Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | How to Thrive in Times of Change | Julia Samuel #303

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

If there is any certainty in life it is that things will never stay the same, yet so many of us struggle to embrace and accept change Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart.  Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 123 of the podcast with Psychotherapist Julia Samuel. In this clip Julia explains that how we respond to change, in many ways, determines how our lives will unfold. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/123 Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com.   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. 

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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. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 123 of the podcast with the psychotherapist Julia Samuel. If there is any certainty in life, it's that things will never stay the same. In this clip, she explains that how we respond to change in many ways determines the way in which our lives will unfold. Life is change and we think we have control and then we don't and so those that find ways to support themselves to adapt and change thrive and those that block it and try and anesthetize their

way out of it have less joy and less success in life. Yeah. You know, all of us have default modes of coping with difficulty. And most of the ways that we cope with difficulty is to avoid it. So don't think about it. Don't process it. Just in my case, it's always to get busy and feel like I've got agency. Busyness is an anesthetic. So it stops us feeling. When you're busy, you go to your kind of thinking part of the brain and your capacity to really feel and emote kind of lowers. So that when you're busy, you're kind of on all the time. And to process change, To process change, we need space so that you can feel because oxytocin is the kind of feeling safe hormone in our bodies that tells us that we're safe. And through that oxytocin, that allows us to feel safe, to think, to reflect, adapt, change and thrive. When we're very busy,

we can go at different gears. So, I mean, if you're really in trauma and terrified, you're in sort of fourth gear and you don't change at all. You're just on alert as you know very well, fight or flight or freeze, and you're not able to think, but you can have lots of, there's a spectrum of it, but at a sort of say second gear, you feel enough to kind of be able to function, but don't um adapt or process or make sense and you don't feel very much because you're distracted the whole time distraction i think is i think it's something that we all do i think it's uh you know in some ways i i sort of feel julia that it's never been easier than now to distract

ourselves. We've got this real conflict, haven't we, where actually what we want to do on one level is kind of sit with those feelings, see what's coming up and processing them. Yet, the flip side to that is we've got endless ways now to distract ourselves, whether it's Instagram, YouTube, Netflix, books, podcasts, whatever it is. Is this something that you think is problematic for society as a whole at the moment? I think it's whether you do it in awareness or out of awareness. So I think scrolling, listening to podcasts, scrolling through Instagram, when you're choosing to do that is a perfectly fine pastime. I think what I'm talking about is that, yes, you're right, we all do want agency.

Some people have more sense of their own agency than others, but I think we all want to feel that we can affect change in our own life and affect the life that we want to kind of have a goal that we're heading for and that we can make the choices from informed information to get there. But also we don't like discomfort. So my kind of big message is that pain is the agent of change. And that's through grief when you're grieving someone that has died or a living loss, loss of structure, loss of jobs, loss of trust in tomorrow is going to be the same as today, loss in health. And my kind of message is that we can't fight those feelings, you know, because if you squash them, they come out sideways, they come out in a different way. And they tend to come out in our relationships or in our bodies, you know, our mind and our body are completely connected. So that if we give ourselves time and opportunities to find out what we feel and find ways to reflect and feel it, sort of loss orientation, if you like, then we can have restoration orientation where we watch Netflix.

We have fun. We drink. We do the other stuff that's engaging and not such emotional intensity, or it might be emotional intensity if that's what we want but you allow space for both and one doesn't knock the other out that you hold both side by side and move oscillate between them feelings that you know that's what makes us human right but at the same time it leads to the roller coaster of being a human being. We don't really talk about our feelings. And that strikes me as something that, I guess, the British, we've been very proud of in the past.

We've got a stiff upper lip. I think it's incredibly problematic. So the stiff upper lip, the thing I think very strongly about that is that we need to be in touch with ourselves and be aware of what's going on in us. And those that are mentally thrive and do well, find a way of expressing it. So they do find a way of talking about their feelings. The thing that I think really matters is that you choose who you speak them to, really matters is that you choose who you speak them to so that you talk to people who you trust,

who will listen to you, will respect what you're saying. And I don't really believe in sort of promiscuous honesty, like pouring out your feelings to anybody, anywhere on social media, all over the place, because I think that feeds the whole to make the whole bigger rather than the kind of trust and connection and value that you get of being properly listened to and attended to people often want to kind of Marie Kondo their feelings don't they kind of have my blues and my pinks and chuck out the rubbish and I'm never going to look at that again yeah and we're human beings. So we, the shadows of the stuff that's happened to us stay with us. And sometimes they come and hit us in the face when we least expect it. And it doesn't mean we haven't done it or we're not

doing it right or that we've done it wrong. It's just that we're wired to, for bias, for danger. And that's just that one coming back to tell you you're here again it's like oh i mean that is the the cold harsh truth isn't it you you think you process something you think you moved on yeah i'm i am good with that now you know i've sort of left that behind so then boom a new life situation and it's it's like ah you know it's a little reminder there isn't there but you never step in the same river twice so you're changing all the time so you a lot of people have this kind of trajectory of life and i talk about this quite a lot in the book about you know you have you start at the beginning you go up this hill you know and you have this

image of your life where you get there and you've arrived and i think social media and lots of aspects of life kind of say that you know the five ways you're going to live your best life and the five ways that you're going to have, you're going to kick ass in your business. So all those things that once you've got the five things, then you're sorted. And then I'm like winning and winning at life, all the kind of black and white pictures of life. In my mind, if someone couldn't show me that it really is true, then I will be willing to listen. But life tends to be a kind of moving up and down process. And you have moments of enormous joy and moments of absolute despair. And the skill, if you like, and the thing that makes a difference between someone who survives and

thrives is the love and connection to others and their ability to move with it and go with it yeah even the changes that you want are uncomfortable because it forces you to adapt to this new version of yourself in this new way of living so and the more we accommodate that discomfort and allow it and give it space and support ourselves through it, then the change happens and we adapt and thrive and grow. And that when we block it, we get a limited, more and more limited life and you know those people who you kind of if you tap them you kind of feel that they're brittle yeah and they have very fixed views very fixed way of being that this is right and that's wrong and this is who I am whereas the people you feel like you want to connect to and engage with are people who are kind of more open, more open to what they feel, more open to uncertainty, more open to what you're saying and to flexibility. I think flexibility and

adaptability are real life skill that we need to give ourselves permission to have. Yeah. I think the tools and the tips you have for people absolutely are going to help people get more out of their lives and I wonder if you could leave the listeners with some of your most practical tips that they can start applying to improve the quality of their lives. I'd love to do that. I think the first one is that when they're going through a process of change, they will feel abnormal and to not fight it, but to support themselves in it. And for them, you know, to find out what that looks like. So for everybody that will be different, what they need to support themselves. For me, it is being self-compassionate.

It is taking exercise. I kickbox. So a lot of what I do is about being empathic and still and in the moment. So really punching the life of the guy I kickbox with is the reverse. So it really releases a lot of my kind of fury. So work out for each of you how you express what you feel in a way that works for you. And the thing that matters most that is the hardest to do is love, is the connection to others. But it starts with the connection with yourself, that how you are with yourself that how you are with yourself how you

speak to yourself will impact how you build relationships with those around you but that is the thing that when people look at the at the end of their lives when people reflect on what matters to them most the thing that gives the meaning and purpose and happiness and health is the love and connection to others. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.