That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Dr Alex George

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Gaby welcomes Dr Alex George to the podcast to chat about all things joy. Alex opens up about his recent OCD diagnosis - and what that means for him (no, it doesn't just mean putting things in order) and gives some advice for those who may be having a similar experience.They chat about 'mental fitness' and why we should be teaching kids how to deal with emotions and manage them - which Alex believes is just as important as English, Maths and Science. One of the big themes of the chat is 'acceptance' - and how finding peace in life is such an important part of being joyful and happy. Alex talks about the Toolkit For Life - which each of us needs - and is tailored specifically to us. We loved delving in to some big topics with Dr Alex, and hope you will get as much out of it as we did! You can find more about Alex and the work he does on his instagram

Dr. Alex, welcome to Reasons to Be Joyful. I have the biggest smile on my face because I have been trying to speak to you. I sound like a weird stalker. I'm trying to get a hold of you. Banging on the door. I know, there, outside, let me in. For such a long time. I thank you so much for what you do, what you do for young men, for everybody.

and I love the fact that I get quoted you to me when I talk about certain things, they'll say, oh, have you ever met Dr. Alex? Oh, Alex George's like, and I just, so I wanted to pass that on to you because you are dearly loved. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And I love the premise of the podcast as well.

I think we do need a little bit more of that in life where you can, it's very easy to see all the kind of dark but I guess you've got to remember there's a lot of light as well. And at the moment, we do need those reasons to be joyful at time. So it's a brilliant idea. And I mean, I love a podcast, clearly. I've been podcasting now for six or seven years. Yes, such a long time. Fantastic format for this kind of conversation to have like, is one of the rear formats of media where you can have an honest, in-depth conversation that allows space for nuance, which often you don't have, that you present it across like almost every form of format. And I don't know what you think.

but I think this podcast space is a brilliant one to have these kind of conversations. Absolutely and wonderfully. It's not edited and it's not all then put out. I mean, I've always loved live. And I get from you that you are about being in the moment, which is something I believe so strongly and I think a lot of people find very difficult. Obviously, in the past, you haven't found it so easy. But now would you say, obviously, this is the beginning of a new year.

I cannot bear. I'm sorry if you like it, but I'm sorry if you like it, but I'm going to be honest, I cannot bear the New Year, New Me, or the resolution. The good news is I'm with you. I've never been, I've always hated it. I think it just creates a stick that people can beat themselves with and say, well, look how bad I am. I think if you're going to do this kind of New Year's resolution, I think what you should do first is look at all the things that you've gone through, all the things that you have done, things that you're proud of yourself for and grateful for, and think I'll build 1% on that and do something a little different this year.

But usually what people do is say, oh, I'm terrible, I'm this, that and the other. And they write a brand new list of all these different things that they beat themselves up for. And it just doesn't work. I mean, most of the studies into the show, it just doesn't work. You know, it's not the way to kind of approach life, I think. It's just so how can you start a year and say, right, I'm going to entirely change everything. And, you know, it just is not the approach that I would take. I understand some people enjoy it.

And I think if you're going to have a specific target like this year, you know, I've never, you know, I haven't played the piano in five years. I'd love to pick up the piano again. That's great. Oh, that's lovely. But I think when you're going, right, New Year, I'm going to suddenly go to gym eight times a week. I'm going to eat this diet that's like, God knows where we've got it from.

I'm going to, you know, make sure I walk three hours a day to kind of do this and that. It just suddenly becomes something that's such a chore and a bore, really. It's no fun. No fun. We all need fun. Goodness knows. But do you live in the moment? I believe very strongly in living in the moment because we can't do anything about yesterday.

we're, you know, spending a lot of people, spend a lot of time thinking, oh, but if, if and when and how and when, do you believe in living in the moment? I do. I'm not always perfect at it. Ironically, I think a lot of the reasons that I've spent so much time in the space of mental fitness and the work that I do is because of my struggles, ironically, because I struggle sometimes to be in the moment. I was diagnosed recently with OCD, which I've actually been experiencing for probably 15 plus years and just like not realized. I mean, often people go like how or you could think easily. How can you not know? You're a doctor. You work in the space. But OCD is a very clever illness.

It hides within your thoughts. And you always think it's the thing that you're worrying about, not that you have OCD. It tricks you into thinking there's always something you need to solve or fix. It lives on the what ifs, the what if you're wrong or what if this happens? and it's a really difficult thing. And the antidote to OCD, as it is to anxiety and depression, is to be present because, of course, those things live in the past and the future and in the possibility.

You know, your breath, your heartbeat, your cells, all of your being can only live in the presence. Like, your breath is the great grounding element because it only exists in the moment, whereas, you know, the thoughts, the mind can't. Like, your mind will not live in the moments. It's only clarity. It's only being in the present. that can be in the moment.

And that's hard. I think a lot of people suffering is caused by the inability to come back to the present. I think the problem is a lot of modern life is pulling you into the future and past. It's a lot of like, this is what I need to do. And what if I don't do that? And even social media is a premise. Social media only exists in the past.

You only ever looking at people's past and what's going on. And I think the world does pull you in that way. So learning to ground, learning to be in the present is very important, probably more now than ever. I think particularly the technology, you have to learn to do it. It doesn't mean it's easy, but it's very important. And especially if you're someone like me who's got a critical mind, I'm neurodivergent with ADHD plus potentially ASD.

I'm going to starting my assessment at the moment. You've got to be able to get out of your head and into the body, I guess, into the present. So for you, can we just talk about OCD? Because you say you were just recently diagnosed. So a lot of people think that's putting things in order. But it's not, that's the same thing. sort of simplistic way of looking at it, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, so I think a lot of the time, we recognise things by what's most visual. So ADHD, the idea is that as a hyperactive young

boy bouncing around the room, and it's because it's something to see, you notice the child, the boy bouncing around the room, but about only 10% of people have external hyperactivity. A lot of people think it's just boys, but actually the split is about 50-50, maybe a slight lean towards, towards boys or men in terms of ADHD. It's what people think it looks like rather than what it actually is. And with OCD, it's similar. You know, you can see visually someone that's cleaning stuff all the time or they're tidying their pencils or they're, you know, they're checking the lock 50 times. You can see that. Whereas actually most OCD exists internally in the mind. So it's based around a framework of an obsession. So it can be an intrusive thought or trigger or

something you worry about. It clings onto your fears, being good or bad person, whether you're going to get sick, whether someone else in your family is going to have something happened to them, whether something's going to go wrong, whether your life's going to fall apart. It'll have fear that it attaches to. And then the compulsion part can be physical compulsions, but often it's rumination, thinking about it incessantly. Often it's fact checking. It's memory checking. It's reassurance. Asking family members constantly. Do you think I need to worry about this? Do you think I need to worry about this over and over and over again? And of course, reflection is a normal part of life. But reflection should be, oh, you know, I had a disagreement with someone at work yesterday.

I probably was a bit cranky. I'll go tomorrow and say, sorry about that and move on with my life. what OCDD will go, oh, you're a bit rude to that person, you've apologized, but now we're going to think about it for the next 10 years and think that my entire person is attached to that moment. And that is the difference. So, like, you should reflect and move on, but OCD isn't reflection, it's obsession and it's compulsion around it. And a lot of people suffer from it. It's hugely underdiagnosed because what's clever about OCD is that it says, no, no, no, there's nothing, there's no illness here. There's something to be afraid of. It's the what if. You know, it makes you think that the thing,

you're worrying about is the problem, not the disease. And that's why it's difficult, because in essence, you lack insight and it's very difficult to have insight into it. And even when you know you have OCD, it tricks you to think, oh, but what about this time? What if you're wrong this time? So yes, it is a tricky thing. And actually, OCD or people often don't realize is that it is actually a neurodevelopmental disorder in part. So I think what we've done over the years, and I think it will change, our view of it is changing, is that we've tried to collect different symptoms like attention, stuff, hyperactivity into boxes and some traits of autism into boxes and some OCD traits and dyslexia and dyspraxia traits. In reality, people who are neurodivergent have a

structural and physiological brain that sits out of the normal range, if you like, or the bell curve of normality. And those brains probably have more or less of different forms of those traits. So you might have, you know, I've got some dyslexic traits. for a long time I thought was dyslexic, but actually much of my reading, writing issues about attention, inattention to words, which my psychiatrist was teaching me about. But effectively, the brain often of a neurodivergent person will have features, more or less, of different parts of it. So the part of your brain, for example, that's affected by ADHD is also the part where OCD is prominent. So if you have a brain that is very attentive, hyper-focused, very sensitive,

and you have a brain that is also quite obsessive and ruminates, then all of a sudden is a perfect storm to build OCD. Like an ADHD brain is a perfect environment for OCD to thrive because you have someone who hyperfocuses doesn't have the best emotional regulation and has high, often higher or high moral worries or a high level of sensitivity, I guess. So it's really interesting.

I mean, that's why, you know, with the book, Am I Normal? Like the reason I sat down to write the book that's coming out, well, depending on when this comes out, it's in January, January 15th. The reason I wanted to write that book was to kind of do the whole look back on my life and through the lens of the way that you assess ADHD, to kind of question like what part of it is me and what bits of the world and how much of it's ADHD and what could be other things? Because I think a lot of people question themselves, like, am I normal? I think most people ask themselves that question. I mean, obviously, it then throws me into

having to ask the whole thing about normal. I mean, I've, you know, growing up everybody always said, oh, you're not, you're always jumping around. You're always so happy. All you want to do is being on television. Oh, do you ever sleep? And you start saying, well, I'm, what's normal? What is normal? There is no normal. I don't want somebody to say, you, I'm normal. I wouldn't like to be normal. Surely, most people don't want to be normal or do most people say, am I normal? Which comes first? So you generally ask the question, am I normal if there's friction. So the thing, the reality, the reality is that every single brain is different. So if you look at scans and studies of the human brain, you compare like men and women, for example, there's often this idea of men and women have different brains.

Largely they don't, actually. The main structural difference between a man and a woman's brain is the size. A man's brain is about 10% bigger and that's proportional to the body size. So that's obvious. Structurally, there's very little difference between a male and female brain. What happens as you go through life and you've got culture and women are culture to be a certain way and men are culture to be another way, that creates difference in the brain later on. So society creates that difference. But also within men and within women, every brain is different. So everyone is different.

And there's idea of what's normal. Well, there's no true zero line for that, but there is the bell curve. And the question of does it matter comes down to friction. So you being really happy and high energy is great for your life. It means you're a fantastic present and you love your life. So it doesn't matter is what I'm saying. Who cares, to be honest, in that situation? However, if you're someone that's also highly sensitive, but your sensitivity is not just being like a bit sensitive like lots of people are, it's crippling. You can't face rejection. You can't have relationships because you can't cope with any sort of dialogue or discourse around characteristics for yourself that affects another person. You're not able to go for jobs because you can't cope with a blind manager telling you you need to do better at something that it wrecks every day. It affects your entire life. That is then not normal because that sits outside the bell curve of normality.

And that is what it comes down to. So, for example, in some ways, so I've got hyper interests in certain things, like I love motorcycles and cars. All my life have been interested in those things to a huge degree, probably to agree that's probably beyond what is like a normal person's interest or a normal level of interest in that thing. Does it cause a problem? Absolutely not. So I don't care. But my rejection sensitivity is off the scale bad. And that does affect every of my life.

So I do care. And in that area, that is where normality matters. Another example would be, you know, I guess, you know, is someone very extroverted or introverted? Well, it's only an issue if it causes you, if it causes you struggles. I mean, you mentioned just before we started this, you're working on the loneliness side. So if you're someone who's introverted that likes to only see people a couple of times a week and is perfectly happy, there's no issue there. But if the same set of interactions made you feel lonely, i.e. you don't have enough quality or quantity of connection, suddenly that's not normal because there's friction in your life.

So what I've tried to do is look at my life and work out what areas are there friction and what areas are bits that I'm like, do you know what, I like the fact that I'm quirky and I'm different like that because that makes me different. So it's not about people having to worry about coming to the conclusion of normality in all these areas. I think it's more about identifying areas of friction and going. Is this me or is this the world? And that is a very important second question to ask.

So it's not about judgment. It's not about other people judging you. It's about self-realization? I think the greatest gift you can have is understanding yourself. I think most people go through life with way less awareness of themselves than they realize. I don't mean that in terms of walking around the Tesco Isles and being rude to people. I mean, they don't understand why they feel how they feel. They don't understand why friction occurs in their life,

why they could always kind of have issues, say, in their relationships, or they never seem to be settled in at peace. They never feel content. like, you know, even from emotions, I mean, studies show that 95% of people have very, very low levels of emotional intelligence. And that's not something that they are born without. That's because we're not taught to have it. We don't, we do not taught as children how to understand the feeling you have in your body and your mind. That's where it comes from and know what to do with it.

And the consequences of that is world wars. It's global catastrophe. It's heartbreaking that this doesn't happen. in families, it's suffering. You know, like people are unable to recognize that. And that's because you'll never taught it. One of the greatest skills you can learn as a human is emotional intelligence. Because if you have emotional intelligence, you can recognize your reaction to situations.

You can name it accurately that you can say, I am feeling right now the emotion of frustration specifically. And I'm frustrated because I feel like this person I'm comparing myself to is doing better for the same amount of effort. and I feel really frustrated specifically by that. So what I'm going to do is not leave a hate like or, hey, like a hate comment or whatever it will be on this person. I'm going to recognize the fact that there's comparison going on here.

I'm going to bring myself to the awareness of the things that I'm grateful for and doing well. Instead, I'm going to think positively about this person and say, do you know what, I'm going to learn from you and fair play to you. That is an example of using emotional intelligence rather than letting that situation eat yourself up. Another one would be if you're with your partner and, you know, someone gives, a bit of attention while you're out on a night out, rather than having huge arguments and not being able to understand

where this angers comes from and go, oh, I'm feeling a bit jealous right now. I'm going to communicate well and say, hey, darling, I just want to let you know, I feel a little bit jealous. You've done nothing wrong. I love you to bits, but I just wanted you to know,

I'm just feeling a bit jealous. And the response of emotional intelligence that person would be, well, thank you so much for sharing that me. I want to assure you how much I love you. You know, it's funny that guy said, hi to me, but you don't want you, no need to worry, darling.

I love you to bits. Great emotion. on both sides. But how often does that same scenario turn into a massive argument, massive upset in a situation where two people actually love each other and there was no actual wrongdoing? So emotional intelligence. And look at it in world leaders, for example. I was going to say that. How many current situations do we have right now that if people had a decent amount of therapy and emotional intelligence could be resolved very quickly? And that's an honest truth. No, I absolutely agree with you. But if when you were talking about,

So, I mean, weirdly, that's exactly where I thought, because if those people that we're all, that we're by thinking about, had had that at school and had it in the home, then all of this darkness and this fear and this hate that is out there at the moment hopefully wouldn't exist. But how can you change that? These people are in power now and it is frightening. There's no two ways about it, and it's bleak and it's dark and it's frightening. And as I said, a lot of hate. But there are a lot of good people out there.

But how do you make it happen in a younger generation? How do we get the young people not to end up like those particular men we're thinking about? Well, hatred is a very low emotional IQ thing. I mean, it's just like it just shows low emotional capacity because actually you need to move beyond hatred to find the other levels of emotion to find peace. But even when you feel hatred, you should be able to recognize where does this come from? And what do I need to unpick rather than acting upon hatred? In general, if you act upon hatred, almost always, it will be a bad decision that you've made. And that's where the real world ramifications

come from. Acting upon hatred is not going to lead to a good outcome for anyone. But the thing that needs to happen fundamentally is that we need to change our approach at schools. We learn about maths and English, you know, I think very important things, but so is learning about how to manage emotions. So, you know, if you think about it this way, and my argument around building mental fitness at a young age and teaching at school is that there is no aspect of your life that does not benefit when you have greater resilience and mental fitness. There's literally no aspect that doesn't benefit. And the opposite is true that if someone has low mental fitness, they have lots of struggles and they've got low resilience, they've got low, they haven't got the

toolkits to deal with life. There is no part of their life that won't suffer. That includes if you want to extend it to a non-moral area. You can look at the economy, for example, is going to be affected by the productivity. You can look at it in a workplace thing, but on a human and much more important level, the quality of life is going to be worse for those individuals. So what does that look like from a young age? It's teaching children to have a broad range of emotional literacy. So 100 to 150 words, they can kind of accurately assign to a feeling like I am feeling so jealousy right now. I'm feeling joy, the emotion of joy. what does that feel like? I'm feeling happiness and feeling contentment and feeling peace.

You know, what are the differences between all these words and how do I recognize that feeling within myself? So teaching that at a young age and then building as they grow, okay, if I feel frustration, what are my next actions to use this emotion in a useful way? Because no emotion, and having said what I said about hatred and anger, no emotion should be demonized. All of them have a purpose, but it's what we do with that emotion that's really important. And building, that's what it is to be an intelligent, emotionally intelligent person, is not living by emotions, but using your emotions to look at the meaning behind them and then act in a way that's according to actually your values and how you want to actually behave in situations. And that means

that as children grow up, they can deal with disappointment, upset, they fail their exams, they recognize that feeling, they self-soothe and they also bring another help that they need. And then use that motivation like I did when I failed my A-levels to then motivate myself to get the grades and go to med school and smash it. You know, if you use your emotions well, you can turn things like disappointment into powerful tools. But if you just live passively by your emotions, you will be missing out on a huge amount of opportunity actually in your life.

So what about young people who go through trauma? And there is, I mean, obviously you were relatively young and the trauma that you went through was utterly heartbreaking. But for young people who go through trauma, whether it's, a parent leaving or a parent dying or a friend at school, whatever it is. I don't need to listen. I think everybody knows what I mean. How do you then help that young person to grow, to learn to feel okay about life in the future? The reality of life is that we're adult cards, many of them we don't choose, so people can be born into very good situations or very difficult

situations. And talking about mental fitness and like the benefits of it isn't about ignoring the obviousness that people can be born into kind of really dire situations. And some of those situations are in a very extreme end. However, you know, you can't choose the cards that you're given, but you can choose how you play and what you do with those cards. And, you know, those cards might be not even be where you're born. It might be genetics. Like I'm born with like clearly looking at my family now. It's so funny. It kind of illuminates in your mind. Clearly have the genetics within me of ADHD, probably SD as well, and even actually look at the OCD stuff. And I kind of can see all of that.

Like, I didn't choose those genetics, but I now need to do something with this. Otherwise, I enter that passiveness of life. And I think that's what you've got to avoid. I think in general when it comes to health is avoid entering that kind of passive, allowing life to happen through you and your health to just happen and go with life rather than like grabbing it by the horns and taking a direction. And so, you know, with a child or young person that's gone through something really difficult, It's not about going, oh, just forget about that and move on.

It's about learning to live life with that thing. So, for example, I was an adult, but losing my brother at what age was I actually? I'm 39, 20, 30 when my brother died, you know, I can't, there's no way you can get over that thing. I think often, you know, I talk about, in the book about grief, I think one of the big things that are not normal about the world is that we try and get over the death of people. Yeah, I agree. And that grief, it can be grief, but it also can be trauma. So it can be a non-death related grief or trauma that's happened. If something's really bad that's happened to you, the goal is not to kind of suddenly wake up and go, actually it wasn't bad.

Like it's just, it's kind of what you're trying to do a lot of the time. With grief, it's like to wake up and go, do you know what? I'm kind of cool with the fact my mum died. Like, I'm actually fine with it now. I'm over it. But that's, and that sounds crazy when I say it. But if you think of what society wants you to do, which is to get you.