Latest / Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast / Paratrooper's Wife Opens Up About Losing Her Husband In The Falklands War

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Paratrooper's Wife Opens Up About Losing Her Husband In The Falklands War · Chris Thrall's Bought the T-Shirt Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The weather tomorrow. Expect a biting cold front. Hmmm, how naughty.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I wonder what I'll be wearing or taking off. The
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: that'll soak you to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: rise slowly but surely, reaching their peak in the afternoon.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Not in the mood for miserable weather, fly cheaply to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Turkey with sun Express sun Express, non stop Sunshine.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Hello friends, I'm your host, christrou I'm a former Romeries commando.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I've adventured for better and sometimes worse, across eighty countries
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: on all seven continents. Welcome to the Port the t
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Shirt Podcast.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: Jay, how are you?
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  Speaker 4: I'm good? Thanks? How are you? Chris?
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: I'm absolutely wonderful. I normally say a bit before I
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: play my intro about the guests that we're going to
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: meet today. But you've got such a colorful, wide ranging, happy,
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: and yet at times extremely sad, comprehensive biography that I
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: didn't want to get it wrong. So Jane massive, Welcome
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: to the podcast.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
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  Speaker 3: Chris, Yes, we start again. Our paths crossed on LinkedIn
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  Speaker 3: and I noticed that you'd written a book called The
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Falkland's Fallen and we've done a lot of Falkland's podcasts.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: The one thing I'll take away from it all is
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: just a sadness and trauma that just seems to go
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: on for a lot of the you know, the veterans
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: and the families, friends concerned. So that was what piqued
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: my interest. And then when I read your biography Champion Bodybuilder.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I hate to use the word survivor, it sounds really
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  Speaker 3: crappy in American, but you know, an abuse survivor, a
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  Speaker 3: life survivor, speaker, obviously author, and I thought, yeah, let's
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  Speaker 3: let's let's have a chat. One thing I will final
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: thing I say is our friends at home. No, I'm
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: climbing Mount Everest in April, and my mission, Jay is
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: to draw attention to the link between undiagnosed or unhealed
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  Speaker 3: childhood trauma aka complex PTSD or what later in life
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  Speaker 3: becomes complex PTSD and this alarming rate of suicide we
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: have in the veterans community. No one is talking about
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: those two things. I would say it's almost the elephant
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: in the room, but it's not even in the room.
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  Speaker 3: So anything that we've got to say on that subject
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  Speaker 3: I think will be of incredible value to anybody, anybody
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: watching or listening. So yes, over to you. I don't
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  Speaker 3: know where do you want to start the beginning.
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  Speaker 4: We can go back to my childhood and the reason
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: the things went in the direction that they did for me.
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  Speaker 4: But one thing that I would say in response to
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  Speaker 4: what you've just said, and it was one of my
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  Speaker 4: attractions to coming on your podcast. You know, I'm in
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  Speaker 4: a very fortunate position now in the sense that I'm
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  Speaker 4: so whole within myself, and I've done so much therapy
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  Speaker 4: and work on myself. I very much choose what I
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: do and don't do these days. So I might get
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: asked to do a talk, I might turn it down,
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: you know, I might get asked to go on a
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  Speaker 4: podcast and I might think it's it's just not a
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  Speaker 4: good fit. But having seen a couple of your interviews
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  Speaker 4: and seeing the way you are as a person.
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  Speaker 5: I thought, yeah, I can really have an.
• 4:00
  Speaker 4: Interesting conversation with this man because he gets so much
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  Speaker 4: of it.
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  Speaker 5: So let's start with complex PTSD.
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  Speaker 4: And for those people who don't understand it, I'm talking
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  Speaker 4: with my therapist head now, because you know, along the
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  Speaker 4: way I became.
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  Speaker 5: A qualified therapist.
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  Speaker 4: Is that complex PTSD tends to occur with people who've
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: had ongoing abuse over a long period of time, usually
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: in situations, most often in situations such as childhood where
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  Speaker 4: they couldn't get away, so there's no escape. So when
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  Speaker 4: we look at the way the sympathetic nervous system works,
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  Speaker 4: and we've got fight, flight, freeze or FAM you don't
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  Speaker 4: have the option if you're a child who's being abused
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  Speaker 4: in your own home to flee. Where are you going
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  Speaker 4: to go? And I was born in the nineteen fifties,
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  Speaker 4: so back in those days, people didn't interfere. Even if
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  Speaker 4: they knew that suffer was going on, people didn't interfere.
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  Speaker 4: You know. It's not like these days where you can
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  Speaker 4: be twelve that had divorced my parents because that's become popular.
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  Speaker 4: It was a whole different world. So if you're in
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  Speaker 4: a childhood situation where you have abuse going on and
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  Speaker 4: it's ongoing over a period of years, that is going
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  Speaker 4: to be your pre cursor to get in complex PTSD.
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  Speaker 4: Now that said, I wasn't actually diagnosed we see PTSD
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  Speaker 4: until twenty and nineteen. Officially. I remember working for the NHS.
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  Speaker 4: I used to be a counselor at a hospital in
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  Speaker 4: palliative care. And I remember doing a PTSD workshop thirty
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  Speaker 4: whatever years ago when I first moved to London, and
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  Speaker 4: I remember thinking, I tick every single box.
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  Speaker 5: Did I do anything about it?
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  Speaker 4: No? I knew. I knew for years and years and
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  Speaker 4: years that I had it. There was just other things
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: that were going on that meant it was important for
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: me in twenty nineteen to actually get an official diagnosis.
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  Speaker 4: I did therapy, and I continue to do therapy along
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: the way. But I think we have a society that
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  Speaker 4: is rapidly changing. Thank goodness, it's rapidly changing. Now we
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: are getting to a point where you and I can
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  Speaker 4: have this conversation today and talk about some pretty raw things.
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  Speaker 5: And elephants in rooms, because you know, the first.
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  Speaker 4: Of all, you have to acknowledge there is an elephant
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  Speaker 4: in the room before you can actually do anything about it.
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  Speaker 4: But for so many years, and for such a long time,
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  Speaker 4: and even now, there is still a resistance to when
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  Speaker 4: you actually say there's an elephant in the room, somebody saying, oh, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: I see it too, And there's been such a stigma
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  Speaker 4: for such a long time. It's I think rife in
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  Speaker 4: the veteran community, because if you start exhibiting symptoms and
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  Speaker 4: you start to go and try and get help while
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  Speaker 4: you're still serving, you're probably not going to be serving
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  Speaker 4: very long. And so often it gets suppressed. It may
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  Speaker 4: be coming out soide ways in symptom control, like going
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  Speaker 4: down the pub and getting slaughtered and all those kind
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  Speaker 4: of coping mechanisms that we use, you know typically, and
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  Speaker 4: you're actually you know, certainly in my husband's day, you
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  Speaker 4: were taught to use. So like I said, are go
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  Speaker 4: and get slaughtered. You know, there wasn't the debriefing emotionally,
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  Speaker 4: certainly with any of these situations.
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  Speaker 5: It was just get on with a job.
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  Speaker 4: And so there is and has been such a massive
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  Speaker 4: stigma around having a mental illness because if it's perceived
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  Speaker 4: in that way instead of and this is.
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  Speaker 5: The thing with PTSD.
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  Speaker 4: PTSD is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. That's
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  Speaker 4: what it is. If you are having things that are
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  Speaker 4: traumatic happening to you or around you, it's a normal
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  Speaker 4: response to that. It's not normal for you to be
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  Speaker 4: in a home as a child where you're not nurtured
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  Speaker 4: and people are amusing you.
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  Speaker 5: And what's worse and what happened in my situation.
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  Speaker 4: They're pretending that they're not and is he They're actually
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  Speaker 4: not just saying there's no elephant in the room. They're
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: actually making you believe there's something seriously wrong with you
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  Speaker 4: that you even think you can see one. And that's
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  Speaker 4: where the archetype of the scapegoat forms. So yeah, I
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  Speaker 4: think we have to get really real about if we
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  Speaker 4: want to drop the veteran of suicide rate and a
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  Speaker 4: suicide rate in the population in general, we need to
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  Speaker 4: have start having these conversations.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, I think it's very hard for me to
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  Speaker 3: get my head around because I think with the advent
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: of writing my first memoir, I was just very you know, obviously,
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: if you're writing a book about crystal meth addiction and
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: being down and out in Hong Kong, you've got to
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: be pretty open, honest, graphic, and candid and yeah, and
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  Speaker 3: also Jay is and this is this must be hard
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  Speaker 3: for some people to grasp. But for me, I I
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  Speaker 3: just used it as my superpower. Albeit I've gone around
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: the houses and yeah, we're going to come on and
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: talk about bodybuilding. We're going to come on and hopefully
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  Speaker 3: talk about addiction. We're going to come on and talk
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: about just kicking the ass out of things and taking
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  Speaker 3: it to the extreme.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 3: I've done all of that. I've had so many near
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: death experiences. It's it's you know, and I feel so
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  Speaker 3: fortunate because it's brought me the best life ever with
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  Speaker 3: a family that I'm just so honored to have, and
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  Speaker 3: I can you know, and also it brought me into
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: the light. I can never be a lone wolf, you know,
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  Speaker 3: a lone operator again out lonely, cold, miserable, tired, worried,
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  Speaker 3: you know, nervous. That's that's a past life for me now.
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  Speaker 3: And so you know, there's a lot that needs to
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  Speaker 3: be exposed here, isn't there? You know? How can how
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  Speaker 3: can I say that chronic addiction is the best thing
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  Speaker 3: that ever happened to me?
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  Speaker 4: And I think you can say that because actually, you know,
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  Speaker 4: it's that thing. I personally haven't done the twelve set program,
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  Speaker 4: but I have had a lot of clients historically that were.
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  Speaker 5: Addicts, and so I know a lot about it.
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  Speaker 4: And it's that thing, isn't it. How can you possibly
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  Speaker 4: start coming back up in any kind of healthy way
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  Speaker 4: if you don't hit the floor you know, they would
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  Speaker 4: call it rock bottom, and everybody's rock bottom is different.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I should just I just want to acknowledge it,
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  Speaker 3: Jay that obviously, when someone dies through addiction, that's that's
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  Speaker 3: it's tragic, it's awful. However, statistically, despite what we might
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  Speaker 3: see think from the train spot in movies and stuff,
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  Speaker 3: it is, you know, addiction tends to be a phase
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  Speaker 3: that many people go through, and statistically few few people
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  Speaker 3: actually do die from it. In fact, no one actually
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  Speaker 3: dies from it unless it's long long term. It's generally
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  Speaker 3: an accident like an overdose, that we tend we tend
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  Speaker 3: to lose people. But I just wanted to say that
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  Speaker 3: because it sounds a bit gloating me saying it's the
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  Speaker 3: best experience of my life when I'm well aware, like
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: I had a letter last week from a father who
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: lost his son to to to heroin and wrote me
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: a very lovely letter to thank me for what I'm
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: doing with the Everest Climb. But yes, you just nailed it, Jay,
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  Speaker 3: when you said, then how else do we grow if
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: we have everything handed to us on a plate and
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: life is just so eat? How can you develop empathy?
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: How can you know what it's like to be starving.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: How can you know what it's like to be an
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  Speaker 3: abused spouse if if you've never had any hardship in
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  Speaker 3: your life. So yes, And one of.
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  Speaker 4: The things you know, we are experiential humors, are experiential beings.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: And one of the things that taught me so much
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: was as part of my job when I worked for
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: the NHS, we did group therapy sessions and these were
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: so my patients were terminally ill.
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: You had to be terminal ill to see me.
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  Speaker 4: But then we did other, you know, courses for healthcare workers,
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  Speaker 4: and then we used to do a group therapy session
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  Speaker 4: for those.
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  Speaker 5: Who were bereaveed.
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  Speaker 4: And and I know, these are the kind of things
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  Speaker 4: that you never forget, however many years go by because
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  Speaker 4: they are so profound. And there were two two of
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  Speaker 4: us that facilitated this group. And one day my colleague
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  Speaker 4: went out of the room to go and get some
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  Speaker 4: photocopying done it and immediately she left the room, one
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: of the guys said, can we ask you a personal question?
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: And I said, well you can ask. I won't guarantee
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  Speaker 4: I'm going to answer, but far away, you know, So
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: he said, are you and one of us so typical therapist.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: I'm like, well, you know, can you tell me what
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  Speaker 4: do you mean by that? He said, if you love somebody,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: And I said, well, that's an easy question to answer. Yes,
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  Speaker 4: I have. My husband died. And the whole room erupted.
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  Speaker 4: Every single participant of that group all erupted at the
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: same time. We knew, we knew. And I said, well,
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: I'm curious, okay, so what made you know? And his
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: response was, you know, we don't doubt that your your
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: colleague's going and what she does and that she's qualified
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: and blah blah blah.
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  Speaker 5: But there's just something very different about.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: The way you say things. When you say something into
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: the group, you say it like you know it, like
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  Speaker 4: you've lived it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's the difference between no SYS and faith, isn't it.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: Faith is just blind hope that maybe something exists, and
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: no SIS is knowing that when something exists. Yeah, I'm
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: so set tempted to jump forward you just to ask
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: about your late husband, and because obviously it ties in
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: with the Falklands, But I don't want to sort of
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: jump forward from your stories. So at what So I
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: think everybody out there can envisage what well, maybe they can't.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: But what a trauma traumatizing childhood is. So it's either abuse,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: isn't it physical or mental abuse? Or it could be neglect,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: and it could be a combination.
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  Speaker 4: Of course, if you look at the what we call
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: the adverse childhood experiences, and those are the things that
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: you know, we're using nice guidelines to see if somebody
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: did you know what, you know, what kind of traumas
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: they may have had in childhood.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: I take pretty much every box.
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: So and it's interesting actually how I've been watching a
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: lot of podcasts lately for different reasons. One, I love
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: podcasts anyway, cause I think you never get to a
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: point where you know it all, not not on this earthplane.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: You know that there's always something to learn in whatever way.
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: And so there's much to be learnt by listening to
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: other people's stories and watching other people interview and all
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: the kind of things that go with that. But as
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: a child, there was something in my childhood that that's
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: actually very telling with childhood trauma, and that is that
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: I can only recall probably about three things prior to
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: the age of seven. And when somebody's had a seriously
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: traumatic childhood, that's actually quite common. So the lady that
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: I used to call my adopted mum. For example, she
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: could actually remember being a baby in a prom Now
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: that in itself is quite unusual. And when I say
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: a baby in a pram, and I was back in
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: the days of the perambulators, and they used to call them,
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: you know, where you could be one year old and
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: still sat up in a pram. They didn't do the
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: bush share things about it. But she had a lot
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: of childhood memories and I just have literally three that
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: I can recall up until the age of seven.
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  Speaker 5: And so some of the things that went on in
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: that time.
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: I'm a privy too, because I've been told, for example,
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: one of them was my and this is quite this
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: is again highly unusual. And I know this because my
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: mother told me from the day I was born. My
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: mother never bathed me, not once. She never ever gave
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: me a bath. She wouldn't pick me up, she wouldn't
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: hold me. She completely rejected me. And people would say
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: to me, if I say that to them, well who
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: did it? Then you kind of just gone dirty. And
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: as my dad used to do it when you've got
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: her for work. So I have no doubt that that
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: was the way it was because she wouldn't really have
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: any reason to tell me something that's pretty horrible, you know,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: never bathing or holding your own child unless it were true.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Then again, as I'm told, but I had no recollection
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: of it. My mother had a complete breakdown and was hospitalized.
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: So there was a lot of fragmentation going on. And
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: I can talk about these things very calmly now because
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: I've gone through a path of discovery in forgiveness. And
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: when I researched my first book, I went back into
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: my family history and I wanted to find the answers
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: to quite a few things. And you can find cause
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: of death, for example, by getting a death certificate and
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: that kind of thing. And there was nothing but trauma
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: in my family for you know, I mean, my mother
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: was the way she was because of her own trauma.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: She didn't just wake up one day at whatever age
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: and decide to be a bad person or decide to
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: be an alcoholic. She was completely and utterly traumatized herself
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: by the things that have happened to her in childhood,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: some of which she shared with me, and then by
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: things that happened along the way. And so as a child,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: and I was led to believe that I had an
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: aunt that was Nobody spoke very nicely about her at all.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: You know, she was described by everybody as in a
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: way that I've been described over the years. And it's
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: one of my regrets in life actually that as an
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: adult before she died, I didn't go and find her
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: and sit down and talk to her. She can never
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: get that time back. But I discovered with through research
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: in my first book that my maiden aunt wasn't a
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: maiden aunt at all. She'd actually been married for two years.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: And then by getting access to the death certificate, I
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: discovered that what would have been my uncle killed himself
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: in a very violent way, and yet nobody ever talked.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: This is an example, Chris, of an elephant in the room.
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: The elephant that's there, nobody talks about it. That's just
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: one incident along the way of trauma. And there were
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: several things that happened in a very short space of time.
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: So I've long since made peace. I mean, my mom
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: has been dead for years now, and I wasn't in
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: touch with her when she died. But if I had
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: some time with her now, I could sit and say
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: to her, you know what this is all, okay, I get.
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: Why you were the way you were, and.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: That's healing, because until we work through stuff, we can't heal.
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: We just carry it forward. So as a child, this
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: really damaged woman. And I'm pretty sure now that I
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: understand my brain better that my mother had raging PTSD
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: from things that have happened in her life, undiagnosed, untreated,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: and all the rest of it. And she managed it
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: with pills and alcohol. And you know, it's one of
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: the reasons why I do talk about my story now,
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: because we understand a veteran PTSD exists, But who talks
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: about the civilians that have it? Who talks about the women?
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: And will come to that a bit later on about
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: when I researched my book and spoke to other families,
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: you know, about how much trauma there might be in
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: some of those histories, but in the civilians, they're just
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: not even looked at at all. And so as a child,
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: you know, I experienced serious neglect. I experienced severe emotional abuse,
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: sexual abuse from within my own family. To this day,
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: what's left of them absolutely categorically deny it happened. You know,
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: there were so many things and as I said to
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: a therapist along my heating journey. One day, you know,
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: I was prime candidate to be made the scapegoat. I'm
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: an EmPATH, I'm very aware, I'm very sensitive to my surroundings.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: So I was this little kid.
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: That was saying, well, there's an elephant in the room, and.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: I'd be ignored, and then I'd get a bit louder
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: and a bit louder, and eventually I would hear shsh,
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: and then I'm trying to say it again. And at
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: the point where I was being screened at saying there's
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: no elephant in this effing room, you're just dulally and
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: you're imagining it was at the point that my mind
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: was beginning to become quite fragmented, and you start thinking
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: that there's something really wrong with you, because if everybody
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: else can't see the elephant, maybe you are mad. Of
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: course I know it was.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: There's another elephant in the room, though, isn't there? Because
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: I saw somewhere in your biography Adhd mentioned and my
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: family is a standing joke in my family that everyone
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: thinks that I've got it, and I prefer to think
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: of it as Da Vinci personality. You know, so friends
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: at home ADHD is obviously a label that's quite stigmatizing.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: It's pretty superficial as well because it doesn't address whatsoever,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: although it may be in modern, more modern thinking it
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: has started to address it, but it seems overwhelmingly if
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: you have an extremely a damaging childhood that you grow
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: up with your brain due to the trauma behind it,
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: it works in a certain way and that's been labeled
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: a DHD. But they don't explain the childhood bit. They
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: just brand you with a label. And of course, so
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: you know, there's another elephant in the room, isn't there?
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: No one? No one sort of talk talks about. So
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: can you, Jay, can you tell me your experience of ADHD? What,
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: what do you think it is? How does it manifest
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: in you? What do other people say?
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I've been diagnosed with CPTSD, although, as
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: I said, not until twenty nineteen, although it was pretty
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: obvious that that was what was wrong. I haven't formerly.
• 22:37
  Speaker 5: Been diagnosed with ADHD.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't bother to go and get a diagnosis for
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: it because I'm sixty eight. Now what does it matter?
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: You know? Why do I need to know? How it
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: finally clicked into place with me, and I'm sure as
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: I can be that it's exactly what's going on is
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: and always was. Is that I watched the Ted Talk
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: about five years ago, so it's not that long ago
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: I sussed it out and I watched this Ted Talk
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: and this girl was talking about how lonely a life
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: it could be and how you know, she was eighteen
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: months old and she was talking, you know, full sentences. Well,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: my mother used to be very proud of the fact
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: that she could tell people that when I was two,
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: you could have a conversation with me and forget that
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: I was an adult. And then this girl was saying
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: about how it presents very differently in women. You know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: so boys get naughty and they get noticed more. But
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: because of the way women are and the way we
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: are in society, you know, we were much better at
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: fawning and masking. Well that's even better if you're in
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: a dysfunctional family, because you get very good at fawning.
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: But that it tends to present itself around puberty.
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: And how you know, your schoolwork and things will just
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: take a nose life, you know, when you sudden need
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: find that your concentration is, you know, and that will
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: be partly to do with hormoneer's changing at that time.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: And she started talking about all these different things and
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: I thought, my gosh, I took every single box for that.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: Now it all makes sense. And the interesting thing is.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: As a child, Jay, Sorry, can you outline what these
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: symptoms or manifestations are.
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: Well, I just I've just mentioned two of them, and
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: one of them is, you know you're able to your
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: linguistic skills are very good at a very young age, right, yeah,
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: so you will be you know, whereas language in children
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: does vary. You know, younger siblings tend to come on
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: a little bit if they've got someone to talk to
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: than elder children.
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: You know, so it varies.
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: And I described about how it. You know, boys become
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: very hyperactive and quite naughty, and so it's a lot
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: easier to see in a boy than it is in
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: a girl, and girls tend to be a little bit
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: more in hi bitted. You know. Society is changing, but
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: we're still in that place where they are. But it
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: will be around puberty that it will start showing up
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: in your schoolwork in other ways. But one of the
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: things that I've got a really good friend, and she
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: always says you know what, Jay, You're like Marmite. Just
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: like Marmite, people either like you or they don't. And
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: how I describe in this is another thing that there's
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: low inhibition when it comes to speaking. So, you know,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I would be that kid and grown up that people
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: would look at me because I say something, and I
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: realize now I'm older, that I would just be saying
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: what everybody's thinking. It's just that the inhibition is not
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: there with ADHD to do that. Yeah, so you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: you'll kind of come out with things. You know, if
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: you've got to miss the bus, for example, it'll come
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: out the way, you know, frustration. There's a lot of which,
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: again can coexist with addiction. There's a lot of of
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: you know, behavior there that you can be very uninhibited
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: with your behavior. So it's kind of it's like an
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: umbrella of things of the way you will present in
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: the world. But there's much less inhibition with people with ADHD.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: And I've learned and I think one of the good
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: things about getting older is my brain still works after
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: the most people's, but it's a little bit slower now,
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: so I can normally hold my tongue when I'm thinking something,
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: you know, rather than finding that I've said it as
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: I thought it, so you know, many different ways it
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: can present itself. I think, you know what is scary
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: is that as a child, I was literally top of
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: the class in primary school. I came third in the
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: county in the eleven plus and then suddenly my school
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: work starts to fail miserably at around age thirteen. And
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: then we move so I went to a different school
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: and nobody noticed or cared.
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: I mean, that's the indicative.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: That's something very there's something very wrong going on in
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: the background. Whatever that's something is nobody looked at it.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: Yes, well, nothing's really looked at, is it. I heard
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: they got a point My friend is a headmistress in
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: Australia and she said they've got a point system now
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: that they assigned to children. And I guess they use
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: a multi agency approach where they look at a pupil.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: They look at the factors in their background, like you know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: absent father or not, parental separation, divorce, hints at you know,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: contact with social work, which obviously is most likely some
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: form of neglect or abuse, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: and they build up this picture of a child based
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: on this system, and if they are likely to face
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: addiction down the line, which as we know, is self medicating,
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: You're you're literally taking your your dedicating yourself for trauma
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: that society doesn't understand and doctors don't understand, and it
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: can go, you know, as in our cases it's gone.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: No one's ever ever labeled, diagnosed me anything. Jay, you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: I've worked it all out for myself, and like yourself,
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: I've never been to any self help groups or churches
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: or anything like that. I'm just too independent for that.
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: And I think it's important that I do put in there.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: And I have said it earlier that you know, to
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: become a therapist, you have to do work on yourself.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: So although I didn't do group work in that sense,
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: you know, doing a program or anything, I've done years
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: and years and years of therapy.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: And what I.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: Would definitely say is I've had some really really good therapists.
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: I've also had some really really bad ones. And I
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: think for me, well, I'm going to change my language
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: with that. I'm not going to say I think I'm
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: going to say I know, because it's a bit like
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: if you're a doctor and you go and see another
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: doctri and you have medical knowledge, you can very quickly
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: see whether the other doctor is any good at what
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: they do or not. I really feel sad, and I
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: worry about so many people out there that may end
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: up with quite bad therapists who are experiencing transferms from
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: projection in their sessions and don't even realize it, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: they are being manipulated and they're not getting the best.
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: Things are changing dramatically now, for sure. But I give
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: you an example. Okay, So if I can an addiction
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: can show up in many different ways. Let's be clear,
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: it's not just all about drink and drugs. Yeah, So
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: eating disorders, which is something I did a completely separate
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: qualification in, and I think we've got we've got an
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: absolute pandemic of problems with eat, with eating now in
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: the Western world that people aren't looking.
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: At because that's another coping mechanism.
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: If I don't want to feel, I can squash it
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: down with food. It's just another symptom of the same problem.
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: So when I was sixteen years old, I became anorexic.
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: And you know, living in a family where.
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: They're pretending there's no elephant in the room.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: It got to a point where I was so scalatal.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: I weighed six stone, which I'm not exactly big now,
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: you know, but it's almost three stone lighter than I
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: am today. And so my family was one that as
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: long as nobody in the outside world could notice it,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: we can pretend it's not going on. But of course
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: you can't hide escalats or child unless they're locked in
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: the house and never go out. So my mother marched
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: me to the doctor one day and she said, you
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: need to sort this child out. She's either anemic or lazy.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: She's got no energy. So the elephant in the room
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: was I had anorexia, and my mother's telling the doctor
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: that I'm either anemic or lazy. I didn't even know.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: Excuse me, I didn't even know until I looked at
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: my own medical records. I wasn't told no help was
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: sought because you see, if, as it would be today,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: there would be an automatic referral to psychological services. That
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: didn't happen by when I was sixteen, So I didn't
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: actually know I'd been diagnosed with anorexia until I was
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: in my early forties and I had to get my
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: medical records for something else, and I read it in
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: black and white. It's what my gosh, And there he
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: said in black and white when at six stone blood
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: pressure ninety over sixties. So it was amazing. I was
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: even stood up, let alone, you know, and literally no
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: help was sought. I wasn't even told. And then I'm
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: going to be kind of going back and forth a
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: little bit wizz because it then manifested after Gary was killed,
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: and I actually paid privately to go and see a psychiatrist.
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: And I will give you an example of a very
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: bad therapist here before, by the way.
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: I'd even started studying psychology.
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: This was literally, you know, the year after Gary died,
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: and I said to this doctor, I've got a problem.
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: Whenever severe trauma hits, I've become anorexic. And I want
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: to do some work on this because I don't want
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: to spend the I want to find better ways to cope.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: I don't want to spend the rest of my life
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: like this. His response was, when you were very young
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: and very pretty, and I think the best thing you
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: could do is go and get married again and write
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: me a prescription for antidepressants. Now, all these years later,
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: having studied as much as I have and understanding psychology
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: the way I do now. I questioned in my mind,
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: what about me was making him so uncomfortable that he
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: couldn't even hear me. But the results of that consultation
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: were catastrophic because I was a child who had been
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: led to believe, as the family escapegoat, that I was
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: the problem. I've gone to see a doctor to try
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: and get help and say, look, I recognize I've got
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: a pattern here, and I've got a problem here. Can
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: you help me do something about it? And he then
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: tells me we're very young and very pretty, and the
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: best thing you do is going, you know, the curio
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: is going and get married again. So it then gives
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: me the message you're the problem here again. It just
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: compounds the thing that you've already grown up with. Bear
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: in mind, you're nough to seven years are your hard drive?
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: You know that that's when your programming happens. So I've
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: already got a problem. I can't remember those years, and
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: you can't change what you don't acknowledge, So how can
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: you possibly find what you can't remember?
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: It's already complicated.
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: And then I've got a doctor, and back in those days,
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: you know, I, like many people, thought doctors were God.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: They knew and if they said it must be, so
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: I thought, oh, okay, that's the answer. Then I just
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: need to go and find myself a new partner and
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: did you Yeah? And I found And again this is
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: where the unconscious comes in, because instead of doing the
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: work that I've now done, that if I'd done it
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: forty years ago would have been so much more beneficial.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: Which is when I was asking for direct me to help.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: You know, I unconsciously attracted another soldier and I've written
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: about some of it in my book, But all I
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: need to say here is that prior to being with
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: that guy, I used to actually be very judgmental about,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: you know, people like you remember Peter Sutcliffe, the Orchhire Ripper.
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: Yes, And I used to.
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: Alwa, say, how can people be with somebody like that
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: and not know until I had that relationship, and bit
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: by bit by bit I discovered this person was completely
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: beating a double life. He was serving in the military
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: when I met him, but he got out and like
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: many people that served in the military, he also had
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: a traumatic childhood.
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: He fell apart.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: And all I need to say about what happened there
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: is that I had everybody from the bailiffs to the
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: fraud squad at my door after we broke up. There
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: was a lot of violence in the relationship. They were
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: stalking when there were no stalking law. I couldn't do
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: anything about anything because he was friends with half the
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: local coppers and I had to, literally, when my life
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: was under threat, disappeared and move to London because I
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: had attracted my trauma just remanifested it somewhere else.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: So what was your turning point or your epiphanal moment
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: if there was one, or some guests just say to
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: me now, Chris, I just it's been a gradual process
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: to get to where I am where I am not
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: I had a few epiphanal moment. I mean, just to
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: give people an idea forgiving my parents was just such
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: an easy one to do, and such an obvious one.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Was hang on, if I need to understand myself, which
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I do because I'm killing myself pretty quickly here, I
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: need to understand them instead of just seeing them as
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: an objective blame. What was their childhoods like? What were
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: their parents like? To Oh my god, they were in
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: a very weird generation. God, that's a whole generation about
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: behind what goes on behind closed doors children, but should
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: be seen and not heard. It's better to be a
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: you know, a solicitor than a refuse collector. You know,
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: all this weirdly perverted way of thinking that they had,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: and that was put onto and then post war, that
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: in itself has you know, implicated. So I actually ended
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: up feeling really really sorry for them, and that was it.
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: That was easy to put that one to bed, to
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: allow me to sort of move on. And then later
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: I genuinely had that epiphanal, see the like moment where
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: suddenly everything fell into place. What the hell am I
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: doing to myself? You're actually a nice guy, Chris, stop it.
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: You know, you don't need to be doing you know,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: you don't need to be taking all these drugs and
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: living in a hot just just just get it back, so,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: you know, just just look after yourself and get it
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: all back. And that's you know, that that was for me.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: But like I say, some people say now, because I've
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: never had that, I just I just sort of worked
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: at it and here I am. Here I am today.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: I think looking back on my life now, and I'm
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: probably the strongest I've ever been and never thought I mean,
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: when I was diagnosed with CPTSD in twenty nineteen, the
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: doctor who diagnosed me very kindly said to me, and
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: I still get emotional when I think of this, he said,
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: I don't think you're coming back from it this time,
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: and that was really hard to hear. And for this
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: time was a medical negligence. And I've had a fewer
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: harm moments, and I've done a lot of therapy, as
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: I said, over the years, but that medical negligence was
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: for sure my complete turning point because in different guises,
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: everybody that failed to diagnose me and actually nearly killed
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: me because of it.
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: And I'm not being dramatic when.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: I say that, how how I'm still here is just
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: it wasn't my time, because people with the condition I
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: had have died in less time than I was diagnosed
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: and finally got surgery. And you know, from the doctor
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: who failed to diagnose me, who was incredibly charming but
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: actually you know, didn't wasn't even looking for what the
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: problem was, which is quite worrying in itself to all
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: of it too. And I went up against you know,
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: as alyticant in person I went up against the NHS
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: because initially the solicitors were dealing with it, but the
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: report didn't go in our favors. So then it's what
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: do we do. So you're already on the back foot
• 38:45
  Speaker 4: because you haven't you know, you're acting as your own lawyer,
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: and in that moment, you know the things, the mind games,
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: the things that I found out, the redacted notes, the
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: notes that didn't have a time on them, so you
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: couldn't tell when the things happened, you know, the tramadol
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: overdose that wasn't recorded, the incident report that they tried
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: to hide from me. You know, there were so many
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: things along the way, and the games that they played. Finally,
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: I began to get acceptance around the fact that I
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: wasn't the mad one in my family. I was the
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: one that was very clearly saying there's.
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: An elephant in the room, and nobody wanted to hear that.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: And so when this medical negligence happened, I had my
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: own GP ringing me up and saying I just had
• 39:33
  Speaker 4: the facts, I've just seen what's happened. Oh my gosh,
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: I'm so sorry. You know, this isn't like us. It's
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: such a small window when this happened to get treatment,
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: and she knows how long they left me, and you
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: know I shouldn't still be here. And I'm actually having
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: people saying to me, no, this is wrong, and yet
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: nobody wants to take responsibility. Well, hey, what does that mirror?
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: That mirrord my dysfunctional childhood completely? So you left me,
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: didn't diagnose me, nearly killed me, But now you want
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: to pretend that you didn't do it and it didn't happen.
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, And.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Jes sorry, is this a specific incident you're talking about?
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Are you talking about your complex trauma in general?
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: Well? No, no, no, this is I went into hospital
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: in excruciating pain, right, And it's like if I say
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: my pain was ten on morphine and trama doll, that
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: gives you an idea how persevere the pain was. And
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: I was left twenty four hours and I kept asking
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: for a doctor and.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: They kept saying, oh, that there's no doctor available.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: I mean, it was just horrender If you read the
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: medical notes, it was horrendous. And they left me for
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: twenty four hours while my balburst. Oh wow, hence that
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: was the reason I was in excruciating pain because something
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: serious was going on. Now, once your bowel vers, you
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: go to which they found me the following day with
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: two quadrant parents nitis. By the time they operated, I
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: had been left hours, you know. Emergency tis down took
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: like four hours. It was hours and hours and hours,
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: by which time you go rapidly in that situation to
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: sepsist organ failure and death. It's a very rapid progression.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: And when I was researching for the court case, I
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: found people who had died in much less time than
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: I got my surgery, and they were still making out
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: because nobody wants to take responsibility if you try and
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: claim anything, you know, unless it's what they call a
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: never event, you know, which is for example, if somebody
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: dies and it could have been avoided. But unless it's
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: a never event, the NHS will never stick their hands
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: up and say, yeah, that happened. But the mind games
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: they played against me, with me being my own lawyer,
• 41:51
  Speaker 4: was particularly cruel because I had PTSD. It's cruel enough
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: with people with somebody that doesn't have it, you know.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: So it was like something inside of me just came
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: up and thought, no, this has got to be the
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: last time this shit happens. I'm not being told that
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: this didn't happen, and I'm not being told that they're
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: not wrong. And it was a process that started really
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: freeing me from my family of dysfunction, because that's what
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: happens in life. Anything we don't process will rock up
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: somewhere else by way of a different relationship, different circumstance.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: You know that you've done the journey. And then a
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: year after this happened, and that was a six month
• 42:32
  Speaker 4: recovery because there was complications after the surgery and it
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: took a six month recovery. And then a year later
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: I had a stressed cardiomyopathy with a cardiac arrest. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: I would say, being fair, fifty percent of that was
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: what had happened to me the year before, and then
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: fifty other stuff. But interestingly, when I was having an
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: echo done the day after it happened, this young dog,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: I know, if kay, he was a lovely guy. He
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: said to me, he said, have you been particularly stressed lately?
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: And I'm joking. He said, oh, yeah, for about the
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: last fifty years. And he said, no, no, no, I mean lately,
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: have you been particular? I said, I'm not joking. I've
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: had relentless stress for the last fifty years. And then
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: he showed me my left ventricle on the you know,
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: the echo, told me it's called a stress cardio myopathy,
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: otherwise known as takasugu or broken heart syndrome. And of course,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: when they'd gone to do the antigram to try and
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: find out what was causing my symptoms, because the left
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: ventricle wasn't pumping properly the minute they'd given me a
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: sedative for the heart just spot. So you know, and
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: here's the thing. In that year when the medical negligence happened,
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: I couldn't have had the worst care. The hospital I
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: was in was under special measures. I couldn't have possibly
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: had worset care if they tried, unless they've left me
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: even longer than i'd actually died, you know, a year later,
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: the same hospital. I couldn't have had better care because
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: it's actually not as easy as it looks like on
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: casualty to restart your heart when it stopped, you know,
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: And there was none of this charging at one fifty
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: and all that malarkey. They whacked me straight in at
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: three sixty and then that didn't work. So there's more
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: drugs and they whacked me at three sixty again. In
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: between they're doing two minutes of chess compressions. Will you know,
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: there's no there's no beat there. And I've come around
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: to you know, to the sea of people, which was
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: the crash team, thinking what the hell's going on? And
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: this doctor's saying, oh, don't worry the morphine and kicking
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: in a minute, and I'm thinking, why do I need morphine?
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: And it came in for an angiogram, you know, So
• 44:39
  Speaker 6: that was But I'm going to say something now that
• 44:45
  Speaker 6: make may make me emotional, and if it does, then
• 44:48
  Speaker 6: that's fine because I was on the cardiac ward for
• 44:51
  Speaker 6: nine days.
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: Might have to edit that bit.
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: I was on the cardio act ward for nine days
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: and when I came home, I got into my own
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: bed that night, and my life was pretty shitty by them,
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: you know, with everything that happened. And you know that
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: it's all very well being the scapegoat, but to get well,
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: you can't be around people that are pretending these things
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: didn't happen.
• 45:15
  Speaker 5: You can't heal and mixed with people who were in
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: full denial.
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: It doesn't work. So you know, I lost all my
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: family along the way, and so it was a really
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: lonely journey, you know. So I was just surprised I
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: didn't get broken heart syndrome a long time before it happened.
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: But that night I got into bed and I cried
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: myself to sleep, and I just put it over to
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: a higher power and I said, either take me or
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: heal me, because I can't do this anymore. And the
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: most beautiful golden light came down from somewhere and bathed me,
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: just bathed me in this light. And so now it
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: wasn't just one harm moment.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: It's been a long, painful process at times, but there
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: have been some incredible things along the way. And one
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: of them. One of them was my husband, who wasn't perfect.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: Neither am I. You know that we were best friends
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: and his death absolutely crucified me. And the other was
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: finding bodybuilding because had I not been able to channel
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: so much of the rage that came from my childhood
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: into that, I probably would have ended up in jail,
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: I would imagine.
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: And I think there's a lot of people that can
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: relate to that.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: And can we talk a bit about what happened what
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: happened in the Falklands yeah. I mean we've had I've
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: had a few powers on to talk about Goose Green
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: and London and your husband was killed at Goose Green. Yeah,
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: how is I mean you're twenty four, which we both
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: now is we both know now is? Yeah? I look
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: at twenty four year I was a very young adults,
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: aren't they? The word child comes to mind without trying
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: to sound patronize him. But and you, what did you think?
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: When can we say his name or do you want
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: to keep that out? I just feel rude saying him.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: No, his name was Gary. I had a nickname to
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: him that I've never made public and probably never will.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: That was very intimate between us, but most of his
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: mates called him Gas.
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: I personally always called him Gary.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: We actually got married when we were nineteen.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: So if you're talking about twenty four being young, we've
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: been married five years. And so one of the things
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: that has been particularly difficult in me going through the
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: grief process, and indeed my second book, The Falkland's Widow
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: is actually my individual journey through grief, is that usually
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: when you have an unbivalent grief reaction, it is because
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: you have an ambivalence in your relationship with the person,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: and it took me a lot of years to work
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: out as part of this grief process, a place that
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: I was kind of quite stuck in because at my
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: very core, you know, I'm a reiki master, I was
• 48:12
  Speaker 4: a holistic therapist. You know, I'm very spiritual. And I
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: met and fell in love with this paratrooper who was
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: all about the parachute regiment and loved everything that he did.
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: One of the last things he said to me before
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: he left was, I've waited six years for this. It's
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: what he was trained to do. But when we got married,
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: and I think it was incredibly mature of us as
• 48:36
  Speaker 4: a nineteen year old, because you're still teenagers. You think
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: you've grown up, but you're not. We made a decision
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: at that time. I called myself agnostic because I've been
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: brought up Church of England, but I didn't quite relate
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: to all of that. I knew I believe in something,
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: wasn't sure what at that stage. He was a Methodist
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: and obviously I was a Pacifist and he was a soldier.
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: So at the ground old age of nineteen when we
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: got married, we made a pact that we would never
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: talk about religion. We would never talk about politics and
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: respect each other's differences. And that was fine in the marriage,
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: But after he went out and got himself killed in
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: a war, there was a part of my anger that
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: was very buried for a very long time because what
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: he was actually doing went against who I am as
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: a person. And it took me a long time to
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: pull those threads together and process that.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: When you say what he was doing, can you elaborate.
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: On being a soldier and going to war? You know,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: if you're a pacifist and you believe that things should
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: be resolved by understanding, you know, differences and talking things
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: through and whatever, and you don't, in your heart of hearts,
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: you don't aspire to war. It's hard to be with
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: somebody who loves every minute of the action.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah. This is the paradox, isn't it about? Yeah, this
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: is the paradox. And again, we live in an incredibly
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: deluded society. How many of those young men join up,
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: joined up to prove himself because of their neglect the
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: experience during childhood.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Well here's the thing, Chris, and I've heard you say
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: this before and I'm one hundred percent with you on it.
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: The reality of war to what you're trained for and
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: what you're led to believe it's going to be like
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: are two completely different things. And the reality for human
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: beings is that unless you're killing as we did back
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: in the day when we hunted to survive for food,
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: or you're a psychopath, it's not normal to kill. And
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: so the reality is that you get these young men
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: varying ages. Bear in mind that many of them were
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: only seventeenth solm Gary was an old crow, I'm sorry,
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: an old sweat. You know that he was leading the Crows.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: You know, he six years man service and he'd been
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: in junior leaders before that, so he was a very
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: experienced soldier. But the reality of going into and I've
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: spoken to so many veterans over the years, more with
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: PTSD than not. Many who won't get treatment for it,
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: that's their choice. But the reality of war to what
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: you think is going to be is something completely do
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: is then you've got to live with the things that happened,
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: the things that you did, the things that you watched
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: happen to people that you care about. And also what
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: because it's always about greed, it's always about land, or
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: it's about religion, or it's about it's about it's about
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: one set of people's egos wanting to take control of
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: another set. You know, it's always about a power struggle
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: of some kind. And here we are in twenty twenty five,
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: and as human beings, we're still doing the same stuff,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: aren't we.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Yes. Absolutely. What a lot of people don't know about
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: the Falklands is that there was a piece steel on
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: the table. It was broken by an obscure country. I
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: can't remember which one, but Margaret's Thatcher received it and
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: allegedly just said make that disappear, because they didn't want peace,
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: they wanted a war. And and then another factor is
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: that the Falkland Islands aren't the Falkland Islands, well as
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: in it's they're not you know, they're not owned by
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: the people that inhabit it. They're owned by the Falkland
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: Islands Company. So now now you know, this has got
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: brings to mind the East India Company and the you know,
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: the de Vere's South Africa Diamonds mining and and but
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: whatever you said, well, you know, whatever way people want
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: to look at it, it just is so bizarre, isn't it.
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: Sending teenage to kill other teenagers to make an ugly
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: kebar of elitists or want to be elitist merchant bankers
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: even richer and more powerful than they already are, and
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: talk about the elephant in the room. I mean, look
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: at Afghanistan that all the millions you want to do
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: is you know, if I say stroke each other, I
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: think people get the understand what I'm getting at, and
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: chuck medals on each other and all tell each other
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: what massive heroes they are.
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: And well, here's another problem with grief. Here's another problem
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: with grief. And I write about this in my book.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: Anger is one of the phases of grief. So you
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: have the denial, you have the bargaining, you have the depression,
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: you have the anger, and you have the acceptance. You
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: have these phases of grief, which don't all go in
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: chronological order. They are interactive, but they all have to
• 53:58
  Speaker 4: be processed if you're to come through the other side.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: How do you get angry, fully angry at somebody who's
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: a war hero and everybody else has got up on
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: a pedestal, But for sure you're angry because they were
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: your love, they were your husband, they were your best friend, they.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: Were the person that you could talk into the wee
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: hours and.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: Tell anything too, and they've gone out and got themselves
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: killed in a war. And that's what your mind is
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: telling you. And then you try and rationalize it by
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: the fact that you married them and you supported their
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: career and it was their job. But you still have
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: that anger because you've been abandoned. Death is the ultimate abandonment.
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: It's not like getting divorced, and you may or may
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: not be able to become friends later they're gone. Well,
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: not only are they gone, you know, having left my
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: life behind and deciding that I would support him in
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: his career. Because that's how it works. They get another posting,
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: you pack up and you move. You've got the next
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: twenty two years of your life mapped out, and suddenly
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: our life is gone and you're just chuck out back
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: into Sydney Street to yourself.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's an interesting it's interesting what happens to you
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: when you join the military. Because when I joined the Marines,
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: I can honestly tell you, Jay, I joined because it
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: offered me some hope for someone that didn't have very
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: much else on the horizon. I mean, I was literally
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: homeless at seventeen when I decided, or when my mate,
• 55:29
  Speaker 3: bet me I couldn't join, and that was it. I went, yes,
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I can. And when I read those recruitment brochures, I
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: was just thinking a of the excitement of it all
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: that I could get into this and be doing these
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: exciting things and B and B how manageable it was
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: for me because they weren't asking for supermen. They wanted
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: someone that could do fifty press ups. I could do
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: a hunt probably do one hundred. They wanted someone that
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: could do five pull ups. I could do thirty. You know,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: there was a I think with everyone, there's there's there's
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: a you know your you know the wall you've got
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: to climb quite literally in the Marines actually for some people,
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: but for me it was it was the speed marching.
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: I just really being quite a light person, I found
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: it quite hard. But what I'm getting to is, so
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: I just joined up as something to do, something that
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: was going to pay me money, something I could be
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: incredibly proud of. And you know, I say to this day,
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: getting into the Marines was my most proudest moment of
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: my life. And it you know, people say, oh, it's
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: when you have your first chart. It's like, no, it's not.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: I reving the first child, I was like, yeah, yeah, okay,
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: Bloodyll eighteen years of this now now I'm joking. But
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: but no, that moment when they said pat yourselves on
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: the box Fellers there was only three of us left
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: or something, You've all just joined the rural Marines, I
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, I was so so so proud.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: I can't ever put that in I can't explain that
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: to anything anyway. My point is by the time I
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: passed out of training, certainly by the time I was
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: serving in the Northern Ireland Conflict, all that had changed.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: I was there to kill. That was my job was
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: to kill. I hate to use the American expression, but
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: the bad guys. And of course, when you were in
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: Doctor Native nineteen year old, anyone's that's not white British
• 57:34
  Speaker 3: was the bad guy. And that's the power of the
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: programming that you go through. Yeah, that's it, and I'm
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: not here to justify it or condemn it, and just
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: here to talk about having honest talk about it.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: That was the thing Chris for Tupara, more than a
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: lot of other people that had served in the fore clones,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: was that in nineteen seventy nine, after we finished the
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: Berlin tour that we had out there. Two Power went
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: to bally Kindler for eighteen months and it was only
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: a month after they went over there that Warren Point happened.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: So there was an almost equal amount of people killed
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: in Warren Point from Two Power that were killed at
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: Goose Green. You know, it was very very close in numbers,
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: so it was a huge, heinous attack. And I think
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: the excitement of going to a proper war was that
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: in Ireland you couldn't you know, you've got a remote
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: control bomb somebody, you know, it just blows you up
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: when you're in a convoy. That's not the same as
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: knowing where the enemy is and you've got.
• 58:51
  Speaker 5: A fair fight on your hands.
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: In a war like the falk Clons, it's kill or
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: be killed, which is what war is about. When you're
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: fighting terrorism, you're fighting very often something unseen. So I
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: think after many you know, Gary in his lifetime had
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: done two tours. He was on a tour of Island.
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: I met him on his on his nineteenth birthday actually,
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: so he done two tours of Ireland. Many of the
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: guys that were a bit older had done more. And
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: so the troubles, as we call them. Why else they
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: called them that, I don't know.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: But.
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: It was a whole different thing to go into war.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: And I think that's why as we get older, and
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: certainly after you know, I'm not here anymore, the Falklands
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: will continue to be a war of great interest, you know,
• 59:42
  Speaker 4: as people die off from you know, other generations.
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: We haven't got many World War two people left now.
• 59:49
  Speaker 4: Because it was the last analog war that would ever
• 59:52
  Speaker 4: be fought. Things military things have changed now. You know,
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: you've got drones, you've got IEDs, you've you know, everything's
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: different with warfare now to the way it was in
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 4: that war.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: And I'm never called it.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: I mean, we can call it a war apparently now,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 4: but for many years, of course it was called a conflict.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, I never was there a reason why they
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: called it a conflict or not a war?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because war was never actually officially declared and it
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 4: was over in seventy four days.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: And if it was war, then we would have been
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: bombing mainland Argentina, I suppose, and vice versa, if they
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: had had the capability.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: Well that's that kind of is, like so many other things,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: a question mark, it's a bit, it's a bit like saying, well,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: how much could World War two been contained? You know,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 4: it just thought bigger and bigger as more countries were invaded,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: so you know it. But it was on paper just
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: to fight for the islands, and the British took them
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: really quickly. So you know, I must say I don't
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: read anything and everything about that war, or I know
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: a lot of things that are not in the public domain.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 5: I was very good friends.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: He's past now, but the communications officer at the time,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: and there's a lot about that war that hasn't come.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: Into the public domain yet.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: You know, there's the thirty year rule. When the thirty
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: year rule, it came to the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: some files were released two paraphiles. I think if I
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: might be wrong, but I think I'm correct in saying
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: they have been withheld until twenty fifty seven.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 5: In other words, when we're all dead. I mean I
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 5: certainly be one hundred, you know.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of things that I know that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: I don't need to say out loud that are not
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: public knowledge. You know, some people know, some people don't.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: It's like everything you know. We're back to the elephant
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: in the room, aren't we Chris. You know, it's like,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: how honest are you going to be? What the elephant
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: actually is there? And you know we can see him
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: and what's he actually really doing? So you know, it's
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: never as clear cut as it appears to be. And
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: for me personally, I'm very protective of my piece these
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: these days, I spend less and less time on social media. Now.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: I use it like you do, because you kind of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: need to do certain things for you know, what you're doing.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: I try on my Instagram to inspire women to exercise.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: You know, I've got an author page, but I've got
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: one that I do my fitness stuff on. But when
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: it comes to other platforms, which I won't even name them,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: you know, I just see so much virtue signaling and nonsense.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: It's just trauma.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: Oh you know. I came off for a while because
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: it's the anniversary of the Falkland starts on the second
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: of April. There is a person I won't mention his name,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: but many people are aware of him, and he he
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: wasn't in the war, and he's not English and he
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: has ingratiated, for want of a better word, himself into
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: that classibated to you know, group of people, and for
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: many years, one of the things that haunted me, and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: it's still one of the most awful things if it
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: ever comes on, is my husband and the service where
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 4: they were all buried in a mass grave after Goose Green.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 4: What is particularly and was hard for me is that
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 4: my promise to Gary was that if anything happened to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: him before me, I would have him cremated, because he
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: actually had a phobia about being buried in the ground.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: Neither of us thought of the logistics of the war
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: eight thousand miles away where it isn't even the crematorium.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: But I'm a person and as all good scapegoats, you know,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 4: I've got a high sense of justice and doing what's right.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: That's what makes us who we are. And it was
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: horrendous for me knowing that he was buried in the
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: ground the.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: One thing that I promised him would never happened.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: And that, for whatever reason, that service was televised. And
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: I think I'm writing saying that the Falcons was the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: first televised war anyway. So there was a lot of
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: things that came out on the media that you wouldn't
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: normally have seen prior to them. And this year this
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: person put on I don't even know where on Earth
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 4: they've got this extended video piece, and to me it
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: was the most disgusting thing to put online where they
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: were actually not just showing the service and the mass
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: grave for the service, but the camera was zooming in
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: on the actual tags on the body bags, and in
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: my head, I think, why why would you do that?
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: Because the BBC is the mouthpiece for the Satanists, that's
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: why they No, no, no, no.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: This wasn't the BBC doing it. This was this guy
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: who's ingratiating himself into the falcons on social media.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: Oh you get some right, Charlie's. I mean it's it's
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: the whole thing is it's such a clever scam that
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: they've played on society. They send you to their you know,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: quote unquote illegal conflicts for their war, their oil, their opium,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: you know, diamonds, whatever it might be, and then you know,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: they give you a good boy medal for doing it.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: And then later in life, rather than understand the game
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: and reject it because our children deserve better, that's a
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: true hero. No, they go into ego self, polish their
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: medals up and go out and pretend that you know,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 3: and it's it's you know, what do you say war
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: is an asshole? It's people are people are just quite
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: pathetic in a lot of ways. And I'm not picking
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: on any individual, it's no one.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: You've got somebody who wasn't in the war and has
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: nothing to do with it, who's trying to ingraciate themselves
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: into a great people and a group of traumatized people,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: because let's not pretend you know, there's so many veterans
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: out there that are still very traumatized. And then you're
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: putting footage like that online for family members to see,
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: and you have no respect of how much re traumasiization
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: that might cause. What is going on in your brain
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: and your mind that you think that's an okay thing
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: to do.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, During the Afghanistan at one point, some like I say, Charlie,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: decided to post a picture of an Afghani or an
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: Afghan excuse me for turn away now, folks, if you
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: don't want to hear something graphic. It's not awful, but
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: it's graphic. But the guy literally lost all of his
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: head to a to a British sniper or American sniper,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: an Allied sniper and I don't know how, I don't
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: know where this photo has surfaced online, but it must
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 3: have been on some pretty graphic website and this guy
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: just decided to post it bang smacking a veteran's Facebook group,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: and it was just how old are you? At what
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: point you life did you just not grow up and
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: realized that people don't want to you know, I mean,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: there are people that want to see that stuff post
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: on the pages where people want to see that kind
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: of thing. But you've just posted that in a group
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: where someone's probably eating their corn flakes with their you know,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: their child sat next to them. And it's a human life,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: you know, see, whether you whether you want to take
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: them as taliban or whatever, it's still it's it's yeah, yes, funny.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: And that kind of brings me onto how I wrote
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: the last book that I've published, which took seven years
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 4: to research, and how at the back of all of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 4: these battles and wars and events and things that go on,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: the mothers and the sisters and the widows and the
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: siblings and the children of those people that got.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: Killed, and how was it for them? Jay? What? What?
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: What stories have you been told?
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: Well, again, we're back to. Over the seven years I
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: was researching, I built up a solid reputation in the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: sense that you can a bit like a therapist needs
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: to have. You know, you can tell me anything. It's
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: not going to go public. The only things that I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: will make public are the things that.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: Need you know.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: So the book The Foker Has Fallen, it's never been
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: done before, is the first of its kind of military history,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: and what it is is it's there are some aspects
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: of how people died, but it's more little stories about
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 4: who these people were. You know, who their parents were,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 4: were they married, do they have any children, where do
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: they go to school? You know, just who these people
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: actually were, because we see names on memorials all over
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: the place, whether it's from World War One, world War two, anywhere.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 4: And unless you actually know somebody, you're not going to
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 4: know anything about their life. You're not going to know
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: who they were. And of course no criticism to World
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 4: War One and those eras because there were millions of them.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 5: So how are you going to log all their stories?
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: You know, we take I mean I volunteer for the
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 4: Commonwealth War breaks as a speaker, and they're doing great
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: things now in terms of little things online, you know,
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: for you know who this person was in this war,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: and you know something very interesting, And I'm going to
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: split this in two ways. In one with in terms
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: of the families, and some families were very close and
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: others were as dysfunctional as mine. So you know some
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: of the things that I've people have shared with me,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: and I would I needed to be at a certain
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: strength within my own emotional self and grounded enough to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: be able to hear all these stories and be able
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: to hold that space for those people. And there are
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: still people that wouldn't speak to me because they still
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: really traumatize. And we're now forty three years later. You know,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: my book came out last November, and I've been I've
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: been researching it for seven I was still researching right
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: up until the last edit to tweak things because there
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: were you know, one widow in America, for example, died
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: while I was writing, and.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 5: You know, so I was updating things as I went along.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 4: So I think there's a huge lack of respect for
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: what families have actually been through in terms of their
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: pain and their suffering. And the feedback I've had from
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: the book has been nothing but positive. In you know,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: thank you for bringing to life the people that we've lost.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: Some of them. There's only a short paragraph. It really
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: depends on how much information you know. In an ideal world,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: they'd all have any equal amount of words. But here's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: another thing that I have found throughout my life, and
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 4: you know you talk a lot about ego, and so
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 4: I know you and I are on the same page
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: when we talk about certain things, is that I've written
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: the book in alphabetical order, so it's the whole role
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: of honor for everybody that died in the Fororpens, and
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: the only separation is between the service personnel and the three.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 5: Civilians that died. So there's no chapters.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: It's just literally in alphabetical order because that way there's
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: no favor.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 5: For rank or service.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: So what you actually have is you have a snapshot
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: of who the person was, and in death, they are
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 4: all equal. They all gave their life for their country
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: over the years. And here's a very interesting thing that
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: I just kind of smile and nod. Now, if I
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: get asked this question when we're talking about egos, if
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 4: somebody actually says to me in a conversation when they
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 4: first meet me, and they know that I'm a war widow.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: What rank was your husband?
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 5: I know exactly the kind of person I'm speaking to,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: and it.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 4: Will come out later in the conversation. And I can
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: see a sort of half smile on your face. You know,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: I think you know where I'm coming from on that one.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: It's not about the fact that I'm a war widow
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 4: and he gave his life for his country and he
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: got a medal for bravery and all those other things,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: but what he did at the time and everything, It's
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: about what is your place in society? J If somebody
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: asked that question, that's how they're looking at me. He
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: was actually an NCO right. Had he had a better life,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 4: he could have been anything. Because my IQ is round
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: about one hundred and thirty and believe you mean, my
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 4: husband's IQ match mine.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 5: He just didn't have the education, that was his childhood,
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 5: that was his background.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: Yet, so why are you judging somebody by how many
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: stripes or pips he's got on his uniform? And since
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: he's died. You know, when I've dated doctors or barristers
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 4: or you know, army colonels or whatever, because I have
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: the choice to I date you, I'm single. They're not
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: interested in what rank my husband wants, but actually interested
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: in whether they want to date Jay. So you know,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: this ego that comes into you know that crops up
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: in conversations like that. I find really just rather ugly
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 4: because when you're dead, you're dead, and it's irrelevant how
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: many millions you've got in the bank, or what car
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: you used to drive when you're alive, or anything else.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: When you're dead, you're dead.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, So it's amazing as well how many people are
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: held in trauma because they didn't join the forces or
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: they didn't join a quote unquote elite regiment. And I
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: meet a lot of people like that, and the way
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: they introduce yourself is high Chris Well, I was never
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: in the marine. What the fucking weird thing to say?
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, that's the first thing on your mind when
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: you meet me is you feel the need to explain.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: And it's because everyone's been indoctrinated into hero worshiping the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: forces rather than understand the reality of it, and the
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: reality of it is quite often very different.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: And here's the impris here's the thing with this whole
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: rank thing that I've been telling you about. You know,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: if somebody asked me that I had a conversation, only
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: people who feel less than or who see themselves only
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 4: by things that are external to them rather than have
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 4: a grounded sense of self would ever ask that question.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's a lot of you know, there's a lot
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: of conditioning, isn't there in life? And it's funny, it's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: kind of all changing a bit now because obviously I
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: speak to colonels and all kind of and you know,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: they call me mate. It's it's it's And I guess
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: a lot, you know, I guess an awful lot of
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: the people joining up these days have got a degree,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: so they're on that university level with their officers. It's
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: quite interesting how you know, how how how that will go?
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: I should say, you know, I'm it's such a paradox.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: I I'm just a realist. I understand what the military
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: industrial complex is. I understand who it, who it supports,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: who's who it's funded by us the taxpayer. What you know,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: You've only got a look at Ukraine. You've got Colin Moyski,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: third Rich's billionaire in Ukraine currently in prison, I think,
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: which tells you all you need to know. Global mafia,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: who brought to power a sado masochistic actor, I mean
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: an actor who played you know, an S n M
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: role in in in gay music videos, brought him to
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: power by through his television station that he owned at
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: the same time. These guys, or Colin Moyski, funded the
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 3: as of which is a right wing nationalist. Basically, we
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: hate the Jews Party. So anyone that understands the parent
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: that the irony going on there understands that it's all
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: a game. All the stuff you hear about this that
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: and the it's it's it's all a carefully orchestrated game.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: And when you know the likes of Colin Moyski, you
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 3: want to want to to achieve an end, they just
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: do what they want to do, regardless of ethnicity, race,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: you know, Second World War that they don't care about
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 3: any of that. That's for us guys to be brainwashed
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: with and to you know, have things we can't talk
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 3: about and all this utter, uttered, crass nonsense. And and
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: this is why I'm just you know, and I see
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: the same criminals are the same people behind the medical narrative.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: And I know that's a crime narrative because you know,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: you've only got a research. For example, Louis Pasteur and
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: Antoine beouchan't to see when the split came between blaming
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: other people for your health and taking responsibility for your health.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: One of them doesn't earn them any money, you know.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: So the reason why I might sound a bit, you know,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 3: I don't wish to be offensive to anyone, Jay, but
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: it's just that it's it's a big club and we're
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 3: not in it. And until we start calling it, getting
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: over our ego and saying, do you know what, ain't
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: wearing these medals. They're just their their trinkets, aren't they
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: They're war trinkets designed to make me feel like a
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: bit of a hero on Remembrance Day. And really so
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: I don't tell the children the true nature of war,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: what it was really like growing up, what a lot
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: of the people that you serve with we like, because
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: there weren't. They weren't all very nice, you know, the
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: harsh reality. But to the other side of the coin,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: I'll be a ton proud of what our forces did,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: what they endured in the Falklands, and the utter bravery
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: of charging up a hill knowing that you might not
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: be coming back down. And some of them were eighteen years.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 3: I mean I had people on the show that we
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 3: were seventeen when they were down there. They couldn't go
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: ashore and join the scrap until they were eighteen. And
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: I won't, like I said, I wouldn't want anyone to
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: think that it. Yeah, brings tears to my mate, the
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 3: guy that bet you I would stop.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: You there actually, because they could go ashore and join
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: the scout before they were eighteen. Yeah, you had the choice.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: And there were three seven. I mean, I've written about
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: several teenagers, but there were three seventeen year olds killed
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 4: at Mount London. Wow, I say three. One of them actually,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: I was not quite true. One of them was actually
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: killed on his eighteenth birthday. He was injured on his
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 4: eighteenth birthday. And in typical you know, I love the
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 4: sense of humor, and I mean, you know, with my
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: sense of humor, it doesn't always go down well in
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 4: Sybby Street. You know, it kind of is what it is.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: It's that dark sense of humor. And you know, one
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: of his amins, you know, when all the traces were
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: going off, was saying, you know, something about the neighbors
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: might be complaining about the noise of his birthday party,
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: you know, because it was his eighteenth So yeah, there
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: were sadly seventeen year olds that were.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 5: Were actually killed.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: I kind of if I came with you, I'd like
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: to read a quote out of one of my book
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: because I think what we're talking about here and there
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: is a great change going on throughout the world as
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: consciousness is changing. And I think historically there's so many
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 4: things that we you know, we're talking about elephants in
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: the room. There's lots of different elephants in lots of
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: different rooms, and that's just the subject matter, isn't there.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: But there's a quote that I put at the beginning
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 4: of my chapter called the dark Night of the Soul,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: and I think for those people, you know, dark Night
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: of the soul, we don't understand it.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 5: It's not depression.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: It's not just a bad day or a bad event
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 4: or whatever. The dark knight, the true dark night of
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: the soul, which is part of my journey and my awakening,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: was a period of time and didn't have a true
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 4: dark night and the soul. You have to completely get
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: to the edge of losing faith in everything, because if
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: you don't, it's just not the dark Night of the soul.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: So this quote I put at the beginning of that chapter.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: When you judge other people without wanting to know the
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: true story behind their actions is usually when there is
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: something inside of you that is so broken that if
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: you found out what you believed about them was a lie,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: you wouldn't want to accept it or make amends. And
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: that's a quote by somebody called Shannon Shannon now elder.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: I love some of her quotes, and I think kind
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: of covered a lot of things in this conversation, which
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 4: has been great. But one of the things you asked
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: me was about my journey, and I think I need
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: to make it clear that the reason it took so
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: long was because there was such That quote says it all.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: I had a family that were denying everything that had
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 4: happened and pretending that it didn't because they were so
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: broken that if they had actually, as that quote said,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: admitted this is true, this is what we did to you,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: this is what happened, then that you then have to
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: look at what's broken inside of yourself. And I want
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: to bring this into the conversation because I think it's
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: so important. I do talk openly about the sexual abuse
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: in my history now and I do that more and
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: more because so many more people, as I'm sure they
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: do with you through your podcast, share their experiences with me.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 4: And when you speak something out loud and take and
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: you actually acknowledge the elephant in the room, it gives
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: other people permission to do so too. And my journey
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: sexual abuse actually fragments the soul. It wounds the soul
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: in a way that other traumas don't or doesn't mean
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: other traumas aren't terrible and they aren't awful. But if
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: you look at how a scapegoat is formed as opposed
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 4: to a narcissist, there is something called splitting that occurs.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: So with the narcissist, the splitting occurs in the sense
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: that you know, they can't deal with reality, so they
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: then manifest this fake reality and this grandiose sense of
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 4: self and that's their new story. And that's the splitting
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 4: that occurs with people like me with empass and people
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: specifically and become scapegoats. The splitting occurs in cognitive dissonance.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: So what's happening is there's a part of you that
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: knows that what's happening to you is terribly wrong. Everything
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: about it uls wrong. On every level. But people refuse
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: to admit, and then they'll give you scraps of you know,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: maybe you'll have a good day because you get taken
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: to the beach or something, because you'll really.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 5: Find a childhood.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: I mean there are sadly, but you know there are
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: extreme cases. But in most childhoods, especially when there's narcissistic
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: abuse going on, that's the game. The game is, we'll
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: screw your mind up, but we'll feed you, you know,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 4: a bit of niceness every now and again to completely
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: confuse you. And so splitting happens with m pass and
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: escape goats in the sense of cognitive dissonance. So they
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 4: have the truth on one hand and then they have
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: the lie that fed to them on the other. And
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 4: so that's where the confusion and the splitting comes with that.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 4: And to heal you have to you have to put
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: those two things back together again. And that's something that
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: narcissists don't do because they've got no investment to ever
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 4: go to that level of pain. You know, they function
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 4: in the world differently. There are lots of people out
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 4: there like Dr Raminy and Richard Grannam and you know,
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 4: many people out there now that do really good work.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: Narcissism wasn't actually even really studied until the nineteen fifties,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: you know, so these are quite new sciences. And the
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 4: reason I'm bringing this into the conversation of this stage
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 4: is is that we are still and this we had
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: this chat before we started recording, we are still getting
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: suicides from wars like the Falklands. It wasn't that many
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: years ago that one of the guys that was injured
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: at Warren Point took his own life. Now I'm not
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: saying that all of those people have been through that.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 5: Kind of abuse, but I.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 4: Have privately spoken to many veterans who, because I've been
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: open about mine, they've told me those stories, and it's
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: far more prevalent than we are led to believe. And
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: so I am a you know in what and I
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 4: love that some of the podcasts that you were doing
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: when you talk about child trauma, is that we have
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: to get to a place just in society whereby veteran
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 4: or not, we have to get to a place where
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: we really do acknowledged childhood trauma and we facilitate that healing.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, it needs to be, you know, a conversation
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: that's just embedded in our daily lives. And so when
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: you see someone doing the old road rage beeping their horn,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: you can go childhood trauma unhealed, make and sort it out.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: Stop taking it out in other people, you know, so
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 3: it becomes a thing rather than go, oh, look at
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: that knob ed over there beeping it. You know people,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: it's called being trauma informed, do isn't it?
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 7: Yes?
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: How many people online have no no clue about trauma
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 3: before they set about attacking someone. Some of the comments
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: that people will leave about another individual with no thought
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: whatsoever that that person might be their last threat, They
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: might be feeling their self worth might be an all
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: time low. And yet they've got a thousand people in
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: a comment section attacking them in the military case because
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: they put their berry on a bit wrong. And they've
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: got a thousand grown men all saying that they're a watermittee,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: and it turns out that the guy is some freaking
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: war hero. This is literally I'm picking something that happened
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: the other day. I think we just need to start
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: recognizing having honest conversation. You know, some people in the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: veterans community, and I guess you know, none of us
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: are perfect or claim to be some are just downright
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 3: nasty people and that's because of their unhealed childhood trauma.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: And you know, and it gets passed off as banter
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: or passed off as oh, he was in the Falklands
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: just you know, you know, and it's like, no, he's
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: an abusive fucker that just takes his shit out on
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: everybody has never literally never got a nice thing to
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: say about is in our case fellow Marines who and
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: like I say, I'm not blaming an individual, highlighting that
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: this needs to be a conversation. We need to be
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 3: thinking about what we're putting online, how we talk to people.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 4: But not just that chrits, not just that, is that
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: you're what you're describing is actually something overtd You can
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: see it. You can see when somebody starts saying nasty
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: things and then the thread gets nasty and supposedly bounter
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: takes place and it goes backwards, not forwards on the thread.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 4: That's overt. But take take the example of my ex
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 4: as one. There's a lot of this that goes on
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 4: as well, in the sense that as we get older
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 4: and the ego starts to realize that we can't become
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: more aware of our own more mentality. What you find
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: through social media is a lot of people reconnect that
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: maybe unspoken to the other for thirty years, you know.
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 4: And there are beautiful things for that that people find
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 4: somebody that they just lost contact with back in the
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: days when you didn't have the cloud and you know,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 4: you just had an address book that you might have
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: lost or whatever, and you lost contact, and so there
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: are lots of positive sides for that. But this ex
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: of mine, who really should have ended up in jail,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: there's no extor bunce about it, and has no has
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: absolutely no empathy, doesn't feel sorry, has no remorse whatsoever
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: for what he did to me, And he's reconnected with
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 4: the guys in his regiment and they all thinking, oh,
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 4: great guy and whatever, because they don't they only know
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: the side of him that they saw. So there's a
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: covert side of these things as well.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, yes, yeah, of course.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 4: And I actually had to point out to somebody who
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: I know through you know, when I was with him
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 4: many years ago. I actually had to point out to
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: her and say to her, how can you be friends
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 4: with somebody when you know what they've done? Why would
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: you want to be That's a bit like saying, why
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: are they to be friends with Jeffrey Epstein or whoever
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: you know somebody or Peter Sutcliffe or whatever. You know,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: I know what they've done, but they're all right to me.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: Why would you? Why is it within you that would
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: make you want to align with somebody like that? It's
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: different when you just don't know, but people aften when
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: they do know, they still are. Well, you know that's
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: the elephant in the room. We won't talk about it.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 4: So I agree with you. I think there are I
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: have a massive respect, particularly for faukle insveterans, because I
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: know what they were up against. I have a massive
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: respect for everything that they.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 5: Achieved in that war.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: But that doesn't mean that every everybody that's a veteran
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: of there or anywhere else.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 5: For all nice people, some.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 4: Are, some aren't.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: Absolutely yes, mixed across the board.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: JA.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 3: Can we talk about your body building, because that's I
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: would say. It was a passion that we shared. But
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 3: it was certainly a passion for me back when I
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 3: was quite heavily into it, and it was what can
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: I say, obviously for me, I'm talking me here. When
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: I look back, it was an extension of me desperately
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: trying to prove my self worth, impress people, get some
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 3: self I mean I always had self esteem, I just
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: something was missing inside. And I remember I walked in
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: a pub one day to go and meet my old
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: man and I'm in there and and I was it
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: was a bit ridiculous. I think I had the biggest
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: arms in the Raal Marines at the time, and yet
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: I was five for aid. The last used to just
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: creaze up when I walked into our office because it
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 3: was just so ridiculous. And and I walked into the
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: pub and my dad looked at me and he just
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: turned to the person next to him and said, someone
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: stick a pin and him will that? And I was like, Dad,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: why are you not sharing my happiness at this? You know,
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: this abnormally bizarrely weirdly proportioned body that I've now got why.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: And what it was is he was trying to say, son,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 3: you're perfect as you are in fact, you know and
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: and and I turned to my stepmother at who was
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: stepmother at the time, and I said, look, what's what
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 3: your Why's dad got this? You know? You know you
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 3: there's there's never any communication in that generation no one
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: actually just says, so you're always in this state as
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 3: a kid of confusion. And my stepmother turned around. She said, Chris,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: you're the most handsome guy I know. And when you
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 3: walk down the street, heads turned. I was like, sorry,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 3: did I just totally missed here?
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 4: What? What?
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: No one had ever said anything like that, and friends
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: at home, I'm not claiming to be the most handsome
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 3: man on the world. What I'm saying is is they
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: were trying to tell me you don't have to prove
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: nothing to no one. You're perfectly fine as you are.
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: And but but in their language, well my stepmom was
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: obviously very honest and open, but in my dad he
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: couldn't bring himself to say he didn't know how to
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: say that to me. So I'm out there thinking that
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 3: I'm not this person, and that if I can get
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: me muscles a bit more bigger and talk about dysmorphia,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 3: I genuinely would go in the gym and I started off.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: I had the old you know, the pokey pin thing
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: on weight number one. Then you went long before I
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: had it on the full step. Then I used to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: get all the weights in the gym that I could
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: fit on top of the stack and then I used
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: to ask something if they'd come and stand on it,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: It's just like insane. And the bigger I got, I
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: wouldn't say the smaller I felt, but I couldn't see
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 3: it Jay, you know, And just just one thing more
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: about honesty and mate, and my Mick come up to
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: me and said, we're on a night out and I
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: had the proverbial tight you know, t shirt on me,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 3: seventeen and a half inch biceps and he's like, Chris, look,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: everyone's kind of impressed with what you've done with your
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: body mate, don't you know, don't mate, don't think we're not.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: It's just but this like, just just wear a fucking
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 3: normal shirt, mate. You know what he was trying to say.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: He could see the desperateness in me of trying to
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: get attention. I was a neglected child that still felt
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: you know, I'd carried that into adulthood, and that was
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: my that's a short synopsis of my story. What was
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: your bodybuilding experience?
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: Like Tony Couse, I'm just going to I'm just going
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 4: to so my experience with bodybuilding. I don't think anything
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: happens by accident, but I started weight training so I moved. Obviously,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: I had to move after Gary died, because you lose
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 4: your home. People forget that when you're in army quarters.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 4: When your husband dies, you're not no longer entitled to
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 4: your home. So I moved back to where i'd lived
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: before I got married, and a friend of mine said, oh,
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: why don't you come to my club? And I said, well,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: what is your club? And she said, oh, well, it's
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 4: like a health club. Come and have a look at
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 4: it and see what you think. So I went and
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 4: had a look, and that's so nineteen eighty three, I started.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 5: Weight training and I quite liked it.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 4: It was a balance, you know, to I don't was excess.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: I used to be a dancer when I was younger,
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: you know, I'd done ballet, tap, all that kind of stuff,
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: so I'd always exercise all my life. But I thought,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 4: I quite like this doing weights. And then I got
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 4: more serious during the relationship, you know, the abusive relationship
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 4: that I was in, and I think that was a
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 4: definite outlet for my frustration because there were so many
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 4: mind games going on at the time, you know, I
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 4: didn't really understand until much later, and so that was
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: a place I could take.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 5: Myself and do a couple of hours in the gym.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 4: And then one day there was a guy in there
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 4: who he won the under twenty ones I think, and
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 4: he was competing and he said to me, I was
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 4: doing I was doing back that night and he said
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 4: to me, doing a back double biceps. And I said
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 4: to him, how do you do that? Any idea how
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 4: to do a back double biceps? So he explained it
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: and I did the pose and he just, you know,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: he said, you're back. He said you should compete and
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 4: I said, well, I can't see my back, what's it
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: look like? And he said pretty amazing, you know. So
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 4: I was like, okay. So I did one sort of
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 4: little competition I think somewhere around eighty six eighty eight, Yeah.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: I can't remember.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 4: And then I got more and more into it. After
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: I got out of that relationship and I moved to
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: London and I started training, and then I started to
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 4: actually compete in nineteen ninety two, and that year one
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: of the judges said to me, I came second in
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 4: the competition and he said, you know what, you said,
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: you should go for the next qualifyer in Derbyshire wherever.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 5: He said you know, he said, you only just came second, you.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: Could still qualify for the I said, I'm not ready.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 4: I'm aiming for next year. So I kind of got
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 4: more and more into it. And then how I got
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 4: really into it seriously that I would say, from all
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: of the abuse that I've described to you, I had
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 4: no anger inside of me. I had pure rage inside
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: of me, which is very very common, particularly with sexual abuse.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: You know, it's one of the most unfair things that
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: you feel could ever happen to you. And so I
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: discovered that the heavier I went, the better I looked.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 4: Because obviously you get the benefits when you work out,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: as you've described, you know, your body.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 5: Changes quite dramatically.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: I am only five foot one, but I'm a typical
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: bodybuilder shape.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 5: You know, I've got very broad shoulders for my height.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 5: You know, I've got that natural V.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: And so I started changing shape quite dramatically, and I
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 4: discovered that the heavier I went, the more emotion I
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 4: got out of me, that anger. It was a really
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: positive outlet for all of that anger. And so here's
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: the interesting thing. You're talking about, the foreseeing thing, and
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: I think there's always an element of that if you're
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 4: going to go into a sport that's all about looking perfect,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 4: there's always going to be a feeling of being less
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 4: than somewhere in there. You know, I would change my
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 4: mind divide to meet someone that doesn't have that, you know,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 4: But for me, I can honestly say that when I
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 4: won the Now and Miss England in nineteen ninety five,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 4: and I was probably you know that year, I was at.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 5: The peak of what I wanted to look like.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 4: I was like, I was one hundred percent this is
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 4: what I want to look like. You know, I loved it.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 4: I had no self esteem. I still had no self
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 4: esteem and I give talks on it now and I say,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 4: you know the perfect body and you know what you're
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 4: saying about your your bulging biceps, because back in the
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 4: eighties and nineties there were hardly any women doing it.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 4: Back then you could be two of you as women
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 4: in a gym and fifty men. Was not any women doing.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: It back in the eighties.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 4: In the early nineties, but I was lucky that they
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 4: brought in this new class called the fitness figure, because
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 4: I was too muscular for the bikini and I wasn't
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: muscular enough for the physique and I certainly was going
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 4: to get ripped enough for the physique. Then they brought
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 4: in this new class called the Fitness Figure, which was
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 4: perfect for my shape. So I competed at absolutely the
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 4: right time, you know, in terms of competition, and I
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 4: still had no self esteem. I would walk down the
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: supermarket aisle and I see some woman nudging her husband
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 4: and maybe looking at me because it was so unusual
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 4: to see a woman with muscles back then. But I
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 4: can honestly say, you know, when I was thirty eight
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 4: when I peeked, still had no self esteem.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: And it's a contradiction, though, isn't it. The bigger you get,
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: the less esteem. I was just saying, well, i walked
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 3: down the beach in Canada, I think it was Colona, Colona,
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 3: on the shore of this beautiful lake, and I'm walking
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 3: down this lake and I'm just wondering what why people
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 3: were looking at me. I've been one hundred percent honestly,
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: I didn't. I was sort of spilt my bloody food
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: down my shirt or something. You know them as all
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: self conscious.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 4: And it's the stain.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, it was, did you I came out
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: of it sort of naturally, probably just I think, I
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 3: think my mind. I started to focus on business more
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: so go into the gym. I just kicked kicked it
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: into touch. It was as simple as that, really. But
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: did you have any reason why you stopped?
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 4: Oh? Yeah. So in nineteen ninety five I did four
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 4: competitions and and then I did my last competition in
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 4: nineteen ninety eight, and that was I qualified for the
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 4: Tropicana Finals. That was the semifinals, but I hadn't won.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: This injury was on me because I hadn't warmed up sufficiently,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: and when I went into the splits on stage, I
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 4: felt my hamstring go oh yeah, and you know, adrenaline
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 4: kind of kicks in, and I remember sort of putting
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: my arms out into this pose and smiling at the
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 4: audience and the judges and thinking, I have no idea how.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 5: I'm going to get back up.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 4: You know. I had to finish my routine and everything,
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 4: and the finals was two weeks away, and so there
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: was no way I was going to make the finals.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 4: And so I took a year off in nineteen ninety nine,
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 4: and then I was I just started training in January
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 4: of two thousand to.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 8: Compete that year, and in February of that year, I
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 8: had a head on car crash on and all circular
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 8: because a guy lost control of his car, spun and
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 8: the ends up coming at me the wrong.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 4: Way, going the wrong It's a bit like in North
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 4: Circular if you know it in certain parts, and this
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 4: particular part, five lanes wide, you've got the M eleven,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 4: You've got all these roads merging into one fifty mile
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 4: an hour limit. He lost control, He's coming at me,
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 4: coming the wrong way down what is in effect and motorway.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 4: I ended up getting cut out the cart by the
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 4: fire brigade because I had a back injury in anything
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 4: and long story short after I don't know how long
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 4: of having problems and whatever, I was basically told by
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 4: an orthopedic surgeon to.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 5: Forget about bodybuilding. I had spinal injuries.
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: One side of that.
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 5: I went through a whole five years.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: And here's where repeat patterns, you know, law of attraction
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 4: repeat patterns. My pattern was not being heard, not being
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 4: listened to, you know, five years, they're treating me like
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 4: I'm some kind of hypochondriac. And the reality is I've
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 4: always been fit and I loved bodybuilding. Why would I
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: not want to do it? But it was, we can't
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 4: find anything wrong with you until I had the MRI,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 4: and then the question was what are you doing for
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: your pain? And me being typically me, I said, well,
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 4: the pain you've been telling me for five years I
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: don't have. And then you know, the extent of what
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 4: was wrong with me comes out. So it took me
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 4: a long time to get back into doing some decent training,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 4: and I still today train more than most twenty five
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 4: year olds do. But I have you know, I am
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 4: not just a qualified PT. I'm qualified clinical PT. I've
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 4: got a lot of knowledge in my head and I
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 4: always thought I would find a way back to training.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 4: One day and I remember having this conversation with this
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 4: barrister and he said to me, he said, well, you know,
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 4: is it fair to say, because obviously they're doing the
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 4: claim for the accident, is it fair to say that
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 4: you'll never, you know, bodybuild again.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 5: And I said, I can't say that.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 4: And they're looking at me like I'm mad because they've
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: seen the scanned results and the reports and all.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 5: The rest of it.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 4: And I said, look, I may not compete again. The
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: bodybuilding is about the training, you know. I can't if
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 4: you're asking me, can I stand, I'm in a quarter
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 4: of law and say I'll never do this again.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 5: I'm not prepared to take my head to such a
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 5: negative space.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 4: And they're still looking at me like I'm mad, And
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 4: here I am. And this happened in two thousands, so
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 4: this was many, many years ago, and here i am
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 4: all these years later, and I'm in the gym, as
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 4: I say, training mores in most twenty five year olds.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 4: Here's the difference. And I think you've said it in
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 4: a way. I think there's something very punitive about bodybuilding,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 4: to the extremes that you go to with both diet
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 4: and the level of exercise that you will push yourself
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 4: to that many people who compete wouldn't admit to. And
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 4: then on top of that, you've got the psychological factor
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 4: that you're not in anything like you're saying, well, doing
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 4: one hundred meters and it's a clear thing. Whoever wins
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 4: is the first past the finish line. You're in a
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 4: sport whereby you're getting judged and somebody else's opinion decides
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 4: on whether you're win that trophy or not. Yeah, So
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 4: I think psychologically it can be quite punitive, and physic
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 4: it certainly can be especially with.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 5: Some of the extremes of the diets.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 4: That's kind of why, with having a history of eating disorders,
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 4: I was never going to go to international level and
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 4: I was never going to do really well. I could
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 4: have built the size for the phy seat classes, but
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 4: I was never going to get my body fat that
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 4: load to be able to do well in them, because
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 4: it's really extreme. And then the question is as you
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: get older, you know, and you bounce out, and I
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 4: certainly have got plenty of self esteem, Now why.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 5: Do you want to do that to yourself?
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was in the gym this morning and I
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 3: think I must be the only person in there that
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: I do squats and I don't put any weights on
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: the bar. Don't really need to. I mean, in my
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: kickboxing class, we do scoats. We don't do squats with weights.
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 3: We just do like these kind of I don't know,
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 3: they're like Buddha squats. Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 3: you do twenty and them blow me. Now you get
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 3: your quad stop burning. And so when I'm in the gym,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: I just I just sort of do it for a
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 3: bit of form and a bit of stretching, and I
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 3: take I take great delight in using the lightest weights
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: in there and put Now, I put the peg on
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: the easy not not just ridiculously small one, but the
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: one that's just you know, it's just enough. And yeah,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 3: it's kind of funny now because I'm fifty five, but
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: I've still got the body I have when I was nineteen.
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 3: I haven't it. I haven't gone to that like dad
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: body thing yet. I haven't. The Only time I start
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: to know I've start to notice my age is want
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: to I either want to look at my face tales
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: a thousand tails, or I noticed want to get dehydrated
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 3: in a summer. Then I start to see my skin shriittched,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: starting to shrivel, like in a way that I never
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: noticed when I was younger. But yeah, it's kind of
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: like it's good for me going to the gym because
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: I've got I've got a good deal going on it.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: Don't ask me why, but but yeah, but then I've
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: eaten mainly vegetables for the last twenty five years, and
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: you know, i'd say to anyone, you know, keep your
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: body pH level what is supposed to be folks, because
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: you know it's all right living on buckets of coffee
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: and you know, huge steaks and alcohol and all that,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: but it doesn't have to take a toll on your body,
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: I think, because you're pumping yourself full of acid. And
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 3: it's yeah, I like, I enjoy it. I like it.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 4: Do you also fine? Because I think this is what's
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 4: so important. That's why I try and encourage women. It's
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 4: not an age thing, although I love it when I
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 4: see older women exercise, because I think too many of
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 4: them don't that. It's not just it's not just the way.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 4: It affects how you look, and it obviously keeps you trimmer,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 4: and you know, it's much healthier for your bones and
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 4: all of the other things and your mobility because as
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 4: you get older and now I'm kind of headed toward seventy,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 4: you know, is that thing where I'm looking at people
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 4: and I'm thinking, whoa you know, like how.
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 5: You could be if you didn't keep active.
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 4: Is that with the chemical changes that you get with
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 4: the catachola means and the endoorphmes and the things that
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 4: you get from exercise, then it is such a good
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 4: balancer with mental health.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's again it's another sort of paradox because it can,
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 3: like if I don't work out in a more. I
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: don't like you if I don't go for a walk
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: around the block or a jog or gym, or go
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 3: and swim a few length. And I only swim a
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 3: few length. But if I don't do that, and certainly
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 3: if I don't have at my sauna, I've got a
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 3: sauna that I built, then my day is very different.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: It's sluggish. I'm lethargic, I've got little interest. And the
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 3: conundrum there is that, wow, maybe you'll rely in a
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: bit too much on the exercise for I mean, yes,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 3: it is what do they call it in gaming? They
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 3: call it a cheat, wouldn't they. It's a cheap, cheap
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: way to get sort of happy those days when you
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: can't do it. You've also got to find a way,
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 3: you know, you've always got to find your way into
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 3: into the light. And you talk about an eating disorder,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 3: but I think I would be classed now as having
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 3: an eating disorder. I love to eat. You know, when
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 3: you've given up alcohol, drugs, smoking, sugar, as you know,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 3: as much as you can carbohydrates as again, as much
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 3: as you can me yadda yadda yadda caffeine, there isn't
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 3: a lot more you can rely on to self medicate
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 3: your children, trauma and food obviously become you know it
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 3: just you know, what I'm trying to say is I've
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 3: still got work to do on myself. I know that
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 3: I think I'm probably my own worst enemy because I
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 3: don't meditate enough. And I do believe that it's in
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 3: that silence is where where like, for example, when you
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 3: go and have that dessert when you know you don't
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 3: need it, if you was to say, no, I'm going
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: to go and walk around the block now and just
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 3: have a think to myself reflect, let you know, let
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: some God into my life. I bet you'd come home
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 3: and go now, don't need that dessert? Do I do?
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 3: You know, But it's because we don't do that. We
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 3: don't do that medical you know, we we instantly go
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 3: to the slave to our emotion.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 4: I think that that is so true, Chris, I mean
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 4: that is so true. And one of the things that
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 4: you know, I see over and over and again, sadly
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 4: more so with men now.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 5: But it's always been historically a women's problem.
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 4: But men is with men now that if you look
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 4: at things from a holistic perspective, you know you've got
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: the third chart of the solar plexus.
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 5: Which is the center of self.
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 4: So that's self worth, self esteem, self everything. When we
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 4: ran food down our mouth to the point where we're
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 4: full up and beyond, what we're actually doing on a
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 4: holistic level is squashing down our emotions. And so, you know,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 4: I can't say that it's great when you get triggered,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 4: because you know, we all know that it's a pretty
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 4: shitty place to be when it's going on. But these days,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 4: when something does trigger me, I'm very welcoming of it
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 4: because it's another opportunity for healing. Anything that triggers you
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 4: is something that's yet to be healed. And I'll keep
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 4: food here for a minute, but I'll just quickly go
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 4: back to what that doctor said to me in twenty nineteen.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 4: You know, I don't think you're coming back from it
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 4: this time. I couldn't have been more devastated at the
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 4: idea that I is going to be feeling like that
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 4: for the rest of my life because life that would
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 4: have been a case that I need to check out.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 4: Life is just not going to be worth living if
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 4: I'm going to be this triggered forever, you know. And
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 4: so I did loads more therapy, and that's when I started.
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 4: That's when I wrote my first book in twenty nineteen,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 4: and writing.
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 5: Became my salvation. When I there were days when I
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 5: wouldn't go outside the house for three days. That's how
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 5: bad the PTSD was at that point.
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 4: But slowly, very very slowly, through writing and healing and
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 4: doing more therapy and doing more work.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 5: It wasn't about wanting to prove the doctor wrong.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 4: It was about if I can't improve this, I don't
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 4: want to be here. So that was the incentive in
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 4: that space. And then on the other hand, when we
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 4: go back to the food thing, I so wish that
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 4: we had more knowledge and understanding out there in the world.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 4: So or are you having it? It's all right, me
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 4: having It's all right, a few people having it, but honest,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 4: more honest conversations about how people are literally eating themselves
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 4: to death these days, you know, because the actual nobody
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 4: needs to have a weight problem, apart from in rare
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 4: circumstances when there is something really wrong with the body.
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 4: And you know, when I used to work and in
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 4: a gym, and women used to come in and say, oh,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 4: it's all right for you, I say, what's all right
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 4: for me, Oh, you're nice and slim.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 5: Well, not like this by accident.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 4: You know it's and it's not for what I eat.
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 4: And then I'd very politely say to them, well, if
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 4: it's genuinely not for what you eat, then you must
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 4: go and see your GP in case you put a
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 4: thyworid issue or something else going on, because if it's
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 4: not what you're putting in your mouth, you have to
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 4: check this out medically. And it's amazing how quickly that
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 4: conversation would turn into oh, maybe I eat more than
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 4: I realize because they know everybody knows. You know, you're
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 4: saying quite openly, which is beautiful to see.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 5: I know I've still got work to do.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 4: Well. The reality is, as long as we're alive, we're
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 4: all going to the minute we think we know it all,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 4: we know nothing.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 3: Yes, of course, putting on weight can also be alcohol,
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 3: can't it, which some people are hesitant to admit.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it's at the end of the day, is basic math,
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 9: and people may not like hearing this, but if what's
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 9: kind of almost irrelevant, although somethings are more unhealthy than others, but.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 4: If more calories are going in than are being used, up,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 4: you're going to expand. And I know that that Katie
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 4: Hopkins did a program she was very very unpopular for
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 4: you know, where she deliberately put on something like six
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 4: stone by gaul. I mean I would have hated it,
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 4: no matter how much they paid me. I wouldn't wanted
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 4: to do that. She put on some like six stone
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 4: and then she just went back to eating what she
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 4: would normally and then lost it all again. And for
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 4: most people, whether they want to hear that or not,
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 4: whether they're male or female, that's the reality. It's a
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 4: numbers game. It's basic mass. It's just that if you
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 4: are eating lots of sugar, you're going to have lots
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 4: of inflammation. If you're drinking alcohol that's empty calories, you
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 4: know that there will be But even if you're eating
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 4: too much of really healthy foods, it there's too many carries.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 4: You're still going to put on weight.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. And obviously we live quite sedentary lives, don't we.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 4: We're encouraged too. Yeah, with all the distractions that we
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 4: have now with video games. And I saw a guy.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 4: I was on the bike in the gym the other
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 4: night and I saw a guy and it made me
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 4: really feel sad. He was not that old. I would
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 4: have said he was probably in his early thirties maximum.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 4: And he literally had a massive belly. You know, he
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 4: wasn't huge everywhere else, but he had this massive, overweight,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 4: massive belly, but the kind of shape that you know,
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 4: medically is really unhealthy. And he was lying on the
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 4: leg press on his phone, and five minutes went by
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 4: and he was still lying on the leg press. I mean,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 4: it's a gym of being busy. As somebody would have said, mate,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 4: can I can I use it? But he was just
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 4: lying there on his phone, tapping away.
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 3: And I was just.
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 4: Mesmerized almost by watching because I was just doing my cycling,
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 4: thinking is he ever going to do a set? And
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 4: eventually he did, He did a set, and then another
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 4: five minutes went by.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in my gym, as you come in through the
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 3: you know where you scan your your code, they've got
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 3: a row of cattle prods, so you just pick up
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 3: a cattle prod and as you go around the machines,
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 3: someone's not doing it fast enough, you just give them
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 3: a bit of an electric shock. Really, I wish I.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 4: Was telling you something funny. I was telling something funny
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 4: that happened a couple of weeks ago. We got two
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 4: leg presses in the gym and one of them was
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 4: broken while and it was one of these things that
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 4: you know it jobbed to fix it, okay, And so
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 4: for quite a long time we only had the one
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 4: leg press, so you know, yeah, you're usually going to
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 4: have to wait for it. And there was the two
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 4: young guys on there, and they were again on their
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 4: phones and chatting and way between sets and all the
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 4: rest of it. And I said to him, how many
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 4: more sets have you got? And we've got two each? Okay,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 4: Off I went, I went to another exercise. I came back.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 4: Have you nearly finished long story shorts? He looks at
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 4: me and said, I said, listen, you're starting to take
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 4: the pe now. You know there are other people in
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 4: the gym. There's only one leg press. And he looks
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 4: at me and said, if you knew anything about bodybuilding,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 4: and I just went, if I knew anything about bodybuilding, really,
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 4: he said, you would know that you need to rest
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 4: at least two to three minutes between the sets. In
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 4: my head, I'm thinking, mate, you're not using enough or
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 4: weight to need to rest two three minutes between the sex.
• 1:58:06
  Speaker 3: You know, it's not just that, it's just get off
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: the machine and stand by it, and then if someone
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: wants to hop on and do their set, they can
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 3: do it. Then they can hop off and you, yeah,
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: it's hard not to let it irritate you. That's sat
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 3: on just scrolling through the phone, and.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 4: You see, here's the thing. This is where we are
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 4: again as a race. And I'm talking about the human
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 4: race very judgmental because he would never have said that
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 4: to me back when I was competing. He's saying that
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 4: to me because even though you know, I don't look unfit,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 4: I don't have that competition body anymore. And I'm older
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 4: and there is quite a lot of disrespect that older
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 4: women get in general, and so there's an attitude there
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 4: where as an actual fact, if you've had a different
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 4: conversation with me, I have a wealth of knowledge that
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 4: he could have tapped into. So if you look at it,
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 4: there's so many things in life for how we view them.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 3: Aren't they I only do one set these days, so
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: I'm a good bet. Get on the machine behind me,
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 3: you watch me do my set, and because I just
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 3: you know, you make the weights work for you, don't
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 3: you you don't have to do three sets. You can
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: do one set and really stretch out your pecks and
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 3: then you know a bit of this and then really
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 3: and that's it. I couldn't. I haven't got time to
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 3: be in the gym for three sets, and you don't
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 3: need to. Like I said, I've still got the same
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: body I've got when I'm nineteen. I do one set
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: and also road across the Atlantic in January, ran across
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 3: the Sahara Desert the year before. So it's not you know,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 3: you don't, you're not. You're not losing anything, folks by
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 3: doing one set.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 4: Well, you may you may or may not be aware
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 4: of this. But when I went to the Falkland, you
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 4: probably don't know.
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 3: I went to the jay Can you speak, speak up?
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Your audio is dropping out a bit, okay.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 4: When I went to the Falklands in twenty seventeen, I
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 4: actually tagged my husband's last footsteps, so last photos I
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 4: have of him are on Sussex Mountain, and I tagged
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 4: from Sussex Mountain down through where they had the battle,
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 4: and then I went beyond into Goose Screen to the
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 4: memorial you know, which is obviously the bit that he didn't,
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 4: and that was, according to the recovery driver, just over
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 4: twenty miles, which was after I.
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 5: Had all those health issues.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 4: So I was pretty toughed at that because and you know,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 4: I was talking to a lot of the guys before
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 4: I went, and they kept saying to me, oh, Jay
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 4: is very unforgiving terrain, and I kept saying, please don't
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 4: say that. I haven't been.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 5: Yet, and it is very unforgiving terrain.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 4: So I did that tab which is over the it's
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 4: not flat ground. There's nowhere to hide, un as you
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 4: would dug in. But they've got these things that they
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 4: call did leyd these big plants that are like this.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 5: They call them baby SAIDs because that's how big they are.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 4: It's very uneven than the flat ground. And then another
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 4: have I did another day was from first Bush Pass
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 4: to up over Mount London Wireless Ridge and then into Spamily.
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 5: So that was about thirteen miles.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 4: So that was after i'd had you know, I've literally
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 4: rely checked out twice in a year, so I'm a
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 4: great believer. And actually when I had the heart thing,
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 4: this is something that I think is so relevant, so
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 4: important to why fitness is so important in all of
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 4: our life is that after the heart episode, the first
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 4: thing the consultant said that day was you're going to
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 4: have heart muscle damage because I had very high levels
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 4: of an enzyme in my blood, which is the thing
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 4: they test whether you've had a heart attack or lot,
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 4: and my levels, I'll never forget that number eighty nine
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 4: hundred and seventeen.
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 5: Well, if you get to ten thousand, your heart's pretty
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 5: much destroyed.
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 4: And my heart made a full recovery, and nobody can
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 4: explain why because it shouldn't have happened. And the only
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 4: thing that I think is a possibility and less of
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 4: course it was a higher power intervening, which is perfectly
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 4: possible in my world, is that I've been fit all
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 4: my life. Yeah, yeah, so you give a natural resilience
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 4: and recovery from that.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I worked in Mozambique once and everybody got malaria
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 3: and except me, although when we went to the doctor,
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 3: they do this blood test thing. They prick your finger,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 3: put it under the microscope, and then they rate you
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 3: on what malaria you've got out of five stars. So
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 3: a heavy bout is five stars, obviously, and I had
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 3: a star. I don't know if I had malaria or not.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 3: But I noticed, you know, we're a chap called Tony
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 3: with us. I doubt he's still with us now because
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 3: he wasn't in the best of health back then. He
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 3: was a big drink, a big smoker, and when he
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 3: got it, oh my god, it knocked him for six
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 3: It really really battered him. He was he thought he
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 3: was going to die. So he had that extreme and
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 3: I had the well, apparently I've got it, but I
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 3: don't didn't feel anything. I wonder if that was to
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 3: do with fitness.
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 4: I think there's always going to be an element of that.
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 4: I mean, some of us are One of the things
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 4: I studied during my ten years of studying in my
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 4: forties was Aida and one of the things that you
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 4: learn about the doshers, which is the different parts of
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 4: the life force energy you've got that. I'm what they
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 4: call tridoshiic, So I have a you know each normally
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 4: you have two, but you know, I have the three
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 4: doshes fart a bit of kaffa, and I'm a combination.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 4: And the Trijosh people have got the strongest constitutions. So
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 4: I think sometimes there is an element that some of
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 4: us are more naturally resilient than others. I certainly don't
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 4: think if I didn't have those elements in my genetic
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 4: makeup that I would still be here, because there's too
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 4: many things that could have taken me out along the way.
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 4: But it's how much you recover. And certainly I think
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 4: in episodes like that heart thing that no doctor can
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 4: explain it in terms medically. They can't explain why my
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 4: heart made that recovery. So for sure I think fitness
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 4: has But I said to them at the time. I
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 4: said to the doctor in the hospital, how long before
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 4: I can go to the gym? And he looked at
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 4: me and said, give it four week. So four weeks
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 4: to the day, I.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 5: Rocked up at the gym.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 4: Still wasn't back to normal, so I had to use
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 4: the lift and I went in the gym and the
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 4: manager there's noly for years, and he said to me,
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 4: are you sure? And I said yes, And I went
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 4: in and I picked up the smallest did five six
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 4: sets of bicep curls and went home. Because it was
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 4: mentally going and doing something. And then within like a
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 4: month I was doing like I did. I think I
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 4: did a five miler and then you know, but I
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 4: built it up. You've got to do a graded exercise.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 4: You'd be stupid to think you can go in and
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 4: just go back to what you were doing before. But
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 4: I built it up and within a very short space
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 4: of time. So when I did the chaps in the Falklands,
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 4: it was actually only a couple of years down the
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 4: road from from that. And you know, there's been times
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 4: when I didn't think my health was going to get
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 4: much better than it than it was, and it continues
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 4: to surprise me.
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 3: Good. So you Jay, sorry, we're talking about physical help,
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 3: but you mentioned the chakras earlier. What so, what's your
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 3: spiritual take is that? Is that a road you've gone
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 3: full on down? Like I would say, I've sort of
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 3: thrown myself into the energy, vibration and frequency field simply
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 3: because it explains all those answers that obviously all my
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 3: life I was looking for through you know, bodybuilding, through drugs,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 3: through you know, whatever it might be. And if I
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 3: can just sorry, just add one thing to that. They
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 3: talk about Kundalini and this energy that's supposed to come
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 3: for three days every month when the moon's in your
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 3: star sign. I know that probably sounds a bit fanciful
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 3: and a bit kind of woo woo, I think is
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 3: the expression to some, but no, I can totally. I
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 3: can totally get that. When you think that we're electromagnetic
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 3: beings and the moon is a magnetic force and the
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 3: Sun is an electric force, you can see there's a
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 3: bigger thing going on here, right. But for me, it's
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 3: quite simple. I developed this really nice buzz in my
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 3: body when when when I've laid off all the shit,
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 3: you know. So for example, when I used to go partying,
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 3: probably will party again, but I haven't done that for
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 3: well six months now since we celebrated row in the
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 3: Atlantic celebrates just a euphemism for an excuse to drink
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 3: loads of alcohol. But undoubtedly, when you're live in that life,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 3: oh man, you you never have this beautiful feeling that
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 3: I have. Now, You just don't have it. It kills it.
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 3: You physically cannot develop it. But when you're off and
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 3: when you've been you know, talk about alkaline diet quite
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 3: a lot on my channel, simply because it's it's the
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 3: key to everything, the key to perfect health and never
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 3: getting ill. Is this is what did it for me,
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 3: you know. And when I'm doing you know, when my
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 3: body's you know, got a good pH seven point two five,
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 3: when I'm not hungover, when I'm not over eating, and
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 3: I physically developed like this electromagnetic feel, you know, lucky.
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 3: It's I can't think of the name of it, and
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 3: I get my body just rushes like I've taken ecstasy
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 3: or something. And so I would just say, just from
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 3: that point of view, I think I'm doing you know,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 3: I know that I'm doing something right. When it gets
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 3: to this massive Kundalini awakening that they caught, I can't
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 3: say of you know, I can't say I've ever to
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 3: hold myself down in my chair because I haven't. I
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 3: personally haven't experienced that. And so I just wanted to
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 3: get your thoughts on it all, Jane, what it's meant
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 3: to you and.
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 4: Well for me, I went on a journey in my forties,
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 4: and I talk about it in my bio in the
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 4: sense that I realized that one of the reasons why
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 4: I did so badly at school was because I wasn't
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 4: studying things that I enjoyed. Yeah, yeah, of course, Adhd,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 4: your biggest enemy is boredom. So in my forties I
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 4: went on this journey and I actually just originally went
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 4: out to qualify as a life coach because everybody kept
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 4: telling me you'd be a great life coach, and that
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 4: was the thing of the time. And then once I
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 4: passed that diplaying there, I started looking at all these
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 4: other things and thinking, oh no, now I'm interested in
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 4: this and I'm so this big holistic door opened up
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 4: for me, and I became a reiki master, and I
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 4: went back to college for two years and retrained. I
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 4: trained in massage in the eighties, but I retrained in
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 4: massage two years of college studied. I evada, kept studying
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 4: and studying and studying because all that time I was
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 4: looking for answers as to how I could heal myself,
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 4: and I kept finding more and more answers. Now, put
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 4: very simply, everything is energy, and energy can change form,
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 4: So we can die, you know, earth to earth, ashes
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 4: to ashes and all of that, but the essence will
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 4: go off somewhere else. You know. Yes, your ad is energy.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 4: And what I learned was that everything, if you study enough,
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 4: everything joins up. And all of this knowledge has been
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 4: out there for thousands of evader is thousands of years old,
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 4: and it works on the basis of trying to keep
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 4: you healthy rather than treat you when you get sick.
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 4: And how I put it is is that disease turns
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 4: into disease. So I know, and simply put, somebody said
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 4: to me, very brutal and very blunt, but also true,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 4: when my bowel burths. This woman said to me, She said,
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 4: clever girl, She said, people have been pouring poison into
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 4: you for years when you threw it all out in
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 4: one go. Now, very true. But if I actually sat
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 4: down and thought about the choice of how I'd like
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 4: to do that, that probably wouldn't have been. I always say,
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 4: those two episodes that happened cleared out my heart chark
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 4: are and it cleared out, you know, my second charter,
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 4: which interestingly is the center, the sacral charterra that is
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 4: the center of where sexual abuse takes place. So the
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 4: disease manifested in these areas where there was trauma and
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 4: there was pain. I can think of a lot better
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 4: ways to deal with it than something quite so drastic.
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 4: But when I was working in palliative care, I never
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 4: met one patient that hadn't meant manifested cancer in the
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 4: area of their body where they were carrying which would
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 4: relate to the trauma they were carrying that they never
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 4: dealt with. It wasn't fifty sixty seventy percent.
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 5: It was one hundred percent.
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 4: Now thirty four years ago when I first started working there.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 4: At that time, if I'd have said to my boss,
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 4: I'd like to do some research around this, I would
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 4: have been looked at as if I was a nut job.
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 4: You know, because we've come on so we have all
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 4: this ancient knowledge that from my perception of what I see,
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 4: and the more I've studied, the more I see. Now
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 4: we have people like doctor Bruce Lipton. If you haven't
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 4: looked at his work, I would strongly recommend it. He's
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 4: known as the father of epigenetics. So we now know
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 4: that it's not whether you've got the genes for cancer
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 4: that decides whether you've got or you're going to get
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 4: cancer or not. It's the environment that turns it on
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 4: or turns it off. We have got Dr Gavil Matte.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 4: We have got so many greats of our time that
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 4: I'm you know, deepat Chopra is another one. You know, endocrinologist,
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 4: ioaedic doctor. You know that there's so much knowledge of
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 4: ancient knowledge that's coming back into the mainstream now and
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 4: accessible free for anybody in everybody, because there's so much
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 4: out there on YouTube and other channels you know that
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 4: you can tap into. So yeah, I mean I should.
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 4: What brings me back to that same thing that I say,
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 4: if anything ever triggers me now, I'm grateful for it
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 4: because it shows me where I've yet to heal and
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 4: when things that would have triggered me don't I know that,
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 4: you know that part of me has heels so energetically.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 4: The mind can cause disease just as easily as the
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 4: food we eat, in the water we drink, and anything
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 4: else that we do, whether we exercise it, whether we don't.
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 4: If we don't operate a holistic approach and we neglect
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 4: one part of mind, body and spirit that can still
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 4: bring about some kind of disaster, makes sense.
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh absolutely. I think we all come to the
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 3: same conclusions, don't we when we look at this long enough.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 3: What what practices do you invoke then on a daily
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 3: basis to keep your spiritual health tiptop.
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 4: I every single morning when I wake up, I have
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 4: a reading app on my phone, So every.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 5: Single morning I do that.
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 4: I do breath work, and I try and do breath
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 4: work as well. If there's any triggers going on, or
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 4: if I'm any kind of situations that I need to
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 4: ground myself, I'll always come back to breath work. I
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 4: have recently started trying. Whenever I can to go out
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 4: and there's a local partner in me, I'll do a
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 4: quick half an hour. I put a timer on the phone,
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 4: do half an hour walk and then I've got my gym.
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 4: All the rest of it I eat. I mean, yesterday
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 4: it was my birthday, so I had a bit of
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 4: anoffy pie and some wine, and you know, I enjoyed it.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 4: But that's not how I live every day. I eat
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 4: reasonably healthy and have a bit of naughty ness. I've
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 4: drastically cut down sugar in my diet and all the
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 4: things you're talking about, the things that create inflammation in
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 4: the body, caffeine and all of those things. And lucky
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 4: that for me, my addictions always came out either as workerholism,
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 4: which you can always making it's use to work because
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 4: you've got to earn money to pay the bills, yeah,
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 4: or in eating, you know. So I'm really lucky that
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 4: drugs never did it for me. I didn't go down
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 4: the path that you went down. I think we all
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 4: have our own journeys in our own way, and so
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 4: if you're doing anything too much, then you're coming away
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 4: from health and you're coming away from balance. So what
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 4: I do these days is I try and balance out work,
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 4: which I do a lot less of. I choose what
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 4: I do these days. I've got nothing to prove. I've
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 4: got nothing I need to go out there in the
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 4: world and prove and do. I share my story because
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 4: I know it gives hope and inspiration to others, and
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 4: I'm known now as an expert with reef and resilience.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 4: Great if you can, by telling your story give hope
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 4: to others.
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 5: That's what your podcasts all about, isn't it.
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 4: You know? But I carry on studying, and I think
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 4: that's a great part of the mind.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 5: Part of mind, body and spirit.
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 4: And recently I've been watching there's a fantastic neuroscientist called
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 4: Dr Taras Schwart, and I've been watching her stuff. And
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 4: I know you did a podcast with Tama Thornborough, you know,
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 4: you know, looking at rewiring and the high wave. And
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 4: so in my journey, as I said to you earlier,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 4: the hardest bit that's been trying to rewire that hard drive.
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 4: It's been a bit like looking for the virus in
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 4: the hard drive of the computer without the software to
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 4: find it. So what I've learned to do is I've
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 4: learned to listen somatically to what's going on in my body.
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 4: That's something I do a check in several times a day.
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 4: How tense are my muscles, what am I thinking, how
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 4: am I feeling? And checking those things so that, for example,
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 4: breastwork brings you looking at those things to ground yourself
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 4: and to give yourself nurturing, because isn't that what we've
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 4: been talking about childhoods Where I think the one thing
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 4: you and I've definitely got in common is that word neglect.
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 4: And if you look at the way most adults these
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 4: days supposedly take care of themselves, there's a heck of
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 4: a lot of neglect that goes on.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. It's funny when you put it like that. We
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 3: neglect ourselves, don't we. And yeah, we think that treating
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 3: ourselves with this, that and that is acceptable. But really,
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 3: when you look at this behaviors, you're putting yourself in
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 3: an earlier grave, aren't you.
• 2:17:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And when you look at And this is the
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 4: bit that I think the thing that somebody said to me.
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 4: I did a podcast a couple of weeks back. It's
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 4: not out yet, but I do it with a psychologist.
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 4: So it's a lovely lady. And she asked me if
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 4: she said to me, She said, you come across as
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 4: a as a very kind person, you know, like all
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 4: the trauma that you've had, you come across as really kind.
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 4: Words to that effect, and I said, yeah. And out
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 4: of everything that I've achieved in my life, that's what
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 4: I'm the most proudest of is that everything that's happened to.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 5: Me doesn't define who I am today.
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 4: And I m past the kind of my nature, you know,
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 4: you know everything that I've done in term happy when
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 4: I'm helping people, counseling, impelliative care, being a therapist, you know,
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 4: being a holistic therapy. I'm always happy when I'm helping people.
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 4: That's an mpass nature. But here's where empaths go very,
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 4: very wrong, and they have to learn this lesson often
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 4: the hard way is they put other people before themselves,
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 4: and we have to learn to take care of ourselves.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 4: Because when you're on that airplane, what do they say
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 4: to you, you put your oxygen mask on first before
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 4: you put it on the child next to you, because
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 4: if you're not okay, you can only you can only
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 4: take care, you know, for other people to a certain extent,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 4: and then you're absolutely depleted. So we have to learn
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 4: and those And I've seen this as a pattern through
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 4: specifically children who've been abused or neglected. Is you see
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 4: a child or you see an adult that's taking good
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 4: care of themselves, they haven't gone through that kind of abuse,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 4: because you have to learn it if it's not something
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 4: that was put into your natural programming.
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, we've all hadded quite a lot to learn,
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 3: haven't we.
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 4: And I think you know, the beauty of life is
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 4: every single day I'm on this planet and there's a
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 4: lot less time ahead of me than there is behind me. Now,
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 4: every single day I learned something new. And I remember
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 4: my Grampy, who was one of the He was my
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 4: step grampy, and I wish i'd actually spend more time
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 4: with him. If I'd gone to live with him, my
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 4: life would have been very different. He died when he
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 4: was ninety one and he used, so I always had
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 4: this attitude of his life was lived by everything in moderation,
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 4: you know. So he drank and smoked all his life.
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 4: He smoke to pipe and he drank pretty much every day.
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 4: But it would be a glass of sherry or ag
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 4: in t and he would fill up his pipe in
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 4: the morning and he'd take a few puffs and then
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 4: he put it out, and that pipe lasted him all
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 4: day and all of it his it was all about
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 4: his whole life was about being open to learning, being
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 4: open to new information. If there's anything I could change
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 4: about my life to have eased my journey, I would
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 4: have begged him for me to go and live with
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 4: him when I was quite young, and I think things
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 4: would have been very different. But then maybe I wouldn't
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 4: have as much to offer people by way of my
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 4: experiences and sharing those. Now you know, it's come see
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 4: comsat isn't it.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, it is, you know, hindsight. It's not just a
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 3: wonderful thing, but it's also subjective. And you know, I mean,
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 3: it's just it, isn't it. If we changed anything about
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 3: our past, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. We'd
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 3: be on a completely completely different trajectory. I can't even
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 3: say that word.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 7: But yes, yeah, and I think you know that this
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 7: last what I've been learning, and I think again, knowledge
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 7: is just growing.
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 4: I've got to put as we're coming to the end
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 4: of I've got to put this into the conversation because
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 4: you ask me, and I haven't answer that question about
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 4: my thoughts on ADHD. So if you listen to neuroscientists
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 4: and neurosurgeons, they actually come to the same conclusion majority
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 4: of them that actually it's either genetic. But that also
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 4: comes into the fact that with people like doctor GARYL. Matte,
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 4: what they will also say is there's intergenerational trauma. So
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 4: that's part of that genetics. And if you get trauma
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 4: when the brain is actually developing, which is later in men,
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 4: you know it can be anything up to twenty four
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 4: and usually twenty one in women, then you can have
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 4: a problem with you wiring somewhere us what happens, or
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 4: as one guy says, if I can't see it in
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 4: the family genetics, it will be from the head injury.
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 4: So there is.
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so there is general consensus.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 4: That these are the main causes of what causes ADHD
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 4: in people. But what I think is absolutely fantastic and
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 4: I'm seeing absolute proof of it now is what Tara
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 4: Schwartz says and what other neuroscientists say about the whole
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 4: rewiring of the brain is that although our neuroplasticity gets
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 4: less as we get older, just as we can't build
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 4: muscle as easily and we're going to naturally carry more
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 4: faut blah blah blah, and hair is going to go gray,
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 4: and nobody actually has got a cure for aging. You know,
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 4: the neuroplasticity is still there and you can still continue
• 2:22:45
  Speaker 4: if you do the right things to rewire your brain,
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 4: equally as you can continue to keep the same trauma
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 4: and the same symptoms if you do nothing to rewire it.
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 5: So I'm a great believer in that nothing is hopeless.
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 4: Not why you've got breath.
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, keep on trucking. As Matthew Pritchard I would say,
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 3: Jay would love to chat longer.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 4: It's been great, Chris.
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll have to have another chat on another day.
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 3: We're going to put all your links below the podcast,
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 3: so don't worry about that links to all your books
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 3: friends at home. Massive Thank you well, firstly to Jay
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 3: for joining us, and secondly to you for watching or listening.
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 3: If you could like and subscribe, that would be absolutely awesome. Jay,
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 3: did you have anything to add before I say a
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 3: final goodbye to our audience.
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 4: No, apart from thanks for having me, Chris, I think
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 4: these conversations on these podcasts are so important and there
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 4: are so many people out there that are becoming more
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 4: and more conscious as the days go by, and that's
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 4: beautiful to see.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, very well said, Well said, Jay, Stay on the
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 3: line just so I can thank you properly after I
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 3: click record button off. But yes, friends, if you can
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 3: like and subscribe, that would be brilliant. Massive thank you
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 3: to everyone that supports us on locals or Patreon or
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 3: becomes a YouTube member, all for as little as one
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 3: ninety nine a month. And thank you to everyone that
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 3: came to our monthly Zoom meeting last night where we
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 3: put the worlds to right. And the last thing I
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 3: just want to say is thank you to everyone that's
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 3: chipped in a fiver towards my upcoming Every summit, which
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 3: I want to raise awareness of the link between unhealed,
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 3: undiagnosed childhood trauma and veteran suicide. So thank you for that.
• 2:24:45
  Speaker 3: There's a link below.
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 10: Much love everyone, friends, Thank you for listening to the
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 10: Bought the t Shirt Podcast. Please like, subscribe, and share,
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 10: and don't forget to follow me on social media. Use
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  Speaker 10: the name Chris Rule, Instagram, christ Throw, Thank You.
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