The Food Medic - S5 E3: How To Stay Calm In A Global Pandemic

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

On this weeks episode Hazel is joined by Dr Emma Hepburn - better known on instagram as @thepsychologymum. Emma is a clinical psychologist, with expertise in neuropsychology, who has over 15 years' experience of working with and treating mental health difficulties in both the public and private sector. She also has a book titled 'A Toolkit For Modern Life: 53 Ways To Look After Your Mind' - which frankly could not have come out at a better time!Topics covered include:* The foundations of mental wellbeing* The impact social media has on our mental health - the good and the bad* Comparison as the thief of joy* How trauma is relative - and all trauma is valid* Goal setting and habit building: help or hindrance?* Loneliness and isolation during the pandemic * Dealing with uncertainty If you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. @thefoodmedic/www.thefoodmedic.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Dr. Hazel, medical doctor, nutritionist, author and founder of The Food Medic. This podcast episode is sponsored by Murad. Murad is the dermatologist developed skincare brand that approaches skin differently. How? Through founder Dr. Howard Murad's four main pillars of wellness for total skin health. Eat your water, awaken your body, be kind to your mind and of course nourish your skin with their high performance formulas. For more than 30 years Murad has been committed to developing clinically proven cruelty-free products that meet the meticulous standards for safety, efficacy and care you'd expect from a doctor. My personal favorite product is their best-selling Retinol Youth Renewal Eye Serum. Retinol is a derivative of vitamin a which helps improve skin cell turnover

and reduce the breakdown of collagen i find this product is great for reducing the appearance of fine lines and improving skin texture it's suitable for all skin types even sensitive skin and you can use it all over your eye area including the lids thank Thank you to Murad for supporting the Food Medic podcast. It's currently January 2021 when I'm recording this and possibly when you're listening to this too, which means here in the UK, we are in our third national lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. My time is currently split between the hospital, seeing COVID patients and at home in lockdown on my own. So this episode is just as much for me as it is for you because it's been a rough 12 months and it's healthy to talk about it. Today I'm joined by the very clever Dr. Emma Hepburn, possibly better known on Instagram as a psychology mum. Emma is a clinical psychologist with expertise in neuropsychology who has over

15 years experience working with and treating mental health difficulties in both the public and private sector. Her illustrative work has been used by a number of organisations including the American Association for the Prevention of Suicide and the Royal Society of Public Health and she recently won a Bronze Levy Award as well as the People's Choice Levy for her social media work and has been shortlisted for the Mind Media Awards. She has also written a book titled A Toolkit for Modern Life, 53 Ways to Look After Your Mind which frankly could not have come out at a better time. Dr Emma Hepburn, welcome to the podcast. First of all, I can imagine that you have been out of this world busy this year looking after everybody else. So I just want to start by asking how are you and how are you coping?

No, it's a great question and I think psychologists can sometimes be guilty of neglecting themselves which is quite ironic because they're so busy giving advice to other people. So at the moment, I think I'm just kind of almost in high threat response mode. I'm in my job in the NHS at the moment. Obviously, the pandemic is rising. The numbers are rising. The staff are stressed. I'm responsible for staff well-being.

So I'm just kind of in that high alert mode, ready to go, really, trying to work out what we need, what we're doing're doing but yes psychologists are very busy in a pandemic very very busy so I know a lot of 2020 some people we've found they didn't have enough to do I had the opposite effect I had to really juggle a huge amount of stuff so it really was imperative to look after my well-being in the middle of it the whole time and ongoing as well as it is for everybody. Yeah absolutely and you're so right it's so easy to kind of forget about yourself when you go into autopilot mode and just think about everyone else and I know that as a doctor I often need that reminder as well that you know you're only as

as good if you look after yourself when you're looking after others absolutely I think because you are in a caring role you get a lot out of looking after other people and because you are so caught up in that you can like you say sometimes just forget about yourself and sometimes that's not noticing when things creep up or stress levels creep up and sometimes you notice at that point where it's actually quite high stress level you can no longer ignore it and I think it's the same for doctors I work with a lot of doctors and I think that's what I hear a lot of the time I don't know if that fits with your experience. You just kind of you wait until it's become kind of it bubbles over and then it's an issue and you

have no choice but to face it as opposed to seeing the warning signs and kind of giving it attention early so I'm sure we'll we'll go into this a bit more as we chat but first of all I'd like to start by asking my guests a little bit more about their professional background and you mentioned that you work in the NHS but also you work I know that you lecture and you do lots of other things and obviously you do your wonderful illustrations online so just to kind of I'd love to hear from you about kind of how your working week looks. Yeah sure so I work two plus days in the NHS it's a bit flexible because I sometimes do extra roles so I work at the moment with staff support so that's supporting staff in the hospital ranging

from the intensive care units to the porters and the cleaners because everybody in the NHS is important we all have a role to play. It would fall apart without any of these roles. So I was seconded to that during the pandemic because obviously staff support is absolutely crucial right now. Prior to that, I did a range of different roles. Most recently, I worked in neuropsychology, which is looking at brain functioning, how the brain has been impacted on by various neurological conditions and prior to that I've worked with children in maternity services in plastic surgery services so psychologists work across a whole range of different services looking at mental health and psychological functioning but currently I'm looking

at the staff in the NHS which is really important. And I mean how I came across you is as the psychology mum on Instagram because of your wonderful mental health illustrations which I'm sure are going viral at the moment because people need that kind of they need those tools more than ever and how did you end up going from kind of your clinical work to maybe translating that into something that is a bit more easy for everyone to consume, I guess? So that's a great question. So actually, the basis of what I do was in my clinical work. So I've always drawn as part of my clinical work. Obviously, with children, it's very natural to draw emotions, draw what they're feeling, draw their experiences.

But I think I used that work because I worked with children for 10 years I then started to use that kind of creative side in with adults as well and people really engaged with it so people would go away with this hand scrawled on NHS paper um thing that we'd done something we've been talking about during that session they'd go away with it and they'd come back the next week i said yes i really thought about this and they added something to it so it was really you know it was really kind of the basis of clinical work but they were really scrappy drawings drawn in the moment but i started thinking well actually i bought myself a new ipad it was a birthday present for myself and i saw the ipad pen so i thought well buy one of those as well that looks quite quite interesting. And I thought, I'll try drawing some of these out a little bit better. I hadn't drawn, I used to love art when I was in at school beyond the clinic room. Wellbeing and mental health is for everybody.

And if we only treat people with mental health difficulties, we're only treating part of the population. Because actually, everybody has mental health, and everybody needs to look after it. So I was thinking, we can use these principles that I use to treat mental health difficulties and to improve mental health at that stage across the whole population. And so I thought, I'll put them up on Instagram because I think well actually I can draw and I think they capture the psychological theory and started putting them up and I like you say

they got popular they became popular very quickly people started sharing them you know it's being shared as far as one of Michelle Obama's organizations in America shared one of my drawings which was you know not something I ever expected. So, you know, people obviously picked up on it and engaged in it really well, which I think, for me, makes sense. I'm a really official person. And for me to read two sheets explaining a psychological concept, it's quite hard. I mean, I can do it, obviously, but it's quite hard to remember. I need need to reread it I need to think about it again but to recall a drawing is really really simple. Yeah I completely agree and I mean we all learn and take in information differently but I'm a very visual person and and I find that it's really

helpful and also my drawings are not on the same level as yours but I find when I'm explaining something to a patient I love to scribble something down because it is, you know, by telling something to someone and then by drawing something, you're kind of reinforcing it and you're more likely to get the message across. And I guess, like you said, it's so shareable and it's universally understood when it's a drawing. So it's wonderful. Absolutely.

And I've actually got feedback from people so quite a few people have said actually you know I've really benefited from these because I'm dyslexic so that visual concept I can remember it better also I can understand it better so I think it crosses a kind of range of people and lots of people are using with children as well which I hadn't necessarily anticipated but I know a lot of schools are sharing them with high schools and actually primary schools as well so I think it crosses you know images are across populations better I think. Absolutely and I think that's probably why Instagram is such a great platform for that kind of content but I just want to circle back to one thing that you mentioned and that was

everyone has mental health and I think I mean it's a phrase that a lot of us have probably heard already but mental health often comes with a negative context so for example we will say he or she has mental health problems and I think that often carries a lot of stigma when we're talking about mental health when actually our mental health's just like our physical health and it's something that we should all really be proactive and taking care of. In your book, you talk about having a mental jam jar. So can you talk us through this analogy? Sure. So just to come back to your point about mental health,

absolutely, I think there is still a lot of stigma around the term mental health, because often we only think about that when it goes wrong. But actually, like you say we all have mental health and we all shift along the spectrum of mental health or well-being which is sometimes a more palatable word for people to think about it along from flourishing to poor mental health and the mental health jam jar kind of tries to encapsulate that it's a an analogy I actually heard from a documentary called I think it's Depression and Me by Alistair Campbell, where he explored the reasoning behind his depression and what factors contributed to it. And it was from a genetics counselor called Jehanine Austin, who's a professor in America.

And she uses this to describe genetic factors. But as a psychologist, I kind of think of all vulnerabilities. so the concept is we all have a mental health jam jar so that's a specific space and it's filled with our vulnerabilities and in the documentary she spoke about genetic vulnerabilities but I would think about kind of our belief systems our thinking our cognitive styles a whole pile of vulnerabilities that fill that jar. And the drawing I use, I draw these as strawberries. So that fills the jar at a certain point. Then we have life stressors. So life throws things at us. We can't control that things will go wrong in life. Life will throw stress at us. It's an inevitable part of life. And if the mix of vulnerabilities and stressors fills our jar

at full capacity, then that's when distress or mental health difficulties can occur. But the reason I like this model is because it shows that we can do things about it. So we can increase the size of our jar, according to this model, with our coping strategies. So we can give ourselves more space to cope with what's being thrown at us. But we can also, of course, manage our stressors. How we manage what's thrown at us in life is really important in managing mental health as well I guess the model I talk about in psychology is a stress diathesis model where it's a mix of the person and the environment which can lead to mental health difficulties and really we're all vulnerable to mental health difficulties with a raw mix of person and environment and it's recognizing we all have that capacity we all need to look after it.

Yeah and thinking about how we can make more room in the jar what are some of the basics that we can think about when looking after our mental health and well-being? Yeah and I think you know take it back to this divide between physical and mental health our brain is a physical organ so all the basics that look after our physical health also look after our mental health so exercise moving your body doesn't have to be huge levels of exercise is hugely good for your brain and mental health what you eat eating regularly drinking all these really basic things we probably don't often associate with mental health are really good for it. Sleep is absolutely imperative for mental health. You know how bad you feel with one day of poor sleep, with multiple days of poor sleep. We just feel terrible and actually does have an impact on our

brain. So that's really important for mental health. Connection, there's a really interesting study, a Harvard adult study, I think it's called called it's a really interesting longitudinal study which shows that the strongest predictor of well-being is connection so you know valuable connections with people that you trust that you feel secure with are really important for well-being and mental health on a day-to-day basis being aware of your emotions and being open to thinking about your emotions and how you respond to them is really important and I always say self-compassion we're far more compassionate to other people than we are with ourselves but self-compassion is really important there's some really interesting videos by Kirsten Neff if you will want to explore this further because it looks at how compassion impacts on

the brain and how it improves well-being so our compassion I always I think is such a it's thrown about a lot but actually it's so important to improve our well-being as well. Yeah I love that I love that last one it's really important especially during lockdown which I know for me that you know brings up a lot of things but it also means that I might want to connect with people and because I live alone that often means using social media and more screen time and obviously there's lots of positives there because we can stay connected but also there's lots of negatives to constantly being online and scrolling through social media and what are some of the signs that maybe social media is

impacting us negatively and maybe we do need to take a step back again I like what you said there because I think it's important not to demonize social media and demonize the online world because it's really good for us in many ways it keeps up connections and can make us feel less isolated which is really important for us but like you you say, social media, if you've seen the documentary, The Social Dilemma, it looks at how it impacts your brain and pulls us in. It's designed to pull us in and use as much of our attention as possible. All of us fall into the trap.

I fall, I'm a psychologist. I know the theory, but I fall into the trap of, the other night I was sitting looking at social media about a story. I thought, why am I doing this? And it's important not to beat yourself up about that because it really is how it's designed. And it's about drawing on that habitual ability of your brain to fall into the traps. So, recognizing when it is causing difficulty is really important. So, I would say if you can't stop doing it. So, in that example, I noticed it. I stopped. I put

it aside. I put it in another room so I didn't use it again because it was ridiculous I want to read my daughter's story I don't want to be on my phone so I put it in another room so I couldn't pick it up because it can become very habitual and if you can't stop if you noticed you can't stop then that can be problematic particularly if it gets in the way of things you want to do so in that example it got in the way of things you want to do. So in that example, it got in the way of me telling my daughter a story. If that's happened all the time, then that's problematic because it stops me doing the things I enjoy. And also if it makes you feel bad.

We all know that social media lends itself so well to comparison and we all know that we're comparing ourselves to a screenshot or a part of somebody's life. But when you're in the middle of it, it's not so easy to step back and think that. And we get drawn in and we make these comparisons. We think our life is rubbish. So it's about noticing how it's making you feel.

And if it's making you feel bad, then it's time to think about what can I do about this? How can I stop this? And actually there's some really nice studies on phone use that even having your phone in the same room as you, so not even looking at it, having your phone in the same room as you distracts you from doing the things you enjoy doing

and reduce your enjoyment. So there's a lovely study which was in a restaurant and people either had their phone on the table in their pocket or they didn't have their phone on them. And even having your phone on you detracted from your enjoyment of that meal in that restaurant with people you loved so sometimes I think it's just as simple as put your phone away so you can't fall into the habit because your phone is designed to pull you in. Yeah I kind of heard about that study and one of the things I'm now super aware

of is when I am working from home and writing or researching and even if my phone is you know turned over it's just having that awareness that it's there so now I have to go airplane mode phone in a drawer so it's like edit sound and mind and also just kind of in the morning I like to do a phone free hour so that I could like do all of my planning without having you know whether it's email notifications or at the moment there's a lot of news notifications and they just really pull your attention oh absolutely yeah and it's designed to because you'll be all over brain no matter how much theory you know if you're a medic if you're a psychologist you've still got a brain that brain doesn't work any differently to other

people's brains and I'm actually the same I actually now have to put my phone physically in another room because it's too tempting to draw you in. And I also, I don't have notifications on anything except emails. And I should probably turn off that as well because I want to choose when I look at things. It doesn't always work, but it's also important to notice rather than beat yourself up when you notice these things happening, thinking this is how social media and phones are designed to grab our attention and use our brains so it's not necessarily about me it's about the way my brain functions so stepping back and thinking okay that's happened I've been pulled in but what can I do about it yeah absolutely and

I think just kind of second to that and creating boundaries as well with messaging apps so that even whether it's WhatsApp or it's email or whatever form of messaging app you use with your friends and family, having boundaries in place so that you don't feel like you need to message right in this moment. If you're busy, if you're at work, if you're doing something else that's more important, that message can wait and I think like I'm definitely guilty where I will want to reply you know instantly or I feel bad that I forgot to reply when when really like you know especially emails they're not intended to be instant messaging apps but we treat them like that we treat everything like that I don't know we treat the our phone because it's so immediate we feel we need to respond immediately and that's what people who design social media want you to do so really it's about creating as much kind of barriers to jump in immediately that you can for me it's it is switching it off and put it in another room that's really what stops me doing it

but it's also about how you think about it and if you step back think I don't need to respond immediately you know 50 years ago I never had a mobile phone so I would check my emails every but it's also about how you think about it. And if you step back and think, I don't need to respond immediately. You know, 50 years ago, I never had a mobile phone. So I would check my emails every three days, probably. So we never used to feel this urge to respond immediately. Another person, I don't expect people to respond immediately to me. So we're creating pressure to ourselves saying that I need to respond to everything immediately.

But we don't, we just don't we just we just don't. No we don't. One thing that you did mention a couple of minutes ago was how like we compare to our other people on social media and obviously before social media even existed we we as humans are going to compare ourselves to other people it's just a normal innate instinct and maybe that's not always a bad thing but I think because on social media you're looking at this highlight reel and you're scrolling and you can kind of get sucked in and feel really bad about yourself especially like right now everyone's there's sometimes this pressure to be super productive during lockdown you know bake 10 loaves of banana bread or like

run a marathon and why do we compare ourselves and like how can we break the cycle of doing that when we know it's negatively impacting us? I think there's lots of theories about why we compare ourselves and we do all naturally compare ourselves we can't help it and the idea is that we're social animals and to help us be sociable we compare ourselves to people around about us to help us build groups and build in groups and recognize the enemy as well so there's lots of theories kind of evolutionary theories about why we compare ourselves so it is inevitable to an extent but you have to let it kind of run away with itself because as soon as you start noticing

you're comparing yourself and that really is key and noticing you're doing it and think about what evaluation you're making with that comparison so often what we do is we make upward comparisons we say this person is doing this and they're so much better than me it happens all the time with parenting we see these wonderful parented pictures online of perfect birthday parties perfect homeschooling it looks fantastic I'm not doing as well as that. So that makes me feel bad. I'm inadequate because I'm not doing as well as that. Let's just stop for a minute and think, is that a valid comparison? Well, no, it's not. Because I'm comparing my whole self, how I feel about everything in my world, to this tiny little picture of their life. Of course, it's not valid it's like comparing you

know a whole novel to one page in another novel and that's not valid you can't make that comparison and it's also being very critical of yourself and I think this is again where compassion comes in so recognizing how invalid that comparison is but also recognizing it was okay to feel a bit bad about things it doesn't mean that you're failing or you're not doing well you know it's that comparison that's making you feel that way so but really kind of observing your comparisons noticing and almost zooming out from them because once we got caught up in them it's difficult to kind of move away from them if we zoom out and say right hold on what's happening here that's the comparison I'm making it's not necessarily a valid comparison

then I think that really helps with it. Yeah I agree and that's a nice way of of thinking about it I like the kind of book and the page analogy because it's very true and we only see surface level of what's going on in someone else's life. And just kind of following on from that, I think particularly in the last year, there was a lot of, I don't know if this is the right term, but I guess comparative trauma. So for example, feeling like your anxiety or your low mood is invalid because you didn't go through maybe a stressful event that was as significant as perhaps someone else when really trauma is all relative so what would be your response to someone feeling like that at the moment perhaps feeling like they can't speak up because bigger things are happening in the world it's such a classic

response isn't it I shouldn't feel this way I don't deserve to feel this way or I have no right to feel this way and I often hear people say that and often that like you say that is drawn on comparison it's drawn on but this person is going through so much worse than me and sometimes I think they're coping or or they are feeling bad whichever way but it's like comparison saying they've been through so much worse than me but again it's a totally invalid comparison because your life situation what you bring to how your brain works your history how you experience the world is totally individual to you and your emotions because of that complex mix of the interaction in your environment and your whole system are individual to you so it's kind of your emotions arise because

of that mix so we can't really judge our emotions because we can't look at this these mixes and everybody and those emotions are valid because those emotions are coming up because of your situation you can't minimize and say i shouldn't be feeling this way and actually as soon as we start telling ourselves we shouldn't be feeling that way what we're doing is we're invalidating our own emotions when we invalidate our own emotions we start to shame ourselves and we start to hide it away and what we know about emotions is as soon as we start to shame them and tuck them away we actually make it worse we increase our stress response we make our emotions feel worse. They will pop back at times that we don't want them to. So actually, it's really important to say,

well, this is how I'm feeling now, rather than kind of making those comparisons which make you invalidate your emotions. I don't know what's going on for the other person. I can't tell because none of us know really kind of the whole story of somebody's lives. But this is how I'm feeling now. And whatever has led to me feeling this way my story is absolutely valid and this is this is my emotion I'm experiencing so what can I do now with this emotion to help myself best and that's much more helpful than criticizing yourself or shaming or minimizing your own emotions because that actually just makes emotions worse. Yeah it does and we're all in the same storm but in you know in different situations or have different things going on in our life and I think

it's everyone's feelings are valid at the moment and it's okay to feel how we're feeling and echo those feelings and not feel like you need to bottle them down because people are worse off in your mind's eye. Absolutely and all emotional responses are normal and often make sense when you look at somebody's story. Now it's not normal to feel bad for a long period of time I think we need to emphasize that it's okay not to feel okay but if you're not feeling okay for a long period of time then that's an indication that you probably need input or treatment of some description. So again it's just I think it's important to keep that kind of nuance there as well yeah I completely agree and just kind of right now obviously we just mentioned that we're in we're still in the pandemic who would have thought yeah um and that you know there's a lot

of debate as to whether you know we should be setting new goals or building new habits because it's january but it's 2021 and we had a terrible year but i'd love to know what side of the fence you sit on well i sit directly on the fence with this one hazel and i guess you know it's a bit of an invalid argument really because you know we set goals all the time even if we're not aware we're setting goals our brain is really a goal set in organ if you have you made yourself a cup of tea or coffee this morning yes so have I so what did you do then you decided you wanted to have a cup of tea you set a goal to make that cup of tea you put a plan in place to do it so you have formed a goal that you wanted to achieve and you've done it and did you enjoy

your cup of coffee oh absolutely it's a successful goal so our brain is ultimately a future planning and goal directing organ so we're setting goals all the time so if you want to set take that into the kind of your conscious awareness and say these are the goals i want to set, take that into the kind of your conscious awareness and say, these are the goals I want to beat themselves up so I need to never check my phone again or you know I shouldn't be doing this so I'm never going to eat a multi-pack of crisps again or you know whatever it's a kind of I should not be doing this there's something wrong with me because I am doing this now that's just a kind of road to failure really because you will never not check your phone again and you will probably at some point if you've eaten a multi-pack of crisps before do it again so it's really shifting to what

what do you actually want to do and what will make you feel good and it's also about the level you set those up in those examples i said i'll never do it again now that's impossible that's absolutely impossible because never is such a big thing that it's unrealistic we all have setbacks we all have lapses particularly when it's habitual behaviors so if you're setting yourself unrealistic expectations and expecting that it will all change immediately with no setbacks you're going to feel like it's a failure because setbacks are inevitable and ridiculously high expectations are unobtainable so it's about failure because setbacks are inevitable and ridiculously high expectations are unobtainable so it's about really starting small building it positively thinking what do I

want to do and if you are shifting away from something and often we do use our goals to shift away from unhealthy habits what do you want to do instead what will you replace that habit with what will you fill that void which is left from shifting one habit to another one but again focus on what you positively want to build and use it as an incentive rather than a demotivator of all the things you're doing wrong and all the things you need to be different about because that's just not helpful for anybody no and I think yeah that's it it's not that it's right or wrong but I guess like you said it's shifting your mindset and circling back to what you said in the beginning having compassion is really important right now I know that for me having daily habits but on a month or like even a weekly basis is something that I've been really focusing on for just a little bit of routine around my schedule because of the pandemic and

that really helps me feel calm but I know for others they like taking each day at a time and that's completely fine as well. Absolutely yeah and I can say we're all individuals all our brains are so different all our experiences are so different you can't put one social media post out saying this is the right thing to do because nothing will be right for every single person out there it's about working out what's right for you and that's what ultimately we're doing in the world as we live isn't it working out what works for us and what helps us live our life in the best way we possibly can and in doing so because we're learning we will get things wrong. And again, compassion comes in there again, because we will get things wrong no matter what we do.

Yeah. So before I knew that we were going to record this podcast, I did put a little box on social media to see what people were really struggling with right now. And one of the overwhelming answers was the feeling of uncertainty and feeling like we're unable to plan ahead or look forward to anything so what advice would you have for dealing with uncertainty at this time I know that's been the word of the year unprecedented uncertain I know I think I think we've all stopped saying I hope you're okay in this unprecedented time because it becomes such a cliche but you know I it really is important uncertainty is probably one of our biggest anxiety creators I mean the world is all actually always uncertain but play

has never felt as uncertain as it does now it's almost that uncertainty has been thrown in our face because it's taken away a lot of things that help us make us feel like it's more certain so uncertainty creates stress and there's a lot of that at the us make us feel like it's more certain. So uncertainty creates stress and there's a lot of that at the moment. And you've actually already touched on something a lot of people find very, very helpful. It's having some degree of planning and routine, even if that's on a daily basis. Some people might prefer for it to be on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. We probably can't plan too far ahead right now. We can't have our coping strategies of booking our whole day in that we look forward to, which is really difficult. But

we can plan the next step. We can plan the daily steps for tomorrow. Again, it's important to have a bit of a flexible structure for a lot of people because sometimes that changes. But having some routine, some schedule can be very common for your mind because it creates certainty. I think also planning things to look forward to. Yes, we can't plan big things, but we can plan, for example, a call with a friend on a Friday. So planning the things to look forward to is really important to deal with uncertainty. It's something that makes us feel good for a start, but also anticipation of positive things makes us feel even better. So if it's a week down the line or two days down the line,

the anticipation itself is very, very good for well-being. And it also draws us away from anticipating the void of uncertainty. And something that's been spoken about a lot, which I totally agree with, is planning for what you can control and managing all that mass that we can't control. So I've got a drawing in my book, which is some balloons floating away of things we can't control and holding some balloons in your hand of things you can control.

And obviously things we can't control, we can't control what's going on in the entire world right now. But we often want to create certainty by watching that or getting drawn into it. So we might watch the news lots more because we want to know exactly what's happening to kind of get a sense of certainty.

But actually that almost creates more uncertainty so what can you not control what would you put in those balloons that you let float away right now but what can you control the things that you can actually do we all have limited brain space if we spend our entire brain space on those things that are out with our control it makes us feel very uncontrolled and uncertain so where do you actually want to shift your focus to at the moment so those are just some ideas but uncertainty is hard and it's recognizing that we are all in a higher threat and stress mode right now and that's okay it's also okay to cut back from your normal daily routine and structure and actually I read a really interesting piece yesterday a research

paper which I think was done in Finland during the first wave of the pandemic which it showed that families who coped well during the pandemic actually almost lowered their standards based their expectations on where they were then rather than their normal standards and that's for things like watching tv is okay for the kids to watch a bit more tv so that really helped families cope and I think that could probably be taken across other people as well base your expectations not on where you were a year ago but where you are now what are the most important things you can do or you need to do today rather than a list of things you're not going to achieve and actually just touching back on to what you spoke about before these little things having some sort of um rituals and nightly

rituals but also maybe having just three tiny things you do through the day to improve your well-being so what three tiny things am i going to do today which can give you that sense of control and you know you're definitely going to do them and you're going to achieve them can be really helpful as well so whole pile of ideas there and it's actually one of my next drawings I'm planning to do is three tiny things so I love that one of the things that I do is three habits but it's very similar to you and it's really little things it can be as simple as like getting into bed before 10 p.m yeah and like I think at the moment it's very easy to distract ourselves and and whether that's with Netflix or social media late at night whatever it might be and you just kind of put off things that are important for our you know like our basic foundations and one of those things is sleep

so for me it's just getting into bed before 10 p.m every night and that's been you know really important and already I feel better for doing that but I do think the three little things is such a nice idea. Absolutely. And you're choosing things which you know, make you feel good. So they'll make you feel more in control. And also they'll have a positive impact on your well-being, but also achieving them because if they're tiny, you're more likely to achieve them. That achievement also makes us feel good. So it works in multiple ways, which is, that's a really nice one, going to bed before 10pm. I should probably try that. Yeah. Well, you've got kids, so.

Another word that kept popping up was loneliness and separation from the people we love and care about. So not just people who are living alone during the pandemic, but maybe people who are still living with their partner, but they can't see their parents or their siblings or whoever it might be how can we best support ourselves during this time we're feeling like that I mean connection is so key isn't it and we've never probably realized that even more than now isolation is is detrimental to us when it's not chosen if we're choosing to be by ourselves can actually be really good for us but isolation imposed upon us can be really bad for our well-being so again I would say

about planning connection maybe one of those tiny things maybe not daily but one of those tiny things is making you feel connected in whatever way is that sending somebody a text arranging a voice I know zoom parties were the thing earlier on in pandemic I think a bit fatigued with it now but what makes you feel good? Is it watching a film together with somebody? And then, you know, speaking about afterwards, I do that with my friends. We watch films together and then we have a discussion about it.

But other people wouldn't enjoy doing that. So what makes you feel connected? Sometimes me just sending my friend a message saying, how are you? It's not even about checking in with me. Sometimes just checking in with them makes me feel good. So I would say try and possibly to make every day if that's right for you or at least some of those tiny things about connection yeah because I think like even even if it's not your family or

partner a lot of people are mentioning that they even miss their colleagues just like the banter in the office and I get that because you know this the days that I work from home when I go into the hospital I'm almost like so excited to see my colleagues to just like you know chat about something see a person in real life I'm excited to see my patients it's just that human contact. And often it's those non-specifics that we've lost in the workplace isn't it because we can still probably do a role but we can't have that as we nip through to the coffee room for a coffee have that kind of random chat which actually were really important parts of our day and I've heard some really innovative and creative ways to deal with this now some of them are my worst nightmare so some

people have I was on a call and somebody was describing they work alongside each other they just have their cameras on that's not my idea personally but they loved it um but other people have kind of informal coffee meetups so they put time in for that sort of informal catch-ups let's have a coffee catch-up so kind of thinking what is it you're missing and how can you gain that now and aren't we lucky this has happened at a time of technology when these things are possible yeah I agree it's nice to hear that people are having like coffee breaks and stuff and it's maybe something that workplaces could consider offering as a as an option or I know that there's been some creative ways that businesses have been trying to support mental health in other ways someone messaged me to say that their company they didn't mention who but have they've got thousands of employees and they bought everyone a subscription to headspace the

mindfulness app and I thought that was just really nice because obviously not everyone's going to pick it up and it's just a tool and as much as you put into it you'll get out of it and things like that but just kind of helping give people a few more things for their toolbox at this time is is really nice absolutely and I guess finally I mean we've we had a great discussion but there's so much other stuff that I'd love to ask from you and I'm sure people want to know more but to find you you're the psychology mum just on Instagram or twitter i am also on um facebook and i am also on twitter as emma neuropsych and i probably need to change that but emma neuropsych yeah i always find twitter is a bit more academic isn't it my work that's exactly my thinking behind it also hazel

you'll probably have seen that i have just released a free ebook which is called how to stay calm in a Global Pandemic. No, I haven't. Okay, well, I'll send it on to you. But basically, one of my coping strategies during the pandemic has been to draw. And to draw my experiences, but drawing also what I'm hearing from other people about their experiences. And I did a whole range of drawings during the first wave and kind of afterwards.

And I just thought, you know what, let's make this into a book and let's make it free so as many people can access it as possible so I put together in a free ebook how to stay calm in a global pandemic which the irony is of course it's not always possible to stay calm but that's the idea it's like how to manage when you don't stay calm. Oh I love that. So I can send that to you and obviously I've got my book which is available to buy a toolkit for modern life as well. Yes which I have a copy of and I was flicking through it again I like leave it beside my bed because it's one of those books I like to open up and come back to and open up and come back to and I opened it up yesterday when I was thinking about our podcast and there's so many useful tools and so many things that are really relevant now it's so you I'm sure you were planning on releasing

this book for a very long time and didn't actually think a pandemic was around the corner but it is the perfect time to publish this book you know when I finished it you'll laugh at this I started it actually on exactly this day last year and I finished it the day the kids finished or went off school for the pandemic and so and I actually think, and there was no test at this point, but I think I had COVID for a week before that. But so, yeah, so I started it, I finished it just as the pandemic started. But like people have said, you know,

all these are so relevant for using at this time. In fact, we probably all need it more because, you know, there's so much more challenges to our mental health right now that we really need to be kind of up in our game and looking after ourselves and our mental health. Yeah, 100%. Well, thank you so much for giving me and everyone else your time and all the time on social media it's been it's you're one of the best accounts to follow at the moment so thank you that was dr emma hepburn aka Psychology Mum. You can find her incredible illustrations and work

on mental health over on Instagram and Facebook. If you loved this episode, make sure to give it a review, a rating, hopefully five stars, and share it with your friends and family. That's all from me. See you again next time.