thing about having a therapist isn't there still that, that it can be seen as a, um,
An unnecessary indulgence.
I was gonna say the other way round sort of seen as a badge of honor, but it can be both. Of course. Some people will, will say the, you know, that the, I have a therapist as, as a sort of sign of some sort of status. But it does, it, it comes across as a sort of quite Americany sort of thing and not very British,
Hmm.
I think it, these things are, these things are easing. I've definitely noticed a difference. People are more willing to talk about it. And we see this from the referrals we get. I remember probably it was about 2003, at a conference, a guy doing a presentation on building your practice. And he said, oh, you can't ever get any referrals from your clients because nobody ever talks about it.
Well, even at that time, I can remember sitting in the back of the room, looking at Shaun and going, what of course people talk about it, but it certainly has increased that people are much more willing to talk about the fact that they have therapy and talk about the fact that they have mental health issues.
And I just want to sort of put that on the continuum because everybody has mental health issues just as everybody has physical health issues, whether that's, they might get a cold from time to time or a pain in the toe. Everybody has these things, and everybody's on a continuum and sometimes they feel more anxious than they would like to do or feel a bit more down than they would like to do, or have a bit more existential angst.
As we talked about last week, then they would like to do mental health is not a something you have, or you don't have.
There's a big difference between mental health and mental illness. They're different things. And like we said on one of our very early recordings. Sometimes people come to therapy wanting a diagnosis. And that, isn't what we do. We, we help people maybe after a diagnosis because they've been given this label and they go, well, what, now we go, well, we'll try and find you a therapist. Let's get one sorted. And they go on a waiting list and can't, can't wait.
So they see one privately potentially. But we don't do that diagnosing. But a lot of people are self diagnosing via Dr. Google a lot nowadays, or they'll listen to podcasts and go, ah, I listen to a podcast episode all about narcissistic personality disorder. I wonder if I have it now, there is a particular condition. I forget the name of it.
It's not, well, it's not a condition condition, but what you find is that doctors in practice will find themselves diagnosing themselves with all sorts of physical ailments because they're learning about them. The more that you know, the more that it's in your awareness, the more tempting it is to go, well, I have that problem. Well, I must have an endocrine issue here. Oh, I must have a dopaminergic problem here. Maybe not. It's only because you understand it.
And that little bit of intelligence, that little bit of knowledge, isn't always a good thing. And I was reminded of that because of the, message we got sent recently. is it my turn to read it
I really can't remember, but go
say it is. I'll do it. It was from Deborah, from London. Hello, Deborah. She says, Hi Richard and Fiona. I have a question about disclosing my mental health problems. I have depression and anxiety and I'm prone to anger outbursts from taking things personally. I am single. And my problems have held me back from dating because I don't want to get my hopes up and fall in love just for them to reject me when I'm triggered and angry.
I wonder if it would be better to disclose early on that I'm prone to these things. But I also fear that all that would happen is I get rejected sooner and potentially more often. Any advice will be gratefully received. Love the podcast. Thanks in advance.
Well, thank you, Deborah, for messaging in, and I'm sorry that you're feeling a bit stuck with this because whether somebody's issues are about self-esteem, whether they're about anxiety and depression, I hear this phrase where people will say, I can't be in a relationship with somebody else. Unless I sort out the relationship I have with myself first, and I get why people might think that.
And for some people that might be the case, but if somebody doesn't love themselves, for example, if they've got very low self-esteem having somebody else in their life that does respect them. That does show positive regard, whether that's a therapist or a close friend or an intimate partner that can help with our personal growth that can help with our anxiety and depression. So I don't think people should be scared about dating. If they've got mental health problems.
Also the way that Deborah worded these things were as absolutes. she said I have depression and anxiety and I'm prone to anger outbursts from taking things personally. So. She's taking the labels. We've no idea if this has been diagnosed professionally, but however it is, she's taking a label on, of having depression in the same way that somebody might take on a label of, I have migraines or. Whatever, and I have anxiety.
Well, everybody has anxiety because that's a normal human condition and depression, you know, everybody has down days and up days and you know, maybe too many down ones, but it could be seriously depressed as in the diagnostic way of looking at it, clinical depression. I tend to think of it as capital D or little D she's used a little D, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Prone to outbursts from taking things personally.
Now, in some cultures around the world, having anger outbursts is sort of the norm,
Yeah, I did a Patreon podcast episode. I'm sure it was a Patreon one. Not a public one fairly recently about this. And I did look at the studies and literally from Northern Estonia down to Southern Portugal, Europe, particularly it's normal. It's quite common to have these angry outbursts because there's a problem. And then 10 minutes later, it's forgotten, gone, and they just move on, get on with their day.
And I dunno whether you found this, actually, if you have a British client, who's married somebody who's from a culture where it is quite an explosive thing. They're quite, they can be quite triggered, cuz I'm just not used to this. Cuz the meaning behind that explosive behavior is different for them than it is for somebody from Spain or Portugal or
Yeah. The very typically British thing is that anger is bad, but that's nonsense. Anger is a terribly appropriate emotion, quite a lot of the time. And if you take something personally, i.e something has hurt you then to have some response to it is surely more healthy. Than not having a response to it. So my feeling is that perhaps Deborah has been in an environment where people have been telling her that her anger is inappropriate when maybe it is appropriate.
There's a theory in transactional analysis. Which is called Racket Feelings. The idea being that during childhood, we find, our default reaction emotion. And one that works for us as a child. And I'm wondering if Deborah's anger response is her Racket Feeling. So it's, it's just the default that just happens when something feels not right. So I found this website, Psychology Muffins. Now, that's a quite a good phrase, isn't it?
I'll have one of those, please. I dunno the ingredients would be in a psychology muffin, probably a lot of coffee.
Uh
Speaking from experience. I am mostly caffeine.
Are you okay. So the ideas, uh, um, quoting here from this website, you surely have met people who tend to have emotional responses, seem unfit for the situation. Someone who cries when you'd expect them to be angry or gets angry when sadness would seem appropriate. Someone who always looks and feels alarmed, regardless of what's going on, someone who starts laughing when talking about a painful, scary experience.
And this happens so often that it becomes the new normal, well, I don't think the word new needs to come in there because if it's learnt from childhood, it's going to be the way that they respond. So if we think that we all did this, that we all, as children found our way of responding that worked for us. And I suppose there could be a gender difference here that some boys might be more likely to have found that anger worked and girls found that crying, worked.
Sorry to be sexist about it, but it's, that's there for a reason. Uh,
Yeah.
so it's, it's that looking for within the self. You can do it when you're looking at other people as well. But when examining yourself is to think about how you do respond typically to when something goes wrong. So that's why I'm thinking that perhaps Deborah's Racket Feeling is, is anger. So she's responding with anger when other people don't feel that anger is the appropriate response and then.
She's going to get a different reaction from them then the times, you know, if, if somebody kicks your dog and you say, oh, that was lovely. How sweet, that's pretty inappropriate. You expect to respond with anger. So anger can be an appropriate response, but if she's finding that she's responding with anger. When that logically isn't the correct response. It might be a racket feeling.
If you have an insecure attachment style that means that when you feel a connection to somebody, you have to lean in towards them because to not is dangerous, you could push you. You don't want them to leave you because you have an insecure style. Then you might find that you can be overbearing, send too many text messages too soon. And then when they don't reciprocate could be offended too easily.
or more easily than is probably warranted and maybe get angry more than is fair, and then push them away because, oh, you can't be trusted after all. You just ignored me. Well, actually they were just in the shower or they were with their family. They were gone to their parents' house for lunch, whatever. But the meaning behind it might be, I can't trust people. Another one scratched off the list. And maybe it is a good idea, early on to say, this is my attachment style.
I can be a bit insecure sometimes. Don't be offended if I get quite angry, if you don't reply, if you haven't replied to my text messages too quickly and I get triggered, but I could understand why people wouldn't want to have that conversation with somebody they hardly know in case it pushes them away. And it just feeds the problem. Doesn't it.
I think, you know, obviously, as I was saying earlier that we do talk more about, mental health, but I, I still don't think it's the normal, first date conversation or even a around the table in a pub with your mates, however long you've known them conversation. And I would include women in that as well. You might discuss the fact that you feel something, but it's not usual, to get into the why's and wherefor's as to what's going on for you.
And to do so might scare people off I suppose the thing is you, you can never possibly know in advance whether talking about this or that or the other, in the same way that you don't know whether talking about art or football or music or whatever it might be is going to be a good thing or a bad thing. But I would say it's more important for Deborah to understand herself at this stage and to see where this is coming from. Why, why she's reacting in these ways, when it, it is appropriate.
When it's inappropriate. We talked about that in terms of emotions, a few episodes ago, and. Then also going back to what you were saying about the, the judgment of society, to not necessarily worry too much about it.
We are supposed to have a fight or flight response. Without it, we don't get any signals from our emotions, from our unconscious that drives our actions, those feelings are there for a reason. If our body feels an emotion, it's trying to say you wanna move towards something or you wanna move away from something. To try and stop that feeling and go, I don't wanna feel anxious is dangerous. Like a fear of Heights.
When people come to therapy, especially as hypnotherapist, they might say, well, I've got this problem with a fear of Heights go. It's not a, it's quite normal to have a fear of Heights. We don't wanna stop that. But what we we've gotta work on it. If it's so intense that it stops you enjoying a good view or stops you enjoying, you're just driving over a bridge, whatever it is, that's the trigger.
Yeah. We wanna deal with that, but it's unrealistic to think we can just switch it off and have no problem with heights otherwise.
I remember somebody, I worked with, who had fear of heights. And I just, I just used a, to me, it was a throw away comment, which I didn't even realize was going to be significant. I said, well, of course, if a fear of heights is a fear of falling
well, it's a fear of landing.
and the guy just sat there went, oh, and I didn't need to do anything else. We did carry on and do the rest of the session. He didn't need anything else. As soon as he realized
Huh,
that that's what he was afraid of, then it, it, it was
what perspective shift, cuz he was able to tell himself if he had that fear experience that
not
So nothing to be scared of this
yeah. Cause he wasn't in a situation where he was going to fall. You know, if you, if you climb up the Eiffel tower or drive over the Severn Bridge or whatever, if you're not going to fall, you have to do something, extraordinary to fall.
it's about trusting ourself. If our body is telling us at an unconscious level, I need to step in, in case you make a mistake, I need to step in, in case you accidentally throw yourself over the edge of this. I need to step in and hold you back. We need to be able to tell our unconscious to tell our body I am safe. I can be trusted. For our body to learn. Oh, you can be trusted. I don't need to step in all the time. I'll still be here making some noises in the background. I'll be back here,
Saying Be careful.
but I don't need to be right here. Yeah. I just need to turn those signals down, quieter. Well, we can't stop the what ifs going through our head, cuz the reason we've populated the planet, the reason we've become as successful a species as we have, is because we have frontal lobes to, to think with and wonder about and have those What If moments and like Deborah she's thinking, what if I disclose that I'm overly sensitive and it puts them off? Well, what if it does? And?
And she's also doing the, what if I don't and then I react way and that puts 'em off.
Mm,
And she can't with any given person, goes on a date with as to what their reactions are going to be. I'd like to encourage Deborah to think about the Racket Feeling idea and see if it's something that you Deborah learnt when you were a child that got your needs met. And if you find that that is the case, which it may be, or may not be, but if then perhaps you, just intervene a little bit for yourself with your reactions If you start it, you go, oh, no. Hmm. I'm not going that way.
I'm gonna go this way. Take a little bit of a pause and especially on something like it's, when she's been offended, I think that was the phrase, you can take a bit of time. Don't have to immediately respond.
it's a useful habit to get into when it comes to things like text messages or returning calls. If there's something you feel in the moment that you want to say, you might literally just have to wait, might be 10 minutes. Might be 10 seconds. You might literally just have to count to 10 before you then compose a reply. But certainly if you have accidentally composed a reply whilst angry. Wait, before you send it just in case, actually there was no tonality. In the original message.
So you couldn't see or hear what was really being said. And instead accidentally heard something that belongs to a past experience so that when, like she said, specifically, um, oh yes. I'm prone to anger outbursts and taking things personally. That's what it was. And like you say, if there were some things that went on in your past Deborah. If there was a time when you focused on that, when you were quite young, do bear that in mind.
We've said before, the way our memories are consolidated is through emotion. The more emotions we experience about something, the more likely it is the brain goes, right. Never forget that that's important. And so 20 years later, or however long, we have something that uses the same, neurological string still uses those same neurons in the brain for, oh, I've just been criticized or I've just been rejected or I've just been insulted or whatever.
And it might be that you weren't, but your brain out of habit and expectation has just got that one way of going. And I, I know it's really hard and some, for some people it might take a day to see a different perspective. You had a client about that. There was fear of Heights. Actually. It's a fear of falling. That's all they needed to hear. And in an instant they changed and shifted their perspective.
Now, for some people that might take a day of, of thinking about before their perspective has shifted and gone. Oh, I see. Oh no, it's fine. And for others, it's half a day for others. It's 10 seconds for others it's instant.
And for one person, it might 10 seconds, one time and a day another, a technique that can be really useful. a very simple one is to write it down. So if you feel, offended or you've taken something personally to write it down almost as a, it could be, doesn't have to be, but write it as a script, in a play of what the person actually said, what they did, what their feelings were behind it.
So imagine what the other person was feeling and what your response was, what you might have said, what you didn't say, what you were feeling, write it all down. And very likely to give a different perspective, cos most people, most of time are not meaning to give offense. If somebody is meaning to hurt, well then there's something wrong. There's Something wrong. If you set out to hurt somebody's feelings.
So most of the time, the things that Debra is taking personally, I will presume because I don't know you Debra but most of the time, people aren't intending to do that. It's inadvertent, it's careless. It's something that they don't realise is important to you, or they got it wrong, you know, all sorts of things, but writing it all out. Can really help get to an understanding of the process.
What we would do in a therapy environment, at least what I do in situations like this, I would say if you were to explain to them calmly, if they were here in this room. And this was a, couple's counselling session, for example. And they were just listening to you. They'd had 10 sessions already. They know how to effectively and efficiently listen. And you, can calmly tell them how you felt about what they said, what would they say in reply?
And so often the client says things like, well, they they would say, I didn't mean it like that. Okay. So there's a part of you deep down knows they didn't mean it like that. Yeah. That's cos that's what, that is what they would say. And what would you say? Well, maybe I'd forgive them. Maybe I'd say, OK whatever.
The, I didn't mean it like that is a very common one of course, because you know, people aren't always brilliant at communication and are sometimes careless and just don't think. But then there's also the times when people say something that's factually true and somebody takes offense at it. And that that's something to, to think about as well. It's a tricky one in, in society. There's certain things you're not supposed to say to people, even though they're factually true
I felt quite embarrassed for a friend of mine once when my son was quite little, I dunno how young he was. Maybe he was four. Maybe he was five, something like that. And, uh, a friend visited and went onto the patio and my son was walking behind her. And as she walked out, Billy said gosh, you've got a big bottom haven't you? And nobody said anything. And, uh, I told I've reminded him of that story a couple of years ago and he's, and he puts his head in his hand.
He's like, I didn't say that to her. Yeah, you did mate, because from your perspective, she had a big bottom, but she didn't wanna hear that. I'd have thought. I doubt very much. She was happy to hear that she was probably accepting of her big bottom,
Well, you
there's a chance she wasn't. No, we don't say those things and yeah, it is factually true. If you were to define the size of bottoms on a scale of small to big hers was big. It's factually true, but that doesn't make it inoffensive. Does it just cause it's true.
Then you get into the territory of the importance of being able to tell white lies.
Yes.
You know, if you get a present and you don't like it, do you say I don't like it? Or do you say, oh, thank you. Wonderful. That's so sweet of you. Thanks.
Oxfam
Truth can hurt, which is a bit weird when you think about it. Why should it, if you've got a big bottom, you've got a big bottom. Why should that hurt? But it does
because of the meaning behind it. If the meaning is this is a small child who is just figuring himself out in the world, it's not offensive. If it's How can I criticize you and have power over you? And for Deborah to say to somebody on, you know, date number 3 oh, 1 thing I've never mentioned is mental health struggles. And then their date leans forward and says, oh, you have some mental health struggles. Yes. Let me take a deep breath and tell you a little bit about it. That's a painful thing.
That's a difficult, vulnerable thing to do. And then if they don't know what to say, because we live in a culture that doesn't know how to communicate properly about stuff like this. Cause we're pretty rubbish. If they don't know what to say. That doesn't mean they're not interested in you or that they don't care for you. It means they don't what to say in the same way when somebody's Mum dies and you just dunno what to say. That is the culture we've got. It is starting to shift.
And I like to think that we are doing our bit to help, but sometimes people don't know what to say
We dunno what to say and the best thing to say in my opinion, or my experience, when you dunno what to say is I dunno what to say.
Yeah. That's exactly right. Exactly. I hope that the people that are on the other side of the, of that conversation, if somebody was to say that to them, I hope they can then know it's perfectly fine to say. I dunno what to say. And the other person goes, that's fine. I don't mind that you don't know what to say.
Work work it out between them. Yeah.
So. Another episode done and dusted Fiona.
They go so quickly
they do
I hope they go reasonably quickly for the listener as well.
30 minutes is a good commute time. I think the average commute in the UK, well, it used to be 40 minutes was the average, but a lot of people are working from home nowadays. So they're listening to this on their lunch break or in, in the background whilst they're tinkering away, whatever it is they do for a living. However you listen, please do give us a rating. If you think we're doing a great job, go onto whatever app that you're listening to this on.
Find the button for review and go love these two. Great folks. Cause somebody did say something like that and left a review and genuinely did make
it really
cuz you know, that people are listening. It really does make a difference to know that that people are listening and they're like what we do. And also if you leave a review, click the five star button, uh, then. Other people are more likely to find it and listen as well.
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Cause I've got little clips of this, edit, edited a little bit out the middle, sort of two minutes of it. And I put it on
didn't know you did that. Oh have clever of you. I don't do anything.
Yeah, well, I'm a, I'm a bit nerdy. I'm a bit geeky. I like playing around with stuff like this. And, and so, yeah, I'll sit with some software and add some subtitles on. The links are in the show notes. If you'd like to follow me and you can catch up on what I'm doing over the next couple of days, if you wanted to my silly little postings and ramblings Well, everybody, if you want us, you know where to find us, please submit some questions or some topic ideas.
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