Hello there everybody. How are you all doing? It's Therapy Natters time again. If you are new to the show, this is a podcast series presented by two psychotherapists who are happy to have something to share with you all. If you've got something to share with us. Because the topics we talk about mostly come from your questions, How are things Fiona? You been busy since we last spoke?
Busy. I not sure. I can never remember what I've been doing, but I know that last time we said, oh, maybe Autumn's coming at, I think today it really hit. It's really chilly, but that's nice
Yeah. I didn't put the central heating on last night, but the electric blanket was on that's for sure.
Wonderful things aren't they, yes.
Oh yeah. Surely we look through Maslow's hierarchy of needs somewhere in there quite far down the bottom, propping everything else up is feeling comfortable. I mean, I was gonna say feeling warm because I associate warmth with feeling comfortable, but there are lots of people who don't and they might love a cold swim in the Thames.
But they want to get warm afterwards I bet. Don't they? I don't know.
Ah, that's a good point. Yeah,
have to ask my sister-in-law who does very strange things like cold swims and ultra ultra Iron Man things. So
Those, those that do it, they rave about it.
Yeah, but I got my I've mentioned my Ukrainian family. I got them electric blankets and their, their comment on WhatsApp. Cuz we communicate that way quite often. Cuz the translation makes it easier. They said we don't need to fear the winter now. And I thought, oh, that's nice.
Oh,
They're not fearing the winter. Cause they've got electric blankets.
do we have that bad reputation here in the UK?
I think it's this, the, the energy crisis, they're disappointed that we don't get much snow. They were Oh maybe no snow or not much snow. But they'd, they'd heard all these horror stories of, we're not gonna be able to heat our houses. And even though I'd said, it'll be right.
What have I been doing? I, I was, oh, I was presenting at the BACP private practice
oh, that's happened has it. How was it?
It was great. It was really nice to see everybody. I mean follow a few people from the BACP on Twitter and to actually see them in person was really, really nice. Went out for a little meal the night before, and then I did my presentation. It was only an hour, but there was there was some, questions asked afterwards. There was an online thing as well. There was a hundred or so people there in the room, but there was also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds online.
Watching from home counselors and psychotherapists dotted all around the world. And I thought, God, this is scary stuff. This is putting myself out there in front of everybody. And I, I did exactly what I knew I'd do weeks ago when I started making notes for the presentation. Which is worry too much about it. I made all these notes about the different things I was gonna say, and I thought better memorize that. Better learn all of that.
Yes, I wanna say that there's all these things, thousands and thousands of words, full of content. And as it turns out, I just needed to stand there and just be me
Well,
just talk about the stuff I already knew
Well done you for doing that. I think it's, I think it's brilliant. I'm, I'm impressed and very happy that you did it. We've talked about worthless worries before haven't we, I cannot remember which episode, but we have talked about worthless worries. That to me is preparation.
Yeah.
And okay, maybe if you were to talk on a continuum, maybe, I dunno, maybe you were six on the anxiety, maybe seven
it it jumped between six and seven. Yeah, I must have until I was up there
And then?
And once I was up there, 20 minutes in, this is
but if you had. In your run up to it in your preparation to it, you'd been one stroke two. Well then when you got up there, you may have gone to an eight
Oh,
because you hadn't prepared. So that to me is a perfect example of worthwhile worry.
makes sense. Yeah.
And I dunno about you, but when I do it, I sort of smile at myself. Doing it, this is, this is what I'm doing. I know what I'm doing. And I probably don't need to do as much. I could be at five or four. But I know me I'll stay at the six stroke seven because then I know it'll be alright.
What's interesting to me is the difference between the way I feel when I present for an hour at a conference to a group of psychotherapists or counselors. And it's all my words. It's it's me. I'm being me up there. The difference between that and when I do my amateur dramatic stuff is vastly different. Because when I do my amateur dramatic stuff, even if I'm doing an hour long monologue, which I have done before. And that was all me. But they weren't my words. They were Alan Bennett's.
So if there was gonna get some criticism from the audience, I can share it with Alan Bennett, whereas to the group of psychotherapists and counselors, when I'm up there being me any criticism well that's all on me. And I think that makes a difference. Does to me anyway. And I think, yeah we're all, I say all there's a very absolute thing to say, oh, we all have this fear of what other people think of us, but maybe we do. Maybe we should care at least.
Yeah, it's interesting. You come up with a should then, because we generally say we shouldn't say should. But I think, I think you are right. To my mind was going to anybody who doesn't care what people think that's somebody who's got a problem. We talk about continua. We know just using that on the anxiety, saying six or seven, that's on the continuum from 0 to 10 or whatever end you want to use for your continuum.
But if you talk about somebody who's at 10 as to caring what people think that could be a problem. But 0 on a caring what people think.
That could be a defense mechanism. People can often pretend to not care. So they call it a zero.
That's . Well, yes, you can pretend to, it also depends on what, what the context is. So if I'm sitting in my little corner. Which I spend most of my time sitting in my little corner and I'm doing an embroidery, which again, I spent a lot of my time sitting in my corner doing an embroidery. If I was on a scale of one to 10 of how people would think about that embroidery, then the zero is absolutely fine because it really doesn't matter what anybody else thinks about it.
I'd still rather, they didn't criticize it, but they're not gonna see it.
I'll be interested though. When somebody talks to me about something they're creating for example, and they might have this voice in their head, this self critic, this inner critic, that's criticizing the work that they're doing. Maybe it's embroidery. Maybe they're doing some embroidery and they've got this voice in the head that says, this is rubbish. You dunno what you're doing. This is awful. This is awful. I do wonder if it's an introject.
Whether it's not really their voice, actually it is still an external one.
Absolutely. And I think I've mentioned on here before about Needle work classes at school where we were so judged and you had to do it right. It can be a problem, but it doesn't have to be a problem. That's what I was getting at. You can be a zero and that isn't a problem. Whereas if you happen to be the new prime minister of a major country in the world. And you say I do not care if my policies are unpopular. Do you, do you not care? Should you care? I don't know. It's a complicated one. Cause
It is isn't it? Yeah, it's very specific.
to be. In that sort of role, I can see you have to be prepared to do something that people will not understand as being a good move. But specifically to do something unpopular and say it in that way. Mm-hmm makes me wonder.
Should I read out these comments so that people know what we're talking about.
Yes. We've nattered too long.
Yeah, so patron Joanne, who's a patron on my Patreon show. And if you're interested, if you would like to hear some more from me. If you'd like access to some of my hypnotherapy recordings and you'd like to get access access, to me, that sounds really weird. But if you'd like to message me and keep in touch with me, or you'd like to support what I do, then yes, you can find me on Patreon. Link is in the show notes. I'll make sure it's in there. What Joanne said. A quick question.
Why do I get so motivated when someone admires my intellect or career? Does it mean I have a big ego. And on a, a different episode, patron Kenny said in reference not caring what others think. I find that I become fixated on making sure no one thinks I've done something wrong. Feeling guilty is the worst feeling in the world to me. And I'd love to feel different. Yeah. it's all part of the same process isn't it?
Of external validation of getting your ideas and your your self-esteem fed to you from the outside, your opinion of self being fed from the outside, rather than from your own internal place. And that's not fair.
Well, it might not be fair, but it is very natural. And I think if we look at a couple of theories for a minute, and then we get more to the specifics, the idea of and we did mention this, I think it was in episode 13. There is a term called locus of evaluation and it's where do people take their judgements of themselves from? So an internal locus of evaluation, the evaluation is happening within the self and external is obviously the opposite from outside, and this is a Carl Rogers theory.
He started it, but many, many people use it in many spheres. But a quote from Rogers in most statements which make or imply a value judgment, the spatial locus of the origin of the evaluation can be rather readily inferred. So if we look at Joanne's comment, why do I get so motivated when someone admires my intellect, career, somebody external to her is, judging her positively and that does her good. Now that's a good thing isn't it?
It is, yes. I'd be concerned that it would also operate too much the other way as well, that if somebody external was to criticize, then it would demotivate.
That is when it becomes an issue. Explicit question. Does it mean I have a big ego? No, it doesn't mean you have a big ego. I think we can be pretty direct. Oh, you might have a big ego, but this doesn't mean that you do. And what does a big ego mean, anyway? Does it mean. Confident. I know who I am. I feel okay in my own skin and standing my ground. Well, those are good things.
I guess it is helpful to be inspired or motivated by praise as long as we believe it. Problems would occur if somebody does give us praise. But it's followed up with our own inner critic of I fooled them blagged that didn't I,
Or they're just straight wrong. Or they're just being nice.
Yeah.
I mean, some people cannot take compliments.
Hmm.
That's a thing, isn't it?
Yeah, it is. So that happened to me at the weekend. Somebody said, oh, you've got a, you've got a, you've got the perfect voice for podcasting. And I didn't know what to say hello to you if you're listening. I didn't know what to say. I had to acknowledge that. Cause we were all therapists. I was able to go, oh, that makes, yeah, that's really strange. That makes me feel really weird you saying that. Cause I feel that urge to say, oh, this old thing, you
At least didn't say you got the perfect face for podcasting.
you've got a great face for radio Richard. I mean, we laugh at that, but isn't that cruel? It's, it's actually really quite judgemental and rude to, to have a comedian say, oh my mother-in-law got a lovely face for radio. Right, okay. Move on. But that was the culture we had for a long time. And I think there is still a little bit of that culture around. That it's okay to be rude about people and criticize, cuz it's banter. It's only a joke and
Well,
not if it's malicious
that's an interesting topic in of itself, banter and teasing. It has to be, it's a two way process if banter or teasing is a one way process. Well, I would just say that's, that's just wrong. That gets into other labels. But if, if two people are engaging in that process together, And both enjoying it. Then that's absolutely fine.
About 20 years ago, it must have been, cause it was before my son was born. I was in the back of a car with some being going to the pub. I was in the back with my then girlfriend, who's now my wife. And we're being driven to the pub by another couple. And they were just at each other in the front. He was driving, she was in the passenger seat. They were just having a bit of a dig at each other. Like they did, like they always did. And it was fun. It was banter.
It was just the relationship that they have and probably still have now. And all was fine for 20 minutes of laughing and joking and banter until she went to play with his radio to change a button or something. And he said, get your fat fingers off that. Your face. Yes. I mean, it's just a phrase. Fat fingers. Means nothing, but it did to her and the, the whole dynamic changed, that stopped being banter to her. That meant something to her.
He didn't know how to handle that bless him cuz he was like, I thought we were just having fun. I thought it was okay to have this. Oh, I hope he learned from that. I mean they got married and had kids, so you know, all is well in the world in the end, I hope.
But it was the meaning behind it and to her that, that triggered something and and like, Joanne and Kenny, well, Kenny, particularly his comment here feeling guilty is the worst feeling in the world to me, because sometimes when something happens, it, we we're triggered into something that means something and, and making a mistake or feeling responsible for something. Well, that's actually part of, part of life. We can't get things right all the time. We are going to feel guilty for something.
Otherwise we've not taken any risks at all.
And if you think about, I mean, whatever, any listeners feelings are about, whether there is, or was a creator who designed humanity What, whatever the view guilt is an exceptionally clever emotion, because it really does do what it says on the tin. If it has a tin. Guilt is there to stop you doing things that society doesn't want you to do. Or that individuals in society don't want you to do as well. It can be one or the other or both. It is a horrible emotion.
I mean, I, I agree with Kenny, what feels worse than that?
Without guilt, you'd be a psychopath.
I remember when I sort of stole sixpence from my mother, I didn't quite, but sort of. When I was six. And the guilt I felt was just horrendous to the extent that I eventually, eventually it was probably about 48 hours, but in my mind it was weeks, but it almost certainly wasn't. I confessed. And of course, my Mother was it's okay. It's don't worry. I mean, sixpence was not, I mean, was, was an ice lolly, you know, I, I can still, I can get a feeling of the feeling now, when I think back to that.
And it is controlling. But without it, as you say, Richard, if we didn't have the potential feeling guilty for our actions, then, well, I don't quite know where society would be. They, there are people and not going to get into the religious aspect of this, but there are people who say, well without the rules that religion puts on. People would be immoral. Well, I, I think that the feelings put that on
Yeah. If somebody's only reason for being kind to somebody and not hurting them is because they're scared of going to hell. Then they probably need to look at their value systems a bit closer.
The, the I'm not going to do that because I would feel absolutely ghastly if I did that. Isn't such an awful thing, but I think what Kenny's probably getting at is the holding onto the guilt.
Yes.
Isn't it? It's not, it's not a momentary feeling of, guilt. Oh, I said the wrong thing. I've said, sorry, the person has said, oh, don't worry about it is absolutely fine. And moving on, it's the keeping it there. And he said about making sure no one thinks I've done something wrong. It's it's the, there's a longevity to that. It feels to me.
I'd. Encourage him to explore that. To see where that comes from. See what's familiar about that. Whether that goes back to something as simple as a sixpence when he was
my sixpence
Yeah. We often find that we hold onto things for a lot longer than other people do. We're a lot more critical and judgemental of ourselves than other people are. I remember again, 20 years ago easily, I got drunk at a Christmas work party. This was before I was a therapist or had a no I'd done my training. Had I qualified, I might have been in the middle of training and I got drunk at a Christmas party. I was working for a civil engineering firm that dug up the road to the national grid.
And I got, there was free wine on the table that nobody was drinking. So I was drinking it and got into a right state. And I was wagging my finger at all sorts of people. And you I'll tell you about you. It was terrible. It wasn't me at all. I dunno where it came from. And Dawn just took me to bed and went, come on. This is getting silly now. And off we went. the, this was to close friends, this, this abuse really. And fast forward about for 15 years, probably 10, 15 years.
I go around somebody's house for a dinner party, those same groups of people that I'd see regularly, you know, we'd see them every couple of months. And somebody had a bit of a dinner party around the house and I went around and I was driving. But somebody said, oh, drink glass of wine. And I went, oh, you know, me and wine best not, but anyway, I'm driving. And they said, oh no, what do you mean about you and wine? What's the problem with you and wine you allergic or something?
I went, I'm just joking. You know, remember that time that Christmas. And everybody was scratching their heads going, when, when was that? I went, oh, surely you remember that. I, I was really drunk and was really angry at everybody. No mate. Don't remember that. And they started talking about different Christmas parties we'd had. And was it that one? No, not that one. It was, that was the year before the year, the year after that. I don't really remember rich what? That's not fair.
I've been holding this for 15 years, feeling embarrassed every time I've seen you every month for 15 years and you didn't even have the courtesy to remember it. God damn you. And I'd held onto that totally unnecessarily. But in exploring it, just in that moment, it had gone the the weight immediately gone. Never had to think about it again. Just because I put it back out there and everybody went doesn't matter we were young and stupid. We probably all did things like that. I didn't we?
I went, oh actually, yeah probably. Yeah, because we all do things like that. No matter what somebody feels guilty of. I think we can fair. It's fair to say. We've all been there. It's nothing to worry about. I think that's fair to say.
Yeah. I mean, as long as we're not talking about extremes again, but it it's it's that the, the word responsibility was in there wasn't it in Kenny's thing? I know what it was. it was something I was looking at earlier, a student piece of work which was discussing taking responsibility almost as though that was the wrong thing to do because the, the person in question was taking responsibility for things that they didn't need to take responsibility for. But again, it's a balance.
We do need to take responsibility for things that we've done and said, or not done, or not said. And say, sorry, where appropriate. That's a good thing, I would say. But not taking responsibility for things that are not within our own control, which brings me to the other thing, the other locus of. Cuz we've got locus of evaluation, which we mentioned, but there's also locus of control
mm
Which is a theory from Julian Rotter. I love that surname. I mean, who wouldn't want to be called a Rotter? I mean, it's great. Isn't it? And this is about where you perceive the control of behavior to be. And the two do overlap somewhat because, well, if you are evaluating where you evaluate things, both are very helpful.
People with a high internal locus of control perceive themselves as having a great deal of personal control over their behavior and are therefore more likely to take responsibility for the way they behave. For example, I did well on the exams because I revised extremely hard. In contrast a person with a high external locus of control perceived their behaviors as being as a result of external influences or luck. I did well on the test because it was easy.
And this does tie in with, with what Joanne and Kenny are saying. In that, I'd like to be asking Joanne specifically what she, what she feels about her own intellect and career, and also to Kenny about where the responsibility is for the things that he's done wrong. Cause you know, if it's in a work context, people are always gonna do things wrong. It's it's, it's inevitable, isn't it? But it's about that taking responsibility.
It's generally accepted that having an external locus of control is not a good idea, feeling that other people control you or that you have little influence over your life because, well, there's no point in voting for change, my vote won't count, you know, those sorts of things.
That's not good, especially at the minute, but it holds us back, like you say, from recognizing our skills, our abilities, if we do well, because we think, well, the test must have been easier or it was just lucky or I must have just guessed on that multiple choice thing. That was, that was luck. We're less likely to take another one and progress. We're less likely to apply for a job that we want because well, they probably already made the decision who's gonna get the job, anyway.
It wouldn't be me cuz other people make those decisions. But with a slightly more internal locus of control, we can see that it is worth applying for that job, going for that interview. Even if there is a possibility of nepotism and that they have already decided that their nephew is gonna get the job, you still have some influence over your life. And it is worth putting the effort into doing something.
In terms of the job interviews one yes, it could be the nepotism thing, but it could just be that they want somebody who's got more of this bit of the experience than that bit of the experience they could be wrong. They could have made an invalid decision that they would actually be better off to have your skills, but you can't influence, very much, what's going on I've I do find that cuz I've worked with many people with interview issues. And it's fascinating.
You have to go into any job interview knowing that you are only in control of part of it
Yeah, and that's okay. But you are in control of, of part of it. To think that you don't have any control at all is not gonna help you. And similarly, if you, if your locus of control is too internal, that's when everything's your fault, when something goes wrong somewhere. Oh, what have I done now? And this wasn't about you. This was just about the, you know, the word document froze. And when you clicked save it overrode the original document with a garbled version and the whole lot's gone.
Oh, that's my fault for clicking save. No, it just, it is what it is. Oh, that's it. But yeah, but I wouldn't have done that. That no, that's not how it works, but we've all met people who, who feel that responsible.
And going back to the interview scenario. I, I heard of somebody who had a job interview a couple of weeks ago and was very prepared, but got completely thrown off track by the first question, which was something that I cannot remember exactly what it was. And I probably shouldn't say it even if I could. But it was completely out of left field and they, they would not have expected it. So they had to go into a different part of their mind to answer it.
So all the preparation was outta the window right then.
Hmm.
But in the end, I, I sort of say, well done you interviewer because they got through the preparation, the, the persona that we've talked about before and got through to the real person, cuz it's a real person who had to answer.
I was quite pleased with myself once
She got the job, by
when. Oh, woo . That's wonderful. I was quite pleased with myself once when I got an email from a radio station to say, would I like to have this conversation about uh, spider phobia? I said, oh yeah, I'll come on. It was probably around this time of year, 10 years ago. Something like that. would I come on and talk about arachnophobia? Yeah. Okay. And I went on there and I'm sitting on I'm on hold while the presenter is just come outta the news or whatever it was and said.
So in a few moments time, we've got Richard Nicholls joining us. He's a spider expert. He's come to tell us all about spiders. He'll be with you in just two minutes after this break. And I'm like, what? I'm not, I'm not a spider expert. I'm, I'm not really an expert on anything, but I mean, if anything, I'm closer to a person expert people expert than a spider. I'm starting to Google. I'm Googling spider facts. Okay. Spider, spider spiders. Oh. They come inside to mate that'll do.
That's all I needed to know. That's my one little bit of spider fact, they come into the house when it's cold, outside and wet so they can mate, they're just looking for love. Okay, that's fine. And then I can weave it into arachnophobia and get back on topic, but how easy would it be when the mic went live to go. Can I just stop you? I think you're expecting something that I can't do. And then put the blame onto them for making the mistake.
And if anything goes wrong in this interview, then that's your own fault because, you know, you've, you've, you've made a mistake here. And I, I felt the need to do that, to try and defend myself in case things went wrong. So it's not my fault. It's not my fault. And I've been to conferences over the last 20 years where that sort of thing has happened. Somebody's got an excuse already before they have even started their presentation about why it might go wrong in a few minutes time.
I haven't had much sleep last night, by the way. So I apologies if this, this doesn't come out right now, those sorts of phrases, I'm like, no, It's okay if it doesn't go right, it's fine. You don't need to try and blame the road works outside for your lack of sleep, to explain why you are nervous, just be nervous and feel it. Feel what you feel. You're human. It's fine. But we don't do we, we so desperately try to defend ourselves and pass the buck.
The first ever conference presentation. I did. Somebody came up to me afterwards and said that I ought to have some hypnotherapy to deal with my nerves. And I said no, sorry that was my first conference presentation. And I think it was the right thing to be, to be nervous. Thank you.
Now get out. All right, is that somebody I know.
Probably not, no.
Okay. Well, I suppose if it was your first conference presentation, that would've been a while ago, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've had a lovely natter today. Fiona that's that's really put the world to right
well, I hope so.
Mm, and I hope everybody can take a little bit of something away from this episode and the, and this series, you know, there's always a little bit of something inside each episode I think for everybody, if we matter enough. So we'll be back next week and we'll do it all over again. And if you have a topic that you'd like us to talk about, link is in the show notes to a form on my website where you can submit whatever information you've got in your head. Send it to us.
And we'll talk about it to a degree, you know. We're not gonna talk about religion or politics, not too much anyway, cuz that, that's not really our bag.
Just go to the edge,
Yeah. We we'll just live on the edge of that cuz that's part of culture, but yeah, if you need us, you know where to find us, have a nice week, everybody.
Bye.