Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #61 Talking Mental Health with Matt Haig

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

Mental health problems are extremely common - it is estimated that 1 in 4 of us will experience a mental health problem at some point in our lives. Yet so many of us still view these illnesses as a weakness or a personal failure. On this week’s episode, I sit down with best-selling author and one of the most prominent voices in the mental health arena, Matt Haig to talk about all things related to mental health. We discuss how society’s understanding of mental health can be very limited and often very toxic and how talking about it and understanding the different textures that exist under its banner is essential. We explore the pressures put on us by modern society, how work place cultures affect our mental health and the need to teach our children about mental health. As someone who has suffered from depression and anxiety, Matt shares his own personal journey and explains how he finds optimism in dark places. Finally, Matt shares his top tips on improving the way that you feel. This is an open, honest and really important conversation – I hope you enjoy it! Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/61 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whether it's our income bracket, whether it's, you know, our grades at school, whether it's, you know, a measurement we want our bodies to be or whatever it is, we're conditioned, I feel, to feel like we're not quite enough in the present moment. And we've always got to become the after picture. We've got to become the next version of ourselves. And it's easy to forget that we're actually everything we need is really already there. But we just sort of pile too much stuff on it. And we sometimes lose ourselves. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we

currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Hello and welcome to episode 61 of my Feel Better Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chastji and I'm your host. Before we start today, just wanted to let you know that my most recent book, The Stress Solution,

Four Steps to a Calmer, Happier, Healthier You, which has been a number one bestseller in the UK, is now available to purchase in the United States. You can pick it up from amazon.com in paperback or from Audible as an audiobook which I am narrating. Now mental health disorders are extremely common. According to the mental health charity Mind, one in four of us will experience a mental health problem each year and in England one in six people reports experiencing a common mental health problem such as anxiety and depression in any given week. Yet so many of us still view these illnesses as a weakness or as a personal failure. In today's episode, I'm delighted to be joined by best-selling author and one of the most prominent voices in the mental health arena, Matt Haig.

Matt and I have an open and frank discussion about all things mental health related. You see, society's all things mental health related. You see, society's understanding of mental health and depression can be very limited and often very toxic. But as we discuss in this podcast, talking about it and understanding the different textures that exist under its banner is very important. Not talking about it can only make things worse. Matt and I discuss the pressures put on us by modern society and culture. And Matt shares his own personal story of how he has navigated his way through these pressures and how he finds optimism in dark places. We talk about how we can stay human in a world of change, the need to always be compassionate towards one another,

how workplace cultures affect mental health and the need to teach our children emotional intelligence. This was an open, honest and inspiring conversation that I'm sure you will very much enjoy listening to. Now before we get started, I do need to give a very quick shout out to our sponsors who are essential in order for me to be able to put out weekly podcast episodes like this one. Athletic Greens continue their long-term support of my show. Now I definitely prefer that people get all of their nutrition from food but for some of us this is not always possible. I think that Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I have ever come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics and digestive enzymes. So if you are looking to take something each morning as slash live more you will be able to access a special

offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of athletic greens which is worth around 70 pounds with your first order you can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more now on to today's conversation so So Matt, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me, Rangan. Hey, not at all. So Matt, as I was just saying, you know, most of the people who I have on the podcast either don't have a book out or they've got maybe one book or two books. How many books have you written now? It makes me sound about 300 years old but i think it's in the teens it's like 15 or 16 it's at the point where i've lost count i think it is

about if you include all my children's books it's about 16 books yeah i mean that's incredible i can't imagine the amount of work it would it would take to actually write 16 books but some of them are very short well the shortest is 3 000000 words, which is basically an essay, but that's a children's book. It's like a homework assignment. It's exactly, exactly. So yeah, anyone wanting a prolific career, write short books, I think. Well, that's great advice to start off with. We've probably finished the podcast now. But Matt, look, I came across your work probably for the first time, maybe close to 12 months ago.

Look, I came across your work probably for the first time, maybe close to 12 months ago. And, you know, I follow you on social media and you, I think, are probably one of the most prominent voices in the mental health arena that I see in public. Where does your drive to talk about mental health come from? I think from the fact that for years I couldn't or didn't you know I was when I first became ill or actually recognized I was ill when I was 24 years old I had I know it's not a medical term but I had a full blown breakdown led into panic disorder depression anxiety whole smorgasbord of mental health issues and i was lucky in that i had a um partner i was close to who i could talk to and my parents were quite open-minded and liberal on such issues and i could talk to them but beyond that really for over a decade i didn't talk about it at all you know i

didn't talk about it to my friends i'd actually i ended up losing some friends for a while not because they were stigmatizing me but because i I just wasn't explaining things. So I would cancel going to the pub or not be able to do things because of depression or anxiety. And I just ridiculously couldn't say that. So I think it's once the floodgates opened, and once I was feeling in a better place, and had come to terms with who I was and what had happened to me and that it wasn't a judgment on me it was just an experience that happened for various reasons and I started I wrote about it on the internet I wrote a blog called reasons to stay alive which eventually after some prompting became an e-book and

yeah it just felt like a release it felt like such a nice thing and all the things I'd been worried about in terms of sharing um personal stuff about those sort of feelings none of those you know maybe it's because I was privileged being a writer I didn't really have a boss in the normal sense didn't have work colleagues I saw every day but I didn't feel any kind of stigma I just felt a sort of warmth and support coming towards me which made me feel less alone so I think primarily the selfish reason for me to write those books was to and to talk about it online all the time is to hear that echo back because you know mental illness for most people for a lot of people one of the horrible things about it is it's very isolating

and you feel very lonely and so books blogs one of the good things I say a lot of bad things about social media but one of the good things is you suddenly realize you're not the only person going through that yeah I mean i totally agree i think as you say if we do watch social media that you know like with anything there's pros and cons and one of its big big strengths is development of community and and knowing that you're not the only one i can tell you as a doctor one thing i've learned over you know almost 20 years of seeing patients now is that often even if you can't help someone, just listen to them, first of all, makes a big difference. But then when you tell someone that actually they're not alone, that you've seen other patients just like that this morning or

earlier this week, I learned that patients love it. They just love the fact, not that someone else is suffering. They just love the fact that it's not just suffering they just know the fact knowing it's not just them no absolutely and it's about the story we have in our heads because when i was first ill the story i had of depression and anxiety and mental illness and mental health care it was a very limited very limited story my image of a mental hospital mental health care came primarily from one flew over the cuckoo's nest the film and my understanding of depression came from the famous people who'd ended up taking their own lives, you know, and all those sort of stories that exist in culture can be so toxic when you're actually ill, because you're looking for other templates of how to be. And now,

I think one of the good things, you know, people talk a little bit too much about the mental health conversation as if it's a cure-all in itself but I think we you know just knowing the reality and the different textures of lives with mental illness or mental health problems is amazing I mean and now my I've got my own life now because I've lived enough beyond that point of deep illness to sort of see their own sort of patterns in my own health and you know I honestly I say it a lot but I honestly have known more happiness more sense of gratitude and everything this side of a line of illness than I ever did before so it's a very complex picture I wouldn't want to go and relive this three years of utter hell in panic disorder and deep depression but at the same point I wouldn't press that magic button to have not experienced any of that because

i'm now in a position because of it where i can appreciate things more i understand myself better i'm not in a i i resist saying i'm in a place of 100 full full mental health, just as no one is necessarily in 100% full physical health. And it's something that I have to sort of monitor and manage and look after and be quite acutely aware of sometimes. But yeah, I'm a happier person for having known the deep despair and pessimism of you know the opposite place so in some ways it's actually i guess i mean obviously it's in many ways it's made you the person you are today um but i guess it must have taught you so much about yourself and what you want to

change what is change well what isn't changeable um i just you know for people who are listening to this who may not be familiar with your story i've read on multiple occasions i think was it when you were 24 in ibiza yep can you explain for people what what happened yes well i was in ibiza but it wasn't a holiday we'd been gone to spain for the last three summers as whole university students so we'd had the rainy winters in the north of england and then you know we'd gone out partied first summer been irresponsible alcohol recreational drugs what have you early 20s in the late 90s then we we got quite well my girlfriend got a really good job out there

working for this hotel nightclub as office manager and we thought you know great have these long summers um by the third summer when i was ill because everyone says oh you had your breakdown in a b-fest so you instantly get that eye rolling and thinking oh it's just because you're hedonistic and going crazy and not sleeping and taking loads of drugs actually i was feeling relatively physically healthy. You know, when I first had my first panic attack, it was at 11 in the morning. I'd been for a run that morning.

I'd just decided I was stopping smoking. I hadn't had any alcohol. I hadn't been a heavy night or anything. So I wasn't a picture of health and I'd been definitely sleeping badly. But it did have that feeling that it came from nowhere and what what happened was it was a panic attack but I didn't recognize it as a panic attack because I think I was someone who thought I'd had panic attacks before you know I'd had panicky situations whether it was public speaking at university and I thought I knew what a panic

attack was and this felt totally different this This was physical as well as mental. There were sensations in my head and in my body. There was the palpitations, the tightening of everything. And I didn't know what was happening. And at the same time, my mind was going haywire in terms of what I was thinking about. So I was convinced. I was flooded with this terror. And I was convinced I was going to either die or go mad,

inverted commas, in the next sort of five minutes. And that didn't happen. But I kept on believing it and believing it and believing it. And it was just horrible. I mean, it was probably depression mixed with panic at the same time, but it just infected everything. And the thing I hadn't realized before this about mental illness which sounds ridiculous but I didn't realize the 24-7 nature

of it when you're in a serious state of illness so and I hadn't really had much experience of physical or mental health problems up until that point um because I was still 24 years old and you know hadn't lived um much of life i i thought i can't get out of this i have no idea how i've got into this so i don't know how to get out of it so my girlfriend had her wits about her enough to say well you need to go to the medical center so we went to the medical center in spain i was prescribed diazepam the doctor was almost sort of laughing like oh i must have been overdoing it or something. And then that wasn't the right thing for me. And it made the sort of panic attacks worse in my experience.

And so I just felt trapped. And that's what made me suicidal. Not because I had any kind of death wish as such. I just didn't know how I was going to cope so it's a commonly used metaphor but the idea of a burning house you don't want to actually jump out of a window but you would jump out of the window if it meant facing the flames it might be the lesser of two evils and so it was completely that I just didn't know how to escape my own self. Yeah, I mean, it's a very powerful story, Matt.

You said that up until that point, you'd never really had any physical health or mental health problems. You're just getting on with life. You know, you're at university, going off to Ibiza to, you know, do what you do in your 20s, you know, to have fun. I get all that. Now that you have, you know, you've progressed significantly,

certainly from what I can tell from talking to you, from actually seeing your posts on social media, you're certainly a lot better than you used to be. Is that fair to say? Yeah, it's definitely better. It wouldn't be, if you did the graph of it, it wouldn't be a smooth upward mountainside. I've had massive dips at various points.

Actually, the mistake I used to make with my own health was believing I was totally better, believing I was 100% better. Because then when I had a dip, which inevitably happens if I'd missed sleep or been sleeping badly or whatever it was I would then really crash

because I was thinking oh no I thought I was there right I'm back to ground zero I'm back to square one whereas now I frame it slightly differently in my mind where um i see it as something about yeah almost like a garden that you you constantly have to pay attention to but um yeah it it doesn't i have i have i've built up a lot of mechanisms that personally

subjectively for me seem to work. I like that analogy of a garden you've constantly got to tend to because, of course, in your case, very severe mental health symptoms that were really causing you a lot of problems. But I sort of think generally speaking, when we talk about mental health, physical health, emotional emotional health we just sort of step out a bit actually health is something that for all of us needs constant attention to it's never going to stay static it's always moving life is always changing you know and i don't think we ever get to that point where oh you know i've done it i've cracked it now i am healthy now because life yeah yeah there's no end point you know it's like oh i'm perfect i can take my eye off the ball now exactly what i'm super interested in is going back to what you said that you'd never experienced health problems before knowing what you've learned now over the last you know however

many years since this happens when you look back with hindsight now would you still say that as a teenager you had no physical or mental health problems or now with hindsight now would you still say that as a teenager you had no physical or mental health problems or now with hindsight you think actually things might have been going on a bit earlier yeah no definitely definitely i mean i was just sort of recounting that feeling that it was like being hit by a bus because i've been i've been the typical male i don't think one of the reasons why i was quite hedonistic going off and drinking in union bars all the time. That's what men do, right? That's what men do. That's certainly like in the 90s, that felt like what you did.

And it was sort of expected and encouraged. And it wasn't seen as sort of toxic behavior at all, really. It was just the norm. And obviously, that wasn't good for me. And I was probably doing it more than average. And I feel like I definitely, I had confidence issues, certainly, that was a clear thing. To the extent that I would have, you know, interviews for a nice job in London, and I literally physically wouldn't have been able to go through the door. This was before I was ill, I wouldn't have been

able, I had to sort of, I can remember there was one job for an advertising agency in Soho Square and I literally phoned in sick from outside the building because I couldn't go in so I had issues I certainly had a lack of self-confidence I you know I had interesting moments at school when I was younger I I used to sleepwalk a lot. I was quite restless. Sleep was always an issue for me. I had various things going on, but they weren't things that I'd have gone to a doctor about.

It wasn't like, oh, you know, my parents weren't saying, oh, well, we need to get you sorted for this. But now, yeah, I do see that maybe some of it was beyond being a teenager sure you mentioned um this is what men do or this is the the message we're given in society about what a man should be doing so i know you've spoken about this i've seen this quite a lot on your twitter feed um this whole idea of you know what well let's put it like this what do you think it what does it mean to be a man in the 21st century do you think i think that's the million dollar question i think we're all working out and i think men have been a little bit behind women in terms of talking about

their gender and talking about masculinity so you either get men being super defensive and anti-feminist or you get men being pro-feminist and and talking about women and supporting equality and everything else but not really talking about what it means to men and obviously it's two sides of the same coin and we haven't really worked out for me i i think really um you know i don't really know what masculinity is but i think like with identity you just need the freedom to be who you are so long as it's not hurting of anyone else and for me I felt very boxed in in the sort of male identity role when it came to mental health and and I don't think that was necessarily the fault of my peers I think a lot of it was self-stigma that I had um I felt you

know I didn't like the idea of being weak or vulnerable or you know and I was supremely self-conscious in talking about it so it's a paradox where because you're I was too weak to admit to being weak it actually takes strength obviously to to admit vulnerability so it's a kind of weird paradox where you you you because you're weak you try and look strong yeah no absolutely and i think of course mental health problems affect men and women as a guy myself you know i've been reflecting over the last few years about you know even phrases like you know man up a phrase that you know i spent a bit of time in uh doing ski seasons in chamonix and you know you'd be out and you'd be skiing and partying and drinking and there's

you know what was this phrase would come you just got to man up and do this and i i've really the last year or two i think now that i think manning up may be one of the most toxic phrases that we've currently got i don't know i mean what do you think yeah no totally and i think manning up may be one of the most toxic phrases that we've currently got i don't know i mean what do you think yeah no totally and i think man up often just means shut up and it means get on with it and it means it essentially means if you don't man up if you do talk about it um then there's something wrong with you as a man. But also, my whole thing of mental health and masculinity is that, you know, the toughest times of my life, the times I had to be strongest were actually when I was looking the weakest. when I was looking the weakest. Like the thing I'm most proud of doing in my whole life was walking to the corner shop from my parents' house

when I was ill and agoraphobic on my own to get a pint of milk and some Marmite, which was a distance of less than 500 metres, just along two streets. And that's still, you know, I've travelled the world, done various things, had various life experiences. And that was still the toughest thing I ever did. So this idea that manning up means always, you know, doing the most heroic action or anything is fundamentally wrong anyway.

You know, because you're going through anxiety doesn't mean that you yourself are a weak person. Anxiety to the level I experienced it actually made me a stronger person because to get over the anxiety I was experiencing and the agoraphobia I was experiencing with panic attacks, I had to sort of go through that. So you're having to face that fear continually every day beyond what most people um would ever naturally experience fortunately so this idea that somehow manning you know admitting an illness or even experiencing an illness is the opposite of strength i I think is fundamentally wrong anyway.

Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know, you share a lot of yourself, you know, on social media, you post quite a lot. And it's quite inspiring, actually, to watch what the sort of things you say. And I'm interested, right at the start of this podcast, you said, actually, a lot of the time when you're doing that, it's almost like a mirror reflection back onto you and so I guess do you find it therapeutic to do that to feel you know is it are you doing those posts for other people or are you doing them for yourself or is it a bit of both? It's probably a bit of both but I feel like I like doing them and I need to do them. I mean, occasionally, you know, I'm a little bit uncomfortable because I'm, unlike you, I'm not a doctor.

I'm not someone who trained to offer any kind of medical advice. I sometimes feel a little bit uncomfortable in the role of, inverted commas, mental health ambassador. Because if I share something, for instance, that's very subjective and personal to me, it's not always a universal thing. For instance, actually, while I was in my last dip of anxiety about two years ago, I had a sort of month plummeting

and pacing around the house and not being able to settle and really in a bit of a bad way. I was on social media when I shouldn't have been on social media and I was tweeting and I did that thing and it was before Kanye West talked about his bipolar in that way but I said anxiety is my superpower and that got loads of stick and loads of grief and I wasn't meaning anxiety is a breeze in fact when i was um writing that tweet i was feeling utterly horrendous and i was trying to almost write myself out of it or frame it a different way and you know for me sometimes it's taking the worst experience and making it a gift like like for me and it doesn't work for everyone again i have to put that caveat with panic attacks i sometimes almost bluff myself into wanting them like if i feel one coming on

rather than feel i've got to run away from that i'll sort of say well okay if this is a test i'm just going to sort of lie down and experience it and see how i handle it see what i do because that instantly creates a separation between you the person and the panic the experience which I didn't used to get I used to think I was the panic this was me I'll never get out of it and actually turning it into an experience that you're achieving but yes in terms of social media I've learned to be a little bit more careful with what I say because you you never know who's out there listening or maybe taking things the wrong way but I think generally I find it therapeutic sharing and I

think people like hearing it and I think one of the reasons why you know whichever talk therapy it is you know the rates for talk therapy next to prescription drugs they're often almost matching I think one of that thing things about talk therapy is is simply drugs they're often almost matching i think one of that thing things about talk therapy is is simply not simply what you're told by the therapist but the process of externalizing something yeah i mean there's so many useful things you just said matt um i think just keeping you know reframing something where and you feel a panic attack coming on in in terms of something yeah okay bring it on let's see what i've got her now to tackle this i can see how that will be so powerful because the way we view our experiences absolutely determines how we feel them and how we experience them and i think i think i can see how

that that may work for some people and not for others the other thing that you know something i talk about a lot and something i think about a lot especially when i see these kind of um toxic battles that you do see on social media sometimes i think we forget sometimes that there's a person behind that on the other end and i would say you know my motto is certainly when i'm trying to interact on social media is to always try and be compassionate because as you've just said when you put that tweet out that got a lot of stick you weren't feeling great right so then surely we can as a society apply that and go okay hold on a minute maybe let's not assume that every

time someone puts something out they're feeling rested and grounded and they thought it through maybe they just actually put something out that makes them feel better and yes there's a flip side to that is what's the responsibility on people to put out stuff like that but i just think we need more compassion on social media but also just in society in general that would certainly go a long way I feel that I can't I think it might have been an Instagram but someone which is normally relatively people say positive things to each other on Instagram but someone was having an issue with something I'd said and got into a little bit of argument and got silly and and people were you know ostracizing them and saying what are you talking about and then three weeks later that same person dm me and said

i'm so sorry i was just i didn't mean a word of what i was saying i was in a really bad place i was depressed i've been drinking blah blah and yeah exactly that when we're not it's and also we change our minds change we don't always agree with ourself you know we literally you can put something and three months later think oh you know and social media i mean one of the joys of it but also the curse of it is it's very in the moment so people are often just projecting what they're feeling it's probably to do with their blood sugar levels or how tight their shoulders are whatever it is and it's just out there yeah and then you've got to almost live and that for the rest of your career that oh you said that once which is ridiculous i and in january i did this um i did a bit of a book tour for the stress solution

and i remember one of the venues this lady came up to me and then she accused us get a book signed and she said dr chesney i just want to apologize to you i said why she says look at you know a little while ago i was really mean to you on social media. I said things that I shouldn't have said, and I attacked you. And it's because what you were saying, it just was too close to the truth for me at the time, and I wasn't ready to hear it.

Whereas I've actually applied a lot for it now, and I'm feeling great. So I want to say thank you, but also sorry. And again, I learned a lot from that. It just like wow that's incredible and I had so much respect for her that she was able to actually come and find me and actually say in person she didn't have to yeah you know she absolutely didn't have to but again it teaches you a lot that as you say people can change their minds absolutely um but Matt as someone who is very prolific on social media how do you deal you know you're someone who you know you've said before you've had issues with panic attacks

with anxiety on one level how does being that guy who talks about mental health a lot when i've seen a lot of people attack you as well for what you put out there how do you cope with that with the previous mental health problems that you've had well i haven't always coped with it that well i mean two years ago i can't remember what the argument was about but i can remember which is you know typical of social media it really mattered at the time but i have no idea what it was but it ruined my weekend and i was yeah i just i know know, I've got children and the children were at home and I was just letting, I wasn't, you know, visibly distressed in front of the kids,

but I was letting myself totally ignore them, ignore all the stuff I should have been concentrating on, arguing with someone in Texas who I would never meet in any other normal circumstance pointless arguments with people and you do I think social media it's very easy to lose that sense of perspective of what matters and it feels like it really matters in that moment and it's for yesterday's chip paper thing but it's continual it's continually continually, you know, people forget. It doesn't matter. But at the point in time, it matters.

And I'm still learning how to use it because I try little times away. And then I get, you know, then I come back on and I'm more addictive than ever. The thing I've stopped doing, well, I've switched off off my notifications I don't have my phone by my bed so I actually have to get out of bed now in the morning because I used to be I'd be on Instagram and I'd be just scrolling for hours and um before I'd get out of bed so I think just having not everyone can do this a lot of people like it as their alarm and a lot of people like to see if anyone's texted them in the morning but i have it in the kitchen so at least you know that basic thing of getting up getting something to eat going downstairs you kind of have to have some kind of rhythm to your day but you know twitter

i think i'm still learning i've never really been addicted to Facebook, so that's okay. Instagram doesn't seem to negatively affect my mental health. Although amongst young people, interestingly, Instagram's the one that always comes out the worst. Yeah, I saw that study. I think it was the Royal Society of Medicine and Instagram came out the worst. But I agree with you.

I sort of find, generally speaking, Twitter's a bit like, you know, walking down the street with people throwing stuff with you. I sort of find, generally speaking, Twitter's a bit like walking down the street with people throwing stuff at you. Whereas Instagram seems a bit more gentler and calmer. I do use Facebook myself, but I think they all do different things. And again, I just want to be clear with people

who listen to this. You know, I don't think, I don't want to speak for you. I'm not against social media. I think it can be a very, very powerful tool. I was just, I guess, intrigued as to being someone as vocal as you are. How do you manage it? How do you let it not affect your mental health? But clearly sometimes it does.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm writing notes on a nervous planet. I was just trying to work out why it affects me, what I should do about it. Should I be doing anything about it? Is social media on balance, good or bad? But absolutely, we can't go back in time. We can't put the genie in the bottle. But I think one thing we're not doing

is we're not really asking about social media and health as a health issue. There's been a lot in the news, you know, last year with Cambridge analytica and stuff about the political consequences of social media which we're seeing in the real world now but i think the next phase will be the health side the psychological side maybe even the physical health side you know we've been you know encourages being sedentary and certainly causes neck problems it's true absolutely true isn't it well look i do want to get onto the

the book notes on a nervous planet which i've got to say is fantastic it's it's such a good book um what is a nervous planet well nervous in the sense that i think a lot of us are feeling stressed out because of the 21st century pace of living and this kind of overloaded culture of everything, which is often kind of paralyzing. But also nervous in the sense that of a nervous system, as sort of like we're connected in ways that we've never been connected before. So our emotions and our psychology influence each other and we've got that's a wider influence than it used to be when we used to live in a hunter-gatherer communities of at most 100 people

now we can encounter 100 new people before getting out of bed we are saturated with everything and it's you know it's parallel i think a lot of the inverted commas craziness of the world to our own mental states and we're not making that connection yeah absolutely i mean there's so much in this in this book notes on a nervous planet um i'd highlight a couple of areas I just thought would be quite interesting to talk about. I mean, you know, could probably spend four hours just talking about this book. You've got the section on time. We need the time we already have. I really loved it because you finish it off saying, we often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn't help anything the problem clearly is that isn't that we have a shortage of time it's more that we have an overload of everything else

i think that just sums up so beautifully um is this something you've been sitting with a lot you know in terms of when you were writing this i mean yeah and i you know something you know maybe hitting your 40s and having kids grow older, you're aware of the passing of time. But I'm, you know, I feel like we all say it, don't we? We all say, if only I had the time, I'd read more, I'd do this more, I'd travel more. And we're all feeling that absence of time. But in real terms, we've got as much time, if not more than any humans have ever had and yet so something else is at play and i think there's two things one we've got more literal demands on our time and also we we have kind of conditioned ourselves to live somewhere else than the present so you know i'm a great fan of the education system i'm from a family of teachers but i i sometimes think the whole education system is a kind of reverse mindfulness where you're you're continually thinking about the future so you're learning not for its own sake but you're learning

for grades for exams for the job at the end of it then you go to university or not and then you're thinking about the career path you take and so from a young age we're trained to always have that sort of forward thinking that forward momentum and it carries on into the workplace in our careers and it doesn't encourage we're not encouraged to just be grateful in the moment for what we have or know how to appreciate what we have and i feel like continually where it's always about accumulating something now for instance my latest technological obsession is my pacer app on my phone to see how many steps i've done now it's a good thing to encourage people to to walk more and i'm a great fan of walking more but the fact

that we turn everything into a number means that we're constantly trying to accumulate so i'm always worried now if i've done my 10,000 steps. And it doesn't matter the quality of those steps where I'm walking. I just want to reach the 10,000 number. And whether it's our income bracket, whether it's our grades at school, whether it's a measurement we want our bodies to be or whatever it is, we're conditioned, I feel, to feel like we're not quite enough in the present moment and we've always got to become the after picture we've got to become the next version of ourselves and it it's easy to forget that we're actually everything we need

is really already there but we just sort of pile too much stuff on it and we sometimes lose ourselves yeah i think this is probably one of the biggest problems in this nervous planet in which we're currently living in is that it's never enough there's always something else to do there's always somebody else doing something that is perceived to be better that you think oh you know i i will be happy when i do this and then you achieve it and you're like oh it's not really made much difference to how I feel about myself and I guess with you I'm guessing um I mean if someone had told you 10 years ago that you're going to have the level of success you have had as an author with multiple number one bestsellers right would you 10 years ago 10 years ago someone said Matt look I'm going to tell you in 10 years time you're going to be this

successful um will that make you happy what do you think your response would have been? Well, I absolutely know my response would have been, yes, that would make me happy. Because before I became published, I said, I don't have any ambitions beyond having my own book on the shelves. But I've written, I will know, i'll remember what it's like to really want that and i will be happy forever it doesn't matter if it just has a handful of readers if it's not out on any tables if it's just there in an actual physical bookstore just the one bookstore i'll be happy forever and that will be it you know i might need to earn some money further down the line but in terms of self-satisfaction that'll be fine and that feeling lasts about a day and then your brain readjusts and then there's a

new thing and all you do oh you know it sounds like the ultimate of first world problems but all you do at each successful stage you reach in life is that becomes your new normal so you've raised the bar of your own happiness so you feel like you need to do more you need to do more and it becomes you know this ridiculous thing i mean having said that i i i am grateful and i am in a sort of abstract sense of where but i've achieved a lot of what i've wanted to achieve and i'm appreciate that but then that's coupled with a kind of nervousness that I'll lose it and everything else which I suppose a lot of people have so yeah on balance I wish I could you know I've told myself at a younger age that your brain chemistry is not fundamentally affected in the long term by these external signifiers you need

to find that in yourself somehow yeah absolutely it's something we get told a lot but it's very hard to believe it and actually apply it um what do you think we can do about that as a society i mean you know i i feel really you know when people ask about that as a society? I mean, you know, I feel really, you know, when people ask about how can we improve the nation's mental health, they're often talking about health care, funding, all of that. And all that stuff is massively important. But I really feel that mental health is such as seen as a sort of sidecar issue. It's a nice touchy-feely area that politicians like to

talk about without doing that much i i think what is more important really than our minds and our perception of the world it needs to really be the framework of how we view everything you know i'm speaking in very utopian terms i know that but i feel in terms of the education system in terms of our working life yeah a lot can be learned from that i mean i'm interested in for instance in work culture and how that affects mental health because it clearly does and there are good steps being made like there's a move to have um workplaces with their own mental health first aider in every workplace over a certain size, which is a good move. But I feel work itself can be so toxic. And a fact I like is the fact that when we work over 37 hours in a week, we become less productive, you know, on an average. And

so I quite like the idea of a four-day working week would be a there's good data coming out on that now there's there's really good data coming out suggesting that actually people can be as productive if not more productive i know a lot of scandinavian firms have trialed this um shorter working day like six hour working days and you know what people come around they don't mess around on facebook and twitter all day they get their work done because they know they can get home early so So they focus for six hours, highly, highly productive, and then they're done. And they get to, you know, balance the work time with the rest time, which is so, so important. And you mentioned schools, you know, we are, you know,

we're both fathers of young children. You know, I think a lot about schools. My kids are still eight and six. So, you know, I don't quite think they're at that age yet where these pressures of exams and the stresses of modern education system are affecting them. I certainly hope not. But I see so many adolescents in my practice who are really suffering the negative consequences of that real pressure at school, the exams, you know, thinking that it's all about their exam results. And if they don't achieve it, the whole life is going to be a failure. And I'm having to teach, you know, all kinds of breathing techniques now to help students get through their exams. And I think in the 21st century, arguably one of the most important things that schools can teach our kids is, you know, that emotional intelligence, mindfulness. How can you stay sane in this very toxic world?

I really do. And I'm not convinced that education has adapted quickly enough for the pace of change that we're seeing in society. No, absolutely. And I also think, you know, as a general rule of education, there's no point learning if the learning you're doing is putting you off learning. You know what I mean? You know, like a lot of people's big message from school is that education isn't for them. Books aren't for them because they felt isolated from it and i feel like yeah it's a bit sad that it's become that and i i saw my mom was

a head teacher for uh the best part of three decades and just in her time there it became less about the child and much more about form filling league tables ofsted all of that and uh you know that that that's quite sad that teachers themselves don't have as much time as they would like just focusing on the needs of a child and even when you know because i thought it was you know it's a sad thing to happen but it was a positive thing responding to um the stress of children when they had um you know the introduction of meditation and relaxation techniques in school i noticed the tabloid headlines were talking about snowflake kids this that and the other you know how ridiculous it was that they were devoting any time of the day to their mental health. Yet those same media outlets, if it was the physical education was being taken out,

they'd be rightly up in arms. But if it was of a mental side, people don't even understand that a child's mental health is important. that a child's mental health is important. And, you know, there's stats about how, you know, 50% of mental health conditions have some kind of seed before the age of 14. You know, our schools and our education system is precisely the place we should be making, you know, equipping people with the tools to understand their own be aware

of their own mental health firstly but also to to not grow up with the values which end up causing us to break down and get stressed out and frazzled you know to actually be a little bit more mindful and aware of her own emotional life because it so often seems to be heading the opposite way. I mean, it's a great point. I think I heard you speak recently about, was it an analogy about an adolescent doing an exam and smoking 20 fags a day? Can you just elaborate on that? Yeah, well, I said, you know, no parent in the land,

well, 99.9% of parents or guardians would not give their 15 year old 60 marlboras a day if it meant at the end of that they were guaranteed to get good grades they would not risk their physical health to that extent just to get good grades yet we risk kids mental health in terms of stress all the time and lots of parents think it's the right thing to do and pile on that pressure and pile on that pressure and some kids can take it understandably but some some children don't and have the rising rates of certain anxiety disorders in children i don't think can just be explained the way in that we're talking about mental health more

or diagnosing or recognising problems. I think, you know, when you really look at the breakdown of figures, there are things going on. And I do think that this new generation does have stresses that we didn't have. And we don't need to pile on more stress. But we still kind of have this view that stress is character building and the world's a stressful place, so we need learn young and it doesn't work like that you know well you know i i'm my

mum i've got a great relationship with her but when i was first there with um panic attacks she thought and she was very worried about me the thing to do was for me to do these stressful things more and more so almost every night I'd be going to the theater or doing this and having a panic attack and having another panic attack and all I was teaching myself was how to have a panic attack you know if you're going through stressful situations it doesn't mean that you're learning how to cope with that stressful situation just because you're going through the situation. Yes, you sometimes need to find that resilience within it, but simply giving yourself a panic attack over and over again

isn't always the best way to get over a panic attack because you're just teaching your brain to have a panic attack. Yeah, and I think one thing we also haven't recognised enough as a society is that our brain is constantly adapting. It's constantly responding to the environment you place it in and so we know that people who are chronically stressed at work parts of their brain one part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex it changes in size in response to that um we know that you know what's it called again the dorsal so i can sound

as clever as you when i'm so it's just part of the brain that helps us make it's a dorsal dorsolateral prefrontal cortex right but basically the important thing is is basically it's a it's part of the brain that helps us to exercise self-control and make rational decisions you know very important skill in life but being chronically stressed is going to change that part of the brain so you find it harder so it's not you know chronic stress in some way because it's sort of invisible we can't see it in the same way as you know like the food we put on our plate we know if that's healthy or unhealthy right we can see it but but stress i think one of the big problems is that we don't think that we can see it so we sort of put it to the backgrounds yes

and i think i think i've thought about this a lot and I think there's two things going on. One is that it is a mysterious thing. I mean, the science is still evolving on it and people, because it's invisible, people don't know where a personality ends and mental health begins. And yeah, I just think we've got a a long way to go in understanding that and understanding you know what what it feels like having that empathy of what mental health is but another thing i think is that mental health challenges people because it interferes with our conception of self of who we are we like to believe that

we're in control of our minds and control of our thoughts and our actions we we kind of know and accept that we're not in control of our bodies that things can go wrong we need to go to a doctor about certain things you know our back can go wrong and we're aware that we armed our back you know our sense of self isn't tied up with the pain in our back whereas to admit or accept the idea that our minds can go wrong is kind of a challenge not just in terms of worrying about ourselves getting ill, or other people getting ill, but it's a challenge on a whole perception of self, because it's like having to give up some idea of control or free will by accepting the reality

of mental illness, which I think is quite threatening to people i think i think you make a really good point there um and it's almost you know you said right at the start of this conversation you said that now or recently when a panic set would be coming on instead of maybe shying away from it you'd almost move towards it and sort of, I won't go as far as saying embrace necessarily, but you look at it in a slightly different light. It's trying to keep it separate from who you are. You've said this a lot in Notes on a Nervous Planet. I love this page. It's the one entitled Remember. Feeling you have no time doesn't mean you have no time. Feeling you're ugly doesn't mean you're ugly. Feeling anxious doesn't mean you have no time feeling you're ugly doesn't mean

you're ugly feeling anxious doesn't mean you need to be anxious um you know feeling you haven't achieved enough doesn't mean you haven't achieved enough this this is really quite profound for many people to know that actually there's a separation there between who they are and how they're feeling is that something you've always been aware of no absolutely not and i you know i know it's a pressure that women and girls feel more than men but i used to be obsessed about my appearance and so self-conscious about it i can remember at school you know i've got a few moles that aren't that noticeable but at school someone made a remark about a mole on my face and and like i spent years obsessing about this mole on my face and thinking that it meant

i was like hideous and that i was this this sort of terrifying now when you look back at photos of me from when i was 14 you can't even see the mole on my face that i was but in my mind it'd been you know that's what i was i was this walking mole and it's just and i think that's what I was. I was this walking mole. And I think that's a good exercise to do, actually. You know, look at old photos of your younger self and thinking about the insecurities you had then and actually seeing from that distance, oh, what was I worried about? I was a nice young person, perfectly normal looking, everything else.

But you get so consumed. But yeah, I absolutely thought that was a reality. You know, I, you know, this actually going back to your earlier question about was there any sign when I was a teenager? It was basically self-harm. I tried to get rid of a mole on my face by giving myself a scar with a toothbrush. So that was a sign, but no one was aware of and i kept it quiet for years but i you know i made myself bleed to get rid of something that i

thought was hideous which a that's that's a ridiculous thing because you're not getting rid of a mole you're just creating a scar on your face but obvious now right but not obvious at the time but when you're just so consumed as a 13 year old a 14 year old yeah so i mean that's an intense age anyway but yeah i was so bothered about that and also just everything you know like it's you i i feel like now you there's for instance my my book's coming out next this week and the hardback i was lucky enough for it to be a number one but which is great and but rather than being thankful for that my mind's thinking well now the paperback has to be a number one or that's the sort of downward you know it's now 10 years ago when you wanted just one book published in a real bookshop which you know it's amazing how

the goals posts have changed quite dramatically absolutely yeah you have obviously made immense progress uh yourself you know you have learned no doubt a lot about yourself um through the things that you've been through and you've very openly shared them in your books which is incredible and i think very inspiring for a lot of people what can people learn from your journey you know what have you learned on that journey that maybe can inspire others do you think I think the simple idea of change you know I felt stuck I felt literally stuck I mean my depression lasted longer than average you know i had three years of really being stuck in a place and it's not like after those three years i was totally better i've had lots of lapses lots of sort of areas on my dial somewhere between but what i didn't believe then

i didn't believe in the possibility of change i didn't understand the fluctuations. Even if you have a condition like anxiety, and you're always got it to a degree, that it's going to change, it's going to shift your relationship to your condition, even if it's a permanent condition, if it's a chronic condition, your relationship to it is something that can change and something that does naturally change over time. You know know the one thing that for me was bigger than depression was time because a lot of the things my depression when i was in the midst of a breakdown was telling me you know it was telling me i'd be dead by the age 25 my relationship would end this would happen everyone would hate me yes bad things happen in life some

some really bad things happen in life and they really bad things happen in life. And they've happened in my life. But that worldview of depression where every bad thing is going to happen and you deserve it to happen and it's all going to be terrible, you know, that's not reality. So weirdly, my experience of that level of pessimism ended up making me an optimist because optimism would have been a more valid and useful perspective you can't do anything with pessimism but optimism would have you know a made me feel better and

would have actually been a more valid perspective because time disproved what depression was telling me it felt so real all that negativity when it was at the foreground of my mind but it doesn't that negativity when it was at the foreground of my mind but it doesn't stay being um you know that is not reality you you can't be this negative nostradamus of yourself where you're predicting everything's bad's going to happen because you you just don't know and even if bad things do happen you don't know the person you will be when you experience them so even you know because one thing some people sometimes say to me after reading reasons to stay alive obviously well you were quite privileged and lucky because you were in a relationship and you had parents there and you had some people in your life you're a small

support network but you had a support network and that's true and i was incredibly privileged but i'll just say in the real depths of depression it felt like not necessarily true but it felt like it hardly made a difference because i felt a thousand miles away from everybody and i almost resented having people because they were i just wanted to sort of disappear off the face of the earth but i'd say you know now the person you have to stay alive for other people but those people aren't necessarily literally other people in your life. They're people you haven't met yet. And also the people that you will be, you know, because our minds change, you know, neuroplasticity, all that stuff.

Our brain literally changes with experience and what we do and when we age. And you will become someone else to who you are at that lowest point. And that, you know, the bottom of the valley, as I say in the book, gives you the worst view. But you know, it can be very hard to get that message in there. Did you stay alive for yourself? Or for people around you? Well, I stayed alive. I think it's very difficult. I mean, having people, I didn't want to spread the pain I was feeling, but I still think there could have come a point where that pain was overwhelming,

whoever I was with, you know, and I, you know, sometimes I'm a bit cynical about the language of sort of suicide and selfishness because it's not really like that you almost your mind can convince you in that kind of state however wrong it is that it's almost a selfless thing to take your life because you feel like such a worthless person or a piece of baggage that you could almost feel selfless for doing something which would hurt other people so it's a very complicated thing when you're dealing with different states of mind i have no idea i'm sure there's parallel universes where i'm not here but i i'm

yeah i i think i somehow i had a sense just the tiny grain a subconscious sense that it would not always be like this and having andrea my partner as a literal reason right there um was invaluable and i say to anyone who knows someone who's got depression you know there's no magic formula of how to be there necessarily you can tell them to go and get help you can read information yourself but i think just listening just having someone where you don't have to wear that disguise and you can literally tell them how you feel whether it's a partner a family member a doctor samaritan whoever just to be able to share that yeah thanks, thanks, Matt. I think, you know, from where you have been to where you are now,

to when I see that you say, you know, I haven't suffered from mental health problems in the conventional way that they're described. And to hear you say that one of the biggest achievements of your life is when you actually walked under 500 meters down the road to the local shop to get some milk

that's incredible for me to hear something like that and i think wow you know it's you know i just you know i can try and put myself in those shoes but i can't because i didn't feel that i didn't experience that and to now see someone who's come from that to you know you post sometimes say you know you used to be scared to going on going on trains now you're on trains regularly you're about to embark on a uk-wide tour where you're going to be delivering content to people i'll be having a literal demonstration of a panic attack but it is super inspiring i think for people and you share what's happened to you so openly and so without judgment i I do, I really do think you're one of the most important voices in this arena at the moment. I think your work helps a lot of

people. Matt, the goal for me with this podcast, it's called Feel Better Live More, because I think that when we feel better in ourselves, we get more out of life. my my desire really is to try and inspire each listener to believe that they can be the architects of their own health and i wonder i appreciate you know as you said before you're not a doctor you know you but i feel that your experience both as someone who's suffered from mental health problems or still continues to you've had so many interactions with the public you've written so many great books i wonder have you got any sort of short and sweet sort of top tips that you can share with people three or four things that maybe they can think about doing in their own life that might improve the way that they feel

yeah i'm never good at short and sweet but i'll try um i i think often it's about slowing down in some way. So for me personally, I know you're a great believer or wants to do it but for me having that space away from people from my work from everything else just getting out going running was a massive help and I know it sounds funny but there's a kind of truth to it when I was running I knew that was a place I couldn't have a panic attack because the symptoms of running other symptoms of a panic attack you've got the breathlessness you've got the racing heart you're sweating but you know why you are and it's kind of a pain that you can control over so i found it very empowering not just on the endorphin level and the feeling of accomplishment but actually it gave you that sense of sort of control which panic took away and you know i'm great so running and yoga are my things i love doing yoga yoga came later i actually started doing yoga for

my back rather than for my anxiety but i noticed that it was having a knock-on effect and whether that was simply just taking that time for myself slowing my breathing down which is something i still watch um another thing which is really important for me is sleep you know it's it seems out of the triumvirate of diet exercise sleep sleep is often the neglected one you're preaching to the converter you know i'm just nodding my head yeah and i you know, because no one really makes money out of our sleep, you know, other than duvet manufacturers and people who make blackout blinds. But, you know, sleep...

And in fact, I mentioned it... And I'm happy for them to make money. It's a good service they're providing. Yeah, exactly. It's a good service. But we've got a lot of people making money out of us not sleeping. You know, the head of Netflix last year, I think he was being tongue-in-cheek but also slightly serious said that netflix's main competitor is sleep you know if they can get people to stay up to three in the morning watching

episode seven of whatever the good life or whatever then it's a good place then um they will you know be making more um value for netflix and so and we do you know our quality of sleep has changed as you know and you know the actual hours we spend asleep changes and obviously social media is a big part of that having our phones by the bed and all of that can be bad for that but I think essentially it's about creating a space however whatever it is whether it's doing yoga whether it's reading a book whether it's going for a run where we're just unplugged we're just ourselves we're not working we're not worried about the money that we're not making or whatever and we can just be rather than you know the reverse of the nike slogan just do it you know where we can just actually be just almost disconnecting in order to reconnect absolutely yeah matt i think there's

some great tips there they've clearly helped you a lot thank you for all the work you do thank you for the books that you write i have actually bought tickets to see you on your tour so i'll be coming with my wife you can watch my panic attack i will see you in a few weeks thanks for making the time today and i hope i get the chance to interview you on the podcast at some point in the near future well it was a pleasure. Thanks so much. It's great to talk to you. That concludes this week's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Matt and that you found the tips he mentioned at the end a useful reminder. It's amazing how many times on this podcast my guests will talk about how important it can be to focus on the basics such as getting enough sleep and slowing down. Running and yoga have come up once again as activities that people find useful for their mental health as well as their physical health. Matt really is doing an incredible job at raising awareness of mental health issues and is someone who is highly active on social media, particularly Twitter and Instagram. So please do let both

Matt and I know what you thought of today's show. And if you can't remember, please do use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. The show notes page for this episode is drchatterjee.com forward slash 61 so do take a look if you want to continue your learning experience now that the podcast is over you can see links to all of matt's books as well as relevant blogs and articles if you yourself are struggling with your mental health or you know someone who is i would really suggest that you check out my latest book the The Stress Solution. 21st century stress is a huge driver of many of the problems that GPs see today, especially mental

health problems. And my book really helps you to understand the wide variety of places where stress lives these days. And importantly, it gives you really actual tips to help deal with it. I've had so much positive feedback from people saying that this book really has helped them improve their own mental health and many people have opted to buy the book for people close to them who are struggling. You can get a copy of The Stress Solution in all the usual places either as a paperback, as an e-book or as an audiobook which I am narrating. As mentioned in the introduction the book is also now available to buy in the United States on amazon.com so for those of you who have been asking me for a

few months from America where they can get the book you can go out and order your copy right now. If you do enjoy my weekly podcast one of the best ways that you can support them is by leaving a review on whichever platform you listen to podcasts on. Please do also help me spread the word by taking a screenshot right now and sharing with your friends and family on your social media channels. Of course, you could just do it the good old-fashioned way and tell your friends and family about the show. Your support is very much appreciated just a quick reminder if you do enjoy the weekly podcast and can spare 10 seconds please do consider voting for it at the british podcast awards you can do this by going to britishpodcastawards.com forward slash vote and typing

in feel better live more if you can spare the time i really do appreciate it a big thank you to richard hugh Hughes for editing the podcast and to Ali Ferguson and Liam Saunders for the theme tune. That is it for today. I hope you have a fabulous week. Make sure that you hit press subscribe and I'll be back in one week's time with my latest episodes. Remember, you are the architect of your own health, making lifestyle changes always worth it. Because when you feel better, you live more. I'll see you next time. Thank you.