Good day to you pod fans. Welcome to yet another episode of Therapy Natters. If you are new to the show, this is a podcast series where two psychotherapists answer your questions and natter about mental health, personal development, and all things therapy. Hello, Fiona How's Tricks
all, all good here. I'm interested in what a pod fan is.
a pod. Fun. It's a fan of pods.
He's a fan of pods P pods. I mean, I presume you did sort of mean to say podcast fans, did you or didn't
oh no, I've been using the phrase pod
Oh, have you? Okay.
Yeah. For a long time. I think it comes from Roland Rats, rat fans who, rat fans. I think that's where it
Uh,
One for the oldies there, ,but sometimes podcasts are called pods. Oh, I need to do my pod. I think. Did I make that
Well, it saves a lot of time, doesn't it? To not bother with the cast bit.
a, it's a whole syllable
A
cut that outta your life,
syllable. I remember Michael McIntyre doing a, joke about this, about how Americans often add syllables that are unnecessary. So they talk about their eyeglasses And a neck tie and horseback riding as opposed to riding on any other part of the horse. So, of course
As opposed to the Australians, which just shorten everything and just put a Y on the end or an O. What you doing This Arvo. The arvo. Is that a thing? It's a thing. Love it. Absolutely love it.
but then you just mentioned earlier, The looking glass, which I said that sounds very American cuz why don't you just say mirror?
Yes, I meant to Google the person's name. Charles Horton is a name that rings a bell. I think the guy who
I Google it whilst, whilst you talk about that and then we'll get into the question that made us think, well, made you think of that in the first place.
Mm, the looking glass self It is all about external validation and about self-identity, about who we are. And I think it can be summed up in a complicated little phrase that if you, if you sort of deconstruct and get your head around, it makes absolute sense about our identity. I am not who I think I am and I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.
And I know that's a lot of words and that can be a bit complicated, but if you rewind 15 seconds as the app lets you and play that back, you'll see it makes a lot of sense that we get our identity. Not necessarily from ourself, but not necessarily from other people. But it's our perception of what those other people are thinking about us. And until we recognize that a lot of us, if not all of us, to a degree, it's a spectrum, isn't. It's on a continuum.
If we all do this, we need to figure out where we sit on. Continuum to work out whether it's, like my old phrase goes, whether it's causing a problem because nothing's a problem unless it caused these problems.
You are nearly right. Charles Horton Cooley
Uh, That was it.
c o o l e y. Not as in a raspberry juice on your pudding.
Oh, yummy.
So Charles Cooley,
and he came up with that I think in the fifties.
1902.
what?
1902.
1902?
Mm-hmm.
Goodness me, that is an old concept. I mean, that is right at the start of psychodynamic. and at that point he's looking at things with a completely different lens. Wow.
I mean, I'm only on the Wikipedia page, but specifically, there's a big chunk on the Wikipedia page about the role in social media. The rise of social media very much reflects the mechanisms, the looking glass self as the different forms of social media offer all different mirrors in which individuals present themselves, perceived judgements of others based on likes, follows, et cetera, and further develop their sense of self. Mm,
well, what is Instagram? If it's not just a way of saying, do you like me, like this. Really, isn't it? If we can use it to our advantage, that's fine, but I think it does a lot more harm than good unless it's questioned why we are doing what we are doing when we post on social media. Definitely. And I guess that explains the why, why called it a looking glass? Because the Cuz mirror I think is a relatively new word, I think.
Not not an my etymologist, but you know, Alice through the looking glass and things like that. That was a long time that, that was that sort of
Yeah, it? does make sense. Yeah.
Well, if I had uh, a time machine, I'd go back and shake that guy's hand cuz he obviously had some good ideas. And this popped into my mind, this idea of external validation and where we get our sense of self from. Because we had a question from a podcast listener, a pod fan. Hello Pod fan. Your turn to read it out. Fiona.
Okey doke. So the question is from Natalie from Manchester, and her question is, how can I stop worrying what others think? For example, having the strength to say no to family and then not worrying what they might say or think. Thank you, Natalie.
Thank you Natalie. And that is a question that crops up a lot in the therapy room. it absolutely is. Can we, can we really no longer care what other people think of us? Is that too big an ask?
is it a good
too far into, or is it a bad idea?
I mean, we might be able to do it, but I don't think it, well, I don't think it probably can do it, but I don't think it's a good idea to do it anyway. I think this goes back to my usual thing, if it's on a continuum and we wouldn't want to be, well, I, okay, I'll just speak for myself. I would not want to be at the end of the continuum where I don't give two hoots what anybody thinks about. I, I don't like that sort of me if I was there.
Sounds arrogant, isn't
yeah, it, it's got a, it's got an arrogant feel and that's uncomfortable. That would be a shadow thing. But it's not just a one continuum. We'd have lots if you worry, about what everybody thinks about. In every circumstance. to the extent that I was just thinking about, well, when, when do I put mascara on and when do I not bother? I know that there have been times when I've put mascara on just because I'm going to the supermarket.
But it's not really because I'm worried about what the person on the checkout's going to think of me. But then.
It's because you wanna look at your best, and that's part of your culture. That's part of who you.
yes. And, but it doesn't go too far. So, you know, if you hear stories about things that, you know, people going into into hospital to have their babies and they have to put their makeup on first. You know, there's, there's times when these things can go a bit too far perhaps. So it is about that, finding the level that works.
Yeah. Finding the level that works for you I mean, Natalie specifically asked about family and we have to bear in mind that our family, when we are developing our personality, our family is our world. They are the world. We don't have anywhere else to go. If we are looking for our sense of self, it is from the external world, our family around. They show us who we are. they treat us in a way that means, hmm, this is how I treat myself, because this is what I'm entitled to.
And if for any reason there's a problem there, if maybe somebody was, you know, a family that was too big and they were overlooked or they felt inferior in some way, I often think of the John Clease and the two Ronnie's sketch. I know my place. With Ronnie Corbett right at the bottom there. And I often think of myself as that Ronnie Corbett character. We were gonna do that once at a conference, weren't we? There was three of us. Me, Shaun and somebody else that was taller. Yes, I remember.
We never did do that. I'm kind of glad we didn't. But isn't it interesting that, of course I'd be the little Ronnie Corbett character, cuz that would be the character that I had always played at all those conferences. Yeah, I know my place. I'm the runaround. I'm the guy who gets hit with a stick too. I mean, that's an exaggeration I slap around the face. Maybe
Yeah. I don't think you ever got hit with a, with an implement
I was hit with a poker once but that wasn't at a conference. It was in a rehearsal for a play, and, the friend of mine, hello Ali, if you're listening, and she might listen. She's felt guilty about that for so long. My fault, more than likely stood in the wrong place in this little fight scene that we were rehearsing. She still feels guilty now. Every now and again she remembers that and it hurts her. Well, Allie, I forgive you. It was an accident. I probably stood in the wrong place.
But we make these mistakes or sometimes we don't even make any mistakes. But we worry that people think we did. We worry that people will judge us, will say something bad about us behind our backs, and who doesn't wanna be liked? It's actually quite dangerous, surely for a human to be okay with rejection. We're a very recent species. This version of humans. You go back to homo heidelbergensis, many thousands of years ago and. If they were rejected by people, then they were probably gonna die.
if they were ostracized from the group, cause they did something wrong and they were banished from the, the tribe, the clan sent to wander through the, the desert or the jungle or whatever, they were going to die. So we've got this mechanism inside us and it's been there for many, many, many, many generations that fears rejection.
And it can still uh, be there formally in certain contexts. So for example, the Catholic Church still excommunicate people.
Hmm.
And they're forced out of the tribe if they, if their behavior doesn't, fit. And that can be for all sorts of reasons. I'm not a an expert on it, but I am aware that if you join the Masons, you are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic.
Really?
I did say to a, a particular person who this applies to. I said, well, how do they know Which he couldn't answer. So presumably they'd have to, they'd have to You'd still have to be ha shaking hands with a priest and not, and doing the secret handshake which would be
It's not that secret.
Well, no. No, I, I know what it is.
Yeah.
we are sort of chuckling about it, but the basic premise is you are different. You are doing something different. Therefore you are not part of us anymore because you are
And that difference is wrong. You are doing something wrong, but it's not your behavior that we are judging. It's you as a person. And that's the difference between guilt and shame. We can feel guilty over things that we did, but we feel ashamed over who we are and. It's important to look at our emotions. If we don't feel what we feel, if we don't understand what we feel, then we can't do anything with it. Our body's trying to tell us things.
If we feel guilty, it means we need to examine something. And it might be you have nothing to feel guilty about, but until you examine the feeling and go, why is that here? Oh, it's because I want my. Mum's approval. For example, if it's family or just family's approval, we just want approval because it's dangerous to be alone. And if we can examine that and go, well, am I alone? Am I safe? Do I actually value their opinion anyway? Does it matter?
Exactly. So religions can manipulate through the use of guilt. So can families, so can businesses so can any grouping of people, they can create a feeling of guilt or shame or both to manipulate a person's behavior so that they fit with what is required. That grouping. So, you know, I'm thinking with, with Natalie, I mean, again, as we always say, all we know is that little snippet that's been sent. So we don't know anything else.
And I'm certainly not presuming that there's any manipulation going on within Natalie's family, but there could be. But generally speaking, most people don't want to upset their. Because that wouldn't be a nice thing to do, would it? So there is a tendency for us to to, to perhaps go a little bit along the continuum of being nice to other people, of being considerate when it might be against our own best interests.
Yes.
There's a tendency to do that. I, I suppose it's about thinking it through for each particular instance and you know, if this is my mom would be upset if I didn't go for Sunday lunch, but there's a particular football match that I've got tickets for and I really want to go to that instead. Wouldn't get the chance to do that very often. If You feel, then you absolutely have to go for lunch with mom and not go to the football match.
That seems, I'm talking really ordinary self circumstances, but that's the sort of place that people will start to feel, oh, I really, I'm being bad because I'm upsetting my mom.
Yeah. Like I was saying earlier on, we get our view of ourself from our family when we are young
I think it's just worth interrupting you there just to say people listening might not have studied child development.
No.
babies are not aware that they are separate when they're newborns. There's a process that a baby goes through to realize that they are not part of the mother usually, but the primary caregiver, they think they're part of it. Not in a, oh, I think I am part of my mother. It's not you know, it's not a conscious process. The cognitive development goes alongside the realization that you're separate.
So as each one of us becomes aware of that separation that we have itself, then yeah, that's, what that self means is the reflection that they are receiving from their primary caregivers.
and if for whatever reason the world around us is chaotic or it's unpredictable or it's shaming in some way, then we internalize that. We take that in at an unconscious level, pre-verbal. Cause we, we don't have the intellect when we are six months old to go, oh, they made a mistake. No. We just believe everything that we experience and that becomes our personality. So in order to change ourselves along that continuum and care less what people think, still care.
Cause we still want to be lied cuz we're human and it's almost impossible unless you've got, Unless you've got psychopathy, you can't really switch off those sort of emotions. Not really.
Or you're a politician,
Or maybe psychopaths make good politicians. Cause I've gotta make such big decisions and take the emotions out. Who knows? Are all politicians, psychopaths? Let's not go there.
No, no, they're not. But they, they, some might be, but no, they are not all, but they have developed the skills probably starting from a, a, a base of being able to separate themselves out from those things and to to put aside the judgements that other people have of.
and I think that means. Improving our self-esteem, our opinion of ourself, because if it was in some way lowered or was just started low because of those early childhood experiences, it's there where the work's got to be done. Our opinion of self, our sense of our value, what we're entitled to. So it makes it easier to be able to. I'm not gonna be able to do that and that'd be okay. I was thinking about this the other day actually, for a couple of reasons.
One, it was a friend's birthday and it popped up on Facebook. It was his birthday. I'm like, oh, that's Paul's birthday, and I sent him a message. Hello Paul. If you're listening, you never know. He might about 15 years ago. This amateur dramatic society we were working at. I needed to move a table. Hey Paul, grab the end of that table for me. Will ya just gotta shift this into the corner? And he went, no. And it was a very light table, and I thought he was joking.
No, I just gotta shift it over in, mate, can you just just grab the end of it? And he went, no, no. You'll have to ask somebody else. My back's been playing up lately, and if I overreach just to even just cleaning my teeth and bending over to spit into the sink causes problems. You know, I, I'm not gonna, we osteopath crazy at me, so uh, no, you have to ask somebody else. And he wandered off and I thought, I love that.
I want that level of self-esteem to say, no I'm gonna put myself first, even if it inconveniences you because. I threw a ball at him and he didn't catch it. He just, what? You threw a ball. And then the ball's at his feet going, well, I'm not picking that up. You threw it And that stuck in my head all these years later, and I always think of this imaginary ball that people throw and I just imagine the ball work. Somebody throws a ball at me. I just imagine it going past me. Going, what?
You threw a ball there. I see I'm not fetching it. You chucked it. I didn't even want to catch it. Your ball.
I was struck that it seemed like there were. Several seconds in between him saying no to moving the table and him giving the explanation. I dunno if that was the case, but that's what I heard. And that's where, to me, the discomfort comes in because you needed the reason why he was saying no. If you just said no and walked off and you had no, no reason for. Well, yeah, that's, that's not, that's not how people in a tribe behave. So it leads to discomfort for you as a recipient.
I mean, I'm jumping to conclusions now. That would be if it was me, but he, well, then he gives the explanation, which makes it perfectly reasonable. So he still had perfectly reasonable behavior. So I suppose this is a, a, a factor, isn't it? About. How others perceive your behavior, even if it's not exactly what they want. So if Natalie's saying no to her family, do they perceive that as reasonable?
And part of that only part, but part of that is on each of us to give our reasons and to explain. So using the Sunday lunch and football match analogy to explain. I wouldn't usually get the opportunity to go to something like this. It's an important match. I've got this free ticket, I'm going with whoever. That's a perfectly reasonable explanation.
If you were to say to your mother, actually, no, you've told me you're making roast beef this Sunday, and you always cook it so that it's like an old boot. So I really would rather stay at home and have a salad. So there's, there's difference in how you do these things?
Yeah. It's tricky because there are some circumstances and with some people where. Actually just saying, no, that's not for me, should be good enough.
Yeah,
We, we don't have to explain ourselves if we don't want to do something
absolutely correct.
because our opinion, I don't want to, is good enough. Why don't you want to, no, I don't have to explain myself. But what are you doing on Saturday night? I'm not doing anything. Well, can you babysit? No, you said you weren't doing anything.
but I want to not do anything. Yeah.
I won yet. Exactly. Yes. We don't have to go. Well, I've been really busy at work lately and I've not been sleeping very well, and I do some rest and I've got so much on at the minute. No, we shouldn't have to do that. And I understand why people might feel the need to explain themselves, but I think that comes from a place of guilt and shame and that
it really, it so depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? and the combination of the, let's say it's between two people, the combination of those two people and the circumstance that you find yourself in.
Hmm. And going back to Charles Horton Cooley's looking glass self. Examine that. Cuz when we're trying to figure ourselves out, it needs to be from our self, our values, our likes, our dislikes, our passions, our interests. People get to a point in life and they, they sometimes do have that almost midlife crisis of who am I? Who am I? Well you're, you're, you're part of whatever culture you're. and you're part of that family and you are somebody who likes War Hammer or Monty Python or whatever.
You know that's who you are. But if we don't know who we are, because we've always found our sense of self from what we think other people think of us, then we need to rewind and look through that process and go, no, I am what I think of myself. And if that's damaged, because while I think I'm a piece of crap, then that needs challenging. If there's things to feel guilty about because yeah, I robbed a bank, or I pushed kids off bikes for fun, then yeah, challenge that.
But even then, why'd you push the kid off the bike? Why did you feel so entitled to other people's money that comes from a place of pain? Not that I've had bank robbers and child bike people pushers in the therapy room, but if I did, that's how I'd deal with it. And I think if you've got something that you feel guilty about, cuz you have been pushing kids off bikes or tripping somebody up in a playground, I did that when I was a teenager, tripped a. I still feel, do I feel guilty about that?
Eh, no. It's not guilty anymore. I understand that. I was just a kid who was a little bit shorter than average and wanted power over a 10 year old. What? And if I took that to therapy and went, oh, I still feel guilty about this thing I did when I was 14, I'm pretty sure my therapist would go, there's a reason why you did it. Yeah, there is. There is. I remember the teacher who saw it went Richard, because that's not me. I'm not one for tripping people up. They knew that.
What, what, what's, what did you do that for? Oh, I don't know. Well, what would you do if he got hurt? I'll take him to the sick room and see if he's okay. Yeah, Of course you would. Cuz you're not the kind of kid to be tripping people. Look what went on there. Must have been feeling something at the time. I don't remember, but,
No, I, I remember that that I scratched Jane Dawson's hand sort of deliberately.
oh, poor Jane Dawson.
Yes, poor Jane Dawson. And I do not remember what it was, but I remember that it was through anger, but I did it and I did feel guilty, but I worked on that I think fairly quickly. To recognize that, okay, that's not what you do when you're angry with somebody. So I was able to process it. I don't know if she remembers it or if she still holds a grudge and hasn't forgiven me. I do not know. I have not.
Chances are probably not. We tend to forget these things that happen to us unless there's a really emotional
I haven't seen Jane Dawson since I was 10, so I have thought about trying to find her, but it's, she's probably not Dawson anymore and it's a quite ordinary name anyway, so, but there we go.
When I was about I dunno how old I was, maybe I was. Six, seven, something like that. I had to have some operations on my ears cuz I was, I was profoundly deaf and so I would've been younger than that. I would've been quite young. Well I had a balaclava cause everybody in the family knitted balaclavas for the, for the, for the kid with a bad ears. And I was standing in the street looking over at, looking over a fence at the, these, this field that was next to this council state, next to a farm.
And this kid ran up behind me or was on a, no, he was on a bike. and stopped and picked up a plank that was on the floor and hit me around the head with it. I know. I was just a little boy and he got back on his bike and biked off. I didn't know who he was and he didn't know who I was. He just saw an opportunity. My mum saw him from out of the window. She chased him down the street, grabbed him, pulled him off his bike, and he, he scarpered. He went, I'm gonna get my dad. I'm gonna get my dad.
My mum screamed, fetch him. Fetch him effing kill him. Which was an interesting day for my parents. I think my dad had to hold my mum back when the guy did turn up at the door and go, oh, I think you've hurt my son. Double barrels. She really gave it to him and my mum would tell that story cuz it's quite funny. This happened, it was sad for me, but it was, she was very angry. She defended me and, Hmm, good on your mum, but I don't remember it. It repressed or didn't have an emotional spike.
Don't remember it. No memory of it. I was probably very little, but it wasn't a problem. Not a problem. When I'm about 22, 23 playing pool in this working man's club and this guy comes and taps me on the shoulder and says Hi. I dunno if you remember me, but I, I want to say sorry for something. And it was him and he bought me a pint and we played pool.
He relived that experience regularly cuz he'd see me around the town and he'd remember the guilt and it, and it'd churn him up inside for 15 to 20 years. He's holding onto this and he brought me a pint and chatted about it and said, I dunno why I did it. And that's, that's rare to have that level of control, I think, to, to, to see the trigger of your guilt. And I'm going, I'm gonna apologize for this. Maybe I, maybe I looked safe.
my demeanor isn't somebody who's gonna smash the pool cue over his head, even though I think my mum would've liked me to but this poor guy'd held onto all of that because he's because of his guilt and I wasn't feeling anything, nothing. There was no fear, there was no animosity. I didn't wander, the streets worried that some guy was gonna hit me with a plank one day, cuz it didn't cause a problem, but it did to him. And I think that's, that's not fair.
Somebody listening might go, yeah, he deserved to feel that for 15 years. Yeah. He should have done, I don't think so. He made a mistake. He was just a kid wanting power, wanting control, whatever it was. There was probably a reason for it.
What you,
A dare for all we know.
the example that you are giving there really shows to me. let's, let's just use the terms victim and persecutor just for convenience sake. Although we could get into why those terms aren't useful. But there will be times when somebody is feeling an awful lot of guilt for for being a persecutor when there is no. For them to do so. And other times when somebody is feeling from a victim place that their in quotes, persecutor should be feeling a lot of guilt when there is no need to.
And other times when they're not feeling things, when they, in quotes, should be feeling it. So again, so many individual differences and the, the takeaway for me is really all, no. I mean, you don't spend it every day thinking about that. It's like a, when you have a, a packet of paracetamol and this says, always read the label. Well, always. I mean, that's my life. Is it? I'm just supposed to sit here and read the label
Never returned to a, a firework that didn't go off. What never the rest of my life. There's a Catherine wheel stapled to the shed. don't go out there.
Like the label say, on Paracetamal always read the label. You're not always going to be thinking about where am I on this continuum? Should I be feeling more guilt? Should I be feeling less guilt? Should I be even using the word should because, should not good. So I shouldn't use should. No, we don't spend our whole lives doing these things.
But when there is a problem, Any of these sorts of issues, then think about it and just have a little look at where you are on a continuum and where it might be better to be and hop along it. Quite often you can simply just decide to be somewhere better.
yeah, with a, with a, a perspective shift that says it's okay to feel something, but it doesn't need to be this strong.
So I'm
I can take a deep breath and let it go.
I'm feeling six on a, a guilt scale of not to turn. Now I think I'll feel four from now on. Yeah.
Yeah. And and I know that's, that sounds easier said than done in his is. Of course it is. But it starts with the awareness that it's possible to do that, and it is possible to do that. But it becomes a habit then to feel four outta 10 about saying no to Sunday lunch or going to Christmas dinner next year with your partner's family instead, That comes up every Christmas. Really does.
You've been very interested in the family systems theories, haven't you, over the last couple of years and yeah, I urge everybody to look into it because it is a system that causes the problems. It really is. And we need to look at that system.
you say it's easier said than done. Sometimes that belief can get in the way cuz sometimes it is actually really easy.
Just as easy to say it
Just yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. We shouldn't always presume, gosh, I'm saying should a lot today. We shouldn't always
Oh, you shouldn't say should
that things are difficult. Sometimes they're easy.
they are. We just need to look at it through a different lens sometimes. So. Here, end of that lesson for another week. Boys, girls, and everybody in between. If you've got some questions or topic ideas you'd like us to know about, send it to us. As always, There's a form in the show notes in the description below. Takes you to the website where you can fill in, fill it in, send us some topic ideas and we'll have a natter.
We've got a few more, few more questions, but we could always have more cause we don't wanna stop doing this. This is something we enjoy doing and it sounds like you enjoy listening cause the their listening figures are quite good. So uh, keep on listening and keep on sending in questions. Have a super week. See you next time.
Bye everyone.