Hello, you beauties. Welcome to another episode of Therapy Natters, the podcast series to help you work out what makes you tick, and answer some questions about what might be going on in your head. I'm Psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and my co-host Fiona Biddle, joins me as usual too. Watcha Fiona Are you good?
Yes. Yes. All Good. Just to say, we had Sharon with us last week, but this week we're back to just the two of us. But then next week we'll have, we'll have another guest next week. That is the,
oh, yes. That's already
on the schedule. Yes.
Yes, Ludwig. Oh, looking forward to speaking to Ludwig. I've not spoken to him for months and months. Oh, lovely. Yeah, that'd be really nice. A sneaky peak. They don't know who Ludwig is. I mean, a quick Google. I'll probably figure it out. You know,
I wonder if you just Ludwig psychotherapist if you'd find him. We'll try it if you want, if you like.
We've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of listeners. One of them is now and he'll be getting spammed. Although, will we have recorded this by the time this goes? Ah, we'll see. We'll see. yeah. Looking forward to speaking to Ludwig next week. That'd be really, really nice. What's going on for you then?
Well, I did want to raise something that I mentioned in a recent recording that I then mentioned when I was chatting with a friend. And it was her reaction to what I said that I thought could be useful to bring in here, which was when I mentioned that my mother stopped working when she got married, not even when she had her children. And I can't remember the context in which I said that, but I'm sure it was very, very well placed and meaningful for the discussion at the time.
Cuz we don't ever just randomly say things, do we?
Speak for yourself.
Uh, I'm sure it had some context. Anyway, I mentioned this because it was then in my mind and I mentioned it to a friend and her response was, how wonderful for her, my mother, to not have the pressure of ever having to work with a capital W. And what a privileged upbringing therefore I had. Which, I mean, I do not dispute that there were privileges in my upbringing. I had a very nice childhood with not that many issues.
Of course there were issues always are, but yeah, I'm not denying that there were good things. But in terms of my mother, I was then set off on a train of thought of thinking is that good? And I also, I recalled when I was doing my little ponder as I like to do, I remembered a time when they had been out at a dinner party, as they used to do in the 1970s
Prawn ring
in her long dress. I don't remember which one, but I can picture in my mind. But the next day she was upset and somebody at the dinner party had said, I don't imagine it was specifically directed at my mother, but she had said in some sort of context that children of mothers who don't work are disadvantaged because. Their mothers are not interesting that they have nothing to talk about.
Oh
so my mother was hurt by that. You know, it was basically saying you're boring and that's damaging your children. But then
tick. That's all the boxes for lowering your
that's not good. That's, that's, that doesn't
Not only are you crap, but you are also a crap parent. What a thing to say. And like you say, it might not have been directed specifically at her, but that was the opinion. And of course she took
took, she she very much took it. And, she, she was really upset about it. She got lots of reassurance from the family, but you know, that's still going to hurt. But then I was thinking, well what about from her perspective? I mean, I, as a child, I can't remember ever thinking, I wish my mother had more to talk about. I don't think that was, that was a factor we, we got on absolutely fine.
Nor at that young age, you probably didn't think, oh, I wish my parents had extra income coming in. Wouldn't have crossed your mind.
No. And on that we were okay, but then thinking about the assumptions that my friend sort of immediately made about you know, my mother stopping working at her marriage, my father was only a school teacher. He'd just graduated, got his certed as it was in those days after his degree. And it was his first teaching job in a state school. And there was no family money, so it's not as though there was of huge amounts of money sloshing around. It was just how things were.
But my mother didn't have any choices. She wasn't allowed to stay at school after 16 because her father, mother wasn't allowed an opinion, her father said there's no point because your job is to get married. And so she was allowed to work. Between 16 and 21 when she got married in a bank in Oxford. so she didn't have a choice. There was no possibility for her to go to university, and then it was just the expectation of this is what you do, you are now a wife.
And then two years later, a mother, and that was it until we left, which I think I mentioned that my brother and I both left at the same time. So, Difficult for her.
Oh
But then my thought process went onto a lovely theory, I think. Called Self-Determination Theory by Ed Deci and Richard Ryan. Deci and Ryan. Some people will have heard of them. If you think about just the phrase, we'll get into more about what it means in a minute, but self-determination. It's making your own decisions, making your own choices, living your life the way that you want to live it, So I don't really think, now looking back, that that was particularly a privilege for my mother.
I mean, there's far, far worse things. Of course there are far, far, far worse things, but she didn't have choices. She was not self-determining except to stay in the culture that she was in, which was a choice. I.
I'm sure, although that might have been a big part of seventies culture, I'm pretty sure there are people today who are going through those sorts of experiences. Because they've always had somebody else making their decisions for them. Somebody else has always been telling them what to do. The locus of control. If you feel that your locus of control, the location of what controls you, is it internal or is it external?
If you feel it's all, it's external because you've almost always had somebody else telling you this is what you're supposed to do and this is how you do it, and you are wrong if you don't. Yeah, we are not going to feel that we have self-determination. Our life is being determined by other people, and that doesn't sound healthy to me at all.
I want to talk more about what Deci and Ryan say in their self-determination theory, but just as an aside, shall I tell you a funny story. Wasn't funny at the time for me, but I laugh about it now, although I still blush.
Ah.
I was reminded of it because I went to a, a lecture given by Rich Ryan talking about his self-determination theory, but I saw him across the room when before everything had started and, and I nearly went up to him and I didn't, cuz I realized what I was about to say cuz I would've gone up to him and said, hello, are you rich? And then I realized that that would not be an appropriate thing to say. You've probably had that yourself, haven't you had that? Anybody ever said that to you?
Yeah, I've had a little bit of that. Oh, you are Rich. I wish I was
But the, that reminded me of a time when I did say to somebody at my husband's work event. There was a guy who I thought I recognized from a previous social encounter. And so I went up to him and said, Hello, are you Randy? Unfortunately it wasn't the person that I thought it was, and his face was an absolute picture. Luckily, he was talking to somebody else who quickly, very quickly realized who I'd meant. And said, oh, Fiona's thinking of Randy such and such name. I cannot remember.
And so it was all fine. But yeah, there was that sort of few seconds of absolute panic at what I'd, what I'd just said. And the, this guy had no idea of how, how to respond at all to it. I nearly did the same with Rich Ryan, but I stopped myself just in time. I suppose Rich isn't as bad as asking somebody if they're Randy anyway, but anyway, to the theory. Their idea, it's all linked to motivation.
Their idea is that if you are intrinsically motivated to an activity, and we talked about intrinsic motivation a few episodes ago. If you have that level of, of motivation to, for a task, you are increasing your feelings of one or more of the following three items, autonomy, competence, relatedness. So if we look at those individually, and I'd encourage listeners to have a think about things that you do and whether they do help in these three areas.
Actually before we look at the three separately, I think most people would be able to see that feeling autonomous. Good thing. Going back to what you said about locus of control. It's, you know, your, your choice that you are doing whatever activity it is, rather than being forced into it. That feeling competent is a good thing. There are always going to be things that any of us feel incompetent in doing.
Anybody you think of who might be highly competent in one area, they're going to have things that they're incompetent, they do. So if you think about Lionel Messi, he might be very good as a footballer. Well, I mean, I think most people would agree he is, but I suspect that there are other things that he would be incompetent at. I dunno what, cause I dunno much about him, but there will be things. But feeling incompetent in some things is a good thing. And relatedness.
We as human beings are social animals and there's so much evidence that the more we are connected to others the better our psychological health. So, so those three things do make sense as important characteristics. So autonomy, you, you mentioned about locus of control. Do you particularly have any examples of times when you've worked with clients, perhaps Richard, who, who are lacking in autonomy? Are feeling the effects in terms of problems causing problems.
It's not the foundations to everybody's issue, but it does crop up a lot for whatever reason. That people will say that they feel they don't have a choice in what they do, whether it's because they have a fear of what other people think, and it's just the public in general. It's just a social anxiety thing. Oh, I, I can't, I can't go, I can't apply for that job because. And then they go through all the reasons why there'd be no, no good for it.
or it's simply because they've had some traumatic experiences growing up where somebody else has made all the decisions for them. Usually parents, meaning well, often. Thinking, well, I've got to micromanage everything that my child does, and that message becomes part of their personality that I need somebody to micromanage me. I cannot trust my own decisions. And then they can't decide what they'll have on a menu in a restaurant. There's just too much choice. What if I get the wrong one?
What if I choose that? But that one would've been better. I mean, it doesn't matter. You'd have still had something that you like, yes. Oh, I'll just not go. Ah. Because they're just not used to the idea that their opinion might be worthwhile. Their choice is correct. They just don't trust themselves. That does crop up a lot. It really does.
We touched on it a little bit in the conversation with Sharon last week, didn't we? About parents who push their agenda onto their children. And I think that if, if it's, if it's done in such a way that the child does go along with it, but it's not fitting who the child is. Then th this, this can really be exacerbated. As had somebody recently who was a medical student, but they didn't want to be a, a medic.
They wanted to be an artist, but their father was a doctor, their mother was a doctor, their grandparents, or I don't know how far back it went, but this was the expectation. This is what you do. This is what our family does. This is, so you are going to be doing this as well. There's a court case on court TV at the moment of somebody who's a lawyer in America whose father was the lawyer and his grandfather was the lawyer in the same town.
And it's all the, you've got to keep it going cuz it's a legacy. This is our legacy and then it all falls apart if that's not the right thing. for the individual. So yeah. autonomy. Does that question that we had earlier that you mentioned before we started recording, does that fit in here?
Yes it does. It does. Yeah, I don't have the listener's name, so apologies. Don't know your name. But they wrote in to say, My mom and dad both suddenly passed away within a few years. I feel like I'm just getting used to it all and finishing clearing their home. And now my aunt and uncle are both in and out of hospital and in need of a carer to help them with the day-to-day. They don't have children.
So my sister and cousin and I are all they have, we have all agreed that we can't commit to looking after them and are trying to get them care. The illness that my aunt sadly has is very, very unpleasant and messy for her, and I don't feel that I could clean up if the call came to me, which it probably would. I feel so guilty for not wanting to help around the house and care for them.
I'm happy to continue to take them to their appointments, help with shopping, and occasionally cook the meals, but not to do the day-to-day care. Should I be? As in, should I be guilty? Should I feel guilty? Well, I've used this, this analogy a few times of somebody throwing a ball at you that you didn't ask it to be thrown at you, and you don't have to catch it, but I totally get why it's hard to say I didn't ask for this. No, there's only so much that I am prepared to do.
These are my boundaries and I'm not gonna shame myself over that. Because you know, this is a little bit about somebody else trying to have autonomy over you telling you what to do. Whether it's a cultural expectation or a specific family member saying, but you, you should be doing this. You should. The tyranny of the should, again. Yeah.
so the listener is an autonomous adult and has choices. So it is, it is a question of where within the social system that, where they, where they are able for themselves to fit and to set their own boundaries. But I suppose where I am coming from is to recognize that there are choices and then be able to make them and stand firm and say actually this is what I'm doing. This is what I'm not doing. And that's that.
Not to the extent, I would hope that somebody else gets neglected, but if other options are available, I mean, maybe the, is it sister or cousin? Maybe one of them would be able to do that role. Some people can, I can't really understand it, but obviously there are people who can do that role. And are very good at it. So horses for courses stick to what you're good at.
You might be dear listener, you might be the one who's really good at organizing finances and the appointments and the scheduling, but not so good at the cleaning. That's okay.
Yeah, that is okay. I think I mentioned this website before. There's a website called Am I the asshole? Well, people would submit experiences that they've had and they wanna know who's the asshole here. Well, if somebody was to write in and say, for example, my cousin is refusing to pull their weight and I've told them to, I've told them that they should. Am I the asshole for expecting them to or are they the asshole for not doing it?
I suspect the public would come back with yeah, you're being an asshole in expecting somebody to do that sort of thing that they weren't expecting to do. Are they doing absolutely nothing? Did they throw a brick through the window? No, they've not sabotaged it. No. They're doing what they can. Well, you are the asshole for.
For not being grateful that they're at least doing something, But if we didn't have emotions, we wouldn't be human if we didn't feel guilty over the fact that we could do more. Cuz there, there's always a could. Pretty much. Even then when somebody's at their peak of, I don't even sleep anymore. I'm just, all I'm doing is stuff for other people. But I feel like I could do more while I'd look underneath. because it's not that you could do more.
It's that there's a feeling that you're not doing enough, and that does need picking apart. I would say. I would sit and journal about that. I would sit and meditate on that and think about that and go, where's that come from? Why am I not good enough as I am without doing anything. Now, of course it's okay to feel guilty about these things.
We should, if we don't feel guilty about things that, you know, other people would feel disappointed about cuz all emotions have a spectrum, then we wouldn't have the peaks of guilt and we wouldn't learn from our genuine mistakes and our, when we actually do hurt people and we wouldn't feel that we need to apologize for that. So guilt is really, really useful, but only over the things that you really deserve to feel guilty about. Now It doesn't sound like they've done anything wrong at all.
No guilt in this sort of context leads to inner dialogue of what's right here, what, what is right for me, what is right for them? Where's the balance? as you say, Rich, without the, without the feeling of guilt, that conversation wouldn't be happening. So it is a useful thing, so it ties in with autonomy. It also does tie in with competence. And as I said, you know, the, the people have their, their skillsets
Well, it ties into relatedness because this is about a, a family and a fear of judgment. We are social creatures. You know, we, we exist on this planet because of our need to feel that we belong. And the opposite of that is rejection. So the idea of being rejected. Ostracized is, is painful to our, to our emotions, to our brain, to, to what it is to be human. And our brain will try to protect us from that ostracization and make us feel something when there's the possibility of rejection.
So it makes absolute sense. It really does. It ties into all of this.
So I guess then the, the answer really is to me is to build on that relatedness by having really open discussions with the other family members as to what can I do? What can you do? What should we do? As in a should, as in what is the best outcome for the aunt and uncle? And to be really open about your own boundaries, and then the others can be open about theirs
Yes.
to encourage everybody to be autonomous within the system, but related at the same time.
Yes. Without judgment. To say this is, this is me, and, and these are my boundaries. And in a, in a friendly way. Of course there's obviously, there's a middle ground between being too passive and being too aggressive, and that's assertiveness. A nice bit in the middle that says, this is my skillset and this is what I'm prepared to do. These are the amount of hours I've got available. These are my wants and needs, and these are the things I, I don't want.
These are the things that if you did, might only score two outta 10 on the, this is difficult and painful for me scale, but it's 10 for me. I, I can't do that. So this is what I'm prepared to do. If everybody does that, if everybody's open with each other and says, okay, well this is what I'm prepared to do. Oh, great. And if there's a hole, if there's something missing, then we go, okay, somebody else needs to step in and.
This is something that is gonna crop up as, as the years go on, because we're an aging population. There's not as many children about anymore. It used to be 2.4 was the, was the average amount of kids that people were having, which meant that the next generation, there was gonna be some workers to, to, to help out. And that's been dropping a little bit and immigration has been dropping obviously cuz of the yeah, I'm not gonna get into that.
So we are gonna struggle in the next 20 years with carers. We are really gonna struggle and that's for future us to, we don't have to deal with that now. That's for future us to deal with, huh? No, actually we need to make put things in place now. But that's another story, anyhoo. We are going to find that there might not be a great deal of carers available to do those jobs in the future and people will be looking to their family to go, well, you've got to.
And I'm hoping that we can highlight that. We can shine a spotlight on that and go, here's a problem. We need to get this sorted. We need to fix this now. We need to put the foundations in place for future us. But at the minute, there are carers, there are lots of them about, I'd like 'em to be more and I'd like them to be paid well,
Hmm.
but there's still plenty about.
it's quite an undervalued occupation for something, which if you just look at the logic of it, it's so important,
Mm-hmm.
yet they're paid poorly.
I wonder if there's this expectation that robots and AI is just gonna pick up the slack somehow. There'll just be a button for everything and the machines will take care of you. Ugh. I mean, that's. It really doesn't. And we know as therapists, there's been lots of talk about AI helping people with, with mental health struggles because, well, it's, it's practically free. This ai, what can it do?
But we know that when the client knows that it's an ai, those texts that go backwards and forwards don't really benefit. It's only when they know this is a human that's typed this out. When a human says, it sounds like you're having a bad day, tell me about it. They feel that weight off their shoulders. When a robot says, it seems like you're having a bad day, please tell me about it. No. Doesn't have the same effect, and that's gonna be the case that this robot is looking after us.
No, we need humans please, because we want to connect to others. Deep down, we really, really do.
So I was just thinking then about the job of a care of a carer. Imagine I mean, my mother was only in a care home for eight days before she died. But in that short time, I witnessed the carers doing their jobs and are so impressed.
Hmm.
It is, to me, an undervalued profession, but actually to, to, to take that role if it, if it works for you, as we were saying, you know, each person's different as to what's right for them. But you get those feelings. You can get a feeling of autonomy if you are allowed to within the system that you're working in. And I suspect that quite a lot of the time that people do have a degree of autonomy.
It's going, you know, make sure Mrs. Smith's okay without saying exactly what they have to do to make sure Mrs. Smith's okay. At least I'd like to think that that's how it is. They can get feelings of competence cuz I'm really good at looking after these people. They also get the feeling of relatedness cuz they're relating to the people that they're helping. So that job works quite nicely on that score.
Yeah. does doesn't it?
But any one of those bits that's taken away from the role. Then it's seriously detracts from it. I think I mentioned a couple of episodes ago about a guy I saw working in an airport cafe and how he was doing such a good job. I don't know, obviously, I don't know, but I'd rather suspect that he just had the autonomy to look after the airport cafe, and so he did, and he took great pride in it. So that showed his competence.
Mm
I didn't see much sign of relatedness, but cuz everybody's coming and going and they don't want to sit and chat to the, the guy who's working there, usually in an airport cafe, that wouldn't be your first expectation, but hopefully that's met by his colleagues. So just like to encourage everybody to think about the things that they do and in this, this context of self-determination theory and see where the gaps are.
To appreciate and really recognize the, the things that you do, where it's working.
I think you hit the nail on the head there by encouraging them to look. Cause I don't think it comes naturally to us to look for these things. We take things for granted. We filter them out. I mean, that's just how a smart brain works. If something's always there, we don't see it. Why should we? Why would we? The, the brain would be inefficient. If you saw everything, it would run outta glucose and we'd need 20 hour sleep a day.
But if we look for those parts of our life where we do have choices, where we do have autonomy, we look for those areas where we have mastery that we are competent in our activities. If we look for those areas where we are connected to others and we do have a sense of belonging, if those are the things that we journal about, meditate on, just bring into our awareness sometimes. That's going to be very good for our mental health.
It really is and gives us that, push to do the things we want to do to be the best we can be to coin a phrase. I like this theory. Yeah. Very good. Do you encourage your clients to journal about things, to meditate on things like this?
I tend to use the word ponder rather than meditate, cuz I just like it. But yes, I do teach all my clients, well, almost all my clients self-hypnosis and it's certainly something you can do in that. And what was the other bit?
Journaling.
Journaling. That'll be the, don't edit this out because this is the reason I've, I blocked it. I'm hopeless at journaling. If I've got something going on in my life, I'll do some just free writing, just, just let it splurge out of me on paper usually, rather than on the screen. But the screen's fine as well. But I love that sort of writing, but journaling it's, it's never sat well personally with me.
so I suppose with clients, I generally say it can be really good to write about it, whatever that means to them. And part of that is if it's on paper, it's not in your head. So again, it's not journaling, but if you, if you are worried and you have that feeling of, God, I'm not gonna get much sleep tonight cause I'm gonna be worried about this, then write it all out before you go to bed and then you don't have to think about it in the night. You can deal with it in the morning.
Yeah. Love it. Absolutely love it. Okay, so that's self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan. Very interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing that Fiona, that fits in really nicely with all of our concepts here on the, on the Therapy Natters Podcast. Really does. If you've got any further questions about this, feel free to ask us. I mean, Google around. There's lots of articles about it, I'm quite sure. And probably lots of books. Probably even lots of other podcasts.
Feel free to listen to them too. But do come back to us cuz we are gonna be here next week as well, of course and we'll be interviewing Ludwig as well. That'd be really, really nice. Oh, looking forward to that.
Yes. It'll be lovely
Yes, it will. If there's anything else you need, you know where to find us. As always, there's a link in the show notes, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera. So I love you and leave you have a great week. We are gonna speak to you next time. Take care everybody.
Bye everyone.