No.1 Grief Expert: Why You're Still Hurting & How To Move On

0:00Yeah, you can't logic your way through grief. Absolutely no way. You have to feel your way through it. That's what's hard. Today on the show. Dr. Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell is a chartered counseling psychologist, author, and expert in trauma, loss, and grief with over 25 years of experience. So why is the five stages of grief a myth? When Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did her research, she was interviewing dying people. So she wrote the five stages of grief about mourning for your own life. And it's amazing work. Of course you're going to go through those phases. And we have what are known as trace neurons and they activate and causing you to want to go and fix that problem.

0:37I was 10 days away from having my leg amputated. So I was preparing for thinking, oh my God, what? How can this happen to me? Someone's like not going through grief. The thing that it taught me is how important it is to invest in your friendship. One of the most important things when it does come to grief is you realise maybe where your energy is being placed. It's not being married. It's not having money. It's having good friends. people that can allow you to be you without diminishing you or judging you. So what does one do in that moment when no one shows up?

1:10Guys, I have written a book and I've just heard it's a Sunday Times bestseller, which is very exciting. Now it's called Healthy Shouldn't Be This Hard because truly that is the reason why I really started this show. Healthy really shouldn't be this hard. and the one thing that I found from all the years of being in the well-being space and working as a nutritionist and interviewing incredible people is that there is one vital step that is missing in our health information us and ourselves and being self-compassionate treating ourself as we would a best friend seems to be fully overlooked and maybe even seen as soft but this book is going to help you re-explore that and realize there is so much science behind just how we think shapes every cell in our body shapes our physiology how we metabolize food how we respond to food and even the choices that we make so if you want to know more this book quite literally might change your life so head to the show notes where i put the link you can head to amazon or any good bookstore and you will be able to buy healthy shouldn't be this hard and if you do i'd love to know what you think.

2:14Chloe, welcome. Hi. If I'll be well. Oh my gosh, we're going to talk about something today that I think will resonate with everyone at some point in their life. And we're going to distill what it is. But before we get to the crux of grief, which is what we're going to cover today, the thing I want to ask you is most people may think that grief is something to get over you don't believe that's the right goal so what is when it comes to grief is to learn to live with it to adapt to recognize that you can live a really rich life even in pain even in sadness it's an opportunity to grow so I guess that's like I mean that resonates in a way because I think when it's as soon as I've said grief feels quite heavy you know the emotion feels quite heavy and sometimes we feel that we can get lost in that emotion but as you said to kind of let it become part of you but maybe not fully embody you yeah not to define you there's more to you and to learn to accept it I talk in my book about assimilating it which is learning to honor it I think grieving is a sacred time in our life it's not a pathology it's not a weakness it's a deep found time of transformation and transition where so much of who you are and how you are and how you be is evolving well I think about the word metamorphosis when I think about grief right I in my book I write at the very end of the book how this book saved me the one that I just wrote because I went through one of the hardest grieving processes of my life that was completely unexpected but I look what I achieved in that time yeah and it was far more than I thought I could possibly achieve and so there's this interesting kind of transformation that can happen with grief and I guess I want to start off with maybe something on the positives that can come of outcome of grief when we attach to it why can it be such a transformational experience it's an opportunity to really really show up for yourself recognize what makes sense to you what's meaningful to you who matters why and to take the opportunity to authentically i think authenticity is a really big thing with grieving with all grieving to make this life happy in whatever way you can and by happy I mean connected I mean with a sense of agency a sense of freedom and a sense of authentic meaning it's a really it's a really big thing really big thing I think that's the power of grief I think you know as I said you we can connect so much to when we're in that feeling and I think I can resonate with that so much that it can consume you but actually so many times people have such incredible outcomes the one thing that I find really interesting about grief and I'd love for you to explain this is that sometimes we try and fix grief through logic yeah you can't logic your way through grief absolutely no way you have to feel your way through it and that's what's hard it's really hard because we live in a grief illiterate world and we pathologize negative emotions and suffering we define it as an illness when it really isn't it's absolutely a sent an essential part of the human condition we are all going to go through grief and not all grief is the same but we are all going to go through that time of evolving and transforming and learning to look after ourselves differently, live differently.

6:14And it's fundamental that we recognize that it impacts all of us, the way that we exist in this body, the relationship we have with our identity, with our roles, with our social dimension, who's our tribe, where do we make a contribution that we value and enjoy. And with our spirituality, what does it mean to be here? What do I want to leave behind? What do I want to feel? They're really big things. They're really big questions. You can't logic your way through them. You have to reflect and emotionally transition through them. And that takes time. i think when it comes to the the logic side of thing i think that's what we all try to it's like a journalistic brain that comes in right trying to find answers trying to figure out why something's happened yeah trying to rationalize it trying to make sense of it and i guess what i'm hearing from you is that you have to feel your way through these emotions right feel it in your body and that's really difficult because i don't think we're taught to feel our emotions like we're one of shutting it down and you know I remember when I went through this was many years ago but very bad breakup and called the doctor and they just wanted to put me on SSRIs as a first option and I had to like really kind of connect with myself and do I do that do I not am I trying to because I guess what that's trying to do is like numb my feelings right to get through it yeah and I made the decision to not but it was just really interesting hearing you say that that you know the person that you would naturally maybe call like the GP when you're maybe struggling with grief that was the direct answer to go on and I'm kind of hearing now that actually you have to feel it how can you become comfortable sitting in those feelings yeah pain because it's tough it's really tough and we I would never judge anyone who does need to take medication to regulate their nervous system and to get through what might be an absolutely horrific ordeal i get that i mean it's a really hard decision whether to or not it's really tough it's really tough and sometimes we do need to numb out just to get through just to get through so i meet a lot of people in my clinic that are medicated but it's not going to take your grief away as you said it just numbs you it just allows you a little bit of breathing room to just function but to get comfortable with your emotions you really have to learn to observe them to recognize them in the body so if I say to you Sarah just take a moment now this moment and willingly slow your breath down a little bit so I'm going to breathe a little bit slower and a little bit deeper than I would normally.

9:09And the moment we do that, we feel differently in the body. And as we do that, if I say to you, Sarah, just take a moment to notice where grief or loss may be living in your body right now, instantly, I think within a few seconds or perhaps a minute, you'll start to notice that your grieving, whatever grief you may be going through, lives somewhere in this body and that's the first step because I think the body's the foundation of everything and once you notice it if you don't judge it if you don't try and analyze it and explain it away or logic it away but you notice it you'll start to get information on what it's actually about is it sadness is it sorrow is it anger is it despair rage I don't know the 180 emotions.

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11:24I love that you just mentioned that because I give clients when they come and see me the wheel of emotions oh yeah so useful to try and help them understand absolutely and it's transformative absolutely and we will we do have the the emotional intelligence to really really find that the right word represents that emotion and actually once you name it if you name it sometimes you can't name it sometimes you need to journal it you can allow it to travel through you i've got it in here i have to give it up yeah it's so helpful i've used it in my book as well i haven't i haven't no but i encourage people to look at it if anyone is watching on spotify or youtube you'll see it but there's you know all of these incredible emotions you know you've got your one two three four five six seven kind of yeah and then they branch off into kind of the secondary and third emotions and I honestly think that our emotional granularity being able to explain how we feel yeah or describe describe I think describe is really what we're talking about because in describing it we feel like we are showing up for ourselves and we're honoring it we're honoring our lived experience and we're not taught that we're not actually taught that we're taught that negative emotions are bad that they need to be you know bottled up that might be seen as weakness and the truth is that grief only releases its grip on you when the emotional content of it and the hard existential lessons of it are allowed to travel through you and it's I have a whole chapter actually on learning to process emotions and learning to read what the intelligence is in your heart.

13:12You know, there's a lot of signals, very important life information and guidance. It's your internal compass that lives in your heart where a lot of your emotions are held, actually. How can we get comfortable with processing our emotions? Because I think that's the biggest kind of question here for me. I think it's about recognizing that you're human. And the biggest block to not processing emotions is being very judgmental about them or being quite rejecting of oneself. So lacking in self-compassion. I know you're really big on self-compassion. We have that in common. And the most important thing that helps people live with grief is self-compassion.

14:04I think I've got to do it quite well together. Yeah, they do. They do. I see so many people in my clinic and they're all amazing. And the majority of them arrive with a sense that there's something wrong with them and kind of please fix me. Please fix me. And there's nothing to fix. There's nothing wrong with them. It's learning to be yourself, learning to inhabit yourself. Yeah. And I can just help people. I can hold the space to encourage people to show empathy to themselves. Self-empaty. Yeah, really often when I say, well, what's your relationship with yourself like? The question is often like, well, I don't know.

14:49People don't really think about that very much. They don't really show empathy to themselves. They're really good at showing it to other people, not to themselves. Well, that's actually in my three-step formula of self-compassion. Is it? I can't wait to read your book. The first step is self-empathy. so I say we're so good at being empathetic to other people but we have to flip it back at ourselves and that's the first step because that allows us to connect to how we feel then the second step is mindfulness so connecting and engaging the mindful brain to have more logical rational decisions so you're not bypassing the amygdala yeah and then the third step is resilience like stepping into compassionate strength and doing what's right to love yourself I love it it's beautiful it's really aligned to what I've I've written about really almost almost the same which shows that there's a wisdom to it right yeah we all we all come at it from different angles but with the same overarching understanding of what helps people reach the potential yeah and heal so those that before we haven't like described what grief is and i want to make sure we do that but before we get to describing grief because i know that i think a lot of people might think about grief just as death oh yeah there are so many different compounds of grief right and i'm going to just steal into that but the one thing i want to ask just before that which is a lot of people use distraction when it comes to grief is that a helpful mechanism because for me now hearing what you're saying that actually pulls you away from processing your emotions so what happens if you pile yourself into work or distract or use substances or I don't know anything that can make you not process your emotions is that a good coping mechanism or is that a bad coping mechanism it's a it's a problematic coping mechanism because Because the more you don't process your grief, the more it's going to leak out as a problem at some point, either a physical health problem or a mental health problem.

16:43Now, of course, not all grief is the same. Yeah. And grief doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens in a life that may be carrying lots of different losses. so I'll give you an example of a client recently who's 56 is going through a divorce her only child is leaving home her parent one of her parents has got dementia is going into a care home and frail father needs care there's a lot of loss there and it's profound and it's disarming and devastating so there is no actual death that we're dealing with per se but there's a lot of loss so as you were saying earlier loss happens really invisibly like if you go through a divorce there's no there's no there's no ritual for it there's no scaffolding to hold the bereavement of that or if you lose um or if you if you're coping with childlessness that's a profound loss um if you um leave your country like I have I grew up in Greece I live here I love it I love it in London but you know I am away from home that's a loss that I live with all the time every day you know there's loss everywhere isn't there estrangement that's a loss that I see a lot now people becoming estranged from their families for all sorts of reasons loneliness that's another loss you know I could talk about it all day there's so many different there's so many different it's funny how we don't define it right so let's before we get into defining it how did you get into I mean because it's a it's a heavy topic isn't it yeah and it's I can imagine you have to have a certain type of capacity to hold this space for people every day so like how did you get into working in this area of grief and loss yeah well I guess I had um I guess I'm quite a curious person I have quite a sort of philosophical mind I'm not a philosopher but I'm quite interested in what it is to be human and from a very early age I felt othered and alienated um I was born as I said I was um born in Greece and I went to a local school in Athens and unfortunately through my primary school years my teacher was rather racist against British people wow and I looked very British I looked very English I was very blonde my mother's English so from pretty much the age of about six or seven she excluded me so she would say you're not allowed to participate in history lessons I found that so humiliating and so confusing because I loved my culture I loved my history I wanted to be a great, you know, I wanted to be part of it.

19:31So that was the beginning. Being excluded from the tribe is one of the most, I guess, like evolutionary, like negative experiences that you can, you know. Because if you're abolished from a tribe, you don't survive. I wasn't abolished, but I wasn't welcomed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was humiliated. Yeah. And then she took it upon herself to pick on me pretty much every week and put me in front of a whole class. I think about it now and I think, oh, my goodness, that's so abusive. and pick out that I didn't know my, I didn't have my answers just right. And she would make me put my hands out and whack me with a ruler that had a metal rod in it.

20:04What? Yeah. So that was normal in the 70s. You know, I'm a lot older than you. So I had those kind of experiences and I had great parents. I had really lovely grounding, good family life. but as I progressed through life a couple of very very sad events happened where loved ones died and that really threw me it really shocked me and I became absolutely curious about well how what is it to to be well what is it to be happy what is it to be human I was just it was just my mind and I studied psychology and the more I studied psychology the more I got into trauma because I'm a trauma psychologist really that's my work and I worked for the BBC for a number of years as a organizational psychologist for them and particularly for BBC News and did a lot of work supporting crew and journalists who are in hostile environments wow they were brilliant people yeah fascinating absolutely fascinating really highly functional professional educated resilient out there absolutely capable but at times traumatized because of the nature of their work and the constant exposure to trauma and war and hostile events and that's when I in my 20s I did my PhD in traumatic loss so I kind of got into it and sort of roundabout roundabout way eventually left working for the media and work for myself and love it I love it so it's heavy but it's massively rewarding yeah because people do heal and people do grow and people do turn adversity and horrific events into huge huge uh opportunities in a way I'm not eradicating the sadness and the despair absolutely not but you can come through to the other side and feel like you've evolved and that there is light and you can laugh again yeah you can love again i think that is one of the most important things for someone to hear um that's why i wrote my book because so many people so many people talk about feeling that they're just not going to be okay ever again and it's understandable but there is light there is light at the end of the tunnel that's the brain that plays the trick on you and it's tough it's really tough to get out when it's all consuming, I mean I feel like I resonate a lot and I read about what I went through in my book but I think like knowing that there's hope for the tunnel is the most important thing most wellness products are built for someone with four hours sleep to spare and a cold plunge in their garden, Dion is built for the rest of us.

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23:36Grounded is launching very soon and you can shop both at diome.co. That's D-I-O-M-E dot co. Use code Sarah20 for 20 % off, whether you're buying once or subscribing. Have you seen that recent paper that came out around trauma? I'm sure you have. Which one? It's circulating all over social media. um so i'm a big fan of the body keeps the score oh yeah um by basil and he his book was quite transformative for me and my own kind of understanding of grief um and i worked really hard on somatic body work for me to kind of process more of the feelings that you were talking about and to not logic my way out and recently there's been a new paper that's come by saying it's not stored in the body emotions aren't stored in the body they're all stored in the mind and there is this like massive moment online where people are going that's incorrect that's not true and then there's the other group kind of saying absolutely it's been proven what as a trauma um therapist and he kind of done your phd in this area what's your understanding of that paper okay um i don't know the the nature of the research so you can bend research to prove whatever you want to prove really i'm not discrediting that research but you can you can um but i do need to look at it properly now that you've um reminded me of it

25:05i i my understanding is that um the limbic system is the mind and uh everything is experienced as i understand it in through the nervous system and that we can't really separate it. You can't separate it. You don't exist unless you exist in your body. And what my understanding of grief is, which is based on the work of Mary Frances O 'Connor, who's a really credible, very serious, yeah, grief researcher, the author of The Grieving Brain and The Grieving Body. And I totally get what she's doing and why she's doing it. And the research that she's producing, which I've written about and spoken about a lot, is about the brain needs to learn loss.

26:01It needs to assimilate it on a neurological level. So shall I explain it? Would it be helpful? Absolutely. I think I just wanted to get up that it says in this paper that trauma may be better understood as a disorder of prediction rather than literal storage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with that. I totally agree with that. Do you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. Totally. because we live in a where our brain is predictive so everything that um you have incorporated into the fabric of your life um people routines locations um even even celebrities you know they exist neurologically in the locate in the neural network of your brain and that collect that collection of neurons represents them and their position in your life so if I ask you to think of your best friend you'll be able to pretty much guess where they are on the planet how long it'll take you to make direct contact with them and how to make direct contact with them so the map is a 3d map and that is the predictive world we're in so we don't use reality to anchor ourselves we use what we've designed what we've created of reality in our mind to predict it it's it's it's literally a memory map so I'll give you an example if you um have a dining room and you've got a dining table I heard Mary Francil Connor talk about this the other day and I thought that's a really good example I'm gonna copy it um and for some reason you have to get rid of the table and then you get up in the middle of the night and you go to your kitchen but you have to go through your dining room and the table's not there but you're kind of half asleep your body your mind will notice the absence of the table because it's mapped it it's expecting to find the table there so even as you walk through an empty room you'll feel on a on a visceral level oh the table should be here it sounds silly doesn't it but that's the world we're in so you map your people and yourself into that 3d world wow and you use that I use that with us what we all do to predict reality and we wake up every day thinking it's going to be a normal day the reality I meet is going to be the reality I've already encoded in my mind and when that is mismatched and suddenly it's not what you expect it to be that's when trauma happens so I agree with that I agree with that paper I don't think I don't think Basel van der Kolk ever meant it as in it literally you know materially exists in the cells yeah um so how do we then okay so we can't work our way through logic so how do we then rewrite that map in our brain yeah so the brain will rewire itself naturally anyway okay so it will take time so um remember when the queen died what a mass grief reaction that was and she was incorporated into everyone's fabric and people reacted to it yeah but the closer the bond the closer the attachment the more significant and profound the connection is the longer it takes for the brain to assimilate it so when you lose a loved one and you even maybe you knew it was coming your mind will still try and locate them into physical time and space because their absence they're suddenly missing from your 3d map is alarming and we have what are known as trace neurons and they activate they literally go like that and causing you to want to go and fix that problem to go and find them and bring them back right so you might find that you know if you're going through a really difficult breakup even if you've decided that that's what you want to do they will be a part of your brain that will be thinking well I just want to I just want to see what they're doing or I want to I want to have another chat with them or I really I really want to go back and talk to them again or I really miss them or you know they'll be your mind will be trying to bring them back does that make sense yeah it's trying to find solutions and it you can't stop that from happening you can't stop that from happening so it will take time and what I advise people who are going through a difficult grief is to sit is to find the courage and the headspace to sit with it and that's why it helps when we sit by the graveside of loved ones and we literally see their name and their birth date and their death date it actually helps the brain assimilate that information wow I think that's the opposite of what I feel like we're taught to do oh yeah yeah you know the opposite I think is like you know come on yeah cheer up yeah put a smile on your face it's sunny today I mean I think when I was going through bad grief at one stage everyone around me tried to you know I remember people being like but look it's so sunny today outside like isn't this great and it would really anger me and I wouldn't say that to them because I know it's coming from a good place but it's this really distinctive language I think when you're grieving that those things are really difficult to find you can't find them you can't you can't leap into that because when you're when you're grieving um the void feels huge your hormones drop so you're not going to have serotonin you're not going to have your usual dopamine everything is in a time of disequilibrium yeah um so you are you know you can't be you can't leap into optimism and enjoy the sunshine it's really difficult and there is a misconception that you know once you've done the first year of a significant grief that you should you should be better you should be over it so what's the time span around grief then well I wish I knew I don't know I mean it depends it depends on what you're grieving who you're grieving how many other losses you're dealing with what your own relationship is with your internal world and your emotions what you were modeled when you were a child I mean there's so many factors that will shape your own grieving journey and there's no predicting but really the first year almost doesn't count it's a first of everything and it's for most people just going through the motions just learning to tolerate if it's an unbearable loss you know to tolerate the pain to try and survive it to try and be as functional as you can be and human second year I hate to say it but it's really tough second year can be harder because you feel like well I got through the first year and I'm not feeling any better now what am I going to feel like this forever and the good news is you don't feel like that forever but the first two years are early days especially if you're grieving you know a child or a partner or a really really treasured loved one and you're just not okay with what happened you can't logic your way through that i have one small ask while you're watching this show if you're enjoying it please hit subscribe on whichever platform you're listening on this really really helps the show more than you can realize it helps people that have never listened to the show before come across it and see all the incredible episodes that we have with the amazing guests so if it is one small favor today if you're not already a subscriber please do subscribe i think that's a really important thing for people to understand so i guess i mean we do have a lot of american listeners on this show as well um but i think in the british culture we don't speak very much about grief um you don't get days off for grief really um potentially if you've lost somebody and there's a death you might do but for a breakup you don't um for a loss of the child I don't know if you do make I think some people are still ashamed to talk about those things um especially with miscarriages people think I just get up and get on with it um the the loss of a friendship I find that very complicated and confusing one to talk about like losing a friend and a friendship breakup you know how can we like what tools and how can we use this podcast to get people to support themselves when they're going through grief so apart from sitting with the feeling which can be the hardest thing in the world um but you said one of my most favorite lines which is courageous what else can someone do i think it's really important to remember that loss is part of life and even if you yourself haven't haven't been impacted by devastating loss I guarantee that somebody that you work with or that you live with or who's in your network is going through a loss they won't it's just everywhere and some of it is just about recognizing that the loneliness of invisible loss does harm to people and the the anxiety that people have is that I don't want to be a Debbie Downer I don't want to be a burden on people the burden is a big one I don't want to be all doom and gloom I don't want to be the miserable one so people silence themselves because they feel like that there won't be it won't be okay for them to be sad or to be up to be in grief so what we can do is normalize it humanize it and check in like literally like how are you doing tell me what's happening are you okay shall we go for a walk tell me and listen people want to fix grief and you can't fix it this compulsion to cheer everybody up doesn't help the mode is a big one it's a big one but i can even get angry at myself when i was going through why am i not better you get very frustrated i think that's a universal feeling that many of us have like you know like just get on with it like come on like why am I still there and I think that's what many of us can say to ourselves when we're going through it yeah yeah which just isn't helpful not at all no it's not helpful at all I think the challenge is to just recognize it and to say okay here you are okay I'm gonna have one of those days today I need to look after me and us you know the versions of our I believe that we carry many many different versions of ourselves we're not just a fixed entity we have many many versions and I don't really know what version of myself I'm going to be in two hours and nor do you yeah so um when when we talk about grief it's really important to not see it as a fixed thing so there'll be days where you feel like you've got a little bit more energy or a little bit more optimism or something's happened that's nurtured a part of you and you think okay I'm all right today and other days where you haven't got it you feel more griefy so the grieving you needs to be compassionately loved like literally acknowledged welcomed like a like a trusted old friend and nurtured simply I think this is a good time to talk about something that was really interesting on your perspective of things about the five stages of grief now I think that's a common um well I was gonna say it's a common myth now because I know that you say that that's not actually true and it's been dispelled in research quite a lot but I remember that being said to me a while ago of like okay these are the ways you're going to go through it's going to be shock it's going to be anger you're going to get to acceptance and you talk about these you don't but research has spoken in the past about these five stages of grief so I think the thing I find with grief is that when you're in that you will try and find anything to hold on to and you're like okay here is the answer there is a logic to this this is the this is the way that I'm going to go on but I think that most people that have connected to grief or had have experienced grief will know that it is not a simple one stage two three four five process some days you're five steps ahead and the other days you're ten steps back i think that's the confusing thing about grief yeah so why is the five stages of grief a myth okay so when elizabeth kubler ross did her research she was interviewing dying people so she wrote the five stages of grief about mourning for your own life wow that's quite a different grief yes now it's profound work and it's amazing work and of course you're going to go through those phases she deeply regretted using the word stages because what as you said you know people want to find something you know solid to stick to but it isn't it isn't a staged process.

39:17I think if we replace the word stages with phases, then that might, that might offer a comfort. But it's also really important to recognize that you don't go through it in a linear way. So you might find that you jumble about with it. So you might find that you're in denial for a long time and then you're angry about it and then you're back to denial and then you have a moment of acceptance and then you're back to feeling depressed and it's zigzagging all over the place. Sounds like life. It's life, it's life because so much, I mean there's so much to say, so much of how you make sense of your own lived experience is subjective it's how you reflect on it it's how you handle it so it's not only what do you think it's also how do you what's your attitude to it so if you're if you're not compassionate to yourself and empathic and you have a very self-critical perspective of you and you're carrying an internal belief that you're not good enough or you're not worthy enough or this has happened to you because you're unlucky or I don't know just a negative self-belief and you haven't got the right support and you haven't got people who are checking in and making you feel like what you're feeling is normal then very quickly you can start to other yourself and mute yourself empathologize yourself and gaslight yourself yeah you can you can in in in the hope that this will go away and it doesn't go away there's a lot that um we can do to help ourselves and letting go of the idea that this is going to be a recognizable staged process is one of those things like what actually helps grief is normalizing it telling yourself that you're having a normal reaction to an abnormal situation you're not wired to tolerate loss indefinitely and you're not wired to live in an uncertain unpredictable world indefinitely so if you're grieving you're human and that's all right I think that's such a big thing isn't it that I think it can be even well this is a thought that I had right we think about how we project into society today yeah we think about all the things that we see on social media we now see the best parts of everyone's lives every day 20 years ago less so um we wake up we maybe look on linkedin at everyone's success we then look at instagram everyone's perfect relationships and work success um you know we will ask how people's day are and everyone says great very often do people say like it's quite tough so we're a constant we're in a constant consumption of everyone's best parts of their lives which I think when you're maybe not feeling great can even emphasize so much more of what you're going through yeah and then I think about the evolution of like where we are today and this I'm not you know it's not like I'm putting a religious belief out there because that's not kind of what I'm doing but there's less religious communities and I think when you have religion you're more connected to maybe hope or an understanding or a community um you also were less likely to live in in communities you know you've left greece i grew up near portsmouth my dad grew up with everyone that lived down his road like all his aunts and uncles so he had this amazing infrastructure but literally three houses away somebody was there you know i've lived in london for nearly 20 years now like i've lived away from my my family so that infrastructure is different people might live halfway across the other side of the world so we're we're more disconnected we're more nomadic than ever before right since covid now we don't go into the office as much um so we have all these structures that are maybe like pulled apart does that amplify how we deal with grief more so than ever before i think so i think i think that's a very important point there is um huge disconnection happening and even though we're talking a lot more we're not really connecting and I see an awful lot of loneliness like a lot of loneliness and people who have busy lives show up in the therapy room profoundly alone and invisible you know their internal experience is silenced and we seem to have missed or forgotten the lesson that actually human relationships deepen and become safer when we can trust the other and be open and be vulnerable like when I can be really open and vulnerable with my closest people that relationship feels stronger yeah 100 and but it's nothing to be afraid of there's a lot of good people around but we don't connect i think it's really sad yeah really sad i just think it's such an interesting modern way to look at grief because i think sometimes i'm like are we finding it harder to connect to grieving than ever before because of the environment and the infrastructure that we've created i think so because people are very busy they literally can't stop yeah there's a lot of stress there's a lot of um needing to keep the show on the go literally and um what again um one of the really interesting pieces of research um that has come out recently is the reality that if we wire people up when they're going through an intensely difficult time we'll see that there's a negative tension that's you know the body is emitting right we are an electrical energy right and the only thing that reduces the the negative tension is being witnessed by another human being or an animal but for most people it's another human being that's why therapy works that's the only reason why therapy works it's about the quality of the relationship and feeling like there's resonance another human being resonates with me sees it and is not judging me is allowing me to be with her that's it that that's that's the only thing that works the moment we try and fix somebody or instruct somebody or manage somebody or track somebody we've lost them so what can someone do if they're sitting with someone's grief because i think they're like the immediate lean in is like okay like how can i help what can i do like what can someone do what would you advise some questions or space to give that person good question is um just learn to be with it listen and offer practical help don't ask them what help they need offer it whatever you see if you think the bin needs emptying empty the bin sometimes it's these really small tasks yeah really helpful yeah yeah or if you think you can help with a school run offer it and please don't rely on text messages um I went through a very very difficult time um about 18 months ago where I had a horrific accident and I was in a wheelchair and very disabled and it was awful it was really awful but anyway luckily I'm on the other side of it now But I went through a profound grief then, a very, very difficult, challenging grief because I was 10 days away from having my leg amputated.

47:19So I was preparing for thinking, oh, my God, what? How can this happen to me? You know, the usual kind of crisis of everything. And I would get lovely text messages from people. But I didn't get anybody showing up. Like very few people actually knocked on my door or picked up the phone. I mean, some people did, but not as many as I thought would. And that really upset me. Like, it really made me think, okay, so what's happened? Have I done something? Am I not important enough? You know, it sort of triggered my own self-doubt and maybe some of my own fear of being alone or being alienated or kind of excluded in some way because I have my own stuff with that.

48:04And I don't mind sharing it. But I think anyone would feel the same. Yeah, but a lot of texts, and I got quite annoyed with the texts because I can't be bothered. I'm really tired. I'm really lonely. If you want to see me, come and see me. And I know texts are helpful, but when you're going through a difficult grief, they're not support. So you don't get to send a how you're doing thinking of you text and think that you've done your thing. Yeah. Does that make sense? well I mean I connect to this so much because when I went through what I went through I've become the thing that's come from what I went through was a deeper connection to my friends yeah because I think I was normally the one that everyone came to but I didn't go to other people I'm the same very hyper independent which I'm realizing it's not a strength and I think when I collapsed burn and crashed so badly and so profoundly in front of people the opposite happened where people did show up and i didn't but i hasn't been expecting that because i was always like somebody who deals with something on their own and i had yeah i mean it really touched me and it made me a different and better person that's lovely because it made me realize like i actually have people that are here and i'm not on my own whereas i think i felt for a long time i can do this all on my own and i always will and actually the the trauma traumatic event that happened made me realize that i wasn't but i kind of needed to break for myself to see that which i find really interesting it was like the universe if you believe in that was trying to say like no look you're actually not on your own yeah and it's given me the biggest best relationships ever since then wonderful which i don't think i would have ever got yeah i didn't go through that Yeah, that's amazing.

49:59I love that. That's so profound and so encouraging for people. And it's exactly what I was talking about earlier, that you can come through this feeling like you've grown, that you've become a bigger person, a better person as a result of it. More connected. Absolutely. Absolutely. I had a different experience where people that I thought were going to be there weren't. That also happened to me. And people that I didn't think were going to be there were. Yeah. and so so my friendship group changed and I found that I I grieved a little bit the assumption that I had better friendships than I did that that played its little part for me um did it allow you to narrow focus on the ones that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah without a doubt I think we try and spread ourselves to so many people and actually when those moments happen the people that really show up you're like no these are the ones that are actually they're real friends here yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's okay and you put more of your effort yeah into building that yeah then actually the vast amount yeah maybe you thought you did have yeah you actually strengthen the bonds i think more yeah yeah i think you do i i totally agree with that totally agree with that but it can be quite frightening if nobody shows up 100 unfortunately i do see that a lot because i tend to do a lot of very serious trauma where horrific things have happened and people are scared to engage with that so what does one do in that moment when no one shows up well that's pretty pretty devastating isn't it and I think it what do you do you have you you'd hope that there would be at least one one person that you can pick up the phone or you can say please come over I need some I need some accompanying I need I need to I need to not be alone um if that if that doesn't exist then a professional and there are organizations that will reach out and will help people particularly you see this a lot with elderly people actually you know there's organizations like help the aged or cruise bereavement who will come to your home and will sit with you and will help you through it but it's really sad it's really sad when that happens and it's devastating I think what this even makes me think about someone's like not going through grief or maybe listening to this someone else I think this shows the importance of investing in the good friendships and relationships in your life because there could be a whole number of reasons of why that doesn't happen but I think the thing that it taught me is how important it is to invest in your friendships or any relationship that you have in your life to nourish it because they don't just they're not just there and they survive you have to really put time in and I think sometimes if we put too much time into our work oh yeah or maybe just a romantic partnership or just one thing then we isolate ourselves from everything else because everything takes time and energy right to disperse around and actually I think one of the most important things when it does come to group as you realize maybe where your energy is being placed having friends is the most important predictive factor in longevity i don't know if you've seen the research out of harvard yeah yeah yeah i i talk quite a bit about that in my in one of the chapters in my book um it's not being married it's not having money it's having good friends people that can allow you to be you without without diminishing you or or judging you it's a really big thing really important what happens when we go through a friendship breakup oh no one talks about this elizabeth day has spoken about this a little bit but like it's one of those things that i think it can be as painful i mean if you're very close yeah it's heartbreak it can be it's gonna say it's similar to a heartbreak but if you have a very dear friend and you don't know maybe what happened or why you've broken up like how do you process that and why is it not spoken about i don't know why it's not spoken about i really don't know because it's it's very it happens a lot um and it's proper heartbreak it's really a challenge to try and reframe it and well lots of things but one of them is another person's behavior and decision is not necessarily a reflection of you it's a reflection of their capacity I think capacity is one of the most important words we have to understand as somebody's capacity and we don't know so we don't know people's whole story we think we do but actually we don't it's our own internal projection of what we think it is exactly so there will be factors shaping your friend's decision that you don't know that are nothing to do with you and your job is to be good with how you've shown up in that friendship and take responsibility for how you've contributed to that friendship obviously maybe there's some learning to be done maybe some recognition but to not have the chance to thrash it out, to talk it through or to say goodbye is devastating.

55:34I think it's really, really hurtful and people make decisions for all sorts of reasons, don't they? And your job, if you're going through a friendship breakup is to question and reflect on what kind of friends are you drawn to why would you want to be friends with somebody who's abusive because that is abusive to suddenly say well I don't want to be your friend anymore to not to not communicate to not reciprocate to not build yeah to not recognize the impact of that on you so there's there's lots that could be said about it so interesting it's like friendships and breakups why would you want to be associated with someone that can potentially hurt you if there is no closure to that relationship I mean I mentioned to you before the show one of our biggest episodes we've ever had listened was the Alan de Botton episode that we had which was around relationships and the biggest spike in that episode that we saw was all on heartbreak and it made me realize just how universal oh yeah this concept is yeah um and actually i directed the episode more towards you know self-growth and understanding of self but the relationship part of that episode was huge and the heartbreak is honestly some of the comments that i read under on youtube were like well they were heartbreaking and it's when people don't get closure and it feels what you just said to the friendship similar to the breakup that when we don't have closure it seems to be the most destructive outcome for one when it comes to grief yeah it's very well it's very painful because it it it's like the story ends abruptly and we don't get to author some of it or the end of it and it's really frightening because it was unpredictable what happens in the brain though like because is it is it going to constantly try and close that loop is it going to be like oh yeah it would be it would be very normal for for the brain to ruminate to try and look for the pitfalls to look for the where were the signs that i could have predicted this that i could have seen this was coming where were the red flags why didn't I see them why didn't I do something about it I think all of that is very very normal but it's important to try and become an observer to yourself I don't know if you if you work like this but to kind of hover above yourself above your life and and look at yourself with some compassion and some understanding that you do the best you can with what information and resources you have at the time and your needs may change maybe you were in a relationship where you were looking for security um and you thought you'd found it maybe the information you had was was correct at the time and things change so it's very very sad to go through a breakup and the lack of closure is a cruelty isn't it there's a lot of ghosting that goes on yeah a lot and um it's really hard really hard to disconnect from that but you have to acknowledge the impact on you and to learn from it and really I think we do get the injuries that we need to learn our lesson you know I'm a big believer in that you know all of these things happen until you learn your lesson and you don't do those same choices again and i think you know it's in a really important way to look at things yeah yeah like what was it that that what was it that that person had to teach me that i yeah exactly myself or was there a part that i self-abandoned in this that i or disconnected you know or you know am i going to make i'm going to be aware of this again when i go into my next relationship there's all these and i think it's interesting because i think your body can send you signals oh gosh yeah when you're like not sure and you're constantly thinking and somebody might you know be very charismatic and be able to kind of like win the way in and so your brain rationalizes with like oh no this i'm sure it's fine but i think your body is an amazing intelligent machine that can give you signals absolutely and also people don't go into relationships uh with the same intentions yes right so there can be a lot of mismatching there also with the same energy so some people will go into a relationship with with a wider spectrum of emotional intelligence that can sometimes be wonderful but it can also be a massive problem if you're if you're with a partner that hasn't got a lot of emotional intelligence or some people go into it armored in their ego fully defended quite transactional quite capable perhaps quite charismatic but nevertheless in their ego rather than in their heartfelt self so what's going on with the dynamics and what kind of relationships you get drawn into and people have patterns well that's an important one I think to touch upon yeah because I think patterns can be confused with intensity of love yes and infatuation yes as opposed to genuine safety yes i totally agree but but what what i think will happen is whatever unconscious belief you have about yourself that is the evidence you're going to be collecting to prove yourself right and unconsciously you will be drawn to partners that prove that reality to you even though logically you'll be like oh no I'd never do that in practice that's what happens we unconsciously create the reality that we need to confront in ourselves to release from it and grow and become wiser and bigger and better yeah but that that's often the work of therapy isn't it to sit with the well what what am I actually telling myself about myself how do I treat myself how do I see how do I see myself how do I what do I want to feel what do I want to experience what where is my future self and how do I treat my past selves how fragmented am I there's so much that goes into it I think yeah it's it's such an interesting question when we to look for partners isn't it oh gosh yeah because sometimes we're just kind of blind in it and then we're like how did i get here what happened to me yeah and then i think and i think you know we were saying in the beginning about the word metamorphosis but i do think that that's why sometimes although they're painful they can be transformative because it makes you ask these questions to yourself which i don't know when you're in a great space and having the time of your life and fun dating you don't always necessarily potentially think about these things it's more when you're in a reflective period or like maybe I don't want to go through this again yeah fair enough that you tend to think about those questions don't you yeah totally but don't you think we get drawn into um patterns and dynamics that connect to our wounded inner child it's like we just keep going through that until until we realize that that's what's happening yeah and then we we we evolve and we say okay no no more but one of the problems I see in relationships a lot because I do a lot of marriage counseling or couples counseling is the idea that if I compromise I'll get what I need now I think what I'm going to say is probably a bit controversial but but compromise doesn't work if you're compromising and it's well I did this for you so you need to do this for me you're not a team that's like tip-tap isn't it well that's how often relationships, particularly lifelong, you know, long-term relationships, become and resentment builds.

1:03:49And there's a kind of the notion of, well, I've sacrificed an essential part of me. What have you done for me? It changes the partnership dynamics. Wow. So what I think repairs relationships is taking responsibility for that and saying, well, okay, how do we collaborate? what does it mean to be collaborative to be reciprocal in what you want what I want and how do we make it work for both of us so it's not an either or but that can kind of ripple through all sorts of different things from lifestyle to finances to parenting to sexual relationships to I don't know the whole spectrum of life and it can become very messy so breakups are devastating because so much of that work probably hasn't been untangled and properly reflected on so you end up carrying it all on your own which is pretty lonely it's so lonely and then I guess that's maybe when you go into more of a self-blame right I guess that's probably when the the journalist of the self-playing comes in and was like well you know you should have seen these flags earlier or you shouldn't have self-abandoned or you shouldn't have done these things yeah shouldn't is a terrible terrible sentence isn't it if I could ban it I would I know so would I although my book has shouldn't in it so I thought does it healthy shouldn't be this half oh no that's that's a good one I like that um but I it's I just find relationships one of the most interesting things to look at because they're all so different oh gosh yeah yeah yeah yeah there's no two relationships alike no um just like there are no two people that are exactly the same what do you think makes a good relationship then from all the ones if you go on into marriage counseling that you've seen not work uh trust there has to be trust so important it's i think you haven't got trust you haven't got anything you can't really be in an intimate relationship of any kind with a person that you don't trust and it's important that in that both of you have to work to build that trust oh my goodness yeah because I think some people you know can easily throw the term of like you should trust me but I think it's an important cohesive relationship where you share vulnerabilities and you build that trust together exactly and if you can't share what you're feeling then you can't build the trust yeah you need to feel held yes you need to feel met you need to feel understood so that you can have psychological safety to touch so that it can become trust and really the relationships that really heal and recover are the ones where there's deep respect and friendship it's not so much about the passion or about the sexual connection although of course that's very important it's more about the shared humanity do you have a shared project you need a shared project you need a shared vision of something and if you haven't got that then you're just two people orbiting each other and probably letting each other down all the time or frustrating each other what about low ego what do you mean oh having bringing bringing a low ego well I think you need to leave your ego at the door if you want a relationship to be humane and compassionate it cannot be about servicing your ego and people that are very defended in their ego just bring that and the ego can't see beyond itself yes which means that you're then punished for not servicing that ego if you're the partner or you're diminished you're devalued eventually you're discarded but because the ego may depend on you you're then going to be hoovered up and you see that a lot particularly in kind of narcissistic dynamics so ego out the door please yeah it doesn't work I think that's maybe an important sign when you're kind of choosing partners to see that trait in people because i don't think sometimes it can look people can see that maybe it's quite um attractive in the beginning it can be right because an ego can be very charismatic yeah and of course we do need an ego i'm not saying that we need to go through life without an ego i think it has a very useful function but when it comes to building community and family and partnerships it's not that useful yeah it gets in the way and it causes rage and abuse very often and an ego will bend reality it will twist reality um so you end up feeling like your version of reality is totally different to your partner's version of reality yeah um because you're not bringing your authentic inner self to it you're bringing a controlling self yeah i think it's so important people to understand that yeah yeah yeah it is and if you're going through a breakup like that and you're having to make your peace with the fact that you were in a relationship with an ego that's really devastating and people will carry shame about that like why didn't i see it how did i how did i get caught up in that yeah um but but you can't see it sometimes you have to come out of it to see it and what's your advice for people going through that to be kind to yourself to see it as a reflection of their capacity as we were saying earlier rather than a measure of your worth yeah a lot of people feel like it's just confirmation that they're worthless or that they're not lovable it's not true you are lovable um it just wasn't the right person and if if they're in a relationship with their ego they can't really be available to you so they're not they're not that important i don't know that sounds terrible but you kind of have to make your peace with that well i think you have to put yourself back in the driving seat yeah you do yeah you do yeah i think that's the most important yeah yeah and yeah how important is something like emdr grief it can really help can it yeah i think so i don't practice it so i'm not the most qualified but i'm not qualified in it so i've seen it work but not always like with everything yeah i think it can it can be very useful particularly if there's um visceral trauma if you're dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder seems to be evidence that it works yeah I find it interesting because I think when we think about grief we think about talking therapy or doing things with our friends but there's so many different things out there that people can do I mean you mentioned breath earlier oh yeah um and that's a big one um sometimes meditations I guess but that can also be quite hard maybe if you're going through grief um walking is that quite a helpful one I always think about regulating the nervous system when it comes to breathe like things that are going to help yeah back into balance a little bit more yeah yeah soothe you absolutely totally agree so my approach is mind body heart soul so sort of do something a prescription as such to help all of you so yes anything that allows you to cross the left right brain barrier so walking gardening housework I don't know anything cooking can actually be quite grounding quite therapeutic walking seems to be psychologically quite symbolic like you're walking through and a lot of people will go on long long grief walks and it does it does calm you down a little bit the breath work's really important obviously slowing your heart rate down and giving yourself a little bit of room because your cortisol levels drop when you do that as I'm sure you know but one of the things that I do very very often as a first step is to create a symbolic safe space in the mind's eye so that because when you're in a complete state and you're just utterly you know you're on the floor you you're you're broken you can't meditate you can't really regulate your body because it's too dysregulated so one of the things that helps is if you can't move like for me one of the challenges when I went through my injury is I couldn't do what I would usually do like go on a walk I couldn't do that and it was really really difficult to try and find you know regulation through that but anyway the safe space is a symbolic safe space in your mind's eye that creates a place that you can travel to whilst you slow your breath down so you have a focus and it's the same safe place it's not a happy place it's a safe place it's different and it can't have any connection to what's traumatized you or hurt you and it can be very very detailed so you have it up your sleeve when you're feeling overwhelmed when you're feeling like just not sure i can get through today go and hang out in your safe place for two or three minutes and know it that's my safe place and for most people it is a spot in nature but if you haven't got a real spot create one use your imagination get get a fictional one and some people will go and hang out on other planets or sit on the moon or you know whatever whatever works but that that that helps the brain calm down so it takes it out of its uh stress response because when the world's unpredictable what we were talking about earlier the brain goes into survival mode survival mode means everything's shut down you cannot reflect you can't possibly reflect that part of your brain is not available so you need to kind of calm it down and bring it back online through simple simple simple exercises i think we've said these words a couple times we actually haven't defined them and I think it's important to the difference between regulation and dysregulation because I remember the first time my therapist said to me you're very dysregulated and I just looked at her and thought what does that mean because I think sometimes we can think our dysregulation is normal um and I think it's not until you connect to that phase or someone can see it in you that you go later on in life like oh i now know that i'm not regulated but i think because we live chronically stressed if we're busy people or whatever sometimes we can be dysregulated without knowing that we're dysregulated so how can someone like listen to this being like am i regulated am i dysregulated like what does that mean yeah okay that's a good question being um regulated means that you're not in survival mode so what the brain will do is when it's assimilating loss it will necessarily keep throwing you into survival mode because it's doing all the work it has to do to create a world that includes the absence of this person or role or location or whatever and in order to do that it releases more cortisol and it takes all change and all loss as a deadly threat it doesn't really know that you're in the 21st century and that this is a breakup and it's not going to kill you it just takes all changes very very threatening so you know you're dysregulated when your body is in fight or flight or freeze mode and there are very real symptoms that come along with that and maybe I'll share some of them yeah so shallow breathing that's one of the most often one where you think oh yeah I'm not actually breathing properly I'm just shallow breathing here I'm not breathing from here um having digestive issues feeling um irritable getting angry very readily um having uh difficulty sleeping feeling anxious feeling dizzy becoming noise intolerant becoming withdrawn so wanting the world to become a very small place sort of checking out finding that you're acting out so you are spending a lot more money or suddenly you've become very promiscuous or you suddenly want to make some major life decisions that have come out of the blue you know I'm leaving um kind of you know like major uh things very impulsive very impulsive yeah um getting um ill all the time your immune system flaring up uh getting hot and cold

1:17:15what else getting very dizzy did I say that getting getting headaches not being hungry yeah yes yes yes not wanting to eat or wanting to compulsively eat rubbish yeah because you're that's your brain kind of tricking you that you need to consume calories putting on a lot of weight becoming very kind of you know heavy limbed not wanting to exercise there's so many honestly there's a long long list I'm trying to remember as many of them as I can not being able to concentrate is a really big one yeah not being able to relax not being able to sit and watch a film or you'll do what you would normally do yeah for for relaxation so you know there goes the kind of having a lovely bath and getting a candle you know you can't do that Feeling kind of restless.

1:18:08Becoming very forgetful. Memory loss. So knowing that you said something but you can't remember or planned something you can't remember. So lots of short-term memory loss. Finding it impossible to concentrate. So you might be present at work. You might be going to work, but actually you're not really there. Not really engaged. so there's loads of things that show us that we're dysregulated loads um so important i hate people kind of like star that part like write them down just to connect because i think sometimes we can put these off as very normal behaviors um and actually they're signs they're signs that you're running on empty yeah they're signs and disconnect no signs and if you disconnect eventually what will happen it will start to leak out as anxiety or depression or some kind of addiction or something will happen.

1:19:04And I have a whole chapter in my book about doing an assessment of your mental health. So listing all the symptoms, doing a proper kind of a questionnaire of kind of where are my physical health and my mental health so that people get an idea and they start to understand it and actively look after it. That's very important. And, of course, nutrition is one of the major, major things. Well, you need to feed your grief, right? Absolutely. yeah yeah yeah you need to eat an anti-inflammatory diet you need to cut down on your sugar well you know this your alcohol and your processed food and you're quite now I'm a bit guilty of drinking coffee but I think when you're not in that dysregulated state it's okay I think you know all of these things are it's just important to notice I you know when I went through my dysregulation I'm someone who loves coffee I can drink up to three cups a day but I remember like a few years ago when I was going through it and I didn't drink coffee for five months I never thought that would happen wow um I'm impressed but I just couldn't you know I knew I couldn't and I think they're the moments when you're like I've got to lean into doing the best things for me yeah I've got to look after myself whereas you know now coffee is like one of my biggest rituals and luxuries I would say every day that's like what I look forward to when I'm in a happy place and when i'm regulated that's like my happiest thing to go and get a morning coffee to speak to my guy at the end of the road and my independent coffee shop and come back and i just love it yeah it's like my happiest time yeah so i think like that's just what's important is understanding what you need and when absolutely with your body it's not saying like you should never be doing this you should never be doing that yeah it's another one was you know i did lot more yoga when I was dysregulated to slow down I wasn't going to do the weights and the resistance training even though my brain I was like I should be doing this for my body I actually needed to not be increasing my cortisol levels I needed to be calming my cortisol levels and that to me was really really important it is yeah so from everything that we spoke about today if someone's going through this if someone is experiencing themselves or know someone that's going through like quite degrief what is the thing that you want to say to them be kind to yourself be really kind and look after your body and humanize your emotions whatever you're feeling it's okay, it's not wrong and have hope, have hope because things can get better and they do get better.

1:21:45Yeah, it's temporary. Well, I ask this to all of my guests, which is what does live well, be well mean to you, Chloe? If you could find that sentence, what would you say? Oh, that's such a lovely question. Live well, be well.

1:22:03for me it's um

1:22:09take care of uh your time so so so simple isn't it but just be you know take care be be be careful with your time because it can go in a flash. And by that, I mean, for me, it's know who you are, for me. Be true to that and honor your connections. We use your time wisely. It's so important. I think it's the biggest financial asset that we have in life is our time. Yeah, yeah. But just look after your time, yeah. because so much of it is kind of like get lost in the busyness of it all don't we yeah we'd say it's my life we don't have yeah a lot of time when you actually look at it no we're here for such a short amount of time and so yeah we haven't had that we're actually we very rarely have the same answer twice which is why i love it because it basically is the definition of what i think people see as success yeah at the end of the day if you have your health you have everything you need yeah yeah yeah yeah thank you thank you you're welcome i'm gonna link your book in the show notes oh lovely to go and read it and it's on audio which is my favorite one to listen thank you i'm grateful today it's such an important conversation i think it it's affects every single one of us in our lives um so thank you for helping us understand more about it you're welcome thank you for having me it's lovely to meet you