It Can't Just Be Me - It's Not Just You: Getting Out Of Your Own Way

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Anna is joined by clinical psychologist Dr Soph, aka Dr Sophie Mort, to answer a listener dilemma. This person is feeling like they've lost their sense of direction in life, but they also sense themselves getting in their own way in the process of trying to rediscover it. Dr Soph offers some positive, practical and simple advice and exercises that anyone feeling similiarly can try themselves at home.If you have a dilemma or situation you'd like discussed, reach out to Anna by emailing [e-mail] or DM her on Instagram @itcantjustbemepodNothing is off limits, we’re open to it all, from your mental health, to dating, to your sex life to addiction…all of the challenges and hurdles that life throws at you - It's Not Just You is a place for you to find some practical advice and support. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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then welcome to our second weekly episode, It's Not Just You. Each week I'll be joined by an expert to explore the issues and dilemmas that are affecting you. No guests, just you, me and an expert. Nothing is off limits, we're open to it all, from your mental health, to dating, to your sex life, to addiction, all of the challenges and hurdles that life throws at you. We're here to offer some practical advice and support because whatever's on your mind, it's not just you. So let's begin.

Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Dr Sophie Mort, I love that full title, Dr Sophie Mort aka Dr Soph, clinical psychologist with a master's degree in neuroscience. Brains, that is all I'm saying right here in the room. Soph, tell us, what does a clinical psychologist actually do? Do you do therapy or is your work more academic? So clinical psychologists do multiple things. So I think the majority of us do clinical work. But what do you mean by we do clinical work? So that might mean we do direct one-to-one therapy, group therapy. Also as a clinical psychologist you might be working in the university doing research. To be honest, the way that I work as a psychologist

is I see one-to-one clients, I focus on science dissemination, so I'm the mental health expert at Headspace, I've written two books and the way I see it is the more we can get information out to the public, the more we can support people before their kind of struggles become what we call clinical, i.e. in need of other people to help them. Yes, intervention. Exactly. Fabulous. Okay, thank you for explaining all of that. Okay, let's get straight into this week's dilemma. This came in from one of our

listeners who's chosen to remain anonymous, so this is not the voice of the person who sent it in. Hi Anna. I feel like I've recently lost my sense of direction. I used to have a clear idea of what I wanted, whether it was nailing that big promotion at work, buying a house, or going traveling. But somehow, none of that seems important to me now. I'm finding myself starting to question

what I've been working towards. I'm not unhappy, but I'm feeling like I'm getting my own way when it comes to finding a real purpose in what I'm doing. But if I have no idea what I want anymore, then how do I know what I need to do next if things need to change for me? It can't just be me that can't figure out exactly what I want in this point in my life. Do you know what, Sophie? I feel as though this is a conversation that I have with my mates in the pub every week, and I can sort of identify with some of this actually as a midlife woman. There are so many people listening that are going to understand this dilemma as well. Is this a very common

situation for you that you hear in your therapy space? 100% it's so common at pretty much any age and stage but particularly around what we'd call a milestone birthday. So 18, 21, 30, 40, 50. And that's because when we hit these periods of our life, we start to reflect, okay, what's important to me? What do I want to prioritize? And in our first few decades of life or first few years of being an adult, most of our priorities and goals were given to us

by society or the people around us. They tell us what we should own, such as a house by a certain age, who we should date, what age we should be married by, what we should do for work and what success looks like. And as we kind of move through those stages, we start to think, hmm, does this work for me? Is this what I really want?

And often we don't really notice that things aren't quite going how we would choose them to, until we feel dissatisfied, a bit lost, and suddenly like, hang on, these things I've been doing for a really long time suddenly don't feel good. It tends to go from a little niggle to quite a strong feeling. And if you've always thought you know what you want to do,

that can feel like being lost. Lots of my clients say it sometimes feel like they're in the middle of the ocean. They know there's land on every side. They can't see it and they just don't know which way to paddle yet. That's a really good analogy. Right.

Actually that makes perfect sense. I mean, do you ever feel that way? Yes, every three years I have. Every three years. That's very specific. I have a very short attention span. I like to learn new things, learn them thoroughly until I understand them and then I immediately get bored.

So I really know this feeling, but what I want to say is it's not only common, it's really healthy. If you can reframe this as an opportunity to actually choose what life you want to lead, I mean, how exciting, You're no longer saying, yeah, I'll do what everyone's told me to. I'm going to figure out what's important to me. I love that.

The reframing is absolutely fascinating, isn't it? Of sort of telescoping back out and going, okay, let's have a look at how far you've come. And this is an opportunity, as you say, to go, where do I want to go now? What's important to me? What are my values? So look, let's talk a little bit about purpose,

because we know that it's absolutely crucial in terms of our sense of contentment and happiness. How do we find it again if we've lost it? And I hear what you're saying about your clients say that they feel they're stuck in the middle of the ocean, they know there's land all around them, they just don't know which way to swim. So how do we head for that land that says purpose? Okay, so I think the first thing is, and I quite like this idea of saying, you know what? For the next year, I'm just going to experiment

because two of the main things that get in the way of our kind of decisions or understanding of what we want and what we want to be are, firstly, the shoulds, right? This idea, I should know, I should be satisfied doing this, I should continue working at the rate I was going at. Now, the shoulds often put a lot of pressure on us,

they lead us to self-criticize, they lead us to become incredibly demotivated. This is not the kind of mindset you want to be in when you're actually wanting to feel open to new opportunities. So firstly, if you're looking for your next kind of purpose, catch the shoulds, replace them with coulds. So I could be doing this.

I could be doing that. I could know what I'm wanting to do next. If I could do that, what would I need to do to get to that place? That's the first thing. And the second thing is notice if you have any beliefs around making the right decision. Often we think whatever I need to do next,

it needs to be the right thing. We forget that actually the way we get to the right thing more often than not is trial and error. Yes, it's making mistakes. Right? Yeah. So if you want to find your purpose, write down a list of all of the areas of your life that are important to you.

So that might be friends, families, hobbies, work, spirituality. I'm really like, you know, churning out some labels here. You'll have those that match for you. Then under each one, write down all of the things that you could do. They might be things you, I don't know, you heard someone do that sound absolutely wild or things you've always secretly dreamed to do. So it could be a class or hobby, something you're curious about. And then maybe decide to try one thing from that list every week.

Now we're not looking for your perfect activity. We're looking for you to start experimenting, get curious and notice which of these things made me feel good. Because over time you'll get a sense of what you value in the here and now and that will help you build a picture of where you'd like to find your purpose going forwards. Does that play into that whole PERMA acronym of positive psychology? So it is P, Pleasure or Positive Emotions, E is Engagement and then Relationships and Meaning. Does it play into that acronym of positive psychology?

It absolutely does and it also plays into acceptance and commitment therapy and all of the therapies that essentially say we know that you're going to feel happier in life if you do what you value. Tell me about the, what was that, the pleasure and commitment therapy? Acceptance and commitment therapy, but I want to try pleasure and commitment therapy. So do I. I'm slightly obsessing about the idea of pleasure and commitment. What does that say about my subconscious mind? Okay, so acceptance and commitment therapy. Tell me about that. So it's the idea that essentially we struggle, firstly there's going to be struggles in life, and secondly that one

of the main reasons we struggle are because we've become confused with our thoughts and our feelings. So if you have a scary thought or an upsetting feeling, it feels like it is a fact and you can't really look forward, look past it. So if you have a scary thought or an upsetting feeling, it feels like it is a fact and you can't really look forward, look past it. So if you imagine that I was holding this iPad in front of you, this is the metaphor of your thoughts and feelings. It's like having it pressed against your face.

You with me? Whereas if we can learn to practice mindfulness, for example, where we notice, observe, let go, it's almost like you pull the clipboard away from your face so you can see the world around it. It means you notice that your thoughts and feelings aren't facts that are permanent, but you're able to make choices going forward. So if we think about it in this way, you accept where you are, you commit to doing a valued action, right? So figuring out what's important to you in your life. And then that is how you make sure that you live a life where you

feel well. And we use that for all sorts of things things it can be for chronic pain, anxiety, lots of the different things that we struggle with in life. But again I love the fact that you're saying that a practical solution to this dilemma is write down all of the things that are important to you and then you go I could try this this this and this every week just so that I can understand myself better in terms of my values and the things that bring pleasure to my life. Yeah and just give yourself a year to make as many mistakes as you need to in order to figure out what works.

Love that, give yourself a year, you give yourself three years. I'm giving myself three years before I get bored and move on to the next thing. So you wrote a whole book about feeling trapped in unhelpful habits and mindsets so tell us a little bit more about your book, which is Unstuck. Yes, okay. So one of the fascinating things about being a clinical psychologist is you, if you work for yourself particularly,

are often lucky enough to see people at different stages in their life. So often I'll work with someone going through something acute, let's say panic attacks, and you hope that they get to a point where they're feeling well and they go back out into the world and often when people have this experience, they have this new kind of invigorated sense of life.

They're like, I'm gonna go out there and do what's important to me. Then they come back to therapy and they're like, so I had all this energy and I tried to change my life and it turns out, A, I don't really know what to want to do. B, I keep falling back into old habits. And I've even read Atomic Habits, great book about changing my habits but still nothing seems to do. But I keep falling back into old habits and I've even read Atomic Habits great book about changing my habits but still nothing seems to shift. So Unstuck was about the many different factors that keep us doing the same

things over and over again because often we feel like failing when that happens. Exactly and so for example what are the many things that then cause us to go back to the same old thinking and patterns? So first thing, just basically not understanding the science of habit. So we often think willpower is enough to make change, but actually your old habits are triggered by cues such as boredom, tiredness, or simply seeing the thing. So you're bored, you see your phone. A habit loop is triggered, you pick up your phone. You're stressed, you see the wine, you reach for the wine.

So often we don't make change because we don't set up an environment to support it. But then outside of the science of habit, which has a hundred things in it itself, we've got the fact that actually, our brains don't really make decisions in our best interest. They use shortcuts. It chooses the thing in front of you

rather than the thing you have to wait for long term. It makes you think you're better at things than you already are, that you're better at planning around time when you just simply know that you're not. You turn up late all the time, or you don't set enough side time, enough time for work. It's also the fact that we're always trying to safety seek.

We talk about self-sabotage. This really just means avoiding discomfort in order to feel better in the short term. So it talks about the five main factors. Those are three of them I've talked about. The fact that in relationships will always fall into this trap, this drama, this triangle, this old patterns. And also, finally, the fact that we will repeat patterns across decades and across generations of people.

So you might try and correct the faults that you think are in your family system and then create a whole new one, which means that the next generation swings back to the previous generation's behavior. So the book was trying to say, not only does it make sense where you are, but there's loads of things that you can do

that will genuinely work to make change in your life. Can you give us just sort of two or three examples of what can you do to sort of create change in your life? Can you give us just sort of two or three examples of what can you do to sort of create change in your life off the back of your book? Quick one. Spend. Okay, firstly, I want to think about who you want to be in the future. This ties quite nicely into this person, right?

So I don't necessarily mean what your purpose is. I mean, when you look to 10 years time, who would you in an ideal situation be? When I look to the future, I think of someone who has freedom, right? That might mean kind of financial freedom, so I'm not worried about it, kind of every moment. It might mean freedom to do certain things that I enjoy. It might mean freedom to feel emotionally safe in my relationships.

Then I want you to spend the next 72 hours looking at the activities you engage in that take you towards and take you away from those people. Right, so there's no such thing really as a good habit and a bad habit. There's only what takes you towards, that's the good one, takes you away, that's the bad one. Then I want you to notice on the list of kind of bad

and inverted commerce habits, the next 72 hours after that, which things in your environment trigger you to fall into those habits. So we've already mentioned, for example, the wine in front of you, the phone in front of you. For the triggers that are environmental, right, so you're gonna go through your list, you're gonna circle the ones that are environmental.

You're gonna figure out how to remove those from your day. So it may be that when you work, you put your phone in the drawer. It may be that you remove alcohol from your house fully. Then for the ones that are more emotional, I want you to plan something else that you're gonna do in that time. So when you feel lonely, you're gonna reach out

and actually call the friend rather than scroll on Instagram. When you're feeling bored, you may be gonna get up and do star jumps. I'm a real fan of star jump. It's really good for resetting your nervous system. They're so silly, they make you instantly happier. You're gonna make a plan

for managing those emotional ones. Then you're going to think, okay, what activities would take me towards that person? And you're going to start scheduling them into your day. Now, building habits are more complicated than that in Unstuck. I outline them all. But I think what's nice about this approach is we stop thinking about, okay, my goal is to run a marathon this year. And we start thinking instead, what do I want to bring more of into my life? What do I need to remove from my environment so I'm not facing willpower alone? And thinking this more kind of long-term approach of who do I want to be year-on-year, not just next January.

So it's quite simple in a way that you're saying what do you want more of? So let's bring that in and let's remove the things you want more of? So let's bring that in and let's remove the things you want, you want less of and they're actually taking away from that goal. Yeah and literally remove them from your environment, right? Just take them away so you can't see them. So the idea of we're getting in our own way is really, really common. What can our listener and anybody else who's experiencing that do to try and get out of the situation of being in your own way? Again, excellent question, a huge one. So to start, the fact that we've been asking this question is already a success, right? So recognizing that you're not quite achieving the things that you want in life over and over again and perhaps you're part of the problem is a huge step.

The listener, for example, has already done that by saying maybe it's me. The next thing is asking what do you mean? Getting in your own way can come in so many forms. Is it that you're not achieving the things that you want or doing the things that you care about because you keep falling back into your old habits? If so, what I want you to do

is what we've already talked about. Is it that you're actually avoiding doing the things that you say you're going to do? That's interesting. Why would we avoid? Again, we've got lots of reasons. The best thing to do here is ask, what is it I will, I fear will happen if I do this thing? Is it that I fear that I'll try and I'll fail? Is it I fear I'll actually get this thing that turns out I don't really want it?

Is it that I fear I'll get this thing and then my friends are gonna become envious and say, oh, you've changed, we live in a culture that does not like people sticking their head above, you know, the tall poppy syndrome thing. If it's one of these things, then you're getting in your own way because you're seeking safety,

you're seeking to avoid this discomfort. So you identify it and then you address that in your own way because you're seeking safety, you're seeking to avoid this discomfort. So you identify it and then you address that thing, right? If you're a fearing failure, okay, so let's say you did fail, what would you do? You plan to manage that. Then you break down your task into such a small activity that you can do without it leading towards failure, right? It's the smallest part of the task. You go and you do it and you build like that.

If you fear success, because then you'll have to live with it, maybe that goal that you had was never really yours, it was someone else's. So change the plan. Your brain knows when you don't really want that thing, and it makes sure you don't put the effort in. If it's that you fear being envied,

it's time to, not gonna say get yourself some new friends, that feels a bit harsh, but find a support team. Find that group of women or whoever it is you want to hang around with, who are gonna say, I can't wait for you to be killing it. I love you already, but I'm gonna be your biggest

hype person when you get there, and I'm already that person now. So we find what we fear, we find the solution, we break down our task into the smallest chunks and we just get going from there. Just to go back to this specific dilemma. So this person's saying, I'm not unhappy, but I'm feeling like I'm getting in my own way.

I've got no idea what I want anymore. And how do I know what I should be doing next? So just three things that this person should be doing. What would you say? So reframe where you're at, see this is an opportunity. Get rid of the shoulds and start experimenting until you find things that you enjoy. And she talks about getting into her own way. So identify what you mean by that and tackle the situation specifically. So remove the things that are slipping you into bad habits, identify your fears and figure out what you'd do if those fears

did come true. Break down your tasks and keep going from there. Sophie thank you so much that is our Dilemma for today and thank you so much for listening as well and sending us your dilemmas please keep them coming we're here to help. That's it for today thank you so much for sending in your dilemmas and sharing your stories with us. It's so important that we're having these honest conversations that ultimately everyone can benefit from. So if there's something you want to talk about then please keep them coming. Whether it's big or small, get in touch with us. You can email us or send a voice note to hello at itcan'tjustbeme.co.uk.

You can also find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Just search for it can't just be me. And remember, whatever you're dealing with, I promise it's not just you. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not.

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