Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / How To Raise Emotionally Resilient Kids with World-Renowned Psychologist, Steve Biddulph
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I think anxiety is what drives family violence. I think
- 0:03Speaker 1: what drives crime, drives gang membership, It makes people vote.
- 0:08Speaker 2: In idiots as leaders of a country.
- 0:21Speaker 3: Everyone.
- 0:22Speaker 4: Before we get into this week's podcast, we've got a
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- 1:30Speaker 3: So looking forward to hearing from you now I hover
- 1:33Speaker 3: the podcast. Steve Benolf, Welcome to the podcast.
- 1:37Speaker 1: Hello Paul, and hello to everybody listening as well.
- 1:40Speaker 3: It is very nice and you probably won't like this,
- 1:43Speaker 3: but just hear a bona fide the legend of psychology
- 1:48Speaker 3: being on the podcast. I mean, you are an author
- 1:51Speaker 3: of some amusing books, one of which I've got right here,
- 1:54Speaker 3: and we were just saying beforehand that's a very old
- 1:57Speaker 3: version of your classic Real Boys. I think you've sold
- 2:02Speaker 3: more than six million books.
- 2:05Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's it's been astonishing and I've been I've
- 2:09Speaker 1: been around for a long time. Paul goes back. You know,
- 2:12Speaker 1: we're tooking forty years that I've been doing it, so
- 2:16Speaker 1: it's a slow burn.
- 2:18Speaker 3: And was the what was the driver to write to
- 2:21Speaker 3: start writing books?
- 2:23Speaker 1: My first psychologists job? I had, like probably like you,
- 2:26Speaker 1: lots of different jobs as a young guy looking for
- 2:29Speaker 1: a direction in life. But my first job as a
- 2:31Speaker 1: psychologist was in a family therapy clinic. Which was the first,
- 2:36Speaker 1: probably the first in Australia where we saw the whole
- 2:39Speaker 1: family instead of just the kid. And so people used
- 2:42Speaker 1: to take their child to be seen by the psychologists
- 2:45Speaker 1: as if that was like getting your car service. And
- 2:48Speaker 1: my Bonds was a pediatrician and it's said, no, we're
- 2:51Speaker 1: going to see the whole family. And it was wonderful,
- 2:54Speaker 1: and we had hundreds and hundreds. And it was in
- 2:56Speaker 1: a country town called lawn System, which was a working
- 3:00Speaker 1: class in those days, a mill town. Everyone worked at
- 3:02Speaker 1: the mill and so it was a tough place. And
- 3:05Speaker 1: what I quickly saw was that in particular the dads
- 3:10Speaker 1: loved their kids, but they just had such negative ways
- 3:13Speaker 1: of raising them, you know, belting them, telling them they
- 3:18Speaker 1: were no good. And I'd grown up in Yorkshire, which
- 3:21Speaker 1: was the I thought was the world capital of negative parenting.
- 3:25Speaker 1: It's not mal but you know, but I'm sure it
- 3:27Speaker 1: was the same in Ireland, and yeah, it was.
- 3:29Speaker 3: And it was there that dad was the disciplinarian.
- 3:32Speaker 1: Yeah, And and what I realized was that they were
- 3:36Speaker 1: doing their best and they and they loved their kids,
- 3:39Speaker 1: and it was just there was a like a rolling
- 3:41Speaker 1: tragedy to see that, you know, one generation destroying the
- 3:45Speaker 1: next basically, and so I thought, no, no good just
- 3:49Speaker 1: sitting in a clinic waiting for people to show up.
- 3:51Speaker 1: I've got to start writing this down, getting the word out.
- 3:55Speaker 1: And so my first book was called The Secret of
- 3:57Speaker 1: Happy Children, and it was just saying, you know, you
- 4:00Speaker 1: don't have to build kids or tell them they're no good.
- 4:02Speaker 1: You know, there's better ways to get them to cooperate.
- 4:06Speaker 1: And to our surprise, it did well everywhere because it
- 4:10Speaker 1: was the first parenting book that had cartoons in it
- 4:12Speaker 1: and stories, and you know, it was a good read.
- 4:15Speaker 1: But it sold a million copies in Germany because yeah,
- 4:18Speaker 1: because young German parents were really wanting, you know, a
- 4:22Speaker 1: whole different way of doing life, and there were there
- 4:25Speaker 1: were hippies now, and they wanted to love their kids
- 4:27Speaker 1: and they didn't want to go back to the authoritarian
- 4:30Speaker 1: what had happened to their country from authoritarianism. So that
- 4:33Speaker 1: got things started. And so then I realized, well, you
- 4:36Speaker 1: can help people with books, because people would be stopping
- 4:39Speaker 1: me in the street and saying, you know, like you'd
- 4:41Speaker 1: said yourself, you know it really it helped. And so
- 4:44Speaker 1: I realized that I still wanted to be a psychologist,
- 4:47Speaker 1: But I didn't want to sit in a clinic, and
- 4:50Speaker 1: so I would get out on the road and get
- 4:52Speaker 1: the message out and write easily read books about the
- 4:56Speaker 1: main what I saw was the main problems. And then
- 4:59Speaker 1: the next big problem, of course, was boys. A baby boy.
- 5:02Speaker 1: You know that someone draw a picture of a baby
- 5:04Speaker 1: boy and a baby girl lying in hospital together, you know,
- 5:07Speaker 1: wrapped up you can't even see what they are. And
- 5:10Speaker 1: I said, but the baby on the left has got
- 5:12Speaker 1: three three times a chance of dying before they twenty
- 5:15Speaker 1: one nineteen. Yeah, I see your face shocked with that. Wow,
- 5:22Speaker 1: nineteen times the chances of ending up in prison, three
- 5:26Speaker 1: times a chance of committing suicide, and three times a
- 5:31Speaker 1: chance of drug addiction. There's this massive risk factor that
- 5:35Speaker 1: just goes with being a boy, and that we had
- 5:38Speaker 1: to do something about that. And I talked to mums
- 5:41Speaker 1: and said, you know what went through you when they
- 5:44Speaker 1: first said to you, it's a boy. You know when
- 5:46Speaker 1: you the baby comes out. You know, in those days
- 5:49Speaker 1: they didn't have scans, you know, the hand a baby
- 5:52Speaker 1: and I say, it's a boy.
- 5:53Speaker 3: What happened?
- 5:54Speaker 1: What actually happens inside you? And most of them said
- 5:57Speaker 1: there was kind of like, oh, you know a boy,
- 6:01Speaker 1: you know, oh.
- 6:01Speaker 3: Crap, you know both huh, I'm happy.
- 6:05Speaker 1: But there's this little plenty in my guard as well
- 6:07Speaker 1: of you know, because this danger is a boy's life
- 6:11Speaker 1: has danger, I'd be frightened for him. And we thought,
- 6:14Speaker 1: that's you know, that's no good. We have to change that.
- 6:18Speaker 1: We want to get to the point where people say, wow,
- 6:20Speaker 1: it's a boy, how sweet? How you know, how wonderful
- 6:24Speaker 1: that it's the sun. And so the world clearly needed
- 6:28Speaker 1: more of They needed more good men and for mums
- 6:32Speaker 1: to not be afraid of boys and to understand their
- 6:35Speaker 1: differences and give them some really clear map. I'm really
- 6:39Speaker 1: big on having a map. You know, this is what
- 6:40Speaker 1: happens at four, this is what happens at seven. And
- 6:43Speaker 1: so you know, you know, all fourteen year olds are hopeless,
- 6:47Speaker 1: you know, don't.
- 6:50Speaker 3: Yeah, have you been setting in our host have you?
- 6:52Speaker 3: Because Oscar is now I fourteen, you know, don't panic,
- 6:55Speaker 3: it's it will it will pass.
- 6:59Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the story with that one pole.
- 7:01Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting actually on that because Oscar, my
- 7:05Speaker 3: little guy, is now fourteen, he's not actually hopeless. He's
- 7:08Speaker 3: actually a really good kid. I think we brought him
- 7:11Speaker 3: up on his diet of stoic philosophy, which has helped.
- 7:14Speaker 3: But what I've noticed, particularly in the last six months,
- 7:18Speaker 3: so he's always been into his sport and it loved
- 7:23Speaker 3: exercising with me, But in the last six months, he
- 7:26Speaker 3: no longer wants to train with me. He wants to
- 7:29Speaker 3: go to the gym by himself and training his with
- 7:33Speaker 3: his mate, and he's creating his own training programs and
- 7:37Speaker 3: stuff like that. And you know, he's kind of got
- 7:39Speaker 3: into a bit of the bodybuilding type training. And I
- 7:42Speaker 3: was initially pushing back and going, mate, you're a sports guy,
- 7:45Speaker 3: you need to be doing sports specific stuff. But you know,
- 7:48Speaker 3: I just thought the other day, I need to let
- 7:51Speaker 3: him go. I need to let him find his own path.
- 7:53Speaker 3: Here he's in that where he's trying to find his
- 7:57Speaker 3: own path. There's all those dopaminergic neurons going off and
- 8:00Speaker 3: thebrill in and I just need to give them a
- 8:04Speaker 3: chunk of autonomy right here.
- 8:06Speaker 1: That's such a relief to hear that you've understood that, Paul,
- 8:10Speaker 1: because what we're saying in Racing Boys is, you know,
- 8:13Speaker 1: six to fourteen is the dad's time, and fourteen to
- 8:17Speaker 1: twenty one. They they're driven to look wider. You know,
- 8:22Speaker 1: dad never has all the ingredients for the man that
- 8:25Speaker 1: they're going to become, and so they have this strong
- 8:28Speaker 1: drive to bring in other, hopefully other terrific male mentors
- 8:33Speaker 1: to build their own kind of man. And if you
- 8:36Speaker 1: were a controlling dad or it was like a big
- 8:38Speaker 1: ego thing with you, you know, no, I'm going to
- 8:41Speaker 1: manage your sport or I'm going to measure creates. It's
- 8:44Speaker 1: always a recipe for disaster because it goes against their nature.
- 8:48Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 8:49Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you've put you've built the foundation, and
- 8:51Speaker 1: now there's the time for easing back and letting them
- 8:55Speaker 1: just leave their own way.
- 8:57Speaker 3: And I'll just be there to pack them up when
- 9:00Speaker 3: a disaster.
- 9:00Speaker 1: Right, Yes, yes, you don't. You don't disappear, and I
- 9:03Speaker 1: mean their mom doesn't disappear when they're six either. You know,
- 9:06Speaker 1: you're right in there. But it's just this openness that yeah,
- 9:10Speaker 1: of course, you know, choose your sports, choose your training.
- 9:14Speaker 1: It's brilliant, brilliant plan.
- 9:15Speaker 3: And how has your advice because you've also written a
- 9:18Speaker 3: book on reaising girls, right, which is again being a
- 9:21Speaker 3: great seller. Has your advice to parents or your approach
- 9:28Speaker 3: been tweaked at all over the last you know, ten years, particularly,
- 9:34Speaker 3: you know, when we see the alarming rates of mental
- 9:37Speaker 3: health issues, particularly in teenage girls, with the rise of
- 9:42Speaker 3: social media and this upwards comparison phenomena that they get.
- 9:47Speaker 3: You know, as I often say, we're meant to be
- 9:50Speaker 3: brought up in villages, and even when me and you
- 9:54Speaker 3: we're young, we would go to school and we'd be
- 9:57Speaker 3: comparing ourselves to h a hand for our one hundred
- 10:01Speaker 3: other teenagers of our age, you know, yeah, yeah, and
- 10:05Speaker 3: you're trying to work out where you fit and all
- 10:07Speaker 3: of that. But na people are comparing themselves to the
- 10:11Speaker 3: best little her brush snapshots of thousands of people, and
- 10:16Speaker 3: often it's this upwards comparison, isn't it. They're seeing the
- 10:19Speaker 3: people who are doing the best, but they're only seeing
- 10:22Speaker 3: those little snapshots of it, and it really impacts on
- 10:26Speaker 3: self esteem, self worth all that. What's your advice to
- 10:32Speaker 3: parents around helping kids to navigate these challenges in times
- 10:37Speaker 3: that nobody's got a roadmap for right?
- 10:39Speaker 1: Yes, well, your starting point question was what's changed in
- 10:42Speaker 1: my thinking? And because with raising girls, even at the start,
- 10:48Speaker 1: we were saying, you know, don't have computers in bedrooms,
- 10:51Speaker 1: don't don't have social media accounts when you're when you're eight,
- 10:55Speaker 1: and so I think people are waking up to that now,
- 10:58Speaker 1: but we're still see horrendous levels of anxiety. And so
- 11:03Speaker 1: we're fixing a lot of the things around the sides,
- 11:06Speaker 1: but nonetheless anxiety. The new book that the Wild Creature
- 11:11Speaker 1: Mind Book begins with a mum waking up in the
- 11:14Speaker 1: middle of that actually hears the sound in the house,
- 11:17Speaker 1: stumbles down the hallway, suddenly realize it's her daughter, and
- 11:21Speaker 1: her daughter is on the floor of the bathroom, you know,
- 11:24Speaker 1: soaked in tears, shivering and sobbing. The name's Elie. She's fourteen,
- 11:29Speaker 1: and she's just crushed with anxiety. And this is something
- 11:33Speaker 1: that I've heard from hundreds and hundreds of you know,
- 11:36Speaker 1: I think probably millions of parents around the world of
- 11:38Speaker 1: experiences of having a charge just disintegrate, literally can't face
- 11:42Speaker 1: the day. And I got so concerned about this because
- 11:46Speaker 1: I was, I mean, Paul, I was ready to go fishing,
- 11:49Speaker 1: you know, I was ready to get in my kayak
- 11:51Speaker 1: and grow my veggies. But you know, there are six
- 11:53Speaker 1: million families who have used my books, and their kids
- 11:56Speaker 1: were falling apart, and so I couldn't walk away. I
- 12:00Speaker 1: had to try and figure out. It took three or
- 12:03Speaker 1: four years. What's the story? You know? I now think
- 12:06Speaker 1: that anxiety is the second biggest problem on the planet.
- 12:10Speaker 1: You know, climate change, of course is the biggest problem
- 12:12Speaker 1: on the planet, But I think anxiety comes second. And
- 12:16Speaker 1: it's not not unconnected with that.
- 12:18Speaker 3: But yeah, I was going to I was going to
- 12:20Speaker 3: say that. And also, many more females have anxiety than meals.
- 12:25Speaker 3: When you when you look at statistics, what's going on?
- 12:29Speaker 3: Is that? Is that a red herrying in the stats?
- 12:31Speaker 3: Are they more willing to open up? Or is there
- 12:33Speaker 3: something different in the physiology.
- 12:36Speaker 1: Let me shock you and your listeners, Paul, I think
- 12:39Speaker 1: that anxiety is just as common in men and boys,
- 12:44Speaker 1: but they show it in a different way. I think
- 12:45Speaker 1: anxiety is what I think it's what drives family violence,
- 12:49Speaker 1: for example.
- 12:51Speaker 3: I think it's what.
- 12:51Speaker 1: Drives crime, drives gang membership, it makes people vote in
- 12:56Speaker 1: idiots as leaders of country's you know.
- 13:03Speaker 3: We can last five days before the election.
- 13:06Speaker 1: R Yeah, and and and so mail anxiety shows.
- 13:11Speaker 3: Up in different ways.
- 13:13Speaker 1: Right, you've got it, You've got it.
- 13:14Speaker 3: Okay, interesting, So let's do a deep dive in just
- 13:18Speaker 3: around the advice changing because you've bopdeated your books, Has
- 13:22Speaker 3: there been anything significant that's changing other than really an
- 13:27Speaker 3: emphasis on regulating full use and social media use. I mean,
- 13:32Speaker 3: I think this US Surgeon General came out and said
- 13:34Speaker 3: this is real, This is very real, and we need
- 13:37Speaker 3: to do something about this. And you count wear it
- 13:40Speaker 3: for randomized control trials, like everybody gets it.
- 13:43Speaker 1: Yes, well, yes, that one is thoughted, I think, And
- 13:48Speaker 1: you're right. The other thing, which I think is now
- 13:50Speaker 1: needed is that and I'm actually going to put into
- 13:53Speaker 1: the next edition of Raising Boys is it completely new stuff?
- 13:57Speaker 1: And what that is is that we have to very
- 14:00Speaker 1: specifically and explicitly teach them how about how to treat women.
- 14:04Speaker 1: And my take on this, Paul, is because I think
- 14:08Speaker 1: what's happened there's a lot of there's a lot being
- 14:10Speaker 1: said about this, you know, the whole toxic masculinity business,
- 14:13Speaker 1: but I've moved past that. I think that when you
- 14:17Speaker 1: boil that all down in terms of a method of change,
- 14:21Speaker 1: all that people are doing is what I call sanctimonious
- 14:24Speaker 1: finger wagging.
- 14:25Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I'm so glad you said it, because
- 14:29Speaker 3: I think it's become. It's been well intentioned, but it's
- 14:33Speaker 3: just not helpful because it's them. Boys are just confused, right, Like,
- 14:38Speaker 3: do I not be masculine at all? You know, what
- 14:41Speaker 3: is Is there any good masculinity? I don't think that's
- 14:44Speaker 3: I think you need to talk about ethics and how
- 14:47Speaker 3: to treat people and that and just get rid of
- 14:50Speaker 3: this inflammatory language. Es.
- 14:51Speaker 1: Yes, And I think part of the problem is that,
- 14:55Speaker 1: which was what we'd always been on about it, and
- 14:58Speaker 1: you're very strong on, Paul, I know, is that we
- 15:00Speaker 1: have to put good men in the lives of children.
- 15:02Speaker 1: And that does not mean having some guy show up
- 15:06Speaker 1: at your high school and give a speech. You know,
- 15:09Speaker 1: the whole consent movement now is all, well, you know,
- 15:11Speaker 1: someone will come to your school, they'll give the boys
- 15:13Speaker 1: a lecture, which again, you know, it's finger wagging. It
- 15:16Speaker 1: has to be that we get the men in the
- 15:19Speaker 1: school sitting in small groups with the kids, we get
- 15:22Speaker 1: bring a lot more of the dads into the school.
- 15:25Speaker 1: And schools are doing this. Some schools are doing this,
- 15:27Speaker 1: and they talk about you know, yeah, you can exploit
- 15:30Speaker 1: women and you can trash talk women. By the age
- 15:33Speaker 1: of thirty, all women will hate you. It's a losing path.
- 15:38Speaker 1: And there'll be girls that'll have sex with you and
- 15:41Speaker 1: they'll think you're cool, and it'll last for about two
- 15:45Speaker 1: or three years. Women will wake up to you. If
- 15:48Speaker 1: you treat people as objects, you're a creep. And women
- 15:51Speaker 1: recognize a creep when they see one. And so you
- 15:53Speaker 1: have a choice in the way you talk about girls
- 15:56Speaker 1: and think about girls and the way you behave around them.
- 15:59Speaker 1: Are you going to be a loser and a creep
- 16:01Speaker 1: or are you going to be someone who has actually
- 16:03Speaker 1: experiences the amazingness of being loved and befriended and have
- 16:09Speaker 1: the warmth and respect of women in your life. And
- 16:13Speaker 1: as a very clear fork in the road, and I
- 16:16Speaker 1: think if men who are got their lives together and
- 16:20Speaker 1: are you know, happily relating to women in their lives
- 16:23Speaker 1: or have related a man, doesn't matter, you know, it's
- 16:25Speaker 1: just going through life successfully, then the young men will
- 16:29Speaker 1: look at that and they'll see, Okay, that's what that's
- 16:32Speaker 1: what's strong. Healthy masculinity looks like. It's not creepy guys
- 16:37Speaker 1: on the internet flashing their jewelry.
- 16:39Speaker 3: It's not the lakes of Andrew Ti.
- 16:41Speaker 1: Yeah, it called manrew hate.
- 16:44Speaker 3: Yeah, right, yeah. I mean really, what you're talking about
- 16:48Speaker 3: is giving them a good education in good character. Yeah.
- 16:53Speaker 1: And the mechanism of that is a lot to do
- 16:55Speaker 1: with role modeling. Yeah, because it's the right it's the
- 16:59Speaker 1: right brain. There's a way that a good man stands
- 17:03Speaker 1: in a way that he listens to you in a
- 17:06Speaker 1: way that and you can tell if you're with someone.
- 17:09Speaker 1: This is what I've been writing about in the news,
- 17:11Speaker 1: things that our right brain reads other people. If someone
- 17:15Speaker 1: cares about you, they settle when you know, if you're
- 17:17Speaker 1: a teenage boy, you know, and there's a man who's
- 17:20Speaker 1: teaching you or guiding you, you can tell whether he's
- 17:23Speaker 1: attentive or whether he listens to your point of view,
- 17:26Speaker 1: whether he hears out you know, your views, whether he
- 17:30Speaker 1: even has time for you or not. The big public
- 17:32Speaker 1: schools around Australia, I talk to the school principles. They
- 17:35Speaker 1: say that these fathers are hopeless. They manage their kid,
- 17:38Speaker 1: they pay for their kids, they hardly ever see their kid.
- 17:41Speaker 1: I was working in one of the big public schools
- 17:44Speaker 1: and they said, look, uber cars come to pick these
- 17:46Speaker 1: kids up to take them home. You know, the schools
- 17:49Speaker 1: are asking can they stay in the boarding school when
- 17:52Speaker 1: the family only lives three blocks away. There's this broken
- 17:56Speaker 1: tradition of fathering in the upper class corporate sector. If
- 18:01Speaker 1: you want to have a good childhood, you should be
- 18:03Speaker 1: neither rich or poor, because they you want to.
- 18:07Speaker 3: You know what, I love that. I saw some research
- 18:11Speaker 3: in the United States that the mental health of children
- 18:16Speaker 3: and particularly teenagers is often inversely proportional to the wealth
- 18:22Speaker 3: of the family as it gets to the higher levels,
- 18:24Speaker 3: because it's basically absent parents often and absent dad, but
- 18:29Speaker 3: sometimes both parents working really hard and outsourcing the upbringing
- 18:35Speaker 3: of children. And I think it's becoming a real, real issue.
- 18:39Speaker 3: I mean, there's obviously nurance under this conversation, right, there's
- 18:43Speaker 3: all of this. We need to get women in equal
- 18:46Speaker 3: leadership positions into the workplace. Equality of pay obviously is
- 18:51Speaker 3: a no brainer. But when we do get that, there's
- 18:55Speaker 3: so many families where both parents are working really, really
- 19:01Speaker 3: hard and doing very long hours. And I'm not talking
- 19:05Speaker 3: here about the families that have low sourcial economic status
- 19:09Speaker 3: that have to do that to put bread on the table.
- 19:12Speaker 3: I'm talking about high powered people. We're both working in
- 19:16Speaker 3: high powered jobs, earning shitloads of money, having a bucket
- 19:21Speaker 3: load of material stuff, but outsourcing the upbringing of their kids.
- 19:27Speaker 3: And basically all your kids want is time with you.
- 19:31Speaker 3: Really as they're growing up, we need.
- 19:34Speaker 1: In raising boys. Right from the very first edition, we
- 19:37Speaker 1: were saying, if you work a fifty hour week, fifty
- 19:40Speaker 1: five sixty hour week, you will fail as a father.
- 19:43Speaker 1: And it shook, It shook Australia. You know that that
- 19:48Speaker 1: was headlines. It was all over the place in magazine articles,
- 19:52Speaker 1: and we turned around a sector of that very many dads.
- 19:57Speaker 1: There were corporate dads going to fathering seminars and learning
- 20:01Speaker 1: you know that you can be different to your because
- 20:03Speaker 1: we based it on our own dad. You know, our
- 20:06Speaker 1: picture of what a dad looks like is that's a
- 20:08Speaker 1: walking wallet. Then we just think that's our job. And
- 20:11Speaker 1: what I you know, I think I turned around. You
- 20:14Speaker 1: see people walking, You see men pushing prams. Now you
- 20:17Speaker 1: see dads at the playground walking around with their kids.
- 20:21Speaker 1: It's not hard. I think part of it is just
- 20:23Speaker 1: letting him know. Look, all you've got to do is
- 20:26Speaker 1: hang about. Same with girls. You know, if dad takes
- 20:29Speaker 1: his daughter to Bunning's on a Saturday morning to get
- 20:31Speaker 1: a hot glue gun, and they don't just race home.
- 20:35Speaker 1: You know, they stop, they have a hot chocolate and
- 20:37Speaker 1: they have an ice cream. Then that girl gets the
- 20:40Speaker 1: message and it's like unspoken. It's the unspoken stuff, Paul.
- 20:44Speaker 1: It's like Dad hangs out with me, you know, Me
- 20:46Speaker 1: and Dad walk the dog three times a week together.
- 20:50Speaker 1: You know. It's like something in there, Like Dad seems
- 20:53Speaker 1: to like my company, So males like my company. You know.
- 20:58Speaker 1: So if a boy comes and he treats her with disrespect,
- 21:02Speaker 1: which they will, then she just thinks this boy is
- 21:04Speaker 1: an idiot.
- 21:05Speaker 3: Yeah, gotcha, because the messaging she's getting. But if Dad
- 21:10Speaker 3: is absent, that's saying a different mess yes, right, yeah,
- 21:14Speaker 3: that's right. It's really interesting just the way society seems
- 21:18Speaker 3: to be going, particularly in the Western world, with I
- 21:23Speaker 3: think a number of things play into it. I mean,
- 21:25Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not religious at all. I'm a recovering Catholic,
- 21:28Speaker 3: but you know, the breakdown of the church, but more
- 21:31Speaker 3: of the community that was associated with it, the morals
- 21:34Speaker 3: and ethics, and I don't I know, they don't own
- 21:37Speaker 3: morals and ethics, but I think that that is a
- 21:39Speaker 3: part of it. I think this drive of materialism and
- 21:43Speaker 3: keeping up with the Jones and working ridiculous ours and
- 21:47Speaker 3: you know, in Australia, we've got the biggest houses in
- 21:49Speaker 3: the world, you know, And me and my wife we've
- 21:51Speaker 3: put many conversations about this, like we could do lots
- 21:54Speaker 3: of other stuff in business, but we've said we're not
- 21:57Speaker 3: going to do that because we want to have balance
- 21:59Speaker 3: and we want to be around and we want to
- 22:01Speaker 3: be involved in our kids' lives. And I think it's
- 22:04Speaker 3: playing quite well, but that it really is important that
- 22:08Speaker 3: both parents are really engaged and involved in the kids' lives.
- 22:11Speaker 1: Yes, yes it is. But as I said before, I
- 22:15Speaker 1: think anxiety is a big feature in this. We get
- 22:18Speaker 1: frightened that we can't pay the bills, or that if
- 22:21Speaker 1: we don't go our private school there'll be too much
- 22:24Speaker 1: sexual harassment.
- 22:25Speaker 3: Ye miss, yeah, yeah.
- 22:27Speaker 1: And so so that's coming back around to your question.
- 22:31Speaker 1: Was what I began to look at is can we
- 22:34Speaker 1: lower can we break the back of the anxiety epidemic
- 22:38Speaker 1: because a parent who is anxious is not available to
- 22:41Speaker 1: their kid. And so I began to look at the
- 22:45Speaker 1: the whole science of how anxiety happens, why we are
- 22:50Speaker 1: prone to it, and how to disarm and not be
- 22:54Speaker 1: anxious even in the face of a horrendous world, so
- 22:58Speaker 1: that the in in the wild Creature Mind. What happens
- 23:02Speaker 1: with Ellie. She's lucky. She gets a therapist who is very,
- 23:06Speaker 1: very steady, and who teaches her about her own brain,
- 23:09Speaker 1: and as a result, her anxiety doesn't this will you
- 23:13Speaker 1: know shock people listening, Paul, is that it doesn't go away.
- 23:16Speaker 1: What it does, yes, it transforms, And basically what it
- 23:22Speaker 1: transforms to is incandescent rage. Because Ellie and her school
- 23:27Speaker 1: friends are being sexually harassed by some bigger boys every
- 23:30Speaker 1: day at the bus stop. They're holding up pornographic images
- 23:34Speaker 1: on their phones and pushing them at their faces. They're
- 23:37Speaker 1: commenting on their looks. And Ellie has assumed two things
- 23:41Speaker 1: that this is just how life is, and that there's
- 23:44Speaker 1: no point worrying her parents with it because they're got
- 23:47Speaker 1: enough worries already, And so she's sitting on this horrible experience.
- 23:52Speaker 1: It's almost every day now. The therapist helps her to
- 23:55Speaker 1: track her body signals. Her wild creature mind is what
- 23:58Speaker 1: we call this body see method, and what she discovers
- 24:02Speaker 1: is she's furious. She's just so furious, and in the
- 24:06Speaker 1: towards the end of the book, she takes action. She
- 24:09Speaker 1: talks to her friends, Her friends talk to their parents,
- 24:12Speaker 1: Their parents talk to the principle. There's this whole chain
- 24:14Speaker 1: of action that happens, and it's just a brilliant example
- 24:18Speaker 1: that we're not about sedating people. You know, does that
- 24:22Speaker 1: makes sense?
- 24:22Speaker 3: All? I'm going, yeah, I know that absolutely does. I mean.
- 24:26Speaker 3: Anxiety I've always thought is trying to tell you something, right,
- 24:30Speaker 3: and it's it's trying to tell you something about something
- 24:33Speaker 3: that you cur about. So let's dive into the book
- 24:37Speaker 3: your nearest books called Wild Creature Mind. So in this
- 24:40Speaker 3: you talk about the two different hemispheres everybody will have
- 24:43Speaker 3: heard of right brian left brain, and you talk about
- 24:46Speaker 3: the work of doctor Ian McGilchrist. You talk about the
- 24:49Speaker 3: vaguest nerve, my favorite nerve in the body. So just
- 24:53Speaker 3: give people a bit of an overview, a high level
- 24:56Speaker 3: of review about where did this idea come from, a
- 24:59Speaker 3: few that we've got two minds, and then what are
- 25:03Speaker 3: the right and left hemispheres tend to do generally? And
- 25:07Speaker 3: then we can sort of dive into the repercussion to anxiety.
- 25:11Speaker 1: Okay, now, what in McGilchrist let people know is was
- 25:15Speaker 1: the leading psychiatrist in the UK. It was the medical
- 25:18Speaker 1: director of the Maudsley Clinic and very much a heavy
- 25:22Speaker 1: hitter in looking at brains and particularly patients with damaged brains.
- 25:27Speaker 1: And when he left that job he realized that there
- 25:30Speaker 1: was something huge going on here. Now. In the seventies
- 25:33Speaker 1: there was stuff around about left and right brains. McGilchrist
- 25:36Speaker 1: showed that that was basically completely wrong, that the idea
- 25:40Speaker 1: that you're left is logical and you're right is the emotional. Yes,
- 25:43Speaker 1: it was taught in many a management seminar, absolute rubbish
- 25:48Speaker 1: because for one part, left brain is it has words,
- 25:52Speaker 1: it's good stuff, but it is massively prone to bias.
- 25:56Speaker 1: You give it, you throw it a slogan, you know,
- 25:59Speaker 1: like make America again or stop the butt, get Rexit done,
- 26:03Speaker 1: and the left brain just goes ooh okay on purpose.
- 26:07Speaker 1: So it's it's very defensive bias and prone to to
- 26:12Speaker 1: getting caught and in anxiety of course, it just goes
- 26:14Speaker 1: in loops round and around. Now you and I are
- 26:18Speaker 1: talking with our left brain. You know, I'm putting words together,
- 26:21Speaker 1: I'm shooting them across to you. Your your left brain
- 26:24Speaker 1: is shooting words back to me. It looks on the
- 26:26Speaker 1: surface like a left brain conversation.
- 26:29Speaker 3: Because the brokers as breath.
- 26:31Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I was smoking with the work it's
- 26:36Speaker 1: doing here. But in fact, what's really going on is
- 26:39Speaker 1: that our right brain is like a super computer, wise
- 26:44Speaker 1: profound animal system which is helping me to read the
- 26:48Speaker 1: pacing of your voice, your breathing rate, the expressions on
- 26:52Speaker 1: your face. It's doing that in real time without me
- 26:56Speaker 1: making any particular conscious awareness of that. Can we trust
- 26:59Speaker 1: it each other? It's coordinating the whole dance of how
- 27:03Speaker 1: an interview or a conversation goes on. It does all
- 27:07Speaker 1: the complicated stuff, you know, Can I trust this person?
- 27:11Speaker 1: Am I safe? Am I talking too much? Am I
- 27:14Speaker 1: listening enough? And so? Right brains are the part of
- 27:17Speaker 1: us which is wise and understands complexity, deals with complexity,
- 27:23Speaker 1: and life is complicated. And so you know, if you
- 27:26Speaker 1: can't you know, you could never write a manual for
- 27:29Speaker 1: how to dance, you know, because dance is kind of
- 27:32Speaker 1: a flow thing. You know, you can't write a manual
- 27:34Speaker 1: how to know when someone wants you to kiss them.
- 27:36Speaker 1: You know, you have to just be receptive and respectful
- 27:40Speaker 1: and yeah and so, but the problem is the right
- 27:44Speaker 1: brain doesn't have any words and so if it doesn't
- 27:46Speaker 1: trust somebody, you know, you're about to sign a deal
- 27:49Speaker 1: of buying a house or something, or you know there's
- 27:52Speaker 1: a boy come to take out your teenager daughter and
- 27:54Speaker 1: he's saying all the right things, you know, But if
- 27:57Speaker 1: your right brain is picking up, I don't feel good here,
- 28:00Speaker 1: it can't say that. What it does, it sends a
- 28:03Speaker 1: signal down the middle of your body, down the vagus,
- 28:06Speaker 1: nerve down that whole system into your organs, and it
- 28:10Speaker 1: gives you a little kind of twinge somewhere or a
- 28:13Speaker 1: little kind of sort of ye see that feeling. It
- 28:17Speaker 1: can be a throat feeling, it can be a bowel feeling,
- 28:20Speaker 1: you know, heart feeling. And everyone listening right now to
- 28:24Speaker 1: this podcast is having reactions in their body. If you're
- 28:29Speaker 1: watching this or listening to this, you'll be feeling, you know,
- 28:32Speaker 1: is this exciting or is it rubbish? Or is it
- 28:35Speaker 1: a little bit unsettling. That's a physical sensation. And if
- 28:40Speaker 1: we learn and what indigenous people would do, or any animal,
- 28:44Speaker 1: you know, a panther or a bear or an eagle
- 28:46Speaker 1: constantly reads that sensus. What's the what's my next move,
- 28:51Speaker 1: what's the way to go? And it's a brilliant way
- 28:55Speaker 1: to guide you through your day, and we ignored it
- 28:59Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. And what Gilchris says, we became
- 29:02Speaker 1: a left brain society. We treat each other like objects.
- 29:06Speaker 1: We treat the world like a big mine and.
- 29:09Speaker 3: So to be consumed. Right. So this kind of gets
- 29:13Speaker 3: into the whole neurovisceral integration theory. Right. And I was
- 29:18Speaker 3: a bassel of under Kolk and they score so which
- 29:24Speaker 3: I have bought. Actually I think it's there, but I
- 29:26Speaker 3: haven't actually read it yet. But so is that all
- 29:30Speaker 3: wrapped up in this idea of the wild creature Brian?
- 29:35Speaker 3: Is that encompasses all of this stuff?
- 29:37Speaker 1: As always for my job is to make it simpler.
- 29:40Speaker 1: You know you haven't read your Vessel Badly cockbook. It's
- 29:43Speaker 1: it's on millions of shelves. The thing is that it's
- 29:46Speaker 1: not I think it's not as complicated. Can I give
- 29:49Speaker 1: an example or a working thing of this? Because I
- 29:53Speaker 1: want people to get something that they can use. It's
- 29:56Speaker 1: always my vow in a podcast or any interview to
- 29:58Speaker 1: try and give something you and take away. And I'm
- 30:02Speaker 1: a naturally anxious person. I'm on the autism spectrum. I've
- 30:05Speaker 1: been anxious for the first seventy years of my life.
- 30:11Speaker 1: But I didn't want to keep doing that, and so
- 30:14Speaker 1: when I started researching this stuff, I started trying putting
- 30:18Speaker 1: it into practice. And so if I'm lying in better nights,
- 30:21Speaker 1: if I wake up in the night and I'm feeling anxious,
- 30:24Speaker 1: which I used to do a lot because there was
- 30:25Speaker 1: many in my family, lots of things, health problems, lots
- 30:29Speaker 1: of things to worry about. I learned this sequence from
- 30:33Speaker 1: in mcgilchristen from some other people using these methods, that
- 30:37Speaker 1: the first thing to do is to say, Okay, I'm
- 30:39Speaker 1: feeling bad. Recognize that. And there's a form of words
- 30:43Speaker 1: that you use which is really important. And it's a
- 30:46Speaker 1: way that people used to sometimes talk in the past.
- 30:49Speaker 1: They'd say, like in a Jane Austen book, people would
- 30:53Speaker 1: say this. He'd say, Oh, there's something in me that
- 30:55Speaker 1: yearns for the sea. You know, there's something in me
- 30:58Speaker 1: that wants to give them a good smack of the man.
- 31:00Speaker 1: It's a it's saying it's not all of me. You understand,
- 31:04Speaker 1: it's not all of me.
- 31:05Speaker 3: I really like where you're going here to continue jumping
- 31:10Speaker 3: on top.
- 31:11Speaker 1: So what I would do is I'm in bed, I think, okay,
- 31:15Speaker 1: not I am anxious, because that is sort of so
- 31:18Speaker 1: all consuming, but okay, there's something in me that's anxious.
- 31:21Speaker 1: And then, and because it's two in the morning, I'm
- 31:23Speaker 1: not not in great shape mentally, clarity wise, but I
- 31:27Speaker 1: can manage this. There's something in me that's anxious. Where
- 31:31Speaker 1: is it? Because every bad state we experience it has
- 31:37Speaker 1: it's located somewhere, And so you go down in your
- 31:41Speaker 1: body and you look for it, and sure enough, I'm
- 31:44Speaker 1: feeling something in me is anxious, and it's around sort
- 31:48Speaker 1: of brown my tummy somewhere. And now, straight away what's
- 31:52Speaker 1: happened by using those words is you've created a kind
- 31:55Speaker 1: of a spaciousness. Part of you is noticing another part
- 31:59Speaker 1: of you, so you've already sprung free from being trapped
- 32:03Speaker 1: in it classic and then the next step is that
- 32:09Speaker 1: you use words to try and describe the sensation. So
- 32:14Speaker 1: you say, you know, okay, it's kind of a clenching sensation,
- 32:18Speaker 1: and you feel to see if that fits. Now, it
- 32:21Speaker 1: never quite fits exactly because as you pay attention to it,
- 32:24Speaker 1: it's the bodies and this is an incredible the way
- 32:27Speaker 1: our body might work. The sensation will begin to clarify.
- 32:31Speaker 1: It's like, as you notice that wild creature, it'll come
- 32:33Speaker 1: out of the bushes a little bit, and so let's say, oh,
- 32:36Speaker 1: actually I thought it was swirling, but it's actually it's
- 32:38Speaker 1: more of a kind of a clenching, and so you
- 32:41Speaker 1: try out the word clenching. And what's happening in neurological terms,
- 32:45Speaker 1: is your left brain is talking to your right You're
- 32:48Speaker 1: using language to kind of respectfully check in with the
- 32:53Speaker 1: signals coming from your right brain, and your right brain
- 32:57Speaker 1: seems to kind of appreciate that. It's like you're relating
- 33:01Speaker 1: more constructively to your own self. And so generally what
- 33:05Speaker 1: happens in my patients is that they experience that it
- 33:08Speaker 1: shifts and it'll go one or two ways. Either it'll
- 33:11Speaker 1: just dissolve because you've noticed it, You've got the message,
- 33:15Speaker 1: and your body is saying thank you for noticing. You're
- 33:18Speaker 1: in bed now there's no danger you can fall asleep
- 33:22Speaker 1: or else. It'll what sometimes happens if it's a strong feeling,
- 33:25Speaker 1: sometimes it'll have an upward movement and so it'll come oh,
- 33:28Speaker 1: it's coming up around my heart. Now, okay, just notice
- 33:32Speaker 1: that what is it in the heart. It's kind of
- 33:34Speaker 1: a fullness in my heart. What's happening now, Oh, it's
- 33:37Speaker 1: coming into my throat and oh, I just suddenly feel
- 33:39Speaker 1: tears pricking in my eyes. And there's a beautiful story
- 33:42Speaker 1: in the book about an ambulance driver who has this
- 33:45Speaker 1: happened in a therapy session and years of trauma comes
- 33:49Speaker 1: up into his un Suddenly in his mind, a single
- 33:52Speaker 1: word comes into his mind. It's Anita. And he just says,
- 33:56Speaker 1: it's Anita, and the counselor says, who's Anita? And it
- 33:59Speaker 1: was a little girl who died in his ambulance and
- 34:03Speaker 1: she'd been hit outside of school and he put her
- 34:06Speaker 1: in the ambulance and they've done the job just so well.
- 34:09Speaker 3: Got there.
- 34:10Speaker 1: They got there in eight minutes, chaos, and mom was there,
- 34:13Speaker 1: the cool kids were there. He told this little girl,
- 34:16Speaker 1: you know, we don't worry, we'll take care of you.
- 34:19Speaker 1: But her injuries were too huge and she didn't survive.
- 34:22Speaker 1: And he'd had dozens and dozens of incidents in his job.
- 34:26Speaker 1: Any one of those could have been kind of the one.
- 34:29Speaker 1: But his wild creature mind, that right hemisphere feeds straight
- 34:33Speaker 1: into the hippocampus. It can track all your memories. It
- 34:36Speaker 1: sorts them, brings them to the fore. Anita was the
- 34:40Speaker 1: one that had got to him. But he had never
- 34:43Speaker 1: known that before, and so once he and the therapist
- 34:46Speaker 1: knew what it was, it was about forgiveness. It was
- 34:49Speaker 1: about you know, sometimes you can't help someone even though
- 34:53Speaker 1: you promised you would. And I can feel myself tearing
- 34:57Speaker 1: up to Stephen remembering that, Paul. It's so huge. But
- 35:03Speaker 1: our bodies are so wise, and if we use these
- 35:06Speaker 1: body tools, we can get all the way back from
- 35:09Speaker 1: down here into the right hemisphere, into the memories, whereas
- 35:14Speaker 1: our left brain would have been going. You know, we
- 35:15Speaker 1: could have been a thirty to fifty one hundred counseling sessions,
- 35:18Speaker 1: going round and round and round, cognitive behavior therapist telling us,
- 35:23Speaker 1: you know, don't be silly, you know nothing wrong. We're
- 35:27Speaker 1: now releasing some of those old methods are just so
- 35:29Speaker 1: disrespectful of the gravity and the depth. And so people
- 35:35Speaker 1: like me and Bessel vander Kolk and all over the
- 35:37Speaker 1: world people are saying, use the body, use the right hemisphere.
- 35:42Speaker 1: We can get people better five times faster if we
- 35:45Speaker 1: just use their own built in what every animal has.
- 35:50Speaker 1: You know, you shudder or you shake, or you cry,
- 35:54Speaker 1: or you just all of a sudden just let go
- 35:57Speaker 1: and your body comes back together again and you're just
- 35:59Speaker 1: not anxious anymore. We can we can break this problem.
- 36:03Speaker 3: It's interesting. What I really like about that number one
- 36:08Speaker 3: is that increased interroception, right, which I think is pretty
- 36:12Speaker 3: key in all of this. But the fact that you
- 36:15Speaker 3: said that there's something in me, because what I hear
- 36:19Speaker 3: so often in these days is it's my anxiety or
- 36:24Speaker 3: it's my depression, like it's a part of them, it's
- 36:28Speaker 3: a permanent part of them, And I think that's really
- 36:32Speaker 3: not helpful because people then they're actually part of their
- 36:38Speaker 3: whole self concept gets wrapped up in this stuff, whereas
- 36:42Speaker 3: you're just like, there's something in me right now.
- 36:44Speaker 1: Yes, I mean it has roots back into Buddhism and
- 36:47Speaker 1: all kinds of traditions, and even with like I'm interested
- 36:51Speaker 1: in a course in getting less violence and aggression in
- 36:55Speaker 1: the world and in families. Then for a person who
- 36:58Speaker 1: when someone is angry, they generally completely just flood with that.
- 37:03Speaker 1: If you can say, you know, there's something in me
- 37:06Speaker 1: that's angry, and go to it and focus on it,
- 37:10Speaker 1: quite often, it turns out it's actually it's kind of
- 37:12Speaker 1: in your tummy, and it's fear instead. And there's a
- 37:15Speaker 1: thing called alexiphymia, which is a condition of not having
- 37:19Speaker 1: any interception and about in wild creature mind. In the book,
- 37:24Speaker 1: nine out of ten people get it. By the time
- 37:27Speaker 1: they've got through the book. We've come at it so
- 37:29Speaker 1: many different ways that they can read their body really well.
- 37:32Speaker 1: That was how we structure the book. But one intent
- 37:34Speaker 1: people have alexithymia, which is not it's not something wrong
- 37:38Speaker 1: with their nervous system. It's just they have absolutely no
- 37:42Speaker 1: idea what you're talking about with anything below the neck.
- 37:45Speaker 1: So you have to start with, you know, how do
- 37:47Speaker 1: you know you're hungry? And they'll sell because it's dinner time,
- 37:52Speaker 1: you're seeing hard no no clock, no watch, you're in
- 37:56Speaker 1: a space station. How do you know you're hungry? They say, oh, well, actually,
- 38:01Speaker 1: you know, there is a bit something down in my tummy,
- 38:03Speaker 1: you know, where there's some things that feel like hunger,
- 38:07Speaker 1: some things that feel like first, how do you know?
- 38:09Speaker 1: And you've had too much to eat? Because I've worked
- 38:11Speaker 1: with men who've said, you know, the first they know
- 38:14Speaker 1: they're angry was they've decked somebody. And there's that little
- 38:17Speaker 1: awareness of themselves.
- 38:19Speaker 3: Yeah, this alexothymia, is there any I don't know that
- 38:23Speaker 3: whether there's been studies done, whether there's any history of
- 38:29Speaker 3: trauma in people who've had that, Like, is it a
- 38:31Speaker 3: reaction to shut down?
- 38:34Speaker 1: I'm enjoying talking to you, Paul, because you've got you've
- 38:38Speaker 1: thought quite very deeply about some of these things. And absolutely,
- 38:42Speaker 1: if all your body has ever given you is pain,
- 38:44Speaker 1: then of course you'll shut it down. And if if
- 38:47Speaker 1: you talk to people who survived torture and survived sexual
- 38:50Speaker 1: assault and sexual abuse as children and so on, they
- 38:52Speaker 1: have developed a very handy skill which you have, yeah, association. Yeah,
- 38:59Speaker 1: not even in their body. I remember working with someone
- 39:02Speaker 1: who they would be as a child that took the
- 39:06Speaker 1: way they were treated was so horrible. They could take
- 39:07Speaker 1: themselves and put themselves in a hole in the plaster
- 39:10Speaker 1: of their bedroom all and that was where they lived.
- 39:13Speaker 1: They could locate their whole self in the in the
- 39:16Speaker 1: hole in the wall and only come back out again
- 39:19Speaker 1: when it was safe. And what happens, of course, is
- 39:21Speaker 1: after a while, you just don't feel your body. And
- 39:24Speaker 1: that's where we're saying, because Wild Creature Mind is not
- 39:28Speaker 1: is not a self help book. What we're saying, it's
- 39:30Speaker 1: a help each other book, because sometimes you'd need someone
- 39:35Speaker 1: who can is so safe. This is you know, I'm
- 39:39Speaker 1: looking at your face as i'm talking about this, and
- 39:41Speaker 1: your eyes, and you're very, very attentive, and you're very present,
- 39:47Speaker 1: and so someone would feel with you like he's with me,
- 39:51Speaker 1: and there's a steadiness there. And if you're with someone
- 39:55Speaker 1: who's steady, you know, if it was a woman client,
- 39:57Speaker 1: they'd probably need a woman therapist to This is kind
- 40:00Speaker 1: of a mothering sort of theme of this person is
- 40:04Speaker 1: so steady that they can protect me and they can
- 40:07Speaker 1: be with whatever crap and comes pouring out of me.
- 40:11Speaker 1: They won't be rattled. And only when that's available is
- 40:14Speaker 1: it possible to start to go slowly back into your
- 40:18Speaker 1: body and feel safe to go there. And one of
- 40:20Speaker 1: our worries was we talked to lots of kids who'd
- 40:23Speaker 1: been to psychologists when we were writing Wild Creature and said,
- 40:27Speaker 1: what are your chances of getting someone like that like
- 40:31Speaker 1: Elligott in the story, And they were telling me maybe
- 40:34Speaker 1: one in ten.
- 40:35Speaker 3: Yeah, this is massive. There's Learly, a psychologist at Harvard.
- 40:39Speaker 3: She's written a book called Dopaminition, and she said she's
- 40:42Speaker 3: become very critical of mainstream psychology and psychiatry that's become
- 40:47Speaker 3: so tech boxy that she find herself sitting in with
- 40:52Speaker 3: patients and they're talking and she's going, which of the
- 40:56Speaker 3: boxes in the DSM did I put this person in?
- 41:00Speaker 3: And then she realized she'd lost all the skill of
- 41:02Speaker 3: the therapist, which is about connection. Right that you know,
- 41:06Speaker 3: the warrant of the relationship, as you will know, is
- 41:09Speaker 3: the biggest thing in the success of not only therapy
- 41:12Speaker 3: but medical interactions as well.
- 41:15Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And and you can't teach that in
- 41:18Speaker 1: a university training. It's a it's a bit of a
- 41:21Speaker 1: it's a difficulty. I mean today you can train as
- 41:24Speaker 1: a psychologist in online courses. And so we've lost the
- 41:29Speaker 1: plot here, and so somehow we've got to get back
- 41:32Speaker 1: to the providing people who have got the basic humanity,
- 41:36Speaker 1: the time, the presence, the calmness to really hold these kids.
- 41:41Speaker 1: And it's because it's hard to get to a therapist,
- 41:44Speaker 1: and when you get there, you don't want it to
- 41:46Speaker 1: not work. A half of all men who go for
- 41:49Speaker 1: counseling never return after their first session. It's a manner,
- 41:54Speaker 1: a whole different you know a problem again.
- 41:57Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, at least I'm seeing experience. I'm gonna get
- 42:02Speaker 3: your opinion on this, right. You may or may not
- 42:05Speaker 3: have an opinion. But I have done four different sessions
- 42:09Speaker 3: of breath work, right, because I'm interested in breathwork. So
- 42:14Speaker 3: a number of years ago I did a session with
- 42:16Speaker 3: a guy called Dan Brulet, who's a very famous breathing coach,
- 42:19Speaker 3: taught Tony Robbins horw to breathe and it was a
- 42:22Speaker 3: full daut session and the last star we did something
- 42:26Speaker 3: called holotropic breathing, right, which is this deep breath, rhythmic, cyclical,
- 42:33Speaker 3: big breaths in and out, and there's lots of music
- 42:37Speaker 3: going on, but this continuous deep breathing for forty to
- 42:42Speaker 3: fifty minutes. And I've recently done a couple of sessions
- 42:45Speaker 3: down here in the Morning's Financial with a great guy
- 42:48Speaker 3: called Barney, and in all of those sessions there have
- 42:52Speaker 3: been people who have had emotional breakthroughs, like significant emotional
- 42:59Speaker 3: breakthrough And I'm just wondering what that for me. As
- 43:04Speaker 3: you're talking, there's a way of through the vegus nerve
- 43:09Speaker 3: then facilitating that connection in with their body, but it
- 43:13Speaker 3: is it is that There's been so many people in
- 43:16Speaker 3: those three or four sessions that have actually come out
- 43:20Speaker 3: and said, you know, I remember this thing. Our tears
- 43:23Speaker 3: were streaming down my face. There was some woman remembered
- 43:27Speaker 3: her childbirth, but people talking about how they felt really
- 43:31Speaker 3: healed and open and self. Were any idea what could
- 43:36Speaker 3: be going on? Because I find it fascinating. I mean,
- 43:38Speaker 3: I'm very lucky. I don't have any past issues or
- 43:42Speaker 3: stuff like that, so I've just been in the breathing
- 43:44Speaker 3: for being in the breathing. Any idea what was.
- 43:48Speaker 1: Going on here?
- 43:49Speaker 3: Again?
- 43:49Speaker 1: I'm going to do it. You turn here, shuck, you
- 43:53Speaker 1: pull again, because I would have real concerns about that.
- 43:56Speaker 1: And there along the lines of yes, of course you
- 43:58Speaker 1: can get people having traumatic memories come up through doing
- 44:02Speaker 1: forth breathing exercises. The real issue is the integration of
- 44:07Speaker 1: those and the pacing and the sequencing of what comes
- 44:12Speaker 1: first and what you heal in which order, and so
- 44:15Speaker 1: I regard you know, there are some fantastic breathwork practitioners
- 44:20Speaker 1: and there are an awful lot of undertrained, ill equipped
- 44:24Speaker 1: ones because it's a very Byron Bay kind of a thing.
- 44:28Speaker 1: You know, we had a workshop people were crying all
- 44:31Speaker 1: over the show.
- 44:31Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, no, no, no, I know, but it's different
- 44:34Speaker 3: to the VIM half type stuff which I've seen a
- 44:37Speaker 3: lot of, and the ones that I've been in have
- 44:39Speaker 3: been very skilled and interesting. The way they set the
- 44:43Speaker 3: whole thing up as well and talk to people, taught
- 44:46Speaker 3: people through the experience I thought was very very good.
- 44:49Speaker 3: But sorry, So do you think that there is then
- 44:53Speaker 3: that is is creating that connection, that body breing connection.
- 44:58Speaker 3: What do you think's going on there that people will
- 45:01Speaker 3: just open up so much, well breathing.
- 45:04Speaker 1: I mean, it's You're right in the sense that you
- 45:07Speaker 1: can get emotions happening, you can get memories coming to
- 45:11Speaker 1: the surface. It's just that I just want to put
- 45:14Speaker 1: on the record a cautionary note. Yeah, because it's in
- 45:17Speaker 1: a group, it's unpredictable. There's a time limit to how much,
- 45:23Speaker 1: you know, are you going to be there for that
- 45:24Speaker 1: person for the next two years if they need that,
- 45:27Speaker 1: And I would rather respect the brain's own sequencing of
- 45:31Speaker 1: what it surfaces and when in terms of the safety
- 45:35Speaker 1: that you know, when people feel safe, then things will come.
- 45:39Speaker 1: I'd rather do that than kind of dynamite the roadblocks
- 45:42Speaker 1: and so.
- 45:43Speaker 3: So you know, it's it's a nuclear problem.
- 45:47Speaker 1: Yes, And so I've been a psychologist for more than
- 45:52Speaker 1: forty five years. I have a strong sense of ethical
- 45:55Speaker 1: responsibility and that's what I would bring to this conversation.
- 45:59Speaker 3: So not we're not We're not encouraging people to go
- 46:02Speaker 3: out and do those things. I was just so fascinated
- 46:06Speaker 3: by what was actually happening with these pinkles that I'm like,
- 46:10Speaker 3: what is going on like that? I mean, that's got
- 46:14Speaker 3: to be some sort of in vegous nerve integration or whatever.
- 46:19Speaker 3: I just had a loss to explain it from a
- 46:22Speaker 3: physiological That's why I look at it through that physiological lens, right,
- 46:26Speaker 3: And maybe that's a very limited lens.
- 46:28Speaker 1: I mean, best of vander Kolk is totally and the
- 46:31Speaker 1: whole somatic psychotherapy movement is really blossoming. And because yes,
- 46:35Speaker 1: your body does hold on to memories. We tell the
- 46:39Speaker 1: story of Peter Levine in the book, who was in
- 46:41Speaker 1: a car crash and his arm it was just kind
- 46:43Speaker 1: of going like that because the windscreen of the car
- 46:46Speaker 1: was coming at him and he's lying on the ground,
- 46:49Speaker 1: you know, going like that because his arm had remembered
- 46:51Speaker 1: what to do at the time. It's amazing it is
- 46:54Speaker 1: it's amazing stuff. Yes, there is so much that we
- 46:58Speaker 1: still do not know.
- 47:00Speaker 3: And now you talk in your book about the difference
- 47:03Speaker 3: between the felt self and feeling give us a bit
- 47:08Speaker 3: of an idea.
- 47:09Speaker 1: It's like the progression we've made as a culture in
- 47:12Speaker 1: my lifetime from feelings were seen as something wrong with you.
- 47:16Speaker 1: If a doctor cried, you know, after you know, went
- 47:19Speaker 1: on holiday after a year of uninterrupted being a surgeon
- 47:23Speaker 1: and cried on his holidays, he think he was having
- 47:26Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown, where we would now say he just
- 47:29Speaker 1: accumulated so much he just really needed to let go.
- 47:31Speaker 1: That it was good that he was crying, and we
- 47:34Speaker 1: know now we talk to our kids about their emotions
- 47:37Speaker 1: two thirds of the time. That's all they need to
- 47:39Speaker 1: tell us that they're sad and be sad, or tell
- 47:41Speaker 1: us that they're angry with another kid at school. It
- 47:44Speaker 1: helps to tune into your feelings. The new layer that
- 47:48Speaker 1: we're adding in is when the feelings don't go away,
- 47:52Speaker 1: when our anger goes around and around, or our fearfulness
- 47:55Speaker 1: goes around and around. Is to push down to the
- 47:58Speaker 1: next layer, which is the sense of felt sense. So
- 48:02Speaker 1: if your parents listening to the podcast then you're talking
- 48:05Speaker 1: to one of your kiddies and they're upset, and you're
- 48:07Speaker 1: sitting with them, and you're really settled in to really
- 48:10Speaker 1: hear what's going on. Say to them, I can see
- 48:13Speaker 1: you're feeling bad. Where does it live? Where does this
- 48:16Speaker 1: bad feeling live in your body? And they'll they'll know,
- 48:20Speaker 1: they'll tell you, you know, it's in my tummy. It's like
- 48:23Speaker 1: a black lump in my tummy. And you don't try
- 48:26Speaker 1: and change that. You just steady them with it. You
- 48:30Speaker 1: just say, Okay, there's a black lump in your tummy.
- 48:32Speaker 1: You can feel it really black there. What's it wanting
- 48:35Speaker 1: to do? What's it doing now? Or what's it wanting
- 48:40Speaker 1: to say to you? And just these gentle inquiries. And
- 48:44Speaker 1: it'll always move our body when we give it full attention,
- 48:49Speaker 1: will always start moving doing what it's trying to complete.
- 48:53Speaker 1: And so the little boy in the book who's upset
- 48:56Speaker 1: with his sister goes from feeling angry with her to
- 49:00Speaker 1: realizing that he wishes she was little again so that
- 49:05Speaker 1: they could play together. She's sending it to a teenager
- 49:07Speaker 1: and she doesn't want to play with him anymore, and
- 49:09Speaker 1: so he's real you know, it's just such one of
- 49:12Speaker 1: those life griefs that just is you know that she's
- 49:15Speaker 1: growing up and she doesn't want to hold hands with
- 49:18Speaker 1: him at the swimming at the ice skating rink, and
- 49:21Speaker 1: you can't fix that. It's just, you know, it's just
- 49:26Speaker 1: but at least now he knows. And in the in
- 49:28Speaker 1: the it's a true story and in the book, the
- 49:30Speaker 1: boy said, anyhow, Mom, I got to get to school,
- 49:33Speaker 1: and so you know, he's he's got there now, and
- 49:38Speaker 1: he's he's okay with it. But that method your question,
- 49:42Speaker 1: it was. The method is go below the feelings to
- 49:46Speaker 1: the felt sense, and it will often be very helpful.
- 49:50Speaker 1: And you'll be in your felt sense too. You'll be
- 49:52Speaker 1: sort of feeling, you know, oh I feel so sad,
- 49:55Speaker 1: but I hear this, and so your child will sense,
- 49:57Speaker 1: you know, there's a resonance between parents child that they're
- 50:02Speaker 1: regulating each other. And it's very magical and beautiful physiological,
- 50:08Speaker 1: evidence based thing that humans do.
- 50:12Speaker 3: I'm almost in desper when I think about just how
- 50:18Speaker 3: we are medicalizing feelings. We're medicalizing childbirth, we're medicalizing emotions,
- 50:27Speaker 3: and this approach is very different. What's your thoughts on this?
- 50:33Speaker 3: This seems to be movement in some branches of psychology
- 50:37Speaker 3: where any bad feeling can be medicated and bad emotions
- 50:41Speaker 3: can be medicated, and then people wanting to get rid right,
- 50:46Speaker 3: to get rid of bad feelings, to get rid of emotions,
- 50:49Speaker 3: to get rid of anxiety. We're kind of coming back
- 50:51Speaker 3: to this stuff.
- 50:52Speaker 1: Well, this has a long tail, Paul, because when I
- 50:56Speaker 1: was seventeen, my mum was going through the minopause. Then
- 50:59Speaker 1: she found me really hard work, and I found her
- 51:01Speaker 1: really hard work. And she went to the doctors and
- 51:05Speaker 1: was prescribed a valium variant of vailium. And she and
- 51:09Speaker 1: I looked it up, you know what had been prescribed,
- 51:13Speaker 1: because we were mates as well as antagonists half the time,
- 51:16Speaker 1: and we found that valium was, and this was nineteen
- 51:19Speaker 1: sixty nine or something, was the most prospect which the
- 51:24Speaker 1: prescribed drug in the Western world. It was like this
- 51:28Speaker 1: lid on feminism, but it's like, you know, let's just
- 51:33Speaker 1: medicate the massive unhappiness of the whole female gender. We
- 51:37Speaker 1: got the Women's movement and people got really pissed at
- 51:41Speaker 1: the life that was being put onto women. And my
- 51:45Speaker 1: mum benefited from that, my sister and her generation. You know,
- 51:50Speaker 1: I've got daughters and granddaughters, and that changed, but it
- 51:55Speaker 1: still has. The drug companies. They aren't quit.
- 52:00Speaker 3: There's a lot of a lot.
- 52:01Speaker 1: Of money and drugs. They'll keep coming back, you know,
- 52:04Speaker 1: they'll be advertising to the doctors. You know, anxious kids
- 52:07Speaker 1: coming in. Haven't got time just to see them, twelve months,
- 52:11Speaker 1: twelve months waiting list. You put them on these And
- 52:14Speaker 1: I'm not saying there isn't a part for this, but
- 52:17Speaker 1: it's a thing to buy you some time. Use that time,
- 52:21Speaker 1: get into counseling, gets you know, have a look at
- 52:25Speaker 1: what your body is doing, because your body is not
- 52:27Speaker 1: your enemy. It's not something you have to to deaden
- 52:30Speaker 1: or dull. It's something you have to set free.
- 52:34Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 52:35Speaker 1: The title of the book originally was Make Friends with
- 52:38Speaker 1: your Wild Creature Mind, and they told me that was
- 52:42Speaker 1: too long. But that's the message is whatever's happening something
- 52:46Speaker 1: inside you, be patient and attentive and give it some space,
- 52:52Speaker 1: and it will always have something to tell you, and
- 52:55Speaker 1: sometimes it'll be a life changing, transforming thing and you'll
- 52:59Speaker 1: never look back.
- 53:01Speaker 3: There seems to me to be benefits here, not just
- 53:06Speaker 3: for people who are struggling with mental health and emotions,
- 53:10Speaker 3: but for all people. I think we, as you say,
- 53:13Speaker 3: we've become very detached. I mean, I've had experience in
- 53:18Speaker 3: the Amazon jungle with Matsis Indian tribes and they they
- 53:23Speaker 3: think very differently than we do. They are so much
- 53:27Speaker 3: more in touch with their bodies and in touch with
- 53:30Speaker 3: nature in general. And I think that and we look
- 53:34Speaker 3: at the Aboriginals, and you know, the longest community here
- 53:37Speaker 3: in the world in the Aboriginal streamers, who are much
- 53:40Speaker 3: more in touch with both their body and their nature.
- 53:44Speaker 3: So I presume that the techniques and the stories in
- 53:48Speaker 3: your book are applicable for everybody who just wants to
- 53:52Speaker 3: get a better sense of what it is to be human,
- 53:55Speaker 3: and not just I.
- 53:57Speaker 1: Don't think anyone has read the book with as much
- 54:00Speaker 1: exception of totality of it, Paul, because we put it
- 54:04Speaker 1: as a range of It's like a spectrum. It starts
- 54:06Speaker 1: off with first just playing first aid. You know, you're anxious,
- 54:10Speaker 1: How can you get through the night? And it goes to, okay,
- 54:13Speaker 1: there's damage that you've rough, things have happened to you
- 54:16Speaker 1: in the past. How can you start to unpack those
- 54:18Speaker 1: and heal those? But the third step is this is
- 54:21Speaker 1: a different way of being in the world. And McGilchrist
- 54:24Speaker 1: says this. He says, a healthy person is in their
- 54:27Speaker 1: right hemisphere eighty percent of the time. Now, Indigenous people,
- 54:33Speaker 1: they walk through the forest, they're not running through their
- 54:35Speaker 1: shopping list. No, no, no, it's like open the feeling
- 54:41Speaker 1: of being and for people watching and listening, you know
- 54:44Speaker 1: you're in your right hemisphere because it feels open. It's
- 54:47Speaker 1: like a soft, open awareness. And this is what I'm
- 54:51Speaker 1: slowly learning, is to be talking to you or being
- 54:55Speaker 1: in my family or going about my life. But I'm
- 54:58Speaker 1: aware of my body all the time and can feel
- 55:02Speaker 1: the softness of my tummy, and can feel my shoulders settle,
- 55:06Speaker 1: and feel my breathing coming and going, and so so
- 55:10Speaker 1: it's a lovely kind of rich experience. And maybe I'm
- 55:13Speaker 1: a bit slower, you know. I'll sometimes often say, look,
- 55:16Speaker 1: I just I just need to have a bit of
- 55:18Speaker 1: a sit with that a bit before I can answer
- 55:21Speaker 1: that question. And you can see now I'm kind of
- 55:23Speaker 1: just slowing down as I'm doing it. But it's a
- 55:26Speaker 1: way of being that's that's actually very responsive. You know
- 55:30Speaker 1: those guys in the Amazon jungle, you know if some
- 55:34Speaker 1: iver twig snaps, you know, one hundred meters to the right.
- 55:37Speaker 1: They're registering that.
- 55:39Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I know about it. Yeah, absolutely, walk
- 55:43Speaker 3: walking through the jungle of those guys, oh experience.
- 55:47Speaker 1: And as a result, they feel very comfortable in their
- 55:49Speaker 1: own skin and part of nature, which if we don't
- 55:53Speaker 1: solve being part of nature, we've only got another fifty years.
- 55:57Speaker 1: It's a serious as.
- 56:00Speaker 3: Like it's a fascinating conversation. I am aware of your time, Steve.
- 56:04Speaker 3: Just saw a couple of questions off topic, slightly off topic,
- 56:08Speaker 3: how is your decade of for a while going.
- 56:11Speaker 1: For people watching and listening. When I turned seventy, it
- 56:15Speaker 1: occurred to me, and you give me this, giving me
- 56:17Speaker 1: this kindly big grin. It occurred to me, that's not
- 56:20Speaker 1: just another decade, it's the last decade of last decade
- 56:24Speaker 1: of functionality anyway, and that's got to make a difference.
- 56:29Speaker 1: And I describe in Wild Creature this experience I had
- 56:33Speaker 1: on a silent retreat, a meditation retreat, of suddenly feeling
- 56:39Speaker 1: an ache in my side of my heart as walking
- 56:43Speaker 1: through the bush and it's just seen a gum leaf,
- 56:45Speaker 1: and I just felt this ache in my heart and
- 56:47Speaker 1: I paid attention to it, and it was like a
- 56:50Speaker 1: like this opening happened Off. There's going to be a
- 56:54Speaker 1: world without Steve Bidoff in it, and I'm I was
- 56:59Speaker 1: sort of seeing my own gonness and and then of
- 57:03Speaker 1: course coming back. But it's not yet, you know, I'm
- 57:05Speaker 1: not dead yet. But it made me very have not
- 57:11Speaker 1: made me very, very intensely interested in I don't I
- 57:16Speaker 1: don't mind being dead, but I very much care about
- 57:20Speaker 1: what I do with the time remaining. Climate change comes first,
- 57:25Speaker 1: you know, the kids that are going to live after
- 57:27Speaker 1: we're gone are going to live in a healthscape unless
- 57:30Speaker 1: we can change that. That's first. Second one is my
- 57:34Speaker 1: friends and family. How can I love them and care
- 57:36Speaker 1: for them to the very end? It was a complete reverse.
- 57:40Speaker 1: I I'd better go on a cruise. Of course, they
- 57:42Speaker 1: mightn't get the chance again, Well it was you know,
- 57:46Speaker 1: you will not see me on a golf course. I
- 57:48Speaker 1: will certainly be, you know, enjoying the world and going
- 57:51Speaker 1: slowly and happily appreciating my life in Tasmania. But my
- 57:58Speaker 1: concern of an elder is to make things work for
- 58:02Speaker 1: the next generation, and so how can I I don't
- 58:05Speaker 1: even know the answer to that, Paul, I just I
- 58:08Speaker 1: don't know, But I know that that's what I have
- 58:09Speaker 1: to do.
- 58:10Speaker 3: Yeah, look, i'll give you an opinion here. There's a
- 58:14Speaker 3: I don't know if you've read the book From Strength
- 58:17Speaker 3: to Strengths by Arthur C. Brooks, absolute brilliant book, who
- 58:22Speaker 3: talks about the first curve and the second curve of
- 58:26Speaker 3: your life, and the second curve starts in the fifties
- 58:30Speaker 3: and a lot of people struggle with that move from
- 58:33Speaker 3: the first curve to the second curve, and he really says,
- 58:36Speaker 3: you know, and that's where midlife crisis happens because all
- 58:39Speaker 3: of a sudden you're not as important and that anyway,
- 58:42Speaker 3: he said that his belief is that on the second
- 58:46Speaker 3: curve of your life, your major role is to disseminate
- 58:52Speaker 3: all the knowledge that you have acquired over the years
- 58:56Speaker 3: to other people to help them to actually get through
- 59:00Speaker 3: their first curve really well. And I think you're a
- 59:04Speaker 3: testament to that with your your work that has touched
- 59:08Speaker 3: millions of people, that has helped a huge amount of parents,
- 59:12Speaker 3: including in our house, to help people through that first curve.
- 59:16Speaker 3: So it is really just about you know, doing that,
- 59:20Speaker 3: doing the leader.
- 59:20Speaker 1: Stop here.
- 59:21Speaker 3: That's great that you've got a book. Eight Again, when
- 59:24Speaker 3: you're at your seventies and year, so I would just
- 59:26Speaker 3: encourage you to continue to disseminate.
- 59:29Speaker 1: It that knowledge because we're all I'm just going to
- 59:32Speaker 1: take that graciously and and and that's you know, sweet
- 59:37Speaker 1: of you to say so, and and lovely to hear.
- 59:40Speaker 1: And it's it felt like a Shambali clock. Something was something,
- 59:46Speaker 1: there was a grace that came into it somehow, And
- 59:49Speaker 1: I'm glad it's it's helped. If it's helped anyone, I'm
- 59:51Speaker 1: really really grateful.
- 59:52Speaker 3: Thank you. Bloody hell hasn't helped anyone, it's helped so
- 59:55Speaker 3: many people. So on behalf of the world in general.
- 59:59Speaker 4: Steve, andarticularly for parents, and and now with your new
- 1:00:02Speaker 4: book on behalf of people.
- 1:00:04Speaker 3: With with anxiety who are struggling. A heartfelt thank you.
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: You're really welcome. Thank you,