Greetings Earthlings. It's another episode of Therapy Natters for you the podcast series all about talk therapy, psychology, and mental health, with questions submitted by you. I'm Richard Nicholls, and with me in the cohost chair is fellow psychotherapist and hypnotherapist also, Fiona Biddle. Welcome to another episode Fiona. Has life been good for you this week?
Life has been very good to me this week. especially you said I'm in a chair. When I'm sitting down life is very good. When I'm standing up, not so good. Sore back, sore foot. But when I'm in the chair, life is hunky dory.
Cause you're cushioned
Yes, I am very comfortable in my little corner.
but your back and your foot are playing up?
Yes.
Oh, sorry about that.
Hey, ho, things happen.
Yes, they do. And it doesn't make it any easier to bear, does it? I remember, what's her name? Oh, she presented at the conference on mindfulness. She's really interest quite little. She was born with a few disabilities and a lot of pain.
Joy Reeves.
Joy Reeves. Hello to you. Joy had this wonderful attitude towards her chronic pain I've talked about it with my clients over the years in that it's a bit like holding cushions. And I think of it like, you know, when you're walking, you've got a tray of drinks, you know you're walking from the bar with a tray of drinks to people and you're putting a tray drinks down. It's quite easy to carry that tray, but if you've got a cushion under your arm at the same time, it's not so easy.
If you're trying to carry more than one thing at once, well what if you've got a cushion under the other arm as well? And what if on top of those tray of drinks, there's another cushion and there's another cushion on top of that and you're carrying all these things and it's not just that one bit of pain that you're carrying. You're also carrying the fear of it getting worse. the, the worries about what might happen in the future if things do get worse following that.
Another thing you're carrying on top of that, which is what do people think of me? Another one on top of that, And you're carrying all these things and you drop everything. And actually you were only carrying the pain. But it made you carry all these extra things as well, and I thought, I like that Joy. That's really good. I'm gonna tell all my clients about that and do.
It is very good, although I hadn't thought about some of those before and now I've got the most my cushions I'm carrying. No joking, joking aside. I am aware of those things. So the, the, what do people think of me, The extra, the things of, I'm not walking correctly because of my foot, therefore that's not good for my back. My back's sore so I'm not walking, et cetera et cetera. So yes, absolutely they do all pile up.
And then you sort of think, Oh, I've got to fix that, but which bit do I work on first? And yeah, it's complicated. But anyway, all's fine.
Yeah.
it's okay
your foot. Your foot's doing okay today cuz you're sitting
as I'm sitting down and I don't have to go for a long walk up the avenue of Champagne which is what I
Oh yes, I did see, I did see on Instagram. It wasn't on your Instagram. I think it was on, It must
I I was too tired to put it on my Instagram. It was Louise's I think. Yes.
Well, yeah,
amazing
been yeah.
I had no idea that existed
It looked gorgeous.
Several hundred million bottles of champagne under that street. And the buildings on it are beautiful. It's well worth doing, even if you're foot and back hurt. You can always sit down and have a glass of champagne.
Fantastic. I mean, if that's your thing,
It's not particularly my thing, but I'll, I'll put up with it if that's what's available. I'm not going into a champagne house and saying Can I have a glass of red wine please. Am I?
A pint of real ale.
That would not be the done thing.
No,
No, I can put up with champagne when I have to
It's a hard life, isn't
tough. It's tough.
Well, I'm glad you had a nice week. You didn't miss much here. It rained and that's about it really. It's been a bit damp,
Yeah.
But you know, it is what it is. It's October.
The Government's been carrying on doing what the government's do. So no. Not missing anything by being away.
When things are a bit negative, it's hard to see the good perspectives. You know. When it's raining, it's hard to see that it's a good thing. But some people love the rain. I've met plenty of people over the years who they've talked about their fitness or they're like going for a walk and I've said, So, you know, how does the Winter affect you if you can't do that one thing? And they're like, That's fine. I love it.
That's hardly anybody else about, I'll just put an umbrella up and go for a walk. I love it. well done. you.
it's extreme, To me, if you get wet when you're out in the rain, it's nice cuz you come home and you get dry
Hm.
As long as you can heat your house, so that you're not freezing and wet, but if you're out and you're feeling tired or you've gone for a run and it's really unpleasant, you've got the good thing to look forward to and then you can feel pleased of what you've done.
Yeah, sometimes we have to recognize there are different ways of looking at things. But when somebody tells us their stories in therapy, We've only got their side of it. We've only got their story. And I'm, I'm not a couples counselor, so I, I don't see couples, I see individuals and people over the years, have come to therapy and, they'll talk about their relationship and they'll talk about their problems. And deep down, I mean, I'm on their side, of course they're my client.
But deep down I know, and sometimes we'll talk about it. That if their partner was in the room, they'd have a different story cuz they'd have a different perspective. Because it's more than just one story. This has been on my mind cause we've had some questions kind of related to this, haven't we?
Oh, we have, Would you like me to read one and then you read the other.
Okay, let's do that
Okay. So the first one is from Julie from Surrey. What do you do when your reality and memory is different from someone else's who has probably gaslighted you for years as a way for them to deal with your reality? When they talk to others in front of you, they tell their truth, which isn't yours. My Mother has a completely different memory of helping me with my children to the memory I have. I'm starting to question if I have it wrong.
My mother has always put her life first, but now she is older, has rewritten everything to the point I am starting to wonder if I have it wrong. All my friends think she was a wonderful grandmother and mother, and I know differently. How do I cope with this?
Yeah, that's a common story, isn't it? I hear that a lot
I hope this sounds okay to you, Julie. There's a lovely mixture in what you are stating there of fact and opinion. so you said who has probably gaslighted you for years as a way for them to deal with reality. and then. My mother has always put her life first, but now she's older, she's written everything.
So there's a mixture of opinion and writing as if fact, and if, if you were my client Julie, I'd want to be pulling all those things apart and look at what's opinion, what's fact, where are we on all these continua that we've got within this, this whole thing
Mm.
But generally speaking, Trust your own memory, but then think about it.
Yes. Cause we do distort our memories over time and everybody does. Not just, not just your mother Julie, but also you We do on a daily basis, and every time we think about something it changes ever so slightly. Every time we talk about an experience we've had it changes ever so slightly, and that's why therapy helps.
Cuz what we do is we get people to talk about the things that have happened in the past that upset them and it begins to change it ever so slightly if we help them to change it ever so slightly.
changing it in the right direction, people who are in the in their own heads can gradually change it in the wrong direction, making things worse.
Yeah, they can. And as a defense mechanism of, you know, plain old denial, probably the foundation of all the other defense mechanisms, Julie's mum has to defend herself and her unconscious will do that and trick her into changing her memories. Absolutely will. It happens on the big things. It happens on the small things. And they're not lying. That's the thing. They're not lying.
And it's hard to not see them as an enemy when they're clearly telling you a different truth to yours cuz their truth is a different truth. There is no one truth is there. It's frustrating. I often think about this. 'Cos I laugh with my sister. Every Christmas my sister used to make a joke about that one Christmas where my parents went away on a winter cruise for Christmas Day, I was 20, I think, something like that. I was living on my own.
So yeah, I went and stopped with my sister I went there for Christmas Eve and left on Boxing Day Morning. So I was there for a little while but every year, when my sister has joked about the fact that I was a 20 year old lad who ate a lot, and I did eat lot in those days, like 20 year old lads did. Oh, I ate her out of house and home. Was the little joke. Cause I ate a lot. Never seem to stop eating. I was never full. Oh well.
And that joke every year got told, but every year I was there for an extra day. And then 10 years later, like, and my nephew said this? Oh, was that that time that you stopped here for like a week or something? No, That didn't happen. And my sister's standing there tapping her foot going, Yes it did. Yes it did. You were here all week. That's not how my sister speaks at all.
But, she just couldn't get her head around the fact that that wasn't true because she'd been telling me and others for fun having a laughs and jokes until it became real. Now, that's innocent and caused no problem. But the reason it caused no problem is cuz me and my sister have got a good relationship. If, we hadn't that could have become a difficult problem.
A version of reality that caused a rupture within the relationship and meant that we didn't talk to each other because she was always grumpy with me and there was no reason for it. And those, those things happen, they absolutely do. And it's based on nothing. It really is based on nothing. Such a shame.
But the reasons why people perceive things in the way that they perceive them which is usually going to be around being defensive, being safe, keeping yourself safe. So it's there all the time. But as to Julie's comment of what does she do? I mean, I think the first thing is step out of it.
Oh yeah.
Step away. Not physically, although physically, You could do. could do, yes, but step above it. Take a position as if you were in a helicopter looking down on it and see yourself in it. See your mother in it. See the children cuz they are a factor in this. And I think there's a reasonable chance you might be able to just go Ah, okay.
Hmm.
That's what's going on. I don't know what you're gonna see from that helicopter position, cuz I'm not you and I'm not in it, but you are very likely to be able to see something. I mean, gas lighting in itself is an interesting thing. What did we do in the world before we had the term gas lighting? Cuz it's relatively recent, isn't it? Cause presumably people still did it
Oh, I'm sure they did. fact, the reason the reason the play was written was because people were doing it. people were manipulating others.
But it's a long time since the play till the word has become
Oh, yeah. the, the play was early 20th Century.
Thirties?
When the houses were still lit by gas, so it you know, predates electricity. So, yeah, it goes back a long way. And there was a film made of it in the thirties, I think, And it's been redone a couple of times, But yeah, people do manipulate. People do lie. Now, the original term for gas lighting was that deliberate manipulation. But I think the term nowadays, the modern version of Gaslight isn't just about the deliberate manipulation, the deliberate lies.
It's also about those accidental ones, where they believe it. They genuinely believe their lies. And that's not how gaslighting was originally, but it is now.
There is still an element of making the other person feel that they are maybe not mentally ill, but wrong, isn't there? There's that sort of manipulation of, Oh, I've done something wrong. Oh, I am wrong That's still there in the meaning isn't it?
It's not me, it's you. And that's what her mum is doing. Does that mean she's malicious? Does that mean she's cruel? Potentially. But maybe not.
I will just say that's what Julie thinks she's doing,
That's one perspective. That's one frame of reference.
So, as you were saying earlier with clients we only have what they tell us. Here, we've only got that snippet, so we don't absolutely know.
But for her to say, How do I cope this? Well, the answer is I think depending on how confrontational you need to be for it to be any use at all. Sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it is. Julie, you know your situation more than anybody else. But, it comes down to acceptance again, doesn't it? This it is what it is.
Who is it actually affecting to leave it as it is to just let it be? It might be that it's really only affecting you, Julie. in which case you might be able to just sort of step away and leave it be. If it's affecting your children, that might be a different matter.
What I hear in this short email is that Julie's reality isn't being validated. She isn't being validated. She had a hard time. She struggled at some point and she needed her mum to be there for her and she wasn't. But is now pretending that she was for. Whatever reason, and that hurts. That creates a resentment an unfairness and that's hard to accept. It really is. And for it to say, How do I cope with this?
it could also be that the mother is saying that Julie needed her when Julie actually didn't. That's possible, but again, we don't know. But step away and think about the good things in it as well. You know, what's, what's your relationship like now with, your children? I suspect from what you said, that you've probably got a great relationship with your children and some of that will have come from how you've learned to be stronger through the struggle.
Sometimes our parents teach us what not to do. I wish they hadn't. I wish everybody had had good parents and it was nothing but the good stuff that was passed down. But that's not always the case. And If there is a generational trauma, if this goes back hundreds of years and could, to be the one that's in the generation now that's more aware of all of this to go, Well, I'm not gonna pass this down to my children. I'm gonna be a better parent than mine could be.
That's not easy when your only example of how the parent was from a bad one. Potentially,
But surely every parent does, well, I will take that surely away. Every parent does some things wrong. So every parent will teach their children at least something that they could do better.
Yes. Don't we always want more for our kids? Want better for our kids?
But if everybody learned from the good examples then by now, after however many generations we've had as human beings, we'd be perfect. But people don't do that, do they?
No. cuz they've got, well, they've got their stories, they've got their traumas, and not all of their traumas come from their bad parents. Sometimes it comes from being a refugee, from poverty, from war. There's a lot of stuff that has gone on over the last few hundred years, even in the last hundred. And that's not that many generations,
And individual traumas, individual, bad decisions. All sorts of things. So it doesn't have to be big stuff that leads to making mistakes. But yeah, as you say, you can learn from the mistakes of other people and that can be a good thing, as I'm pretty sure we've said before on this. Being a perfect parent wouldn't be a good thing because your children aren't going to grow up knowing how to deal with the world. So it's okay
We had another question, didn't we? Yes. This was Terry from Sheffield. He says, I've been told I often play the victim and see the world in quite negative ways. If a small thing goes wrong. It's as if everything has fallen apart and I might as well give up. I've ended relationships and left jobs when probably I didn't need to. It's hard to see things from other perspectives though.
I think it might be time if we named the theory we're talking about today. It's a simple, psychological, counseling therapy tool called reframing. which is simply putting something in a different frame. So if you think you've got a picture on the wall and you don't like the frame it's in, maybe a pretty picture in a black gothic frame, and you take it out and you put it in a nice, simple, plain silver one or white one or something. You've reframed that picture.
So that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about putting a different frame around an experience and so that you see it differently. And as I was saying earlier, you can look at a different perspective on almost anything and get that different view. So what Terry is saying is that he's actually identifying I don't know how to do. this. Because he's recognizing that what he's doing helpful. He's got that idea that what he's looking at is in the bad frame, the ugly frame.
Victim frame.
The victim frame. He doesn't know how to change it.
And it comes from, firstly, being aware that we do this and then challenging the thought that if there's something you've experienced such as. I mean, he was talking about relationships and jobs and things like that when things go wrong, walking away. When he, now looks at it back and goes I didn't really need to walk away. But in that moment, there was no other choice cuz the meaning to him was. This is going nowhere. I'm never gonna achieve anything doing what I'm doing like this.
I've gotta walk away. All because there was a slight argument or because, you know, a boss reprimanded or whatever it was. And I, I often remember back in the day. Remember the TV show Friends? Of course you remember the TV show friends, It was popular in the Nineties, wasn't it?
Oh my. My kids, not exactly kids, but they still, if they're staying here, I'll come down on Saturday Morning, Friends will be on guaranteed
All these years later, they're raking it in
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They are.
Well after, I dunno how far through the series, and they did 10 series, didn't they? And it gets to sort of series eight or something like that. And Chandler has had disastrous relationship after disastrous relationship and has an argument with Monica and says Right. I better get my stuff then, hadn't I? She's like, What? Well, that's it. You know, You don't wanna be in a relationship with me, do you? We've had an argument. She said, Well, that's what couples do.
And the the penny dropped for the character that, Oh, oh, that's why all my relationships have ended. It's cuz I walked away and I didn't need to. And took him eight series to figure that out. I know he's not alone. And that's, I think one of the reason why the show was popular was because people identified with the characters. And I think a lot of people saw themselves in that character and went, Oh, it's okay to have an argument. It doesn't mean that they don't love me.
It doesn't mean that my world should fall apart now, and I have to escape. But that's kind of what Terry was doing, by the sound of things. And feeling like the victim when he looks back, because there was the slightest issue. Oh, well that's it. That's the end of the world. You know. We might as well just sell the house. Whoa. We don't need to sell the house because there's a leaky roof. We just fix the roof. No, no. This house is just gonna fall apart. It's just gonna fall apart.
That's the next thing that happened. Then I'll then we'll be homeless and, and then, And then this, and then that. And we catastrophize. And I know people do those sorts of things. They do, Terry, and you're not alone in that. And it's great. The fact that you're writing in, here's the good thing, the fact that you're writing to us identifies the fact that, you know it's wrong.
You, you know, it's not helpful. It's, it's not helpful. I think it's likely, We talked about racket feelings before, it's likely that this was helpful to you before. That maybe when you were a child, if you went into this mode, got your needs met. But as an adult, being in this place does not get your needs met. So, as I said, to Julie. Stepping out of it and taking that helicopter view, seeing the bigger picture will be really, really helpful.
But just to recognize that you can, change anything around. So I've got a few examples that I just wrote out earlier. Actually. I just used one from my weekend in France. When I was going to meet Greg and Louise at Dover. I got the train from Cheltenham to London, London to Dover. And I missed the train in the middle. I had underestimated the distances at either end at Paddington, at St Pancras.
Both of the tubes were at the other end of those stations, so I didn't make it by the skin of my teeth, but I didn't. and I was so infuriated and so exhausted from trying to make it. Later on, when I'd got there and we were in the car going to the ferry, they said very nicely, they said that they were happy that I had missed the train because it gave them an hour to walk on the White Cliffs of Dover and they had lovely time and I was. That's really nice then.
And so that's a, that's an example of a, a reframe, but some others I just wrote down. This was when I got from a, a client who was saying, My mum is always pestering me as to how I'm doing. Simple reframe on that is my mum really cares that I'm okay.
Yeah.
So then there's another, it poured with rain today, so I couldn't go to the beach as I'd hoped. Change that around to the rain, meant my wife and I visited a fascinating museum and had a great talk over a lovely lunch that made us connect even more.
Hmm.
My teacher told me I would never amount to anything. Change that around to I can accept the implicit challenge and prove that teacher wrong
Yeah.
Then final one this way around. Then I've got one the other way around. My husband never says he loves me. Well, perhaps that means that my husband is so secure in our relationship that he doesn't feel a need to discuss it. Doesn't necessarily mean that, but it might mean that. So can have a look, but sometimes it's helpful to, to, to do these reframes a little bit the other way. So if somebody's thinking I must get top grades in every exam or I am not good enough. You can reframe that to me.
Well, I am essentially good enough and I know that I will do my best and so all will be So both ways round on reframes.
Yeah, seeing things from different perspectives. For some it's easy. For some it's natural because they've been doing it all their life because well why wouldn't they spend a moment to look and find different ways of thinking and feeling about their situations. But for some out of habit, of something they've been doing since they were young, they don't. It just goes straight onto something negative. What's the worst that could happen out of this situation?
And it goes there and creates the feelings as if the worst thing in the world is happening. Actually it's probably nothing. Or like in, in that example. Somebody pestering you, they're pestering you because they care for you. They're interested in you. Because they know that you have value and that you're loveable but to say, Oh, I wish they'd leave me alone. It says something about you.
It says that, you know that character likes their own space, and I know there's people listening that go, Yeah, that's me. I'm, I feel pestered by my mum, dad, next door neighbor, whoever.
Doing this doesn't necessarily take away the first feeling, but it puts it more into context. So it can make it easier to deal with and to move on from. And remember the Sedona Method back in episode, I can't remember what, but Sedona Method. That can give you the opportunity to move on. And yes, I think you're quite right, Richard, that the people who are listening, there are gonna be some who sort of, what are they talking about? Well, of course you do that and there are others.
What are they talking about? How on earth do you do that?
Yeah. And although we can say to everybody, Hey, talk to your therapist about it. Of course not everybody can see a therapist.
No. And with this one though, you can talk to friends, colleagues. You can say Can you just help me to see a different perspective on this please? Because there will be one. Or many likely
And I think that's a great way to go into it. If you go into it with can you see if there's another perspective to this? Can you help me with another perspective? If you just go in there with the story out of habit and alliance and allegiance to you, friends will just be on your side all the time because that's what we do. Even if we disagree with each other, we very rarely will go. Well, it doesn't sound as if your mum's doing anything really wrong. What? You're supposed to be on my side.
No, we're not here to take sides. And as a therapist we do that. I, I do that all the time. People will bring stuff in and they'll expect me to be on their side. And I've gotta put another perspective on it, in a way that still shows them that I care for them. And not everybody's a therapist, so they're not gonna do that. So the easy road is just to take your story as truth and stick with it. But if you say to them, is there another perspective to this?
Yeah. Am I, am I missing something?
Yeah. am I missing something? Yeah. As opposed to am I the asshole? Which is the, the website. And that can be quite helpful for people to read the, am I the asshole posts. Because you can read it and go, How did you not know that you are the asshole here? Because they don't. Have you ever heard of Am I the Asshole?
I haven't, but I will be looking it up.
Often it is people that are being gas lit or it's people where it's fairly obvious. No, your mother is the asshole here. But a lot of the times people are telling their stories and they don't realize that they're doing anything wrong because their frame of reference is different. When somebody says, My flatmate is constantly telling me off or leaving my cereal bowl in the kitchen, I'd have tidied it up eventually, but every day they keep on at me about it and it gets on my nerves.
Am I the asshole for, for, for leaving it during the day with a little bit of cereal in it. It's not doing any harm, is it? Well, maybe it's not doing any harm to you, but you know, these two people have different expectations and they've got a different frame of reference. There's a different frame around the bowl on the kitchen sink. One person thinks that's fine, it's gonna, I'm gonna clean it up later anyway. And the other one thinks They're walking all over me. They're taking the mick.
They know I like things tidy. They're deliberately leaving that there just to antagonize and irritate me. Nope. We're all just trying to be happy and live our life. All of us just wanna be happy. And that's it. That's the answer. 99 times out of a hundred people aren't trying to be cruel to each other, I hope. I don't think that's me being naive. Maybe, maybe 99 out of hundred's a bit much, but you a, a large proportion of the time.
98.5
Yeah. I'm gonna go with that. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah, humans are good. Most of us. Well, Fiona, I think we've come to time again for episode 30 of Therapy Natters. We've been doing this for 30 weeks.
It's amazing. It seems like just yesterday. But we thought it would be a good idea and it seems to be from the feedback that we've been getting, which has been positive.
We, we get constant messages of encouragement. No one said anything bad yet,
Well, there was one on, there was one on Twitter, but that was a bit strange.
Oh right, okay. But you could have put a different frame around it.
Exactly.
Because it might not be about us. In fact over the weekend, my wife was on taxi duty. She had to do some driving, take my son somewhere. And so I sat down for an hour and went Right, ask me anything on social media. it was an anonymous app so somebody could say anything. They literally could say anything and I, I wouldn't know who it was. So it gave people the opportunity to be brutal. Fortunately nobody was. Everybody just said nice things.
Somebody actually said, You've saved my life, and yet we've never met, and you'll never know who I am. I'm like, my God. All because of making mental health, personal development content, a complete stranger out there feels I've saved their life. That's, that's astonishing. And I've had a few messages like that over the years. It's, it's amazing what audio content can do for people. But somebody, Oh, I'll read it out actually before we finish, cause it was quite funny.
It was, the question was, Oh yeah, somebody submitted. If your wife was out for a night and you and your son were hanging out, what would you do and what takeaway would you get? And um, I put probably watch, anime and eat pizza. And cuz that's my frame of reference, that it'd be nice to spend some time with my son eating pizza, watching anime. Somebody replied with a different frame of reference.
Tanya, Hello Tanya, if you're a listener to this, um, different frame of reference cuz Tanya wrote as a reply or better still cook something and show him that men too can feed their families that he's not a woman's job to cook. Maybe even give him a cooking lesson because she'd got a different frame of reference.
She had taken it that by the fact that your wife was out, you couldn't cook. cos as far I can see I do not know what your cooking arrangements are at There's nothing in there to say that you don't do it all.
Yeah, I do. Well, my wife will cook every now and again, but I do it. I do it because I work from home and so I'm always home first and years ago, we always had the idea that whoever got home first made the evening meal. Well, now it's me and my wife does a workout after work most nights with some weights in the front room. You do that, I'll make the evening meal. That's how it's been for years. My wife doesn't even know how to use the cooker. I'm joking. She doesn't listen. She doesn't listen.
My wife is probably a better cook than me, but I certainly do it more. And yeah I think I'm quite inspirational to my son for that.
Yeah, so that was an interesting assumption Tanya made there
Cuz of a different frame of reference
Two pieces of information, the assumption in the question that there would be a takeaway, and then your response that there was takeaway. But actually you didn't say it would be takeaway pizza. You could have cooked it.
Yeah. I usually do. Yeah. I don't make the dough. I buy the dough, but I do roll it out and make my own sauce and yeah. Yeah, I do. I do make pizza, so there you go. Thank you Tanya. Thank you for your input. Now you know that there's always another way of looking at things. And so does everybody else out there in listener land. So I think we'd better go for another day, but we'll be back next week. Please submit us some more questions and comments.
Form on the website and there's a link to it in the show notes.
Please do keep giving the questions cause I've got so many things on my list of topics that I'm desperate to get to, so we just need question to the right topic.
we'll be here long enough
yes, yes Lots to go.
Take care everybody. See you next week Bye.