Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #263 How To Be Your Own Therapist with Dr Julie Smith

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Social media has its flaws – but it can also be a force for good, creating communities and offering help to people who might not otherwise receive it. And my guest today is someone who uses her platform to do just that. Dr Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist, who’s passionate about making the tools of therapy accessible to all. And she has a real talent for doing so, to her audience of over four million people across social media, and now with the number one Sunday Times bestseller Why Has No One Told Me This Before? Julie has worked in the NHS and been in private practice for more than a decade, helping a diverse range of clients through difficult times. But she felt frustrated that it was only those clients sitting in front of her who were able to benefit from her years of training and experience. Therapy is about talking and working through your problems, but it also has an educational component, Julie explains. You learn about how your mind works, so you can influence your mood and cope better day-to-day. She realised this was something she could teach online so, back in 2019, set about posting short videos to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. These quickly went viral, earning her hundreds of thousands of followers. Recent topics include breathwork for when you feel overwhelmed, how to recognise addiction, and how to help someone having a panic attack. If you already follow Julie, you’ll be aware of her warm and friendly approach to helping us all build resilience. I think she’s brilliant at demystifying our thoughts, feelings and behaviours and encouraging small steps towards self-care. During this conversation we cover many of those steps, such as meta-cognition, journaling, emotional vocabularies, self-soothing and recognising your attachment style. As with all of Julie’s tools and teachings, the common theme is self-awareness. She’s helping people get a bird’s eye view on their life, notice patterns and perhaps make different choices. And, as we discuss, this can help not only our mental health and emotions, but our physical health too. I had such fun chatting to Julie and this is a wide-ranging and empowering conversation that I think can help all of us improve our mental well-being and resilience. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.leafyard.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Order Dr Chatterjee's new book Happy Mind, Happy Life: UK version: https://amzn.to/304opgJ, US & Canada version: https://amzn.to/3DRxjgp Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/263 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 qualified health care provider with any questions you 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.

There is always a way through. I've seen people pull themselves from places you imagine people could never come back from. And they have. They've turned their lives around. It takes time and it takes effort. It's a marathon. It's definitely not a sprint. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. to Feel Better Live More. Social media, of course, has its many flaws, but it can also be a force for good, creating communities and offering help to people who might not otherwise receive it. And my guest today is someone who uses her platform to do just that. Dr. Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist who's passionate about making the tools of therapy accessible to all. And she has a real talent for doing so to her audience of over 4 million people across social media. And now in her first book, the number one Sunday Times bestseller,

Why Has No One Told Me This Before? Julie has worked in the NHS and has been in private practice for more than a decade, helping a diverse range of clients through difficult times. But she felt frustrated that it was only those clients sitting in front of her who were able to benefit from her years of training and experience. Now, therapy is about talking and working through your problems, but Julie explains that it also has an educational component. through your problems. But Julie explains that it also has an educational component. You learn about how your mind works so you can influence your mood and cope better day to day.

And she realised that this was something she could teach online. So back in 2019, she set about posting short videos to Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. These videos quickly went viral, earning her hundreds of thousands of followers in a very short period of time. Recent topics that she's covered include breathwork for when you feel overwhelmed, how to recognise addiction, and how to help someone who's having a panic attack. Now, if you already follow Julie, you'll be aware of her warm and friendly approach to helping us all build resilience. I think she's brilliant at demystifying our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and encouraging small steps towards self-care. During our conversation, we cover many of those steps, such as metacognition, journaling,

emotional vocabularies, self-soothing, and recognizing your attachment style. And as with all the Julie's tools and teachings, the common theme is self-awareness. She's helping people to get a bird's eye view on their life, notice patterns and hopefully be empowered to make different choices. And as we discussed, this could help not only our mental health and emotions, but our physical health as well. I had so much fun chatting to Julie. This is a wide ranging and empowering conversation that I think can help all of us improve our mental wellbeing and resilience. I hope you enjoyed listening. And now, my conversation with Dr. Julie Smith.

with Dr. Julie Smith. What I see in all of your work, whether it's the online videos or in your book, is this kind of message of self-empowerment, of helping everyone understand that actually there's a lot that I can do myself. I don't necessarily have to be reliant, as you say, on a professional or someone else to give me the tools. I can learn the tools and apply them myself. I don't necessarily have to be reliant, as you say, on a professional or someone else to

give me the tools. I can learn the tools and apply them myself. Is that something that's really important to you? Yeah, absolutely. And that was the reason for getting started. You know, there's a lot about how therapy isn't accessible for everybody for lots of different reasons and reasons that I perhaps didn't have the ability to control or affect in great in a great degree um but there you know I was sat in this therapy room with access to the research and the techniques that help people and but I was seeing people you know one at a time and and so there was that sense of you know I would sort of finish a day of therapy and go into my husband and say why should people have to pay to come see me to find out this stuff you know i mean there's a lot

to therapy that isn't isn't the educational part so education is one aspect of therapy where you can learn a bit about how you can affect things there's this other sort of part that you can't necessarily hand out in a video online um that you have to experience in the room one-to-one with someone. But the educational aspect was so helpful in enabling the people I was working with to manage week-to-week in between sessions, you know, and a lot of them were saying, I mean, that's where the title of the book came from. A lot of people were saying, why has nobody told me this before? This is not hard. It's not difficult to learn. But when I do it every day

it makes a big difference and and that wasn't one specific kind of you know bullet thing that that made the big difference it was lots of little skills that when you put these in to practice every day they do make a difference and they make life easier you've seen a lot of people over the course of your career I know you started off in the NHS and you moved to private practice. What are the common things that you would see repeatedly? You know, are there common kind of tendencies that people have that even if they came in with slightly different problems, were there some underlying themes that you saw actually were pretty universal? that you saw actually were pretty universal? Yeah, often there was a lack of confidence in people's belief

that they could manage their mental health. So a lot of people will come to therapy and they imagine that you're going to fix them and you're going to make it all better and that you have the key to that. And while you have the information available that helps other people you're not going to do it for them and so there's this sort of process in therapy where people um build their confidence in their ability to manage but often i think that is a really common theme at the beginning of therapy that but often because of

you know you get to the point in a problem where you feel like nothing's working and I'm out of ideas so I'm going to go and seek support and so when you're in that place you naturally imagine that um you don't have the answer and there's nothing you can do somebody else must have to do something to you or for you um to change it um so often there's this sort of rediscovery of your own abilities. I guess it's that empowerment piece, isn't it? Yeah. It's fascinating to see how you have just blown up in what, two years? When did you post your first video? Do you remember?

Yeah, it was the November before the first lockdown. It was the November before the pandemic started. So it was like a month before we worked out that something was going on so in 2019 yes yeah so what we now we are so 2021 so that's not long that's about two and a half not even we're coming up to two and a half years I think it's the middle of April now so it's almost two and a half years in that time you have I don't know are you one of the most followed people on TikTok is that right uh I have no idea I'm not sure I mean there's there's um yeah three million of them on TikTok and about four million of us across platforms and things so and I don't think it's because of me you know my early were terrible, but I was probably at that point the only person on that platform offering education of that sort.

And so I think really it was a reflection of what people needed and what people were struggling with and nobody was talking about. I mean, when we discovered TikTok, there was loads of great dancing and comedy and it was a fun place to be. And there were also lots of young people expressing their distress and saying I'm not okay and but there was no professionals on there going here's what you could do here's some ideas or you know um go and seek help or that kind of thing so um yeah it felt like we were kind of swimming against the tide hugely um but yeah so I think it blew up because it was what people needed to hear or wanted to hear how's that being for you because you said over four million people across all platforms now follow you and all the content I've seen from you which is brilliant on social media but all the content I've seen is very visual. You are front and centre, right? So

there's a huge recognisable piece, like, you know, over 4 million people around the world probably know what Dr. Julie Smith looks like. And I've heard you describe yourself in many interviews as an introvert. So I'm fascinated by that. You know, three years ago, you did not have a global social media profile. You never posted a video for your professional work. What was life like then three years ago compared to what life is like now? Because I suspect there may have been a roller coaster, maybe moments of self-doubt, excitement, but also then worry? Like, can you share a little bit about that journey? Yeah, I mean, for sure. For me, it was exciting at first, but I didn't really see the potential of it or where it was going to go. I really genuinely saw

it as a temporary project that would be an interesting way to get some education out there, that people in therapy were saying, this is really useful. So I wanted to make that accessible. And when it started to blow up and we saw the numbers, it was just numbers. It was just numbers on the screen. And then my husband said to me, imagine if you lined all those people up like next to each other and you saw them for real. And that's when I thought, oh gosh, yeah, because actually, you know, I'd been working one-to-one with people in my little office and that was comfortable. I live in a small town. I don't, you know, that was fine for me, that kind of life. And I didn't have any ambitions to be public. And so the idea of being public

really got me questioning, okay, is this what I want for me? Is this what I want for my children? It was also zapping loads of my time because social media as a content creator, it will gobble up as much time and effort as you're willing to give it. And it rewards you for that. So, you know, it's just as addictive for content creators as it is for the consumer because the more consistent you are the more content you produce then you know the more traction you get and so I had to really there were times when I had to really kind of stop and think what do I really want my week to look like what do I want my lifestyle to be and and how does that fit in with family life and things like that and so you know I've said no to a lot of stuff based on the fact that I don't want that for my family and for myself and I've had to stay really close to the reason I started in the first place I think

that's helped me all the way along to deal with being public or my face being seen it's because each time I would do a video there would be this bunch of people that would contact me and say I just want to say thank you so much it's you know I even had people messaging me to say that that it saved their life in a moment where they were thinking of something terrible um it it turned and turned things around in that moment and now they were going to go and seek some help and And so for me, that was a real driver. Wow, these are real people watching this stuff. It's having an impact.

If I could shift someone's direction in a positive way, wow, that's so worth it. But so I didn't want to lose sight of that. I wanted to keep that at the core. And so that's helped me, I think, deal with the sort of the vulnerability of being public. I mean what you're speaking to there for me is values and you write about values in the book I want to talk about that shortly because I think knowing our values and reminding ourself of them regularly is such a valuable tool to navigate the inevitable stresses and obstacles and pushes and pulls that life throws at us. And it's interesting to hear you describe that because I'm hearing, oh, Julie

clearly knows her values. And so when she is getting pulled or pushed, she keeps returning back to that value, which I think is, it's great to see you putting into practice something that you write about. What were some of those moments? I mean, can you describe them where you're making videos, your numbers are going up, you're feeling that pull, oh, we need to make more videos, right? This is helping people. What was there a point where you realised, wait a minute, I haven't hardly seen my husband or my kids this week. I've been here before you see, so I'm very fascinated. Can you describe some of those moments for you? Has it been tricky? At times,

did you think, I need to just shut down my accounts, like I don't want this anymore? How has that been? I think, yeah, I'd be lying if they're saying there weren't those moments of thinking, I just want to go back to the way things were, because there was a time where it just felt lots of pressure and you know suddenly I've got to adjust and and I don't think I mean it's not like a you know I haven't turned into Justin Bieber or anything I'm not being hounded in the streets I live in a small town and and stuff like that so there hasn't been a huge change on that front um do people stop you uh do you know I had uh very early on i had a couple of um young girls sort of follow us around the supermarket and then and then wait at the door and my husband said i think i think

they want to have a you know selfie with you and and i was all sort of embarrassed about it and my daughter said mommy you need to do this it's never going to happen again so i was like okay then so we did that and um but yeah really it hasn't happened again well no I'd lie a couple of times it's happened but often it happens you know what it happens because the type of content I do the people that come up and say something are the people who have found the content meaningful I'm not an entertainer I'm not you know exactly anything like that so the people that come up are saying lovely things that that give me that drive to move forward so actually it's been a really nice experience when it happens um but

it's also nice that it doesn't happen a huge amount you know i'm not living in the center of london or anything and and seeing lots of people every day so you know i do the school run then i go back to my therapy room and start filming videos so it's actually a pretty quiet life in uh to a degree so yeah that's that's really really interesting you as you were talking about your experience there something that you write about at the start of the book really came to me which is this idea that you know we're not our feelings our feelings are not facts our emotions are not facts um i love the way you've articulated that and and And it kind of sounds as though, again, through this experience that's been your life over the last two and a half years,

you've had some bad days, some days where you've questioned, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? Other days, you probably felt really good. You've had that experience in the supermarket. other days you probably felt really good. You've had that experience in the supermarkets. There's a kind of rich tapestry of emotions and feelings that are part of normal life. Yes, yours happens to be on a big public scale because of TikTok and Instagram, but everyone goes through that, don't they, in their own life, in their own way. So this idea that we don't always have to act on those feelings like you didn't deactivate your account and go right I'm done right you knew that let me just sit with this and make a make a better decision in a few days once I've just thought about things I don't know I mean this seems to

be a key idea that I see in a lot of your work online and in the book that thoughts and feelings they come and go don't they they're not fat we don't have to act on them yeah and and and like you say when i'm doing this kind of work yes i've been those kind of the highs are great i get to come meet people like you and and do amazing stuff like this and and there are also days when i get home after the school run and i think oh i've got to think of a video and i oh gosh i really just do not feel like doing this today and but then actually when i think of you know when was working in the NHS, there were days when I felt really good about something that was going really well. And there were days when it all felt too much. And I really didn't feel like doing it anymore. And, and, and so you get

those days, whatever is going on in life, don't you? And, and yeah, you get to choose. I love that kind of idea that, you know, you're one decision away from from a different you? And, and yeah, you get to choose. I love that kind of idea that, you know, you're one decision away from from a different life. And, and, and that gives you that sense of freedom to a degree. But, but yeah, you don't always have to act on it. So that you know, we have a sort of a feeling that will come and it will, it will come with an urge. So you'll come, you'll, you'll have an urge to do something or do a certain act, but you don't have to go with it. So I don't know if you wake up in the morning and it all feels too much and you have that urge to just pull the duvet over, go back to sleep and switch your phone off, hide away from the world.

You could go with that urge and you're likely to kind of feel terrible at the end of the day. Or you could act opposite to that urge and push through that moment with the possibility that once you were up and about, you could feel a bit better or a bit different. And often in therapy, we'll play around with that idea that, okay, so when you went with that urge, what happened? How did you feel after that? And when you went opposite to it in another situation, what did that lead to? And so you can kind of learn as you go by just reflecting on these sorts of experiences and often

we i love the idea of a kind of a basket so you know you have all of these different aspects of your experience but they're really like weaves in a basket and we don't experience each weave we experience the basket you know you have this experience but in therapy what we do is we start taking it apart and we look at the different aspects and the sort of minute detail of different experiences so that we can see where we can make different choices. You write this section about motivation, you split it up, as you say, into urge and action. I found that really, really interesting. A lot of us, we act on our urges you know we don't want to get up so we just stay in bed we feel like some sugar so we go and open the cookie jar but a lot of your work is helping us understand that actually you don't have to act on that urge how can people

I guess train themselves or teach themselves that they don't have to because I think for some people that's that's like a deep realization that I feel this way I don't have to do it yeah yeah and you know we I mean that's taught in um dialectical behavior therapy. So DBT in. But that's a very specific therapy that's for people who perhaps have unsafe coping strategies and things like that. So it's not really freely available to lots of people. But it is one of the skills that is taught in that therapy is to build your awareness of urges and practice not going with that urge, but doing something that's based on your values instead of the feeling. So, you know, you can play around with that in lighthearted ways. In the book, I talk about, you know, when we were kids, my sisters and I used to get a packet of polo mints. And the trick was, you know, you hold it in your mouth and who's

going to crunch it first? You've got to not crunch the polo and and there's this incredible urge to kind of crunch the mint and and really it's just a light-hearted way of of demonstrating that you can have this urge to do something and you can it sometimes it's excruciating not to go with it it's really hard and other times it's easier but you can kind of really play around with it in terms of building your awareness with those light-hearted things um like food and stuff like that. It sounds like you and your sister then at a very young age were preparing for you to be this TikTok global star with sucking mints in the back of the car. Well, do you know, and it's kind of, you fast forward to today and I was saying to you earlier, I just got back from holiday and I've had a lifelong fear of heights.

And because I don't, I live in a small town, there's no built up areas and I don't get the chance to challenge it on a regular basis. So whenever I do, the feeling always comes back. And we went on holiday and we are going up these really high buildings. We went up the frame in Dubai and it's so high and I'm determined not to pass on that fear to my children so I did a huge practice of acting opposite to the urge because my urge is to say no way am I doing that I am not going up there I'm gonna die I had to kind of hold on to that not go with that urge and and go along with it but also when we're in that situation and we, you know, go up in this lift and we come out and there's a glass floor and, oh God, you know, and just the stress is high. And my kids are running around on this glass floor and enjoying it, not a fear in sight, from anyone. And so my urge to quickly get to the other end, get in the other lift and go down again, I had to hold back, hold

back, hold back. And, and, you know, you practice with those lighthearted, you know, don't crunch the mint exercises. And they do start to translate into, hang on, I know I can do this. I know this is an urge. And I know that I don't have to go with it. And so I was determined in that situation not to be the person to say, let's go, let's go and sort of, you know, halt everybody's fun. But just to hold on to that fear, practice my breathing and stuff like that. Yeah. And to keep my stress response down. And it worked. It helped hugely. That's a very powerful powerful example i guess the key thing for me there is that you don't practice this for the first time when you're at the top of a building right in that fear states it's kind of what are the kind of low risk activities in day-to-day life that you can practice so that in that real life scenario you can now implement in a different way. So apart from sucking a polo mint,

what are some other ways that people can try and practice that? And is this what you talk about in the book? There's a term I'm not familiar with, metacognition. Yes. Does this sort of fit in here? So that metacognition is the sort of core sort of method used in psychological therapies, really. So, you know, your brain has the ability

to think and have thoughts. And but it also has this incredible ability to think about the thoughts that we're having, you know, so we can be in this conversation talking to each other. And there can also be this other part of your mind that's kind of watching the conversation and thinking about the things that are being said. And that the the sort of ability that we really tap into in therapy so that we can reflect on experiences look at them with a bit of um a bit of a bird's eye view um and then then you get this this degree of sort of diffusion from your thoughts so you can kind of um see them for what they are rather than, you know, and I talk in the book about, remember the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey? And he kind of finds this old wooden mask.

It doesn't look like anything. And when he puts it on, it kind of grips him on the back of the head. It affects everything he does, everything he thinks and that kind of thing. But when he takes it off and he holds it just at arm's length, it's just a mask again. And I think of thoughts as like that. When it's here and it's all you're looking at, then it's really hard to have any degree of kind of control over that. And instead it will control you. So it will impact on how you feel and how you act.

But when you get a bit of distance from your thoughts you go oh yeah gosh that's really that's a lot of self-criticism right there it takes some of the power out of it just by holding it on its length so you don't have to not have negative thoughts you just have to give yourself a bit of perspective on them and hold them back and see them for what they are yeah i love that i had this idea in in my new book called take Daily Holiday. And the idea for that was essentially where one of my mates said to me that in a workplace he used to work at, the boss or one of the managers had a counter on his desk saying, oh, only 66 days till I'm in Florida on a beach. Only 65 days. And I thought,

this is interesting, isn't it? This idea that someone's trying to live understandably in the future. There's nothing wrong with looking forward to a holiday, but this idea that, oh, my life will be great on those seven days when I'm on the beach in Florida, things are going to be great and I'm going to count down. So this idea that we're, you know, I really thought about what is it about this holiday that got this guy excited, got him counting down? What is it about holidays that gets us all excited? And my conclusion was, you know, I asked myself, what is a holiday? What does it offer us? Yes, it can offer a son. It can offer us time with our family and our friends. I know you've just been on holiday. There's all kinds of things that we love about holiday, but I think one of the

big things that gives us this perspective, you know, I've often found that when I take off, you're on a plane, let's say, you start to put your life, you get the 30,000 foot view on everything in your life, literally straight away. And I'm thinking, oh, why was I bothered about that? That's nothing. It doesn't really matter in the context of things. So I think perspective is a key thing. And then I sort of thought, well, why do we have to wait for one week a year to get perspective on our lives? Why can't we do that every day? And so one of my recommendations to my patients and people is take a daily holiday. Take, even if it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes, where you step outside your life to give you that perspective. And I see a very similar idea of what you're talking about. It's like, well,

if you never step outside your life, you think you are your life. You think you are your thoughts. You can't see any separation, but there's all kinds of practices. I don't know, journaling, meditation, mindfulness, all kinds of things that we can use. A walk around the block that gives us that perspective. I mean, that's certainly how I see it. Would you agree with that? Do you have a different perspective on that? Yeah, no, for sure.

I mean, I noticed that as well. I mean, going on holiday is dangerous for us. That's when we had the idea to make some videos and put them on social media. So I'm a bit nervous about going on holiday. But yeah yeah i often get that kind of you you calm don't you and you reset but actually i also whenever i go to the beach for the day with my family just for a walk on the coast i get that same feeling but in a much less time so you know a couple of hours at the beach my family i can come home and feel reset or sort of recharged in some way. Potentially, I could, you know, lucky enough to live close enough, we could do that once a week if we prioritised it.

So, yeah. And again, I get that with kind of exercise. If I go for a little jog around the block or, you know, down to the woods or something, I feel that feeling again. And it might not be to the same degree as a couple of weeks on holiday. But if I do that every day, it adds up to more than a two week holiday anyway. Yeah, exactly. So you're getting even more perspective than you would have done just on that holiday. One of the funnest parts of the book for me was when you described you as a trainee clinical psychologist

and you guys were being taught mindfulness. And I think you were talking about how sceptical you were. You thought, there's no way I could do this. There's no way I'm going to talk about this with people who come to see me and help. And then you explained how you once went running and how it completely changed your perspective on it. So maybe let's dive into mindfulness. What is it? Why were you so sceptical? Tell us about that run and how is it useful for people? Because it seems to fit in here, which is this idea of you can observe those thoughts and not necessarily act on them. I think mindfulness helps with that, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Mindfulness is that process of staying in

the present so observing the thoughts that come into your mind not trying to stop having any not a lot of people think that mindfulness is the ultimate in concentration and if you i don't know if you're trying to be mindful of this glass that the minute your attention is not on that glass you've failed and you've got mindfulness wrong and it's really not that it's know, your mind will wander to this thought and that thought, and it'll bring up stories and memories and it'll hear the car outside or that kind of thing. Mindfulness is noticing that your mind has gone somewhere and then guiding your attention back. So I love to think of mindfulness as a spotlight. So if you say, you know, your mind is a theater and actors are, you know, your thoughts. So different actors will come on stage. You can't control who's coming on stage

or how long they're going to be there. But all you have is the spotlight and you can choose which ones you're going to focus on and for how long. And so mindfulness is that process of choosing what you're going to focus your attention on and allowing everything else to come and go. And yeah, when we were trainees, and it's almost embarrassing now to even think that we behave like that. You know, we were supposed to be so open minded, but it really makes you think this is really difficult stuff to teach people because it does give you that sense of well this sounds really weird and not helpful at all and I absolutely had those judgments in the beginning and and it was only once I started using it that I had that oh right yeah this is helpful um moment um did you into before that run which you speak about in the book, where it really seemed to showcase to you what mindfulness was, had you planned before that run, right, okay, I'm going to have a mindful run now. Or was it just, I've gone for a run because that's how I unwind and

oh, I get it. Oh, this is what what this what you know tell me a little bit about that experience yeah so uh it was you know exam season stress was high I had lots of work to do um but I just needed to get out the house I've been studying all day I needed to get out the house just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains

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January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. yeah I went for this run and it was a really long kind of gravel path and and I could feel as I kind of started the jog I kind of felt just so you know I was just full of kind of oh should be doing this oh got to do that when I get back and I could feel the stress and um I thought you know I'm just gonna try I'm just gonna see if this will help I'm just, you know what, I'm just going to try. I'm just going to see if this will help. I'm just going to, you know, try and be mindful. So I focused my mind on the sound of

my feet on the gravel path, which is that crunching and crunching and crunch sound as I went along. And my mind left that sound a thousand times. You know, I would think, oh, that email I got to reply to, or I need to do more original than that, and I haven't added that to my, whatever. My mind went off to lots of stressful things. And each time, I just brought it back. And because I was moving my body, and I was outdoors, and there was lots to bring me to the present, and the sound as well of my feet on the gravel, I was able to keep doing that. And I did that process maybe a thousand times. I don't know how many. During that run? During the run, yeah. And then by the time I got back, I noticed that I had spent that run focusing on the present. You know, obviously there were these little moments where my mind would go off, but, I had more time feeling calmer and focused on the here and now than I would have done if I had just gone through my to-do list while I was running. And that's when I thought, oh, yes, I had these little micro moments of peace. And actually,

mindfulness isn't about making you feel calm and peaceful. It's not a relaxation exercise. It's practicing that sort of mental muscle if you like to be able to choose which thoughts you're going to pay attention to and which ones you're going to let pass and that is an incredible skill to be able to utilize i think it may well be the most important skill for any of us to learn because i I think a lot of us don't realize, I didn't for much of my life realize it, your brain is literally taking in so much information all the time. And actually, what you're focusing on and what you're thinking about is just a small fraction. And your brain is actually helping choose for you what's important. But you can actually train that skill.

And therefore, you know, that thing about urgent action, there's a space between urgent action, and you can choose what you're going to do with that. I would say the thing that's helped me the most in my own, I was going to say mental well-being, but I'd almost say physical well-being as well, is this idea that, you you know between stress and response is a space and you can train so that that space in your mind becomes bigger and bigger like these days I really feel I feel I've got minutes to make a decision even though it's microseconds but I didn't five years ago and I think it's through doing these regular practices we're definitely going to get to some of these regular daily practices you know what I found recently like you on holiday at this sort of fear of heights and this scenario you thought oh wow I can I can do

this differently here um I literally two weeks ago because as we're having this conversation my book's only just come out I think two weeks ago And I was due to go on BBC One Morning Live to talk about it. And I got up early and I was due on, I don't know, about 9am or something. And the taxi was due to pick me up at about seven. And, you know, I'd showered, I'd shaved because I was going to be on telly. I thought I'd shave, but I shaved for once. And the taxi had gone. And I thought, oh, I know the old Rangan would have in that moment, I would have made myself

sick with thought, oh no, I'm going to be late. This is going to happen. And I was just totally calm. I thought, oh, well, I guess taxi's gone. I guess I'll just phone a couple of local firms. And if I can find someone great, if not, well, so be it. And I know that sounds ridiculous. And to me, five years ago, that would sound ridiculous. But I see a lot of the tools that you're teaching people about, there can be a starting point where you then practice regularly and then some of them start to become automatic. Do you know what I mean? Like, it feels really good in a real life scenario. We go, oh, I've chosen a different response here. Five years

ago, I would have got stressed out by this. There's nothing wrong with that. But, oh, this stuff's working. Like, in that moment, you just didn't allow yourself to make yourself sick with your thoughts. You know, does that make sense? Yeah. And I think, you know, lots of it becomes automatic. The thing that you do all the time, your brain will be brilliant at automating for you, right? And if you can just repeat it enough time, it will get easier to do. But also, it won't always happen. So, I mean, a lot of it is a toolbox. But imagine if you had a toolbox and there was, I don't know, some job to do and you had to put a picture up and you were kind of trying to do the tool with something else. And because it was quicker and easier than going to get your tools that you need.

Sometimes you'll use the tools and other times you will try and you won't. The situation won't feel like um you have access to it or maybe the stress will be higher and you know maybe if um i don't know maybe if you're going to visit the queen you would have been more stressed and and that's okay you know i think yeah um a lot of what i try to teach people is it's not going to make you perfect in every situation um but the tools are there as and when you need them. And sometimes you'll use them to good effect and sometimes you won't and that's okay. And I think you make that case very well. Right at the start of the book, you say that

these tools are not going to mean that your life becomes perfect and you don't have any problems anymore. Not at all. You're equipping people with the skills that when those things happen they've just got a better toolbox to approach them yeah yeah i think it's um i never want to give the impression that um you know because i have access to this sort of knowledge that that everything for me is perfect and I have some sort of subhuman existence where no problem ever phases me. It's just not real. They're tools and they help when you use them and they're easier to use when you use them more of the time, but life is still really tough for everyone. Yeah. And I think that's a powerful message because we can know stuff but we're all human as well so you can be an expert in this area and share tools it

doesn't mean you're going to be perfect at applying them and I think sometimes we you know I think about this honestly through the lens of sports and I think of let, Tiger Woods, regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time. Tiger's had a coach for much of his career. Now, his coach can't play as well as Tiger, or he'd be playing. He'd be Tiger Woods. But he can see Tiger and he can help him go, oh, Tiger, actually, this is why your shot keeps going right, because you're doing this, right? And I think that's a really

useful way because sometimes I think we expect our teachers and our educators to be perfect. But that again is setting up a kind of false reality for us where we think if I can't be perfect, then I'm failing. I know you do talk about failure in the book, but having a good relationship with failure is kind of important, isn't it as well? Because, you know, we all fail from time to time, depending on how we define failure. Why did you decide to write about failure in the book? I think it's just a huge subject that no matter who I've worked with over the years, you can't go through a therapeutic process of someone without experiencing

failure along the way, right? You know, if you're trying to make some sort of change in your life, failure is going to be a part of that learning process because that's how we learn, you know, we learn through trial and error. And so when we have a culture of it's not okay to fail or that failure says something fundamental about who you are as a person and your worthiness as a human being, then that develops a sort of defensive way of living where, you know, we stay back from risk. We don't do anything that might even give us a sign that we're going to fail. And when we do that and we kind of hold back and our life just shrinks and, you know, we say no to things because they have that element of risk of failure. And we never find out things could have gone OK.

Have you ever had those tendencies? Yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, this whole journey on social media has felt extremely vulnerable in terms of, you know, anything that you say, if you do something wrong or, you know, you kind of embarrass yourself in front of potentially millions of people, that to challenge that that relationship with failure and and I think for me because the account was never about me that helped a lot because it was based on I want to share this information it's not who I am it's just something I'm doing because it seems like a good thing to do I've got access to all this great psychological research and these techniques that I know help and I know how to apply them. So I'm going to share them. It's not about me searching for validation in the world. And actually, you know, when I talked to my daughter, who's nine, about, you know, followers and things, she'd say, how does it feel to have all these followers? I'll say, I'm just, I'm still mini, still just me. It's not, I'm not any different. I'm no better or worse.

If I switch that account off tomorrow, I'd still be exactly the same person. And so it doesn't mean anything about who I am as a person, which enables me to be vulnerable and make videos and share that kind of information. But I think as soon as we attach our kind of sense of self-worth to something, then failure can feel catastrophic. I mean, what you just described there has been a huge part of my life.

You know, I realised recently before I did an interview with someone called Elizabeth Day who has a podcast called How to Fail. recently before I did an interview with someone called Elizabeth Day who has a podcast called How to Fail and you have to send her three failures in your life oh man that was a stressful experience for me because I realized I'd kind of known this anyway for a few years but as I had to really articulate things for Elizabeth before the conversation, I realized that I'd been so scared of Fadi my entire life that I wouldn't put myself in situations where Fadi was an option. So I would very skillfully avoid things. I would only play sports that I knew I could be the best at. I wouldn't play them

otherwise. It's like, oh no, no, I'm not going to be great. It felt too painful because for most of my life, I'd say until maybe five or six years ago, I've got my value of who I am from success or external validation, which is a very lonely place to be. It's a very toxic place to be, as you say. It shrinks your world. You don't sample all the wonders that the world has to offer because you don't want to risk failure. So when you said your platform is not who you are, that's very powerful, really powerful. Has that ever been challenged whilst you've been doing it is it you're talking about it now with a real detachment which is wonderful like you know I know that's just a part of me that's my role as a psychologist I'm sharing those tools it's not who I am did you always have it okay with that or have have there been times in that where you got sucked into, oh man, I've got some negative comments, you know, people saying that video wasn't right,

or that can be triggering? I don't know. You know, has that happened? And have you had to remind yourself of these things? Yeah. And I think what's helped is that I have started this stuff later on, you know, I'm kind of in my mid th30s i um already have a family i think if i was starting something like this um much earlier in life i wouldn't have the sense of self um firm um and the kind of the sense of identity that i perhaps needed to solidify before i made myself vulnerable in that way um and so i wouldn't recommend it to everybody. But yeah, I mean, there have been times, and you can get kind of sucked into this idea that, you know,

I don't know, you could be in a situation where you get invited to something and it's all very grand and you're made to feel very important and you go, oh, this is very nice. And then, you know, you go back home and you're picking up feel very important and you know, this is very nice. And then, you know, you go back home and you're picking up dirty washing off the floor and, you know, you kind of, what is this? And you have to be able to step back and see it for what it is

and see that you are consistent youth throughout. And because, yeah, I imagine it could be a really difficult experience to, I wouldn't like to feel a sense of fear that this could all end tomorrow, you know, because then who would I be? I know I am at that place where I know who I am and because it's all happened so quickly, I know that I can survive without it

and that life would generally be okay if it will end tomorrow and I'd have these great stories for my grandchildren can you still remember life pre-global TikTok status can you does that does that do you ever go yeah you know I quite like to get back I mean can you actually remember or is it, you know, we very quickly adjust to our new reality, don't we? Yeah. So, I mean. Yeah, I had more time back then. You know, I was, I had this really nice balance. I was working kind of part time and doing it around the children.

And I had my third baby. And so I had time to like, you know, go for coffee once a week with my friends who also had young babies. time to like you know go for coffee once a week with my friends who also had young babies and and those lovely times that felt um well I think the pandemic took those away as well but um it suddenly I became really really busy and and so that was a part of it that I was a bit sort of you know oh I really want some of that balance back but actually um that I think was temporary and I've now got to a place where I feel more able to say no to certain things and keep that balance. Well, that's again, I think that's a lot of take home for people listening or watching that you had made a decision around your work to have

more time for your family. You know, you have this private practice, you do it around the school pickup. And so you got that balance. And then you blow up on TikTok and so everything shifts again and now you're refinding that balance yeah and I think that's a powerful message because I think even when we say work-life balance it sounds sometimes as though this is a destination at some point I'm going to get to that mythical work-life balance place but it never comes it's always a moving target. And so I guess that metacognition, that awareness of knowing when you're moving out is so important to kind of bring you back. Yeah. Yeah. Because also now I probably wouldn't be super happy if

I had nothing to do. So, you know, it's always, like you say, a constant sort of balancing act. You never find that perfect center and stay there life pulls you in different directions so um it's about constantly being aware of is this you know this kind of week i'm having is this the kind of week i want to have all the time and if not how can i make a change for next week even if that's a really small change and so i can head in that direction but it's a constant re-evaluation, re-adjustment, I think. I love what you said about the fact that this happened to you in your mid-30s. Late 30s. Late 30s.

In your 30s, right? It's probably been a really good thing. And this is something I've spoken about. I don't think on the podcast before, but with friends or people I meet in professional settings, I said, I'm glad that when I went on BBC One with my own show, that I was happily married and I had kids. It's very grounding, isn't it? Because as you say, you know, you're still picking up dirty washing and trying to clean up the kitchen. And know my wife she doesn't give two hoots about any of this stuff she never has even when we met doesn't give a hoot about it and I think that's so grounding isn't it yeah yeah and and and I think it is protective in its own way because you can um you know these

sorts of things can disappear as quickly as they arrive and and so if you know that it's not about trying desperately to hold on to it it's about knowing that whatever happens you could survive it and you would be all right and that gives you that grounding to be able to sort of walk into something with confidence and um and so i guess for people who are sort of aiming for different things patience is is a really good thing to hold on to because it doesn't have to happen today. And if it happens in 10 years down the road, you'll be more ready for it, for sure. Values is something that's come up a couple of times in the conversation. There's a whole section

in the book on values. And I really get this strong sense from talking to you today, Julie, but also beforehand in my kitchen, that you seem to me as someone who's very grounded, who knows what's important to them, and therefore it helps you navigate, you know, all of these potential pitfalls with a lot more self-assuredness. What are values? And when did you start going through that process of kind of trying to define what they were for you? Sure so there's a therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy so ACT for short and a big aspect of that therapy is really looking at your own value system, what's important to you, what matters to you most in your life. And there are these lots of different ways to kind of just literally kind of map it out. You

can actually put on paper the different aspects of your life. So it might be health, family, intimate relationships, friendships, lifelong learning, career, whatever, creativity. And you can kind of put all of those different areas of your life on a page and just start to bullet point what matters to me in that area of my life and and why and um not not what do I want to happen to me but what kind of person do I want to be in the face of anything so you know um how do I want to come at this area of my life what kind of attitude do I want to come at this area of my life? What kind of attitude do I want to have? You know, what kind of friend do I want to be? What kind of partner do I want to be or mother or father? And you get these kind of these sort of buzzwords

or different kind of bullet points that just ring true for you as a person. And then you can really look at, you know, there'll be these check-ins and stuff that I include in the book. You can just give it a number. You can rate, okay, how important is this area of my life to me? And you might say 10 out of 10. You know, it's so important. And then you can also rate, okay, how much do I feel like I'm living in line with those values at the moment?

And if you rate it as high, then fantastic. You know, you're kind of doing well. And if you rate it as low, it's not necessarily an opportunity to be self-critical, but it's an opportunity to go, okay, that area of my life really matters to me, but I'm not living in line with the values that I hold around that. What's pulling me away from that? Why am I not doing that at the moment? And how could I steer towards it so that that, you know, those numbers come closer together. And so that's a really great way of kind of looking at your values and values are very different to goals. So a goal

is something that once you get there, it's done. So a goal might be, I want to pass my exams. And when you pass your exams, you've done it, and it's finished. But your might be i want to pass my exams and when you pass your exams you've done it and it's finished but your value you know your reason for taking the exams might be because you always want to challenge yourself and learn as much as you can about the world okay so the exam becomes a part of that path so goals can pass you by um and sometimes mean less because they are part of the path. So, you know, you can overcome sort of failures and things along the way if you've got a very clear value around it.

Yeah. Do values change or are they always the same for people? Yeah, absolutely. They change depending on what's going on in your life, what the situation is. You know, I could never have imagined that what my value system might have been like before I had children, you know, it changed virtually overnight. And, and that's okay. And actually, a conversation I was having a little while ago, with someone was around, you know, how, what if I'd known when I was younger,

the values I needed to have in order to be okay and be happy and be successful. And it's like, well, you could never have known that, you know, that, I don't know, fame or fortune wasn't going to bring you happiness. You had to experience that to then learn from it, to then adjust your value system. And so it's okay for values to change because a value system is neither correct nor incorrect. You know, it's not finding the perfect value system. It's working out what matters to you at that point in your life. So that's why I kind of advise people to keep doing the little check-ins, you know, and just go back to your values at any one point.

Because I think a lot of people that come along to therapy who have that sense of, oh, I don't know really what the problem is, but things just aren't enough. Things just don't feel right. And so they can't really pinpoint that problem. And it's often because life has pulled them away from a set of values for whatever reason. Life has pulled them away from something that actually means a lot to them. And so I just found find it really kind of valuable tool I think this idea of values changing and that it's okay to change and there's no right or wrong they're your values right you know do they feel right to you I

think it's very empowering and when I think of them changing you can think of certainly I can think of a couple of scenarios where sure as, as you mentioned, different stages in your life, like your values as a teenager may be different in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s, right? So time-wise, I think values can change. But even within, let's say, one of your values is, I don't know, family and friends or relationships, nourishing close relationships, for example. And you know that's important to you and you score it as, you know, 10 in importance. But when you look at it, you're like, well, I'm only giving it a two out of 10 at the moment in terms of my time. But you may also go, yeah, but my job isn't going to be this busy forever. But for these three weeks, there's this kind of project that the whole company had been looking at for the last year. So yeah, for the next three weeks, I know it's going to

stay a two. But as soon as this project's over, I'm going to get it back up to an eight or nine. Do you know what I mean? So I think it can change in many different ways. And it comes back to awareness and this kind of metacognition. And that's where it needs is so crucial that it doesn't become a tool for being self-critical and getting down on yourself. It has to be a learning experience and a mapping out of your life. You know, am I in the place I want to be

and being the person I want to be? And if not, how can I adjust? Because like you say, there are nuances, aren't there? And sometimes, you know, life will pull you away from different areas. And sometimes that's because that's the path and that's OK. So, yeah, you've got to look at it with always with curiosity rather than criticism and self-attack. Are you able to articulate what some of your values are in life?

Yeah. And I guess when all this has happened and a big sort of life change for us, the values that I've held on to have been around being the parent I want to be. And I think that became really salient for me because it pulled away so much of my time. And I made efforts in the beginning to try to not let it affect the children. try to not let it affect the children. So I was getting up at like five in the morning to make a video before the children got up and things like that so that it didn't affect them. And of course, that had an effect on my health. You know, I was just completely exhausted. And so it wasn't sustainable. And so we tried something else and then we tried something. And so you just constantly make adjustments and we are getting there um but yeah i think um a key part of my values at the moment is around um being the parent i want to be and that involves being present um a lot of the

time and how i can balance that with um this other project about you know making psychological um techniques and and insights from therapy accessible to people um so sort of um managing the two of those um uh and come you know kind of different um values that people not might not kind of imagine our values but um i have just sort of different words in my mind so i'll often have because I'm quite a kind of introvert quiet person who's always been used to kind of staying small and quiet um one of my values over the last few years has been enthusiasm so come at everything with some enthusiasm whether it be my parenting or the work that I'm doing um and I don't always manage that you know it's not always doesn't mean I do it perfectly and it's always there but it's just a word

I like to come back to because I find that really powerful. I love enthusiastic people and I love to experience being like that so I kind of tried to keep that as whatever I'm doing, try to do it with some enthusiasm. It's a powerful word that.

As you said enthusiasm, I could feel my body language change. It is, it kind of evokes a really good feeling you know because what I love about that as a value and obviously it's unique to you but I suspect there's going to be a lot of people listening or watching you yeah quite I might take that for me I might I might borrow that one for me um but it's a value that you can apply it's not dependent on your job or where you are in life.

It's something you can, you know, it goes across everything. So you can be enthusiastic with the barista at the cafe. You can be enthusiastic when you're making a video. You'll be enthusiastic with your kids. Like it's kind of, of as you said before the number of followers you've got is not who you are but I guess your values are kind of who you are right yeah there there are there are sort of a vision in your mind of who you want to be and how you want to come at life whether that's you know a good or bad situation for you um so yeah it's almost like a sort of something to hold on to. And I, I like to kind of see it as a path. So it's something, it never ends.

It's not done. It's never done perfectly and it's never complete. It's just this, a never ending path that you always try to stay as close to as possible as you, you know, go through your sort of journey of life as it were. And, um, and sometimes you'll be pulled away from that, you know, maybe your sort of journey of life as it were and um and sometimes you'll be pulled away from that you know maybe your health will you know fluctuate or um something awful will happen in your life and it will completely pull you away from that and and it's always about um you know repeatedly re-evaluating and trying to steer back towards it when you can yeah i think this awareness piece for all of us is important, isn't it? Life is not perfect. Things are going to happen where it's not rolling the way we'd ideally want. But even just being aware of that just makes it much more likely you can shift and change the direction on that compass a little bit over the coming weeks.

that I've written about that I've tried on a few of my guests and it's always gone, it's always been really interesting for me. And if you're up for it, I'll try not to prejudge going in, but I suspect you're someone who's pretty in tune with life and what's important. That's my strong sense from you. But there's two parts of this exercise. The first one is, I would ask you, I would ask you, I'm going to ask you right now, what are three things that you could do this week that would truly make you happy? Go back to movement and exercise. It's something that has not been prioritised while I've been so busy, you know, the book and going away and trying to spend time with the family and be present. I haven't prioritized that, but I know it makes me happy almost instantly, you know, when I'm out and I'm running and I can feel on top of the world.

So, yes, that one. Absolutely. Making contact with friends. That's another thing that that goes down the pan when I'm really, really busy. You know, weeks can go by and you think, oh, we haven't even spoken. But it always, always makes me feel much better having some social contact. And what else could I do that would make me happy? um what else could I do would make me happy um probably you know we've been on holiday eating all sorts of theme parks and and actually um returning to a sort of healthier lifestyle and and focusing on eating well and nourishing my body always makes a difference as well so um yeah focusing on good nourishing food will i know make a difference for me yeah so

i love that so interesting and the second part of the exercise is called write your own happy ending and so this is now you know fast forward to the end of your life and you're lying on your death beds looking back on your life what are three things you will want to have done or achieved i guess um i will want to have have got my children out into the world with all the skills that they need to um to be able to face everything that they're going to face um uh and i'd be you know super content and happy if I felt that all three of them were in that place too, you know, if they were, um, happy and had good quality relationships and felt that they could face anything that came up for them. Um, that's probably the, the biggest thing

for me. Um, what else would I be happy with happy with? It just, it always comes back to relationships, doesn't it? Everything in my mind is times, you know, good times with friends. And, you know, we had, we had a really small gathering when, when the book came out and it hit the Sunday Times. And my husband did a little surprise where he kind of I was getting ready to um apparently go out with a friend uh says and and every all of our kind of local friends came and sort of filled the therapy room in the back garden to have a little surprise party and oh gosh after you know two years of of being isolated away from everybody and our old friends all got together and we had a really good chat and some food and wow that feeling of connection with people that you care about is just incredible and

so you know almost there and then we said we have to do this more let's get the barbecue out let's have a you know let's make more time for for just being with people that we care about so um yeah that's the sort of having been just grinding and working working working that's a real shift for me i think yeah i love that i thank you for sharing that um the idea behind that exercise certainly the way i use it with with patients or the way i've written about it is again about awareness of bringing intention to your life like you know the idea really for people to think about what three happiness habits could I do on a weekly basis? If I do those happiness habits, will I get that happy ending that I've just defined that I want?

And I guess it speaks to some of the things we were talking about with values. Like, as you say, it always comes down to relationships. On the deathbeds, we are almost certainly going to say, because we know from palliative care nurses, this is what everyone says, I wish I'd spent more time with my friends and family. And therefore, certainly for me, doing that exercise has been really powerful because I now have it in my mind, I've got a specific number. Like I have, as a weekly happiness habit, when I'm working and not on holiday, I want to make sure that for at least five meals a week, I've been fully present with my wife and my kids. I know if I'm doing that,

that I'm nourishing the most important relationships in my life, which means if I do that week on week, well, at the end of my life, I'm going to get that part of my happy ending. I'm going to get that, oh yes, I have nourished those. And so again, it's just another way of bringing intentions to people's lives where they might go, yeah, at the end of my life, I want to have nourished friends and family, but oh, I have no time week to week to do that. I'm so busy with my work. And again, it's not about making people feel guilty or shameful. It's like that values exercise. And I love your happiness habits they were kind of they're quite unique to where you're at in life at the moment because you've just been away and been eating all sorts of theme parks you're like actually at the moment a happiness habit for our

family is let's eat a bit better yeah and again these things are fluid and they can change can't they yeah yeah and actually you know I I was only sort of saying on my Instagram stories last night that I've just sort of been um away from platforms and being on stories and things like that because I wanted to, when we were away, be present with, you know, it's my time to really be with the children and just play and not be constantly checking my phone or, you know, having it beeping. And so there were whole days where I didn't really have Wi-Fi and that was great because it just stayed in the bag and and I was able to be present that meant so much so um yeah those sorts of things are you know you don't ever regret that kind of experience I think you never regret spending less time on your phone I've heard you say that if there was one practice you could prescribe to everyone in the world it would be journaling yeah now again i if i've got that slightly wrong or that's taken out of context feel free to correct but what is it you like so much about journaling and is it one of

those kind of you know i'm interested as a therapist are there some universal practices that yes we're all unique we've all as a therapist, are there some universal practices that yes, we're all unique, we've all got different preferences. But are there some things that you found time and time again, that always seem to work with people, and I guess is journaling one of them. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness.

So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour, and I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years.

It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision-making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are of course many different ways to journal and as with most things it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions

I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three question journal, completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal, or click on the link in your podcast app.

Yeah, and you know, I guess for people who are able to access things like therapy or counseling and go to see someone and and see that as something that's possible to them is fantastic and there is so much potential in that but there are also this huge group of people that don't see that as an option for them maybe maybe they're just not able to talk about things and so that's really where the idea of you know for everyone actually journaling is an option and and even when I think about back when I was really young anytime that I felt kind of full of emotion or something that I wasn't really clear on or able to understand I would write stuff down and and and I would always have that experience of

you write for long enough and you get this kind of, oh, yeah, a bit of clarity on it. And, and back then, I didn't have any guidance or knowledge about how to do that. It was just kind of expressive writing, I guess, and always found that useful, because I wasn't a big talker. And now that I have, you know, the knowledge around the research around, you know, the research on expressive writing and journaling in recent years has really opened that up and shown the potentials for it. And so when it's guided with specific questions, maybe questions that therapists would ask you, it enables you to then open that up in a private space and be able to get some clarity on things that if you didn't have access to a therapist for whatever reason, you might not have had access to.

So that's why I think journaling is, you know, a really useful tool. When people want to journal or they think, okay, I like that, Julie, I want to give that a go. A question I often get asked is, well, can I just write them in notes in my phone as opposed to writing them out on paper if people ask you that what do you say um if it's the difference between doing it and not doing it I'd say just do it whatever your medium um and I

always get hassled for being such a pen and paper person I'm going to be such a dinosaur um people keep saying to me you know put everything into electronic diary and I'm like no I want my pen and paper it's all it's handwritten I can't do I can't do this stuff I see other podcast hosts with their fancy iPads and it's a neat I'm like I can't do that I'm total old school I was like that when I was writing the book I have paper that you can see the desk because there was paper everywhere with notes and stuff and it's just how I like to to do things so um you know I can't judge anyone for being on the phone. But actually, if you're on a device, the reality is if you want some quiet, protected time,

that time's not going to be protected if you're on a screen that also has social media apps, news apps going ping, you know, oh, it has news news headlines that kind of thing it's all going to distract you so i think if you want protected time then you know put your phone in the other room go into a different room with a pen and paper and see what comes out and and see but you could explore the difference you could it would be interesting experiment right to see if you journaled with one and then the other for a week um how that experience was different um so

you can play around with it i guess yeah i think that's a great point that if it's the difference between doing and not doing it okay do it however you can do it but yeah i love that idea that it's gonna be hard on a phone for it to be protected you know you're gonna have to then be using up willpower and motivation you just you're making it harder most of us are making it harder than it needs to be. And I know there'll be some people going, oh, yeah, fine doing it. Okay, great. I did read some research a few years ago. I can't remember where it was from at the top of my head now, but there was something about, I think some researchers compared doing it electronically and writing. And I think the conclusion was that writing on paper was much more powerful and they thought it was to do with the speed at which we process in our mind kind of echoed the way that we write.

I don't know if that's been validated or replicated again, but I find that really interesting because then you think on an evolutionary level, well, we've been kind of writing stuff down for thousands of years. So we probably adapted. There's some sort of, I don't know, we're used to doing that as a species, aren't we? Whereas we're not really that used to yet just quickly with our thumbs typing something down. Maybe that's quicker. Do you know what I mean? There's something about that, I think.

Yeah, and there is a sense of if you're doing it on your phone, maybe it's because you're going to try and fit it in in one of those little in between moments for five minutes and not really give it your you know full um undivided attention as well i guess um you know if you're going to try and speed it up then that's probably not you know you have to kind of give it its due and and protect some time whereas like you say if you're doing on a screen you maybe you're trying to do that fast. And yeah, these things take, you know, good, honest self-reflection takes a bit of time and space. If someone's thinking, okay, I want a journal, right? I get up, I'm not gonna do it on my phone.

I'm gonna do it on a piece of paper. I might go and treat myself to a journal. How can they start? Because there's many different ways in which they can do i know the book has lots of examples for people but have you got any sort of helpful ideas for people in terms of what what are they going to start writing yeah well do you know something that um we often kind of talk about in in therapy when we're getting people to sort of reflect on experiences is we just we just start by you know talking in hindsight about what happened.

What happened yesterday? And then we begin to tease it apart. So that might start with a he said, she said, or I did this and I felt that. And a therapist will always try to get you to distinguish between what you thought, so the kind of words or pictures in your head and how you felt and where where you felt that feeling in your body and you know the physical sensation of that and and what that's doing is is sort of teasing apart you know we talked about the weaves in the basket and you experience um something as a whole and then it's really hard to see the wood for the

trees and think about well well, you know, I don't know why I then did that thing that I did next. And so you kind of trace it back and look at what did I feel? What did I think? What were the urges? And did I go with that? Or did I go against that? And what was the impact of that? So really just kind of teasing apart the different aspects of your experience um to look at which parts influenced each each other so when i'm when my mind is focused on um the worst thing that could happen how do i tend to feel um and when i'm focused on, you know, feeling excited about something that I'm going to enjoy, you know, how does that impact how I feel? So kind of there's no kind of set specific thing that is going to make journaling a success and make you do it right. and make you do it right. I would say just reflecting on experience and trying to break it down to detail will begin that process of seeing connections between things.

Yeah. It's that awareness piece again, isn't it? Because once, I guess, I don't know, let's say someone's had a argument with their partner the day before and they decide to journal and go, you know, even certain things might start to become clear like, oh, I hadn't slept well the night before. Maybe that's why I got triggered. Or, you know, when my partner said that, I interpreted that like that. But you know what? Maybe he or she meant that. And had I interpreted it like that, I wouldn't have reacted like that. I guess, that. And had I interpreted it like that, I wouldn't have reacted like that. I guess, I mean, to me, when you do things like that, it means that the next time you're in a scenario like that, you've done a bit of kind of mental training. You know, oh, you know, last time I,

last time that happened, I can choose a different response this time. Yeah, you can start to just pick up on themes. And actually the process of just putting something down on paper is a helpful way to sort of diffuse from the thoughts. You know, we talked about kind of taking the mask off and just holding it at arm's length. If you kind of get your thoughts out onto a page, you can see them for what they are sometimes. And just that process is helpful in itself.

I would be less concerned about getting it right and writing the right things and just focus on getting everything that's in here out onto the page yeah i see journaling as having a conversation with yourself yeah but you're it's very hard when you're in your thoughts and your mind to have that kind of that detachment from it so i think journaling is helpful i something i've also found to be really helpful, both personally, but also with patients is WhatsApp voice messages. Like I found some people say that when they, and in fact, I've got a friend who literally figures stuff out as they're leaving me WhatsApp voice messages. They start off and at the end of the five minute message, there's something

about the words and hearing them say this stuff. They go, get it i like do you know what i mean it almost feels a bit like verbal journaling but does that make sense yeah yeah and there's something quite powerful about voicing something and um that you obviously get the benefits of in therapy but um might not from from purely just writing something down. So yeah, speaking something out loud is pretty powerful. You talk in the book about words being so important. And I think you referenced a study at one point where you say that our ability to even express and label negative emotions is related to depression after stressful events. I thought that was really powerful. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. Why words are so important and how

can we increase our emotional vocabulary? Yeah. And there's a brilliant researcher in America who talks about it. She calls it emotion granularity and this ability to emotion granularity and this ability to, you know, find words to describe very specific emotional experiences. And often people will message me and say, how do I know if it's anxiety? How do I know if it's fear? How do I know if this is, you know, sadness? And I think it's more important to have a name for an experience that you have than it is to match that with everybody else's. So, you know, the word is for you. And so if you know that you feel a certain way. And so, I mean, it's Felden Barrett is the lady who who talks about emotion granularity.

And she'll say that, you know, you can you can even use words from other languages if there is not a clear word for the type of feeling that you're trying to express but the process of being able to describe how you feel you know attach it to different scenarios means that you can predict when those feelings are going to come and you can develop a sort of concept around when i feel this i know that if i do this or that it has this effect and so it's really kind of mapping out your experience of life and beginning to understand it in real detail that's such a fascinating idea it took me back to many years ago as i don't know if i was a medical student or a junior doctor at the time.

And I went to a lecture with this professor and he was talking about different languages and how they express different things. And actually some of the symptoms that we get trained in Western medical schools to ask our patients about, the way we ask them, that language doesn't exist in another culture. I think it was to do with gas or indigestion. I can't remember what it was exactly, but I found it so helpful because I thought in some practices I've worked at where there's a huge ethnic diversity of the patient population, I realized that, Arongan, you can keep asking these questions in the way that you understand it, but if that patient doesn't understand doesn't get what you're talking about has a different kind of vernacular for that it's just really

fascinating isn't it and i guess it's about that wider perspective and this idea that actually not everyone sees the world in the same way that we do um i i found that very very powerful i found it really helpful in clinical practice yeah and you really you really get that in the therapy room as well you know you're kind of um people will will you know come on in and describe their own experiences in their own way and then as you move forward you know a good therapist will always use that language as they move forward they won't then turn it into some sort of clinical experience use that language because that's what means something that's what resonates for that person that goes beyond the therapy room there doesn't it that's really good communication I guess that applies with your kids or your partner or your friends

right it's when we use the language that is currently being acceptable they've said that that's how they see it it's just a good communication skill I think yeah absolutely and it would work in in any kind of situation if you're using you know lots of people like get asking questions around how can I support someone and how do I say the right thing what should I say not say that kind of thing and yeah that's absolutely a great skill for kind of supporting someone or talking to someone and helping them to feel understood and heard is use the language that they're using and reflect that back to them and enable them to feel that they've really been listened to and really been heard. A lot of the way we think about the world, of course, comes from some of our earliest experiences, often in childhood. And I really love the way you've articulated so many ideas in the book.

One of them was that, look, these are life skills. They're not really, yes, they're skills you may learn in therapy, but actually they're life skills that we should all know what emotions are, what thoughts are. You know, there's a space between urge and action, all these things. And things and you know i think wouldn't it be great if schools taught this stuff you know so kids grow up knowing this there's a section in the book where you speak about attachments which i'm really interested in because i i guess this is reflective of the journey i've been on personally which is understanding how many of my behaviors in life how many of the journey I've been on personally, which is understanding how many of my behaviours in life, how many of the things that used to trigger me, you can clearly see where they've come from in my childhood, the way I was brought up, the experiences I've had. And of course, you don't need to go there to have better emotional regulation. But I've certainly

found that when I have gone there and made peace with it and changed things, that actually I've cut off so many downstream consequences, almost at source, if that makes sense. Attachment styles, I hadn't read much about them before, and I really enjoyed that part of the book. Can you speak to a little bit about our childhoods, how important they are in terms of how we view the world and then what these various forms of attachment mean and what we can do about them. So attachment is probably the only section of the book where it talks about the impact of the past. And I feel that was a kind of conscious decision in that I feel like it's almost a whole other book, you know, talking about past experience and how that can kind of impact.

But actually, you know, attachment styles and things like that is quite, it can be quite a quick way of just working out, oh, actually, am I more inclined to this way or that way? And without having to sort of, you know, go back through past memories that might be traumatic and stuff like that, you can kind of look at, OK, am I more inclined to um you know withdraw and step back from people or um do I try to kind of you know seek um uh lots of care and attention when my partner moves back and avoids and and so I you know just distinguish between um some different sort of attachment patterns um in the book and you can go through and kind of look at the different different sort of attachment patterns in the book. And you can go through and kind of look at the different sort of criteria for each and see which one feels more.

And often you can kind of very quickly go, oh, yeah, that one's me. Maybe I'm an avoidant attachment style or maybe I'm an anxious attachment style and and the attachment style again is not um is not a suggestion about your worthiness or you know who you are as a person it's a style of attaching to people that you learned very early on in life based on the situation that you grew up in which no one gets to choose right um and so, but those, the ways that we learn to cope with the situation we're growing up in, in early in life, then get reflected

in our adult relationships later in life. But they can often be, so the ways that you learn to cope early in life are often useful. You do what works in that situation, what gets you through it. But then when you're an adult and you're in a different situation, if you're still using the same tools um then it can be more destructive so if let's say

um it was safer for you to be um uh a sort of avoidant attachment style you have enough sort of avoidant attachment style with your own parents and you tend to hold back and withdraw and shut down because that was safe. And then you find yourself in an adult relationship with someone who is anxiously attached. So someone who is constantly worried about whether you still like them and whether you're going to abandon them. But actually your way of doing things all your life has been to step back and close off from people and keep yourself safe, then you can see how that would lead to some problems in a relationship. So I guess I included it in there. Because it's one way you can kind of quickly look at, oh, yeah, I roughly do things like that. And how

would that affect me today? And, you know, so it's just a sort of way of starting to look at your own behavior, I guess. Yeah, I think it's, it's I think it's it's really I think that bit's really helpful for people to just again it just builds that awareness oh that's why that happens oh I don't and I can change that if I want like I can essentially go through it may be tricky it may take a bit of time I'm I'm deeply fascinated in this area I guess why I'm so drawn to psychology is that there's a patient I write about, this lady who had these really vague symptoms. And she's seen multiple doctors before, like vague, I think it was abdominal pain, bilateral upper arm pain. And she tried all kinds of medications with various else. There's nothing

really worked. She'd made changes to her lifestyle. So actually she was eating great. She was moving her body. She was sleeping well. And, you know, she turns up to see me and I can't remember exactly where I got a sense of this, but I always try and inquire about people's wider lives, you know, what's going on. And what's really interesting is that she had got into a pattern where she would always end up in relationships with older guys who wouldn't treat her well, who were often married. This was a pattern. And I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a trained counsellor, but I remember talking to her, really building up a report with her. And it came out that at a young age, she felt strongly that her older sister got much more attention than her. And I could really see this pattern with her, where she had, in many ways, learned to accept not having enough attention and allowing people to treat her a

certain way. I'm kind of trying to overly summarize this story, but it was only when we kind of started to tackle that and made her aware of it. And she didn't actually end up seeing a therapist, but I gave her loads of self-compassion exercises to do. And I'm all for therapy. So I think I recommended it and for whatever reason, she didn't want to engage. But literally, you know, it took a while, but over six, nine months, you know, she ended up in a relationship with someone of her own age for the first time who treated her really well. A few months after that, her symptoms went, like completely went. So I guess my interest is several fold, but I've also found that understanding some of these kind of childhood patterns and, you know, often directing people to get therapy

or see a psychologist or, you know, whatever they have, you know, that they can access either through the NHS or privately, I find it helps with many people's physical symptoms as well. Yeah, it's quite incredible, isn't it? And I think it's been a neglected area for a long time, but I think more recently the research is really moving forward on it and we're really starting to bring together all these different areas. And it's incredible that that kind of story it really shows the power of just building that self-awareness and having that chance to get a bird's eye view on things and because sometimes it is about just noticing the cycle and enabling

yourself to recognize that you there's a choice to do something different and and it's not always that easy but sometimes it is sometimes the awareness is enough to, to call someone to sort of make a different choice and, and just be aware of what makes them vulnerable. And, and, you know, that's the incredible part of some of this. You, of course, push yourself out of your own comfort zone, going on to TikTok, and then I guess writing this book what has writing the book done for you and I guess specifically I'm interested is do you think writing this book has made you a better therapist oh um good question I've never asked that before actually um because I guess I'm doing less therapy than I was um because I, you know, busy doing all this kind of stuff.

Yes, I hope so. I hope it's made me a better therapist because it's certainly enabling me to keep really up to date with the new ideas and research that's coming out. And, yeah, I mean, I don't know how I'm going to navigate that part of my life now, really, because before I was, you know, just running a little private practice from my home and it was all very kind of small, low key stuff. I don't think I can do that now. So, yeah, I need to that's something I need to kind of navigate and work out how I can kind of manage that as we move forward, because I think I I would miss it so much if I didn't. There's something quite moving and profound about the experience of therapy with people and sitting in a room with someone, developing that unique but so close kind of relationship with someone.

People come and tell you things they've never told a soul and the therapy room very quickly becomes their sanctuary and their safe place to come and just be completely themselves. And, and so yeah, I do love that. And, and I, you know, I love when it goes well, you know, I just get such a high from when it goes well. And, and people imagine, I think that, you know, therapists just, you know, I just get such a high from when it goes well. And people imagine, I think, that, you know, therapists just, you know, see people, you know, time after time and then never remember them again. But you do. You think about them for years afterwards and wonder how they are. And, you know, it's so brilliant if you kind of manage to spot someone out and about and, you know, they look like they're doing well.

And you think, yes, go on. It's great. It is special. It's not easy. It's not easy trying to get that balance for sure um self-soothing it's a lovely section in the book that i like um this idea that you talk about when our threat response is triggered we can feed our brains new information this kind of there's a two-way system it's you know we can change that environment

we can change the environment that our brain is kind of processing by what we do there's all kinds of examples that you've given in the book and how we can do that i like the one on scent and smell i thought that was really interesting yeah you know it all comes from dbt dialectical behavior therapy um and it's distress tolerance skill so um you teach people who have um you know very intense emotional distress and often have kind of dangerous ways of coping with that, how to get through those really painful moments. And self-soothing is one of those skills. So it's really about allowing that emotion to pass. But while you're doing that, um, soothing your way through it. So, um, allowing you to kind of feed information to the brain that you are safe. Um, you, anything that can comfort you along the way. And, and yeah, so you can use all of your senses to do that. So things you can see, things you can hear, taste, touch, smell, and smell is the one that um you know it's so fast acting you know if you

um i've had people before who kind of use um like their mother's perfume from when they were a child and something that they really associate with safety that that if you can have access to that when you're in a really tricky place or in a really dark place it can help you just soothe your way through it while it's passing um and i've had people as well use um you know the little key rings that are like cuddly toys yeah yeah people unstitch them fill them with like lavender or something that they associate with calm and and then sew them back up put it on your keys so if you're out and you find yourself you know really distressed maybe people that struggle with panic attacks and stuff like that you can you can just hold your keys up

and you're you're getting that scent um you're self-soothing through it no one even needs to know what you're doing um it's you know these great tools for kind of managing through really tough times yeah that's brilliant that's such a helpful tip for people isn't it because as you say no one has to know you're doing it you're just sort of playing with your keys but you can smell it yeah and you know i think we know how quickly a candle for example being on can change the mood at home yeah you know or we know it can help people sleep certain scents um you know for me this studio it's very important that i try and create an environment of you know intimacy and warmth where people can open up and we can have deep conversations. So,

you know, we always put a candle on and we, do you know, it's not that I hope no one's threat response is triggered when they're in here, certainly having a conversation on the podcast, but I don't know, smells and ambience and our environment, it kind of matters, doesn't it? Yeah. And you can really personalise it as as well so if you're thinking about creating like a self-soothing box um you can put things in there that you associate with safety and comfort um so it doesn't have to be anyone else's idea of of those things it's got to be yours so that that you know if it is your you know mother's perfume or a photo of a holiday you had that always makes you feel lovely and warm and then you know use

those things that that that work for you i'd say judy i've had so much fun talking to you i could talk to you for hours there's so much we haven't covered but of course people can get the book and read all about all of these ideas and practical tools in them um this podcast is called feel better live more when we feel better in ourselves we get more out of life clearly the tools that you are teaching the world through your online accounts are helping people think better process negative emotions better which of course in turn is going to help them get more out of their lives at the end of conversation, there's a lot of people out in the world, as you well know, who are really, really struggling with anxiety, with fear, with negativity, with the seemingly

uncontrollable nature of the world around them. Right at the end of this conversation, have you got any final thoughts that you want to share or you would like to share with my audience to help them um i i guess sort of taking it from you know the the darkest place that people can be is is um there is always a way through you know even and the thing is when when you're not doing so good and you're not feeling so great, your mind convinces you that you are the only one and there is not any possible way that you could do anything about it. And it's just not true. I know I've worked with people who don't want to live and they see no way out. And at times when professionals around them are wondering how we

could ever get someone through this and I've seen people pull themselves from places you imagine people could never come back from and they have they've turned their lives around it takes time and it takes effort it's a marathon it's definitely not a sprint um but there are ways through. And so, you know, getting all of the support that you can along the way is essential and helps profoundly. But also, you have this potential to educate yourself about all the things that are going to help and, you know, read a lot and watch a lot and there's so much available now um try to go to credible sources like yourself you know people that that you know have have uh looked at the research and only kind of share things that they um they see as credible and and just start learning because step by step things can begin to change an empowering message jilly you're doing incredible work you're helping so many people thank you so much for coming out to the studio. And I hope we get to do this again at some point in the future.

Definitely. Thanks for having me. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. Always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more.