Latest / The You Project / #1538 The Five-Easy-Steps-Myth - Amy Molloy

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#1538 The Five-Easy-Steps-Myth - Amy Molloy · The You Project

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Speaker 1: I can know you, bloody champions. Welcome to another episode
0:03
Speaker 1: of my favorite, well, my mum's favorite podcast. You Project
0:07
Speaker 1: Tiffany and Cooked two times in one day, you and
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Speaker 1: me two times in one day. It must be like
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Speaker 1: fucking Christmas for you.
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Speaker 2: Hey, isn't it ever? Isn't it ever?
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Speaker 1: And hasn't Mary got great taste in podcasts? By the way?
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Speaker 1: Doesn't she? Though? Doesn't she?
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Speaker 2: Though?
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Speaker 1: You probably can't get enough of me. I'm like cocaine
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Speaker 1: with specs and big nose.
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Speaker 2: Look, you're not wrong, You're not wrong.
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Speaker 1: I'm like like sociological cocaine. Just inhale me and just
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Speaker 1: Amy's like what the fuck? Amy's like what what? What
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Speaker 1: is this book? I can't believe it never made me
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Speaker 1: do this? Hi? Amy?
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Speaker 2: Hello, I'm just loving your accents right now. You're so
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Speaker 2: incredibly Australian to me. I just I've lived here for
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Speaker 2: ten years and still a good as the accent still
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Speaker 2: gets me.
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Speaker 1: There's no accents here, there's the only accent to you, bro.
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Speaker 1: I hate to I mean, I don't want to raign
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Speaker 1: on your fucking accent parade, but tiff and I don't
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Speaker 1: have an accent.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely completely must only be me.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it is funny, isn't it, Because I mean, yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's when I travel overseas, people often say, oh, I
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Speaker 1: love your accent. I'm like whatever, I'm like, oh, okay,
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Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, we don't we don't realize we're a
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Speaker 1: little What does it sound like? Is it kind of?
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Speaker 1: Is it an abrasive accent for the.
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Speaker 2: Rest No, of course not. I love it. My husband
1:34
Speaker 2: has got a pick as the accent, and my kids
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Speaker 2: have a wonderful blend. Of my little girls there, she's
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Speaker 2: half Bogan and half English, so she's got this beautiful,
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Speaker 2: like really pick Ossie accent sometimes and then really pummy
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Speaker 2: Queen's English sometimes, and she veers between both of them,
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Speaker 2: and I just think it's brilliant.
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Speaker 1: That's how often do you go home and take the
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Speaker 1: kids with you?
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Speaker 2: Since pre COVID because of the price of flight, and
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Speaker 2: also because my kids are three, five and seven and
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Speaker 2: doing the long haul with the full gang feels like torture.
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Speaker 2: So I get all my family to come here and
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Speaker 2: stay with us and said, which they absolutely love, rather
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Speaker 2: than go back to the you know, English climate. But
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Speaker 2: hopefully next year maybe or the following year, we'll go
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Speaker 2: back there.
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Speaker 1: I mean, without me reading something off a website or
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Speaker 1: a bit of paper, Can you just give my audience
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Speaker 1: that just the amy snapshot? Who are you? Just a
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Speaker 1: quick kind of you know, just however many years you've
2:37
Speaker 1: been alive in a minute or two, no pressure.
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Speaker 2: I journalist, editor, author, writing, coach, podcast writer, all the words,
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Speaker 2: all the things with the words, specializing in mental health,
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Speaker 2: lived experiences, you know, breaking down the stigma around sharing
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Speaker 2: our stories in a really empowering and productive way. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: everything that comes under that umbrella is what I do.
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Speaker 1: What kind of kid were you?
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Speaker 2: Oh? A great question? Oh do you know what? I think?
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Speaker 2: It goes into two like two chapters of my childhood
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Speaker 2: and life, as most of us do, like a very expressive,
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Speaker 2: confident kid and then a very shy, like self conscious
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Speaker 2: teenager and young adult. So really like experienced the two
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Speaker 2: sides of it. And so much of my adult life
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Speaker 2: and my healing and my therapy has been about rediscovering
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Speaker 2: that early version of myself, the one who was like
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Speaker 2: so confident in her voice and who she was and
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Speaker 2: showing up in the world in this really true to
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Speaker 2: herself way. And it's been about like going back to
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Speaker 2: that and like most of us, right, Like, the bridge
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Speaker 2: between that version of myself and the later one was
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Speaker 2: of course, trauma and things happen that, you know, especially
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Speaker 2: for me early on, made me really like question the
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Speaker 2: world around me and really shook up my self confidence.
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Speaker 2: So I think part of my work as a journalist,
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Speaker 2: definitely as an editor, has been how to help people
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Speaker 2: to find their voice and really feel confident in sharing
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Speaker 2: who they are.
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Speaker 1: I know you work a lot in the healing space,
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Speaker 1: trauma space, mental emotional health space. My PhD. My PhD
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Speaker 1: is in self awareness kind of, it's in a think
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Speaker 1: or mede perception and matter accuracy. What's the what's the
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Speaker 1: space between your identity and who people think you are?
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Speaker 1: Like who you think you are and who others think
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Speaker 1: you are? This is literally my research. I'm just interested.
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Speaker 1: How close is that?
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Speaker 2: Well, it all comes back to the stories that we
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Speaker 2: tell about ourselves and the stories that we believe about ourselves.
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Speaker 2: And I'm really interested, particularly at the moment, about memory
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Speaker 2: and the truth of our memories, you know, especially when
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Speaker 2: you're talking about childhood, because so many of us stories
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Speaker 2: we tell about ourselves and then tell the world about ourselves,
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Speaker 2: especially if you're a writer or someone who has social
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Speaker 2: media is all based on so much of the story
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Speaker 2: of our childhood, but our memories can be so inaccurate.
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Speaker 2: And you know, you look at two siblings who brought
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Speaker 2: up in the same home, experience the same experiences, and
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Speaker 2: one is traumatized by them and one isn't, and you know,
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Speaker 2: it's really and then that informs who we become as adults,
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Speaker 2: or who we think we are as adults, and then
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Speaker 2: that informs how what we tell the world about ourselves.
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Speaker 2: So even you know, I work a lot in the
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Speaker 2: mental health space, and you know, saying I'm a person,
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Speaker 2: you know, I'm an anxious person versus I'm a person
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Speaker 2: who experiences anxious episodes or like what we pathologize in
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Speaker 2: terms of our behavior. You know, I've experienced health anxiety,
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Speaker 2: which is a very normal reaction to events in my life.
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Speaker 2: Like I was widowed when I was twenty three, my
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Speaker 2: husband died very suddenly of cancer when I was a teenager,
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Speaker 2: and my dad was paralyzed from cancer and had to
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Speaker 2: learn to walk again, And my very understandable response to
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Speaker 2: that was to develop health anxiety as a way to
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Speaker 2: feel safe. Now I can spend the rest of my
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Speaker 2: life saying I'm an anxious person, or I can say no,
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Speaker 2: I had this very understandable response to a set of
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Speaker 2: circumstances that I experienced, and how I see that is
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Speaker 2: going to inform how I go and live the rest
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Speaker 2: of my life. Am I living the rest of my
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Speaker 2: life as an anxious person? Personally? I choose no, because
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Speaker 2: I don't see myself as that. Am I going about
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Speaker 2: in my writing writing that I'm an anxious person? No?
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Speaker 2: But you know, you can see the difference in like
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Speaker 2: such a small, like one sentence, I'm an anxious person
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Speaker 2: or I experienced an anxious episode as a result of
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Speaker 2: my life experiences. And I think that's the power words
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Speaker 2: and storytelling and non fiction right based on lived experiences,
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Speaker 2: it had such power to change how we see who
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Speaker 2: we are.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that, And I also love the idea
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Speaker 1: of opening the door on the understanding that two people
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Speaker 1: go through the same experience or very similar experience, like
7:17
Speaker 1: you're talking about the siblings, one is traumatized, one is
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Speaker 1: not traumatized, and then that kind of opens a bit
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Speaker 1: of an awareness door on oh, well, what caused the trauma?
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Speaker 1: Because if one person is traumatized and one is not
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Speaker 1: Is it about the stimulus, about the event, the situation,
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Speaker 1: or is it about my individual response and interaction. And
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Speaker 1: as you said, my stories, you know, it's like if
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Speaker 1: you believe you're in danger but you're not, or your
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Speaker 1: body will respond as though you are actually in danger
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Speaker 1: despite the fact that in the real world here there
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Speaker 1: is no threat. So I guess it's trying to understand
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Speaker 1: on a physiological, psychological, emotional level that like the intertwining
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Speaker 1: of anxiety. You know, It's like when I believe something bad,
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Speaker 1: even if the belief is flawed, then I have that experience.
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Speaker 1: It's like our body doesn't know when we're dreaming. That's
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Speaker 1: why my heart rate goes up and my blood pressure
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Speaker 1: increases and my sympathetic nerve system switches on and all
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Speaker 1: of those things happen despite the fact that I'm not
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Speaker 1: actually running away from a bad guy down a dark alley.
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Speaker 1: My body doesn't know that's not real, you know. And
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Speaker 1: there's this, yeah, I guess, really trying to understand I
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Speaker 1: think with anxiety and depression and mental health, not that
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Speaker 1: it's a solution, but opening the door on understanding it
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Speaker 1: is definitely part of a.
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Speaker 2: Solution, absolutely, And I think that's where the telling of
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Speaker 2: lived experience is important, like absolutely, Like as a journalist,
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Speaker 2: I want to interview the experts and the psychologists and
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Speaker 2: psychotherapists and the academics, but I also really want to
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Speaker 2: hear from people who have gone through a real experience
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Speaker 2: about what works for them, doesn't work for them, how
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Speaker 2: they deal with their triggers. And I think in particularly
9:09
Speaker 2: in media and reporting of mental wellness, it's that mixture
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Speaker 2: of the academics and experts and the lived experiences which
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Speaker 2: is really going to move the needle on how we
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Speaker 2: understand mental wellness and the spectrum of all of it
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Speaker 2: and how it really looks in life. Because when I
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Speaker 2: wrote my first book, I was twenty three and I'd
9:27
Speaker 2: just been widowed, and at the time it was a
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Speaker 2: super controversial memoir about how I became very promiscuous and
9:34
Speaker 2: use sex as therapy. So the daily mail the headline
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Speaker 2: read and it was all about like young widoweddom and
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Speaker 2: loss and grief and how it shows up in very
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Speaker 2: different ways. And at the time, all the self help
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Speaker 2: books around grief were just very like ten steps formulaic,
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Speaker 2: and they certainly didn't include sex, addiction or eating disorders.
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Speaker 2: Or you know, all the very different ways that we
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Speaker 2: deal with grief. And it's because of the telling of
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Speaker 2: lived experience that we can see, like there isn't this
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Speaker 2: cookie cutter way of self help that is like going
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Speaker 2: to fit everybody. We need to look at the full
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Speaker 2: spectrum of how we cope with adversity to actually help
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Speaker 2: people to overcome it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love that. The I mean, the truth
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Speaker 1: is that there's almost no cookie cutter approach for anything,
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Speaker 1: whether or not it's food, overcoming or dealing with stress
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Speaker 1: or trauma, whether or not it's building a business, writing
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Speaker 1: a book. It's not like there's an absolute three, four
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Speaker 1: ten step formula that's universally optimal for every individual. And so,
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Speaker 1: as you said, it's like, I think it's good to
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Speaker 1: open the door on the science and the research to
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Speaker 1: a point, and I'm a researcher, but also to go, yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: that's good in theory and in you know, but like,
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Speaker 1: here's what's happening on the ground with real humans who
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Speaker 1: are going through real stuff, and try to, you know,
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Speaker 1: see what resonates in the middle of all of that.
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Speaker 1: Have you heard of a lady called what is her name?
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Speaker 1: What is her name? Abigail Shreier. She wrote a book
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Speaker 1: recently called Bad Therapy. Really interesting. I think you'd like
11:15
Speaker 1: to at least have a look at it. Also a journo,
11:18
Speaker 1: a researcher. It's called bad Therapy, and she talks about
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Speaker 1: the fact that for a lot of people, obviously talk
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Speaker 1: therapy is great. She also said, for some people it
11:28
Speaker 1: makes it worse. Right, It's not like there's this, oh,
11:33
Speaker 1: you know what you need to do. You need to
11:35
Speaker 1: sit down and talk to somebody. Some people and by
11:38
Speaker 1: the way, everyone, I'm not saying talk therapy is bad
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Speaker 1: at all. I'm saying for some people, it doesn't seem
11:43
Speaker 1: to work or be optimal. For some people, when they
11:47
Speaker 1: sit and basically every Tuesday sit down with you know,
11:51
Speaker 1: doctor whoever, they kind of relight the fuse of that trauma,
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Speaker 1: and then for the next two or three days they're
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Speaker 1: in a worse place than before they rocked up. Rather
12:01
Speaker 1: than acknowledging what's happened and not putting their head in
12:04
Speaker 1: the sand, but just saying, all right, right now where
12:07
Speaker 1: I am, what is the best use of my mental
12:09
Speaker 1: and emotional energy and my attention, And for some people,
12:14
Speaker 1: you know, just getting on with shit. Is what works
12:16
Speaker 1: for other people. Going and talking on a regular basis
12:19
Speaker 1: is what works. And I think, you know, that's the
12:23
Speaker 1: danger of any cookie cutter approach, I guess.
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Speaker 2: And that's really where the work I do as a
12:29
Speaker 2: writing coach comes into it. So I work with people
12:32
Speaker 2: to you know, turn their lived experiences into books and
12:35
Speaker 2: articles and podcasts and whatever they dream of doing TV shows.
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Speaker 2: And it's a real fine line between sharing your story
12:44
Speaker 2: and like flogging it to death in a way that
12:46
Speaker 2: doesn't ever let you move on. So like I want
12:48
Speaker 2: people to write the book, but then, like I talk about,
12:52
Speaker 2: we need to close the loop on it, because if
12:54
Speaker 2: we don't and we just leave it open, like I
12:57
Speaker 2: can spend you know, the next part of my life
13:00
Speaker 2: talking over and over again about how I was widowed
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Speaker 2: and that awful moment my husband died, and I can
13:05
Speaker 2: just get stuck in that trauma loop forever. But at
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Speaker 2: a point I had to close it because I knew
13:11
Speaker 2: I wanted to go on. I've got another partner, I've
13:13
Speaker 2: got three kids, and I want my life to be
13:15
Speaker 2: so much more than that. So I write work with
13:18
Speaker 2: my writers to you know, create this beautiful book about
13:22
Speaker 2: some of their hardest experiences in a way that will
13:25
Speaker 2: a help them to heal and be help the people
13:28
Speaker 2: that read it to heal. But also let's close the
13:30
Speaker 2: loop then and find a way for you actually to
13:32
Speaker 2: move on with your life after that, because like you
13:35
Speaker 2: were saying, you know, you can sit in therapy for
13:38
Speaker 2: the rest of your life and hash over the toughest experiences,
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Speaker 2: or you can find a way to close the loop
13:43
Speaker 2: and move forward.
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Speaker 1: And I think sometimes it's like even though like let's say,
13:50
Speaker 1: you know, which we're not going to bit, Let's say
13:52
Speaker 1: we did a deep dive into losing your husband, and
13:55
Speaker 1: we might chat about it, but you know, let's say
13:57
Speaker 1: we did a podcast on that. Even though that you
14:01
Speaker 1: might not be instructive in any way, it's just in
14:05
Speaker 1: the sharing of your experience and your journey and your
14:08
Speaker 1: therapy and your you know, revelations and insights, breakdowns, breakthroughs,
14:13
Speaker 1: all of that where someone else kind of that's for them,
14:18
Speaker 1: that's part of their therapy and healing without you telling
14:21
Speaker 1: anyone what to do. I think sometimes it's just in
14:24
Speaker 1: the going like, oh, wow, Amy went through something that's
14:28
Speaker 1: you wouldn't wish on anyone, and oh, she's kind of good.
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Speaker 1: Now she's kind of normal, she's got three kids. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and she's not sitting in the corner a broken mess up.
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Speaker 1: There's okay, So it's possible. I think that gives people
14:43
Speaker 1: hope absolutely.
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Speaker 2: You know, my first book came out like twenty years
14:47
Speaker 2: ago now, which is Bomkers or fifteen years ago something,
14:50
Speaker 2: and I have people, you know, messaging me now who've
14:54
Speaker 2: just looked me up, found my Instagram and now you know,
14:56
Speaker 2: there I am with my kids on the beach. And
14:58
Speaker 2: they always messaged me to like, I'm so happy for
15:01
Speaker 2: you because the last thing they read was a year
15:03
Speaker 2: after my husband's death, and I'm you know, still crawling
15:06
Speaker 2: out of grief, and now they're genuinely so happy to
15:09
Speaker 2: see that your life doesn't have to end with that,
15:12
Speaker 2: you know, toughest moment when it does sometimes feel like
15:15
Speaker 2: it is going to end and they're going to be
15:16
Speaker 2: there can be no way forward. And I also think
15:19
Speaker 2: I really want to break down shame about how we
15:22
Speaker 2: do cope because we all look back on these toughest
15:25
Speaker 2: times and we drunk too much, or you know, we
15:28
Speaker 2: were kind of selfish sometimes, or we said things that
15:32
Speaker 2: hurt other people in grief or in loss or in heartbreak,
15:36
Speaker 2: and we can really beat ourselves up about it. And
15:39
Speaker 2: I always always talk about a letter I got after
15:43
Speaker 2: my first book came out, and it was from like
15:47
Speaker 2: a woman in her eighties who's been widowed in the
15:49
Speaker 2: war and she'd gone on to kind of sleep around
15:52
Speaker 2: and have all these affairs, and she said, I've been
15:54
Speaker 2: living with my shame and guilt for you know, forty
15:58
Speaker 2: years about how I acted to being widowed, and now
16:01
Speaker 2: I finally feel like I could forgive myself. And I
16:05
Speaker 2: was like that, that is it. This is why we
16:07
Speaker 2: put ourselves out there, even when we're scared, and you know,
16:11
Speaker 2: we have this vulnerability hanking over and our hands are
16:14
Speaker 2: shaking as we press posts or whatever we're doing. This
16:17
Speaker 2: is why we do it because we can really have
16:20
Speaker 2: a ripple effect on someone by sharing our own story.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that. And I think sometimes when you're
16:27
Speaker 1: in the middle of pain, darkness, whatever, you just reach
16:33
Speaker 1: for whatever is going to give you some whether it's
16:36
Speaker 1: booze or whether it's sex, or whether it's fucking Netflix
16:40
Speaker 1: silliness or I don't know, but you reach for something
16:43
Speaker 1: that's going to pull you out of that, even for
16:45
Speaker 1: a moment just to that.
16:47
Speaker 2: And it works until it doesn't, right like it does.
16:50
Speaker 2: I certainly don't say I regret anything. It absolutely works
16:54
Speaker 2: until it doesn't. And I think the mindfulness is about
16:58
Speaker 2: knowing that moment that it isn't working anymore.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, do you think that? Well, it's good to
17:06
Speaker 1: listen to you read your books, you know, listen to
17:09
Speaker 1: podcasts like mine and whatever. You know, go to workshops,
17:13
Speaker 1: go to therapy, and do you think we trust ourselves enough? Though?
17:17
Speaker 1: Like I feel sometimes we would rather have someone else
17:21
Speaker 1: tell us what to do rather than tap into that intuitive,
17:25
Speaker 1: instinctive wisdom that I think we all have that intelligence
17:30
Speaker 1: that I don't know, you know, that that stuff that
17:32
Speaker 1: we can't explain, that that high level of intuition.
17:36
Speaker 2: I think you're totally right, yes, And I think that's
17:39
Speaker 2: where you know to link to the other podcast I
17:41
Speaker 2: write this space, which is a mindfulness podcast. That's where
17:46
Speaker 2: you know meditation and mindfulness. And it sounds like such
17:49
Speaker 2: a cliche, and I am the person you know who's
17:51
Speaker 2: always telling everyone to meditate, But this is why. Because
17:54
Speaker 2: until we do learn to sit with ourselves and trust ourselves,
17:57
Speaker 2: we can read all the books and sit in therapy
18:00
Speaker 2: and fork it out with everyone. But until we literally
18:03
Speaker 2: do learn to go inwards and say, like, what is
18:05
Speaker 2: my body telling me? What is you know, your physical
18:09
Speaker 2: sensations are such a guide for if you can you
18:13
Speaker 2: know you were talking about earlier about kind of the
18:15
Speaker 2: force fheares around us and our body reacting to the
18:19
Speaker 2: misconception of fear. If we can pull that back and
18:22
Speaker 2: actually go, no, what am I feeling genuinely in this moment?
18:27
Speaker 2: If I take away the chatter all around me, then
18:29
Speaker 2: we can often find a clearer way forward. And you know,
18:33
Speaker 2: I'm the person that I didn't meditate right after my
18:36
Speaker 2: husband died. Like those those are the times when we
18:38
Speaker 2: don't want to look with it. It's really scary to
18:41
Speaker 2: sit in silence, which is why we turn outwards to
18:44
Speaker 2: all the podcasts and all the books and everything else.
18:47
Speaker 2: But if we can find an attainable way to meditate,
18:51
Speaker 2: which is what the space is all about, in a
18:53
Speaker 2: relatable way to meditate, then you know, that's when, yeah,
18:57
Speaker 2: we can start to trust ourselves a little bit more.
19:02
Speaker 1: I think also, you know that when people think about meditation,
19:06
Speaker 1: not always, but a lot of people think meditation, you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: cross legged, you know, finger tips, touchings, you know, in
19:13
Speaker 1: some kind of Eastern pose, you know, or whatever, and
19:18
Speaker 1: I'm shit at that. I can't do that, I get
19:22
Speaker 1: you know, my mind is like a dog with three dicks.
19:24
Speaker 1: It's busy up there. I can't sit still right, I'm
19:28
Speaker 1: you know. But I can get into a similar you know,
19:32
Speaker 1: like turning down the volume on my mind, like to
19:35
Speaker 1: get like stepping out of the mayhem and into the
19:38
Speaker 1: calm a little bit when I'm doing you know, when
19:40
Speaker 1: i'm training, when I'm working out, when i'm I've been
19:43
Speaker 1: riding motorbikes since i was five. When I'm on a motorbike,
19:46
Speaker 1: I'm very which you would think you shouldn't be calm,
19:49
Speaker 1: but I'm extremely calm. In music, I'm very calm, and
19:52
Speaker 1: I think I think for people it's also finding the
19:56
Speaker 1: meditation or the tool that will turn off that sympathetic
20:01
Speaker 1: nervous system, turn on the parasympathetic calm the farm, you know,
20:06
Speaker 1: get them just lower all that kind of noise, be
20:09
Speaker 1: that physical, mental, or emotional noise, and not think, oh shit,
20:14
Speaker 1: I can't meditate. I can't sit on the floor with
20:17
Speaker 1: my legs crossed and meditate. I need to try harder.
20:20
Speaker 1: It doesn't really work.
20:22
Speaker 2: Oh exactly. You know, I'm really lucky my parents taught
20:25
Speaker 2: me to meditate when I was fifteen after my dad's
20:28
Speaker 2: cancer diagnosis. He's speaking of accents. He's you know, from
20:31
Speaker 2: a western London family, like you know, pretty gangster. Don't
20:35
Speaker 2: tell anyone, but I'm not him. He was like the
20:37
Speaker 2: black sheep and when off the university, became an engineer.
20:41
Speaker 2: But before that, you know, he certainly was not raised
20:43
Speaker 2: in any kind of spiritual background, with any kind of
20:46
Speaker 2: religion or meditation. They would have thought it was complete bananas.
20:50
Speaker 2: And then you know, after he gets got sick, as
20:52
Speaker 2: many people do, he would have tried anything to survive,
20:57
Speaker 2: and so someone introduced him to reiki as a way
21:00
Speaker 2: to you know, just soothe the symptoms side effects of chemo,
21:05
Speaker 2: and through that he started meditating, and then he taught
21:08
Speaker 2: me as a teenager, which I'm just so grateful for
21:11
Speaker 2: because this was long before meditation was trendy or talked
21:15
Speaker 2: about or anybody you know, really did it. And I'm
21:19
Speaker 2: lucky he taught me open eyed meditation initially, so my
21:22
Speaker 2: first experience of meditation was like just being out in
21:26
Speaker 2: the world, softening your gaze, focusing on something on the
21:29
Speaker 2: horizon and just seeing if you can focus on that
21:33
Speaker 2: site or that noise instead of all the chatter, and
21:36
Speaker 2: you know, just really take away like the multisensory experience
21:40
Speaker 2: of everything going on and see how focused we can be.
21:43
Speaker 2: And I think that's what I'd take into my meditation,
21:46
Speaker 2: Like I rarely just sit in silence. I am normally,
21:51
Speaker 2: you know, with my kids or in the car or
21:54
Speaker 2: in a noisy cafe, And it's how you can make
21:57
Speaker 2: that a meditative experience. And like my heart, like you,
22:00
Speaker 2: he would never if I said sit down and clear
22:03
Speaker 2: your mind, which I wouldn't do because that's not what
22:06
Speaker 2: I think meditation is. But he would just say no.
22:09
Speaker 2: But he's spearfishes and to him, you know, when he's
22:12
Speaker 2: tracking a fish out in the ocean, like he's hyper
22:16
Speaker 2: focus and he's not thinking of anything else. Or when
22:20
Speaker 2: he's surfing, that's his meditation to him. You know, when
22:24
Speaker 2: I'm hiking with the kids and you know we're just
22:27
Speaker 2: listening to the sound of our footsteps breaking through the
22:29
Speaker 2: branches on the ground, like that's meditation to us. So
22:34
Speaker 2: there's so many ways that it can be, and we
22:37
Speaker 2: really need to break away from the idea that it
22:39
Speaker 2: is sitting cross legged and aming, because you know that
22:42
Speaker 2: works for some people but not for most people.
22:47
Speaker 1: Okay, so I've got a few philosophical questions for you. Ready. Yeah,
22:54
Speaker 1: what is something that like a revelation or an insight
22:58
Speaker 1: or an ye hard moment in the last couple of
23:03
Speaker 1: years that's kind of blown you away, Like a revelation,
23:08
Speaker 1: a realization something that you didn't know, or an awareness
23:11
Speaker 1: that you gained which has impacted the way that you
23:14
Speaker 1: think can do and be and create, if anything, I.
23:18
Speaker 2: Love that one of the big ones. And this is
23:21
Speaker 2: such a huge topic, but I'll try and summarize it's
23:24
Speaker 2: as much as I can is fine, and all of
23:29
Speaker 2: ours over identification with suffering. So it's really interesting because
23:34
Speaker 2: my career really was springboarded in a big way by
23:39
Speaker 2: sharing my story of the worst day of my life
23:41
Speaker 2: when my husband died. And it's very interesting to be
23:45
Speaker 2: valued so highly for that and then to and in
23:49
Speaker 2: a world where you know, bad new cells and we
23:54
Speaker 2: do love to hear about other people suffering, and then
23:57
Speaker 2: to get to a place to actually place of value
24:01
Speaker 2: on saying I'm a happy person, I have a good life,
24:04
Speaker 2: this was a good day. I'm going to share that too,
24:08
Speaker 2: you know. I wrote about this on my blog recently,
24:10
Speaker 2: like the sharing of our happy times has to be
24:14
Speaker 2: as important as sharing our tough times. And I come
24:19
Speaker 2: from a family who really rally when times are tough,
24:24
Speaker 2: like they are, you know, you want them on the
24:27
Speaker 2: day you get the diagnosis, on the day the relationship
24:29
Speaker 2: breaks down. They are bloody brilliant. My mum is serves
24:33
Speaker 2: it up with that, but they are very uncomfortable and
24:37
Speaker 2: maybe it's a cultural English thing too. They are not
24:41
Speaker 2: great at celebrating good times. And I think there's two
24:44
Speaker 2: levels of that. It's like A it's seen as boastful
24:47
Speaker 2: or tool poppy syndrome, and B there is a distrust
24:50
Speaker 2: of happiness that has been conditioned into me because they
24:55
Speaker 2: because of again collective trauma, they are worried that if
24:58
Speaker 2: you celebrate good things, shoe the other shoe is going
25:01
Speaker 2: to drop, and that you know, something bad will be
25:04
Speaker 2: around the corner. And I think for me, a big
25:07
Speaker 2: realization through therapy is that I want to live a
25:10
Speaker 2: life where I value happiness as much as I value suffering,
25:14
Speaker 2: where I teach my kids not only how to suffer
25:18
Speaker 2: but also how to celebrate life. I was taught from
25:21
Speaker 2: a very early age how to endure and survive, and
25:24
Speaker 2: as women, you know, we are great at being survivors.
25:29
Speaker 2: But I really want to teach my children how to
25:33
Speaker 2: celebrate and trust their happiness. And yeah, that's kind of
25:38
Speaker 2: dictating what I'm doing in my personal life now and
25:41
Speaker 2: also in the content I share, because I don't only
25:43
Speaker 2: I actually like change the name of my business because
25:46
Speaker 2: it was storytelling for healing, and I felt like, in
25:49
Speaker 2: a way, we were getting stuck in that suffering loop
25:51
Speaker 2: of only sharing the stories of suffering, and I wanted
25:54
Speaker 2: to start to show the other side of life too,
25:56
Speaker 2: because our negative bias does naturally make us attached to
26:01
Speaker 2: the darkness of life, and if we don't make space
26:04
Speaker 2: to the other side too, Like, you know, what's the
26:06
Speaker 2: bloody point of all of this?
26:07
Speaker 1: Really, what's what's the Yeah, I agree with you, what's
26:12
Speaker 1: the I don't know. Is there a is there a
26:16
Speaker 1: line in the sand amy where or is there a
26:19
Speaker 1: philosophical or psychological point where, yes, we want to acknowledge
26:23
Speaker 1: the bad stuff we want to, you know, but then
26:26
Speaker 1: I just don't want to become a victim for twenty
26:28
Speaker 1: five years where I'm just I'm just self indulgent in
26:32
Speaker 1: my pity party, and I'm inviting people to you know,
26:35
Speaker 1: it's of course we've got to acknowledge the bad, we've
26:38
Speaker 1: got to deal with it. We want to heal all
26:41
Speaker 1: of that. But at the same time, let's get the
26:42
Speaker 1: fuck on with it, because you've got a life now,
26:46
Speaker 1: You've got potential, you've got days, you've got time, You've
26:48
Speaker 1: got you know, like, how do we is there? I
26:53
Speaker 1: know that's a hard question, but what's the point where
26:56
Speaker 1: we go? Like like you kind of the way that
26:59
Speaker 1: you acted after your husband died, some people would have
27:03
Speaker 1: gone I understand that some people would have gone no,
27:06
Speaker 1: and you moved on. I don't know, is there a
27:09
Speaker 1: is there a I don't know what am I asking?
27:11
Speaker 1: I'm asking, I guess how do we not get trapped
27:14
Speaker 1: in self pity and still move on without totally of
27:19
Speaker 1: the experience?
27:21
Speaker 2: Good question, and that is part of the dance. And
27:24
Speaker 2: you know, the absolute part of life really is like
27:28
Speaker 2: how do we become more than the events that happened
27:31
Speaker 2: to us? Like that is the big question? And I think,
27:34
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, definitely, how we scare Like the repetition
27:39
Speaker 2: that we get stuck into, Like I'm really hyper aware
27:42
Speaker 2: of like getting stuck on a script of what's happened
27:44
Speaker 2: to us. And like it's funny for me as like,
27:47
Speaker 2: you know, a so called like media person media personality,
27:52
Speaker 2: because I do so many interviews and I write books
27:54
Speaker 2: about my life, like I can get stuck on like, oh,
27:57
Speaker 2: you know, and then my husband died, and then I
27:59
Speaker 2: did this, and my I was paralyzed, and then I
28:01
Speaker 2: had needing disorder and blah blah blah. But I start
28:04
Speaker 2: to hear myself when I'm just reeling off the script
28:06
Speaker 2: that I've said hundreds of times, and I catch myself
28:10
Speaker 2: and it's not even about not about like not telling
28:14
Speaker 2: that story. I'm really happy to talk about my first
28:17
Speaker 2: husband and everything that's come after it, but I really
28:21
Speaker 2: want to update it to truly who I am now.
28:25
Speaker 2: And you know, my current husband there was a moment
28:27
Speaker 2: in the pandemic when he turned around to me and said,
28:31
Speaker 2: you know, you're so attached to your trauma. And at
28:36
Speaker 2: the time I was so affronted. I'm like, well, what
28:38
Speaker 2: are you talking about? But he's really right in that moment,
28:41
Speaker 2: you know, in the culture of the pandemic and everything
28:43
Speaker 2: that had been, you know, happening, and all the bad
28:46
Speaker 2: news in the world. I had started talking about my
28:50
Speaker 2: first husband a lot more than usual, and I'd almost
28:55
Speaker 2: started to use that story to make myself feel better,
29:01
Speaker 2: to give myself more value, and even like to win
29:04
Speaker 2: an argument with my current husband, like if he said something,
29:07
Speaker 2: I'd say, you know, if you don't understand, like you
29:09
Speaker 2: don't know what's happened to me, or you don't know
29:11
Speaker 2: what I've a seen. And though it doesn't happen often,
29:14
Speaker 2: that's probably been the only time in this current relationship
29:17
Speaker 2: in fifteen years, but it's that moment when I go like, oh,
29:21
Speaker 2: like that victimhood and again coming back to using our
29:24
Speaker 2: suffering as a way to boost ourself ESTEEME. That's something
29:29
Speaker 2: I really try and be hyper aware of because we
29:32
Speaker 2: are in a world that glorifies suffering, and we have
29:36
Speaker 2: to be careful not to get stuck in that cycle.
29:41
Speaker 2: It's really interesting, like you probably know the word the
29:45
Speaker 2: work of Gaboron Marte and all the work he does
29:49
Speaker 2: in trauma, and I heard him say, you know, so
29:53
Speaker 2: many of us being everyone who has experienced any kind
29:56
Speaker 2: of trauma, so you know, I'm so grateful for it
29:59
Speaker 2: because it's made me an empathetic person, or this is
30:02
Speaker 2: a gift it's given me, and like I've done that.
30:05
Speaker 2: I say, like, the reason I'm such a good journalist
30:07
Speaker 2: is because I've been through so much so I can
30:09
Speaker 2: connect with people. And Gabor says like, no, no, no,
30:13
Speaker 2: that's your trauma, lens speaking, you would have been that
30:17
Speaker 2: anyway like me, I would have been. I have to
30:22
Speaker 2: realize I would have been empathetic, and I would have
30:24
Speaker 2: been had this skill, and I would have been able
30:26
Speaker 2: to connect with people whether or not I was traumatized
30:29
Speaker 2: or not. And I have to stop giving my trauma
30:32
Speaker 2: credit for giving me that gift and actually saying, hey,
30:35
Speaker 2: do you know what, I don't have to say, I'm
30:37
Speaker 2: so grateful that happened to me because it made me
30:39
Speaker 2: the person I am. I can realize that I have
30:42
Speaker 2: value regardless of what happened to me. So yeah, I
30:45
Speaker 2: don't know if I answered that question or not, but
30:48
Speaker 2: there's something in that for people.
30:51
Speaker 1: I think it's like Tiff and I have spoken about
30:54
Speaker 1: this a lot and a lot of guests. I mean
30:55
Speaker 1: we're fifteen hundred and all the episodes in or something
30:59
Speaker 1: and like I try, I try to be. If people
31:05
Speaker 1: meet me on the street, the biggest compliment to me is, oh,
31:09
Speaker 1: you're exactly like on the show. Like I'm like, great, great,
31:14
Speaker 1: If I'm different, then this is bullshit. And you know,
31:19
Speaker 1: there's a space between person and persona right, and to
31:24
Speaker 1: be in a public space and to have attention and
31:27
Speaker 1: to have an audience. Like one of the one of
31:33
Speaker 1: the catches these days, I think is that like there's
31:36
Speaker 1: a social currency almost in being a victim and going
31:41
Speaker 1: oh no, let me tell you my story. It's worse
31:44
Speaker 1: than yours. Yeah, And I'm like I get it, I
31:48
Speaker 1: get it, but there's got to be a point also, yeah,
31:52
Speaker 1: here's the bad news, but also here's the rest, here's
31:56
Speaker 1: the rest, and like trying to you know, everyone's been
32:01
Speaker 1: through stuff to different levels, and you've genuinely been through
32:05
Speaker 1: you know.
32:06
Speaker 2: A little bit.
32:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've been through heaps of course, right, so and
32:12
Speaker 1: no disrespect so of lots of people in different ways.
32:16
Speaker 1: It's trying to how do I how do I not
32:18
Speaker 1: be that kind of virtue signaling Oh, let me tell
32:23
Speaker 1: you about my story and did I tell you about
32:25
Speaker 1: how you know that where we don't lean into that,
32:29
Speaker 1: so we're kind of almost getting social brownie points.
32:33
Speaker 2: You know, it's self right, you know, it's self esteem.
32:36
Speaker 2: And I genuinely believe many of us are living with
32:39
Speaker 2: chronic self esteem. Like we're literally a low self esteem
32:42
Speaker 2: epidemic going on because we don't know what value is anymore.
32:46
Speaker 2: You know, we're bombarded with like you're you'll have worth
32:49
Speaker 2: if you've got this car and this house and this job,
32:51
Speaker 2: and even as a mother, if you have these kids
32:53
Speaker 2: and you're you don't yell at your kids or whatever
32:56
Speaker 2: it is. We don't know really what worth means anymore
33:01
Speaker 2: because there's too much chatter around us. And so, you know,
33:04
Speaker 2: like with I think a lot of this like trauma
33:08
Speaker 2: virtue signaling and trauma bonding is because our self esteem
33:12
Speaker 2: is so low. And I'm talking to myself now, like
33:15
Speaker 2: I will find myself every now and again, if I'm
33:17
Speaker 2: having like a tough week as a parent and I
33:20
Speaker 2: have to go to an event or you know, meet
33:23
Speaker 2: a new person, I will find a way to like
33:26
Speaker 2: wangle in my past story because I'm like, well, this
33:30
Speaker 2: is something I can fall back on to talk about.
33:32
Speaker 2: This is something that's interesting if they know that I
33:35
Speaker 2: wrote a book about this, or I went through this,
33:37
Speaker 2: And so when you kind of we use it as
33:39
Speaker 2: a way to like one, connect with people, and you
33:42
Speaker 2: also prop up our own self esteem to just go, oh, yeah,
33:44
Speaker 2: I'm worthy of being here because I went through this thing,
33:48
Speaker 2: which proves that I'm worthy of being here. And like,
33:51
Speaker 2: I think, if we find a way again, we could
33:54
Speaker 2: go inwards that old cliche again and realize that our
33:58
Speaker 2: worth is in just to who we are the day
34:02
Speaker 2: we were born. We were born with this incredible worth
34:05
Speaker 2: and that hasn't changed and will never change. And if
34:08
Speaker 2: we can find a way to sit with that and
34:11
Speaker 2: who we are without the clothes and the job and
34:13
Speaker 2: the house, that's where like solid, genuine self worth comes from.
34:20
Speaker 2: And then we don't need to tell these stories. Like
34:22
Speaker 2: we can tell the stories because they genuinely help people,
34:25
Speaker 2: but we don't have to because we know we have
34:28
Speaker 2: value without them.
34:30
Speaker 1: I agree with you, and I don't know if you
34:32
Speaker 1: have the answer to what I'm about to ask. I
34:34
Speaker 1: agree with you, But at the same time, like there's
34:38
Speaker 1: this kind of divergence of messaging that we get in
34:42
Speaker 1: our culture, and one is you're amazing, You're good enough,
34:46
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you look like, where you live,
34:48
Speaker 1: what you drive, what you earn owns. That's like, it's
34:52
Speaker 1: just who you are, right, which is you know, I mean,
34:54
Speaker 1: we've got to pay the bills and feed the kids,
34:56
Speaker 1: right of course. But then the other message is that's
35:00
Speaker 1: everything what you look like, what you own, what you own, earn,
35:04
Speaker 1: where you live, what you drive. They are like, it's
35:08
Speaker 1: not spoken, but it's obvious, like through social media, through media,
35:13
Speaker 1: through and we tell people that, but it's it's like, yeah,
35:19
Speaker 1: that's well and good, it's all well and good, say
35:21
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter what you look like, but have you
35:23
Speaker 1: been in the real world, It actually fucking does matter.
35:27
Speaker 1: It does matter. It shouldn't, but it seems to.
35:30
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm sitting here saying all of this
35:33
Speaker 2: as a middle class white woman, blue eyed, blonde haired,
35:38
Speaker 2: you know, skinny, like I'm saying with all of the
35:41
Speaker 2: privileges that come of that and everything that I've done
35:45
Speaker 2: with sex and like, all the stories I've told are
35:48
Speaker 2: under the umbrella of me looking like this. So I
35:52
Speaker 2: have an incredible privilege to go out and kind of say, yeah,
35:55
Speaker 2: I behave badly, I did this, I did that, but
35:58
Speaker 2: look at me, and I know I will be accepted
36:01
Speaker 2: in most places and spaces, but you know it's safe
36:05
Speaker 2: for you because I know a bit about your backstory,
36:07
Speaker 2: like how people interacted with you, and especially being like
36:11
Speaker 2: in the media when you were heavier versus now, or
36:14
Speaker 2: different parts of your fitness journey, like you would have
36:17
Speaker 2: felt people reacted to you differently, and that's how the
36:21
Speaker 2: level of how people gave you a voice and listened
36:23
Speaker 2: to you and valued what you had to say would
36:25
Speaker 2: have been differently, you know, absorbed, depending on what you
36:29
Speaker 2: look like at the time.
36:31
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I was, and I've spoken about this
36:33
Speaker 1: too many times, but for periods of time, I was
36:37
Speaker 1: essentially a fraud. I was telling people to do stuff
36:40
Speaker 1: ami that I wasn't doing. I was like, I owned
36:44
Speaker 1: multiple gyms, I opened the first personal training centers in Australia.
36:49
Speaker 1: I'm working with professional athletes, I'm an exercise scientist. I'm
36:52
Speaker 1: doing all this cool shit and when no one's looking,
36:55
Speaker 1: I'm eeting everything that's not nailed down because I'm fucking
36:59
Speaker 1: controlled myself. So I'm just wearing bigger and baggier tract
37:02
Speaker 1: suits and hoping people won't notice, you know, And it's like.
37:07
Speaker 2: So let me ask you then, like, how have you
37:09
Speaker 2: updated the story of who you are? Like the story
37:12
Speaker 2: of who you were when you were at your heaviest
37:14
Speaker 2: versus the story of who you are now. How have
37:17
Speaker 2: you had to update that? Because I'm assuming you aren't
37:21
Speaker 2: always walking around thinking the same as when you were
37:26
Speaker 2: heaviest persus now you've got to update your mindset as
37:29
Speaker 2: well as your physical appearance. Really, if you're going to
37:32
Speaker 2: integrate it, well, yes.
37:35
Speaker 1: So, I thank you. That's a good question. I mean,
37:38
Speaker 1: for a very long time I could not distinguish between
37:42
Speaker 1: my body and my self self, Like my sense of self,
37:46
Speaker 1: my identity, my self worth, my self esteem came through
37:51
Speaker 1: looking a certain way. You know. I wanted to be
37:54
Speaker 1: big and muscular. I wanted to like intimidate dudes, or
37:57
Speaker 1: not intimidate, but impress. I guess I wanted to belong.
38:02
Speaker 1: I want to be connected. I wanted women to think
38:04
Speaker 1: that I was not horrible to look at all that
38:06
Speaker 1: stuff all out of insecurity and fear and shit self esteem.
38:10
Speaker 1: And over time it wasn't an overnight revelation, but over
38:15
Speaker 1: time I kind of recognized and realized how I was
38:19
Speaker 1: creating my own emotional and psychological prison. I built this
38:24
Speaker 1: prison for myself to live in. That meant I literally
38:27
Speaker 1: couldn't be happy or fulfilled or connected unless I looked
38:32
Speaker 1: a certain way. And I don't have optimal genetics, so
38:35
Speaker 1: it was always an uphill battle, you know. So yeah,
38:38
Speaker 1: I think for me, the liberation was in starting to
38:41
Speaker 1: try to figure out who I was beyond a body,
38:44
Speaker 1: which for me was a spiritual, emotional, sociological, and psychological journey.
38:49
Speaker 1: And I'm still on that path, and I still, you know,
38:52
Speaker 1: I still sometimes care too much about how I look.
38:55
Speaker 1: I still sometimes care too much about what you think
38:58
Speaker 1: me right now. I still have all that human bullshit,
39:02
Speaker 1: but it's you know, I kind of have bigger and
39:06
Speaker 1: I guess better awareness around it.
39:09
Speaker 2: And do you ever catch yourself? Sorry, I'm not interviewing you,
39:12
Speaker 2: but it's okay, the journalist, the journalist. Do you ever
39:17
Speaker 2: hear yourself? Because I know you talk about it, you know,
39:20
Speaker 2: relevantly in this podcast when you're telling your story of
39:24
Speaker 2: you know, I was this heavy and I lost weight.
39:26
Speaker 2: Do you ever hear yourself kind of a voice in
39:28
Speaker 2: your head going, oh, here he go to the gap?
39:31
Speaker 2: Why am I telling this story? Is it still relevant?
39:34
Speaker 2: Or am I you know, just repeating the script that
39:37
Speaker 2: I've told before. Do you have that voice?
39:39
Speaker 1: Yeah? I had that voice about three minutes ago when
39:42
Speaker 1: I'm very aware that a lot of my listeners have
39:44
Speaker 1: heard this shit too much. But I didn't know that
39:46
Speaker 1: you knew that or that you So I'm very aware
39:50
Speaker 1: and I'm one of my biggest paranois about this show
39:57
Speaker 1: is that I am not you know, it's not fucking
40:01
Speaker 1: groundhog Day for my listeners because we do seven days
40:03
Speaker 1: a week and we have a lot of listeners, and
40:07
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want it to be too much
40:09
Speaker 1: about me. I'm happy to talk about me, but yeah,
40:12
Speaker 1: I don't and I don't want it to be self indulgent,
40:14
Speaker 1: you know all of those things. But yes, yes, but
40:18
Speaker 1: that that kind of who I was and the experiences
40:22
Speaker 1: and stories that came out of my childhood and teens
40:26
Speaker 1: was kind of informed you know a lot of my life.
40:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that's I think the awareness is all
40:33
Speaker 2: that matters. Like you have got that voice in your head.
40:36
Speaker 2: I think where we lose ourselves in our trauma is
40:38
Speaker 2: when we're not questioning that, when we are just you know,
40:41
Speaker 2: rattling off the same or boot who this happened to me,
40:45
Speaker 2: or I used to be the fat kid, or I
40:47
Speaker 2: used to be the traumatized anorexic girl. When we're just
40:50
Speaker 2: rattling off without consciousness of what we're doing to ourselves
40:55
Speaker 2: and our own nervous system, you know, because every time
40:58
Speaker 2: you go back to like or when I was, you know,
41:00
Speaker 2: bigger and felt lonely and afraid like we are, our
41:03
Speaker 2: nervous system can't really differentiate between an event happening now
41:07
Speaker 2: and one that happened ten years ago. So it's also
41:10
Speaker 2: about being aware of like, when I'm telling that story,
41:12
Speaker 2: how does it feel to me? Is it expansive or
41:15
Speaker 2: is it constrictive? Is you know, do I want to
41:18
Speaker 2: kind of hide in shame or does it make me
41:19
Speaker 2: feel like I'm opening up and connecting with the world.
41:22
Speaker 2: And I think as long as we have that awareness,
41:24
Speaker 2: we're okay as storytellers. It's when we just start, you know,
41:28
Speaker 2: rattling off that script without checking in with ourselves that
41:32
Speaker 2: to me, I'm thinking, like, Okay, let's you know, let's
41:36
Speaker 2: pause and see if this is still relevant and purposeful
41:40
Speaker 2: in repeating this story.
41:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. All right, We're on the home
41:45
Speaker 1: straight you're doing great. You don't need my endorsement, but
41:47
Speaker 1: you're doing great. The woman who's done a million podcasts
41:53
Speaker 1: you said before bad news selves. I want you to
41:57
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit. Why do you think
41:59
Speaker 1: that that is?
42:02
Speaker 2: Oh academic?
42:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, why does the journalists think that people are because
42:09
Speaker 1: I know that a couple of times they've tried positive
42:13
Speaker 1: news services which fucking fell over hopelessly, and everybody's like, nah,
42:18
Speaker 1: I want to see applying crash. Let's turn this shit off.
42:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will tell you my personal experience and opinions,
42:25
Speaker 2: because he had lots of very clever academics have done
42:27
Speaker 2: the actual data on it and studies on it. But
42:31
Speaker 2: you know, two things, like, there's two sides of it. Unfortunately,
42:35
Speaker 2: sometimes hearing about what other people going through does allow
42:39
Speaker 2: us to, you know, downward compare and feel better about
42:41
Speaker 2: our life, and that can genuinely make us feel grateful
42:45
Speaker 2: to a point. But you know, there's also research around
42:49
Speaker 2: like gratitude practices and around. It's much more potent if
42:53
Speaker 2: we don't use another person or a situation to compare to,
42:56
Speaker 2: Like I'm so grateful that I'm not the one with cancer.
42:59
Speaker 2: I'm so grateful I'm not the one going through a divorce.
43:02
Speaker 2: I really try, within the work we do with the
43:04
Speaker 2: Space podcast and my own gratitude practice to not use
43:08
Speaker 2: downward comparison to prop myself up. However, within the news
43:12
Speaker 2: we do get that little high from thinking, oh, at
43:16
Speaker 2: least that isn't me. I might be going through this,
43:19
Speaker 2: but I'm not going through that. Also, just as a
43:23
Speaker 2: human species, we are interested in like everything most of
43:28
Speaker 2: them think, we do as a self protective mechanism, and
43:31
Speaker 2: so the part of us is like we want to
43:33
Speaker 2: be one step ahead of whatever the danger is that's coming.
43:37
Speaker 2: And so we have this hunger for every risk that
43:40
Speaker 2: could possibly happen to us, whether you know, for you know,
43:45
Speaker 2: look at their crime to crime podcasts and the majority
43:49
Speaker 2: of the huge audience for it are women. And it's
43:52
Speaker 2: because women are most at risk of domestic and family violence,
43:57
Speaker 2: male and female violence, you know, use in the dating world.
44:02
Speaker 2: Like you know, just running on my run this morning
44:04
Speaker 2: at five am in the dark, at least half of
44:07
Speaker 2: the run, I'm just like scanning around thinking, Okay, if
44:10
Speaker 2: someone comes out of there, I'm going to go and
44:11
Speaker 2: run and knock on that door. Like we just have
44:13
Speaker 2: this running commentary in our head of how to keep
44:16
Speaker 2: ourselves safe. And it's one of the reasons they say
44:19
Speaker 2: that women are so interested in listening to true crime
44:21
Speaker 2: podcasts because as a part of us, that is like
44:24
Speaker 2: taking in information just in case we are ever in
44:27
Speaker 2: this situation. And I think the same is true for
44:30
Speaker 2: some of our addiction to bad news. It's like we think,
44:34
Speaker 2: if we can absorb every risk around us, then we
44:38
Speaker 2: can somehow protect ourselves from it, and of course that's
44:43
Speaker 2: not true. What we do is this hyper strength in
44:45
Speaker 2: our negative bias to thinking that that, you know, ninety
44:49
Speaker 2: nine percent of everything that goes on in the world
44:51
Speaker 2: is hideous. And you know, again it's coming back to
44:55
Speaker 2: getting comfortable with other people's happiness. It's really hard some
45:00
Speaker 2: if we are struggling with infertility and our friend tells
45:03
Speaker 2: us they're pregnant, it fucking hurts, you know. If our
45:06
Speaker 2: relationship is going for a really crappy patch and our
45:10
Speaker 2: friends have started dating and fallen in love and it's
45:12
Speaker 2: all the honeymoon period, it's really tough sometimes to hear that.
45:16
Speaker 2: But we do need to expand our tolerance for good
45:20
Speaker 2: news and other people's happiness, which sounds bizarre, but we
45:24
Speaker 2: are not very good at it, and so like for me,
45:28
Speaker 2: I really have to push and test myself to ask
45:32
Speaker 2: people about the great things going on in their life,
45:36
Speaker 2: asking how their kids are doing, how their relationship is,
45:38
Speaker 2: what's going on with their job, and reading some of
45:41
Speaker 2: the happy news, because I know that I can be
45:45
Speaker 2: uncomfortable celebrating myself and other people, and so I just
45:50
Speaker 2: think we need to get better at it. Yes, bad
45:52
Speaker 2: news sales, but we have to leave some space in
45:55
Speaker 2: the market and the media space for the good of life.
46:00
Speaker 2: If we are ever going to feel safe in this
46:03
Speaker 2: crazy world that we live in, we have to realize
46:05
Speaker 2: that sometimes great stuff happens.
46:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, almost there. My last philosophical question anyway,
46:17
Speaker 1: if is a little what am I going to go?
46:20
Speaker 1: I want to ask you this, tell me about an
46:23
Speaker 1: idea or a belief that you held that you've done
46:30
Speaker 1: a one ady on something that you changed your mind
46:34
Speaker 1: about that maybe impacted the way you live or the
46:39
Speaker 1: way you communicate or the way that you think these days.
46:42
Speaker 1: Has there been anything that you essentially got wrong or
46:45
Speaker 1: believe you got wrong and now you've you've kind of
46:48
Speaker 1: done a bit of a one eighty.
46:50
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure there's.
46:53
Speaker 1: I've never actually got any I know you've never got
46:55
Speaker 1: anything wrong, but just humorous.
47:01
Speaker 2: There's been so many. The big one relevant to my
47:06
Speaker 2: work is that, oh, there's so many. I think one
47:14
Speaker 2: that's really more relevant to your readers actually is that
47:17
Speaker 2: I had this belief that you might relate to that like,
47:22
Speaker 2: the more disciplined you are, the better. Like, you know,
47:26
Speaker 2: I come from this family of athletes and very active
47:30
Speaker 2: people and perfectionists, and like, my career peaked very early,
47:34
Speaker 2: and I would have at that point in my twenties
47:38
Speaker 2: put my career above friends and family and walked over
47:41
Speaker 2: anyone to get what I wanted. At the same time,
47:43
Speaker 2: I was a you know, high functioning anorexic. I very
47:47
Speaker 2: much thought I was in recovery, but I certainly was not.
47:50
Speaker 2: If I had actually looked honestly about how I was
47:53
Speaker 2: eating and living my life, and I was just so
47:56
Speaker 2: proud of how disciplined I was in every area of
47:59
Speaker 2: my life life and thought, if I can just keep
48:03
Speaker 2: being disciplined and living by these rules and eating well
48:06
Speaker 2: in egg folks, and you know, following my fitness with
48:11
Speaker 2: em and working all the time, I will be great,
48:16
Speaker 2: and of course if many of us have found out
48:18
Speaker 2: that's not a sustainable or pleasurable or connective way to
48:23
Speaker 2: live for me and probably for a lot of people.
48:28
Speaker 2: And so like moving more into a mindset of like
48:31
Speaker 2: flexibility in how I live and what I eat and
48:36
Speaker 2: what I do and how I work has been a
48:39
Speaker 2: big game changer for me, I think, and now that
48:42
Speaker 2: I have kids, it's really the only way to live.
48:45
Speaker 2: I you know, my needs are not first in this
48:49
Speaker 2: household at all, and that's as it should be with
48:52
Speaker 2: young kids. But you know, if the twenty five year
48:55
Speaker 2: old workaholic anorexic version of me would look my day,
49:02
Speaker 2: she would think it was a failure to be frank.
49:05
Speaker 2: You know, our cancel work meeting because my kids suddenly
49:09
Speaker 2: got to come home from daycare because they've been hit
49:12
Speaker 2: with a yo yo and I haven't been able to
49:14
Speaker 2: go for a run because someone was up crying. And
49:16
Speaker 2: then you know, my dinner will be my own dinner
49:19
Speaker 2: and a fish finger off one of the kids plate.
49:21
Speaker 2: And I would have seen that as an absolute disaster,
49:25
Speaker 2: But personally for me now I really see it as
49:28
Speaker 2: a triumph. And it's a real sign for me of
49:32
Speaker 2: how far I've come, and the fact that like I
49:35
Speaker 2: can love myself in the chaos of it all is
49:39
Speaker 2: really special.
49:41
Speaker 1: I love that now. Of course you write for The Space,
49:46
Speaker 1: which is a mindfulness podcast also on Nova and Casey
49:51
Speaker 1: Donovan voice. Is that right?
49:53
Speaker 2: Yeah?
49:53
Speaker 1: She sure does, so well done on that. How long
49:57
Speaker 1: you been doing that?
49:59
Speaker 2: We kicked off they're in the basically around lockdown, so
50:02
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and it's yeah, gun gangbusters.
50:06
Speaker 2: I think we had great timing. Obviously, everyone was desperate
50:09
Speaker 2: for some kind of emotional toolkit at the time, and
50:14
Speaker 2: I think the form out of it, which is you know,
50:16
Speaker 2: twice daily episodes, five minutes in the morning, five minutes
50:19
Speaker 2: at night, really relatable, digestible mindfulness and mental health pips
50:26
Speaker 2: really just got people. You know, my brief from the
50:29
Speaker 2: producers was mindfulness without the bullshit, So it was like,
50:34
Speaker 2: you know, no cliches, no kind of spiritual jargon, and
50:38
Speaker 2: also like not that this is bullshit, but like we're
50:42
Speaker 2: not going to talk about crystals or we're not going
50:44
Speaker 2: to like use the language that like the average like
50:47
Speaker 2: trade on the street is going to bullcat. So they
50:50
Speaker 2: really wanted me to break it down and just make it.
50:53
Speaker 2: And I think we do it. I mean, it's had
50:56
Speaker 2: over nearly six million downloads now lifetime downloads, and it's
50:59
Speaker 2: just going from strength to strength. And I just love
51:02
Speaker 2: like when I hear from like friends or friends of
51:05
Speaker 2: friends who listen to it. It's never like my spiritual
51:08
Speaker 2: friends who do listen, but it's like my husband's mate
51:12
Speaker 2: who's never meditated before, or like my friends who work
51:15
Speaker 2: in the police force and have PTSD and are looking
51:18
Speaker 2: for something that they can listen to on the drive
51:19
Speaker 2: home after they've seen, you know, some brutal scene. I
51:23
Speaker 2: love the people that are coming back to me and
51:25
Speaker 2: saying like this is a game changer for me. It's
51:28
Speaker 2: really nice to introduce kind of so called spiritual content
51:33
Speaker 2: in a way that like is really easy for people
51:36
Speaker 2: to understand and just using their everyday life. I love it.
51:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's I mean, that's the thing. You know.
51:43
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find how do we explore these ideas
51:46
Speaker 1: and concepts with people who aren't and I mean this
51:49
Speaker 1: politely in the tocomas spiritual people. You know, how do
51:56
Speaker 1: people find you, follow you and connect with you if
51:58
Speaker 1: you want to be found for load or connected with,
52:01
Speaker 1: not followed in a creepy way at five I mean
52:05
Speaker 1: in a virtual I mean in a virtual way.
52:09
Speaker 2: Well, you can listen to the Space wherever you listen
52:11
Speaker 2: to your podcast and follow along their act the Space
52:15
Speaker 2: Underscore podcast on Socials. I am everywhere as Amy malloy
52:19
Speaker 2: amymlloy dot com dot au, Amy not Amy Underscore Malloy
52:23
Speaker 2: on Instagram. But yeah, you can just give us a
52:26
Speaker 2: Google you'll find us.
52:28
Speaker 1: I appreciate you. You are great at what you do,
52:30
Speaker 1: your brilliant communicator and storyteller. And yeah, it's been really nice.
52:35
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on the You project. Well say goodbye
52:37
Speaker 1: our fair Amy, but for now, thank you
52:40
Speaker 2: Pleasure, Thanks so much, Thanks TIV, thank you,