jo and jo for editing

Hi Joe, how you doing? I'm good, are you? I'm all right. I'm glad it's Friday. You’ve had a busy week? Just been busy. What, you've been mad busy, haven't you? Yeah, I'm still doing two jobs at the minute as well, so it's kind of pretty full on, but it's been good. I've been out, like, I like speaking to people. I don't like being in an office, and like all that funding stuff and business plans and trying to figure out how we can get Reconnect going—like, it's not my bag. Going and speaking to people is what I enjoy, so yeah, it's been a good week.

Oh bless you. Okay, well listen, I'm going to try and not take up too much time here. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to—I haven't prepared anything from my part because what I do is once I've got the transcripts, I'll just make my part sound a little bit more thought through and eloquent, and then we'll get all your words. Because this is a written piece for Mad in the UK, I'll send it back to you; you can edit what you like. So you don't need to worry too much; this is just a start to kind of collect a bit of information. Then we'll do a backwards and forwards thing before we publish it, and at some point, I'll send it on to Kathy at Mad in the UK, and she can edit it further with you as well because she'll want to edit what I've produced as well, because she does. So that's fine.

Also, the order might change of the questions, so at the moment this is just about collecting the kind of information. Okay, so just answer as casually as you want.

Okay, so first of all, I just want to say that the TED Talk was amazing. I wanted to connect with you after that because I wanted to get the TED to try and do our part in making it get to as many people as we could help get it to. You know, obviously, I'm so tired; this is why I can't even speak. So that's why I initially connected with you.

So can we start off with that and talk a little bit about that talk? How long has it been now? Is it one week? Is it two weeks? I've lost track of time.

Eight days.

Oh God, okay, so eight days. So how's that been? How's the reaction been?

It's been amazing. It's been so overwhelmingly positive. It was the first time I put my story out there. I've had opportunities in the past, but I'm really lucky that I've had some amazing people supporting me to make sure that my story gets shared in a safe way. So it was the first time I put myself out there, and I was expecting blowback. I was expecting to not be able to read the YouTube comments, and I never experienced that. So I think I was prepared to take some online abuse but didn't know how I'd react to it. But it's been so overwhelmingly positive; it's been amazing.

Even if I go right back to straight after the event, I was anticipating like a sort of delayed forced clap, but I got a full standing ovation, and I was just like—you can see, I think you can see in my face at the end of the video, I was just standing there exhaling. My slot was the last talk before lunch, so I kind of took my headphones off and went out to give my girlfriend a big hug and speak to my friends. But it was just an amazing stream of people who really related to it, and a lot of the comments were, "I had a similar reaction to my doctor," and "I've not heard people talk about it." A lot of people were also saying they had a difficult experience with antidepressants, but they didn't feel they could talk about it.

I think some of the biggest compliments were from senior GPs who said I made them think, and they want to share the talk with more junior GPs—people who had really started to question the biomedical model for the first time. To hear them relate to it was really amazing, and to get so many great comments online—yeah, I wasn't expecting it, and it's really nice.

No, fantastic! It's so good to hear. I mean, I can really understand, to be honest, why and how you've got that reaction because I think how you positioned it and how you presented it was just very accessible. How can you argue with that? How can you argue with that? Obviously, so many people are relating because they've been through exactly the same or people that they know have, and in many cases, many people that they know. So yeah, such a relatable story. Thank you for being that person that put it out there in that way; it's incredible.

Oh no, thank you! That's exactly why I wanted to do it. Originally, it was suggested that sometimes TED Talks can be done by more than one person, and I originally applied to do it with Joanna Moncrieff and Jillian Bowden. We thought—and it's a talk that I hope happens one day because we each bring a different perspective. I think TED's feedback was that, and they were right, I think, and Joan said the same—that we couldn't explain in five minutes each what we needed to, and they wanted to go with more of a story first.

What I really wanted was to create a tour that could be shared with people who are going through what I went through seven years ago.

Wow, fantastic! Because you absolutely did that. What have you learned about the whole experience of public speaking in the process?

Where to start? I've learned so much. I was really fortunate to meet an incredible public speaking coach who's forging new ground. I describe her work as a torpedo of therapy because she's a therapist as well as a public speaking coach, so she's kind of had this vision and brought the two together. Honestly, Joe, it's so powerful.

If you think about what you experience when you public speak, it almost brings up all of your worst thoughts and limiting beliefs and shame, is what I'd say. It's completely transformed my relationship to my own shame. Maybe if you give me an example, because it's something I'm really passionate about. I knew at the start of this year that I was really disconnected from anger, shame, and sadness, so my goal this year was to really try and connect with those emotions. I'd spent my whole life pushing them down, but when you speak in front of people—this work was done in a small group of six—this stuff comes up.

An example would be we did an exercise for a minute, and all I had to do was stand in front of six people and Jade, the coach, and not say anything. The idea of the exercise was to own the space, but it was so confronting because what was going through my mind was, "None of these people want to see me." That was the first thought. The second, when people were looking at me kindly and lovingly, was, "Well, they're just faking it; they don't actually want to spend time with me."

At the end, Jade, the coach, asked me to share what had gone through my mind, and I shared it. It was so confronting to hear how they wanted to see me, how they think what I've got to say is important, even though I wasn't speaking in that moment. That's one example of the work that I went on and the journey I went on.

I might go around the houses here, Joe; you might have to edit some of this, but I'm kind of happy to share this because it's been probably the biggest part of my own journey with my emotions over the last year, and it's something I want to speak about. I did this work through public speaking and was really confronted with shame. I was really confronted, like firsthand, with how cut off I was. For example, I'd be speaking about something that's sad, and the group would reflect back that I didn't sound sad. I think that's really important, especially for our community, because sometimes I hear people speak, and it's quite intellectual and disconnected from the emotion. But we're talking about something sad, and if you haven't connected with the sadness yourself, it's hard to communicate that to others, and others can't feel it.

I was really confronted with this, and there was one really powerful moment where I just shared how much of a bad opinion I had of myself—how all these nasty thoughts and opinions I had of myself. I shared it with the group, and up until this point, I couldn't cry in front of them. The group started crying, and then I got a little tear, and they got up and hugged me, and I just bawled my eyes out for the first time in years. It was so powerful, and it felt like that moment was the first time I really stopped repressing the sadness.

I had a similar experience in the speaking group with anger, for example. I'd speak about things I should be angry about, but it didn't come across in my voice, so they mirrored it. We did these amazing somatic exercises, like pushing against the wall, screaming, letting it out. I found that my public speaking journey has helped me connect more deeply with my emotions, which I think is essential work because you'll know as a therapist—and a lot of people that read this—that we can't intellectualize this stuff; we have to feel it.

I think most of the people that read Mad in the UK are leaders; they have the stuff that needs to be heard. But I think we have to be honest: have we personally done the work to connect with our emotions ourselves, and are we portraying that emotion so others can feel it too?

But so true, and such credit to you to go there and do that work to be able to produce that talk and the energy that that talk kind of expressed and communicated. That's why people have connected with it, because you've been able to be that authentic and that vulnerable, and obviously, that's been a journey for you.

But yeah, I think you're right; it's really, really important to be real, isn't it? To be able to be connected with what you're—the words you're actually saying—to feel that emotional kind of connection. Otherwise, it's empty, and that's exactly the opposite of what your talk was. I mean, it was absolutely so full of realness and authenticity, so that makes complete sense. I'm glad you found that.

Sounds like an incredible person, the speaking coach.

She is! Oh, I'd love to give a shout-out if I can: Jade Anon. She is phenomenal. One of the things she taught me that really relates to what you said is there's a difference between speaking and acting. I decided that I wanted to learn how to tell my story, and I went to loads of different speaking groups, but it was all like, "Here's how you use your body language when you're sad; you slow down and you go slow." Whereas Jade's view is—that's acting.

I think we need to—when we're presenting, it's a really important lesson to learn: am I acting here? Am I acting the role of the intellectual, the academic, the psychologist, or am I speaking and being real? What I found is I have to take a minute just to sort of breathe and connect with how I feel. I don't ever think about what I'm doing with my voice or my hands; it just happens naturally because I connect with the emotion.

You're freeing yourself up to be who you are and connected with those emotions that are informing what you're saying.

Yeah, absolutely! I love the distinction between performing and being real in that moment, and yeah, it absolutely comes across, Joe.

Do you know what? There's something I want to add to that, and yeah, I hope this is related. What I've learned is when you want to—the thing—the difference between speaking and acting is really important, but when you want to speak, you have to be prepared to have others see you, and you have to be prepared to let others in. That can be really difficult work that a lot of us struggle with.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned this year came from a day out at Speakers' Corner. I've been to Speakers' Corner a few times in Hyde Park, and if anyone's reading this and fancies speaking and wants to go to the deep end, I'll happily go down with them. I stood there with a cardboard box that just said, "Was my depression a disease?" question mark. I started on a little stool, and that's kind of where I started to create my talk. I didn't know I was going to do a TED Talk at this point, but I wanted to practice.

It was amazing because you get people often with really complex needs down there that come to heckle, but you get so many different perspectives and live feedback from people. What I experienced there has been the most profound journey on my own— I don't want of a better phrase—like my own relationship to connect with myself. It was the first time when I was really confronted by shame—like really confronted by it.

All these people that often were like a couple of BLS came over and told me that they were taking antipsychotics, and they were very fragile, but they heard me. They complimented me; they said that it was really interesting, they didn't feel judged, that I was a good speaker, and they encouraged me to keep going.

What I experienced was like a complete counter—a pushback against my shame. I want to talk about this and I want to talk about the Mad in America, Mad in the UK platform because what I experienced was really overwhelming. It was almost like a sense that this story I told myself about shame might not be true, and I can allow space for that shame to come up and to be spoken about. When I did, I got this punch of energy. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced. I felt it in my heart, and it wasn't like a fast heartbeat; it was like an electrical sense that kind of went up through my chest into my face.

I didn't sleep for three days, and I didn't feel like I needed to sleep for three days. It was like I drank 100 coffees an hour every day of the week, and my sleep just—I just didn't need it. I started to sort of feel paranoid as I walked down the street and started to think of these people following me, attacking me.

I tell you this because I know about how it was the first time in my life where I'm sure if I had gone to a doctor, I don't know what labels they'd have given me. I don't know what would have happened, but I was so lucky to have amazing people around me—one in particular, James Scurry—who safely held spaces. The amount of work that man has done, the amount of wisdom he has, really helped me out.

What I learned was it sent me on a journey towards more somatic-based work, and I think this is really important to talk about because it tied in massively with my TED Talk. I eventually found a somatic experiential therapist who was amazing, who helped me sort of be with these sensations and gently allowed them to happen. It was like a release of energy.

I think this is the bit that often gets missed off by people in our field that are often quite intellectualized. I think the impact this has on our body and how it feels gets neglected, and it required a lot of guidance and support in how to sort of work with this—the different tools I can use to allow my body to do what it felt like it needed to do.

In doing so, I uncovered quite a lot of difficult stuff that I'd repressed. This was all really important because I built this talk on how to not just go to therapy and talk. I'd learned how to feel my emotions, but I don't want to—I worry that in my TED Talk I might sugarcoat it a little bit. Like I say, we need to feel to heal; we need to feel. I think we do, but feeling can be really bloody hard. It can be intense, and I can see how this stuff would present in our bodies.

I wanted to share that because I think that was a really new part of my journey, and I felt like I was a living case of "The Body Keeps the Score."

Oh, that's like a whole new TED Talk, isn't it? Because you couldn't have fitted all of that into—I think you did it really well, but I can hear that there's a whole lot more to say on that kind of somatic experience and what went on for you there.

You're so right; that's the TED Talk I most want to give, but I'm still working on it. I'm so grateful for all the help I've had. The somatic experiential therapist I work with was amazing, and like I mentioned, James. I've learned all these different movement-based practices, which are so powerful.

I used to practice yoga; I never thought I'd say this because you've heard my story. I run marathons, I love running, I like being busy, I play football, but now I find, from a therapeutic sense, I find yoga too fast. I find that I have to move even slower to connect. That strange energy I spoke about—these slow movement-based practices—just move it around.

It was so important to do that work because in the moment in my TED Talk, the first two minutes, I was absolutely terrified. You can kind of tell, and I'm speaking quite quickly, but having done this work, it felt like I let a bit of steam out, and I was able to connect with the emotion.

Some of the still images that the photographer gave—I'm like laying down the law like this, but in my head, I was visualizing the packet of Sertraline I was given, and that brought out the sense of anger because I'd done all this somatic work and I'd done the speaking work, and it allowed me to tap into it—not to come across as angry throughout the whole talk, but just angry in the bits that needed to be angry and sad in the bits that I felt like I needed to be sad.

That’s what comes across—that it feels like you had that control, that you had the choice to be nuanced and go from one emotion, one set of feelings, to another as needed.

Yeah, and thank you for picking up on that. It took a lot of work to get there, but I'm glad we could talk about that because I think we often neglect the importance of how emotions are held within our body. I know it's kind of like ancient wisdom that's coming back, and Bessel van der Kolk and Gabor Maté have done such good work in kind of highlighting it, but again, I think it's something a lot of people intellectualize and don't feel.

I read "The Body Keeps the Score" before I went through this and didn't really relate to it. I think it's really important that we allow space for people to talk about these experiences and how it's set in our bodies and just let them feel safe to experience it.

No, absolutely. So Joe, we need to talk a little bit about Reconnect and your vision for that and what your work is going forward from this TED Talk. I mean, I know you've been doing a lot leading up to it in the past few years, but what now?

I'm just going to—I made a few notes. Hang on, let me get them up here. I don't want to—anyway, so I'm wondering how I think it might be easy. Should I give you a bit of an overview of what the Reconnect vision was and where it came from? I think like a little bit of an introduction to a person who doesn't know anything about—don't worry about this; we'll edit this out—but to a person who doesn't know anything about Reconnect.

So an introduction to what Reconnect is, first of all, and then a little bit about what your hopes are in the next year or two.

Really, Reconnect was a vision that I had when I was really struggling, but when I started to see through the biomedical story I was told. I am so grateful to Johann Hari and his book "Lost Connections." That book literally changed my life. I read that, and I started to ask questions, and Reconnect was literally the Google search. I realized that my depression wasn't caused by a chemical imbalance, but then I was like, "Well, what now?"

I was seeing a therapist who was absolutely brilliant. I'd realized that I often felt lonely but didn't know where to go to connect with other people that could understand and talk about the experience I've been having. I was asking questions like, "Well, what is it if it's not a chemical imbalance? Is it my lifestyle? Is it my work? Is it my values? Was it my childhood? Was it difficult events from the past?"

I started to realize that it was probably a combination of all those things, and I was like, "What do I do?" I felt like the support was really siloed and spread out. I had the example of feeling like a detective hunting around for clues. So I had the idea of, like, "Why hasn't anyone put this together under one place where the person can pick the support they want?" Kind of like the gyms have done, where someone's brought all these different types of exercise and equipment together and classes and sometimes community, but the person picks what they want to do.

So that was the idea of Reconnect—the vision. I set about chasing it four years ago. I left the sponsored visa in Australia in the sun in a comfortable job selling software and moved back and was completely naive to how hard it would be.

But I think it might be worth me telling you about the Reconnect journey. So hopefully that's told you, and I've come on to it. The first step I started when setting up Reconnect was to look at the NHS data because it just seemed so obvious to me that this was the support I was searching for. I just considered myself a bit of a basic 25-year-old that just wanted to play football, go to work, make money, and drink with his mates.

So I kind of thought if I had this vision and this is what I wanted, it just seemed so obvious. I looked into the NHS data and was pretty shocked at what I learned about the IAPT outcomes. Then I started messaging anyone that would speak to me and spoke to so many amazing people.

I don't know if you want to put this in there because I know I don't like using the term because I don't want to add weight to it, but I learned that anyone that's labeled as anti-psychiatry is actually really nice. As a person that doesn't know anyone, that had no experience, no degrees in this, everyone—100% of people that I asked for help—responded.

That is amazing!

Yeah, you know, every time that somebody says that to me, it reminds me of what Johann Hari says—something like, "This is one of the hardest struggles, but you meet the best people."

It's so true!

That is so true! So I did that, and then I went away and created a survey. The survey had about 36 questions, and I put it out online. The idea was that I wanted to create this service, this vision I have, but if I did it just for me, it wouldn't work. I have to do it for the "we."

So I put my survey out online, and over a thousand adults in the UK filled it in, which is mind-blowing! To get people to fill an anonymous online survey about experiences of depression—like my friend that works in market research said, "You're never going to do that." And 1,500 people clicked on it, and a thousand completed it.

The mix of emotions I felt from doing that—the first—I mean, there are so many questions. I've been skeptical to publish it just because it could become quite political, but one of the main questions for me was I asked the question—I think 1,200 adults answered this question: "What caused your depression?" I gave a little bit of a caption at the bottom; that's what the question said. But the caption at the bottom said something along the lines of, "We get that people are given different labels for their suffering, but just for the purpose of this question, we refer to depression as depression, anxiety, and related conditions."

Just to give a bit of context, the answers were just mind-blowing. The most cited answer was issues in childhood, followed by bereavement, followed by issues at work, followed by issues in the family, and then it was abuse. People wrote a lot, and it was so hard to read.

Although I haven't got any sort of psychology degrees, I felt like that was one of the biggest lessons I could have read. A thousand people were suffering. I tallied them all up to see how many people attributed their depression to life events versus being biomedical. It was 92.5% of people said it was a natural life event; only 2.5% of people said a chemical imbalance.

I read that, and I felt like that was a bit of a mandate to keep going because how come we operate in this system that we don't listen to people? Having given people the space to write what they thought, and I didn't have any bias, they said that. So I was like, "Well, that was kind of..."

So I took all the lessons I've learned in that to try and create a service to be like, "Well, if these are the issues that people are struggling with, why can't we help them with these issues?" Some of that might be therapy, but I'm really passionate about the power of the group as well.

So that was the first step, and then we got a small amount of funding, and I was joined by the amazing clinical psychologist Dr. Jillian Bowden. We met because Jillian was the lead author of the BPS's "Understanding Depression" report, and I read that and originally wanted to do a podcast because I felt like that report was so in line with my experience and what my research had found that I kind of wanted to come together and talk about it.

So Jillian and I ran a small pilot group with eight members, and it was amazing. The way it worked was we had an incredible researcher—who I'd love to give a shout-out to because he's going to be a phenomenal clinical psychologist one day, and he is in the process of applying—so the more praise I can give him, the better.

But a Sarapin Nissus met with eight of our group members like the week before we started our sessions. What he did was he gave them a quantitative form, but we absolutely did not use the PHQ-9. We used two measures: one was CHIM, and if you come across it, it's brilliant. It's like connectedness, hope, interpretation, meaning, and empowerment. I might need to edit that; I think that's it.

It's a measure to see how people feel they are in relation to all those things, and the Strathclyde Inventory, which I think is founded on Rogers's work. They filled in this quantitative questionnaire, and they went to have an interview with Sarapin. We couldn't get people out of the room; that's how good Sarapin was!

We'd offered them nothing; they'd seen a Facebook ad about the service. They didn't know they were coming to a co-working building, which is a really cool space, and met Sarapin. I couldn't get them out of the room! I was like, "I couldn't get out of the room," and it was just amazing to see, first of all, the skill of Sarapin to give people he's never met to build up that kind of relationship in such a short space of time.

But also, some of the things people were saying—like one of the members said that she felt empowered just by answering the quantitative measures on the form. Like, who has ever said they feel empowered from answering the PHQ-9?

So we did that, and then the group—the Reconnect group—was—we didn't know what to expect. It wasn't typical psychoeducation; it wasn't group therapy. We're still trying to figure out how to call it.

Basically, Jillian and I co-facilitated, and we used the "Understanding Depression" report as the foundation, but we were measured with budget and resources. We wanted to co-produce, but in reality, we could only give them a couple of weeks. So we said, "Look, here's the six weeks we've got; here's a loose structure. What do you think?"

They said, "Yeah, looks good." They said maybe we could do two weeks for what helped when we were depressed. So we did that, and it left us with a week three. I said, "What do you guys want to do?" Interestingly, they wanted to do a meditation class, so I organized that.

We kind of agreed what the outline would look like, but then the sessions were just a conversation. We kind of didn't know what to expect. We had a slide deck, but we were like, "Okay, well, we'll ask questions, but if we need it, we've got stuff to talk about." We didn't need it; just having the group talk about what depression was so powerful.

Then the next week, the similar thing: "Why do we feel depressed? Why might we feel depressed?" It was amazing, and Jillian and I didn't need to say anything. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned: Jillian is incredible. She got an MB for setting services in the NHS, and she was so modest. She removed all of the power; she just sat there and facilitated and was there to answer questions. She kept the conversation going, but what the amazing thing was is that amongst the group, the wisdom was there.

So we went through this each week, but what I'm really passionate about is not just taking a psychological approach, adding the community, but also looking at how we can build the foundations by looking after our body. So we went for a walk; we had a walk in nature, we did a yoga class. There's loads more I'd love to do in the future. We tried to combine this so people get a real holistic amount of support.

At the end, they had a final interview with Sarapin again. Same problem: I couldn't get out of the room! I wish I had more budget for more, and the outcomes were brilliant. It was truly amazing to see just the power of community.

I'm just thinking as you're saying this, what we need to do in this particular interview is like an introduction to this because this is exactly what you should be talking about in front of the live audience when we do the "Audience with an Ally" in March.

Yeah, brilliant! What we need to do is when we get these transcripts, I'm going to send it back to you, and you can edit it so that you're introducing this but not saying all of this detail. We need to save all of this more detailed stuff so that you can actually tell people about it in March, but you need to give enough of an introduction to whet appetites.

Yeah, so that's fine. So okay, let's go now to—I want to end it with a kind of just your hopes about the way forward so that we can end this particular part because obviously we've got to cut this down to a readable size.

Yeah, definitely! And I want to end it with a powerful kind of hope for the future type thing. So yeah, what are your hopes for the future for Reconnect? And have you got any more TED Talks up your sleeve?

I've definitely got more TED Talks up my sleeve! The stuff we mentioned earlier about the influence—the thing I'm most fascinated about at the minute is the concept of energy. I think our edit in "The Body Keeps the Score," where Bessel van der Kolk says we've been so focused on the chemical aspect of emotions, we've completely neglected the energy.

It just seems so obvious to me, but if we talk about energy, it seems like people label it as something—I don't use the word, but "woo-woo." I don't know how to do it yet, and it's still something I'm working on. I'm still on my own somatic journey, and I'm still connecting.

But if I could ever explain what I've been through over the last year and explain the energy component of emotions to 25-year-old me, that's my second TED Talk. I'm really into this at the moment as well, and I've been for a while.

But the stuff around kind of neuroplasticity and frequency and energy and how actually we can—we have so much more control than we think, but we're so disempowered by medical model narratives about, you know, it all happening to us and being responses and all of that.

It's how to kind of unpick the bits that we do have control over, isn't it? And be empowered to think about how we actually can impact how we experience the world because of what we choose to give our energy to in terms of what we're thinking—what thoughts we even choose to give our energy to.

Oh, 100%! When you connect with that thought and that emotion, the energy component of it—I again found that the shame, when I challenged that notion of shame, it was like a punch of energy that was really hard to work with.

It's something that I'm really interested in. Can you imagine if we didn't disregard this? It is sad that so many people don't talk about it. I'm doing at the minute Lisa Fennon's book club. I don't know if you've ever come across her book "Worn and Worn Out." It is fantastic! She is amazing! If you can get—her book is, I say, it's free; she wrote it and put it out there for free, and it's incredible.

She talks a lot about the scripts that we're given to explain our suffering and how different knowledge bases are accepted over others. Doing her book club has really made me think.

So the first—was it the first or second week? We had to discuss, "What is the mind?" It's such a powerful question because even in biomedicine, they've taught with such certainty. Lisa makes the example that even the UK's biggest mental health charity is called "Mind." The very fact we call it mental health—we're talking with such certainty that we know what the mind is, but we don't! Because no one can tell you what the mind is, and no one can tell you where it's located.

I learned this firsthand in India at a meditation retreat. We got to debate, and there were people of so many different religions debating it. If you ask a Christian, they'll say it's the soul; it comes from God and goes to heaven when you die. You ask a Buddhist, and they'll say it's an endless stream of consciousness that flows from one life to the next. You ask a scientist, and they'll say it's made in the brain, but we can't explain where.

I think that's important because we've taken this concept of the mind that we don't understand, but someone has agreed that that's a certain thing. But we can't do that with energy; we can't talk about the energy we feel because someone's decided that this is the dominant perspective of the mind.

I think it's ridiculous! If I start talking about the energy body and how I feel in my body, people label it as "woo," and say, "Well, you can't talk about that." The way they look at some of the more somatic practices gets disregarded.

But the argument I'd say back to anyone that is so certain is, "Well, if you're going to disregard the energy we feel in the body, you tell me about the mind. You talk so certainly about where it is, and they can't tell you!"

Yeah, this is one of the problems that me and a fair few of us have got in relation to the whole neurodiversity thing. They're still trying to put it down to an actual thing that goes on in the brain—a different neurotype, a different way of the brain being wired. It's the same old stuff but with a different language attached to it.

You know, why can't we all just be?

Yeah, do you know what? You've probably seen on this call when I get passionate about something, I get excited. I get really—like, you probably just saw it then. I could feel it in my—so I really passionate about sleep. When I was in Australia, they've got a different healthcare system. So rather than the system we've got, you get ten half-price sessions, and it's kind of up to you how you spend it.

I was in a fortunate position where it was the only time in my life—certainly not there now—where I didn't have to worry about money. Now I live like that—like I'm a poor student. But back then, I was like, it was a great deal for me, and I decided to spend my mental health plan allowance on a sleep specialist.

She was Dr. Deln, an assistant professor. She's incredible! To have an appointment at her clinic, I had to speak to a psychiatrist first. The psychiatrist said, "Joe, I think it's highly likely you have ADHD." Of course! She said, "I can't officially diagnose you on this call, but she gave me the details of her colleague and said, 'I really recommend you get in touch with them.'"

I was lucky that I was speaking with an amazing therapist that helped me back in the UK. We were speaking digitally at this point, and he recommended I read "Scattered Minds" by Gabor Maté. Again, I'm in a real privileged position that I was able to have conversations with people that were around when I was young to try and understand why I felt the way I did. Those were very difficult conversations for us to have, and it painted—and you got taking those conversations and then reading "Scattered Minds," I could completely understand what had gone on.

That was a really difficult thing to do, so I sometimes struggle with it because that gave me the context I needed, and I didn't want to take the label. The other bit I've come to learn that I think fits into the neurodiversity movement is that when I have what people would describe as ADHD symptoms—which I 100% have—I find it so hard to sit still, to concentrate.

Having done the somatic work and learned to connect with my body, I've learned just to sit there and see how I feel. What I find for me when my—what we want to call them—ADHD symptoms present is if I actually tune into how I feel, there's a deep sense in my body that I don't feel safe. I need to regulate, and I need to calm myself down, and that's when the somatic practice, the breathing practice, comes into it.

So I think it's exactly like this stuff I talk about in my TED Talk. You're absolutely right! If I went down the neurodiversity movement and I said, "I'm just—there's something neurologically wrong with my brain, so I need support neurologically," yes, it would cut me off from doing the things I've learned to help, which is connecting my body, understanding where I come from, and learning how to regulate my nervous system.

Yeah, again, still some days I don't concentrate that well, but it's tough. I love the analogy! You know, I think it's so important that we make that analogy as well.

It's, you know, if the neurological difference or disorder, whatever people want to call it, but difference is responsible for the distress, behavior, or difference or whatever, then what we don't need to explore or to dig deeper or to listen to the messages that things may be giving us. We don't need to—it's like we've got that protection there, which obviously isn't a protection at all.

You're so right! I don't know; it would be a really interesting thing to communicate. How can we have conversations with people that are passionate about it to help them understand this? Because I expected so much pushback from the neurodiversity movement because you think about the nature of what I'm talking about in my talk. I thought I'd get pushed back, but the response from so many people that are passionate about neurodiversity that class themselves as neurodiverse has been so overwhelmingly positive.

I don't think they've made the connection, Joe.

Yeah, I don't think so either. It's how can we have a conversation? That's why potentially that next TED Talk—you know, sometimes we have to spell it out. I don't think they would have seen your TED Talk and made the connection that the analogy that we've just talked about.

I really don't! Sorry, it wasn't your responsibility to make that connection for them in your TED Talk, but it is another TED Talk potentially, isn't it?

Yeah, I enjoyed it! I'd do another one; I didn't think I would do, but it took so much work. It was just so amazing; I felt a connection with the people I was talking to.

But I really—I don't know if I told you this, but I stood in the wings before my TED Talk, and I was petrified. There was a volunteer whose job was to open the door to let me walk onto the auditorium, and I just walked there and went, and I had a hug. She gave me a hug, and then I walked out.

But the bit just before, I stood there thinking about all the amazing people that have helped me put this talk together, and it's so nice that I'm getting so much praise. But I couldn't even name them, but obviously, Jillian, James Scurry, Jade, my speaking coach, Joanna Moncrieff, and most of the people in your community that were so kind.

I stood there, and it helped so much just to think about that. This is a team effort, and I'm genuinely not being modest in saying that without a disorder for everyone, I wouldn't have been able to give that talk. I really wouldn't.

I think you really acknowledged the kind of impact and influence of others really well. Like you said to me on the phone afterwards about not being able to mention Johann's book by title, but obviously, you did mention the book, and it was very clear. That was lovely as well to be able to kind of, you know, you mentioned it earlier today, but just to trace it back to that turning point for you as well.

So many people do, don't they? When we think about Laura Delano, they track their journey back to reading a book like she does with Bob Whitaker. I love that! I love those stories!

I can tell you that watching your TED Talk will be the "Lost Connections" or the "Anatomy of an Epidemic" for so many other people that stumble upon it.

Yeah, it will be! It will be the turning point for so, so, so many people, and that's what I think is the biggest celebration, really.

So yeah, that's such a really good end point I wanted to make. I wanted to get to a really good, powerful end because that is the point that needs to be emphasized. This is a life-changing thing that you've done for so many.

So yeah, brilliant! Got it! That's literally the biggest compliment it could have paid me.

But you asked me a question, and I got drawn into the first bit. The bit was, "What's the vision for Reconnect?" The vision for Reconnect is to create the place that I envisaged during my own struggles so people can pick the support on their own terms, and it's truly holistic.

We don't look at one specific type of tool and act like that's going to cure all the problems. We help them build an understanding and connection; that's why it's called Reconnect. We want to help them to connect with themselves and the others around them.

But my vision was really huge. As I traveled the world, I learned so much from different countries and different cultures, and I had this big vision: wouldn't it be amazing if there was like a global network that just shared what worked? Because we're all human, and there's so many amazing knowledge systems and ways people relate to their experience and tools they use.

I just look at it and think, wouldn't it be amazing if we made these available to people so they could pick the support they want on their terms?

I love that! And we'll get that bit; we'll put it into where you were talking earlier about Reconnect. We'll save the bit of the real questionnaire and that for the "Audience with an Ally," and so I think between these two things, we'll cover everything.

Brilliant! Love it!

So cool! Thank you! Honestly, what you said there is like I'm going to sit and reflect on that because that's the biggest compliment you could have paid me.

Well, it's true! It's absolutely true! And I can promise you that it won't take long. We'll start hearing people saying—and we probably already have—but we'll start hearing people in much more detail saying, "That's the TED Talk that changed my mind."

I remember several years back when Ellen Lons' TED Talk came out, and I started Drop the Disorder in the early days of Drop the Disorder, which would have been about 2016-2017. We were sharing Ellen's TED Talk, and people were coming on Drop the Disorder saying, "That's the talk that really made the penny drop for me."

And Ellen's TED Talk was brilliant and is brilliant, absolutely! But it's not as clear; it's not as obvious saying something as successfully and as directly as yours.

So I think that that will have more of an effect, and obviously, Ellen was talking about something entirely different—not entirely different, but very different in terms of experiences of psychosis and being labeled with schizophrenia.

But it was still that thing that, "Oh God, yeah, that might not be a thing in the way that I thought it was a thing, in the way that I've been told it was a thing, in the way that society tells me what it's—you know, that it's an actual thing, this biological illness that lives within our body."

So yours is doing that, but with obviously something that affects more people than so-called schizophrenia. So that's why I think that we're going to be hearing lots more examples of, "Yeah, that was that moment for me."

That's so nice! I'm reluctant to talk about it a minute because I've challenged them, but I'm really disappointed in TED because you probably saw that when I gave that talk, the reaction in the room—again, it was a team effort. The reaction in the room, I thought that felt special, and I thought TED would promote it.

I was naive! I was naive! The fact they deleted a minute of it—and it's a bit where I talk about "Lost Connections." I said, and I was annoyed more from a storytelling perspective. I really slowed it down, part of my story, where I say, "I'm sitting on my bed, I'm staring at the window, I'm conflicted. I don't want to accept what I just learned."

They skipped straight to, "How did my doctor know?" But what I actually said is, "I just read that there was no reliable evidence that my depression was caused by an imbalance of serotonin." They deleted that bit, and they said that it was because I didn't have the credentials to say that.

The more I think about it, the more frustrated I am because the label—and it is bad science in my credentials. I want to say to them, "I will give you my medical records; you find me the incredible evidence." There is none!

But it's like the irony, isn't it?

Yeah! You know, I wish I was stressing last week because it's really important for YouTube that the video gets engagement early on because that's how it decides to promote it, which is hard.

But I really—I hope I keep that now. I've challenged them, but I haven't heard back. But if this gathers momentum organically and it gets a big audience, then I can turn around and say, "Look at the TED Talk; that is the problem!"

Look at what they—like a couple of people in the comments have picked up on it. People in the comments have said, "The warning from TED is ridiculous!"

I think like—interestingly, I didn't actually—well, I did know a little bit about how unreasonable TED are, but I didn't quite understand that actually quite a lot of people know that as well. Quite a lot of people that I've spoken to kind of—it's not anything kind of new to them. They basically know that they're really not a cool organization, actually.

And Johann, when I was texting him, said, "I think he said that TED are bastards." TED really do not treat their people well!

So there might be a story with Johann and TED that I'll dig a little bit more deeply about maybe, but yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.

I love that message, by the way! I'm going to share it with my therapist; it's my job for this weekend because my therapist literally saved my life. It was lost! Keith said, "There's a TED Talk and a book I think you should read," and that's what I'm going to be doing with your TED Talk now!

Exactly! It's like a circle, isn't it? It comes back around.

Well, listen, I'll go and transcribe this. I will send it to you when I've tidied it up a little bit, but it will still be a complete mess. Then just go through and see what you think, and it will be a process now, and we'll get it out in January.

Brilliant! Thank you, Joe!

All right, hun! And yeah, we'll get publicizing your "Audience with an Ally." I've shared it a little bit; I'm going to share it again, but try and send it out. I've sent you the link.

Yeah, I've just signed—my job this weekend is I've just signed up to this short-form content course, so my job for like—I'm going to be posting loads next year. But my idea is like I've wanted to write a book for ages, so I'm breaking my book down into months. So I'm going to do a blog post and loads of short-form videos.

So basically, it's on my agenda. I haven't got much of a following at the minute, but I'm going to do loads of little videos.

Oh, brilliant! Sounds good!

I need to learn how to do little videos! You know that thing called Descript? Have you heard of Descript?

No!

It's like a program that basically transcribes your videos into—no, sorry, edits your videos without having to—basically, you get the transcript and you get the video, and you can cross out some of the words, and it will take out the video without you actually—

Oh, that's really cool!

Yeah! Anyway, for—yeah, exciting!

Thank you so much, Joe!

Thank you, Joe! When it arrives!

Yeah, have a good one, and let me know if you're ever down this way.

Where about are you in London?

Hackney, but I come to Central London quite a lot.

Do you?

Yeah, I might be down there in December, so I'll drop you a text if you—

Yeah, you do! Yeah, that'd be great!

All right, see you! Have a good one!

See you!