Bonus Episode Fight or Flight

0:00Disordered eating messaging is all around us. You can hardly leave your house or check your phone without seeing something about dieting, weight loss, or exercise. With all that pressure, it can be hard to recognize habits have become harmful or even an eating disorder. If you're concerned you or a loved one might have an eating disorder, I want to introduce you to Equip. Equip is a fully virtual, evidence-based eating disorder treatment program that helps patients achieve lasting recovery at home. Every Equip patient is matched with a multidisciplinary care team that includes a therapist, dietician, medical provider, and mentors.

0:37And you get a personalized treatment plan that's tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Equip treats patients of all ages and all eating disorder diagnoses. It's covered by insurance and there's no wait list. If you think that you or a loved one could be struggling with an eating disorder, don't wait to get help. Visit equip.health to learn more. That's equip.health Good morning, welcome I was just saying to Hamish a second ago It's like having your own birthday party And wondering if anyone's actually going to turn up So it's lovely to see some familiar faces And all of you here today I guess I'll introduce myself And I'll play a quick video I'm Danny White-Scorn, managing partner At Starcom within Publicis I'm going to play a quick video And then we'll get into it I'm Danny White-Scorn and this is Behind the Title, where leaders show up differently.

1:30On the outside, everything looks like it could not be better, but on the inside, I was falling apart. That has been probably the biggest challenge that I faced in my career. It was awful, and I was done pretending that I was okay. Behind the Title was created as a platform to help destigmatise otherwise taboo subjects in society and the workplace. Three days after the funeral, I get on a plane, and I was sitting there in this meeting, leading this pitch, going, I can't believe I'm here. I can't, what am I doing? I'm not, I can't be Pippa CEO anymore. You feel like you've failed. You feel, how have we got to this situation?

2:07Could I have done something differently? There's so many posters that say, it's okay not to be okay. No, it's not. It's not okay to not be okay. It's always important to ask for help, to be honest and say, I just can't do this anymore.

2:29Hamish, welcome. Thanks, man. Great to have you here. Do you want to maybe just give a quick introduction to you, your background quickly? So I'm Hamish. I'm currently the CEO of an AI consultancy that I set up with my business partner about six months ago, nine months ago. Before that, I was CEO of Media at Dentsu, then Chief Revenue Officer at The Guardian, then one of the sales directors at Google, and other things before that. But that's me. Amazing. we when i got approached about this uh talk i mean i had to pinch myself for a second because when i started behind the title i never really imagined that i would ever be sitting on a stage here talking about it and for those that don't know what it is um i guess about a year ago i started creating content for myself online which was all designed to help people i guess advance their career um help to elevate topics in the workplace that aren't otherwise discussed um And actually, I was away with a media owner, and they suggested to me, well, have you thought about doing a podcast?

3:31And I was at the time thinking about it. And before I knew it, I was already shooting it in their studios. It was Yahoo Studios. And, you know, we are where we are now in season two. And it's all designed to, I guess, destigmatize taboo subjects that are probably not discussed in the workplace today. And there's nothing like this in the industry. and so I'm incredibly proud that we did this. But the reason why I brought Hamish back on stage was because when I had the idea and I was ready to shoot it, I never knew Hamish, but I'm a bit of a fiend on LinkedIn and I'd seen he posted some stuff and I reached out and we had a conversation and it was really his support and backing that got me to do this.

4:14So that's why I thought I'd bring him back where it all started. So I guess it would be good to understand a bit about, I guess, your background and in particular why it was important to come onto the podcast in the first place. Yeah, thanks, Tony. I mean, the reason I wanted to talk about this was because when I grew up, my mum and dad used to talk about their friends who had had a little nervous breakdown and they weren't doing it kindly, right? That was a character flaw. And that sort of sense of if you can't cope, you've failed was something that was ingrained in me from a very young age because of that.

4:48And I'm sure many people had the same sort of parental views of what it meant. And so it was a stigma. And so when I was going through my own hell for seven years, it stopped me talking to anyone. It stopped me going to get help. And actually it made it compound and get worse and worse and worse, such that it got to a really dark place one morning that I won't go into now. You can listen to the podcast. I talk about it a bit. And if I hadn't been for my wife, I wouldn't be here now because it was like pretty miserable. And so I thought, I don't want anyone else to go through that, because we need to get rid of the stigma that's associated with mental health, especially men's mental health.

5:23And so when you said, do you want to talk about this? I was like, hell yeah. And also, I'd taken a short sabbatical that turned into a very long sabbatical, and I'd set up my own business. And I thought, well, I'm not actually in the industry anymore. You know, not quite like I was. So I haven't got any risks. I can just be confident and talk about this. in the way that I want to. And if my business goes tits up and I need to get a job and someone decides not to employ me because of this, then do you know what? Fuck them. They've just helped me do the filtering for me. I don't want to work there.

5:54So what have I got to lose? And I thought, yeah, I'll definitely need to come do this, Danny. So as soon as you said it, I was like, I'm in. Let me be number one. I want to do this. And I suppose that makes me think, because of the sort of quite privileged position I was in in terms of having no risk, really, in talking about it, did everyone jump at the chance to talk to you? No. It was actually quite tricky at the first point. And largely because of the stigma that's associated with some of these subjects, you know, we cover off everything from kind of, I guess, mental health more broadly, suicide, cancer.

6:31We've got... God, I'm drawing a bit of a blank here. But there's a wide variety of topics, addiction, bereavement. I think that people often just shy away from that. because in society it's just not seen as something we discuss. But if I look at the workforce that I have the privilege to work alongside now, it's a different generation, and that generation welcomes and wants that. But, yeah, there were quite a few that I had to send persistent messages to. What does that tell you about our industry, though, that people don't feel they can actually talk about this stuff? I just find that... I'm not surprised, but I'm really saddened by it.

7:09It is saddening. I mean, and again, as we're editing the footage a lot of the time, we don't do many changes to what you see out there. But I have had some leaders that have actively just asked, could we just tweak this wording or this wording? Because I think there's a perception that if they put something out there that has a word that possibly would associate them with something that either might be quite negative, you know i guess uh be perceived as something could hold them back in their career i think they get quite worried um whereas actually for me it was the opposite i was like again fuck it i don't really care like this is all about it for me this is all about if it can help one person one single person then job's done that's all that matters and the messages that i've received from people and equally the speakers the ones that were reticent to come on are hugely thankful for a chance to share their story i i think the industry unfortunately is the way it is and whilst this podcast won't change the entire industry if it makes some inroads and i think it is because there's the best part of 50 people sitting here wanting to listen You know, we've had the best part of over 100 ,000 minutes listened to of the content.

8:35We've just been commissioned for season three and season four. I've been invited to sit on two panels at Cannes. Mate, that's amazing. Just goes to show that there is some change, but it's taking time. What was interesting was actually your episode. Everyone was feeding back to me on the physiological side of how you talked about, your experience and it wasn't just the stigma of I'm shit or I'm messed up. Actually there is a lot that sits behind that. It'd be great maybe just to unpack that a little bit more for everyone. Yeah, sure. So for people that don't know, my story was I basically burnt out because I was suffering massively from panic attacks and depression and all sorts of things.

9:20And it got to a nasty place. Anyway, I guess the physiological bit. Okay, so how many people have watched Inside Out? You know the Pixar movie? Right, you've all seen it. So it's that story. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's basically this young girl who's about to go through puberty. And in her head, she's got these four characters, like rage, sadness, disgust, and joy. And they're pulling all these levers in her brain, which basically are helping drive who she is. And the whole premise of the first one, anyway, is about making sure that she protects these core memories within her. Because as those core memories breaks and shake, she changes.

9:55Because the concept, and it's actually, remarkably true to how neuroscience actually works but the fact is in all of us through the ages of about three to eight we have that shit going on and we have these core beliefs or what psychologists call schemas that exist inside of all of us that become quite cemented and by the time you get to where I was in my late 40s you can't really change those things they're there and they impact who you are how you see yourself how you see the connections you have in the world and all that sort of stuff. And when some of those core beliefs bump up into something in the real world that sort of seems to contradict it, it causes some stress.

10:33And because your amygdala, so the sort of like the massive monkey brain in the back that powers the fight or flight and all that stuff, I'm sure you've heard this before, can't differentiate between what's physical and what's psychological, that sort of stressful moment of a core belief bumping up into something in real life causes stress. It triggers the amygdala to go, right, shit, let's go fight or flight. And for me, I'll be very open about it because I was on the podcast. For me, there were loads of core beliefs like we all have, but two of them really struck out. The first one was I grew up with an absolute belief, and I don't know where it came from, that if I worked really, really hard, I wouldn't fail.

11:13And that was important because failure was not an option ever. That would be terrible, catastrophic. And the second core belief was because I was brought up by a very practicing Catholic mother, and I was sent off to a Catholic boarding school from a young age, there was this sort of belief that the Almighty, and therefore anyone in authority, was omniscient, omnipotent, and infallible. Like authority, what they said, went. And that meant for everything, right, subconsciously, whether it was a teacher, whether it was a policeman, whether it was a boss. and the problem is as you get more senior your bosses become more difficult right it just it is just the way that it goes uh and your responsibility of successful failure genuinely lands on your shoulders because it's your team it's your responsibility and so if there's a failure in either of those things like there's some weird shit going on with the boss that they seem to be behaving quite unfairly or erratically because they're infallible it's your fault right and that is stressful.

12:16If a failure happens, like you miss a number or there's a risk of missing a number, it's on your foot. You're clearly not working hard enough. And so those two things happen all the time when you get more senior. And for most people, it's like just part of the job. But because they were core beliefs that fundamentally were unshakable truths, it caused me all sorts of stress. And the problem about this shit is it's not just one-off, it compounds. So what I've subsequently discovered is that when you're in a moment of fight or flight, in order that you have the strength and the ability to leg it, right, or fight the weirdly aggressive badger, whatever is attacking you, bits of your brain turn off, right?

12:54So the bits that are associated with empathy, creativity, connection, communication, they switch off because you don't need that when you're running away or fighting. And the other bit of your brain that turns on is scanning. So you're constantly scanning for danger because in that moment, anything could key you. And when you're caught, like I was in this sort of amygdala hijack, when you're always in fight or flight, that's a pretty bad place to be when you're leading a team, right? Because a neutral face, of which there are a few here, back in the day I would have thought, they're disgusted with me, they disagree with me, they hate me, they're angry, because you're tuned psychologically to see neutral as bad, right?

13:34That's what fight or like that. And all sorts of innocuous things get seen as a threat. So a simple text from my CFO going, can we have a chat? Maybe go, fuck, what account have we lost? What sort of skeleton have they uncovered of bad stuff that we're going to have to fix? As opposed to, maybe they just want to have a chat. Maybe it's good news. And those things compound, right? Because your core beliefs might not be bumped into every day, but once it starts setting in, it just compounds all of these things get worse and worse and then it compounds even further because you don't sleep right so what happens is you get woken up and as I was every day for seven years at five o 'clock with a surge of cortisol that then led into panic attacks so you've ended up doing all of this on four or five hours sleep non-stop trying to turn up to meetings to client meetings to your team to your boss to x-cos whatever it is on four or five hours sleep which just is madness and all of that I was like, this is a complete and utter failure.

14:35But what actually then I discovered was, and this was the really powerful bit, was when a therapist took me aside when we were having our conversation and said, look, we can deal with the core beliefs, but I get a sense that for you, the shame of what's going on and what's happened to you is the real big problem. And I said, you're right, I feel properly ashamed. I feel like a failure and I feel like I've let everybody down. She said, okay, stop right there. Let's focus on this. She said, you're perfect. And I went, oh, hello. okay, you've got my attention, I'll listen to this. And she said, no, your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

15:08Anybody who had your core beliefs and your systems and your experience would be having exactly the same thing. You're working perfectly well. We just need to give you the tools and the techniques to ensure that you can manage what your body's designed for. Because the reality is, the body was designed to be running away from saber-toothed tigers and looking for berries and shit, not living in the world that we currently live in with all of the distractions and digital impacts and all the stresses, the little stresses in our lives. It wasn't designed for this. So, you know, it is designed to deal with what it was getting in the way that I was getting it.

15:43And what I learned was that very, very simply, if you can look after, ignoring the core belief bit, which does take a lot of time and a lot of work if you've got those sorts of things that you need to manage, but the actual physiological bit, the trying to get rid of the amygdala hijack, if you focus on four chemicals um legal ones that your body produces dopamine oxytocin serotonin endorphins and you focus on getting the balance of all of those right your nervous system is much more likely to be in a state of balance um all the time and this matters for that five o 'clock wake up so if anybody's suffering from the five o 'clock wake up this is the bit that just suddenly was like a light bulb moment for me was what happens with that is um every human being for the history of time since the first human being took the first step would have had a rise in cortisol from between 4 and 6 30 in the morning because it's what wakes us up it's it's how we get the energy and the motivation to get out of bed and that's fine if your base level of cortisol is down here then the rise of cortisol is just enough to get you out of bed if however like me and like many many people you go to bed and your cortisol is up here by the time you wake up in the morning it does come down a little bit but it doesn't come down enough to counterbalance the fact that the spike in cortisol pushes you into a place of amygdala threat and panic which is exactly what happened to me for seven years because my cortisol was always so high it never came down enough so if you focus on understanding the the sort of techniques that will work for you around dopamine oxytocin serotonin endorphins then you can manage your cortisol levels amongst other things there's loads of other benefits of those four things to prevent those 5am wake-ups and when the therapist was talking to me this it was like wow that is a huge moment for me because I'm like I'm not broken I've got nothing to be ashamed of this is just humans and how we work and I was just never given the tools I was never taught the psychology so then you know we spent hours talking and I spent loads of time reading books and I now know what works for me is 30 or 40 minutes of fairly vigorous exercise a hot sauna jump following by a freezing cold ice bath and fuck man I'll invade France life is good and you've just got to find what works for you I could listen to you for hours we were talking for a long time on the podcast and I guess that's my role is to try and hold space for people to open up and share their experience and we haven't got long left so I'm going to try and draw this to a close we've had some incredible leaders turn up on the podcast and if any of you have listened amazing thank you for giving up your time if any of you haven't, available on Spotify, Apple, all the other podcast platforms.

18:24You can follow me on LinkedIn. Some of the ones that really jumped out to me, similarly to Hamish, again, just learning about this fight-or-flight mentality. If anyone knows Pippa Glucklick, an incredible steward in the industry, talked about, unfortunately, when her husband took his own life. And three days later, she was in a pitch room in the biggest pitch of her life because she felt that she couldn't say no. an amazing episode and you know there's so many more that are on there you know just launched today Ali Reid, Chief Growth Officer of Brain Labs I guess covers a really important topic around you know menopause and perimenopause and you know ultimately when you lose your superpowers what do you do with yourself so that went live this morning so feel free to check it out I mean look for me I guess if I was to I guess leave you with a thought or what i would love from the industry because there is a lot of change that's needed is one get involved listen um share it across your platforms if you know anyone that has a story that you feel would want to come on the podcast and talk let me know this is the only podcast of its of its type um and then of course i mean hamish has been incredibly modest today but he's also one of the chairs of nabs um there's not enough that is done with organizations to support with nabs um you know nabs is the industry leading body that is there to support us and so we need to get more people supporting uh and behind uh behind the cause um i don't know yeah so can you just go back now to your offices and ask whoever's got the purse strings to double what they give to nabs because it's never going to be enough and nabs is such an amazing safety net for the whole of this organization for the whole of this industry that you can't ever give enough and And not very many people in the industry are at the moment because of the tough times.

20:15But please persuade people to give to NABs because it is such a powerful charity. Honestly, this is not enough time to cover this topic. I did ask to go on a big stage, but they told me no. So I'll accept the 20 minutes I was given here. I was told to remind you if you can leave by the back there rather than the left-hand side where you came in, that would be great. Again, please listen, share. Lovely to see so many of you here. Have a great day. Cheers.

21:09off their first order. That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com code smoothie.