Hey, hey! Welcome to another episode of Therapy Natters, the podcast all about therapy and mental health as opposed to therapy and spa weekends. That's a different sort of therapy. I'm Richard Nicholls and fellow psychotherapist Fiona Biddle is with me too to hold the reins and keep us on topic. You do make me smile, Fiona. Every time, not every time, but a lot of the time I start introducing the podcast and you just begin to light up.
There's a little smirk that starts on your face as if to go, what's he gonna say today?
Well, it's, yes, that my face is following my mind then, because I never quite know what you're going to say. I don't know if you know what you're going to say, but I don't. But
I've often got a rough idea.
yes, I hope that the light up is more than a smirk, because I'm, I'm very happy to hear, your introductions. They make me smile. And if it's a smirk that is unintentional.
sorry, yes. Smirk is wrong word, isn't it? Yes. Just goes to show it's not the words that you hear, it's the meaning behind it that's important. We spoke about that before, didn't I? When I had a friend once who didn't understand what dulcet tones meant, and she got cross with me. Same thing. Yeah, yeah. But of course a smirk is a negative thing, isn't it? There's a, almost like a superiority thing with a smirk.
And no, I just recognise that I can be a bit cheery, but also sometimes overly cheery. I remember once this is when I had a proper job. We're going back a long time now, like 20 years. When I left to then become a therapist full time, my manager, she admitted that when she interviewed me and she made notes on everybody's CV, who she could then refer to the CV she's reading through to go, who was this? Who was that? She'd write little notes like brown hair, blue eyes. Tall, short, whatever.
On my CV, she wrote, Annoyingly cheerful. And I thought, if I was going to write a memoir, that's probably what it would be called. Annoyingly Cheerful. Because I think I am. Sorry, folks. I am annoyingly cheerful.
And as you're saying that I'm smiling broadly because I do know what you mean.
Yeah.
For me personally, it's never annoying, but you somehow do annoyingly cheerful in a very not annoying way.
Oh, thank you very much. So today, we want to talk about a topic that hasn't been suggested specifically by a podcast listener. By the way, if anybody wants to send in some topic ideas or ask us some questions... I always put a little link in the show notes to a form where you can fire away, ask us some questions. But this is one that we wanted to shoehorn in because There's been something on your mind and you thought, Oh, I want to weave that into Therapy Natters. And this is episode 74.
We've, we've not had a way of putting it in there, but...
we can do, I do have a list of things to talk about on this at some point, and there's still quite a few things on it. But this was a sort of coincidence of a theory that popped up when I was listening to another podcast Which was The Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett who was talking to Jim Kwik, the guy with the broken brain. And there's certainly a space for more from both of those two to come into this at some point.
So, the idea Which is not new at all, because it was created by Edward de Bono so that's quite a way back, but I hadn't heard it before, or if I had, I've forgotten about it, but then it chimed with something that I heard on that program that I don't watch, yes, yeah, you know, that Love Island program that I don't watch,
yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't watch that, do you? Of course not, no. That's beneath you, isn't it? Oh,
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Except that Eve, a couple of weeks ago, she was saying that we needed to, for
Oh, CPD. Yeah, it's research
and, yeah, yeah, research, we need to. But, seriously, or semi seriously, there was, a particular guy called Mitch got himself in a bit of a pickle, shall we say, by saying pretty much exactly the same things to two girls. So he would say to one of them, I really want to get to know you. What's going on between us is meaningful. You mean more to me than the other one. And then he'd go to the other one and say exactly the same thing.
I mean, of course, you know, this is an edited scripted reality, whatever it might be called, we don't really know what's going on. But the way that it came across was that what he was doing was responding and speaking from his emotion. in each of those situations. So he wasn't being intentionally duplicitous. He wasn't lying. He was saying what he felt at the time. And that is how he described it. He said, I've been speaking from my emotions. It sort of made sense.
Because your emotions will vary from moment to moment. And if you just speak from that place you could end up in a pickle, because they, change and aren't necessarily based on logic. And then this tied in with this idea from Edward de Bono, which is about having, or being able to use, six thinking hats. And he gives each hat, six of them, a different color to describe different ways of thinking about a situation.
So, we'll get to using it with Mitch in a minute as to what he could have done or could indeed do with his situation. But to say generally, it can be used individually, when making a decision. So, let's say We've got the idea of maybe it's time to move house, we need to make a decision as to whether to move house or not. We'll look at that in a minute. So, individual decision that you might need to make, you can use the six thinking hats to hopefully create some clarity around the situation.
And include all the factors that you need to include. But you can also use it in a team. So it could be a family situation or it could be a work situation where again, let's just use the decision needs to be made, but you could use it much more broadly.
Let's say there was a family deciding where to go on holiday, or it could be a work scenario where they're wanting to decide whether to launch a product or which product to launch or how to market or a whole range of possible scenarios that could be there. And in a group situation, you would allocate a hat. To a different person. Now, it's very helpful if you have six people in your team or family and you can allocate one to each. So let's pretend for a moment that that's what we have.
We have six people and six hats. But you can swap hats and that would actually be quite a useful thing for different people to wear different hats at different times. So shall we go through the hats and explain what
what's this all about?
they are?
hats.
Yes. Well, we have hats with different colors. That's the basis of this. So the first hat is the blue hat and the blue hat is the one that's in control. So whoever in a group puts on the blue hat is in control of the conversation. And if it's within yourself, you put the blue hat on to set up the system that you're going to use for allowing the others to talk. So, the Blue Hat organizes, allows the others to be heard, make sure that one doesn't get more time than another.
It sets the agenda, summarizes the points made. And the discussion starts and ends with the Blue Hat. So, whether that's one person or within the individual, that's the control hat. So the next one, and these don't have to be in this order, you can have them in other orders, but The next one is the white hat. This is the information hat. The one that represents facts and figures, looks for gaps in information, looks at how to fill those gaps.
It recognizes the difference between facts and beliefs. And is generally seen as neutral. Beliefs are irrelevant to the white hat, although it needs to recognize that they are in existence, but they're put to one side. The white hat is about facts and figures and not about beliefs. The next hat is the red hat, which is the emotion hat. So if you're wearing the red hat, Any and all emotions can be expressed with absolutely no need to justify where they're coming from or their validity.
Emotions to your heart's content. You can express beliefs, express gut reactions, and intuition. So, any thoughts you might have that are just pure intuition, the red hat allows those to be expressed. Then we have the black hat. The black hat is the Be Careful hat. It is sceptical. It looks at risks, it looks at problems, it's generally as negative as possible, which can be quite freeing sometimes to allow yourself to have the black hat, although some people tend to reside under a black hat.
But it can deconstruct the thinking from other hats. Very importantly, it must be based on logic. So if emotion comes in, that's the red hat. So the black hat is logic and fact based. Emotion? You take the black hat off and put the red one back on or refer to the person who's wearing the red hat. And some people might have a tendency to spend too much of their time for their own good in a black hat, but also some people don't spend perhaps enough time with their black hat on. Just two more.
We have the yellow hat. The yellow hat is the optimistic hat. It's the one that looks at opportunities and benefits, short term and long term potential positive outcomes and counters the black hat. So again, any, anything needs to be logical and rational. We're not talking emotion here because that's the red hat but you can allow the yellow hat to speculate somewhat because it's the optimistic one. It's the, this is going to be great hat. let it run with the positives.
And then the final one is the green hat, which is the creative hat. It's the one that looks at new ideas, possibilities. The yellow hat has identified an opportunity, but is not responsible for defining the how. The how is the task of the green hat. It discounts faulty thinking, creates new concepts and doesn't have to be rational. And it likes risks and actions. So if we look at the example of Mitch in Love Island, basically what he said was that he was, wearing a red hat.
Right.
So he was having conversations with these two girls both of the times, and in both situations he was wearing the red hat. So he wasn't justifying his emotions, he was just expressing the emotions he was feeling, the gut reactions he was having, and that's... where it all was. When he got out of those conversations, started talking to other people, he realized, because he put on a white hat,
With more information, he could logically understand.
this isn't the way that people behave. We're not expected to just be in emotion all the time. We need the information hat. We need to be looking at the rationale in a relationship as to what the pros and cons of staying with one girl or going to the other or making a decision. You need to look at both. If he'd had this idea around, he could have looked at the white hat. And in fact, to some degree he did later on.
I felt that he could have gone further with it because one of the girls Was... I was going to say as bad as him. She was messing around with not just him, but somebody else as well. She was doing the same thing,
But not necessarily with the red hat on. That might not have been her emotions. It might have been a genuinely duplicitous, I'm playing a game hat. Which is, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe that's the, maybe that's the white hat. Or maybe the yellow hat, depending on what game you think you're playing. Who knows? But we wear these different hats, don't we?
Yes, I think she had a It's okay for me to do this because I know what I'm doing and it's fine. But you can't do it because I'd get jealous. hat. So it was very much a red hat she was wearing.
Oh, okay. I think it's worth knowing that there's these different factors to us, because often we, we tend to think of ourselves in two different parts, conscious and unconscious, logical and emotional, but there's more to us than that. So many times people will say, well, My head says yes, but my heart says no, or vice versa, as if it's just the two. And I think they're the ones that dominate, I think, the head and the heart, the emotional and the logical.
But It's quite nice to separate things out a little bit more and look at, say, the black hat that says, let's not just have information, but let's really look at the negatives. Let's look at the caution in making this decision. It's important to have all these hats.
And the other hats, I mean, obviously red and white are very clearly defined. And I think the system is trying to clearly define the others, but it can't really, because the black and yellow, the negative and positive, they're going to have emotion. I mean, I tried to say it because I was being a good girl and reading what was explained in the theory. In order to be going down a negative path or going along a positive one, there is emotion there.
And we have our own tendencies to find potentially one easier to do than another, but that might be context dependent. Could be a general trait, but it could be context dependent. I remember when my brother bought his first flat He went to see one, said, yeah, that'll do, and bought it. Whereas, if he was going to, we did laugh with him, not at him, with him, at the time, if he was going to buy a shirt, that would take far longer
What?
him to determine which shirt to buy. he was notorious for taking ages to buy a shirt. But the flat, yeah, easy.
Do you know what? I get that.
Mmm!
Two things happened a couple of months ago in the same weekend, well, the same couple of days. One was a Sunday, one was a Monday. On the Sunday... I went to Fosse Park and, Dawn wanted to get some perfume, and I thought, oh, I could do some new aftershave. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. Sniffed all these different aftershaves and went, I don't know, I don't know, and I bought none. On the Monday, I test drove a car and went, yeah, that'll do. That'll do.
Put me down for that in September, yeah. That'll do.
Let's look at that then. In terms of the buying an aftershave, what was your white hat saying?
The white hat was looking at the cost, I suppose, and recognising I work from home four days a week. It doesn't really matter what I smell like. And was also looking at the fact that there were so many of them. So many choices. And some of them were musky, and, very masculine, and oh, I quite like that. I feel like, somebody who works with wood and metal if I wear one of those aftershaves. That'd be nice. And there were some that were quite fruity and flowery.
I'm like, oh, that's embracing my feminine side. I quite like that. that's quite a sweet, cute, fruity smell. I like that.
Isn't that the red hat?
Oh, yeah, that's more emotional, I suppose, isn't it? Yes, because it was a, feeling thing
it's how you want to feel when you get one.
No. No. It wasn't. Do you know why? No. It was because... Ah. Back to what we were talking about last week. What would other people think of me if I smell like this? Oh, but that's still emotion. That's still the red hat. Because that's still opening myself up to criticism. Oh, you smell like a girl. Or, oh, you smell like leather.
It's actually, I think, you know, the whole idea of perfume and aftershave is a fascinating area. I never really bother with it personally myself. I just don't really get it. it has no emotion for me, but I think the people who are genuinely buying this, they do have an emotional connection to it. And some of that, for some people, will be about status and what wearing a particular brand means in terms of, if I am wearing this, then that means I am that.
I think part of my dismissal of it all is that I don't notice it and I can't tell. And if somebody is wearing very strong, I'll just don't want to know because it's too strong. So it, just passes me by as a whole concept, really. It shows that it's actually quite a complex business that decision, there's lots of different factors, whereas when you were buying a car, what was it, what was your white hat and red hat saying about buying the car,
Well, because the car I've got at the minute is leased, and it's got to go back in September, maybe my white hat was saying just get a car that you're gonna be able to get for September, because you haven't got a great deal of time. They said, yeah, we'll be able to get you something for September, it's fine. And I'm getting a, I'm getting a Toyota Corolla Hybrid. I'm going for a hybrid. the white hat was saying...
That's going to have better fuel economy, that is going to save you some money on fuel. And Toyota are a reliable company. I've got a friend who works for them and they were honest and said, yeah, they're well made cars. So my white hat had lots of information about it, otherwise I wouldn't have gone for a test drive in the first place.
but there's some yellow tinge to that. there's a,
Yeah, because there's
there's a, there's a, benefits, yeah, okay, so it was, it was very, yeah, it was white with a yellow tinge, which doesn't sound terribly nice, but okay, so was there any was there any red hat involvement in this?
Not that much, I will be honest. Not really. I did have a test drive and thought, I like this. This is comfy. This is nice. Oh, well, I'm a bit of a geek and there's an app so you can log into your car and turn the heater on in advance if it's cold when you're still sitting in the restaurant, which I thought, oh, I look forward to that. I know. Quite looking forward to that because that's technology that's been around for a while, but doesn't get implemented that often. But yeah, great.
'cause it's a hybrid. Got a big battery, bang, turn the heater on in advance for half an hour. Warm up my car before I get to it. So yeah, there was, oh no, was that a, was that a red hat? Was that emotional? Maybe There isn't a hat for a nerd There isn't a nerd
I think, pulling these things apart is not that easy. Can be a lot of emotion in terms of cars. Some people really do to use my brother again. He's just about to come back from China. So he's buying his first new car for a considerable number of, well, probably five years he's been in China, something like that. And cars matter to him more than the flat. Probably on the level with the shirt. So there was, there was a significant amount of consideration as to which car to get.
Whereas if I was buying, which I will do soon, I need to get a new car but I won't get a new car because I don't have any emotion connected to getting a new car. I'll get a second hand car that does what I need it to do. And if it's a nice color, I'd be happy. So. Emotions around cars, I mean, you say Toyota, I and Corolla, I know what these things are, and I know the brand that my brother's going with, but I can't remember exactly what it is, but I know that I did know what it was.
But those things don't matter to me. So my red hat on buying a car... Would be very, very different to my brother's red hat buying a car. When I was younger, I had a thing with cars was we always, as a couple, as a family, we, we always had just one car. We never did two cars. We always managed with one. And I always had this thing of, I am never going to have a little car. Cause I don't want the little car as the little woman having a little car. And that's, that's a red hat thing.
because the white hat might say, well, a little car would actually be more appropriate for you. It'd be easier for you to see over the bonnet, etc.
Thanks. No, it's, the, the white hat does say there's no point in me having a big car because I'm just using it for short trips. And if I do my level of big trip in that car is to drive on holiday to Wales or Devon or something. And there's no need to have a big car. I don't need to put golf clubs in it. I don't need to pack it to the gills with toys and bikes and all the rest of it like we used to. so my white hat is dominant in, that decision for me.
Because there isn't really any red hat anymore. I've grown out of the needing to have a big car because that was a, I don't want to look like the little woman. And I don't mean little as in short, I mean I am short, but I think most cars I can see over the steering wheel.
Yeah, I'm sure you can see over the steering wheel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
So! Going back to the idea that we said earlier about wondering if it's time to move house.
Hmm.
let's say this is, this is somebody that they've been in their house for a little while and they're wondering about moving. So, the blue hat defines the question, is it the right time to move house? That's the question. And the blue hat says that all the hats will be allowed to speak in the order that's being defined. Each can make four statements. And then each can respond when they've all spoken. And we'll do this on paper.
When it's just with, or within a person, doing it on paper's a good idea. Because just sitting there and talking to yourself you'll probably get in a muddle. So, the white hat. Some presuppositions. Putting as much as possible into a mortgage is good in the long term. That's one of this person's presuppositions, a fact to them. Other people might have a different view, but having enough disposable income to give my family, including me, good experiences is important to me as well.
So this is a presupposition. so, who's this about? So we're doing the who, what, where, when, why and how. This is about me, my partner and my child. The what, where to live. Where? Is here or somewhere within this area? When? Now? Soon? Later? Never? Why? It's a good thing to consider from time to time. And, you know, just thinking, there are people Do not consider such things and perhaps later regret it in terms of an investment opportunity, for example.
One of the facts in this example that the person has just received a promotion and so will have 500 pounds net extra income per month. So that's the factor probably that's created the question in the mind. And also that we have nowhere for family to stay since the spare room became the nursery. So there's facts.
Hmm. Logical fact
But then you've got interest rates have just gone up and could go up further.
Hmm.
By how much, and we don't know, and not only do we not know it, we can't know it.
Hmm.
The idea of the white hat looking for ways to fill in gaps in knowledge, that's not knowable. That's a guess. Economics. It's all guesswork and also the housing market has been going down. So would we need to feel certain that we wouldn't need or want to move again for a few years, at least if we did move now? Okay.
Hmm.
that's the white hat, the red hat, emotions. I feel excitement and anxiety in equal measure. I feel that to move to a bigger place is a sign of success. Makes me feel content. But the risk of getting stuck in a potential negative equity is scary. My gut feeling is that it would be okay. We could ride out any issues with the market and interest rates. And then we also need to be looking at what do we think these emotions will be in the future?
Because one of the important things with emotions is, and this goes back to Mitch in Love Island, what's it going to be tomorrow? Not just now. Because we need to be looking at whether these emotions are going to stay. And in this example, the idea is that they're, Not likely to change. These, emotions are going to be fairly fixed. They're, consistent. Think this could also be used for instances where people are making dodgy decisions because they're not thinking of emotions longer term.
Only acting on them right now. So the black hat what are the risks? Negative equity, already said, becoming trapped. What if there was a drop in income? What if I became ill? We need to think about those things. if I became ill, I didn't have my income, the home could be repossessed. And then the world is so unstable. We can't be sure of anything. But what if we moved and then find we didn't like it? What if the neighbours are awful? What if we can't get our child into a nice school?
What if there are problems with the house that don't show up on the survey? Whereas where we are now it's all, we know what we're doing.
Hmm.
That's a nice strong black hat going on there.
Hmm.
Yellow hat. Well, moving would give us more space. Good Long term investment nothing suggesting even with the housing market being in a bit of a dip that long term investment in property isn't a good thing. That would be a major change in the world. We could live in a better place with better schools. We could choose a, nice home that fulfills all our criteria.
And to counter the arguments of the black hat about negative equity and being trapped, well, we'd still be living in our house and we can decide, choose to have a house that we'd be happy to stay in for a considerable period.
Yeah, you can live in, you can have negative equity if you don't move. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. I've been through that. And then the green hat, the creative one. What if I wonder if we could actually push it a little more and set up an Airbnb business as well? Yeah? What if we consider moving somewhere completely different? Maybe not completely different, but maybe to the other side of the city. Maybe there's things that we might be able to do there that are a little bit different from what we were planning on. And then the blue hat summarizes. There are risks.
It's important to recognize these, be prepared if markets deteriorate or interest rate rises. Then if we decide that we'll be okay and can ride it out, then we can go with it. If we decide that we can't, that it wouldn't be okay, couldn't ride it out then maybe we'd make the decision not to move. But in this example, it's feeling, as I'm reading it through, that the benefits of the extra space the investment, it's worth at least going further to consider what we could possibly come up with.
And look at the green hats ideas too. So that's a practical example of using the six hats. Within the self.
And of course this applies for any big decision. Maybe
You could decide, yeah, you could do it for what you have for dinner, if you wanted.
Yeah. I mean, don't spend too long on it. But it could help you to decide whether you're gonna have less meat, or more protein, or more sugar, or less sugar, or what you're gonna do the next day, or whether you go to Aldi or Waitrose, you know, absolutely could,
and doing these sorts of exercises will help you to learn something about yourself as to where you tend to sit. Do you have a very comfortable black hat? that you wear a lot of the time? Or, do you tend to have...
I live in my yellow hat,
Is the black hat somewhere in the bottom of the cupboard? And your yellow hat is the one that you wear. Is the red hat a more comfortable fit for you? Or do you like... wearing your white hat more. Maybe your red hat doesn't get enough of a look in. What about the green hat? Do you use your green hat?
I'm quite impulsive, so I'm a yellow hat, green hat character, but with a lot of, there is emotion in there, the red hat, but I think a lot of the clients, they might wear their black hat a lot, because they've been programmed, over time, through habit, to only think about being careful and making sure that everything's going to be okay. What can I do to minimize my pain? that crops up a lot.
Wearing a black hat can be safer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it can be,
hat can be scary.
absolutely and we do need to look at all these different hats that we are wearing and then take them off and go, right, I'm putting on my red hat now to go, what do I feel about all of this? And then I'm gonna put my green hat on and I'm gonna look about, I'm gonna be creative and look at opportunities. We do need to do this, and I wonder if you practice this over and over again with reasonable sized decisions, even smaller ones, I suppose.
It becomes a skill, where you get to know more about... you and your values and your likes and your fears and your hopes and it helps you to go, yeah, I can trust myself to make a decision. That way, if you make the wrong decision, for some reason, you can look back and go, that was a mistake. You can look back and genuinely mean it when you say to yourself. I was doing the right thing at the time. I gave it enough thought to mean it was the right thing to do at the time.
We don't have foresight, we've only got hindsight. So then we don't live in a place of regret. I think that's important for people, to not regret their decisions.
And quite often people fear, regret, and so that keeps them in the black hat place. Again, it's safe.
Hey, well I love that. That's a great little tip. And I'll briefly summarize this into the show notes, you can have a quick read. And, give you a little link to a Google search that says Go and find out more. Because this might be, might be quite interesting for people to To, to get to learn more about. Well, thank you very much for bringing that in, Fiona. Is there anything you wanted to add there before we disappear?
No, I don't think so. I hope that it'll be useful for people.
Mm,
Slightly different topic. Maybe Mitch will read this when Love Island's finished and he can see what he needs to do. And of course in those situations, actually this is something I just wanted to bring in is that When you're doing something that relates to other people, doing it in front of them can cause you some problems.
There's a time and a place.
There is a time and a place.
Right, well, speaking of times, we've come to it. So, we'll disappear for now. As always, we'll be back next week. If you have a question you want to fire at us, do fire away, and we'll look at answering some of your suggestions and topic ideas, and if you need anything, let us know. Happy to share anything. You can be anonymous, you can use your real name, you can pretend to be an old lady called Ethel. If you like, that's absolutely fine, even though you're a young boy called Bobby.
It really doesn't matter. No judgment here.
an old lady called Ethel.
Hey, yeah, Ethel's listened to podcasts too. We don't hear enough of Ethel's nowadays. I wonder how old the youngest Ethel is. We had this conversation before. Sorry for the tangent. Anyway, let's go disco. Have a super duper week. I will speak to you next time, folks. Ta ra!
Bye.