The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Fearne Cotton on how to stop judging yourself

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

On this episode of One Thing, Anna chats with the one and only Fearne Cotton about why she thinks self-judgement is the biggest cause of guilt and worry.Fearne Cotton is the founder of Happy Place. Happy Place is a destination for all – where difference is celebrated and the extraordinary is discovered. Happy Place is a place to connect. To listen to the most interesting minds on the planet, and engage with the conversation.To give back and pay it forward. To find the joy in every day – even if for a moment.You can listen to Happy Place podcasts, buy Fearne's books and learn about upcoming events here https://www.happyplaceofficial.co.ukYou can also follow Fearne on Instagram at @fearnecotton and @happyplaceofficial

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 and welcome to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. I am so excited. I thought I would feel a bit nervous today, but actually lovely Fern Cotton, who is in front of me on my screen right now, it feels like I'm talking to a friend because your voice has been in my ears so much, especially of this last couple of years, where I have lent so heavily on the amazing resource that is the Happy Play's podcast and all of those conversations that you bring there, which quite frankly have informed and changed the way that I think, which is kind of my life really, isn't it? Because the way that we think and approach life affects life. So

welcome. I've got some things to say about you besides the fact that your podcast is just such an incredibly valuable resource. And I often feel really emotional and a listen to podcasts because I think these conversations are so incredibly insightful and they're free. I just think it's the most amazing gifts. So thank you for everything that you bring. You've spoken to Elizabeth Gilbert, But Robbie Williams, that was an amazing one. Some of the stuff that he said kind of still goes around my head now about reaching the mountaintop and still feeling all the feelings that he was hoping would have gone away with that mountaintop experience.

Gabby Bernstein's one of your most recent ones I was listening to yesterday. Jamie Oliver, Brunay Brown, my personal queen. And then your recent book, Bigger Than Us, which is all about finding meaning in a messy world. And there's one little sentence I just wanted to read out. I feel like it encapsulates so much of what you do. And it's where you've written at the beginning. I want more peace, a deeper connection, a trust in life, faith instead of worry, more meaningful moments, acceptance in the messy bits, even meaning in the messy bits.

And I love that because everything you bring us helps us on that journey of finding the meaning in the messy. So welcome. Thank you. What a lovely introduction. And thank you. I'm so glad that you love the podcast. And I always love seeing on Instagram that you've listened and your feed.

back on the episodes. It means the world. And it's really important that happy place keeps delivering either low price point or very free content in whatever form it comes, because this subject matter is for everybody. And it has to be seen that way. It has to be accessible. It has to be imbibed in that way. So it's of paramount importance. We keep it like that. So I'm so glad that you like it. I do. I love it. Thank you. Happy company. More times than you'll ever know. So, Fern, how are you today? How are you? Yeah, I'm good. I've had quite a busy morning already with the school run and then just did my radio show and an interview and just lots of stuff going on. But I feel good. I feel I slept okay last night, which I always feel weirdly proud of myself when I've slept well, I'm like, oh my God, well done me. So if I've slept well and I have that feeling when I wake up of, I don't really need to achieve anything else today because I've actually managed to sleep. I'm good. So I'm feeling sprightly. I always think it gives me a little buffer in my day where I'm less likely,

I always call it the like Mary Poppins to the Hulk gap, you know, and I feel like a good night's sleep kind of widens that gap. So, Fern, what is one thing, just, you know, simple question, isn't it, with the not so straightforward answer sometimes? And what's the one thing that you would love to share with the mum's listening? I guess I've been lucky enough to talk to so much. many people over the years on all manner of subjects, whether it's related to parenting or not. But I think this one thing, which is quite basic, applies to so many of the conversations I've

had, if not all of them. And it's really simple, but really, really hard to do. And I'm sure you will have spoken to countless people who have touched on this. You might have even said the same, but I can't truncate parenting anymore or the solution to all the stress we feel with parenting anymore than saying stop judging yourself. It's the one thing that I think will help reduce stress, anxiety and how you go about your everyday life. And we all do it.

And there are loads of problems that stem from judging oneself. whether it's the things I've mentioned, feeling stress, feeling anxiety, maybe moving into panic, potentially insomnia, all these different personal mental health problems we can stumble upon. But also, we're so much more likely to then judge other people because that judgment mindset is present a lot of the time. And either to sort of deflect your own pain and suffering. You judge other people. Or it's just habitual that judging yourself is an everyday thing. So then it's easy to judge other people because it's a quick, easy emotion to sort of, um, sort of, I guess, lean into it becomes a bad habit. And it's also been very normalized that we

judge others and judge ourselves. Parenting is obviously one of the most trickiest terrains to navigate. I don't know what I'm doing. I black it every day. I often feel like I'm a teenager and I'm not equipped mentally to do it. I often regress back to, you know, I guess my own childhood and how I've reacted in situations and apply that to parenting, which is so wrong. I make mistakes all the time. I mess up. I have regret. Most people, this is not unfamiliar. Most people will go, oh yeah, I have those feelings. I've felt like that. But it doesn't stop us from judging ourselves. We still might put our head on the pillow at the end of the night and go, I shouldn't have done that. I'm an idiot. I'm a terrible parent. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a bad mom or whatever it might be. And it's not useful. It's not useful in any shape or form to have that judgment. Of course we can all go to bed and hope. You know what? Tomorrow I might deal with things with a little more, I don't know, calmness or tranquility or maybe I'll approach this situation that scares me feeling a bit more supported or whatever. We can all have that hope and that's

a really healthy thing to have. But to go to bed each night or even walking around your everyday life beating yourself up is no use to anyone. To you, your kids and to other people because as I've said, we'll all obviously then judge other people more too. So although it's a really simple one, I think when you bring it into the everyday life of a parent, it is a minefield, but I think it's worth us always coming back to that sentiment, just stop judging yourself. It's hard but basic. It is hard but basic and I think we start realizing how often we do that. It's shaming, isn't it? Is that beating yourself up? Where's the margin for humanness? Like where if we set the bar so much so that we beat ourselves up for, I don't know

forgetting something, getting it wrong, not responding. Just not accepting that actually we're a mixture of emotions all the time and experiences all the time and resources all the time that are always changing. Therefore, we cannot ever be the same from day to day. We were always, we're human. And it's got worse though. It's got worse for, I think, several reasons. For our generation, it's particularly bad.

And the judgment we have on ourselves is particularly nasty. Because first of all, parenting is a very different. set up to how it was for our parents. You know, I don't remember my parents really like playing games with me or playing with my barbies with me or whatever I was playing with. I would go up to my room and play on my own or I would do art on my own or I would go and ride my bike on the street because my parents were both really busy. My mom had like three jobs at any one time. She didn't have time to be playing with me. And that was normal in the 80s. You just made your own fun. You used your imagination. There's so much pressure these days on like playing with your

doing arts and cross playing with your kids like taking them to all the after school clubs and making sure they're you know stimulated in all these different ways we don't allow our kids to get bored and we feel nervous when they do get bored because the first thing they probably say is can I go on the iPad and you're like oh my God no how am I going to get you off the iPad we've got all this other shit like technology that we're having to deflect from this helicopter parenting where we're trying to like do everything with our kids and this didn't exist for our parents generation it just what the language wasn't there, it just wasn't the norm. And as well as that, we've got social media on top of things,

which we all know, the ubiquitous sort of nature of how social media works and how it makes us compare and despair. We know all of this, but we still do it. We still might scroll one day and see a kid eating some spinach and you think, what the hell is going on? Like, my kid is eating properly processed fish fingers. And I've actually put the telly on so they sit there and stop getting out of their chair. And you instantly

hate yourself because you've seen someone else's kid eating well. I mean, it's crazy. And our parents didn't have that. They didn't know what other kids ate how they were parented, what the style of parenting was. They didn't know. That's normal. What we're living through is not normal.

So we're having to combat a lot of crazy stuff. And our parents also, you know, had, there was an element of ignorance is bliss with a lot of stuff because they didn't know that certain processed foods, well, all processed foods were bad or that pesticides weren't great or that kids should drink a certain amount of water. You know, I don't remember my parents ever going, oh, you should drink a glass of water because they don't drink water now still. They'd live off tea. So these things weren't in the vernacular and they weren't the norm. So the pressures were less. The pressures, you know, was certainly worse in other ways. My mum, as I said, had three

jobs at any one time. My dad was working as a sign writer and it was hard graft constantly to make sure that I could go to my dance class at the weekend or my brother could be part of the football team or whatever it might be. And I know those pressures still exist for lots and lots of people out there. But I think the mental and the emotional pressures on parents today are hardcore and we don't know how to combat them we don't know how to negate them

we're just sort of going ah like every day I don't know how to do how to cope and there aren't any answers yet because certainly with social media the tech companies

aren't looking at ways to help parents especially with all of this stuff if anything they're making it harder so we've got a lot on our place so we don't need to judge ourselves on top of all that. No. So we finish off with a few quick fire questions. So what is a motherhood high for you? A motherhood high for me is laughter. There is nothing better than when

me, my husband, and actually all four of the kids, if we're all together, are howling with laughter. I am euphoric. I love it. So for me, it's laughter. And we had a evening of that the other day where we were just like, it was stupid. Seeing how long we could stand the kids running their finger along the souls of our feet and they were cracking out of laughter. We were cracking up and it was just like simple joy. It was so funny and we were all in the sort of a bit of a chilled out mood where we could just laugh and not worry like, oh my God, it's nine o'clock and the kids aren't asleep yet. We were just messing about. Laughter for me is always a parenting high. I love that. It's really bonding, isn't it? You just are yourself. You are

your unabandoned self. And what's a motherhood low? When I turn into a child, which I do quite often, and I have a tantrum, and I don't act in the way that I should. It's a given that my kids are going to do that. They're young. But I don't like it when I match their mood and the way they're expressing it. That for me feels like a real low and I've had loads of them. Yeah, I hear you on that. I do. I hear you on that. And I think the thing is then, isn't it, to see, to view that with acceptance and compassion because then we're not stuck in shame and we're more likely to then see the need or the unmet feeling or whatever it is going on so that we can meet it rather than I'm going to throw another one in which is completely different. I don't even know if it matches the

question, but the parents' WhatsApp group, I find it's so stressful. I'm just fine. It's so stressful. And I'm always behind and I can't catch up on it and I don't understand a lot of it. And I go, I don't know what day you're meant to do that thing. Can you just say it again just for me? And I'm just like the idiot that never gets it. I just feel overwhelmed by the parents' WhatsApp group. There are quite a few that I haven't joined. Yeah, because there's quite a few of them around here. And then they all, and then you get added because there's an event or a birthday party.

and suddenly you're in another one. It's really full on. This is specifically the class what I'm talking about, which is very handy and there's some brilliant class reps that are doing a hell of a lot of work, but I just can't keep on top of it.

It's when you go for a wee and suddenly there are 40 WhatsApps. Oh, I can't. I can't bear it. Yeah. I'm with you. And what's one thing that makes you feel good? You've said a couple already, haven't you?

But what makes you feel good? I guess, when you see that change is possible. Sometimes with parenting, I think you can feel very stuck. Like this problem, this phase is going to be around forever. Like at the moment, Honey won't go to sleep unless I hold her hand. This is a really new thing. Before I would go night and I would just sit in the next room and just do emails until they stop shouting mum. But now it's gone, like we've regressed and I'm like, oh no, I'm beating myself up again. I'm doing all the things I've just explained we shouldn't do, and judging myself, I think the things, the moments where I feel really good

is where I see that change is possible and there's a new phase and it's because of new growth and new learnings and new processing for the kids. And those moments are really good sort of humbling reminders that everything is always changing. It gives you faith to like ride the wave rather than just trying. Yeah. And not beat yourself up again. Oh, those are good moments, aren't they? And finally, how would you describe motherhood in three words? It's almost impossible. I mean, chaos is the first word that springs to mind. Spontaneous, because there's just no point in planning anything a lot of the time

because it all goes out the window. And let's just say beautiful, because it rounds it off nicely, and you've got all corners covered with it being hard and bonkers, but also beautiful. Because so much of it is, and you have to remember that there are those beautiful. moments in the times where it is just impossible because it does feel impossible at times. So I think chaotic, spontaneous and beautiful feel full-bodied. I love that. Thank you. I learnt a great new word today. Brutiful. Brutiful. Brutiful. I'm beautiful. Fabulous. I really like that. I'm taking that one. That's going inside somewhere.

You don't even have to have three words. You can just use one. Perfect. Brutiful. That was Zoe. Brutiful. I love that. Oh, that's so good. So she's put a lot more constructive thought into this. I should not have wanted it so much. It's all that, isn't it?

It's a spontaneous, chaotic. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. I think so. That's my experience anyway. Well, thank you so much. Thank you.

It's so lovely to talk to you. 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 anam arthur you might like to check out my two books called mind over mother and know your worth i'm also the founder of the mothermind 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 Thank you.