Hi there, folks. Welcome to another episode of the Therapy Natters podcast. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls. And with me as always is another psychotherapist to help answer some of your questions. It's everyone's favorite Fiona, apart from possibly that princess from Shrek, it's Fiona Biddle. Hi Fiona. Do you know any other Fionas?
Hi,
it's not that popular a name. Is it really?
I was once in a room with four other Fiona and nobody else, or it might have been three other Fiona's there might have been four of us, that was a bit weird. But yeah, it's not that common. This Fiona Bruce, the news reader.
Fiona Bruce from the BBC
Well, my brother's name is Bruce. So
Fiona and Bruce fi.
Bruce, the, the news reader came along and there's a politician as well. An MP called Fiona Bruce strangely.
There's not that many Richards. I mean, there is a lot of Richards. That's a, that's a relatively common name.
There's a lot of Richards.
There's a lot of Richards. There's not that many Richard Nicholls. There's a photographer who got the richardnicholls.co.uk domain name. God damn you, Richard Nicholls.
Did you hear that the first, I think it was the first Ukrainian baby born of, refugees to the UK. It was called Richard. They, they called the baby Richard and I thought, oh, that's nice.
Let's bring it back.
Yeah. Cuz Richard Osman has talked about the fact that there aren't any Richards anymore.
My son used to go to school with somebody called Brian. And I think he was probably the youngest Brian in the country. Hello to you if you are that Brian, or maybe you're a younger Brian. Brian, what a great name, imagine looking at a baby and going you're a Brian. Brilliant.
It is. Weird with names, some of the names that we just completely associate with old people, and you'd never think of calling a baby that, but then they go round in cycles. So I know when my niece and nephew were born and they were given old fashioned names. But now they're very common. Because they go round in circles.
Because it's always the meaning behind it. Isn't it? The meaning behind the word or the name that creates the response that creates the reaction, which brings me quite nicely on today's topic of failure and what that means. And I think it does mean something different to everybody. Doesn't it?
It can mean something different to everybody, but also different things to different people in different circumstances within their own life. So if I was to play golf, I think I might have said this before I, and I failed, I wouldn't be the slightest bit bothered because I know that I would, and, it would be expected and not a big deal. If I was to fail playing trivial pursuit and made a complete mess of the game, then I'd be bothered.
So it's context dependent apart from anything else, but people do have general tendencies, of course. Because if you've got good self-esteem, then failure's gonna make less of an impact, but it also ties into that self-efficacy. So Wimbledon's happening right now. So if Rafa Nadal was to lose to somebody who was ranked 200 in the world, that's going to bother him because his self-efficacy is such, but his self-esteem is also high I presume.
And I hope that he'd be able to brush it off more quickly. So it's quite complicated.
Well, I had a client once who was young and they were very good at tennis and they were the best in their school. So they always won. And they did really, really well. So they joined a tennis club and they were the best in their town and they almost always won. They did really well. So they joined a bigger group, bigger club, best in the county doing really, really well.
Then they went to a coaching school, a specific tennis school that did academic stuff, but 99% of the time you were playing tennis, which is the best of the country. All put into one place. Now they're not the best, of the people that are around them. And their game suffered and they went downhill. It didn't motivate them. It didn't inspire them. It pulled them down because they were so used to riding the waves of I'm great at this. I don't have to work too hard to, to beat anybody until you do.
They were talking about that. Some of the commentators at Wimbledon about the American college system and how the junior rankings mean virtually nothing because it's only when they get to that level where they're all the same, that it sorts out the different things. And then the mental game comes into it, of course. Would you like me to read the questions?
Go on then
So we have two similar topics. The first one is from Matthew who is in Hull and he says, although my self-esteem has never been great, I've found that being made redundant has really knocked me. It's felt like an absolute failure. Not only in that I failed at holding down the job, but I failed at providing for my family. It's turned, failing something into being a failure as a human, and I'm taking everything personally.
Okay. The second one is from Celia in Ipswich and she says, how do you help someone with the negative feelings they have? After they failed an exam, they expected to pass, even though they're working on retaking the exam in spite of those feelings. Mm. So we've got slightly different scenarios there, but both about how do you cope with failure? And I think, firstly, I'd like to say about. Matthew from Hull being made redundant is very unlikely to be actually about you Matthew,
Good point.
Because that's not how redundancy works. If you were sacked.
Yeah. If there was some gross misconduct and you had a verbal warning and then a written warning, and then look, sorry, mate, this is not on, you've got to go then. Fine. Take that personally, even though there's probably still stuff to work on with that, but redundancy. Yeah. That's how somebody runs their business and having to let people go. That's not on you.
There's such strict rules on it. That it really it's very unlikely. I mean, there's, there's the possibility that was you Matthew against, I dunno some other person and they had to choose one with everything being equal between the two and they chose you, but that's pretty unlikely. And even, so that might be on, you know, the color of your shirt rather than anything that's worth judging. But having said that these are your feelings, this is how you, you feel. And that's tough.
It's, it's really, really tough to have taken this so hard. Then I'm sort of feeling, I don't want to be saying you shouldn't have taken it hard cuz you did and that's valid.
I remember people describing the good old days when there was lots of factories about, and if you didn't get on with your boss, you could just walk out of the door and walk into the factory next door and going, I've left that place. He's an idiot. I'm looking for a job. What do you want me to do? And they go, oh, there's a machine over there. Just go and get yourself set up and I'll speak to HR. We'll get you details. And that was it just wandered from factory to factory doing a day's work.
That wasn't that long ago. That was maybe not quite in my lifetime, but you know, it was early seventies probably. And that, that was a regular thing. So I'm told. That's not the case anymore. It really isn't. To try and find a job. I know there's, there's, there's lots about. Trying to find one that matches you is not so easy. And we do have to apply, and I'm hearing these stories quite a lot lately of, of people coming outta university and then going right.
I'm ready to get working now, but the world seems to be on fire and energy prices are high and food prices are high. And ah, this isn't so easy and having to apply for dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens, you know, literally a hundred applications before they even get an interview. And then they're having to have lots and lots of issues before they get offered a job. Is the way it is right now. And maybe that's the way it's always gonna be. And we need to accept that.
I think it probably before the seventies, that it was like that cuz remember early seventies was all the three day week and stuff like that. So probably talking sixties, but I know when I, did an IT degree and then you could just walk into jobs. It was like that then for those cuz there were plenty of them and people weren't qualified. So that probably still is with some things like care homes, but it's about the interpretation of Feeling judged. Isn't it. that's the thing.
He feels, yeah. Matthew feels that he's, that he's letting down his family that he's, that, that he's a failure. That he's a disappointment. And of course that feeling isn't motivational. That isn't the sort of feeling that leads you to go right. Fantastic. Every Monday morning and go, come on, let's do this rock and roll lads. Come on. That's disappointment and sadness and feeling like a failure. Isn't gonna motivate us. Emotions are there to motivate us that there to tell us something's wrong.
Take action. But we need to look beneath everything. Look at that emotion and go, what is it trying to tell me? And then we can challenge it if we have to.
Whereas in Celia's example, it's different in that, that person. I don't know if it's Celia herself or somebody she knows. But whoever that is, who's failed an exam. And is looking to retake it. That can be motivational because that can really, you find out what you did wrong and if at all possible fix it, that's not always going to be possible. I know when I failed my history O, level and using the term O level really dates me, but that's what it was.
I realized what I had done wrong, which basically was I had not revised adequately. So I retook it and fixed that and got it and avoided that feeling. Cause that was not a nice feeling, since, but that's something that I could do that it's not always gonna be the case. I mean, I, I think there would be lots of exams that, however hard I tried, I was never gonna, well being a doctor.
I was talking to a doctor yesterday about training and I thought, no, I could never have done that too, too, too much. No, I couldn't. Couldn't couldn't have done that. but if it's something that is doable and I suppose that then goes back to Matthew. We don't know what the job was but bearing in mind that almost certainly wasn't about you, Matthew. There is, I can't see any reason as in a logical reason for not being able to get back on the horse or maybe a different horse.
But we can't always wait until things feel right. A lot of people their actions are based on their feelings. I feel ready. And then they take action for, for a lot of things. The action has to come first and the feelings will follow. And I know that's not easy, cuz it means if we've been knocked by a rejection, cause it is a rejection being made redundant is being told in some particular way, we don't need you here or we don't want you here. And that's not a nice thing.
The way the brain lights up when we rejected. Is exactly the same areas as it is when we are, given electric shocks or we've got just one.
a second. It feels like we are being told that we are not wanted. It could be that, that boss really, really, really wants Matthew and needs him, but can't have him. So just.
Interject on that, that, yeah. Yeah. We dunno. No, you're quite right. Or it's again, it's the meaning behind it. And if the meaning isn't painful, then we shouldn't have pain. And that's a way of our emotions telling our unconscious it's. Okay. The meaning behind this can change. You are still wanted, liked whatever it is, whatever the rejection is, we're still lovable, desirable, whatever, just because somebody rejected us in some way, shape or form.
think there's also a cultural element. I think that, that there's something about that word redundancy. That's got a meaning in British culture of not wanted, not needed. whereas. That's not necessarily. I mean, I don't know about that specific word, but I'm thinking about in America failure, is seen quite differently. So I've heard things said about, you know, American business people, if you haven't been bankrupt a couple of times.
Then you're no good because you've got to go through that experience of having failed at a business in order to be successful in a business. Now that doesn't apply here, we wouldn't think that I mean happens, but it doesn't have, it's not a prerequisite for success to fail.
Oh, I think some elements of, of failure is a prerequisite to living though. It.
Oh, I agree. It is, but I don't think it's part of our culture. It's not part of, it's not part of our culture to, to say failure is actually good, but from the NLP thing, of course, which says that there is no such thing as failure.
Oh only opportunities. Yes. It's a little toxic though, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't like it. I don't like it. It, it really pushes aside how people feel this isn't a, this is, this is just an opportunity to learn. I still feel crap. This still hurts. I fail my driving test three times before I passed, because I was too young or too impulsive or whatever it was, but drove too quickly argued with the examiner.
It was only because I left it so long between the third and fourth attempt. That I had time to get my head around it, that I grew up a little bit. And I do wonder if I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder when I was 17, 18. And I think that influenced it. The meaning behind. You're no good at this and that, isn't what they said. They said, no, you didn't, you didn't hit the mark. We've marked you down.
The meaning behind that was far more painful for me when I was 18 than it was when I learned again, when I was 22, 23, something like that. After I'd got a motorbike for a few years and eventually then my girlfriend who's now my wife said, I'm fed for driving you around. learn to drive. And the motivation came back.
I failed my driving test the first time. Because I had to come out of a T junction and a car came speeding around the corner and my examiner slammed on the brake in the dual control car. So I didn't have a ch I didn't have an opportunity, but it was, it was one of those things where if that car hadn't come round, but I was, I was devastated at failing mainly. I think I was devastated cuz my brother had passed first time. So I felt a failure in comparison to him.
One thing about failure is that it is, as we've been saying quite explicitly, that it's part of life isn't, it is, is part of what we. All experience and it's what you do with it. And that was making me think of, probably the main theory, in one sense, from Carl Rogers one of the early, exponents of counseling, started the person-centered or client-centered movement, and he had this idea of the fully functioning person.
And the thought might be a, an idea to look at that in terms of this concept of failure. Does that make some sense to you, Richard? Yeah. So Rogers had defined, or at least this is where it's got to now. So it might not have been his explicitly to start with, but seven characteristics of a fully functioning person. So let's go through the seven, shall we?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So the first is having a growing openness to experience. Now, I think that's really quite interesting in that it's a growing openness, but we're talking about a fully functioning person. So it's about a process it's not about, it's not about the finished product as
this is not just positive experiences. This isn't just open to experiencing all the, all the fair ground rides of the world. It's it's all experiences.
Yeah,
Including failure.
yes. Including failure and being able to cope. Isn't that, something about that that poem, if about, is it, if the,
Rudyard Kipling.
yes, he, you can face triumph and disaster and treat them both the same, that, that sort of idea, In this example I've got here. It talks about it being, not being too defensive. So not going into a situation and presuming that you need your defenses up or that it's going to be bad. So being open to whatever's going on around you, the second one is to have an increasingly existential lifestyle.
We tend to filter our experiences through the lens of what we already believe about ourselves and about the world, usually in a way that confirms these beliefs. If we adopt what Roger's calls an increasingly existential lifestyle, we can flip it around. And allow our own personality and self concept to develop based on what we are experiencing rather than the other way around.
So we allow the outside world, other people to influence us, change us rather than us presuming what's going on in the outside world. It's a little bit different, maybe quite a lot different from existentialism as a whole theory. Number three, increasing organismic trust. And that's about trusting ourselves. Our colleague and friend, Shaun Brookhouse often talks about trusting yourself, to trust yourself. That's what this is about.
So recognizing that yeah, you know, instinctively, you can trust yourself. So using your own values,
Mm.
not necessarily other people's. Number four, freedom of choice. Choice Is one of my favorite words in therapy. The number of times, people are not recognizing the things that they can choose to do. and you, you can take that to extremes of that. All sorts of things are choices in life and maybe some sort of compromise makes some sense, but most people have more choice than they realize that they have in what they can do. Number five creativity.
A lot of people get their creative juices, squidged when they're younger, uh, children are by nature, very creative. so allowing that creative part of the self
Hmm.
to. Come to the fore, not necessarily in terms of the typical creative, it's not about art
Yeah, this isn't about making papier mache. Yeah, exactly. It's it's about risk taking
Yeah. And thinking things differently and trying things out. And well, maybe, if I do this or I do that in terms of a colleague at work or something. Maybe if I approach this situation. Yeah.
being able to change perspectives on things like failure.
Number six, reliability and constructiveness balancing inner and outer worlds being open to our needs and being able to maintain that balance between.
Hmm.
So having a congruent view of yourself, I E one in which their self-worth self-image and ideal self overlap rather than exist as separate entities, which is very, like we discussed with the persona shadow and real self and even aggressive needs, which can be matched by the intrinsic goodness within the person. Number seven, a rich full life. Roger's suggesting that the fully functioning individual experiences, joy and pain, love and heartbreak, fear and courage, more intensely.
So going back to the subject of failure, it is about that is about being able to take it. Do you remember weebles?
They wobbled, but they don't fall down.
Yeah,
Yeah.
to be a weeble
Yeah. Be more weeble
dunno if they still do them, they might have been filled with lead at the bottom or something. Maybe they don't do them anymore. I dunno. Um, it's a long time since I've actually looked to see if weeble still exist, but for any younger listeners, if they Don. There's a, it was a little toy, which was heavily based at the bottom and you could knock it over and it would bounce back up again. And the catchphrase was weebles wobble, but we don't fall down.
Yeah, I remember.
So at the moment Matthew's fallen down,
Yes. It doesn't feel. Yeah.
himself back up again.
Yeah. And how do we do that? I think it comes from accepting our reality. This is what has happened. This is how I feel. I'm going to act accordingly rather than allow the feelings, which are disappointment. That feeling of failure is disappointment. I'd much rather I'm disappointed that I'm not working right now than I feel useless. Therefore, I am useless. No, you're disappointed. Therefore, what? Cause that's very different. With I am useless.
The action is well there's no, point in trying to apply for more work. No, one's gonna want me, whereas recognizing this feeling is disappointment. My expectations haven't been met and I'm sad about that. That's true. We do need to think more creatively. In order to reframe things. And that then does give us urges to seek out new work or to, to at least hold our head high and be okay with I was made redundant. Oh, that's it.
I remember when I was made redundant back in 2003, it was a great time for me. I was just about to get married. And so it was a little bit scary to think, how am I gonna pay my mortgage? I'm supposed to get married next year was thinking about starting a family. Yikes. Now I've got no job, but I've been waiting for that push to become a full-time therapist, not just somebody who did it on a Thursday afternoon and a weekend, and being redundant did that for me.
You are not alone in that there's, a few of you who did it on the basis of redundancy and it's, it can, it can certainly be a good thing. obviously I have no idea if Matthew got some sort of package, I have no idea what Matthew wants to do with his life, but that's, perhaps this is a good time to really sit down and think, what do I want? I dunno, even how old he is.
but let's just say he's 40 dunno, just picking a number out of thin air, let's, let's say he's 40, he's got another 30 years of working cuz by the time he gets there, it'll be 70. He'll be the retirement age. So he's got another 30 years of working at least. Well. What, what does he, what does Matthew want those years to be like, maybe use this time as a springboard, into finding what he really was. Of course it could be that the job he had was his dream job. I mean, that's, it's not impossible.
but in which case it'll be able to get back into it somehow, almost certainly.
because the only ones that do are the ones that attempt to. The ones that take the opportunities, the ones that never do the ones that take the redundancy and go, wow, this is who I am now. Now I'm 40. No, one's gonna want me, I'm too old. I'll just take universal credit and just feel sorry for myself. They're not the ones that are going to see the opportunities. And so we need to challenge. We do need that creative thinking to go.
if I had more self-esteem for example, if that gets in the way, then what would I do? I need to act like somebody who behaves that way and feels that way and see if I can create those feelings for myself, rather than let my existing feelings hold me back, feel the fear and do it anyway. I suppose, as the old phrase goes,
Yeah, I think it's worth recognizing though that not everybody can get their dream job. The world doesn't work like that. it's all very well saying, oh, you know, you can fulfill your dreams. Well, if your dream is to win Wimbledon, well only one person does that in each tournament, each side of the thing anyway, but once each year, not everybody can play football for England. Not everybody can be an astronaut.
It's not possible to always fulfill your dreams, but if it is something that's really, really, like that, that's, that's a narrow field. I mean, us talking to somebody earlier today about wanting to be, a dancer, wanting to be a ballet dancer, the vast majority of people who try to be a ballet dancer are not going to succeed.
For all sorts of reasons, not least, because there's not that many ballet companies that you can join and the numbers are just not gonna work out for most people, but whatever it is, you can look at what it is that appeals to you about that dream job and see how you can get that in another way.
Whether it's in another job, doing something that still creates those feelings. Or elsewhere within your life, you know as a kid. I always wanted to be an actor. Thought, that'd be great. Am I a failure? Because I'm not an actor. No, but I quite like doing that sort of stuff. So I work with an amateur dramatics organization. I get my needs met that way. When my confidence wasn't good enough to think, you know, I'll be an actor. I pushed it to one side and said, okay, I'll be a radio DJ instead.
Am I a failure cuz I don't do that. No, I was interested in that and I'm still interested in that and that's why I've got these podcasts. Because I'm still interested in how audio works and microphone technique and communication and how we use words to help people. And that's what inspired me to become a therapist in the first place. And then I've got all my needs met, but it's only because I got to really know what I wanted first and that does take thinking.
We need to really get to know ourselves and work out our values. Absolutely. We really, really do. I think that's everybody's homework this week Fiona
yeah. So specifically I'd suggest people really, really let themselves think big. Imagine a few years, hence quite a few years, hence depending on your age, and take away any fear, no such thing as fear, no limits whatsoever. Anything is possible and see what you want to do. And then take that back to, well, how do I get that? I remember doing this, exercise with somebody who was a lady was probably about 70 at the time and tiny, tiny, tiny lady I'm tiny, but she was tiny.
And she said that she wanted to be a Sumo wrestler. It was, it was quite difficult not to laugh. In fact, I did laugh. But so did she, so that was okay. but what it was was she wanted to be significant. She wanted to have some level of power and to be seen
Wow.
well, that tells you so much.
Yeah.
So it's how to get that. There probably better ways to do it than being a Sumo wrestler for a 70 year old little tiny lady.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yes.
But those sorts of, exercises can really help you to find out what it is that you can do. And
Do it, everybody do it, have a look at your values and your needs and your desires and see if you're getting those needs met in your life. And if you aren't, let's figure out a way that you can be really, really good.
tell
Yes, please. Yes. You can submit any question to us or even an answer to us. If we've asked you a question, there's a submission form on my website. Link is in the show notes. Well, we better love them and leave them for another week, Fiona, because, um, tick tock, you seen the time?
Need to get back to watching tennis
My turn to make the evening meal tonight. So I'm off to go and do that. I'll let you catch up on the tennis and if you need anything, you know where to find us, have a lovely week, everybody.
Bye everybody.