The Life Of Bryony - The Life of YOU: Can we say 'NO!' without feeling guilty?

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Welcome to Life of YOU, where your dilemmas take centre stage, and we try our best to solve them (or at least not make things worse!). In this bonus episode, I'm joined by the brilliant Matt Haig as we dive into your most pressing concerns. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU You know what they say: a problem shared is a problem… halved?! Get in touch! 🗣️ Send a text or voice note to 07796657512 and start your message with LOB 💬 WhatsApp Shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512 📧 You can also email me at: [e-mail] Also, check out Matt Haig’s latest book The Life Impossible, an inspiring adventure about finding yourself through loss and new beginnings.   Bryony xx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Life of Briony bonus episode. Every Friday, I make it all about you, darling listener. Joining me again is Matt Haig, and together we'll be untangling some of your trials and tribulations. I always have so much fun catching up with Matt so if you missed Monday's chat I implore you to have a listen. An excellent use of your free time if you ask me. Today time's up on Beth's TikTok addiction. Will she ever be able to focus on something for longer than 90 seconds? Alice is to done with her to-do list. Will there ever be an end to her chores? And Sabrina is saying yes when she really means no. Does that relate to anyone? Will she ever master the fine art of people pleasing

without sacrificing her sanity? All of your problems solved right after this. Hi, Bryony and Matt. I think TikTok has officially ruined my brain. I can barely concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes. If my husband tells me anything, I'll instantly forget it. I don't think that's got anything to do with TikTok. That's probably just relationships. And I'll often find myself upstairs

with an intention of getting something and suddenly have no idea what I wanted to begin with. How do I regain my attention span and actually focus on something longer than a TikTok video? Or am I doomed to live my life in 60 seconds bursts forever is this too much social scrolling adhd early menopause what do you think from beth i instantly like and relate to beth a lot i mean that's i mean i'm not tiktok my brain is almost too adhd for tiktok because i just get so confused by it at the start and I always

go into the search box and I'm like searching for things and the things I'm searching for don't come up and it's like no you're searching for that but really you're going to be interested in this other thing and it's like I don't have that specific problem of TikTok but I have the specific problem of the internet and distraction yeah I'm walking into rooms and not knowing why I'm there and worried it's because my brain is massively rotting, but it's probably just to do with like attention deficit and all of that. And I wish I had a great pity answer to that

because I still have this problem. But I think, I don't know about you, Brownie, but myself, it's when you can find the ability to step away it's a very short amount of time needed before your brain starts to feel a little bit more ordered i think there are some actually quite practical things you can do with this as well beth which i have an app on my phone called jomo i think it's called okay and i use it when i'm like when i have to work and i have to write because what i find myself doing is i'll sit and i'm like and i'll be like i'll get a paragraph done or whatever

and then my brain will go off and then i'll start just check like i just literally scrolling not not particularly just checking oh has anyone messaged me oh can i get a little dopamine hit oh to see i've got a few more likes on instagram or do you mean like or something terrible happened in the news that i can anyway what jomo does and i think there's quite a lot of apps out there so this is not me plugging one particular one do this is it just switches off all my apps for a certain amount of time so i can plug it in and say for an hour i will not be able to access this thing on my phone and that kind of helps for work stuff yes i'm not great at this as i've just said but one thing i do do 90 of the time is I also I don't actually have my phone by my bed I have it charging

downstairs I sometimes take the laptop to bed because I sometimes get ideas and want to write things in a word document but I don't actually take my phone and I know that makes me in a minority because I think something like 80% of people charge their phone by the bed if you can do that I feel like the first hour of being awake sets the tone for the whole day so good or bad day so if i get up without obsessively checking the phone or walk the dog and i'm out then that is going to be a good day but the other day where you're sort of like sat in the bathroom staring at the phone for about half an hour and you're just getting a bad neck and you're just you know that's gonna be a bad day isn't it but i also think there is an interesting thing where we do

all get a bit like you say that thing where you fear that your brain is rotting away and that i definitely have that where it's not just that i go into a room and i forget why i'm going into them but i'll open like an internet page on my laptop or whatever a google page and i'll be like i forget what it was i was going to open the page for that's because we're on a device which is designed to distract us instagram and other social media companies have in the past hired psychologists as consultants in terms of how to get people addicted to their products so that's what we're battling against also to remember that i think is quite a powerful thing in and of itself because i think it enables you look even just i started and i had a really good point i was going to make beth and then i

got distracted by something out of the corner of my eye. You're on TikTok right now, just under the desk. I think our brains are not designed to cope with the level of digital overwhelm that we are presented with on a daily basis. Yeah, and I think, as with all things, it's just about not being too hard on yourself about it because this is definitely a universal problem now, isn't it? We're all going through this. And, you know, we can talk about it, but none of us are speaking from a high ground on this issue. Can you watch television and not look at your phone? the trouble is for one thing I feel

it's so interesting isn't it I can remember growing up people who watch TV they were the ones who were rotting their brains according to my mum now if you can watch an hour of TV without checking anything out wow you're like a Buddhist monk

in Tibet discovered the key to enlightenment you can actually watch a complete episode of young sheldon without you know checking 700 things i couldn't watch any of you know like the scandi crime stuff oh yes because i i was like obviously i can't speak swedish so i either had to learn swedish or stop scrolling on my phone i mean what's the future going to be we're going to have we're going to remember this is the glory years aren't we can you remember when people were worried about tiktok you know now we've got this implant in our brain where we're continually

stim and to be actually being able to focus on an external thing in our hand wasn't that we used to worry about that was so traditional how quaint yeah beth just don't touch your phone for the just the try for the first five minutes of your day don't touch your fucking phone and then see how you get on hi bernie and matt i swear my to-do list has a life of its own no matter how many things i check off it seems to multiply overnight I start the day with grand plans to be super productive but somehow the hours disappear and I'm left wondering where the day went how can I take control of my time and finally conquer my to-do list without feeling

like I'm constantly running in circles and this is from Alice again Alice I relate very much to this because I'm someone I'm especially recently where I just go through the day and I realise by 6pm I haven't done any writing. It's not like I haven't been working. I've all been a few little answered emails, but nothing that I consider proper working. And then it gets to like 6pm and you get depressed because you think, when I've got all the life stuff to do,

making food, walking the dog, bins, all that stuff. And then, yeah, I've got no time. But I think part of it with me is actually not realising that a lot of stuff I think is wasting time isn't actually wasting time. You know, so sometimes like even an email might now be, you know, wasting time, or even what you're looking at

on the internet might be helping you in some way so i think we can risk being over hard on ourselves and it's a product of a sort of consumerist society where we're always encouraged to be earning and to see ourselves as a sort of economic unit that's got to be useful and productive but and again we're in a world which makes it very hard to do because we've got so many distractions. So yeah, this isn't an answer to the problem, but I'm hoping that you're going to have some wise words. Matt, as you say, it's a world that wants us to be addicted to earning and doing and stuff. But I also think there is something in the world where we get very used to feeling like we're not doing enough like we're slightly feckless and useless sometimes i realize my subconscious does this where i will deliberately without even

realizing i'm doing this set myself up to fail because i'm so used to that feeling of feeling like oh i haven't done the thing i was supposed to do are i fucking useless yes and even though you think well hang on why would you set yourself up to feel useless it's like actually there's even though it's not a very nice feeling there's a sort of familiarity in it yeah not to be too heavy about it but it's like one of those things that if something really major suddenly happens in your life then instantly somehow your brain knows how to prioritize but so so often we're almost just by our flawed design almost like a hobby of our minds is just to sort of have all these worries and neuroses on a daily level and to beat ourselves up about it but if it wasn't being worried about this the brain would be finding something else to be beating ourselves up about, even if the

internet and everything else didn't exist. So yeah, I think it's the real issue there behind it is how not to be so hard on ourselves about things. I also think there's a quick thing about to-do lists is I create to-do lists and I think I'm sort of controlling the world. Andrea, my partner, has a to-do list of, I think it's reached 200 because she numbers it. And she has done very little of the to-do list, but she loves the to-do list almost is slightly doing it in her mind. Like when she's...'s like put this thing on the to-do list then i've done it i'm kind of like yeah at least addressing something but i yeah i'm not i'm not organized enough even to have a to-do list of things i'm not going to do so you know

sometimes you get like a day in a life features in magazines with writers i had one yesterday and it was the worst interview i've ever had in my life because it was a bit of a day in the life thing but yeah where you feel like you've got to make out that you're in the gym with Mark Wahlberg at 3 30 a.m for three hours or been out for a run with Bryony Gordon I watch writers who are very disciplined or they claim to be disciplined and they're like I do a thousand words before breakfast. And then I'm like, when am I going to become that writer who doesn't leave everything until the deadline is sort of like sitting on my shoulders?

I have, in my own work, created a solution to this, which is write shorter books and shorter chapters. Because if you're writing shorter chapters, you can actually have a book that looks book-sized but it's not really because a lot of your chapters are just paragraphs well i think this is a neat thing that you can get away with if you have sold seven trillion thousand and one books as you have matt haig but i'm not sure that my editor is going to uh is going to it's going to take that well yeah but tell your editor that we're in an age of intention deficit and people haven't got the time for like two page chapters and that's the book

exactly uh alice less is more stop making to-do lists alice just go with the flow just go with the flow and accept if it's really important it'll get done great advice we've got an email from someone who calls sabrina the carpenter not her real name and not a carpenter and not Sabrina carpenter oh yeah I would be able to go to go home today and tell my teenage daughter that needed advice from Matt and Bryony Sabrina if you're listening and you do have a query you just have to email lifeofbryony at mailonline.co.uk anyway sabrina quote unquote okay weird start to an email but you know when some guys say they like being you're really setting this up as an amazing email they like

being spanked okay it is an amazing it's an amazing email or having something pinched well i i think i derive a similar sadistic pleasure by saying yes to things that I simply do not have any time to do. I'm a serial people pleaser. And I realised this week that it's really at the expense of my rest and relaxation. This week alone, I baked a birthday cake, did a school run. I'm not a parent. ate a birthday cake, did a school run. I'm not a parent. Love Sabrina. And fix a dislodged banister on a staircase. Woodwork is not my strong point. I say yes to everything,

even when I know I don't have the time or energy. And then I end up overwhelmed and annoyed at myself for saying yes in the first place. How do I learn to say no without feeling like I'm being a bad daughter, sister, friend and still keep my sanity intact? I'm saying a bad daughter, sister, friend and still keep my sanity intact. I'm saying yes to you, Sabrina, as a human. Yes, that is a genuinely great email. Saying no is important, isn't it?

It's important, but I was really bad at it. I used to, you know, say yes to everything work related. If I sensed someone else wanted me to say yes to it, I'd feel like it was completely rude saying that. But then I learned the hard way I don't know if you said yes to things that ended up being mistakes and so I think I learned that I had to say no and actually saying yes to things sometimes can be negative not just for you for other people but and also you have no time for when people really need you if you're spread out so uh thin i mean i have no hard fast answers to people

pleasing because i am i think it's at the core of all of my problems in life every addiction i've ever experienced alcoholism a drug addiction eating disorders all my problems stem from the need to people please that that i am only out of interest though yeah because i think i understand that but in terms of like addiction how do you relate like your alcohol history to people pleasing i think a it allowed me to like feel like i was putting on a sparkly dress and I was being a vibrant, fascinating person in a way that I naturally, without alcohol, feel quite socially inept. And B, if something had happened in a day and the day had gone wrong or I thought I'd upset someone or I, do you know what I mean? All those things, I would just go and get completely off. Yes, there's a way of dealing with it. yeah totally and I the same with me like I used to

think I was more interesting and funny to people if I was drinking so I was almost drinking for them but also drinking to save my own embarrassment and discomfort of being so this sort of neuro divergent person finding it hard to talk and make eye contact with people suddenly if i had alcohol it was easier to do that and the saying yes to everything is i find it really really hard to the extent that i'm scared of making new friends because it'll be new people that you could potentially disappoint because you have to. So it's easier to keep your WhatsApp, you know, with just a few people in it rather than having a wide pool of friends that you just I feel I would just be disappointing all the time. Because I have actually disappointed people in the past through my own mental health of not being able to do things or not being able to go to the pub or not being able to do that. So I haven't always been a yes person, but I felt being a no person

can actually make you feel very guilty for pointless reasons when it's not really your fault at all. For me, I think saying yes to everything is about fundamentally fear of being rejected by people. If I say something that doesn't please them, they're going to turn away and not want me in their life and that's a very childlike response and what i've realized is that if i say no to someone and they turn away and don't want me in their life then i don't want them in mine it's a natural filter exactly and also yeah and you can be a bit more respected and certainly respect yourself more for saying no and actually it's like all things it's not actually that hard once you do it i think it's the hardest thing i've never got good at saying no i struggle when it's like

family or members like extended family of a you know they want to do something together as a i really struggle with that i'm much better now at saying no to work-related things. But I suppose I don't feel it's upsetting people in the same way. So, yeah, I still have got that problem. I'm the complete opposite. So I can say no to my family. No, I'm not. No, Mum, I'm not coming for the weekend.

No. Like people I know, I guess people I know who are there unconditionally for me. I guess that's, I feel much more secure in saying no. were there unconditionally for me. I guess that's, I feel much more secure in saying no. But in like a work situation, I'm like, if I say no, will everything fall apart? Will my career tumble and crumble? And maybe that's a kind of freelance kind of mentality, I suppose. Sabrina, the next time someone asks you to do the school run for them, look them in the eye and say, my name is Sabrina and I'm a chronic people pleaser do you really need me to do this for you and they'll probably say yes the other thing is that

someone very dear to me once said is the thing about boundaries briny is they tend to get burned into you and so maybe you just have to get to a level of pain. And saying no is often saying yes. Saying no is saying yes to more time, is saying yes to yourself, is saying yes to having boundaries and respecting yourself, isn't it? Yes, Matt. You can now take Listen to Friday's Life of Briony episode

off your to-do list. How satisfying. Are you sick yet of me asking you to rate, review and tell a friend that this show exists? My producer says it's staying in the script until this show wins an award or he gets a pay rise. We're a very interactive bunch and we'd love to hear from you.

Details of how to get in touch are in the show notes. You can voice note note text or email just to say hi and i hope you have the best day ever and i'll see you on monday