The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding - Dr Julie Smith

Why are emotions so hard to understand for humans? Well, we, we're gonna start with a big question.

So, Chris, in the deep end, yeah. Well, I guess I've made a bit of a career out of um working with people on their emotions, and um, as a, as a psychologist, you know, I was in the NHS for 10 years, and then um worked in a very kind of small private practice. And I would say, you know, all of that work, however diverse it was in terms of what people were dealing with, mostly the common problem was: there's this feeling or set of feelings that I have, and I don't want to have them; and there's these other feelings that I would like to have more of the time, but I'm not sure how to access them. And, and nobody has this sort of manual for how to manage emotions and how to understand them. And um, we don't even really have a great vocabulary for, you know, we're quite limited in—if you think about the sort of the diversity of uh the different sort of minute uh feelings that you can have throughout the day that apply to different situations—they're all slightly different. You know, if you say I feel um joy one minute, joy in a certain scenario might feel quite different to joy in a different scenario. You know, the qualitative differences are there, and you can feel that, but we don't necessarily have the words to express it, and we certainly don't have uh the sort of models to understand it. Um, and you know, it's only in recent years that people have even started to talk about them. So, um, we're in the early stages, but it's, you know, exciting.

Are we doomed to fail in some regard there as humans, that we have this very rich inner experience which is very difficult to communicate, to measure, to understand, to export to somebody else—hey, this is what I'm feeling—and then you have just this limited language, which is constrained not only by the words, you know, but even the language; you know, German has a ton of words that we don't have in other languages that almost unlocks your ability to understand emotions in that way. Are we uh uh fated to kind of always be scrabbling to try and understand emotions, but never fully doing it?

No, and I don't think—I don't think it's necessarily um sort of our failure or our limitation that um emotions can't be measured and quantified. I think it's it's a limitation of the method, isn't it, that—that why do we want to—we don't have to do that in order to, you know, there was that real push actually, you know, in in my career where we were asked to sort of, you know, measure things on scales and numbers, and and actually when you looked at how that would be applied in the room with someone, when you're working with someone, it was sort of really, really limited and how helpful it could be. Um, you know, if someone came back with some kind of uh mood diary in which they'd kind of added a scale of—and you get this a lot on apps, don't you—you know, rate how you feel today out of 10—and really doesn't tell you much at all, because you don't feel it on a scale; you don't feel a number; you have a a set of feelings and um that are kind of different, and sometimes deep, and sometimes complex, and sometimes confusing. And it's our sort of—often it's when people are trying to kind of sell something around mental health that they try to make it really simple—um, but it's okay that it's not.

I think what's your advice for people who are overthinking everything?

Well, I think this is actually a really popular subject online; people—I think it's something lots of people are dealing with—and and that's because I think the way that life is set up now, right, we're all expected to do—all the technology that we have—in theory, life should be really easy; it was all sold to us as if that will make life easier, and you'll have more time on your hands; and actually all that happened was we increased our expectation about how much we get done and how much we can handle. And so what we're dealing with in terms of mental load is so much more than uh what you know would have—and actually, you know, the way that life is set up now, away from traditional roles where, you know, you know a man might go out to work and a woman would take care of the family—those things were separated, but now both people are trying to do both; actually you're both taking on two full-time jobs. And so the mental load is there, and and so it makes sense that people are living at a higher level of stress all the time. And when you're—when your your stress level, your arousal level is higher, you're more vulnerable to overthinking. So a lot of people think I'm overthinking something because there's something wrong with me or I'm just a worrier. And I always say to people: don't label yourself as just a worrier, because that gives you that sense that you can't overturn it or you can't do anything about it, which is wrong. Um, you know, it's a habit as much as anything else, but it's also something that is more likely to happen when you're already stressed. So, you know, if someone came into the room with me and said, you know, I'm just overthinking everything, what shall I do? Actually, what we would look at is life as a whole, like the full context of—it's not only what are you overthinking and how can you stop thinking about it in that way; it's, you know, what is going on with the your stress levels in general that's causing you to be at that state where you're looking for the worst-case scenarios, so—'cause that's what you're set up to do, right? It's not a fault in your brain; your brain's doing a really good job; you're probably giving your brain lots of s—s—sort of lots of signs rather that um things aren't okay; you know, you're maybe your blood pressure is high, maybe you're on the go all day, and so your brain is getting those signals from in your body and from your surroundings that uh we're not all, you know, not all as well here, that there's a lot going on; I've got a lot to deal with; be alert because something could be unpredictable here; we need, you know—so that's your kind of state of readiness. Um, so I think when you're dealing with overthinking, it's important not to just deal with overthinking, but to look at everything as a whole.

Yeah, I wonder whether there's more opportunities for people to consider and ruminate about what's going on in their life at the moment, because most of the base needs for most people that are listening to this podcast are sorted; they know where they're going to sleep tonight; they know where the food is going to come from, etc., etc. Uh, and oddly enough, uh an existential crisis or, you know, worrying about emotions, thinking about thinking is actually kind of a luxurious position to be in, in order to be able to get to that stage. I'm aware that for everybody that deals with it, including myself, it doesn't feel luxurious at the time, but it's probably an indication that the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is probably being sorted, and we're then moving on to what's next. But yeah, the threat detection thing—the fact that there is uh an infinite number of potential uh stressors out there—and are biased toward looking at those ones as opposed to something a little bit more calming—the the calm stuff that's not salient; I don't need to worry about that, but I'll worry about the thing that I think I need to worry about.

So what about in the moment somebody's in that sort of—they're trapped in that cycle, that overthinking loop? I imagine this is something that your clients talk to a lot about. What are interventions, or what are the ways when you find yourself doing that that you take yourself out of it as best you can?

Yeah, so, so if you're worrying, I think there's a lot of work that you would do around building awareness of what's happening at the time. So, um, you—we formulate—so we pretty much draw out the cycle on on pen and paper; just um, you know, we look at the scenario that comes before—so what you—what tends to happen in the lead up to the overthinking, and what's the, you know, what the things that are contributing to that; and then what are the types of thoughts that you're having? And so you build this awareness that um they are usually horror story thoughts; you know, it's the worst-case scenario that you can possibly come up with, and you play it out in your mind over and over again, and and that ramps up your anxiety; and then when you feel those symptoms of anxiety, whatever they are for you, you then look—you know, become more vigilant, and you become—you sort of look for more things that could go wrong. And so when you do that, when you look at the cycle, even though the the minute details will change depending on what's going on for you and what the situation is, the cycle will pretty much always be the same. And so you get this sort of uh insight into the the cycle that you're going around in; and when you do that—I mean, in therapy you do it in hindsight, right? So you go and you look at the week that's just gone by, and you say this happened, and I was really worrying about that, and that's how I dealt with the worry; and often you're looking at, you know, what you did in response to that feeling that then actually fed back into the cycle. And when you see it on paper, and you see that when you—you know—you did something to get rid of that feeling—um, but then actually it brought you back around—you can see that you're doing things that actually contribute to making it worse. And and there has to be a kind of careful process of self-discovery—um, and when—but when you do it, you you begin to get this awareness in the moment as it's happening. So you start with it in hindsight; you're looking back; and then the more familiar you become with it, the more you start to—when you're in it—go, oh, I know where I am; I think that that's that thing again that we thought about last time, and now it's happening.

Yeah, that's interesting—using uh sort of retrospective uh assessment as a predictive tool; you go, hey, this thing happened before; maybe it'll happen again; that pattern's beginning to come up. Uh, so for me, when I'm underslept—I'm underslept—my uh ability to sort of regulate just falls out of the window. Yeah. Uh, so okay, right; I'm I'm tired; therefore I need to sort of adjust the sight on my scope to be like: am I actually that bothered about this, or did I just get four hours sleep last night?

Yeah, yeah. Uh, what about fear as well? Because I think that this is kind of a a two-pronged uh challenge that people have—um, a lot of fear, a lot of concern about making decisions, about whether or not I'm doing the right thing—very visceral emotion. How can people better deal with fear?

Yes, do you know, I—I actually wrote the chapter on fear in this book when—so over the summer I went through um uh some health problems; I was diagnosed with cancer; and uh at that point I was about six weeks away from finishing the book on—yeah—no—yeah, I was six weeks away when I um started going for tests, and then I was about two weeks away um from handing the book in when I got my diagnosis. So I was so determined to finish the book, and at that point I was just reading it through, right? I was just—and and I—I read through—just happened to read through the chapter on fear um the day after, and uh I thought, this isn't what I need to hear right now; this isn't right. What was wrong with it? Hit delete. So it was probably more gentle than I wanted—than I personally needed—and and I think generally um that that can happen; you know, lots of people do need that approach, but at the time I got selfish with it, and I thought, I need something a bit different to this; I hit delete, and I rewrote it for myself. So it's much more about, you know, in that moment: okay, fear is here, and it's necessary, and it's information; it's telling me that not all is well, and I need to be alert, and I need to think about how to work through this; and so I'm going to use that fear, but I'm not going to be the victim in this; I'm not going to be the, you know—there's often—you talk—people talk about cancer; there's often this idea that that thing is attacking you, and you're victim to it, and I just did not want to be in that place at all. And so I wanted to kind of turn the tables, and so um in the chapter I talk about this idea of, you know, choosing to be the prey instead of the—choosing to be the predator instead of the prey. So um sort of always being on the front foot and forward motion and looking at: what's my plan, and what am I going to do next? And taking action so that I didn't feel, you know—'cause you can feel—you still feel fear when you're on the front foot, but you're using it, and that feels so fundamentally different to sitting in fear and just allowing it to implode.

I had this realization toward the end of my 20s when I was trying to unpack uh a, you know, three decades of of not understanding myself, and uh I remember I wrote down: action is the antidote to anxiety. And the reason for that was: I became way less fearful about the future when I was moving myself toward it—uh when I didn't feel passive, when I didn't feel like I was being—being blown around by the wind. And um, yeah, there's this interesting—this interesting sort of uh coming back to center moment, I think, with a health scare or with fear in general—if it's really visceral, you know, if it's emotional fear or if it's serious—uh, and it really does kind of remind you about this essence of yourself—at least I found that—that when I'm in—when I've got uh a big period of of ruminative stress, I actually feel oddly more myself than uh I do at other times. I think it's sort of strips away a lot of the bravado and momentum and inertia that you've got going on—compensating mechanisms and the ways that you can kind of hide things when everything's going well—and then you kind of come back to center, and you kind of remember what that is. But yeah, action being an antidote to anxiety, I think—and it's ruthless because the action uh is the exact thing that anxiety stops you from wanting to—the the very last thing—I'm going to stay in bed; I don't want to get up; I don't want to be leaning in; I don't want to be sort of uh taking charge of the situation. And a lot of it is being able to recognize urges and override them—so recognize that urge to go for safety and comfort, and and act opposite to it—and um in the same way that you do in kind of more light-hearted situations. So I don't know—exercise, you know, you get to a point where your body's sort of hurting a bit, and you would rather stop, but you practice sort of overriding the urge, and that's a a big sort of um skill set that is actually taught in certain therapies—acting opposite to urges—and you can do it in really small ways. So um, you know, you might—you know—put a Polo in your mouth and resist the urge to crunch it, and you know—so you can do it in really light-hearted, kind of simple ways, but then what you're doing is you're kind of practicing that mental muscle really to be able to recognize that in moments when you need it most, and and to be able to do it, so it's not the first time you're doing it; doesn't feel, you know, you—you know the process. It's a vicious cycle, you know; there's periods where momentum seems to be working with you, and then periods where it seems to be working against you; and uh I think what we all—everybody wants—is this sort of permanent upward spiral toward ever-increasing capacity and ever-increasing hope in ourselves, but you know, there is a—there is a vicious sort of other side to that momentum too; and uh stepping in to kind of have a circuit breaker on that is um yeah something I think a lot more people need.

Yeah, and I think, you know, people want to feel uh courageous and strong, and and I think what we forget is that fear is a core component of that, you know; it's a core ingredient of uh of courage; you can't really call yourself courageous if you didn't do something that filled you with fear. Um, so in order to kind of—and you do—when you—when you face things that are that scare the living daylights out of you, and and you do that with sort of forward action and um you know take a sort of commanding composure in fa—in the face of those really scary things—um, you you start to feel that and you—and you start to discover that what you thought were your limits uh was really kind of a smoke screen.

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It's different, you know. One of the taglines of CrossFit for a while was: get comfortable being uncomfortable. And um, it was sexy or whatever, but I always felt a little bit—I don't know—I—it always felt a little hollow to me, because the discomfort that people were getting comfortable with when doing a workout was something they elected to do—like you chose to go to the gym; you—you already do this because you like to do it. Yeah, maybe you've pushed yourself beyond a limit that would be reasonable to almost everybody, but still it's sort of within your control. Yeah, a cancer diagnosis is a degree of discomfort that you didn't choose. Yeah. So, you know, reflecting I guess on the last year for yourself, what's your advice to somebody who is going through a tough time with their health, uncertainty, fear of the future—you know, this is the personal and the professional colliding for you, I suppose. Yeah. Um, what did you—what would you say to somebody?

I think when—when uncertainty is—I mean, that's the the big thing about something like that is—and and you don't—when it happens as well—you—it's not like this sort of big dramatic moment where you suddenly—you know what the diagnosis is; you know what the plan is; you know what the risk is—it doesn't really happen like that; it's all in stages. So there is this sort of big period of being really uncertain about everything and not knowing what to do with that—um, and then not knowing who you can really share that with, because you don't want to scare the living daylights out of everybody else that you love. Um, and so when there is such uncertainty in that way, the way that I dealt with it and and would do again in the future is just narrow everything down; narrow your focus down: what's the next move? What's the next step? And let's take that—get that—get that bit done; take action.

What would be an example of that? Um, so actually it was a really kind of strange experience where the day I got diagnosed, the day after the consultant I was under was about to go on holiday for two weeks, and then we had a holiday booked for two weeks after that, and um and once he went—some more tests came back, and the the the treatments or the recommendations were changed, but the team wouldn't tell me what they were because that was his role to do that. Um, so I was sort of thinking, okay, they're not going to tell me, so it must be something bad; do I cancel my holiday? What do I do? And there's all these kind of um, you know, uncertainties around what to do, and and I could feel myself—I was sat there trying to edit the book, and and and it was just consuming me, and and I'm rightly so, right? My brain is saying, hang on a minute, let's sort this out; and and I could feel that sort of sense of just being in terminal—not being able to affect anything or control anything and just waiting. I thought, I'm not doing this; there's no way. So um, you know, um my husband came home from work, and we just—we started doing lots of research on um uh surgeons and uh consultants, and you know, we're lucky enough that we were in a position to go and pay to go and see someone, but you know, I started asking medics I know for recommendations—found someone that was nearby—made those calls, got those appointments, and in the process of just doing that, you know, nothing's changed in theory, but I am moving forward and taking action, and it felt just fundamentally different to, you know—I wasn't sitting there shaking and weeping; I was: okay, what's the next call we can make? Who—you know—how much does that cost? What can we do? Who can we see? And um and we did, and and it actually helped the process—um, and I, you know, found someone to um, you know, do the surgery for me and all that kind of thing, and and it was really positive. Um, but yeah, I think sitting there like—and that's where I got that feeling of the rabbit in headlights—I'm not going to sit here like a rabbit in headlights; I'm going to move forward, and I'm gonna—you do something. And you can't—in every situation—not in every situation you can do that—but um, you know, I'm lucky enough that—touch wood—I'm lucky enough that I was in that position where I could, you know, affect the outcome—trying to contribute to your own future again—it's that action being the antidote to anxiety thing, I think.

Time. Yeah. Yeah, you don't want to feel like life is buffeting you around and you're at the mercy of it. Yeah, you're already feeling a little helpless; you're already in a little bit of hell, you know, well that it's going to get worse. Yeah. So yeah, trying to step in, and I think it's okay for that action not to be the solving of the thing as well. You know, people often say, oh, you know, um don't sort of avoid things by getting busy with something else, but sometimes that's necessary—um, for, you know, improving the moment and not making it worse. Well, there's better and worse coping mechanisms, and if one of the coping mechanisms is: I made myself feel better for half an hour today; I did a thing that gave me some respite—you know, it's a very low-resolution way to look at what you should or shouldn't do—like a random judgment that you're making on it, which is: well, do you think that being sympathetically activated for 18 hours today is a good way to spend—what if you could get that down to 17 and a half? Okay, is that worthwhile? Are you saying that that's a coping mechanism, or is that maybe you actually giving your body a little tiny bit of respite? So uh, looking forward, what about looking back? How can people better understand their childhoods?

Um, in terms of understanding a childhood, I think it really helps to do a lot. People are doing that online with kind of bits of information that come up on, you know, videos and stuff like that. Um, but I think if you want to do it in depth, in a really constructive way that's truly going to help you and not send you into kind of resentment and bitterness about everything your parents got wrong, then um, it does help to do that with somebody else. Um, where you can look at it in a constructive way that's actually going to help, because you know, there's utility in going back and and and processing that and and creating that sort of um uh sort of narrative, really a timeline of, okay, this happened and that influenced me in this way, and this happened and and then you know, and and that's that's really useful. But sometimes if it's not constructive, it just becomes a rant of everything that was done wrong for me and and all the negative impact that's had on my life, and that's quite dangerous in some ways because you can then get into that that cycle of that sort of turmoil, really, of resentment and and feeling like a victim of it. Um, whereas when you do that constructively, for example, when you do that in therapy, it'll be a fairly balanced uh view, and it will kind of look at the things that you wouldn't change and the things that you might do and um how they've impacted you now and how if if something happened in your childhood got you stuck into a certain cycle of I don't know, something that you do in your relationships today that you'd rather not, then you you're using that right, you're you're going to use that to then break the cycle because you're going to use that to say, okay, I know what I'm doing now it's because of something that happened earlier on and and I'm going to choose to do something different. I'm going to break that cycle. Um, so it can be really, really productive, um, but it has to be carefully done.

I think what about if I mean everybody's parents will have made mistakes, some larger than others. How can people learn to get back to neutral with something that they can't go back and change? There is no time machine to go and fix whatever it is they feel like they've inherited this version of themselves that their parents created: the the pathologies, the thought patterns, the biases, the ways of seeing the world and themselves and the inner voice and all of that stuff. Yeah, if our parents got it wrong, and in the ways that our parents got it wrong, how can we become more at peace with that? I think in some ways a part of that work is is understanding where your parents have come from and that they more than likely had their own complex childhoods in which they had their own um, you know, damage that was done and and cycles that they were stuck in, um, and and probably, you know, they were sort of growing up in an era where there wasn't that education around this kind of stuff and there wasn't that insight, and so they would have been living out their own uh coping strategies with whatever they were dealing with. So I think that's part of it is understanding that. Doesn't make it okay if your parents were, you know, horribly abusive, but it's it's one way of understanding these cycles that people get stuck in and how um damage can be caused often without intention. Um, but also there's a degree of um, you know, in that parent-child relationship, often we carry the parent-child relationship into adulthood and and we still behave like the child in that relationship.

That's just what I was about to say. Yeah, in a sense that we we give all the responsibility to our parents for making a good relationship, and actually what you have now is an adult-to-adult relationship in which you get to decide. You can't change your parents, and and actually often people assume that if I could just convince my parents that and and and help them to see the damage that they did and get that apology that everything would be better, and you know, possibly, but but a lot of parents won't necessarily have any more insight than they had when you were a child. And so I think we can't sort of rest our idea of healing on that, on getting those apologies or getting their insight, um, because often they don't have it and and often it's about developing a relationship with our parents that um that they are capable of as well, um so that we're not expecting more of them than they're actually able to give. It's it's interesting that we see the lineage between our parents did this and therefore I am like that. How unfair, how could this be the case? You just go just go back one generation, just move back by 25 years, and you go, well, your grandparents were like that, which made your parent how can you give yourself this uh excuse or this reason and not continue to ruminate, and then the great-grandparents, the grandpar, you know, you go all the way back. Yeah, so yeah, it's um it is odd, and I think that you're right as well. Every generation thinks that it's unique, and I get the sense that emotionally maybe this has been the biggest change across one generation from sort of like Boomer period to whatever ex-Millennial, Gen Z, just that the opportunity for people to ruminate, the challenges that people have from an emotional stressor perspective, perspective uh the information that you have to become aware of how much better things could be as well, which creates an ideal and then you sort of compare yourself to, oh well, if only I could get rid of my anxious attachment, if only I could get rid of my fear of the future, if only I could get rid of my overthinking or my whatever it is, um which is now opened everybody up to think back more, but our parents don't necessarily have that. They're just sort of uh dealing with the physics of their system, the way that it was given to them without necessarily realizing quite so much or quite so visceral that well, things could have been a different way. It's like, well, things just are the way they are, and you go, okay, so what do you want? Do you want to be largely unaware that things could have been different and to understand the way that attachment styles and child rearing and behavioral genetics and etc etc work to influence the disposition you have as an adult, or do you want to have it this way? Like is ignorance bliss? Because for me personally, I would much sooner be able to contribute a little bit to have the pain of the realization that there's something which is in my hands and that there are ways that this can be, but be educated on this and actually be able to make some sort of an impact as opposed to just being at the mercy of it.

Yeah, absolutely, and I think what we have to be really careful of and you kind of see a lot of online is is this sort of resentment and bitterness, this sort of um one-sided, this negative thing was done, um, you know, parents are the bad guys, I'm the victim of the bad guys, and and now it's awful, and you know, to a degree, you know, in in the most severe scenarios where things are just awful, um, you know, that's almost separate from from what we're talking about here where you know you can have a a fairly sort of normal childhood um and there were things that negatively affected you, but there would also have been a lot that positively affected you, and and so I think one way of sort of creating a sort of antidote to just feeling bitterness and resentment towards your parents is to sort of nurture some gratitude around, okay, these were the things about your childhood that weren't ideal, what what would be the things that you would repeat, you know, when you become a parent yourself? What were the things that you value about your childhood that you think helped you become the person that you are or that helped you, you know, feel secure or, you know, so your your parents might have been um emotionally neglectful and not sort of spent lots of time with you, but actually maybe uh they held down a really difficult job and endured that so that you could have food on the table every night, and maybe, you know, maybe your mom was at home every day when you got home from school with a warm dinner and you know had that kind of dutiful sense of of loving you and uh so so there will be new ways of sort of turning something and looking at it in a slightly different way that helps you to uh shift shift the the feeling and and not just sit in that resentment of um, you know, I've I've survived um despite my parents rather than because of them.

Are you familiar with the Thomas Sowell quote, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs"? I am now okay, so I I this year it feels like that's been the quote of the year for me, um and a lot of the time what it means is trying to optimize absolutely everything, and railing against things that are shortcomings is a uh surefire route to misery because you're not going to be able to get everything to be perfect, and in many situations something is positive and something is negative, and the negative thing has probably come along for the ride as the dark side of the positive thing. Yeah, uh and I think that it's the same with the parents, it's so right, you know, um uh Dad wasn't there for me uh sufficiently emotionally. I imagine that's a big sort of uh Millennial complaint about Boomer parents, you know, Dad was sort of this classic still blue-collar guy, and you go, yeah, he was at work like 10 hours a day, five days a week for 18 years to raise you and before that and for brothers and sisters and all the rest of the stuff, and you go, okay, so there are no solutions, there's only trade-offs. You had this level of security, or maybe there's somebody else who dad was there for me a lot of the time, but we really struggled with money, and you go, okay, again, you you it came to me because I started I made a big pivot with my diet and that improved uh a turn of energy problems that I was having, but I was finding myself waking up at 3:30 or 4 in the morning every single day for a week, uh and the first day I thought, oh, this is just it'll be like it's a transition thing, then the second day I thought, oh no, this has become a habit, and then by the third day I was railing against it, so I woke up and I was like, God, like why is this the case? How come I'm waking up at this time? This is so annoying. I'm going to be tired tomorrow, etc, etc, and that Thomas Sowell floated into my head, and he the quote, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs," I thought, right, okay, would you be happy to get up at 3:30 in the morning if it meant that your mood and your cognition throughout the day was better than it had been over the last couple of months? It's like, yes, like what are you complaining about then? What you're complaining about is why can't I have the entire world exactly the way that I want? Yeah, it's like, no, no, no, no, you don't, you would that be beautiful? Yes. Is it in anyone's world realistic? Absolutely not. And the same thing I think when we look at our parents is a nice perspective. Yeah, absolutely, and it's there's always something to be grateful for and something to feel a bit annoyed about or miserable about, and um I think part it's a really important life skill to to just have that clarity that you can choose. You don't have to be, you know, we're all human, we all find ourselves in those moments, and you know, when I'm talking about that, you know, uh health scare stuff that I went through in the summer, um and I talk about sort of, you know, being the predator not the prey and all that, that doesn't mean every moment I was feeling that that that was a response to those dark moments where you feel, oh my, you know, what what's going to happen to me and and and you those dark moments, so it's only human to find yourself in those, but we just by having that awareness and knowing that it's a choice gives you that opportunity to step back from it, get that, you know, put it at arm's length, see it for what it is, and then you get to choose, but you know, having those moments of acuity or the moments when you're not doing that, like you say, the the dark moments in the morning when you're thinking, oh, why am I doing this? It's okay to have those moments, doesn't mean you're failing, but then you had that process of, hang on a minute, I remember that quote now, I get to choose, and and you just learn from all of those experiences.

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I imagine that a lot of parents—I'm not one yet—but I imagine a lot of parents have the reverse problem, which is that they're terrified of getting it wrong for their kids as they're raising them or shortly after they've raised them. What is your advice there? It is part and parcel of of the whole experience, and and you feel it, as a woman, you feel that that from the moment you know you're pregnant, and suddenly everything you do is about somebody else and um and so you feel guilt no matter what you do, really, um and and and with feelings of guilt it's it's important to listen to it as well. I mean, there's kind of, you know, there's stuff online about sort of parent guilt and and how, you know, you shouldn't feel it or you should ignore it, um and do what's good for you, and that's fine, you know, there are moments, you know, that might be in in the context of taking a break because it's difficult to do that and take time for yourself, and that's when you you know acknowledge that guilt and you take it with you because you know this is the right thing to do, um and there are other times when it's important to to listen to that guilt more deeply and go, well, am I feeling that because I'm not living in line with my values as a parent and um so I don't know um uh if I you know feel guilty about coming here, so so coming to London for a couple of days doing some interviews, there's a sense of I don't want to leave you guys, and and if one of my children got upset um which they didn't, but if they did, but um I would feel that sort of oh, why am I leaving? And that's sort of the point where I have to get that clarity of the situation where I'm doing this because um it benefits the family, like the payoffs thing, right? Your dad's at work all day, that kind of thing. Um, they're difficult decisions, and by having your values really clear in your mind about why you're doing something, um it's easier than to kind of not make the guilt go away, you just you're willing to take it with you, so you get it in your backpack and you you know you take it with you because you know you're doing the right thing and because sometimes that feeling is um is not based on something that's warranted, you know, sometimes it's you know if you're I don't know a people pleaser or something because of how things were set up in your childhood, you'll probably feel guilty all the time uh when you feel like you might have, you know, upset someone, um and and that's that's not necessarily warranted, that's a pattern. Um, so sometimes, you know, if we if we engage in sort of emotional reasoning right, which is that bias of I feel it therefore it's true, uh that can get us into all sorts of trouble, so if because I feel guilt that means I'm a terrible parent, then I'm going to have a terrible time.

That's interesting. Yeah, so if you if you feel the guilt and you don't recognize it as a as a normal part of being a parent, um then you're likely to just think that you're failing all the time, so it's not just the sensation, it's the story that you tell yourself, and you happen to be defaulting to a very particular story which is because dot dot dot because I'm a bad parent. I mean, look, the only thing I can contribute is sort of a bit of an evolutionary lens, but I imagine that mothers especially, but also fathers have a pretty easy-to-activate guilt response to kids. Why? Well, because the parents that didn't feel guilty when they left their kids, their kids died, and we've selected for the most neurotic, overbearing, caring parents that we can think of, and that's that those are your ancestors. Yeah, okay, so this is going to arise. You leave, like, you know, I'm sure that even just Dad going to work, Mom going to work on a morning, normal day at work, kid is sad, you go, okay, I understand that in order to put food on the table to keep tiny Child Alive I have to go to work. Yeah, do I feel guilty about that? Well, kind of, no, but then if it's something that seems more elective, then it feels like, yeah, that is because it's I don't know less justified in some way or, you know, more opulent, more more chosen, so you go, okay, well, I I just need to work out is this in line with something like you said, principles, the life setup, uh am I doing something that makes the world a better place that my kids can grow up in? Is this something that they're going to be proud of? Is this something that affords us a different type of lifestyle? Is this something that they would want me to do? If they were in 20 years' time, would they want to look back and say, you know what, it is I'm really glad that you actually went and did that? Yeah, uh but in the moment you've got a crying child and you feel like a piece of because you're leaving. Yeah, and you know, it is important to listen to anyway, isn't it? Because like I say, even if you got the values and you know it's there, it might be an indication that you know I do feel guilty, so maybe I need to just redress the balance a little bit, so you know it, I think people talk about balance as if you find this perfect spot and then you just don't move, and that's the perfect way to live, and it really isn't that you know if you if you see someone on a a balancing beam or a tightrope, they're always doing this, they're always moving slightly from side to side and readjusting, readjusting, notice when you're going off too far, readjust, and um and particularly for, you know, uh as as a working parent, I find that's constantly, you can listen to those feelings when when they happen, it can be it's information, it's you know, do I need to just spend some more time with them? Maybe I have spent a bit too much time on the book this week. Yeah, do I need to um you know, block out the weekend? Just I suppose as well an uncomfortable realization for look look at me, bro, sciencing parenting from bro parenting from the from the sidelines over here, but I imagine as well that you there should also be a question uh that parents ask where they say, well, are my kids maybe too sensitive? Are they are they um too unfamiliar with me being away from them? Are they unable to regulate uh even a small amount of time away which is unrealistic and is making them fragile in a way? Maybe I need to step in on the other side; maybe they need we need to do a little bit of training. I need to sort of bring them into land a little bit. I need to calm them down. I need to say, hey, this is what's going to happen. I'm going to be away for 15 minutes. I've got to go to the shop. I've got to go and do whatever. Uh, so yeah, they're all signals, and I guess it's a good learning experience, and if you deny them then the opportunity to learn is just out the window.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and it's all about opportunities to learn, isn't it? And like you said, if like you said, if a child has been used to having you there, you know, that sort of post-lockdown kind of experience for lots of parents actually where you know everyone had been at home for many months, it was really difficult for young children to then transition out, go to nursery or go go to school or you know um I wonder what we'll see in a a decades' time um from an attachment perspective, from a lifestyle perspective, from a psychological makeup perspective, you know, we may find out that kids are largely so robust that a two-year period during their formative years didn't make that much of a difference, or maybe it'll be really great or maybe it'll be really terrible, and uh time will tell. Yeah, uh you mentioned before about people-pleasing, uh this is something that over the last year or so I've realized that uh maybe a pathology I'm more familiar with than I realized. What have you come to learn about people-pleasing? People-pleasers, where it comes from? Yeah, so you know, often, often it makes sense, you know, often these things feel um confusing until you hear someone's story, and then it makes complete sense, and you kind of I've had so many of these moments with people in the room where you know they come in and and think you're just not going to understand this, this is just bizarre and complex, and I I don't get it, and and then you spend a decent amount of time going through someone's story, and then you get to this lovely point where you kind of say to each other, of course, of course it is this way, how could it not be given everything that's happened? And you know, there isn't sort of one story or one scenario that always leads to people-pleasing, there are lots of different ones, and but I think it's important to distinguish that people-pleasing isn't being a nice person; it's it's so much more than that. It's um it's being absolutely vigilant to how other people feel and placing that as your absolute priority over and above your own well-being, your own health, anything. So you know, it's just terrifying the thought of displeasing someone else or um experiencing their disapproval or they're not liking you or rejecting you, um and so you know I've seen people who live in in turmoil um trying to please everybody around them and keep them pleased, uh which is not sustainable and so it creates chaos where you know you're you're constantly chasing your tail and and it gives other people a lot of power over you, so you can end up in in relationships that are sort of exploitative or um just not healthy for you, um and and yeah, so I think it's one of those things that sort of banded around um and and it's something that a lot of us kind of do in bits and bobs, kind of like yeah, sometimes I'm like that or in certain situations I'm like that, and and some people spend their lives um really, really struggling with it. The desire for us to take something we do a little bit and turn it into a label that describes our entire personality uh is quite strong in the pathologization of sort of normal emotions in that way, which is odd, right? Because both me and

You, um, are fans of, sort of, emotionally informed therapy and people understanding their emotions. I also think it’s very interesting. I think it’s one of the most interesting things that you can do, uh, and yet I imagine that you have a similar problem to me, as the overuse of therapy speak online to describe, like, this person wasn’t mean to me, they were narcissistic, or they caused me trauma, uh, you know, I’m not sad, I’m depressed, and uh, the sort of straying over into, you cross the boundary, that’s that’s one of my bound, etc., etc.

Um, so people, a lot of the time, will say yes to things when they mean to say no, or they want to say no. They want to become firmer at being able to disappoint those around them. How can they become better at that? I think is one of the most important skills anyone will ever learn, actually, because you’re you put yourself at risk if you if you can’t uh say no when you need to, or you can’t hold boundaries, and there’s that people-pleasing tendency. So if everything is about everybody else and what they want from you, um, and that’s where it’s not the same as being a nice person. So you know, if you’re um, if everybody else’s needs and wishes and desires come first, and you don’t have the ability to put a stop to that when it doesn’t fit, then you’ll end up doing things that you regret and don’t fit with your values, or that don’t feel like you’re being a nice person. But it’s because somebody else has more power over your behavior than you do.

Um, so I think assertiveness skills are a big part of what’s taught in therapy, actually. You know, teaching people to manage uh difficult people and and people who perhaps have more power in a relationship, or you know, um, it kind of sounds easy to be able to say no, um, and and it’s not, because it’s always packed out with lots of emotion and complex dynamics between two people, and so it can be really difficult, but it’s absolutely learnable. And so that’s where um it’s it’s important to remember that even if you’ve had a habit for life of putting everybody else first and being the “I don’t mind, I’m fine, you know, whatever you think” type person, that you can begin to change, but it’s often about learning specific skills. Why do you stop? What are the skills? So, uh, a lot of it is practice in uh light-hearted ways. You know, we talked about the sort of acting opposite to urges, using role-plays, and kind of, you know, situations that aren’t necessarily um the most emotive, the most difficult for you. You kind of grade situations. You could even make a list, to be fair, so you can uh make a list of the different situations where it’s difficult to be assertive or state your own needs, and you take the easiest one and you start with that, and you practice, and you have a go, and then you come back and you see how it went, what went well, what would you know, and um, so I was working with someone on um on dealing with those kind of assertiveness skills, or needing to state your own in a workplace, and and uh you know, going home on time or taking holiday, those sorts of things. And so we started with something really uh that felt the easiest, and then we just assessed it. So you know, stress test things and then learn from it. Actually, the anticipatory anxiety about it was much worse than actually the awkward moment of saying what I needed to say, and their reaction was not as bad as I thought it would be.

Um, you know, I had all that fear and discomfort, but that died down as soon as the moment was over, and then actually I got what I needed, and uh the situation was better than it would have been, and I’m not living in resentment. So when when you start small, you get these small victories that give you that momentum and give you that sort of drive to move forward and go for the next challenge. But you can’t expect to suddenly go, “Right, from now on I’m going to be bounded and assertive and strong,” and going overnight harder. Yeah, right, it’s just not going to happen. You have to do these things gradually and start with the easiest thing, something that almost feels a bit silly, that’s so easy it’s it’s a bit kind of, “Really am I starting here?” But then you get that little easy victory, and then you move on to the next one, which is a little bit more difficult, and and so on. That anticipatory anxiety thing is so funny because you’re right, it’s almost always your ability to uh turn the future situation into a nightmare is significantly better than it almost ever is. And the stupid thing is that all of the nightmares that you genuinely uh encounter in the real world, the ones that you probably didn’t see coming, to go, “Okay, so I have this unbelievable ability to predict things that aren’t problems, not predict things that are going to be massive issues. Okay, brilliant, thanks, amazing way our brains are set up.” Um, but yeah, I I I think that that’s right, and again is a uh uh slowly rehabilitating people-pleaser, uh that’s a way that that I found to be better as well, um to learn to be able to make demands of other people, to not subjugate my needs, uh or believe that I don’t have needs, or think that it’s noble to not have needs, to put somebody else ahead of me. Oh, this is like a sort of a sacrificial type. It’s a sort of odd like emotional puritanism where you think uh if I feel bad but someone else feels good, net-net that means that it’s good. Go, “What if both? What if you could both feel good, but you just need to sort of make a demand?” Yeah, yeah, so true. And often you’re, when you feel like you’re being a nice person because you’re making them feel good, um, actually sometimes what you’re doing is just appeasing them, and you’re just scared of their emotional reaction or their disapproval, and it’s you know, feel it’s it’s motivated by fear of of what their reaction might be rather than um you know your own values around what should happen in that situation. It’s also not very trustworthy. If somebody can’t trust your no, it’s very difficult to trust your yes. And you know, you hinted at uh if you don’t have any choice, it’s not particularly virtuous. You don’t even feel good about doing the virtuous thing because you didn’t have any other option, but you didn’t choose to be nice to this person, you simply couldn’t be bad. Yeah, and um I had I wrote about this this week actually that uh a friend of mine, a few months ago, me and him had had a a sort of well-meaning debate, but I was worried that I’d upset him, so I rang him a little bit afterwards and I was like, “Hey man, I just wanted to sort of check in and make sure that you’re right.” He’s like, “Yeah, of course, like, of course, it was it was totally fine.” And then I he heard me start to chastise myself for going, “See, this is this is my people-pleasing nature coming out, this is me…” I had to check in. He’s like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on a second. The reason that I love you as a friend, for one of the big reasons, is because you decided to put me first, even in this situation, even the one that was neutral. The fact that you did reach out and care…” He’s like, “Be careful pathologizing something which is actually a really virtuous part of who you are.” And I’m like, “Right, okay.” So doing the thing was uh good, it’s a part of my nature that my friends are glad that I have. Yeah, but by not really, but by being compelled to do it as opposed to choosing to do it, that does kind of negate some of the virtue that’s behind it. So I was like, “Right, okay, so am I supposed to purposefully try and get rid of that, so briefly make myself a worse friend, to then relearn it again consciously, so that I can finally get back to the place that I was in the beginning?” I’m like, “That seems unnecessarily effortful, like, to go around this whole loop to end up at the place that I started again, but this time it’s, you know what I mean?” And I think this a this line between virtue from compulsions and virtue from choices, and then this odd sense that we need to deprogram… it’s right. Okay, so if it’s hard to do, does that make it more virtuous? Like, it’s in my nature, like that’s just me, speaking forward. What a lovely way to be. Would you rather be somebody that’s mean and you have to work hard to do that thing? Would that make you a better person if you were good but you were naturally mean? I’m sure I’d be able to find a way to castigate myself and whip myself into submission, say, “Well, I mean, you know that you did the thing, but you didn’t feel like doing the things, that’s…” you know, the uh human desire to minimize uh our sort of good uh points is um robust to say the least. Yeah, and and like you say, it’s all about um the choice, and you know that you clearly have an awareness of it now. And so if you found yourself in a situation where it was really detrimental to you and you knew that you probably should say something different, but you’d said X because um because of that people-pleasing tendency, then you’d be in a a better position to be able to choose something different because you have that awareness, and and that’s the key, isn’t it? Is it’s okay to have that as a trait and and that sort of tendency, um, because if you’re aware of it, then when it becomes troublesome, you stand a chance at doing something different. Doesn’t mean you have to kind of eradicate everything and you know, clean slate and start again. Um, you can. And that’s the thing, you know, a lot of um a lot of stuff now is about you, like you say, pathologizing everything and and as if it’s something that’s wrong with us, and and actually those those tendencies can also be really lovable parts of us and things that other people appreciate about us or that we appreciate about ourselves, um, but that don’t always work in every context.

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What’s your advice for dealing with passive-aggressive people? Oh, uh, so with passive-aggressive behavior, I think it’s one of those things that you feel it very subtly, so, and you start to question yourself. I think that’s one of the key signs is that that you know something will happen, maybe it’s a a compliment that feels more like an insult, or uh something that’s where on the surface everything seems friendly superficially, but you come away feeling like you’re not sure if they really liked you, or uh you come away feeling sort of wounded in some way, and or maybe you’re being kind of subtly excluded, um, and and that sort of behavior is is inviting you in to become, especially if someone uh is being a pass pass aggressive by um taking on the role of a victim in a situation, they’re inviting you to come in as a perpetrator. And passive-aggressive behavior is one of those things that it’s really difficult to um pinpoint exactly what it was, and well, the culpable deniability is the entire reason for the passive aggression. Yeah, so someone could, you know, I don’t know, let’s say uh you know something great’s happened in your life, you’ve been really successful, one of your friends has a problem with that, and and so starts sort of ignoring you or trying to exclude you and stuff, but as soon as you uh pick up on that and and say, “Are we all right?” then all is denied, right? They that everything’s fine, “I’ve just been busy, haven’t been able to,” you know, and and so you you’re kind of stuck in this place, I can’t really address it because they will deny it, um, and yet I feel terrible, and I don’t feel connected to this person anymore. I feel like they maybe don’t like me, or something is going on. And and the trouble is the more you then uh get sucked into kind of joining the circus in that way and playing the game, um the more you lose, I think. Um, so a lot of it is about watching and learning. You know, if someone reveals themselves to you that they’re not okay with you in a certain way, or um that that friendship is now conditional on you, I don’t know, making yourself smaller or um not doing certain things or associating with certain people, um then all you can do is learn from that and make your own decisions then about whether that’s a friendship for you or whether that’s something that the friendship can overcome. You know, might be a a blip, but it might also be something bigger. Yeah, I I’m intimately familiar with passive aggression, and uh it it never really points at the thing that someone’s trying to say. It’s this sort of shadow sentence that gestures in the direction of it whilst also being able to be completely denied that it is that thing that we’re talking about, so that it’s kind it’s it’s quite a cowardly form of communication. I’m aware that it’s a coping mechanism; there’s lots of reasons that people do it, but it’s a very cowardly form of of communication because it doesn’t ever actually say the thing that you mean, it just sort of points in the direction and then gets mad at you if you don’t realize it. Yeah, uh, so Neil Strauss says, “Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments,” and I think that’s sort of passive aggression in a in a nutshell. Yeah, but yeah, you know, there’s two, at least for me, there’s sort of two broad approaches. The first one being like, call it out as gently as possible. You’re like, “Look, hey man, uh it feels like such and such a thing has happened, I’m not really too sure what it is, um but I don’t like this sort of lingering sense of something unspoken. Help me understand here, like what’s what’s going on? This is an open forum, I’m not going to judge you, just let me know.” Uh, and for me with that, you know, that’s a really, as long as you deploy it in the right way, that’s a really open-door policy, that’s an olive branch for somebody to go, “Okay, it’s a bit safe.” Yeah, do you know what it is, like, “Hey, I know that you don’t even think about it, but you said this thing the other week and it’s just got to me and I haven’t really being able to stop thinking about it.” And you go, “Awesome,” like, water under the bridge, and you can then round it out quite nicely by saying something like, “Hey man, look, I I just want to let you know if this ever ever happens, if anything even remotely close to this happens again, just call it out, like, just say it to me straight away.” Like, is that what happened for you in your situation? I mean, I like I say, illustrious career of dealing with passive-aggressive people, and um but that’s at least my current working theory of one of the better ways to deal with it. And um the the second side of it is, look, like if you’ve put that forward and this person sort of behaving this way, I think going, “Okay, like I I I trust what you’re saying, but it still feels like there’s something lingering there,” and you know, reliably now those situations, those people have just got phased out of my life. So I’m like, “Hey man, I overthink enough, I don’t need to be overthinking about your thinking as well, like I’ve got enough of my own thinking to overthink about.” Yeah, and and then there’s a big decision to make, isn’t there, when when someone is behaving in that way towards you, and you know friendships are valuable, so you know it’s important not to um make that decision impulsively, but to like you say, do that over time. So you know, someone might make a mistake because they’re having a hard time, and and that might change and and get better after a while, or it might not. And so with that sort of watch-and-learn approach, take it in, adjust your the amount that you trust someone, so adjust how much you uh share with them, adjust how much you trust them to you know um know certain information or whatever, um so that you can kind of not so that you’re always guarded, but so that you’re just protecting yourself if this person is revealing themselves not to have your best interest at heart, um and then gradually come to a decision about whether this friendship is really um for you or not, whether it really uh adds to your life or if actually takes away from from your life. Um, but yeah, I think sometimes that that decision has to come just carefully and considered so that you’re not sort of impulsively um pushing someone out and then later realize it there might have been an explanation for it.

It seems like I think talking about relationships, intimate relationships, there’s sort of two broad buckets of challenges early on in relationships: one being you loving somebody who doesn’t feel the same, and the other being somebody loving you but you sort of struggling to let them get in close, the sort of anxious versus avoidant, I suppose, the push versus the pull. Yeah, what’s your advice for these two buckets of people? Yeah, so that I mean it’s quite um it’s quite common actually, this sort of uh avoidant person getting into a relationship with an anxious um attached person. So uh if you’re sort of anxiously attached, you might uh always be you know worried about what that other person feels, and you will want more affection from them and more reassurance that they still love you, and and you know that’s based on those early attachments, whereas the avoidant person, they still need love and they still need that reassurance, but they’re not going to ask you for it, and when things get too uh sort of intimate, then that will fill them with some sort of uncomfortable feelings, maybe fear, um and they will kind of shut that down. Doesn’t mean they don’t need love from the other person; they still benefit from connection, they just find it really difficult to um to reach out for it and to um and to sit in that sort of exposed state, that vulnerable state of of being close to someone or being intimate with someone. So I think what you’re doing when when you’re working with couples who are in that kind of relationship, the risk is that the relationship ends because the the avoidant person becomes so overwhelmed by the anxious person who keeps trying, keeps trying, keeps trying, um that they kind of um push back or become sort of rejecting, and then that’s too much for that anxious person, and in the end they say, “I I can’t do any more of this,” and they move on. Um, and so what you’re aiming for in that scenario is um to and it’s important to, I know we you said at the beginning there about you know someone who doesn’t love you back, this is a kind of scenario where these people do love each other, they just have different styles of attachment. And so what you’re aiming for is awareness of each person’s cycle, you know, own sort of cycle or pattern of dealing with people in the relationship, so that they have some level of appreciation and a degree of patience for the other person and what they you know what they’re experiencing, but for both of those to aim for a more secure attachment style, so to edge towards somewhere in the middle, which involves compromise from both people. So it involves you know the person who’s more avoidant um building up their tolerance for intimacy and closeness, um and for for the anxious person to build up their uh resilience for uncertainty and uh the tendency to kind of seek reassurance and calming that. So so it involves both people kind of working to fit together, and it’s absolutely possible. Um, you know, there are lots of couples with those sorts of styles of that that work really well.

Um, yeah, what about the person that doesn’t love you back? The I guess we’re one step before the relationship here, you know, pining, pandering, clawing for somebody who just you want them and they don’t want you. Yeah, I think you know there were just oh I don’t know, probably thousands and thousands of books written on that kind of scenario, that sort of quest for love and things, and um I think you know when we’re talking about the people-pleasing side, some people will have that tendency to uh stay in relationships in which the other person has no affection for them, um because of the fear of being alone, being rejected, and I think you make better decisions about those kind of relationships if you work on having your own back. So it’s much less scary, the idea of leaving someone or being rejected by someone if if you know that you will look after yourself and do the best by yourself, and uh you know you’re much more resilient to any of that, and you’re much less likely to put up with someone who who doesn’t love you back and treats you poorly if you have your own back and you’re looking after yourself. So having that kind of um good relationship with the self, where you you come first, uh helps you to be able to do… Isn’t it strange? We’ve got this sort of odd balance when we get into relationships with people. Before we met them, we were self-sufficient humans, perfectly fine, most people, maybe in many ways preferable uh to uh being in a relationship, and then you decide to you decide to let this other person into your life, and you think, “Right, okay, well I I know that in order to fully love this person, in order to integrate them into my lifestyle, I need to not just sort of continue to do the independent thing that I was doing with the window dressing of like some companionship every so often, but they actually infuse themselves into it. I begin to um take heed of what they say, I care about their opinions, uh there is a bit of them in me, and if that leaves, there is this void there, and you’re sort of trying to create this balancing act, and then as things get more and more…” You think, “Well, maybe even their opinion of me is more important than my opinion of me, and I am so concerned about what whether they’re okay that I can’t be okay without that, and if they were to leave, I don’t even know what would be left.” But in order to have, in order for you to hold on to the initial type of sort of ruthless independence that you had before, it feels like you wouldn’t ever really fully be able to let that person integrate into your life. So yeah, I this sort of uh delicate balance between you are okay, you can back yourself, you are not a fragile little mouse, and also if you want to experience everything that there is to enjoy in a relationship, you need to allow yourself, you need to open up that side of yourself in order to be potentially hurt. Yeah, uh it’s a not a simple balance. Yeah, and it’s it’s a risk, but um it’s a risk that’s worth it because we we do um a lot better in relationships um than we do outside of them, and you know you you there is so much to gain from that risk that it makes it worth it. You do make yourself…

Vulnerable going into a relationship, don't you? And um, so when you're kind of at a stage where you're you're not sure whether um the relationship is going to end, like you say, when when people have been so into a relationship and and sacrificed so much of themselves that it's become all about the other person, ending that relationship then can be this process of rebuilding. You you don't know what your preferences are because you've spent, you know, so many years prioritizing somebody else's. And but it it's absolutely possible to do that and to to rediscover, you know, yourself and your own preferences and the things that you like to do, or your own goals and your own values. But it, you know, takes a bit of work.

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I suppose a lot of the time the the sort of disagreements, I guess, before the relationship breaks down, uh the kind of arguments that people have, uh I had Ben Shapiro on the show recently, uh who's a good debater, and he mentioned that uh he has to remind himself that being loved by his wife is more important than winning an argument. Because a lot of the time, regardless of whether he's in the right or in the wrong, he he's very well trained; it's like saying, "I go into a fist fight and I'm an MMA fighter." Um, he has a very particular set of skills. Humans hate being so wrong so much. I think that we can become myopic about this sort of stuff, that we just don't want to lose the argument to our partner. Yeah, even if we might be in the wrong, even if the outcome results in us being more miserable or things being more sad. Yeah. How what's your advice for uh better disagreements and for sort of letting go of this need to win arguments?

It's interesting, isn't it? Because when you're in the moment and you're angry with someone, it feels as if the best feeling is going to be when you prove that you're right and you come out on top, and and you're the only person that that thinks you look good when you win. And and actually, if you're in a loving relationship with someone and you know you prove yourself right and you feel like you've won the argument, what the other person then feels is probably a bit crushed and a bit disappointed in you for uh being so ruthless with them. And and so it's so important, and I think you learn this over time, the longer that you're in relationships, learn how to argue in a way that leads to reconnection and uh the the aim is no longer to work out who's winning and and whether the relationship is going to continue; the aim is to resolve it in a way that doesn't hurt either of you too much. And um, and arguments that focus on reconnection and repair as opposed to winner and loser lead to much much stronger relationships, um in which you you can argue and still trust each other.

I always had this thing in my mind, uh this was early Bro Science from me; this is like early 20s bro science stuff, uh where I noticed that the tone that was set at the very beginning of a relationship that I would get into very much sort of determined expectations down the line, that um you know, during the first, you know, 6 months or whatever, 3 months where everything's amazing, uh the expectations coming down the line, if you spend four nights a week together because you're both smitten and you can't think about anything except for them, etc., etc., but really where you want to bring this relationship into land is you probably see each other two nights a week or whatever, um the change, the pivot that then gets made, or there's a particular demeanor that you have in the beginning; maybe you're more aloof, you're playing it more cool, or maybe you're more lovey, or whatever it might be, um that that uh tone setting in the beginning is uh highly determinant of what is expected down the line, and quite rightly so, like this is the relationship that I got into; what's this one like? Why is what what what's happened with this sort of adjustment here? Um, but I get the sense that with disagreement, with attachment style, with regulation, co-regulation, with the way that you um make up after you've argued, etc., uh setting the tone for that as early as possible as well is maybe even more important because that is going to determine, or at least my current working theory is that most relationships live and die not on how happy you guys are together, but how well you disagree. Because like insufficient happiness may be a reason for a relationship to break up, but what's more likely is too much disagreement, too much unhappiness. Right, like let's get past that first because that predicates you being able to access the happiness thing in any case. And yeah, the sort of direct communication that, "Hey, when X happened, I felt Y. I'm sure it wasn't your fault; I'm sure that you didn't mean to make me feel that way, but I I I don't want to lie to you; I just want this to be other there, and this is a collaborative process," almost treating the relationship like a third person and being like, "Look, we have this thing, which is the way that we're in mesh together, and I want to do things that allow that to flourish as much as possible."

Yeah, yeah. And and also it's okay to um for it not to be perfect at the beginning. So you know, I've been with my husband for like 20 years, and we don't argue in the same way that we did when we first got together. You learn to argue; you learn to, yeah, your relationship evolves. And as long as you're always doing your best to try and improve on yourself and how what you bring to the relationship and making adjustments when things don't work well, um then what you have is this amazing flourishing, strengthening thing over time, um whereas I think, you know, if you if you base your choice about whether you continue a relationship on um, you know, how you're arguing right now, as if that's the only way it can ever happen, then you might end a relationship that could have improved or got better. So it's all about sort of learning from each experience, isn't it? And then trying to, you know, do better if you feel like you've not really brought your best.

Getting on to the individual, what's your advice to people that have got a critical inner voice? You know, what in in my years of uh sort of doing therapy with people, I've come across so many people who are highly self-critical, painfully so, and yet hold on to it for dear life because they think that that's their source of drive and motivation and productivity and achievement, and so they'll defend it like it's doing something for them, um and until they learn that actually it's probably doing damage or it's holding them back and um because often they'll they'll they'll come with a some other problem and won't necessarily recognize that it's being perpetuated by that that tendency to um not only be self-critical but just, you know, psychologically hammering yourself into the ground when things go wrong or when you're not perfect and that sort of thing. Um, but I always like talking to people about the idea of, okay, we all want to do well in life, right? We want to, you know, be at our best. And but if you take that idea and you take, I don't know, Elite athlete; there is no Elite athlete out there that um chooses not to have a coach or support around them to do their best, right? They recognize that that's helpful, but they also don't choose their high school bully to come and coach them and and come along to them with the come along to competitions with them, or uh they'll choose someone that they trust, someone that is honest with them but delivers that honesty with respect, and someone who genuinely wants them to be at their best and achieve. And so if you take the idea of a sports coach and everything that they have to embody to be decent at that job to get the most out of someone, why wouldn't you want to also do that for yourself in your own head? Um, you know, the the differences um between, you know, that kind of high school bully sound or, you know, the um, you know, abusive parent or whoever that voice is in your mind that is never going to get um the kind of outcome that you would get from, you know, a really good coach or someone who genuinely wants the best for you.

It's a great realization; it's a really lovely realization. You know, I would certainly put myself into the category of person who believed that his castigating inner voice was uh encouraging his performance for a long time. Kind of got myself to at least now realizing it's probably not helping; it's certainly not making me better. But then it there's an even more sort of difficult question, which is, okay, it's not even useful... and it's still there, right? Okay, so it's no longer performing the function that I thought it was, but you've got this, you know, lifetime of habit of that just being the default that you go to. Remember, I used to do this thing when, uh, again, CrossFit world, uh it's interesting that I use CrossFit a lot of the time when I'm talking about kind of like the induction to personal growth because they those both those things happened at the same time. Okay, um so I kind of anchor a lot of the things that I was doing then to the training modality that I did, uh and if I was doing a workout on an assault bike, my heart rate was really really high; it's 170 or whatever, I've got the taste of metal in the back of my throat, uh I'm aware 170 is not that high for some people, but it was high for me, uh working away in the assault bike and these sort of during that extreme stress, like acute stress, uh this sort of weird texture would appear, this sort of landscape or whatever in my mind, and it was always critical voices; it was always. And I have had it a couple of other times when I'm under periods of extreme stress; the less gracious parts of my inner monologue come up, uh and yeah, I wonder it certainly got infinitely better, but there's still work to be done.

Did it help you at the time to perform? Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, in my experience, most high performers are not driven by a perfectly balanced desire to enact their logos and actualize themselves; they are looking for validation from the world; they are looking for acceptance in a way that they never got it as a child; they're looking to prove the chip on their shoulder or the bull's wrong or whatever it might be. A lot of people are driven by running away from something they fear, not running towards something that they want. And uh it allows people to create very very impressive lives, but in the only way that everybody else can judge it, which is outwardly. Yeah. And you know, I know that this is one of your uh pet uh obsessions too, which is the price that successful people pay to be the person that you admire. It's probably been the most interesting question that that I've considered over the last few years, and and you speak to a lot of people that are very successful, and you look at the price that they pay, and you go, "I didn't know if this is worth it," like you have this cathedral of of accolades and success and reputation and and other people admiring you and so on, but look at what you've had to do to get there. And again, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Um, I'm I'm currently sort of really really trying to work about what would this be like if it was more fun? What would this be like if I sacrificed maybe even, you know, 2% or 5% of the gripping and the cloying and the sort of like control in the real world to maybe unlock 50% more enjoyment internally? Uh, and I don't even know if that's a trade that needs to be made; it might be a sort of a false equivalence or whatever, but uh I've made it I've made a ton of progress. So for the the people who've got um an endemic uh critical inner voice, I think uh certainly there is at least a little bit that can be done to deprogram that; how much, whether you can get to the stage where it's, you know, the the perfect high school coach that you never had, uh I'm not sure, but uh yeah, I'm moving in the right direction.

Yeah, and I think um a lot of people get the impression that if you're not sort of verbally hammering yourself that the alternative is some kind of airy-fairy, um you know, "you're lovely as you are," and that kind of thing that you just you can't believe in and just feels I and and there's a lot in between, isn't there? So you know, when I talked about the kind of fear chapter and and that sort of inner voice that I needed when I was going through all my health stuff in the summer, um I needed a hard hard voice; "we are we are not victims here; we are being strong here; we are doing this," and and and it was very um sort of powerful and needed to be a powerful approach and needed that. I think what wasn't there was the contempt, was the, you know, digging at yourself. So I think um what stops a lot of people from trying to kind of challenge how they speak to themselves is that they think the airy-fairy stuff is um the only self-indulgence is the only alternative, and it's not. You know, actually self-compassion has to be honest all the time, and if you're not um living in line with your own values or you're not making yourself proud, you have to be honest with yourself about that, but in a way that's also respectful um and that doesn't make you recoil in shame and then unable to learn from it. So there's this kind of whole spectrum and variability and choice about what that tone is like.

I think it's well, it's very much a horses-for-courses thing that maybe at the beginning of your journey, if look, if you are 450, you're kind of getting towards the stage where you just need to use whatever you can, and if shame is the most salient uh sort of tool that can get you from there down to a more healthy body weight, or you know, pick whatever it is, if you're on the verge of a drug addiction or whatever, like you just get whatever fuel you can grab a hold of most easily. But after a while, you have to think, right, okay, I've got myself into some degree of momentum here; is the tool that got me here the one that's going to get me there? And is this really like, have I worked this hard to achieve all of these things to still call myself a piece of...? If I fall short, it's like, really, that's what you're doing? That's the that's the fuel that you're relying on? Like a a guy with a hammer, you go, okay, there's only one use that I have for this; I only have one mode of in a monologue; I'm never going to be gentle with myself; I'm never going to be caring; I'm never going to be reassuring; I'm never going to be supportive; it's like, no, no, no, no, I'm just going to whip myself into submission, and it's always that's that's it. And and those sorts of responses are often going to increase the urges to escape and avoid, which aren't going to lead to success anyway. So you know, even if um you feel like shame or fear or something like that has worked to get you set on a better path, um it's not sustainable because it's more likely to lead to uh the need to use those escape methods and um later on. So yes, it's recognizing that even if it's been useful, it's really helpful to find other resources as well.

Is this similar to the approach that you have for dealing with self-doubt? Yeah, I think with self-doubt a lot of the stuff online is a sort of like, you know, "just don't do it; just believe in yourself," and and again honesty has to be part of that. So with self-doubt, um sometimes it's useful to listen to it because it some of it's valid and warranted, you know, so if you're you know really doubting your ability to perform, I don't know, in an exam, um because you haven't studied, then you want to listen to that self-doubt, but in a constructive way. So it's like, "Why am I feeling this? Okay, I haven't studied; let's book in a load of study time, and let's make it happen." So there are certain, you know, you don't want this sort of like, you know, happy-clappy, "I'm never going to be honest with myself; I'm just going to be happy with myself all the time." Um, it's okay to feel these things; all of those emotions that we can feel, including the negative ones, they are information, and we get to choose what we do with that. You have to choose to listen to it first off, and when you're listening to it, you kind of have to ask yourself, "Is this warranted? And is it a fair reflection of reality? And is it in proportion to reality as well?" So you know, some people will have self-doubt because that's a really useful natural thing to do, and it reflects a need in the situation, and other people will just chronically doubt themselves all the time, and sometimes that's more of a pattern that's developed that doesn't always reflect reality. Um, you know, it's it's a learning experience that has happened possibly earlier on in life.

All of this is made significantly harder when you're overwhelmed and emotionally activated though, I guess, which is, you know, to kind of bring it full circle, I suppose. All of the things that we're talking about in the cold harsh light of a podcast studio uh sound achievable, uh rational, um within reach, but you're just swimming in emotions; this thing happens; I'm overwhelmed; there's too much going on; um what is a what is a way that people can kind of come back to center when we've got we've got these; we maybe even understand the tactic; I should be I should be more supportive with myself; my inner voice thing again, but you're just all you can feel is just this activation. Yeah, and that's why I wrote the book actually, this idea that um when you're in it, when you're in the storm, what you don't need to hear is someone saying, "Well, maybe you should have learned to meditate six months ago; you'd be all right now," right? What you need then is you need someone to kind of, you know, grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eye and say, "Okay, I know a way through this; follow me; here's what you need to focus your attention on, and here's the next step you need to take, and we're going to take that together." And you know, it's really difficult when you have a flood of emotion because of whatever situation you're in; it's difficult to work out which way is up, let alone what step you need to take. There are these moments of your brain is sending you lots of information in the form of emotion in its attempt to apply meaning to what's happening and to work out what's happening and what you need to do next. So in that moment, you know, the best thing for our nervous systems is each other and is someone else. And so I always say, I think um I say in the introduction actually, you know, "the inner world is a bit like a sauna; there is benefits to be being there, but only if you don't stay too long." And so in if you're struggling, uh reach out to somebody else, another human being that you trust for connection, and that will be the most helpful thing to you if you have someone in your life like that, uh but not everybody else, not everybody has that, but also even the people that have it, sometimes that person isn't with them all the time and or in the moments that they most need it. And so that's what this was really about is about kind of talking to someone in the moment and say, "Okay, right, we're in this situation; it is what it is; here's here's how we deal with this moment; find some calm; find some clarity; and then work out which way we get through this," um because the only way is through it. If as soon as you numb all that emotion, well, that's all information for you, so if you numb it, you're not going to be able to use it, um but it's just it's not easy to kind of work out in the moment because life is complex and it throws stuff at us, right?

I realized that the sort of numbing of emotions, the uh fleeing from them, there are better and worse ways to do it; it's TR, you know, people to say, "Well, it's better to be addicted to the gym than it is to be addicted to fentanyl," you go like, yeah, obviously, but one of the more sort of not insidious but certainly subtle ways that people do that was uh meditation or breath work or um, you know, what people would typically consider to be very healthy, very embodied uh solutions to this. So an emotion arises inside of you, and if you're good at meditation, you notice it, you release and allow it, right? Okay, brilliant; you still don't know anything about that emotion; you haven't sat with where that's come from, and that's just going to continue coming up. Now are there times when you need to just let it go? Yes, absolutely. But if this thing's going to keep on happening, like you're it is permanently putting some sort of Band-Aid over the top of this and again and again and again and again, you go, after a while, you need to kind of admit, "I just need to I just need to sit and investigate where this comes from." Yeah, and some people are able to do that individually and kind of sit with it and listen to it and be with it, and other people need support to do that because it feels danger, you know, it's only uh feels comforting if your body feels a safe place to be, so for some people that's not the case, and it's terrifying and leads to all sorts of unhealthy strategies, um so that's when it can be really helpful to do that with someone else who can kind of guide you through listening to that, and then when things get too much, kind of pulling back a bit and coming in again, and you know, these things can be done really carefully and piece by piece and by teaching some of the skills to begin with to cope with how distressing that can really be. You know, some people have a lot um a lot in the past that they've been really successful at numbing and covering up, and so the minute you ask someone to take a look at that, well, there is a reason they've been numbing that for a long time, and so well because it's really painful and it's really scary, um so you know, no therapist worth their salt would ask you to sort of do that without first teaching you the skills to be able to cope with how distressing that could be.

Dr. Julie Smith, ladies and gentlemen. Julie, I appreciate you; I think the book's great. Why should people go? They want to keep up to date with everything you're doing. Um, I'm on Instagram and YouTube and all the platforms just as DrJulie, but um uh yeah, the the book's available everywhere, I think. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, you will love my full-length, 2-hour-long conversation on an LED video wall with Dr. K, just here; go on, press it.