The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Em Clarkson on not letting other people’s narratives impact yours

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

On this week's guest episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna is joined by influencer, author, podcast host, columnist and new mum Em Clarkson, who shares her One Thing with us: that it's important not to let the narrative of others impact you if it doesn't serve you.An advocate for body positivity and female mental health, Emily is also the co-host of the Should I Delete That podcast which she co-hosts with Alex Light. She also runs the Have A Gos community which was set up to bring back the fun to otherwise intimidating sporting events. Follow Em on Instagram hereFollow the Have A Gos on Instagram hereListen to the Should I Delete That podcast here

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist's 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. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a guest episode of The Therapy Edit. I'm really excited today. I'm pretty sure I say that every time. But I mean it every time. I'm really excited to have Emily Clarkson with me.

She is a podcast host of Should I Delete That with Alex Light, kind of just diving into all of those different topics, kind of the nitty gritty of being a woman in this kind of culture and in this world. And, yeah, have a listen. She is a writer. She dives into the nuances of the things that shame women, things like how our body. is viewed, our gender, how we view and advocate for ourselves. And I love the fact, every time I see one of Emily's posts or like hop onto her page, I end up feeling kind of that really good

kind of angry where something is stirred in you. Maybe it's a, it's a recognition of like an injustice or some way that we're kind of being let down or shamed. And yeah, I get stirred up in a good way where I end up thinking, wait a minute, we deserve more, or actually this shouldn't be happening. And it's really, it's good, that good kind of angry. So thank you, Emily, for making me good, angry. And the other thing I've got, the other thing I've got on my list in your bio before I finish is the have a go. So you've got a community where you make exercise more inclusive, just inviting people just to come and have a go in a way that suits you. And yeah, let go of all of what it should look like, what you should look like.

So that's there as well for people. So, hi. Hi. How are you? Great. Well, you are. Thank you. You are great.

I am good. Thank you. Yeah, the kids are back at school today. So it feels, yeah. But I'm getting all the school emails and, yeah, it does feel calm. The house feels quiet. It's quite nice. I might just walk around it later and just absorb the calm before it all kicks off again.

Yeah. I'm in like that on a mass scale at the moment because I have a baby due imminently. So my quiet house, I'm trying to do exactly that. And I've just got no idea what's coming. Just walking around the house like, oh my God, something's coming and I don't know what. Something's coming. It's going to kick off. It's going to kick off in the most amazing, wonderful, challenging, messy, life-affirming way.

It's coming at you and it's going to be great. I did it three times. That's how, that's how wild. Yeah, can't be that bad. It can't be that bad. But thank you for all that you share. Do you, do you, do you tend to write off the back of like feeling stirred by something or you see something and then you get that kind of that feeling and it just, because everything you write is so kind of imbued with like passion and it just always kind of reaches, reaches into me. I think I started writing.

as a lot of people my age did because obviously we grew up with the internet I started writing a lot about myself because that's kind of how we were brought up to do it like bebo wanted you to write about yourself Facebook or is asking what's on your mind you know what I mean it's like your story like everything was kind of like teed up for us to like write about ourselves and then obviously like I came up as well as a blogger where again all you kind of wrote about was yourself yeah so I think at one point I just went from realizing that it didn't all have to be about me because I'm just perhaps not that interesting in the scheme of things. And as the internet grew, I guess so did my opinions and my perspective. And yeah, I've always just, I'm really

grateful for the platform I have and have grown. And I think a lot of it's grown with me to now, I don't like, I struggle so much as I was like, what do you do? I'm like, I have no idea. But I think, yeah, just evoking righteous anger, I think I'm just going to put that on a business card. Just stick that on your CV, absolutely. Yeah. Emily, the question that we ask, all our guests here is if you could share one thing with all the mums that listen to this podcast, what would that one thing be? Well, I wouldn't presume to speak to mums as a mum yet, because I'm not quite with you. But one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned in my life and something that I found very applicable during preface.

has been that people tell you an awful lot about themselves when they're talking about other people. So whether that's bitching about somebody or projecting their, or whatever, I mean, I just, I think humans are like massive overhead projectors and everything they say tells you a lot about them, even if, you know, when, even if it sounds like it might be about you or somebody else. Yeah. So actually, when people are talking about other people, they're actually giving you some significant insight into who they are. I think people are so, people that are gentle. I'm, I saw this on Megan Rose Lane wrote this the other day so wonderfully. And it's like people that are gentle with themselves are gentle with others. And people that are horrible to themselves are horrible

to others. And that's not always the case because obviously some people that are very mean to themselves are truly wonderful humans, but I think the, well, I always think the happiest person I know isn't talking shit about somebody else. And that's pretty applicable for like every area of anything. Now, whenever I hear anything, I just think that was mean. And meanness has come from somewhere bad and I just have to pity mean people now. And not even mean people, you know, people, I was saying about this this morning in the shower, knowing that I was going to talk to you. I've been given so much advice during pregnancy and for some reason I've been given so many horror stories

and I thought everyone was kidding when they were like, oh, you know, you're going to be just you waited to within an inch of your life and I was like, I mean, it's going to be that bad. It's been so bad. Yeah. And I kept my pregnancy a secret for the whole first half of it. Like we didn't announce until I was past the halfway mark

and I think that was, it lulled me into a false sense of security because the people that I shared it with the first half were like my people. my really close friends. And then when it kind of became everyone else's stuff, I literally went to a wedding that first weekend. And I sat down next to this woman and she was like, I closed my eyes and I remember the blood, the trauma, the pain of childbirth.

And I was like, oh my God, who are you? And I thought about her so much on the car ride home. And I was like, you know what? I can make that about me. I can make this, like, I can let this terrify me. I can let this become my story if I want. Or I can just sit and be like, oh my God, poor woman, like she's clearly struggling with what happened to her and she is having

to project it for whatever reason. And I don't have to make that my problem. I can just feel really sorry for her and just leave it there. And it's been really valuable for me. That's so empowering though, isn't it? It reminds me of that phrase that actually you've just cast a totally different light on what people think about you is none of your business. And I kind of always looked on that as like, well, it's just, you know, it's not your business to know what they think about you when actually the way that you've just made me look at it is what people think about you is actually it's their business

that's their stuff and how empowering is that one we think actually we don't have to take it on no and I think like as humans we lead with our egos like everything is ego led and I am a truly like I am in recovery for people pleasing

it's been a really big journey for me and I can't stress this enough like when you lead with your ego, which even that I took personally, when the coach that I saw said that to me and she was like, you're very ego led. And I was like, what do you mean? You're saying my big head and you're saying that I haven't healed. And I took it so personally. I was like, well, there's the problem. Like if you always lead making everything about you, then everything always will be. Like everything, you can be offended by anything. You can be hurt by anything. But if you remove yourself

from the centre of everything, it's so much easier to just let people say things around you and let people think things about you and let everybody kind of do their thing and you're just going to do your thing. And it's just, it's just lovely. It's just so chill. Yeah. Because actually I think sometimes, and as a therapist, I have this privilege of kind of scraping beneath that kind of that top layer of people's stories and realizing that actually, yeah, how they're presenting in the world, especially if there is kind of anger, resentment, you know, that kind of passive aggression, that comes down to often what is pain and that internal that internal messy journey and you start realizing that things so much of what is coming your way is actually not not about you at all

not about you at all I got a shitty message on Christmas morning and the old me would have read that on Instagram and been like oh my God she's ruined my Christmas like what I and then I but knew me I got it on a little and I was sitting there and I was like bless her. It's Christmas morning and this is what she's doing. She's sending hate to someone that she doesn't know on the internet. Like that's a bad Christmas and I feel sorry for anyone having a bad Christmas. I don't need this to make my Christmas bad. I can just see that she's like and I don't know that that goes against everything because like you say I evoke righteous anger. So when people do do me wrong every fibre of my being is like no I need justice but actually

I don't need justice. I need peace. That's what I want. I want peace. And allowing myself to pity people like someone said it when i announced a pregnancy somewhere on the internet that i'd be a shit mom and for a minute it really got me and i was like oh no and then i was like who are you who are you and i was like you know me and also you've written this somewhere you've written this on an anonymous you've written an anonymous message about someone that you don't like okay that's not my problem and it's just it's so it's just so freeing it's lovely and you know I always talk about it in the context of the internet because that's kind of where I hang out. But this happens in real life too.

You know, I think comments that we hear like from our moms or from our friends or whatever, it's so often a projection. I always think this when, I don't mean, our moms particularly as a generation, have been so conditioned by diet culture. And, you know, it's not uncommon for someone to hear from a mom or like, are you sure you want to eat that or, you know, some comment like that? and again if you're leading with your ego you hear that and you think oh my god like i can't eat this because she because she clearly thinks blah la la la and actually if you peel that back

what she's probably saying is god i wish i could eat that it's a projection of her own weirdness around yeah it doesn't eat your problem but we just don't you know we don't that's not what we jumped to it's such a practice though isn't it and i think one of the one of the biggest lessons i've had to learn from being online and it's the biggest life lesson and i and i blippin wish I'd learned it earlier, but it's, it's becoming more comfortable with being misunderstood. And actually, people will not get you. You cannot get everyone on your side, and of your opinion. You're going to rub people the wrong way just by being, because you'll come up against more people that, that think differently. And actually, it's, being misunderstood

doesn't mean that your opinion and your feelings aren't valid. Like, we have to validate them ourselves. Yeah, let other people be wrong about you. Like, you can't control how everybody's going to react because people perceive you based entirely on the lenses that they see you through and you don't know what those are. And yeah, it's just, I don't know, if it's like, you know, those little diagrams that you used to get in the magazines that normally told you if like he was going to fall in love with you or whatever. But I just now, I just put peace as my ending and I'm just like, I just want peace every time. I just want to sit with my dog in the evening and play a stupid game on my stupid phone and watch some stupid TV and I just that's all I want I don't want I

don't want anything else and so I'm going to choose the path that takes me there and generally speaking that means letting other people be wrong about you it means putting putting down control putting well trying to stop controlling things that you can't control and yeah just yeah people be people letting people be wrong about you it's that's yeah such a such a big learning isn't it? And just becoming okay with that, I think that's transformative. And that's when we really start to address people pleasing. And I remember hearing people pleasing, termed as people pleading. And I thought, wait a minute, I'm a people please. It's just because I want people to be happy and I want to do nice things for people. And actually, you know, it was so, it just totally reframed it for me.

And actually, I needed to do other things for other people because I need their validation and I need there you know well done thank you I appreciate you because I needed that because I didn't have that for myself and another thing I heard that really challenged how I thought about people pleasing was you know are you manipulative and I think no I don't manipulate people but actually when you when you're engaging in people pleasing behavior all the time we're trying to control as you just said what people are thinking of you and how they see you and that is utterly utterly exhausting and relentless and we never get there which is I like the world that I'm the world that I live in is just like rocked off its axis with the people bleeding thing I'm

like oh my god you've seen straight through me um it is manipulative and like that's a it's a real thing that oh my god there's so there's so much learning that I'm doing about myself as I'm getting older that's the best that's one of the best things about the internet is that it's giving me access, it's giving all of us access to these conversations and these tools and stuff so that we can put it down

because even with the best intentions, manipulating anybody hurts you. It's just, it's not peaceful. It's just tiring. I'm reading the book, the book you wish your parents had read at the moment. Oh my gosh.

My brain. And it's all of this. It's just like you just realize like how you were brought up and why you feel the things you feel. And I think something that we always want to assign is blame to all of our behaviours and we want to understand why and we kind of want to blame a lot of people. And I think something that my coach said to me when I first started with her was that you did

what you did with the tools that you have. And now it's just time for better tools. And every time I pick up a new tool, I'm like, oh, Fab, I'm going to do better at just being happy. And it's just, I don't know, I find it fun. It's amazing how we can access this stuff. And I think, you know, people pleasing, often people don't realize it was a coping mechanism at some point. It was a survival mechanism perhaps at school. You were bullied and you had to, you know, to survive, you had to please people. You had to kind of change yourself so that you didn't receive as much of this horrible

kind of behavior or maybe in childhood. There was a lot going on around you and you just, you know, to survive in that, you just needed to be kind of good and small. And I think, you know, what we're loving. now is that is is that the most incredible thing we can do for ourselves is is the undoing of that and it's not that you know I think when I think oh I was manipulative my people pleasing or I was needing of others and my people pleasing how bad that is when actually that that that was a cope mechanism for me and a survival technique that I no longer need um yeah it doesn't need to be a

lifestyle anymore so yeah I absolutely love what you said about there was just so much there for us to devour and learn about ourselves online. So thank you for everything that you, that you do for us in inspiring that. Thank you. And to finish off, I have some quickfire questions for you. What's a high? What's a life high for you? What's an Emily high?

I literally, I'm like, I have nothing. I just really love my life. I just love my life. My life is my high. I just, I feel grateful every single day for it. I've got the best dog, best husband. I've got a huge kid in my stomach. I'm just the luckiest person in the world. So my life. You're not going to ask what I love is as well, aren't you? Yes. Hit us with it. Um, in truth, I've had a tough year. I've had this pregnancy's been very difficult. Um, I've suffered really badly with sickness. And, um, I've suffered really badly with sickness. And, um, I I've had, I feel in a really good space that I was talking to you before we started recording

about how I have, um, really worked to, um, draw quite a distinct line between the pregnancy and the sickness and to treat them as two completely separate things because I was allowing the sickness to ruin my pregnancy, I think. And, and I had to deal with a bit of disappointment and I had some weird feelings about it. So I guess like that, that was probably my low in that it's been the greatest high of my life. Um, but I've, struggled with some emotions around the sickness, I guess. So that would be like, but it's not a life low. It's just a current, it's just been a current difficulty, but it's been a low in amongst the greatest high, I guess. Yeah, but that clarity, I flipping wish I'd had that in, especially my third

pregnancy, that separation of the sickness and the pregnancy, the pregnancy of which you're so grateful for and the sickness, which is just horrendous. And, by making a statement about one, you're not making a statement about the other. And I think that is just so incredibly helpful as a lesson for just how we approach our kind of conflicting emotions. So thank you for that.

And what's one thing that makes you feel good? Oh, being outside. I just love being outside all the time. The day I can go for a ride and like, I'm going to drop this kid and go. I'm going to go. I'm going to shuffle out that door. Honestly, watch me.

It's going to be so sad. because it'll be so slow. But I just, I love being outside. I love moving. And, yeah, just the great wide world. It's cool. And inspiring other people to do the same with your community. And then finally, how would you describe where you're at right now in life in three words?

Absolutely fucking terrified. Oh, no, it's going to be, it's going to be amazing. And, yeah, it's going to be the ride. It's going to be the ride. Yeah, I can't wait. It's just, it's like, you know when you go to the top of a roller coaster and you just chill out on the top and you're just like, it's going to be, I love a roller coaster and I know I'm going to love it.

And I'm just so excited and that's why I've paid for it. And that's why I'm there and that's whatever. But there's that minute at the top where you're like, ooh, this is going to be crazy. What am I doing? Yeah, literally, why am I up here? That's kind of, yeah, that's me at the moment. But in the best way, in that fun adrenaline way.

but what the heck yes well thank you so much emily for for joining us and for sharing your yeah just brilliant wisdom and yeah can't wait to can't wait to hear more thank you thank you for listening to today's episode of the therapy edit if you enjoyed it please do share subscribe or review because it makes a massive difference to how many people it can reach you can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my three books, Mind Oath and Mother, Know Your Worth, and my new book, The Little Book of Calm for New Mums, grounding words for the highs, the lows and the moments in between. It's a little book you don't need to read it from front to back. You just pick whatever emotion resonates to find a mantra, a tip and some

supportive words to bring comfort and clarity. You can also find all my resources, guides and videos all with the sole focus of supporting your emotional and mental well-being as a month. They are all 12 pounds and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon.