Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #101 How To Make Better Decisions Under Stress with Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

My guest on this week’s podcast is living proof that trauma doesn’t have to break you – that your start in life needn’t determine where you’ll end up.  Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton is one of just six female chief fire officers in the UK, and a psychologist with a PhD in behavioural neuroscience. She’s also an ambassador for The Big Issue, which she sold on the streets while experiencing homelessness as a teenager – something she describes as the worst, most dehumanising experience of her life. And yet, as you’ll hear in this episode, it helped create the grit, resilience, empathy and compassion that’s made her the incredible human being she is today.  Sabrina talks us through her amazing journey from childhood trauma through homelessness, harassment and onto academic and professional excellence. She shares the experiences that lead her to research the psychology behind how and why we make the decisions we do when under pressure. Her work explores the tension between instinct and procedure, gut decisions versus protocol. And her findings have revolutionised not just how the UK Fire Service works, they’ve been adopted across many areas of industry and won 10 science awards globally. This podcast, recorded in front of a live audience at the Life Lessons festival, is one of the shortest conversations I’ve released, and yet it’s absolutely packed with Sabrina’s enthralling stories, powerful lessons and practical advice. Her message – that every single one of us is stronger than we think – is a vital one. This is a truly life-affirming episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.  Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/101 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I mean, you know what? Bad things are going to happen to you in life. Whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you experience, you're going to have disappointment, you're going to have failure. Things will happen that just aren't fair. That's life. You can't control that. But what you can control is how you respond to that. And I'd love to say that's solely a choice. It's not always a choice because your emotional reaction to something is not a choice. But what you do about it, the way you choose to respond to that, the actions that you take, the words that you use, the thoughts that you allow yourself to have, you can control those things. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books,

The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people, both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier,

we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome back to episode 101 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. My guest on this week's podcast is the living proof that trauma does not have to break you and that your start in life needn't determine where you'll end up. Dr. Sabrina Coman-Hatton is one of just six female chief fire officers in the UK and a psychologist with a PhD in behavioral neuroscience. She's also an ambassador for The Big Issue, which she sold on the streets whilst experiencing homelessness as a teenager, something she describes as the worst, most dehumanizing experience of her life.

And yet, as you'll hear in this episode, it helped create the grit, resilience, empathy, and compassion that's made her the incredible human being she is today. Sabrina talks us through her amazing journey from childhood trauma, through homelessness, harassment, and onto academic and professional excellence. She shares the experiences that led her to research the psychology behind how and why we make the decisions we do when under pressure. Her work explores the tension between instinct and procedure, gut decisions versus protocol and her findings have revolutionized not just how the UK fire service works, they've been adopted across many areas of industry and have won 10 science awards globally.

This podcast was recorded a few weeks ago in front of a live audience at the Barbican in London at the inaugural Life Lessons Festival. Due to time constraints at the festival, it is one of the shortest conversations that I've released on the podcast for some time, yet it's absolutely packed with Sabrina's enthralling stories, powerful lessons, and practical advice. Her message that every single one of us is stronger than we think is a vital one. This is a truly life-affirming episode and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Now before we get started, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are essential in order for me to put out weekly episodes like this one. Vivo Barefoot, the minimalist footwear company, continue their long-term support

of my podcast. I am a huge fan of Viva Barefoot shoes and have been wearing them for many years, as have my entire family. They make really, really comfortable minimalist shoes that you can basically live your entire life in. Many of you I know have already taken advantage of the special offer and have fed back to me that you are so pleased and are often really surprised with how comfortable these shoes actually feel. I have seen that they can be really beneficial for some people with back, hip, knee pain, as well as general mobility. And I have been recommending them for many years now to patients and have seen great benefits.

They make shoes for all occasions, work, play, walking, going to the gym, and so much more. And they also make shoes for children as well as adults. For listeners of my show, they continue to offer a fantastic discount. So if you go to vivobarethought.com forward slash live more, they are giving 20% off as a one-time code for all of my podcast listeners in the UK, USA and Australia. Importantly, they offer a 100-day trial for new customers. So if you're not happy, you can send them back for a full refund. You can get your 20% off code by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Dr. Rangan Chatterjee with Sabrina Cohen-Hatton. Thank you.

Sabrina, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. I have been so excited about talking to you ever since a mate of mine actually sent me a Guardian article about Sabrina a few months ago, which is really quite incredible. And for those of you who don't know, Sabrina is one of the most senior firefighters in the country. She's got an incredible life story. She was homeless as a teenager. She studied for her GCSEs whilst homeless, did really well in them, got into the firefighting service, moved through the ranks, super senior, has done a lot of research which has influenced national policy. And I could go on, but safe to say she's a super impressive

woman. And there's just so much I want to talk to you about. We've only got 45 minutes. But I thought I'd start by asking you about your time being homeless. That is probably something that many of us, I think, possibly can't relate to. What happened? What was that like? And how has that influenced your life beyond that? I think it's fair to say that it was the worst and most dehumanizing experience I could ever describe. And sometimes I think to myself, I'm having a bad day. And then I just remember back to what it was like. And there was a time when this bad day was something that I could only dream of. So it really does help to put things into perspective. But when I was nine years old, my dad was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. And he died. And my mum

found it really difficult to cope. So much so that she suffered terribly with her mental health. And I think it's fair to say that if someone goes to war with their demons, it's everyone around them that gets hit by the shrapnel. And that was certainly the case in our family. It was awful. And we lived in abject poverty. She couldn't run a business anymore. It folded. And we grew up living on benefits with a parent that couldn't cope and things were super super tough and it got to the point where when I was 15 things were completely uh they just couldn't go on in the way that they were and I started sleeping rough so I'd sleep in shop doorways I'd sleep in derelict buildings and pretty much anywhere that I could find. There was one time when I decided to

sleep in a subway because, do you know what, and this sounds silly, but I just wanted to go to sleep where there was somewhere light. And so I put my cardboard down and I put my sleeping bag down and I went to go to sleep there. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I could feel like my sleeping bag was wet and I could hear some bloke cackling and laughing and I realised quite quickly that this drunk guy was urinating on my sleeping bag, which was the most dehumanising experience. Only this guy completely misjudged this because I had a stray dog, stray dog, stray human, great, he was sleeping in my sleeping bag

and he didn't take too kindly to being urinated on either and let's just say that's not the kind of thing you should be waving around an angry dog. I don't think he'll be doing that again anytime soon. But you think of the practicalities of that as a young girl, I was 16 by that point. I had no other clothes. I had no other blankets. So I just went with this kind of sudden sleeping bag. And I just went and sat in the middle of the town center on a bench, pulled my knees up to my chest, hugged my knees and just cried until the sun came up. And then I went down to the bus station. When it opened, I got on a bus and I went to school the next day. And there's a real lesson there because you work with people every single day. You might experience people who, on the face of it, you

think, well, you're a really disruptive person, but you never know what they've gone through that day before you've met them so if you can be anything I would say just be kind um but I had a really tough time and actually it took me three attempts to get off the streets it was really hard I sold the big issue because there was very little uh help that it was available for me and I don't know how much people know about the big issue but it's a street magazine and in those days you'd buy it for 50p and you'd sell it on for a pound. So you're kind of trading. And that enabled me to have some kind of an opportunity to get out of the situation that I was in. And eventually it got to the point when secure accommodation, and I say secure accommodation because I had tried to get accommodation before.

The first place that I got was a shared house and I got beaten really badly by one of the other guys that lived there. So I ended up back out again. I ended up spending some time living in a van. But when the prospect of an actual place came up, then I started to think about what else I could do with my life. And that's when I started thinking about the fire service. Because the amazing thing about being a firefighter is people trust you to know what to do when they're having the worst day they've ever had they only call you because they don't know what else to do so the idea that someone could trust you to do that and you could be part of a team of people that can help people in that situation that really appealed to me because

I felt like I knew what the worst day of your life felt like and I wanted to help others in a way that no one had been able to help me. I mean I can try and imagine what that felt like but I have no idea. I don't know what that feels like. I'm someone who's lucky. I've always had a roof over my head every night. It's funny because the only other person I got to know who I know was homeless was on the second series of a BBC series, a film called Doctor in the House. And there was one of the guys on that who I spent time with him and his family. And he told me that he was homeless when he was 16 and he also shared a very similar story that um one night woke him up and someone was literally urinating all over him and it's actually really common when you're experiencing homelessness it's really common it's intentional

yeah yeah I've been punched I've kicked. I've been spat at. Honestly, it's unbelievable the way that people will treat you when they don't see you as a human. And when they stop seeing you as a human. Honestly, it was the most humiliating experience I've ever had. Yeah. Now, if we sort of fast forward from that to you as a senior firefighter, teaching firefighters and beyond how to make better decisions under stress, I'm sort of can't help but thinking, well, you have experienced a level of stress that very few of us have experienced. few of us have experienced. Do you think what you felt whilst you were homeless, do you think that makes you better equipped now to help other people cope with stress? I think it certainly helps me to empathize with others in a way that I'm not sure I would have known how to do if I hadn't been

through that experience. And I think trauma can do that to you sometimes. So I think it does from that perspective. I think the other perspective is that, you know, no matter how bad it seems, it's never as bad as it possibly could be. So I think that's certainly helped as well. But there is something about resilience that's built on the experiences that you have. And I think what I would say is everyone is stronger than they originally think that they are. Every single one of us. Yeah. I think that's a powerful lesson. I mean, you mentioned trauma can do things to you. I mean, trauma can break you. And it appears that trauma could have broken you, but actually it made you more resilient. And that trauma actually, I'm guessing, gave you a certain drive to succeed was that drive to succeed was that there beforehand or do you think your experiences gave you that drive to go and actually achieve the heights that you have achieved since then yeah do you know I think that's a really good question um when I first joined the fire

service as a young 18 year old girl I wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms by some and I'm going to caveat this by saying this it was a very small part of my career the rest of it has been incredible and I've worked with some incredible people but when I first joined the fire service you know they there were quite a lot of people that would say to me I don't agree with women in the fire service I just don't and I'd be like I don't agree with morons in the fire service, but here we are. You know, no offense, mate. Sorry. That's a great answer. You know, but I've experienced sexual harassment. I've been sent unsolicited, very inappropriate pictures directly to my phone.

I've been told that I was never going to get the promotion because I didn't have a hmm. And after the fourth time that this guy said that, I said, well, I might not have a hmm, but I'm kind of working for one, which is the same handicap handicap in my view and I knew then that my future lay elsewhere but there is a point that actually you experience these things and I lost count of the amount of nights I go to sleep and cry myself to sleep and think well I can't go on like this but then I think back to what I had experienced and think well actually this isn't as bad as what I've had and tomorrow will still come so I think that those what I had experienced helped me get up again and do the next day. But I think I've often wondered about this because I think a lot of what you do and how

you view the world depends on the role models that you've had in life as well. And I went through a period where my entire family broke down and that's not unique to me. Lots of people experience that. What happened in my case was relatively extreme, but those elements aren't unique to me. But I had some amazing role models at various points in my life. And my grandmother is someone who I often speak about as being my biggest inspiration. My grandmother was a Moroccan Jew, and her and my grandfather had to escape Morocco after a pogrom where she was attacked with a machete for the crime of being Jewish, and she was left for dead.

And when my grandfather went to collect her body, he had to go through this pile of mutilated corpses to find her. And when he pulled her out, she gasped for air. She was still alive, and she survived. And then they escaped to Morocco. And North African Jews at that point couldn't get visas to go to places like America. Europe was out. So they thought they'd been safe in Israel. So they went and they made a home in Israel. Now, when my father was dying, my grandmother came across and lived with us for some time.

And even though she'd had all of those horrible traumatic experiences, And even though she'd had all of those horrible traumatic experiences, I've never once heard the woman hate or judge or consider anyone with anything but compassion and care. And with that kind of role model for someone who can go through that and still look at the world through eyes of love. I mean, how can I not feel like I can have resilience with a role model in my life like that? Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. It's interesting, the idea of, you know, what we grow up with. I've just come from hosting a panel on happiness with someone called Helen Russell and someone called Mungi, who's the granddaughter of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And she talks about this concept of Ubuntu, about this South African philosophy.

And I asked her about whether that philosophy that's ingrained in South African culture, has that helped them go through basically racial violence, oppression, prejudice, and come out the other side? She goes, goes absolutely and it reminds me a little bit because I've just come from that conversation now and hearing you talk about these experiences and how you know despite the the adversity you faced how you could still come out the other side and be a kind and compassionate human being because no one would blame you for holding on to that resentment and feeling angry and bitter yeah i mean you know what bad things are going to happen to you in life whoever you are wherever you are whatever you experience you're going to have disappointment you're going to have failure things will happen that just aren't fair that's life you can't

control that but what you can control is how you respond to that and I'd love to say that's solely a choice it's not always a choice because your emotional reaction to something is not a choice but what you do about it the way you choose to respond to that the actions that you take the words that you use the thoughts that you allow yourself to have you can control those things they are within your gift and that really comes on to lead us on really nicely to talking about you know stress yeah and how do we make better decisions under stress because between that stressor and the response that we have it's a choice yeah exactly that and what do we do with that choice can often impact a how we how stressed we feel about something but also the impact of our decision making and

i know decision making is something that you're very um you know you've researched something you talk about a lot um so as a firefighter you know at what point did you start to, clearly, you know, many of us in here, I don't know how many people are firefighters, but we've got an idea of what being a firefighter is. Perhaps you could expand, you know, what actually is it like being a firefighter? What does it feel like when you actually get to that scene? you actually get to that scene and maybe share some incidents that may have happened in your own life that has changed um change where you went beyond that and changed the narrative of your career i think the first thing to say about being a firefighter is it's the most intense privilege that you could ever have to be someone who is trusted so much in those kind of situations um but you are caused because the

situation in front of you is by its very nature extreme. And we are incredibly well trained, we're incredibly well experienced at those situations, but they are intensely stressful. And the thing is about stress is it affects the way that you make decisions and it affects the way that you think. So when you're experiencing stress, it essentially takes up the processing capacity that you have in your brain and you've got less available then to either synthesize the information that you have around you, create that coherent mental map or make a decision then that you have. So being able to practice in intensely stressful situations means that you reduce the stress that you experience at that particular

point in time for real, and then you can respond in a better way. I had, I'll share with you a particular incident that completely changed not just my perspective, but my entire world, if I'm honest with you. So my husband and I were both firefighters at the same time on neighbouring stations. And one day I was called to an incident where a firefighter was very severely injured. And there was only one fire engine involved in that. And I knew that he was on it. So there was a one in four chance that it was him. And as much as I'd had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls where you turn up and you know that you're going to see someone at that incident where they've

woken up to cornflakes and normality but you know that their life has been completely turned upside down but being called to an incident like that when you're the loved one when it's someone that you know and you care about you are absolutely torn between the role of a responder and all of the accountability and the responsibility that goes with that and the role of a responder and all of the accountability and the responsibility that goes with that. And the role of a loved one and all of the fear and worries and anxieties that go with that as well. And it was the most difficult experience of my life. Anyway, we turned up and it turned out not to be him, although he had very nearly been killed himself. It was our friend that had been injured and I struggled with this incident for a long time afterwards because I kept thinking about it and

replaying it in my mind and as much as I'd have this overwhelming sense of relief that it wasn't him I'd then start to feel guilty because I felt like by not wanting it to be him that badly I felt like I was de facto wishing it on the other guy who was our friend. And I found that really tough to deal with. And that incident was actually the reason why I started to do the research, because I started to look at how we could make firefighters safer. And unbeknown to me, the number one cause of injuries across all industries, actually, not just the fire service, is human error. So I figured, well, if I could learn how people think and how people behave a bit better, if I could understand human error, then maybe we could

reduce it. And that's when I ended up doing a PhD part-time while I was still serving. And then after the PhD, we started to do some national research, which I now co-supervise with a professor at Cardiff University. And we learned more about how we make decisions under pressure and we developed some quite amazing techniques that we know help to raise people's situational awareness to the highest levels they're anticipating and helps them to join up those very quick intuitive decisions into their bigger plans and you made a brilliant really perceptive point earlier about the point in which you experience something and you make a you make a decision you have this kind of gut uh intuition about how you're going to respond

but before you action it that's the point at which you have an intervention and that's what we found in fact 80 of the decisions that we make when we're at incidents are intuitive gut decisions they're not rational decisions where you've kind of weighed up a load of different options. They are instant responses to something that you're experiencing. So we developed some techniques that take that point at which you're about to make a decision, whether it's the 80% of intuitive decisions or the 20% of analytical ones, before you act on it, that's the point at which we introduce these techniques. And we trained our commanders to ask themselves three things very rapidly like a rapid mental checklist what am i trying to achieve so how do i join up this instant

response that i have to this piece of the situation and put it in the big picture what do i expect to happen so raising the situational awareness and projecting what might happen and how does the benefit outweigh the risk and when they were doing those three things we found it didn't slow down their decisions but it helped them connect things to the bigger plan and to project what was happening so they had a better view yeah you know what i really i really love that because in the heat of the moment when all kinds of things you know quite literally are going on um you know you sort of a simple checklist can have such a value you see that in like surgical operations now and human factors training and that simple things are operating on the wrong knee yeah can be prevented by having simple checklists it sounds ridiculous

but i think we we underestimate the value of them. And you've been thinking about that, I guess, in terms of how to help firefighters make better decisions. But I'm hearing that and thinking, well, actually, what can people in this audience who are not firefighters, who are not senior commanders, what can they learn from that? What can they learn from your research and how they can make better decisions in their own life whether it's busy day at work whether it's they're in traffic and they're stressed they need to get somewhere whether it's a frazzled mum who's stressed out by her kids and wants to react are there some universal themes from your research from your experience we can all learn from.

Yeah. And I think those techniques are applicable in whichever industry you're in or whichever situation you're in. I think the other thing that we've learned, and this is a really simple tip, but it's something that when you're experiencing the pressure of needing to make an instant decision, you've got, you might be in a boardroom or in a meeting and people are looking at you and asking for an answer. And you feel like you have to make a decision there and then. Just stepping back from that and creating some space for yourself to take a walk around the incident so I've created that space that thinking space so I can you know get a better view get a better understanding and make sure that what I think is happening actually is happening if you're in a meeting and you someone's pressurizing you for a decision then say that's a really good point I need to reflect on that and I'll come back to you. And it sounds so simple, but our instinct is to just respond. Cut yourself some space. As a working mum myself, I know what it's like to be completely frazzled.

My daughter's sat at the front grinning at me now. And it can be really tough when you're trying to juggle three million things, get out the room, they've pressed the go slow button and they haven't even brushed your teeth when you're trying to get the dog out the door it can be really stressful and your instant reaction is to kind of shout come on get out the door but again it's just pausing and thinking okay what can i practically do to get this child out the door quicker and and do you would you use those three questions in that kind of situation with your family with your daughter all the time i mean that so that has huge practical value for people so just let's just i don't know maybe we could repeat those questions and then think about a

a hypothetical potentially situation uh where someone could that. So what are the three questions again? So it's what am I trying to achieve? What is my goal? What do I expect to happen? And how is the benefit worth the risk? Okay, so let's take it to a, you know, I don't know why I'm saying a mum, it could be a dad, right? A parent of two kids who is trying to get the kids out of the door in the morning for school and things aren't ready. And there's a bit of chaos going on and then people start to get a bit frazzled. And the parent wants to sort of shout and say, come on, just get your things together. I've told you this before, we're going to be late for school. So familiar. Right. So this is meant

to be fictional, but if any of you can resonate with it, nod your heads. Wow, a lot of nods. So let's think about how might we apply that for that parent right then. So the goal is to get said children out the door and to school on time. So when you're at that point that you want to scream and shout and just explode because there's no So when you're at that point that you want to scream and shout and just explode because there's no other, you're having that emotional reaction. Actually, if your goal is to get everyone out, screaming and shouting and, you know, having that very natural reaction to go and get your shoes on actually isn't going to take you any closer to that goal. What might take you closer to the goal might be marching over to said child, lifting them up under your arm and walking them over to said shoes and putting them on.

So in that particular point in time, if you can just think, okay, what is it that I'm trying to achieve? And then the thing that I'm planning on doing, so screaming and shouting, for example, what's going to be the effect of that? What is going to happen? And you know that if you start screaming and shouting, actually, you're no closer to getting them out. You you further because it's going to cause another kerfuffle exactly so is the benefit worth the risk absolutely not so then you move forward as to think okay what

can i actually do to do this and you just run through that cycle every time you've made the decision before you implement it run it through and we know it doesn't slow down your decision making when we tested it with, we tested the latency between the point that the inject came in that they had to make a decision on and the point at which they had to go and implement it. There was no difference in time. It doesn't slow down your decision making. Yeah, I think that's a really key point there because a lot of people might be thinking, oh, that checklist sounds great. But in that moment, I don't have time to go through a three-point checklist. I just need to go. But I guess what you're saying, your research has shown

is it doesn't slow things down. And I guess not only, well, you're saying it doesn't slow things down. Can you train that so that actually you become quicker at applying that framework? So when you start doing it, it might take a bit of time, I guess. But do you become quicker at applying that framework so when you start doing it it might take a bit of time I guess but do you get quicker at that the more you practice it? Yeah definitely because it becomes a primed reaction so you do it automatically without even thinking about it and it can be really powerful so when we were doing it for the research we would train people in how to use it and we had a kind of we had a clip of a rescue that had to be performed and we'd stop at a kind of, we had a clip of a rescue that had to

be performed and we'd stop at a particular point and we'd say, okay, take me through this. What's your decision? Why? What are you trying to achieve? What do you expect to happen? And how are the benefits worth the risk? So when they do the first one, it would be a bit clunky and they'd um and ah, but by the time they got to the end of it, it became so proficient that then when we were analyzing the data afterwards and we were looking at the the narrative that they were using they were doing it without even realizing it you know it became a an unconscious response um and it honestly is so powerful it sounds so simple but it's so useful yeah now i'm already thinking about thinking about you know i might for a week or two start applying that in my own life at

various times, just see what happens. And with all these things, I always encourage people in general, whether it's my patients or people who listen to this podcast, like, if you'd like an idea, give it a go, suck it and see. What have you got to lose? What's the downside of doing that and trying it? You know, if you are sceptical, give it a go. Exactly. Of doing that and trying it. You know, if you are skeptical, give it a go. Just taking a quick break in the conversation to give a shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show.

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but I recognize that for some of us, this is not always possible. If you're looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of athletic greens which is worth around 70 pounds with your first order you can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more but is this now something that is being rolled out as a policy for people in the fire service

yep we use it all across the country so it was integrated into our national policy so we all now use it and in fact all emergency services then adopted it in our national doctrine for how we deal with kind of major and complex incidents so it's spread even further and we've had loads of people from all industries that have been interested in it as well. We've presented it all over the world. And in fact, we're up to science award number 10 globally for this work. You know, it's been really incredible, the response that we've had, but its applicability is really broad. I mean, how does it feel for you? Going back as a teenager, you're sleeping on the street, you face adversity every day, you come across this idea of being a firefighter because you think, well, wouldn't it be amazing that people would rely on you when they're at their lowest ebb?

And now, like, fast forward 10, 20 years, and you are involved with research that is fundamentally 10 20 years and you are involved with research that is fundamentally changing the practice of firefighters around this country and around the world without some journey yeah it is and do you know what there's not a day goes by that i don't pinch myself and just think i still can't believe that this is quite real um and it is incredible and especially i mean i'm a big fan of the kind of concept of sliding doors. And for me, I don't need a pat on the back or an award for this stuff. I'm just really glad that someone is going to go home that day and the sliding doors have slid the other way and that whatever could have happened hasn't happened. And they don't have to feel that intense set of emotions that I felt when I thought it was my loved one. That's really amazing. But the downside to it, and I'll be really honest with you, is I suffer from this constant kind of

feeling that I'm, you know, this imposter syndrome. And we talk about this a lot in leadership roles. And I know it's not just me. I know it's people that have had very normal, you know, normal, whatever normal is, lives that experience this as as well but I do constantly think to myself is this real am I good enough you know is this someone's going to find me out in a second and find out that you know actually I'm still that scruffy kid that was sleeping on the streets one day um so much so that I found it really hard to talk about my experiences before with homelessness and it's only recently that I've started being very open about it. And particularly the higher up in the fire service, I went as a leader in that kind of world. And let's be honest, it's a very alpha male world

anyway. You know, the kind of, the role models that you have in that kind of world are strong and infallible and like they sleep in chain mail or something so the idea of standing up in front of whatever floats your boat you know you know the idea of standing up in front of people and going hey I'm vulnerable that I used to be a really scruffy kid that used to sleep on the street and you know eat out of bins and stuff that was really hard but actually it's a huge part of who I am and no matter how you how much you want to erase your history, you can't. It's your history and neither should you. And do you know what's so powerful about this?

Since talking about it, so many people have got in touch with me. Other firefighters, police officers, people from all walks of life who are doing okay now have got in touch and said, you know what? I'm so glad you're speaking about it because I experienced homelessness as well either as a teenager or you know in their kind of early years I'd experienced homelessness and I hadn't told people about it and the fact that you are now means that I feel like I can now be more open about it but if you take those young people that might still be experiencing homelessness or might be experiencing poverty or might think that you know society isn't for them because it's turned their back on them or for whatever reason if you can show to those young people that you can come from a place like that

and still do okay do you know what maybe the journey won't be so hard for those who are in that place right now yeah i mean i mean it's it is incredible to think about your journey and just this whole idea of sharing our experiences because ultimately as human beings we want to connect and when we when we when we hear someone's vulnerability and uh the troubles that they've gone through you know we connect with them we want to hear more we we learn about ourselves as we do that but i can appreciate it must have been very very difficult um you know we were talking up there before we we came down i was telling you about um a podcast i did with john mcavoy who um was was probably one of britain's most wanted men just a few years ago you know locked up with a 7-7 bombers and abu hamza and

um you know two life sentences for armed 7-7 bombers and Abu Hamza and, you know, two life sentences for armed robbery. And what was really striking in that conversation I had with him was that growing up, his role model, his male role models were criminals. So he grew up with a single mom and that's all he knew as his male role models. And therefore for him, in many ways, I wouldn't say it was inevitable, but it was highly likely that he was going to follow that path. And I remember I was thinking about that,

sharing that with you and thinking, well, he has overcome that and turned his life around. You have overcome your adversity and turned his life around. You have overcome your adversity and turned your life around. Are people like you and John special? Or can anyone do that? No, I don't think we're special in any way, shape or form. I think it is really hard when you grow up in an environment where you feel like there's no hope for you. I mean, you take growing up in poverty, for example, and there are 14 million people in the UK today who are experiencing poverty. There are 4 million children experiencing poverty today. And when you're experiencing

poverty, you clearly haven't got an income coming in from doing a good job that's going to pay you very well. It doesn't mean to say that you don't have potential. It means that you don't have access to the same opportunities. And that's a really tough experience. So I'm a big believer in social mobility, but there's a real practical side to this. If you're growing up in an environment where you don't think that life is for you, society is for you, or those other things that you can aspire to are even a reality, they're a dream for people like you, it's really difficult to reach for those opportunities regardless of your potential. And that's a really tough position to be in. Now, you think about that, right? That is one in five of people today who are experiencing poverty. That's huge. And if

everybody could release their their potential imagine how much stronger our society should be these should be our next generation of doctors of lawyers of lawmakers you know but they're not not because they don't have the potential people looked at me on the side of the street like i had nothing like i was nothing but i had plenty of potential it's just reaching for those opportunities. But it's not just about trying to get those opportunities that are there. It's how you expect to be responded to when you have those opportunities. So when people would walk past me, they would judge me. And as much as you would like to think that you don't care what people think about you, actually,

the reality is you're human and you do. The way that you feel when you see someone judging you or responding to you, that becomes part of your inner narrative, your inner voice, the way that you talk to yourself, the way that you expect the world to respond to you. And that becomes part of how you then respond to the world. And that's a really tough thing. So if you take unconscious bias, for example, we talk about that all the time. And it's a really, really critical thing. And we often speak about it from the perspective of protected characteristics and with very, very good reason. But what we don't talk about enough of is how we respond to people based on their social class or based on their economic status. or based on their economic status. And if you're a young person who's experienced poverty, who's reaching for an opportunity, and you're sat in front of an interview panel, but they've made a judgment on you because of your accent, or because of the clothes you're wearing, or the way that you're presented, then regardless of your potential, that opportunity is closed down for you.

So it's about what you can do as an individual to reach for those potentials and believe that you're worthy of them them but also how we respond to others if we have power or influence in some way and we all have power or influence in some way yeah what happens to us in childhoods often conditions us and as you say it sort of kind of locks in a certain response that we have to other things that might happen in our life um you seem to have sort of gone through that and sort of worked on it and process that in your work in your job i'm interested how has that played out in your personal life away from work because i know from my own experience from a lot of patients that when we don't process those emotions and how we being conditioned

that can absolutely have an impact on our relationships I think that's a really good question um I think it inevitably has an impact on your personal life because it's you and how you respond to the world and how you see the world responding to you then and I think that those experiences helped me to see the human in everybody. And it made me less quick to judge. And I think I've taken that through my life, no matter where I've gone. I always try to see the potential in someone rather than just the way that they present. I think that those experiences have made me very sensitive to the way someone might be experiencing trauma and the

way someone might be responding. So I think it's probably made me uber sensitive to that, which in some ways has really helped in my job. In other ways, it can, you know, it can play on your mind significantly afterwards as well. But I think the other part of it, especially in my job is because, and you must experience this as a medic as well, because you are constantly exposed to trauma, it becomes almost I love my family dearly. And the idea of losing one of them absolutely fills me with dread. So to counter that, I constantly try to think about what I'm grateful for. And me and the family do this really lovely thing where every night before bed, when we're tucking Gabby, little Gabby into bed, which takes some time, believe me. We'll do this thing where we'll come up with three things that we're really super grateful for. And sometimes it might be,

you know, little things like another season of Peaky Blinders or something like that. But sometimes it might be a really big thing like, you know, your health. My aunt is really ill at the moment. So, you know, we're constantly is really ill at the moment so you know we're constantly thinking about how grateful we are for our health and that we're okay and then we'll talk about something that made us really happy that day and that helps you to recount the story something that's made you really giggle or something that's been really good and so you're thinking about the positives not the negatives and then the last thing is to share a random act of kindness and that means that you've actually got to go out and do a random act of kindness and sometimes mine are as much as

not letting the door slam on someone who I can't stand which I can tell you is very tempting um but my daughter did a great one where instead of presents she asked for donations um to a charity and I thought oh my god that is so sweet at such a young age as well which made me feel completely crap and inadequate for just not letting the door slam on said person but it's about what you choose to focus on you know and I think that is an amazing lesson for stress per se isn't it we have this negativity bias as humans that's you know kept us alive for a couple of hundred thousand years um but these days it's sort of working against us in a massive way and um it's so i had a big smile on my face when i heard you said that because listeners of this podcast will know that i i have a gratitude practice that we

play which is a bit different but very very similar themes that i think really i would recommend so much that people um think about applying in their own life and what the one I do is that we all go around the table at dinner time and we all have to answer three questions what have I done today to make somebody else happy what has somebody else done today to make me happy and what have I learned today that's a nice one yeah they're all but we can all sort of you know squeeze those sort of things together and choose the ones that we like that are going to work for our family right um but again you know these kind of what we would call softer things a there's a lot of science to back them up but b it's it's i think you know learning

these things you talk about kindness and compassion these are the things that we're missing i think in the world today um and that's sort of it's interesting you mentioned intuition and i've heard you talk about decision making before and how a lot of policy is made around what you can measure what what can you analyze and i remember hearing that it reminds me of medicine a little bit whereby you know we're taught how to diagnose how to treat and everything now has become protocols so if a patient comes in with this you rule out you know they come out with a headache you first of all you make sure you've ruled out cancer and then you quickly move on to trying to make that diagnosis then you can go on the treatment path and I think in, we have forgotten about the art of medicine and how there is something about your individual experience as a clinician, your gut instinct, the fact that you've seen people for the last,

you know, for me, the last 18, 19 years, and that you start to pick things up and you see patterns that sometimes the blood results don't tell you. And I can really see that similarity between what you can measure versus intuition. So when it comes to making decisions, how do you deal with that conflict? I mean, how do you train people to embrace their gut instincts, but also to also be open to other ideas as well i think that's such a good point so my phd was actually focused on the neural mechanisms that sit behind those kind of gut decisions that you make and the thing about your gut is it is you know it is helpful your brains are designed to learn from the experiences that you have the things that you're exposed to and they help you have shortcuts in your brain biases and heuristics they help you to make decisions in a very quick way in a very complex

and dynamically moving environment so those kind of gut intuitions that you have that's based on things that you've seen in the past the things that you've learned the memories that you have the things that you know you've kind of got these associations with and those associations can interact with each other way below the level of consciousness so there's a lot that your gut can tell you that's based on the things that you've seen so i think you're absolutely right and that that that that point about diagnosing and the relying on or listening to your gut as well as the protocols is a really critical one one thing that i think is quite specific to the kind of culture that we live in today, it's you can't open a newspaper without hearing about the next litigation that's

happened. So the point about today living in a society like that is when you have protocols and procedures, it gives you some comfort to know that you've got the backing of a procedure for whatever decision that you've made. So then actually, if you followed that procedure or that protocol, then you can't be held accountable or be blamed if something's gone wrong, or it doesn't have the outcome that you want. And I can tell you from my experience that sometimes the best decisions still have terrible outcomes. Sometimes you still have to pick the least worst option. But if you've been able to hang a protocol or a procedure, it makes you feel better because that's the applicable one. But the reality is

the world is more complex than that. And if we want to have an environment where people who are making decisions that affect whether people live or die, making the best decisions, we need to create that culture where people feel safe in making the right call for that situation rather than relying on a procedure or a protocol that might, you might just be trying to jam a situation that doesn't quite fit into that. Yeah. what if you would mind sharing an example if your own job in your own career where you had to make a least a less bad decision because I can't imagine the sort of decisions you sometimes have to make but I wanted to sort of bring that to life was there a time where you had to choose between who gets saved yeah actually there's a an example

that i wrote about in my book with this and i'm gonna tell you at the beginning spoiler alert it was a it it was a an exercise it wasn't a real situation so don't get scared when i'm talking about a bomb that exploded in a tunnel and lots of people were having to uh to go in and try to rescue people but this scenario was essentially that. And we had some intelligence that said a secondary explosion was about to happen. And the intelligence suggested that it was going to be a very short period of time, like 11 minutes. So we had to make the call over whether we flooded the tunnel with more responders and tried to bring everyone out that we could, or we took everyone out and tried to uh just evacuate the tunnel immediately or

some kind of midway the decision that i took was to not to flood it with more because actually the idea here was to minimize the amount of people that could potentially be killed but to get everyone that was in there to bring everyone out that they possibly could and to leave the ones that were absolutely stuck that you couldn't get out until we'd either dealt with the the intelligence or the secondary explosion or we'd we'd disabled the device except one firefighter refused to leave um he was in a car with a a an eight-year-old girl who was only trapped by her foot so he needed a very specific piece of equipment to get her out and he was refusing to leave her on her own so then the next decision came and this was the tough one where it was do I risk sending more firefighters in with that piece of equipment

or do I try to convince him to come out or do I just say no I'm not risking anybody else and that at that point in time you're not just thinking about the kind of pebble that you throw in the water you're thinking about all the ramifications of that it's it's all of the ripples that come off that pebble and what could possibly happen and that even though it wasn't a real decision you were I still had sweaty palms I was still thinking about the accountability I was was thinking about, oh my God, what if that was my child in there? How would I feel? And in the end, I decided not to send more people in because the objective was to minimize the lives. And as it happened, he still refused to leave the child. And the bomb exploded a little bit later than the intelligence suggested, but it still wouldn't

have been enough time. So had we have sent more people in, there would have been at least an additional three lives that would have been lost. As it happens, we didn't send someone in, so we didn't try, but it meant that two lives were lost instead of five. So that is a horrible, horrible situation to be in. Yeah. I mean, hearing that and trying to put myself in that position, I could feel my heart rate going up a little bit as well. And, you know, it's a fictional scenario that you were talking about, but I mean, that's how powerful it is when you start thinking about it. Did you apply that three question framework in that situation? I did. And had I not, I probably would have sent more people in because you can't help it. You want to try. Yeah. I guess that's

where instinct might work against you, right? Where you're like, oh my God, it's a child. You know, I'm mum. I've got to go and save. Exactly. My initial reaction was, I will take the equipment in myself.

And the guy that was kind of running the scenario kind of slammed his hand down. He went, that's a cowardly thing to do. So you're supposed to be in charge. You're leaving the scene. You're not making the decision. That's the worst thing you could do. What you're doing is a complete cop-out. And I was a bit like, oh, well, I thought I was doing the right thing, but I put myself in danger and no one else. He went, no, you're leaving the scene in disarray.

Don't be an idiot. Insert whichever word you would like to there uh so at that point then i kind of thought about it again applied the three-point uh principle that we were talking about and then made the other decision yeah thanks for sharing that um yeah really incredible to hear so you know what i've heard you talk before about the time of your life when you were homeless you used an interesting phrase for me. It really stuck out to me. You said, when I was experiencing homelessness, and you said before, when people are experiencing poverty. And I think about that because, you know, stress can also be a perception concept. The way we frame a situation can determine whether it's actually stressful for us or not.

And I think a lot of people, I would say, if I was talking about it, I think I would say when I was homeless or that person is homeless. And I wonder if you choose that language carefully to almost know that it's a transient thing that can be gotten out of. You see what I'm getting at? Is that a conscious choice? Have you always used language like that? No, it is a conscious choice because when I was experiencing homelessness, people saw that as my identity. And I think that's a really dangerous thing, isn't it? And we always do that without even thinking about it. We describe ourselves as something that becomes a huge part of our identity and how we see ourselves and who we think of ourselves as. And if it's

something as destructive as homelessness, if that becomes your identity, it can be really hard to move out of that and to reach for those opportunities and to achieve social mobility. So I would love for more people to see homelessness as an experience and not as an identity so people could move out of it without the risk of being judged in quite the same way yeah i think there's a really powerful message in that for all of us the way we use language i think determines how we feel about things um you can apply the same rule to mental health problems oh my god you know absolutely saying i am depressed or i'm currently feeling low is two completely different things or you, one is something that can be transient. You could take this to obesity, you know, I am obese.

Well, you're almost labeling and defining yourself. So it's very hard to move beyond that because that's who you are. Whereas if it's, I don't know, if it's, for example, I'm somebody who's currently carrying excess weight. I know it sounds a bit forced, but I do think these things have real value. And that's why I think it caught my ear when I first heard it. And it's interesting for me that that is a conscious choice to change a language. Language is so powerful and we underestimate it, don't we? We really do. and you made the point very perceptively about mental health mental health is massive for us in the fire service and mine did some brilliant research and they identified that we are significantly more likely to experience issues

with our mental health in the emergency services probably no surprise there because we're repeatedly exposed to trauma but we're also less likely to ask for help from the general population. And you think about that power of language. I work in an incredibly male-dominated environment. We know that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in this country. And you put those things together and you look at the language that we use, man up, men don't cry. We tell our kids, our sons from the time where they're this this pig be brave you know don't cry you're a boy and what that says to you as you grow up into a man is that I can't express my emotions I have to keep this in and that kind of pressure to stay strong means that actually if you are

experiencing extreme stress or problems with your mental health then you can see there is not being a way out and those are our sons our dads our brothers you know there's a real point to this and i mean i i'm i'm so frustrated that the clock says 3 minutes 30 left on there i feel like we're just warming up and there is so much more i want to talk to you about and this book has now has gone to long form so we're normally 90 minute two hour conversations and so i think we are going to go and follow that up at some point with a proper sit down one in a studio where we go into some of these things in depth. But for the purposes of today, for this live event at Life Lessons, for the purposes of people here in the audience, you know, I call the podcast Feel Better Live More.

When we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of our lives. And I think a lot of the things that you talk about will help us live happier, calmer, more productive, and lives basically full of more resilience as well. I always like to finish podcasts with practical tips for people here in the audience today, but for people who are who can also listen to this through their phone and on their computer, do you have some, and maybe things you've already mentioned, but do you have some practical take-home tips that everyone in here can start thinking about applying in their own life, whether they are a firefighter or not? Yeah, I think for me, the big one is embrace failure with as much commitment as you embrace success.

Now, there's two reasons for this. For me, you always learn more from failure than you do from success because you've had to fight harder. You've learned more. You've had to fight your way around it. So if failure is not a bad thing, don't be afraid of it. I think particularly when you're, certainly for me, when I'm in a position that I'm in, it's quite, people don't want to be seen to fail, but talking about them can be really powerful. And there's a second part to it. I know, certainly in my position as a senior leader, if I've got people around me that can't own their failure, I can't trust them not to claim a success that's not theirs. So there's a point about ethics, ethics their own value so don't be embarrassed or ashamed

about your failure own it i mean that is so powerful and i think we can all reflect on that our own lives at various points um my was it my it was my son i think it was literally three or four days ago we were having a chat and he said, Daddy, do you know what I learned today? I said, what he says, do you know what FAIL stands for? I thought it was like a riddle he'd made up or something. I was like, no, what does it stand for? I was thinking, what is this?

He goes, you don't know, Daddy? I said, no, I don't. It's like first attempts in learning. Oh, that's brilliant. And it was clearly something that the teachers had been talking about at school, but I think that's a nice way to wrap this up right and it's i think it's a great lesson it's something that i think my son is learning in his school at the moment which is fantastic and i think something we can all learn from sabrina you are an inspirational lady your

story the work you're doing is helping so many people. It's a real honor and a delight to meet you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. Guys, please give it up for Sabrina Cohen-Hassan. Thank you so much. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. I really hope you enjoyed the conversation and enjoy the fact that it was a conversation in front of a live audience. In fact, this is something I hope to do more of in the future. So if live Feel Better Live More podcast events appeal to you, do let me know on social media and I will see what I can do. Now I thought Sabrina's story was inspirational and her tips at the end I think had great value for all of us. Now I want to make sure that as much as possible

you turn the inspiration from these conversations into action so please do try and think about one thing or one theme from this conversation that you can start applying into your own life immediately. Of course, please do let Sabrina and I know what you thought of this episode on social media. And if you can, please do use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. If you want to find out more about Sabrina, please do visit the show notes page for this episode of the podcast. That is drchatterjee.com forward slash 101. On it, you will find articles about Sabrina, links to her social media channels, as well as links to her brand new book, The Heat of the Moment. The show notes page for this episode is drchatterjee.com forward slash 101. On the theme of taking action, my latest book, Feel Better in 5, makes looking

after yourself really, really easy. Everything that I recommend in the book takes only five minutes. This is not only what I have found to be practical and sustainable after 20 years of seeing patients, it is also what the science of successful behavior change supports. If you are looking to understand how to create new habits in your own life that will build over time, please do go and check out the book. The message is deceptively simple, but feedback has been absolutely fantastic so far. Many people are using this book as a way of making helpful changes in their life. And look, even the busiest person has five minutes to look after their health. Feel Better in 5 is available in paperback, as an ebook,

or as an audiobook, which I am narrating. Now, if you know someone who you feel would benefit from hearing the information in this podcast, but does not listen to audio podcasts, well, this episode, like all of mine, are available to watch in full on YouTube. The best way to find them is to type in to your browser, drchastity.com forward slash YouTube. And if you do enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to podcasts on.

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for producing this week's podcast and to Richard Hughes for audio engineering. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest conversation. Remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time.