The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Anna Whitehouse on not idolising or looking down on each other.

Episode Date: May 20, 2022

In this episode of One Thing, Anna chats with Anna Whitehouse (aka Mother Pukka) on how we've become a split society and what we can do as mothers and citizens to close the gap.Anna is a presenter on both Heart Radio and Channel 4, a columnist at Grazia and Marie Claire, a podcaster and the author of three books. She also heads up 'Flex Appeal', campaigning for flexible working for all. She is making waves and changing lives and businesses!You can buy her latest book, co-written with her husband, Matt Farquharson, the Sunday Times Bestseller Underbelly, here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Underbelly-Anna-Whitehouse-ebook/dp/B08FLCGRH9/ref=sr_1_8?crid=1YTP7T3TNQPBA&keywords=underbelly&qid=1651670019&sprefix=underbelly%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-8And you can follow Anna on Instagram at @mother_pukka

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist, mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hello and welcome to today's guest episode of The Therapy Edit. And I'm so excited to have with me, the one and only motherpucker and a White House. You're sitting time. I'm going to do that awkward bio bit.

Okay. So you're a mum of two. You're a columnist for Grazie. You have a show of your own on Heart Radio. You are a founder of Flexap here, which is absolutely, I mean, it's changing the landscape for flexible working. And I think so many of us have so much to thank you for that. You've got two best-selling non-fiction books and one novel Underbelly, which I absolutely loved, couldn't put down and highly recommend. And then more recently you've got Dirty Motherpucker podcast, which is real, hilarious, gritty.

And yeah, just as we were chatting just before we hit record, it's just seeing behind the scenes of people that we often form a perception of in our mind. So, oh my gosh, I love it. So welcome. How are you today? thanks um i'm probably like a six and a half out of 10 which uh it could be better could be worse yeah yeah just kind of middling middling there not too bad not great doing all right yeah yeah i hear you bowing on blowing on well it's thank you for thank you for uh fitting fitting me and it's an absolute pleasure to speak with you i always just i'm always inspired by

everything everything that you're doing the content that you put out there the thought provoking kind of just seismic plate shifting stuff that you do. I don't know how. How on earth do you find the energy for it, Anna, or you peddling, paddling underneath it all? Well, I think it's what you do as well, isn't it? When you're hacked off about something, you get an energy from it. So it's sort of that sense of, I'm reminded every day that if I don't change something for my kids, you know, then I'm sort of just setting them up for a fall. So it's sort of that self-acilitating energy and anger combined it combined to keep keep me going and I don't always get it right you know I think that's the other thing to say that it's not that it's always groundbreaking you know bashing down

brick walls kind of stuff it's also learning that's the bit that I'm excited about is going oh okay you're right I didn't see it from that perspective and so it's the growth I think publicly is quite terrifying at times but also it's yeah it's it's there's confidence in that, I think, and standing in the fire sometimes, that kind of righteous anger that spurs you on and, yeah, it fuels that passion. So Anna, the question that we ask our guest here is if there is one thing that you could share with all the moms, what would that one thing be? So is that actually something from my dad? I've posted about it before. He used to always say to me when I was a kid, never look up to someone and never look down on someone.

because, you know, he said, speak to the queen, as you would, the refuse collector. And I think that really put me in good stead because pedestaling someone like people, I really struggle with the kind of the influence from the follower dynamic because it feels like there's a sort of power dynamic there when it's actually somebody saying something and you've got an audience. There's a difference between someone manically following versus someone listening and absorbing and going, well, I don't actually agree with you on that is a two-way conversation. And I think if we are pedestaling people and if we are then, you know, on the other side of that

looking down on people, you're in quite a negative space of never feeling enough, always feeling that comparison comes in, or, yeah, using others, you know, who maybe have made a mistake online, for example, or somebody who you don't agree with, like we were saying earlier, there was a lot of when everything happened with Caroline Flack, so many people going, oh, God, I hated her anyway. You know, it was like, why do we have those two extremes? Because I don't think, for me, as a mother, to be honest, just as a human, it helps because it will always leave you with a sense of inferiority looking up. And it'll always leave you with a sort of grim comparator looking down. And it's not good place. That's not a good place to exist. So it's a

actually not my advice. It's from my dad. That's great. That's great. And how do you, do you feel like our culture? Because I, you're making me think of your book here. And I think it just, you know, underbelly, it's just that real kind of diving into that dynamic, isn't it? And when we put people on pedestals, quite how far they can fall both themselves. And then also in our own mind, when we kind of look up to someone and then it feels painful, actually, when that, when that kind of that bubble burst and that fantasy is, you know, pot and the reality, the gritty, normal, mundane behind it that we see that. So how, in a culture that almost, I think, encourages us to pedestal people

or just to do that kind of navigating and finding our place above or below, how do you, yeah, how do you, I don't know, how do you try and avoid that temptation? Well, I think it comes from being confident in your own voice. And so I often, with Flexapil, I get people saying, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to, you need to, you need to. And I often come back and say, oh, no, no, this isn't on me, this is all of us. Like, I can say something, I can do what I can on my side, but without a collective effort, it's going to fall on its face. So, no, actually, don't put it all on one person. and they're going to break, we need, for example, whatever you're fighting for. For me, it's

obviously gender equality in the workplace. That's my specific burn, I suppose, over the years, is to how can we do this as a collective and recognise your voice? I get that inferiority complex when I'm on a panel. So I'm doing a panel at the British Embassy this week in Paris, talking about flexible working. And it's all French MPs and me. And I don't really understand how I'm why I'm there. I'm questioning everything. But actually, they want my perspective on where the UK stands in terms of flexible working. So my voice is valid. And I think it is recognising that in yourself is that when you see something that perhaps jars with you, that with empathy and kindness, you can challenge that because that's helping you form your opinions. That I think we've lost the art of conversation because it's just an echo chamber of either agreement. or seen as trolling. And this is what Underbelly really tried to tackle, was like, let's not live in those two extremes.

You know, it filters back to not pedestalling people and not looking down on people. So my ideal, I think, for, you know, not just mothers, but humans is that healthy discourse, healthy conversation. Because only then, without shame and rocks thrown, do we progress? So there's a lot about respect in there,

there about just respecting other people's opinion stories, even if it doesn't, you know, even if it doesn't reflect yours and actually giving them the space to have that. And not making what they're saying is a statement somehow of the validity of what you think, but just being open and respectful. And then you can move forward. Like when you remove shame and you remove disrespect from a conversation, nobody's going to respond well to either two things. Shaming someone has deep-rooted penetrative impact on a human being. We know that. But like, for example, I remember a while ago, I had a woman going at me going, I bet your campaign is funded by the Tories, you're a horrible Tory. And I'm not, and it's not funded by the Tories. I promise you.

And, you know, you've got a perception of me that is totally distorted, but how about you write a piece on why you're so angry and I can respond? And, um, you know, you've got a perception of me that is totally distorted, but how about you write a piece on why you're so angry and I can respond. And she did. And actually, in putting thought into it, she was like, okay, like, yeah, I don't think, you know, you're not a Tory, but it doesn't matter what you, where you vote, but it was just the assumption, the, the, the thing is, I'm angry at the Tories and I think this woman's got a slightly posh voice. I'm going to throw it all on her because I'm angry. And it's like, where are you placing that anger? Because you won't feel great placing it on the wrong person in the long run, you know, repeating.

flogging the wrong horse isn't going to help you win the race, you know? And I think that was really an eye-opener for me, was I could have in that moment got very defensive and gone F-off, which was my instinct, and it was unfair the way she was responding to me. But her anger was valid. It just wasn't valid coming at me. So we sat down and she wrote a piece. And it took us to, we ended up then getting her story heard at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. So she got a seat at the table. She delivered a speech on what it was to be a single mum on the breadline working zero-hour contracts. And the conversation moved forward.

That is an example. I'll always use and always hold close to my heart as progress. That's so powerful. And I think one of the things I find most or just one of the hardest things I experience in life, really, is that feeling of being misunderstood. And it takes me, it's taken me a lot of therapy and a lot of kind of. of soul-searching, a lot of kind of practice not to take that feeling as an attack. Yes. Because sometimes we won't be understood.

Sometimes people will come at us with things. You just think, oh my goodness, am I not putting myself across properly? Are you not? But actually to peel away that first initial reaction and just to go in and meet as humans and probably both a little bit hurt and a little bit just trying to get it right underneath it all. And it in that itself just creates that opportunity to have a conversation and do something incredible. That's just, I love that story.

I'm going to remember that one. That is amazing, Anna. Thank you so much. Thank you. I've got a few cheeky, tiny, quick fire questions. What's a motherhood high for you? I think it would be my daughter saying on Mother's Day, I love you to the university and back. Oh, I love that.

The local university is about a mile up the road. Oh, I love that so much. And what's a motherhood low? I think it would be that oxytocin high post-birth and actually feeling I was on top of the world and that crashing low, recognizing that I was postpartum and I had just gone to the shops thinking I could and trying to crawl up the stairs.

realizing the pain of that C-section, the pain of motherhood. And actually, I think it's the extremes. It was the, I am on this high, and then I was literally on the floor. It was those extremes. That's the low. Yeah, yeah, those lows. And what's one thing that makes you feel good? My family, actually.

I think it's very easy to think it's been painful, it's been hard. We've held on. We've fought. We've gone through some of the worst times and some of the best times, but it's my family. And I'm so proud of how we've navigated the arguments, the messiness, the occasional screaming at each other and actually coming back off, talking about not looking up and down, coming off that kind of angry pedestal and sitting in the hole with each other and going, it's been really shit and it's been really hard. And I don't blame you. So yeah, it's family. Oh, that's good. Thank you. And how would you describe motherhood in three words to finish off? Exhausting, exhilarating, extreme. Oh, and you came up with all ease as well. I know. I was like, this is also on one side, exhilarating on the other. And then, to honest, you look at those two and it's just extreme. It's an extreme situation to be in, emotionally, physically. And I was going to say, vaginally. Viginally, it's an extreme situation. It is. And thank you for all that you do, Anna, in helping us navigate that and the honesty that you bring to those highs and lows that really helps us realise we're not alone. But thank you for your time. You're amazing. We appreciate you. Take care. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe and review. You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my two books,

mind over mother and know your worth. I'm also the founder of the Mother Mind Way, a platform full of guides, resources and a community with the sole focus on supporting mother's mental and emotional well-being. It's been lovely chatting with you. Speak soon.