Do you find yourself trying to think your way out of what you're feeling, rationalizing the anger, or explaining the sadness or guilt, or perhaps you go straight to the chocolate or wine or pizza to soothe yourself instead of really feeling what you feel when you feel uncomfortable? We've all done it, but the advice from my guest today is to stop trying to feel better and instead get better at feeling. Tamsin Hartley is a former physiotherapist who retrained as a coach and trainer.
She's also the creator of the Listening Space, a structured process that uses what she calls clean language that gets at the heart of what you are feeling. In this episode, Tamsin guides me through a demonstration of this technique, which helped me uncover a new way of understanding my own intuition. And there are some great tips and techniques that you can use with either yourself or with a colleague.
So if you are ready to learn how to feel those difficult feelings and feel better without being overwhelmed, then do have a listen to this episode. If you're in a high stress, high stakes, still blank medicine, and you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed, burning out or getting out are not your only options. I'm Dr. Rachel Morris, and welcome to You Are Not a Frog. I'm Tamsin Hartley. I'm Director of the Listening Space. I'm a coach and an author, and I love working creatively with people.
It is great to have you on the podcast, Tamsin. I'm really interested to talk to you because you talk about feelings, which is something that I don't think we're very good at as doctors and people in healthcare, partly 'cause the pace of life is, is so fast it's quite difficult to have the time to feel our feelings, partly 'cause a lot of us think, oh gosh, if I just stop and feel my feelings, will I be able to stop feeling my feelings?
And consequently, I think a lot of us have just suppressed them and sometimes we don't actually even know what they are or how to recognize them. But you've just told me that in order to feel better, we've got to get better at feeling. What exactly do you mean by that? I mean, you are absolutely right. A lot of people, most people don't want to feel particularly the uncomfortable feelings. I mean, why would you want to?
And I think the problem is that many of us haven't learned as we grow up, that you can feel and it's gonna be okay. You can feel discomfort and you'll be met in your distress. And that emotional energy that comes from whatever fear, whatever, um, uncomfortable emotion that lies beneath the surface, it will pass. And what happens is we become in fear of the feeling itself. And there is a metaphor that I use, I'll just pick it up as a ball of discomfort.
And one way of seeing the feelings that you have of discomfort is to imagine them to be like a ball that sits within you, not nice to feel. What most of us will do is we'll either pretend it's not there, we'll try and cover it up. We might try and hand our ball onto somebody else. We'll medicate, we'll drink, we'll eat anything to avoid the feeling. But what that lets your brain, your more reactive brain know, is that actually this, you need to be frightened of this ball.
And so it's like pumping that ball up with fear. The feelings, that emotional energy doesn't get to just pass through your body, which it will do naturally if you allow yourself to feel. The emotional energy that builds up in your body, generates a stress response, which over time can create chronic physical symptoms, pain, bowel symptoms, I mean, the stress response affects your whole body, uh, or can affect every part of your body.
Um, so if you learn to feel and to know that this ball of discomfort will in time deflate itself, the emotional energy will dissipate, iE you get better at feeling. The byproduct is to feel better over time. So what do we miss if we don't feel? Apart from feeling better? 'cause you've let the energy go through you, what else do we miss by really avoiding those feelings and being fearful of them? I mean there's the negative impact, but I think there's also, well, many negative impacts.
But I think that someone shared with me a metaphor for being with our feelings. And, um, I'm not a sound technician, but sound technicians will have, uh, a slider board, uh, to dial up different aspects of sound. You might want a bit more on the base. You want My might a little bit less on the treble. It would be nice if our emotions worked in that way, that you could dial down rage and fear and dial up happiness. But actually the way it works is more like a master control volume dial.
If you dial down on fear and rage, you also dial down on joy and happiness, love, connection. So you can miss out on the whole range of your feelings. Wow. So you're saying when we suppress these feelings 'cause they feel too uncomfortable, we're also suppressing the good stuff and we're not then getting access to the really good stuff? Yes. And I, a lot of the work, so I, I work, um, with people with, um, chronic physical symptoms, uh, in, in a mind body kind of way.
And a big part of that is actually finding joy, finding, uh, things that nourish you. So it's not just being able to be with the discomfort so that that emotional energy discharges itself. It's being able to feel the whole range of your emotions. You talked about feeling better not suppressing these emotions you've talked about. If you dial down the the negative emotions, you're also gonna dial down the positive emotions as well. What do we do instead?
What do we, what ways do we suppress our, our feelings? I mean, I know one way I do is I guess just like, I'll think about this later. Or, you know, let's distract, let's distract myself with, with something else. What else? What else do we do to avoid stuff? Distraction. Absolutely. Um, covering it up with a, we medicate, we drink, um, eat. I think one other thing that we do is, um, try and pass that ball onto somebody else. You feel my anger for me. And we don't do that consciously.
None of this is done consciously, or most of it's done below conscious awareness. But if I discharge that anger onto you or that fear or that sadness, then I don't need to feel it. Actually, equally, it is possible to take on the feelings of others, uh, inadvertently.
And you might notice that, for example, if you go into a meeting or you go into a, a situation at home, you suddenly think, oh, I'm suddenly feeling, uh, uh, a feeling about something, I'm suddenly feeling a bit annoyed about something, and I wasn't before I came in the room. You might be curious, possibly, there's a feeling that you are picking up from somebody else. You go in to see a patient and you find yourself getting a bit annoyed and enraged.
It is possible that that's a feeling that they have that is too uncomfortable for them to feel, and again, below conscious awareness. So feelings are pretty contagious. Uh, absolutely. I think one, one thing I've seen in myself and a lot of doctors is that yes, we can try and pass them on to other people, anger and stuff like that, but also I think I can think myself out of feelings. Is that possible or not? it's definitely possible and I would say a lot of the people who come that I work with.
It's very easy to, or it, they can get to a stage of talking about the feeling, but talking, the feeling isn't feeling it. And I wonder if I could share a story here because this is an example of a client who really, feeling for her was just too overwhelming. Because when a feeling, when we don't allow our feelings, there is a risk that they kind of explode into the present moment, and it can feel overwhelming.
And so suddenly this feeling that is no longer just a part of you feels like it's the whole of you. And she described, um, a feeling that she had very uncomfortable when she arrived at work, and she realized that she, she, she said, I, I have another metaphor. I have lots of metaphors. Um, we talk about having a bucket of, uh, capacity for balls of discomfort. And everything that everything that feels emotionally charged becomes like a bucket filler.
And these little balls of cut, um, of emotion, fill that bucket. And she said I realize that by the time I get to work, my bucket's already full. I've got, uh, two children at home. One has ADHD, the other is autistic, and there's a lot of emotional charge. And she talked about, for example, this morning, my son slammed the door and she said, and I just felt, felt it. And she went here to her chest with her hand.
And so we use that as a way of connecting with a feeling and, um, seeing what happens when you just stay with that feeling. 'Cause she carried that feeling. She identified that she was scared. Now scared is a very old feeling for her. She has a lot of, uh, history of trauma in her childhood. So this slamming of door had triggered something for her. I said, okay, shall we just get a bit curious about that feeling?
And I used these questions, clean language questions that I've come to found, find really helpful for helping to sum, uh, inviting someone to connect with their inner experience. So I said to her, you know what kind of scared? She said, well, it feels horrible. It feels inside. I can just feel it there. Anything else about scared? She said, well, I've carried it with me to work. This wasn't helping her concentrate at work.
That's the work we are doing, being able to concentrate and fulfill her work, um, the, the commitments, but what she carried with her into work was impacting her. Whereabouts is scared? It's here in my chest right across here. Ah, is scared on the inside or the outside? It's inside. Does scared have a size or a shape? She said it's like a dark, dark storm cloud, and it's just filled with rain and the pressure is building.
And the problem is, I've no idea, but you know, a storm cloud brings lightning and thunder. I've no idea when the thunder's gonna happen, and lightning can cause damage. And so this gave a very tangible sense for her of this unpleasant feeling. Emotional energy that had built up in her body. Asked her some more questions, she even drew it. And the next stage was to be able to stay with the feelings in her body so that she no longer needed to be in fear of them.
What she does is she tries to shift away from them. So I said, well, let's just stay with that feeling, but know that right now you're safe in your body. Stay with that feeling of scared and just be curious about it. Just know that that's emotional energy and it will pass through your body in its own time. And she did. At the beginning of this, staying with it, the experience felt like about a 9 out of 10 intensity. For her.
She thought she was gonna flip into a panic attack, which is not uncommon for her. So she stayed with a feeling. And I just stayed, and I said, can I just stay? Be curious what's happening now, and stay with that feeling. It reduced. It reduced. 7 out of 10. 6 out of 10, down to a 3. And for her, that was an absolute revelation, that she could have a feeling that was about to flip into a panic attack, stay with it, and it passed. She'd never had that experience before.
And the lovely thing is that she's teaching that to her kids now, and she's teaching her kids about this bucket with the balls so that her, but her son can now say to his teacher, that's a ball there. And they've noticed a change in his behavior at school. What are we scared of that might happen with these feelings? For many people. I mean, it's gonna be different for different people, isn't it?
But it just feels so overwhelming that, um, I, I guess you fear that you're going to lose yourself in it, that you're not gonna be able to control it. But the, I, the paradox is that by not controlling it and allowing it, you actually have an experience of it passing through the body just as this particular client did. Yeah. I, I, what I'm struggling with is this idea of feeling your feelings. So when you say to someone, just sit with it and really feel it.
If someone hasn't been used to feeling feelings, what does that mean? To actually feel it? Uh, that is a really good question because some people really just do not, you know, it's all from the head up. And, um, I know people who've said, well, as I started to feel, I realized I always thought my body was just a taxi that brought me around. From A to B. And um, actually now I realize that my body has something to tell me. And I, I was all, you know, I felt very disconnected from my body.
That's not unusual. And so you have to start little and be kind to yourself and just know that it's a practice, little bit at a time. And maybe you start with something, uh, more tangible, like, uh, like, you know, can I feel my feet on the ground? Can I feel my seat on the bottom, uh, uh, my seat on the chair, rather than what emotion am I feeling? If that just doesn't feel available to you. Even I worked with, um, somebody who really doesn't find it easy to get in touch with her feelings.
She said, oh, I'm just gonna put my cardigan on. I'm feeling cold. Great. I'm feeling cold. Allow yourself to notice what your body is telling you. I mean that can sound daft, but some people don't even know when they're hungry because they're so not used to feeling the sensations that connecting with the interception. Does every feeling that we have, tell us something about our needs or boundaries or anything like that, or sometimes they just come and go for no reason?
Well, I don't really know the answer to that. I suspect that we have most feelings for a reason. I mean, I, I sometimes say that is whether we pay attention to them or not. But, you know, at a fundamental level, emotional energy, feeling sensations in your body, feelings can be either emotions or sensations in the body.
Um, sensations that in the body are just a physical representation of manifestation of, of the emotion that's underlying there, uh, beneath the surface, beneath those emotions, there's gonna be a story that you're telling yourself. Sometimes you have access to that, sometimes not. Becoming more aware of your feelings gives you a point of, checking in with yourself. What am I telling myself about this situation? What am I thinking about myself? What's the story I'm holding about this situation?
But fundamentally, that emotional energy is designed to move you to towards safety and away from danger, if you bring it down to its very simple level. And I think the other thing is. when you get better at feeling your feelings, it enables you to discharge the energy. I mean, if you think about it, if this is your brain, a lot of the discomfort arises from, um, amygdala driven thoughts that maybe are unconscious, that there is threat. I mean, your magdala is designed to seek for threat.
If you stay with a feeling and it settles down, you can then engage your prefrontal cortex and challenge the assumptions that you might have, challenge the thoughts, invite a kind of curiosity about, well, actually, is this true? And very often people will say to me, when they stay with the feelings, when they start to notice the story beneath the surface, ah, I'm creating this story for myself. I'm creating this pressure on myself.
Of course, there may be times where there is real threats and you need to act, but it's not always so. I think this is fascinating, the patterns that I've noticed, yes, either we completely dismiss the feeling and we think right, or we blame ourselves for feeling it. Why am I feeling scared? Or why am I feeling stressed or sad or upset? I shouldn't be able, you know, I'm a professional. I shouldn't feel like that.
And then you get the issue that you say they, they build up and you, you know, you're suppressing them. And actually that ball's getting bigger and building rather than getting less. I'm just going to interrupt. That's a lovely example because you've had this feeling and you go up into your head, why am I feeling like this? What's the answer? Probably shame I shouldn't be. Then you're pumping up your ball even more Yeah. That's interesting.
'cause what I find sometimes is I am feeling a feeling, and then I'll go up into my head and go, why am I feeling that feeling? I might be feeling a bit disgruntled or pissed off, and I'll generally blame one of my family. Oh, it's because my husband's not being nice enough to me, or this or that happened. Sometimes I'm just hungry or tired.
Or there's something that's happened maybe couple of hours ago that I haven't properly processed, so I'm then attributing the feeling to the wrong thing or to someone that it's sort of more safe to take it out on even I, I don't know. Is, is that a problem that you see quite a lot? Yeah, I mean if you think about that, it's a lovely example, you know, and if you think about that dark storm cloud, what's that gonna do? The lightning that she talked about could be snapping at her colleague.
Um, it could be snapping at her kids when she gets home. You know, he, her, her child was just overwhelmed and needed to be met in his distress and she didn't have capacity at that time. You know, with all of this just to bring some kindness to yourself 'cause we're all vulnerable underneath. Are, are we frightened of other people's emotions as well then? I think. yes, we can be.
And I think we become less frightened of other people's feelings when we felt those feelings ourself and we realize that we have capacity, and we realize that feelings pass. And I know that for myself in the work that I do with clients, I am not worried about their feelings. I don't take them on as my own. And I suppose there's also that.
You, you don't, you can sit with someone in their distress, in their big emotions and not have to be, they, you don't have to take them on as your own, but you can still hold space for them for that feeling to be present. Yeah. I, I think with doctors, we don't just take them as our own. We feel either responsible for them or like we have to fix them or solve them.
There are some lovely comments actually since, um, I interviewed, uh, a couple of, um, clinicians who are working in palliative care who are using clean language questions. And I'll read some of the comments because the impact that using some of these questions, uh, I mean essentially it's, it helps to prevent them to go into rescuer. I don't know if your, uh, listeners are aware of the drama triangle. We talk about that a lot.
The, the, the, yeah, where you get, let just quickly describe the drama triangle. It's described by Stephen Karpman in the 1960s where you get into a sort of rescuer, victim, or persecutor mode and you just move around. Yeah. So one way of seeing this, and kind of my take on it is bringing awareness to yourself. What am I, you know, what, what role am I in? It's very easy.
In fact, you are usually in trauma when you start pointing that, oh God, he's gone into rescuer, or she's gone into victim, but this is about you. Uh, three roles Stephen Karpman suggests when something's not working the way that you'd want it to you tend to go into one or more of these three roles. Rescuer, there's a leaning in. Can I suggest, have you thought about? And you might be saying these things out loud or just in your head.
Victim, disempowered, full of shame, poor me, if only I were stronger, better braver, whatever. And then, uh, persecutor pointing the finger of blame, blaming others. So these questions, clean language questions, and I haven't explained what they are, but, um, they have helped these people not go into rescuer so much because, um, perhaps I ought to just explain what clean language questions are. Um, they were created by a New Zealander called David Grove.
And, um, you, you are simply repeating back some of the other person's words. Few words, a short phrase, and using one of the questions that he devised. And these questions help to minimize the contamination of the conversation. That's the clean element, um, with your assumptions and your suggestions. So you just repeat back some. And probably the most commonly used question in a clinical setting might be, is there anything else about? So your patient might have said, um, I'm really scared.
Is anything else about feeling scared? My question might be what kind of scared? And uh, what she noticed is that it's changed the way she works. This is the, um, consultant in palliative care. She says, I listen more intently. I'm really noticing their words. I don't feel so much pressure to know the answer and to find solutions, and it feels easier and I'm not always thinking about the next question. So what kind of? Anything else about?
She said they tend to respond quickly and often there's more to say. And there is another question that can be really useful is, what would you like to have happen? And she said, when I ask that question, there's often a pause and they think about it. And the response can be really clear and simple, something that can be achieved. I guess the fear is when you ask that question, well, they're gonna answer, they're gonna ask me something that I can't give them.
Um, and they may have a whole host of problems with eight or 10 issues, um, that they're grappling with, but it gets to the core of it really quickly. And, and that can change everything. And it helps her to quickly uncover the real reasons behind a patient's visits. What a lovely thing to do. But the impact, um, for her, and I thought this was so lovely. She said, work feels fun and fascinating again, and it's put a spring in my step going to work. She's got 20 years of clinical experience.
I know the medical stuff, but this things I'm always learning and, and she uses it a lot on herself. I get a better sense of what would I like to have happen and what needs to happen for that? So there's a different sense of agency. so you can use it for self coaching or really co coaching others within, you know, a consultation or just a conversation, but actually the beauty of it, yeah, you don't need to go through any big coaching courses or anything.
It's just really looking at and reflecting back the language somebody's already using. And this is particularly good for exploring your feelings, is that right? It is particularly good, but you can use it for exploring anything. These questions are used in so many settings. Education, business, healthcare And what is it about these questions that make them so powerful, do you think? They are surprisingly powerful, because I think the person being asked the questions, feels heard.
And there is something about hearing your words repeated back and not, oh, a friend of mine has a lovely expression. Um, she said that these questions help to prevent, prevent you from speaking into the life of others, and they help and it help others prevent others from speaking into your life. And what are, on the courses I run, I always just invite people to notice, go away and notice when someone speaks into your life and says, oh, I think you should do this, oh, I noticed how you feel.
Yes. Um, this is what's happening, just notice how, how it feels for you. Sometimes it can be helpful, but it isn't always. When somebody goes into fix it mode around you, it can deny you of exploring your own experience for yourself. And that, that fix it mode. Gosh, I, I see myself going into it so often. I'm, I'm not so bad at it with, you know, clients and stuff, but with friends, you know, oh, this is what you should do this, blah, blah, blah, and it's really hard.
But just that, that phrase, what would you like to have happen? It, it's, it feels a little bit clumsy to me grammar wise, but I'm presuming there's some very specific reasons for saying to have happen. Yes. I can't remember what tense it is. I, I mean, I'm, I'm going to be honest, I don't use that question a lot.
I don't use it a lot in my coaching, but I know that clinicians are finding it really helpful is a different kind of context when you're with a patient and there's information to be gathered and you want to find out what that patient wants to have happen. In my coaching, I'll often get someone to really stay with their current experience. It's a different setting, it's a different context. I wouldn't use that question with a friend necessarily doesn't feel quite natural to me.
But it can be very helpful in a, in a setting where you've got a kind of contract to, I mean, people do use it with friends if it feels natural, but it's inviting you to go beyond the having happened and look back on it. That's just what I was thinking. 'cause I can imagine if you said to a patient, what would you like to happen, that, well, I want to go out this room with a prescription of something and with their plan and go into this consultant.
Whereas if you say, what would you like to have happened or have happened, which one is it? I, A have happen. What would you like to have happen? what would you like to have happen? So that takes you to the outcome, not the process. In a way, yes, yes. And, and I think what's interesting as well, because this, um, particular consultant said she, there's something about the intention, the mindset with which you go into asking these questions.
I, I call it a clean mindset and it's an, I kind of, I don't know. Um, I'm curious, tell me how it is for you. I'm not literally saying that, but that's what I, and I'm, my clean mindset is saying, right, okay, well I'm assuming all of these things that you've got all of these things going on and I'm just gonna put that to one side, and I'm opening a space for you to tell me how it is for you. That's a clean mindset.
And so she said that actually she notices when she drops into these questions, they come from her heart, whereas many other questions come from her head. And I thought that was a really nice, um, nice observation. You know, I, I'm, I'm, you are a human being with me as a human being. Tell me how it is for you.
And then you're gathering information from which you might be able to, um, give a different kind of treatment plan, whatever it might be, the context in which you are working with that person. Is it all about the insight?
I'm thinking, because I guess as the coach, as the trainer, what, what we're always trying to do is get people to have that aha moment that, that moments of realization, like, like you were saying with that lady who had that ball of, of fear and she, you know, she realized she was taking it into work and it was just, you know, she was really scared of it. For me, coaching doesn't work until someone has realized something, then they're able to solve that problem.
But if you, if you're going around the edges, like so a lot of people come to me, you know, for coaching, say, oh, I just need to manage my time more, I need to manage my emails. And if I just coach someone managing their emails, that wouldn't work, 'cause that's not the real problem. And we have to spend quite a lot of time working out what is the reason why they feel that they absolutely have to have be a inbox era or they can't do that.
And often, you know, it comes down to the i'm not good enough or whatever. And then once you've got the actual issue underlying it, then you can work out how to manage your email. Is it a bit, is it another way of getting to that? it does get to the, uh, the, that you refer to. It's a really nice way of doing that. However, you have as a coach, when I'm working as a coach, have to let go of the desire for that to happen. You have to sit in the trust of, because then you are kind of, it.
It's almost like you are like the, getting better at feeling, uh, rather than feeling better, it's almost like, as I see it, this is a bottom up modeling process. You don't know how you do you, I can ask some questions that help you figure that out, and I don't know where we're going with this because if I do, I'm not being clean. If I do, that's my model of the world. I might have a sense of it. I can direct questions in a place that might be useful for you.
I have no idea whether this is going to help you or not. I just trust that as you gain awareness of yourself, something useful will happen. And do you always try and focus on people's feelings? Only if they want to go there. You know, I often talk to people about the difference between right and left brain processing. Um, our left, our world is very left brain oriented. You know, structure, sequence, plan forwards, label categorize.
We don't often pay attention to what our body is telling us, so we only have half the story there. That's massively simplified of course, both sides of the brain evolved in everything we do. But we don't always listen to the wisdom of the body of what our body is trying to say. And these questions are quite nice for inviting awareness. That scared became a dark sta storm Cloud.
An awareness that becomes very tangible, that enables you to likely to sort of step back from it and let it be part of you rather than the whole of you, and see what information it gives, and see what might work better instead for you without trying to force change. So how would you use this clean language model to, to start to feel your own feelings and understand yourself more? You can ask these questions of yourself.
Um, there are the questions, um, are available in the book that I've written, the Listening Space. I mean, I could ask these questions of you so that listeners, or we could do a meditation, actually. We could, you could ask these, we could do a meditation on anything, and then your listeners could have a go and, and just seeing what arises for them. Let's, let's do that because I think it'd be good for people to experience this.
Um, I know a lot of people listen to this in the car or on the treadmill or on a walk. Is that okay If you're walking around? You don't have to be like lying on a yoga mat with your eyes shut for this. This, do you? Or can you? Oh, no, no. You can be walking around. I suggest you're probably not driving, but, um, you, you know, so long as you stay paying attention, it's going to be stay conscious.
Um, and okay, uh, you know, you can use these questions to, for anything, for any form of self-inquiry. And so one, um, one thing we could do if you like, is I have a set of cards that have different, you know, valleys, whatever, and we could use them. You could choose one. Just tell me when to stop and we could use that as a focus of, um, meditation. Let's go for it. So Tamsin is showing me her values card. Let's have a look then. uh, you don't get to choose, which as in, just let me know.
Just stop. Okay. Ah, intuition. So we can use these questions just to bring awareness of what intuition means for you. And, you know, you may, um, find things arising for you and you may not. Either way is fine. I'm going to ask you a question, sorry, i'm going to give you an instruction followed by a set of questions. And what I'm going to do is pause after each question and just notice, um, what arises for you, if anything. so. Intuition. And thinking about what intuition means for you.
So giving yourself time now, Rachel, to really notice for you. And, um, you might want to close your eyes or just soften your gaze as you do this. So just notice for yourself, what kind of intuition is that? It is a, Like a personal wisdom. Personal wisdom. And is there anything else about intuition? it's quietly nagging. Ah, quietly nagging. And whereabouts is intuition? Um, in, it's in the inside. Yeah. I think it's, yeah. Lower gut. Lower Lower guts. Okay. Lower gut and it's personal wisdom.
And does intuition have a size or a shape? Yeah, it feels a bit flat. A bit flat. Yes. Yeah. My listeners gonna think I'm mad because it's not, it's not there. I can't go. Oh, there it is. Because it, it's, it's when I'm intuitive about something, it just feels something's a bit off or not quite right. Or there's this sort of background niggle, so it's sort of like wrapping around things.
It's not like a particular ball, it's not like a big ball that's somewhere, it's more of a, Almost like a sheet that would wrap around things. Okay, so it's almost like a sheet wraparound things and a background niggle, like a bit of, and does intuition have a sound? A low hum. Okay. Anything else? Low hum. Anything else about intuition? Sometimes it becomes a louder hum and that's when I worry that it's fear taking over rather than intuition. Okay, so there's a loud, sometimes it's louder.
Hum. That's, you worry about, that's when fear taking over. Yeah, I, I never quite know when to trust when swishing. 'cause I never know if it's like, it's a genuine, yeah, this is, this is the deep wisdom or it's like a, um, I'm just reacting. I'm just reacting to something with my amygdala. That's what I worry about. Okay. And, and intuition is like a, a sheet wrapping around a thing and it's a low hum. And sometimes louder. Anything else? Yeah, there is sometimes this louder.
There's this louder thing where I feel that I really know something and then actually I'm, I am wrong. Because, you know, because I've, I've, you know, been interpreting it, it, it's that through the fear, shame or guilt stuff rather than the sort of background. But sometimes I know ignore, I ignore that init intuition in the background.
'cause I really want something to be, to be true that isn't, for example, you know, if you were working with a certain person that you would really love to, that working relation to work out with, but there's something humming in the background that this isn't quite right, but you like, really want it to be. Okay. Like I said, dunno, you got a new partner at work or something like that and you re you're desperate for this person, but they're really not the right person.
And your intuition's going, it is really not. But you're like going, no, no, no, no. I'm gonna ignore that. 'cause we really need this thing to work out. Okay. In a background humming, and I could ask that question again and again. Is there anything else about intuition? But I'm gonna move on to just invite you to represent intuition on paper in some way. It might be an image, it might be a word. No one's gonna see it. Well, you can show it doesn't matter.
Yeah. So I'm drawing like a, it's like a, I get background of sun actually with the beams, but sun, it's set, it's a setting sun. So like the beams aren't really, really strong. It's not bright in the sky. You can't see it, but you can, you can see the, the glow. The glow over the horizon. Okay. So what do you notice as you look at what you've drawn? That it's strong, but you have to notice it.
You know, you have to be in certain, you know, if, if, if there's something other, other shiny thing over here, you're not gonna, you're not gonna notice it. Um, there'd be other, if there's clouds around you, you're not gonna notice it either, you know? So it's. It's strong and it's there, but there's other things that can, that can cloud it out. think. Yeah, Okay. Anything else about what you notice? I guess you could trust the sun.
The sun is, is always there and it's all, and it's, you know, it's not like it's one day not gonna show up and it's not, not gonna be the sun. It is, right. It is the sun. So what do you know now about intuition? That it is that thing that's in the background that's quiet that you can trust that is always there, but there are things that cloud it out and that you need to be in the right conditions, I think to be able to pay attention to it. And what difference does knowing that make?
I think when I have this gut feeling that there is something not quite right or something wrong with feeling about it, I clock it and I know it's there, and I then make the time to get into the right conditions to explore it and to really. To clear the sky and to clear the horizon so I can actually properly look at what, what it is and what's going on. And that's a listening space.
That was really helpful actually, because I have been struggling with this, uh, I am quite intuitive with, with this, but I'm also quite impulsive with ADHD that, you know, I'm, I'm impulsive, so if I act on what I think is intuition, but it, it isn't, it's just fear or something else, then I'm gonna make a lot of wrong decisions. And I, and I have in the past made some quite, you know, decisions that weren't that helpful.
So actually that, I think the, what I would do with this is, yeah, when I do have that background buzz of Hmm. Is then, is then sit with that and then ex, yeah, maybe explore the feeling more, try and work out what that feeling, what the intuition is telling me in much more of an unclouded area, make sure my nervous system is settled down, that I'm not experiencing the exact, the A threat at the time.
And the lovely thing about Metaphor is that, you know, for example, if you were working with a colleague and you shared that they could say, they could help you check in, what's the sun telling you? Um, and, and I'm gonna share an example of, I mean, the metaphor is just fascinating. Connecting with your feelings can bring a richness of information that we don't always access. I think there are many, many cultures that access it better.
But, um, this is a story from a client recently who works in the NHS and she's happy for me to share her metaphor. She said, um, she's autistic, and she said I can't help myself. When I'm working with people, I find it really frustrating because very often they'll, and she's talked about an oxbow river. Now I'm not a geographer, but my understanding is that they meander and sort of curve back on themselves. And she said, I can't help it. I've got to go.
She said, I'm, I've got to go the shortcut, the neck of the oxbow. I get really frustrated with people doing this, and yet it had caused some difficulties in relationships with colleagues. And I said to her, well, that's really helpful because, um, this is really useful, the neck. You know, there would be situations I imagine in if you're working in ITU or a and e, you know, you're gonna be doing the neck more of the time.
And so I said that metaphor could be really useful for you because you have a choice point. Sorry, I'm pointing to the point where the river starts to bend. And the neck is the possibility. I said at that point, you then, rather than just automatically going across here, you could have a choice as to whether you allow for a bit of meandering.
Because what that does is get other people on board and you get the collective wisdom, but it means you can do it joyfully from your prefrontal cortex rather than, ah, got to go across the neck. And the impact for her was that she, next time she chaired a meeting, she was able to canvas opinion and people actually came up to her afterwards and asked about, you know, other areas of work that they might work together. And the impact. I mean, it's totally understandable.
And you can see how the o the meandering would be frustrating, but she's starting to see that through this metaphor, she's got a choice point. It absolutely makes sense, and I think this idea of sharing this stuff. With colleagues, obviously you, you need to trust them. But it's really, it's really, really helpful, you know, so I can imagine my colleagues saying like, Rachel, like, just calm down. What's your what's the sun telling you here?
Or are you in a position where, are there too many clouds there? Are you in a position where you can listen to the sun or whatever? And, and that, that's, I love that oxbow thing, you know, she's recognized that this is the time I'm gonna choose to let someone go off meandering. And that feels so much more empowering than having to put up with someone meandering Yes. So many ways in which these awarenesses can be helpful.
I can see how what you're talking about will work with patients, with colleagues, with ourselves. So what we're talking about is this method of using clean language to help people examine. What's going on for them, without inserting your assumptions, without fixing it, without rescuing, without being a victim with them or with ourselves. And it can be really, really effective. And what I love is that it can help develop some metaphors. I love metaphors. They're so useful and they're so useful.
Just communicating stuff with other people. It's a real shortcut, isn't it? Yes. And, and it can be if you use the wrong metaphor or if you don't hear the metaphor that the, your patient is using, you can use a mismatch. And I'm thinking of, so many of the metaphors in medicine are about war, the fight against disease, battle, germ warfare, you know, and that's not necessarily the way that people want to experience, particularly their chronic conditions.
if someone wants to start using clean language or if someone wants to start being able to feel their feelings more, what three top tips would you give them? Um, so the top tips, I would give, and I think it's that simple notion that the aim isn't to get to, to feel better. It's about getting better at feeling. And bring kindness to yourself as you do so. This peeling feeling is part of you. It's a part of you that wants to be heard. Bring kindness to yourself.
And also, yeah, that metaphor is a lovely way of bringing awareness to yourself. Wonderful, and can you just go through those three questions again for us? Because I think people will be like, oh, I, I've forgotten. What did she say again? Um, so probably the most conversational, um, clean language question, and I would use that every day just as a way of checking out is what kind of?
So if my, I don't know, daughter comes to me and says I'm frustrated, or what kind of frustrated, it's like touch, it's like, okay. It just gives you a, a way of finding out more. The next is, is there anything else about? It's like a way of saying, do you wanna say more about that? Um, I can share the, the clean questions. There are links to, to the, there's a whole set of clean questions.
There are 12 basic, 20 or so specialized, but those are really, you can go a long way with those two and the, um, and so anything, is there anything else about, um, and then what would you like to have happen? I'm gonna experiment with those three this week. That's wonderful. Tanzen, thank you so much. If people wanna find more about your work, um, get hold of you, uh, how can they do that? Um, I have a website, the Listening Space.
I have a YouTube channel, but all the, uh, links are on the website. Um, links to information about the book. There are some free downloads of meditations, yeah. That's great. I think those are gonna be really, really valuable for people. So thank you so much for being on, and we look forward to speaking to you again sometime. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks for listening.
Don't forget, you can get extra bonus episodes and audio courses along with unlimited access to our library of videos and CPD workbooks by joining FrogXtra and FrogXtra Gold, our memberships to help busy professionals like you beat burnout and work happier. Find out more at youarenotafrog.com/members.