Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / From Trauma to Resilience: The Stress Continuum and the Power of Reappraisal, with Dr Eamonn McCarthy

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From Trauma to Resilience: The Stress Continuum and the Power of Reappraisal, with Dr Eamonn McCarthy · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Dr. Eamon McCarthy, welcome to the podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: With a name like that, you should have an accent
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: like mine.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: It would make my storytelling a lot better if I did,
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: but it's a few generations back, unfortunately.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: And when did the first McCarthy's come to Australia?
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I'll make it to my parents to hear this and
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: correct me, but I'm pretty sure on the maternal side,
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: it's probably, you know, two or three generations. The maternal
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: side was, I think, a few more than that.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: So we still celebrate St. Tony's Day, but I must
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: admit it's still a bit imposterish when we do.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: So, mate, you are a forensic psychologist by trade.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: You've got a PhD in forensic psychology.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And you've worked for.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: A little bit different. So the psychology world's a bit
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: different in that I've got a professional doctorate, which means
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I can practice as opposed to a PhD.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Gotcha.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Sorry.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: So you're trained in forensic psychology, we should say. And
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: you have worked with everyone from severely traumatized kids to...
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: CEOs in the area of performance psychology, right? So, which
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: is really interesting. And I want to talk about both
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: of those on the podcast, about early life stress and
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: the enduring effects that it has, how we can mitigate it,
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: but then also a bit of stuff on performance psychology.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: So it'll be something that's for everyone, but give our listeners,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: you know, just a bit of your background, right from
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: the training through to the sort of stuff that you've done.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, from a training perspective, I mean, to get to
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: the point of being, I guess, a doctor of forensic psychology.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So you sort of go into your undergraduate three years.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: A lot of us thinking, oh, great, and then I
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: can go out and help people. But the reality is
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: at the end of that three years, based on sort
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: of how you performed, you've got the option of doing honours,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: which I did. And then if you still came to,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: I guess, specialise beyond psychology, then it was another three
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: years doctorate, you know, specialising in forensic science. So I
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: got through that challenge. Yeah, so challenge, actually enjoyed every
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: second of it, to be honest. And then, yeah, in
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: terms of, I guess, workplace history, sort of deliberately started
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: with some short-term stuff in the aerial defending space. I
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: say deliberately because I was always pretty clear that I
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: wanted to work sort of back towards a preventative end.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And I think it's pretty hard to do that if
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: you haven't seen the outcomes as a bit of a
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: motivator for what it looks like if you don't do
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: that work. So then quickly sort of transitioned across to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: childhood trauma, worked for a group called Take Two for
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: an organisation called Berry Street, which was amazing. So I
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: was there for a few years. And that was a
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: chance to, I guess, do quite literally hundreds of assessments
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: of the very traumatised and very high-risk young people. And
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: that sort of led me, I guess, down the path
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: to thinking, look, all good and well to be doing
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: these assessments, but I'm seeing the same kids coming back
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: sometimes without the recommendations I've made, they've implemented. Unfortunately, I'm
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: a fairly humble bloke, and so I realised that was
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: more about my recommendations were obviously unrealistic relative to the
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: system itself. Right. And so that led me down a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: path towards child protection, principal practitioner for a number of
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: years there, which is a sort of senior role that
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: gets to, I guess, capacity build a lot of the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: staff at work there, but also they're involved in some
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: very high-level cases, and that sort of I guess was,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: when I think about it, probably my fondest times in
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: terms of really getting a sense that as hard as
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: it might be and as bad as the front page
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: of the age might look, sometimes people doing that work
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: are quite literally braving themselves against the wheel just to
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: keep children safe and to make sure that children's rights
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: are being preserved. And then in a nutshell, continuing in
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: that role for a number of years, absolutely loved it.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Upskilled through groups like Youth Justice, Royal Children's Hospital for
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: a while. So I wanted to get better at, you know,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: for example, you know, assessing and treating families and children
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: who've been involved in sexual abuse. So the gatehouse at
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Royal Children's Hospital was somewhere I sort of parked myself
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: for six to 12 months. And then more recently, got
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: sort of, I guess, tapped on the shoulder by some
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: people that I'd worked with whilst I was at Child
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Protection asking if I wanted to be the CEO of
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Lighthouse Foundation, which is an odd step sideways. It's not
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: something I've thought about, but grateful I did that for
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a few years. And then miraculously wound up In my
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: current company, Mind Your Honky, working with an incredible group
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: of executives and I guess some at Melbourne's the least,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: but also as a byproduct of that, very much getting
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to work with some incredible adolescents and young
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: people at risk as well.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And we will talk about Loretta Academy as
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: we go through, which is where we actually met through
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the amazing Anita Pahor and Larry Kesselman. Yeah. Just going
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: back to the time that you had, I mean, that's
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: pretty hard.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Work, seeing all of that.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, I know from Connie, my wife, who's a counselor,
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: about transference and counter-transference and all this. So, I mean,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: how do you, first of all, what are those things?
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And how do you.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: Protect yourself as a psychologist, like hearing the worst of
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: the worst? Like, how do you not let that affect you?
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Well, it's such a good question, Paul. And I guess
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: if you'd asked me right up until COVID, I would
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: have had a million clever ways of suggesting that I'd
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: managed to compartmentalize that part of my life from my
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: personal life. But, you know, I started, and I'll get
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: back to your question, but certainly when COVID came along
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: and I could go from an online meeting about some
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: horrific things that have happened to younger children and walk
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: downstairs and sit around the dinner table with my own
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: two young girls. I guess I realized that under certain circumstances,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: there probably is no completely infallible way to protect yourself
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: from that. But look, in terms of transference and counter-transference,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: which can occur in any therapeutic relationship, it's essentially when
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: the personal either unknowingly or unintentionally at least, transfers between
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the client and the therapist. And it can happen for
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: any number of reasons. I'd hate for any sort of
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: early career psychologist or even late career psychologist for that
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: matter to be kicking in the cells if it does happen,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: but it's one of those things that I guess you
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: need to be acutely aware of, but also one of
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: those things that it requires an external third party to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: help you make sure you're aware of it from time
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: to time, so IAS supervision and so on and so forth.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: But when it came to the really tricky, really sort
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: of heartbreaking, heady trauma cases, I guess something that occurred
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: to me early on in my career is that the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: young person sitting opposite me They don't need my tears.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: They don't need my sympathy. They don't need me to
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: feel sorry for them. You know, what they actually need
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: is somebody who can sit with and contain and hold,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: no matter what the story might be, someone who can
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: almost take that, you know, I guess the expression might
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: be concerned attachment. So that capacity to sit with it
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: objectively and provide support guidance to their own thought processes
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: and feelings without sobbing and hand-holding and sort of bringing
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: my own feelings into it. So that was probably the
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: thing that kept me sufficiently, I suppose, aware of that
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: while I was working in that space.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: So it's kind of a little bit of how can
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: I be as useful as I can here? And it's
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: by having a little bit of detachment and really focusing
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: on helping the client. Okay, so it's kind of a
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: win-win if you can get to that psychologically.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: And don't get me wrong, I mean, you know, that's
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: in session and that's when assessing or writing reports or
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: doing things for the clients. But, you know, it doesn't
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: mean that, you know, I couldn't even tell you how
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: many times in the car trip on the way home or,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: you know, in some cases, the second a young person's
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: walked out the door. You know, I think you'd need
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: to be sort of self-human not to sit there and
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: feel that quite deeply. Particularly, surprisingly, before I had children,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: it probably was so foreign in many ways that, you know,
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: you might have a sort of, you know, I guess
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: a real-life observation or a movie idea of what it's
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: like to have children and how fragile they are. trying
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: to find an experience or, you know, a part of
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: your sort of brain map could put that in its
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: perspective just didn't exist. So there was definitely some tough
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: times after the fact.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: In session, I sort of, yeah, did try to pride
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: myself on that's my stuff and that space is not
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: about my stuff. It's very much about the person that's
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: coming in to, you know, to hopefully get supported.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, geez, it must be a hard juggling act and
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: it's got to take its toll. It just has to
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: take its toll, right?
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. you know, you've obviously come from professions, you know,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: worked in and worked with, you know, men and women
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: from the military and stuff like that. I mean, I think, unfortunately,
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: there are simply jobs in this world that will leave,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes not so good stuff in your system.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: If you're there to help and if you're there to
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, very much like I have, I suppose,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: tackle those extremes in life out of curiosity and that's
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: my secondary gain. So it's not completely, you know, I'm
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: not a saint waiting, but, you know, there is that
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: secondary gain out of getting to learn and understand. Yeah.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: But yeah, to think that that doesn't leave part of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: itself in your system, I think is, yeah, it would
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: be pretty risky thinking. Yeah.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: And I think back to when I was doing helicopter
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: search and rescue, obviously there were some jobs that we
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: did that were pretty horrible, picking up people who were
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: either dead or almost dead and dying in the back
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: of the helicopter. And one of the coping strategies is
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: black humor. And initially when I started, I was a
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: little bit shocked by some of the black humor, but
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: then you know, you quite quickly slip into it. And
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: it's actually quite an effective coping strategy, but I just
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: can't imagine black humour being appropriate or something you would
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: go to in your area, right?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: So you kind of lose one of those coping skills.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: You're spot on. When I worked, you know, for example,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I've done jobs in sort of, you know, the sexual
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: offender space and some of that horrific stuff. When the,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I guess the topic of the black humour was, can
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: allow for that to be a really, really helpful process.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: The challenge, particularly when you're working with children who have
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: been abused or traumatized, is that ultimately, not only is
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: that something that in no world creates any humor, but
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: in actual fact, oftentimes those who have committed the atrocities,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: if you think about their histories and their backstories and
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: you know consider it in the context of transgenerational trauma
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: or things that may have happened to them even that
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: doesn't sort of present itself as something that allows you
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to use black humor yeah one of the unique you
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: know it's a big oh it was one of the
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: unique aspects of that particular work was that it wasn't
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: something that felt helpful uh let alone appropriate it's sort
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: of yeah it was one of those things that just
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: sort of sat in your core and we did a
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: lot of the reflective practice and supervision all the rest
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: of this but it was very hard to humanize it
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: or normalize it or humorize it in a way that
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: was helpful.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I totally get that. I remember, jeez, I
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: don't know how many years ago. It would have been
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: probably 20 years ago. I came across Robert Sapolsky. I'm
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: not sure if you're familiar with him, a professor who's
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: kind of called the godfather of stress. And his pioneering
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: work was on baboons in Africa. And he studied baboon
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: troops for 20 years and going out every summer.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And doing field work.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: And they would shoot the baboons with tranquilizer guns, which
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: was a stressor. And then they'd quickly go and get
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: them and they'd measure their cortisol in their blood. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: they find that the response, the stress response that they
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: had was directly related to their hierarchy in the troop.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: in that those that were higher up in the hierarchy
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: showed less cortisol responses to being shot. And those lower down,
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: and it mapped exactly, right? And that really, that was
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: the first time that I saw that that social status
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: has a big impact on stress. This has been being
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: validated in humans with the Whitehall study and the Whitehall
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: study too of pretty civil servants and shown that that
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: senior managers had the least stress because more autonomy, right?
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: So I think you get where I'm going here, just
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: in terms of the impact of.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Social status as a stressor.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: But separate to that, Sepulsi also talked about that early
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: life stress. And I remember him saying that it starts
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: in the womb. And it starts, well, it starts with genetics.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: And then it's particularly about the mother in the third trimester.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: If they're having a stressful trimester, this blew me away,
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: that if they had a stressful third trimester, that child
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: would be born with an enlarged amygdala and hypervigilant to
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: stress and threat, right? Which we know is an awesome
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: adaptation if you're born into a dangerous world. But if
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: you're not born into a dangerous world, then it's an issue.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: And then he went on to show that You could
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: be born with a normal amygdala and then suffer adverse
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: childhood experiences, ACEs, and that amygdala will grow. It will
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: become more sensitive. In extreme cases, the frontal lobes don't
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: develop well. So talk to us about... those adverse childhood
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: experiences and everything from severe trauma to just, you know,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: a hard upbringing and then some of the mitigating factors
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: that go into it, such as social status and occurring adult,
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: these sorts of things.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: I just want people to.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Get a sense of the complexity behind this.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: And complexity is the absolute word, and it's why we
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: separate the notion of, say, trauma or post-traumatic stress from
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: complex trauma. Yeah, and so it is about the complexity
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: of it. So, I mean, as you said, in utero,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: the experience of the mother absolutely had a profound impact
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: on the, I guess, predisposition to experience trauma in the infant.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: And I guess when you think about that, Not always,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: but the likelihood is if, you know, a woman who
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: is carrying a child, you know, first, second, all sort
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: of trimester is in an environment that is inducing levels
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: of stress that actually impact on the baby. it stands
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: to reason that baby is more likely than born into
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: a stressful environment. And so you kind of get that
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: self-fulfilling or that, you know, exponential growth whereby you've got
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: an infant who is predisposed, i.e. less able to deal
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: with stressful situations, being brought into arguably a more stressful environment.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: And so you kind of see how that, and I think,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: you know, from memory, there's been studies in rats that
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: sort of demonstrate the same thing or other animals whereby
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: there's almost, That inheritability, so to speak. Yes. And so
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I guess what we see is we're not talking about
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: more often than not a child or infant who has
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: come to services attention by way of a single harm type.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: You're typically talking multiple harm types. So it could be
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: everything from neglect to emotional, physical, sexual, to family violence.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: The list goes on. And so I suppose the way
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I've always sort of explained it and conceived it myself
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: is is that you're talking about someone in a hierarchy,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: if you use the baboon example, who is 100% reliant,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: both biologically in the first instance, but certainly psychologically in
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the second instance, on the caregivers. And so if you
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: can imagine, for example, if you found yourself in combat
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and the people you were in combat with were also
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: the ones that you were reliant upon for food, or
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: water yeah and you didn't know one day to the
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: next whether it was going to be guns out or
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: here's your water and food it's that experience of essentially
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: i'm so reliant upon my caregiver to keep me alive
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: and support me but they're the sense of danger and
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: trauma as well yeah and so it just leaves you
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: in a state of such incredible heightened vigilance you know
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: how do i walk into the world one day to
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: the next knowing whether i'm going to get the food
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: or the hug or the whatever I need to be
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: thriving or at least surviving versus you suddenly presenting as
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the danger. And so I think that's where the real
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: distinction between what I saw in that space versus say
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: potentially an adult who's experienced a single or a number
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: of specific traumas, that complex trauma where it's pervasive, it's
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: any second of any day, I can't plan for the future,
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: I just think next second to next second survival, you
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: really do see both the most horrific but incredible brains
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: that you'll ever see, which is those that are 100%
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: focused on surviving. They are in many instances going to
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: the extremes of survival that, you know, I don't know
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: about you, but certainly I've never had to learn or develop.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So you do see some incredibly sort of almost genius
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: level survival strategies, but obviously heartbreaking in the context of
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: how they come about.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And those, it's really interesting, isn't it?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Because those survival strategies can be really effective, particularly if
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: somebody's brought it up.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, the environment you were describing, right?
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: And the word that comes to mind for me is VUCA,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: which is a term that came out of the military
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: to describe the changing nature of warfare, volatility, uncertainty, complexity,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: and ambiguity, right? And we both know that uncertainty amplifies
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: any stressor. Like when I come home, is dad going
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: to give me a cuddle or is he going to
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: beat me, right? Or mom or whatever that may be.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: That ambiguity, that uncertainty, that's more stressful than someone who
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: comes home knowing it's going to be bad, right?
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely. And sadly, that is what you often say,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: is if there's some predictability to it. And by the way,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: I'm certainly not hierarching or triaging, because it's very individual.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: But you're right, if there's at least some predictability to it, i.e.,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: when my old man's drunk or when my mum's using drugs,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: That's a risk. Otherwise, they're okay. At least I can
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: structure my survival around that in a way that might
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: allow me to know that when I'm at school, for example,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I can find some safety and some focus on self-growth.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: Whereas if it's so pervasive and complex, which for many
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: of these young people it was and still is, there
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: is no capacity for that. You can't plan around it.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: As I said, it'd be likely, you know, that the
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: notion of the enemy suddenly handing you food and water
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: at random times, you know, there is just no way
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: of planning for your survival other than staying in a
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: constant state. of hyperarousal, or sadly, in many cases, hypoarousal,
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: where it's almost that it's so bad that I'm just
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: going to detach from it and it's escaping my mind.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Can we just talk about the difference between hyperarousal
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: and hypoarousal? I read a really interesting research paper that
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: applied sort of stress physiology that was well understood in
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: exercise science to the world of psychiatry, where we always
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: talk about stress adaptation in the physiology world. And if
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: you don't recover, you know, you go into a catabolic state,
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: whereas if you recover well, you supercompensate, right? But the
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: kind of same thing happens in psychiatry, right? And that
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: hypoarousal is a pattern with continuous high cortisol, that hyper cortisol.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: So talk to us about the difference between hyper and
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: hypo and how that manifests in individuals in their behavior
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: and their day-to-day lives.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Definitely. And look, I mean, lastly, it depends on the
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: cohort you're working with in terms of the sort of labels.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: You know, we, and mind your monkey, I use expressions
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: like sort of, you know, windows of optimal performance. Yeah.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: But then when you're in a therapeutic setting, particularly in
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: the trauma space, we talk about sort of the trauma
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: continuum body, you know, window of tolerance, being able to
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: sort of sit with it and work with it. But
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: in essence, you've got your, you know, synthetic nervous system.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: And it puts you at right times, hopefully, you know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: correct and real life for every time. The United States
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: have fight, flight, I think we go about fight, flight,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: freeze and fawn. I think that's sort of a down,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of fairly common vernacular. And so in
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: a fight state, i.e. when I am beyond the point
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: of being on birth, And I move into alarm. That's
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: a situation where you do find yourself hyper aroused or
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: hyper vigilant. And that just means you are, you know,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: so for you and I, it might be if we're
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: walking down a street and someone sketchy walks towards us
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: in a dark alley. Yeah. Our body moves into a
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: state quite deliberately and importantly to make sure that we're
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: best able to respond to that potential threat. And if we're,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: for example, you know, sadly a lot of girls and
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: women that I've worked with, and men for that matter,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: who are talking about sort of, you know, sexual assaults,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: And one of the things that sits pretty hard and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: one of the things we need to work with is
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: sort of the notion of, I always thought I'd fight back.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't fight back. I sort of froze. You know,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: I kind of didn't do anything to stop it happening.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: And it's about, well, good on you. Your brain is
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: brilliant because it made the assessment that this is not
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: a fight situation. This is a free situation. And that's
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: that sort of high power arousal where we sort of
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: go below what alert might be. And if we can't
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: physically escape, for example, we might mentally escape. We hear
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: terms like detachment or numbness, particularly in children. They sadly
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: can't get away from what's happening, but their brains can
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: be absolutely brilliant from a survival capacity and at least detach.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: and try to, you know, minimise the psychological impact of
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: the physical act that's occurring. So I think that's probably
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: the best way to describe it. And what we're looking for,
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and I know you talk about this a lot and
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: I thoroughly agree, you know, whether it's sports or whether
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: it's psychiatry, psychology, is that sort of ideal, you know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: optimal performance zone. So that alert stage, and that's where
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I'm able to rely on all of my amazing colleagues
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex and you know monitor my emotions and just
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: be my best self at any given set that is
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: helped not by no stress yes helped by good stress
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: yes that i sit in for an appropriate period of
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: time with some recovery as well whereas whether you're talking
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: mind your clients in a work setting or child protection
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: clients in a sort of heavily traumatized setting if it's
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Good stress that turns into bad stress with no end
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: in sight. Yeah, that's where the ability to look at
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: it as a growth opportunity versus something that's actually damaging you,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: you know, becomes pretty profound.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: I often say stress is like Goldilocks and the three bears, right?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It can't be too much. It can't be too little.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: It's got to be just right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: But what is interesting is just right for one individual
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: might be different to another individual, right? And I was
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: actually reflecting the other week just on my life, and
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: I actually think I've had the right dosing and the
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: right intensity throughout my life, from being born in Belfast,
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: from a mixed marriage, brought up in a Protestant neighborhood
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: as a Catholic And then, you know, getting into sports stuff,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: getting into quite a few hurry situations when I was
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: a teenager, then the military, particularly combat survival and resistance
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: to interrogation. That was my time when I went, shit,
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: this psychological stress can be just like physical stress exercise,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: because I was an exercise scientist. And I realized after
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: combat survival course stuff that used to be stressful was
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: no longer stressful and that's when i realized that was
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: the super compensation curve right and and the military talk
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: about stress inoculation right um and i think that's important
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: isn't it because i think we've some sections of society
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: have gone down a well-intentioned but dodgy path where we're
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: trying to remove all sorts of stressors from our kids
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: that can have unintended consequences of bringing up bloody snowflakes
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: rather than resilient people, right?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah. Like, I mean, imagine, you know, 300 years ago,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: imagine if you rocked up and your brainchild for society was,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: you know, had cold showers to create some sort of
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: friction or stress in your life. And you sort of think, wow,
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: like now, you know, I've tried that and struggled with it.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: But the thought that that you know, as important as
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: it is to create that physiological kind of friction for ourselves,
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: if you rewind the clock, you know, that would be
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: almost unheard of to have a warm bath.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: That's right, exactly.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: And I think that you're right. I think that that's
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, the notion of removing you know,
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: what little stress is left in most of our lives,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: if we're lucky, of course. I mean, there's some exceptions
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: to the rule. Yeah, yeah, I think that can be
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: absolutely dire. And I think we saw that in some
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: of the presentations during COVID, for example, where, you know,
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: being children, being adults, where you sort of did live
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: in quite a I won't say comfortable. I mean, it
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: was annoying and there was a lot of implications. But,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, you were in a bubble in many ways.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And I know a lot of people, particularly young people,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: in terms of school refusal and a lot of mental
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: health presentations as the restrictions lifted. was, I think, a
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: clear reflection on what it looks like when many of
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: life's very deliberate social and vocational stresses are removed, how
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: quickly you can actually lose some of that resilience you've
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: built up as well.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, absolutely.
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: And it is interesting the individual responses that people have.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: And I think Dennis Charney has actually done a lot
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: of stuff on prisoners of war and PTSD. And he
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: was the one who discovered that there's one gene that, say,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: me and you have different variants of that gene. We're
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: both exposed to pretty significant early life stress. I've got
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: one variant of that gene and basically that stress crumbles me.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: You've got a different variant of the gene and you
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: become superhuman because of the early life exposure to what
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: for a lot of people would be an intolerable level
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: of stress. So there's a real interaction between genes, environment,
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: and then other factors that come in, like, was there
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: one adult role model in your life that can help?
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: So talk to us a little bit about that, which
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: would be a nice segue into Loretta Academy, actually.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Definitely. I'm certainly no expert in genetics. I'll put it
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: out there now. But, you know, except the fact that
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: an infant in utero can subsequently experience impacts that are
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: created at birth by the mother. That's a terrible way
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: of putting it. It may sound like it's a mother's fault.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Created by the mother's environment experience. I think it stands
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: to reason when you look at evolution and you look
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: at the brilliance of the way evolution works, it stands
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: to reason, I think, that individuals from a genetic perspective
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: are going to come with different limbs, I suppose, of
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: innate capacity to tolerate certain stressors and rise through them.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, brain chemicals, whatever else. But I
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: think what I've always loved about the idea of resilience
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and psychological resilience, I should say, and I can go
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: probably not dissimilar to Katerina Harding and Mr. Fiamus, is
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: that even though some of us might be born, you know,
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: further along the, you know, the resilience spectrum in terms
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: of our inherent capabilities, I love that it's pretty much
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: stands to reason and certainly mind you, Mikey, Our whole
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: ethos is very much supporting the fact that I can
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: take someone who might be one of those individuals you
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: described that crumbles in the face of the challenge, and
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: you can train the same way you can do physically,
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: the same way you would experience in the military as well.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: You can train yourself. to become increasingly resilient throughout life,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: much like the person that's born with an inherent strength,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: if you want to put it that way, in terms
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: of they're naturally more resilient. If that's a level they
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: simply stay at, you have to call the naive B,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: someone who's had a pretty good upbringing but no challenges.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Chances are their resilience is going to stay quite stuck.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: One of the kids I've worked with, I didn't ask
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: for the problems, but imagine when they choose the problems
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: they want to actually endure. You know, sky's the limit. Yeah, yeah.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: And you'll hear people say, you know, I was brought
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: up in the school of hard knocks. Like there's so
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: many successful people out there who had freaking hard upbringings
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: because what I think it does is it surfaces the
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: dog in people. That's a Belfast term. He's got a
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: bit of dog in him or she's got a bit
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: of dog in her. I think it surfaces that.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Doesn't it?
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: But it also, it creates that stress adaptation or that
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: stress inoculation that then has the transfer effect, like spreads
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: into your life. And I think the other thing that
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: we can't underestimate is somebody's belief in their ability to
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: deal with stressors. I mean, Mark Seary showed that that...
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: can determine whether or not you view something as a
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: challenge or a threat, which then massively changes your physiology, right?
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: 100% and your psychology. So, I mean, the whole notion
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: of money monkeys, that thought sort of, you know, swimming
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: erratically through your brain and you've got to kind of
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: catch control of how you think about them and, you know,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: do we champion ourselves or would we self-depreciate? And, you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: that isn't very much what it's about, is that essentially
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: if I've got the capacity to enter a stressful or
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: difficult situation, weeks of evidence of things that I've survived before,
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: that goes a long way towards me being able to
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: take a more optimistic or successful approach to it. Whereas
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: if I've had a fairly sheltered life, for want of
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: a better expression, or I have avoided putting myself in
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: stressful situations, when stress or difficulty hits, I've got very
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: little to look back on to actually encourage my thinking
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: towards the likelihood that I'll succeed. And I think that
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: what people like you, for example, demonstrate well is that
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Either you need to experience difficult situations by choice, i.e.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: dip your toe in that good stress and watch your
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: resilience grow. Or sadly, in the world that we live in,
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: as you said, removing as much stress and challenge as
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: we can, be someone that has stress and trauma thrust
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: upon you. And therefore, you sort of develop that resilience.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: So I think you've got to choose to put yourself
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: at least in some level of discomfort on a fairly
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: regular basis. Otherwise, as you say, in these often stories
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: of people who've had bloody hard upbringings, really difficult challenges
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: are the ones that end up, you know, for example,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: on some of the YouTube clips you and I probably use.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: It's difficult to find one of someone who's had an
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: amazing life but has deliberately placed themselves in situations. that
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: continue to grow their ability to be resilient in the
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: face of stressors.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I have a very, an increasing opinion that stress,
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: your stress capacity is like a muscle and it is
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: use it or lose it. I think everybody knows what
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: happens to your muscles when you don't go to the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: gym and stress them out because let's face it, that's
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: what exercise is, is it's a physiological stressor that stimulates
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: adaptive responses in recovery, which you mentioned earlier on, right?
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: The importance of recovery was if you don't give your
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: muscles that stimulus, they atrophy. And recent research has come
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: out and actually showed there's a part of the brain
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: for that, the mid anterior cingulate cortex that actually grows
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: bigger when people do hard things and And the people
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: who you look at and go, that person's really freaking resilient,
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: you stick them in an MRI scanner, I guarantee you
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: they have a large mid-anterior cingulate cortex.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: And you can see specific results of that as well.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've seen studies where people are shown a
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: series of images, you know, that might be neutral, distressing,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: or positive. And depending on, you know, sort of the
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: brain imaging and how, I guess, from a brain perspective,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: that resilience, in relation to the response to the neutral.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So the way they set the study up, you know,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: without going into too much detail, is that you sit there,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: you see a shape, and that shape is connected to
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: either a neutral or a horrible photo. And if I'm
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: low resilience after a few kind of rounds of this,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I see the shape for a potentially neutral, potentially negative photo,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: and I'm already in a state that says a negative
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: photo is there. Yeah. Whereas if I've got a more
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: resilient brain type, I basically see that neutral photo. My
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: brain takes on, you know what, could be good, could
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: be bad. Let's wait and see. And so, of course,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not rising into that sort of high stress state,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: which means I'm coming out of it much more effectively
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: This is the very reason, Eamon, why I am not
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: a fan of trigger warnings in schools and universities. Because,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: you know, if you think about it, if somebody is
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: already hypervigilant, they have a hypervigilant amygdala, and you say
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: to them, this could be upsetting. fuck are they going
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: to think of course they're going to go into amygdala
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: hijack right and and and it's again it's well intentioned
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: but it can and it can be useful for some
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: people i'm not saying we throw it all out but
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: other people it just puts them in a hyper vigilant
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: state and then they avoid and then their challenge muscle
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: or their stress capacity muscle deteriorates.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Right It's such a rock and an hard place conversation
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: when I've worked with as much trauma as I have.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: I fully agree with you in terms of the average punter.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: I think you're right. Your brain is hardwired to identify threat.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: And if someone is kind of giving you the heads up, hey,
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: this next thing that's going to happen could be threatening,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: stands to reason that's going to be counterproductive. Yeah, and
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: the challenge is when you've got someone who you know,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: particularly long-term complex trauma, you know, first of all, what
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: it does is sort of almost keeps your amygdala, so
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: you sort of, you know, your emotional brain, I suppose,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: in the on position. Yeah, and then it starts messing
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: around with your sort of, you know, the watchtower, the
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex. So I can't necessarily think clearly or rationally,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: but then worse still, the campus in terms of the
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: memory loses the capacity to timestamp and to really order memories.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: And so, of course, I'm suddenly someone who's had a trauma.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: can't rationalize or kind of use my, you know, very
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: clever modern human brain to say, hey, it's all good.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: This isn't one of those times.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: A memory that actually is failing to let me know that, oh,
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: that's a past memory. No, that was six months ago,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: not right now when they've just given that trigger warning. Yeah.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: So it's one of those, you know, sort of, you know, possibles.
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: It's you're damned if you do and you're damned if
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: you don't, right? For the average person, it's, you know,
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: we're almost... sort of highlighting and kind of encouraging the
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: notion of taking something that you might have been more
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: than presumed enough to take in your stride and say, oh,
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: you know, you should have been worried about that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, exactly. I mean, it is tricky.
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: And it's also, you know, there's the tricky situation as well,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: and I see both sides of it, but I'm increasingly
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: leaning one way, is that the The amount of times
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: that mental health is discussed with our young people in schools,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: that there's now a reasonable amount of research that says
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: the more you talk to young people about mental health,
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the more they start to identify with disorders. The more
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: you explain this is what depression looks like, this is
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: what anxiety looks like. And I get it that you're
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: trying to educate people so they can look out for
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: their mates.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: But then you have that kid who's going, oh, maybe
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I do have anxiety, maybe I do have depression, right?
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: And it's, again, it's one of those things, well-intentioned interventions
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: that can really be helpful for some people, but for
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: other people are actually making the situation worse.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Don't criticize, but I do think that that's largely related
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: to poor execution as well, because I, you know, with children,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: but also, you know, Mindful Monkey and other roles I've
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: worked in as well, you know, with adults, You know,
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: things like RMO K-Day, definitely things like sort of workplace resilience,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: which we're doing quite a bit of in the sort
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: of private and sort of government-monitored sectors as well. That
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: distinction between a mental illness versus mental health is such
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: an important one, and I think that's the problem. So
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: the way I sort of describe it to get confusion
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: out of the way is just replace mental with physical.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: So I can ask you, how's your physical health? You
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: can be in great physical health or you can be
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: in very poor physical health. In neither of those situations
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: does it necessarily mean you've got a physical illness. Yes.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Because to have a physical illness, you've got a cluster
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: of specific symptoms occurring in a particular way and having
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: a particular impact. So mental health and mental illness is
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: exactly the same deal. So I can be in great
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: mental health but have a chronic mental illness, might be
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: in remission or well-supported, or I can have terrible mental
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: health and have never had a mental illness in my life.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: And I think children especially, it's the, you know, I
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: guess it's easy for me to say, well, it's so simple, but,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: you know, I can do it for a living. But
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I guess it's the nuance there. Yeah, it's that. You
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: can have symptoms. or, you know, we used to call
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: them sort of analog or subclinical symptoms that might be
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: akin to sort of anxiety-based symptoms or depression-based symptoms or,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: you know, put your name on it, doesn't mean you've
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: got anxiety, doesn't mean you've got depression. If it's a
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: prodromal or subclinical, these are basically your mental health might
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: need improving. Nothing to do with labels, nothing to do
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: with a diagnosis.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't mean you have a disorder that you
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: need to go on medication for.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Look, it is a tricky one. That's a really good explanation.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: It's probably the best that I've heard. So for someone
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: who might be listening to this and going, Yeah. I
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: had early life stress. I had adverse childhood experiences and I,
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: I recognize that it's getting in the way. Right. Um,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: you know, the, the, the stuff you talked about earlier
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: on that, the, the amazing shit that a child's brain
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: can do to help them get through, um, can still
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: linger in their adulthood and it's no longer serving them well, right? So,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: and here's obviously where therapy comes into it, but what
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: are some of the things that can help someone disentangle
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: that challenging past to kind of go, hey, it's okay
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: now and I don't need to regress or I recognize
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: those things and I can go a different way? Is
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: there anything that can help move people along?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Look, it is the thing that gets me up in
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: the morning. Mind your monkey, whether it's with executives or
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: whether it's with some of the young people I work with.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: That's what it's all about. You can't remove the fact
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: that trauma has happened. It is there. You can't remove,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: if you haven't had help, if you haven't had growth
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: through that space into your teenage or adult years, you
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: can't change the fact that that's part of who you are.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: The change comes in terms of how you think about it.
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: Because as we've discussed today, there are so many incredible
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: strengths that come with that. It doesn't define who you are,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: but it absolutely explains why it is that if you can,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: Look at the survival, the strength, the incredible things your
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: brain did, the way you've managed to deal with problems
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: that others will never have to face and you've actually
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: got through it and kept going. That is the stuff
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: that it should arm somebody to recognize that they can
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: enter pretty much any day-to-day stress and have the evidence,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: I've got this. If I got through that when I
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: was 10 or if I got through that when I
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: was 12, even without help, Mate, what could the world
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: throw at me? If I can deal with problems I
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: never asked for, imagine what I can do with problems
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: that I choose.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that's cool. And it reminds me of one
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: of my favorite quotes from Epictetus. So, and what should
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: we say to every trial that we faced? For this
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: is my discipline. This is what I've trained for. right,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: is that you had some hardcore stress adaptation training and
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: you came through it and fucking hell, are you resilient.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I'd love to have you in the trenches with me
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: when the shit really hits the.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Fan, right?
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: And probably the worst and best moment I've seen in therapy,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: whether it's mind or mouth, especially I think because you
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: underestimate how someone can be very successful in, say, a
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: vocational setting and, you know, a captain of industry, so
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: to speak, we underestimate how much, you know, unprocessed sort
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: of statements or experiences or traumas might be sitting in
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: their childhood or parts of their life, often apologetic in
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: a way that how dare I feel like I can
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: complain or, you know, be upset about this because I
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: have such a good life now. That likely shameful or
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: traumatic that have sat there and sort of felt like barriers,
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: you know, when you can get people to actually connect
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: with the fact that, you know, shit, that is a
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: huge part of why I now achieve what I'd achieve. Yeah.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: It's game-changing. It takes trauma from being something that might
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: define you and label you and limit you to being
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: something that actually, as you said, you know, I've got
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: through that. And, you know, that's when I was, you know,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: bought into it and look at the guy.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: And leads into post-traumatic growth, right? I don't think we
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: talk enough about post-traumatic growth. There's a whole heap of
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: literature on it when you dig into it. And I
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: think what you've just described can really help people. I
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: remember seeing the work of James Gross. He was one
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: of the lecturers on my neuroscience course. And he talked
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: about his research on reappraisal of stressful events and that,
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: you know, a bunch of people who'd been through traumatic experiences,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of their natural tendencies were to suppress it
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: whenever it came up. I just push it down. I'm
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: not going to think about that. But he taught them
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: to reappraise and actually go, where's the silver lining? Yeah,
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: that was a horrible event, but where was the silver.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Lining down the track, right?
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: And that reappraisal, they, yeah, strength focused and they massively
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: improved in positive relationships, life satisfaction, coping skills, All of
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: those things, right?
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: And the incredible thing is you often find, let's just say,
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm working with an executive mind monkey. They've
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: had traumatic experience, say, you know, age 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: When you first start discussing it and the analysis and
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: the thoughts and the internal kind of views of that,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: it's very readily apparent that if someone hasn't done it
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: at work, they're often thinking about it from the perspective
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: of an adult. So almost judging and, you know, analyzing
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: and criticizing how they might have responded to a situation
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: that they had said using a very clever adult brain.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: And sometimes just sort of stopping and going, you know what,
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: let's just pretend I'm having a chat to my eight-year-old self,
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: you know, or any eight-year-old for that matter. And I
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: look at the situation and I look at what I
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: must have needed to do to actually get through it.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: It's that game-changing, and I think that's that reoccurrence of this.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: It goes from being something that has control of us
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: to something that actually, when that memory emerges, I attach, geez, yeah, horrible,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: horrible thing to happen, but gosh, doesn't that explain my
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: capacity to do this, this? Yeah, even back then, how
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: awesome must I have been to have got through that?
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: You know, imagine what else I can sort of, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: throw myself into to keep becoming more resilient. Yeah, no,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I really, really do like it. And I think we
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: need more of that, right?
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: And also, I think, you know, as well as those
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: psychological skills that you've talked about, the reappraisal, the thinking
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: of the good that's come out of it and the
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: strengths that I have, I think this is where my
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: world comes into your world to be the supporting act
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: because essentially what we're talking with somebody who's had previous
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: bad experience, adverse childhood experiences, and we're trying to change
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: how they think now, it's a neuroplasticity exercise, right?
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: And the brain controls everything the body does.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: But it is completely reliant on the health of the
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: body for its functioning, right?
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: And that's where.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Exercise is hugely important. Sleep, good nutrition is really important.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And I mean, even stuff like, I don't know if
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: you've seen the research, even the creatine, they took people,
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: randomized control trial, half of them going through psychotherapy. They
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: all had depression. Half of them just continued with their psychotherapy.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: The other half had psychotherapy plus creatine. And it doubled
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: the effectiveness pretty much of the psychotherapy. because the creatine
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: was directly supplying energy to the brain cells.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And it's one of those things, I mean, obviously, you
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: know this, we've chatted before, I mean, it's certainly not
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: higher expertise and much like a lot of antidepressants, you know, SSRIs,
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: we don't know exactly what they do and exactly how
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: it helps but yeah certainly i've seen many studies like
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: that and i think i guess the key message i
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: like to sort of have people take away whether it's
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: medication or whether it's supplements or whatever it might be
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: is that you know it should never be the first
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: or only minor defense yeah you know don't get me
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: wrong i think this comes back to the discussion about
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: the difference between mental health and mental illness if i've
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: got a you know a kid who's identify that they've
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: got anxiety because they've been sort of misled to believe
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: that it's sort of a label when you draw your dot.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: You know, they may very well be some, you know,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: some exercise and some healthy eating away from feeling fantastic.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: And then you've got those who, you know, once moved
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: into that sort of clinical space. obviously has a sort
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: of a combo effect as well, is there absolutely medications,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: lifestyle changes, health changes, exercise always, in conjunction with something
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: that allows you to sort of cognitively process, you know,
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: some of those sort of distortions or biases that might
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: be happening in your thoughts that can keep you going. Yeah, yeah.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: And it was a really interesting study, the British Medical Journal.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: It was a systematic review and meta-analysis of 218 randomized
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: control interventions for depression.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: SSRIs tended to be the least effective, right?
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: But SSRIs plus exercise was really effective. And I actually think...
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: you know you because we both know sometimes they work
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: sometimes they don't work right and i think and this
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: wasn't my idea um i can't remember who the researcher
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: was that when they do work it's because they raise
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: bdnf because if it was just serotonin that ssri is
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: going to have an impact on the reuptake of serotonin
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: within a couple of days but typically and antidepressants take weeks,
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: but the ones that do work, some studies have noticed
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: there's an increase in BDNF and BDNF to increase takes weeks,
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: sometimes up to six weeks to happen. I actually think
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: that that's probably the driver and the common link as
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: to why exercise is so effective as well.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: I think the thing that's really challenging, when you see
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: someone that is clinically depressed or clinically... Severely, right. Significant anxiety,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: for example... One of the hardest things is that there are,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: since you're there, say, exercise. Yeah. You know it's going
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: to make an instant difference.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: You also know it is probably the hardest thing in
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: the world to build momentum around. Yes. So it's that
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: kind of, you know it yourself, you know. I'm sure
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: you've had times where you're sort of recovering from surgery
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: or injury and you can't exercise as you normally do
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: and you notice an instant difference. Yeah. Can you get
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: out and do something?
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: It makes you feel great.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: No, no, no.
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And to go back to your thing, particularly people
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: who are severely clinically depressed, that what we then see
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: is their cortisol rhythm flips and they cannot produce cortisol,
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: then they can't get out of bed. Like if you
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: can't produce cortisol, you cannot engage in life or if
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: your cortisol is very, very low. Like for the average listener,
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: their cortisol will spike just as they're waking up. to
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: give them the energy to go and get out of
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: bed and attack the day, right? And that's what happens
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: with that severe trauma is you go from hypercortisolemia to hypo.
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, later in life, yeah, oftentimes, particularly with significant childhood
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: trauma or, you know, adolescent trauma, he's your right. It's
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: almost that there's been such high level of cortisol, you know,
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: adrenaline there sort of, you know, to keep you alert
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: and alive. Yeah. That it almost becomes irrelevant in many ways.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: And so later on in life, there's almost that difficulty
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: creating cortisol to stress or anything else. Yeah. It's that numbness. Yeah.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: No, no, absolutely. The adrenals just become pretty weak.
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: Burnt out don't they let's talk about Loretta Academy because
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: that's where we met right and Larry Kesselman and Anita
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Pahor who sort of set it up and you're the
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: Chief Psychologist tell our listeners I'd rather come from you
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: than come from me what Loretta Academy does because it's
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: frigging awesome.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Really awesome is now that I hate to take, you know,
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: even a minutiae of credit for it. So Anita and,
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: you know, Larry, my business partner, so we actually run
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: Mind Your Monkey together. How I first met them was
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: when I was introduced to Anita who started something called
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: the Reaser Academy. And I was a bit slow on
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: the uptake, but that's actually a combination of Larry and Anita. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: It took me a while to realize it too.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: Mate, I guarantee it took me longer. I think it
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: was like sort of year one. But it's almost so
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: awesome it's difficult to explain. So essentially, completely funded by
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: the LK group and by Larry and Anita personally, a
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: group of young people once a year come along to
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: a four-day course. It's very much around recognising the capacity
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: for things like entrepreneurialism, innovation, creativity. trajectory in life. So
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: oftentimes that will be trauma, it will be abuse, it
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: will be physical disadvantage, neglect, you name it. They might
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: not have had the sort of, you know, primary school,
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: high school, you know, mum and dad sort of, you know,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: taking me to stock or whatever it might be. Like
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: it's been a tougher time. But, you know, people like
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Larry and certainly many of the people who work within
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the LK group have this infectious that you know that's
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: where that incredible it's like you said the people with
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: the hard knock lines are the ones you just hear
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: story after story after story of doing these amazing things
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: and so what the reader academy does is it really
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: takes as many of the barriers away that might exist
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: to these young people going to school on duty by
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: saying look what we're going to do we're going to
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: do three or four days that exposes them to a
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: the most incredible ceos you know the high-level corporate titans
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: of the various Al Capra companies and external companies as well.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: But it also does it in the kind of venues
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: that a lot of young people in that space wouldn't
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: dream of. So Group City, where the NBL happens, back
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: into the Capital Grand building, Larry's building, where they're with
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: world-class Michelin chefs, they're with world-famous artists. You know, people
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: the likes of yourself as well, obviously, you know, presented
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: and been on a panel as well. So it's almost
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: like the adults blink first. So it's not saying you
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: need to do this, this and this before the rewards there.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: You know, here is your exposure up to an opportunity
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to A, mix with some of the growths of business
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: and private business, which is But B, you end up
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: with kids who perhaps never thought they could walk up
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: to a person in a suit, let alone a person
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: in a suit behind a boardroom table. Suddenly, it's completely
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: changed not only their thoughts around that world and their
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: position in it, but it's also kind of really you
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: just see this massive boost in confidence. Knowledge around how
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: to start, you know, for example, writing a resume, how
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: to get a job. And with the heart of the program,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: which happened yesterday, actually, for the second time, is, you know,
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: an employment pathway where some of the companies from the
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: LK group actually had stand-up stores and the young people
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: get to vie for jobs there and there. in a
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: space that's supported by an understanding that, hey, there might
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: be some additional supports needed to begin with, but because
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: of what they've been through and how they got to
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: where they got to, this is an investment that could
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: be the greatest thing your companies ever sort of gone for. Yeah.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: No, it's very cold.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: And whenever I.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: first saw it and Anita explained it to me, I'm like,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: just how can I get involved? And it was so
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: rewarding to see the transformation in those people and then
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: to see some of the alumni come back and talk
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: about their experience and how it's lifted them. It's frigging awesome.
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: So Larita Academy, L-A-R-I-T-A. Jump on it now. If you're
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: a business, you know, see how you can get involved
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: and support it because they're doing absolutely brilliant work.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: You guys are doing absolutely brilliant work. I would follow these.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: Fred and Aaron, they're in the L, you know, the
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: L-credit group of companies. Like, it's just, Coming from a
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: child protection background, I guess you look at the size
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: of the problem and think, gosh, what will the size
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: of the solution need to be?
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: But I think the fact that particularly with Larry's group
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: of companies, you look at the size of the problem
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: in terms of underprivileged young people that have real potential.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: And I got introduced to a scenario where all of
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: the companies had already sort of been mobilized with a
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: similar view and passion for it. So it's just so unique.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: But yeah, very proud to be part of it.
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's very cool.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: So talk about Mind Your Monkey, right? So why is
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: it called Mind Your Monkey? And why did you get
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: involved in that from your background in forensic psychology and
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: child abuse and all that stuff?
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it seems like an unusual leap, doesn't it?
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: But I guess when I first met Larry and Anita
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: and was, I guess, volunteering and helping with some of
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: the training around Ruta Academy stuff, it was really, really
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: clear that, you know, we all shared this nothing else,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: just this pure belief that really every single person should
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: get the opportunity to become the best version themselves. You know,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: why that's not taught in school, so who knows why
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: everyone doesn't get free access to sort of, you know,
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: someone like me who knows, but With the same, I guess,
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: belief and ethos that went into the Lariva Academy, Larry
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: and Anita said, look, the work you've done in the
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: trauma space, really, if you take that and apply the
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: same thing to people who are excelling, people who are
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: cognitively intact, people who absolutely have stressors on a daily basis.
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: It's really the opportunity to look at performance enhancing. I
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: always say resilience, but kind of think about it as, oh,
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: you know, someone who's had a hard time, they build
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: resilience so that they can kind of survive a hard time.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: And I always say that at the end of the day,
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: if you're thriving in life and I increase your resilience,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: then you're off to the stars. If you're struggling and
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: I increase your resilience, you're going to be kind of thriving.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: And so it's not just for those who had hard times.
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: And so we took that ethos. You know, I don't
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: know how Larry was really keen to have that applied,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: you know, across some of the executive group as well.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: But I think, I guess for me, the unicorn was,
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: of that business is that it's a combination of being
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: able to do that work, which we love. We deliver
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: modules of training to businesses individually as well. But then,
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: you know, the other side of that is that, you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: one of our main cornerstones at ASG is sort of
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: around providing pro-modo everything to the Lariva Academy as well. Yeah.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: The small business or a minor business that gets to
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: from day dot be doing things on both sides of
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: that fence. And why forensic? It's a question that we
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: sometimes get asked in the sort of business setting as well.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: And I think people sort of hear forensic and think, oh,
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: you know, something much cooler than it is. But forensic
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: quite literally means appropriation to the law. Ah, there you go.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: You have a forensic accountant, you know, have a forensic editor, really.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: And so I suppose where that comes in handy is
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: that when I'm working with a business or an individual
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: kind of executive within a business, it's probably that healthy
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: combination between what does that individual need, because that's how 8%
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: focuses them as a person. But you can't lose sight
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: of that 20% that says they're operating within contractual space,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: a legislative space, business obligations. It can't all be about
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: just feel good. It has to be how do we
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: make your business just leave overlay as.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 5: Well yeah and and who would um sort of last
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 5: question who would your typical client be now clearly very
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 5: different from your typical client 15 20 years ago or
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 5: who you see in lorita academy.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's just funny you know it depends how we
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: define it because we define it by sort of size
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: of bank account or success in business then yeah worlds
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: apart But I guess one of the great things about
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: human beings that I kind of guessed and concluded and
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: found out to be true is that every single person,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: like I've never sort of triaged and said that's the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: most traumatized child I've ever seen. As if I'm going
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: to say to the second most traumatized kid, oh, your
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: experiences are somehow a little bit less traumatic. you know,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: horrible than the next kid. Same goes for someone, you know,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: everyone's worst experience is their worst experience. You know, I.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: Often say, Epictetus says, you know, the hardest thing you've
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: ever faced is the hardest thing you've ever faced. And
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: that becomes your barometer for what is difficult in life, right?
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: And double down on the fact that some of these people,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: and they are in credible executives, you know, they're C-suite,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: you know, left and right. You know, imagine if they
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: sort of, you know, publicly try to acknowledge they're struggling
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: with something or how difficult such and such has been.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: There's that extra layer of sort of, I guess, socialization
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: or social guilt that says I don't have the right
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: to feel, you know, the way I feel. And so
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: it really is, I do love there's such commonality between
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: those two ends of the extreme. Because down the trauma end,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: it's secret and shameful. People won't understand it. It's so
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: off the radar that I can't talk about it.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: It's not this similar up the other end. And so,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that's the beauty of it is
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: it feels like very similar. Well, I'm working with human beings. Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Some are thriving in one way and some are surviving.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: you know, equally impressive waters. Yeah, no, very cool.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: So, Eamon, where can people go to find out more
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: about Mind Your Monkey and Loretta Academy?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: Where do we send them to?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. So, look, Mind Your Monkey website is mindyourmonkey.com.au and Instagram. Certainly,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: social media is not my forte, but it's mind underscore
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: your underscore monkey underscore and Loretta Academy is at Loretta Academy.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Excellent. Great stuff.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: Eamon, um, this has been an excellent, a really interesting
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: investigation of the whole stress continuum all the way from really.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Horrible stuff up to performance psychology.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: And, um, I can think of no better man to
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: get on and discuss it because you're an expert and
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: both haven't seen you speak as well.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: So anybody who's out there who would like their business uplifted,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: just jump on to Mind Your Monkey. And if you
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: have a business that might want to help out with
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: disadvantaged young kids, then Loretta Academy is the way to go. Absolutely.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Thanks, Emmett. I was going to say, imagine how good
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: it would have sounded if I had the Irish accent
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed. Good stuff. Thanks, mate.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Take care. Cheers.