The Attachment Theory Expert: How Our Childhoods Are Affecting Relationships and Love

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:33My guest today is Dr. Natalie Colleen. Dr. Natalie is a psychologist, a psychotherapist, and specializes in attachment. So she calls herself an attachment therapist, works with children in care after a very long career of working in the healthcare sector with, you know, patients with cancer and so on and so forth. Nathalie and I, believe it or not, got in touch on Instagram. And she told me about her book coming out on the 25th of July. So it's about time for you to pre-order it. Her book is called Just About Coping. And I was like, yeah, that's exactly what the whole world is trying to do today.

1:15Everyone is trying to cope. Brilliant title, incredible content, and a wonderful vulnerability. Natalie also sharing her own story not just the story of some of her patients and we agreed this is definitely worth talking about here on slow-mo so Natalie thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me Yeah just about coping I think that's it basically I should just ask you to speak for the rest of the podcast this is truly our modern life really the idea of just trying to keep up What made you choose this? What in your personal story, if you want, made you think about this? I think it's a culmination of socially people always asking me, what's the strangest thing you've ever heard?

2:06Or what do clients come in with or patients come in with in therapy? And I realized that people are fascinated by other people's stories. I think on the one hand to normalize themselves and think oh I you know I'm not strange I'm not odd somebody else is doing this yeah lots of others feeling the same way yeah but we all kind of cover it up and we all um don't feel confident in talking about it yeah these little nuances and little behaviors or things we do to get through the day or get through stressful times yeah and then I think people are fascinated to hear also because maybe they think by comparison or maybe I'm coping a bit better maybe it's not as bad as it could be so I wanted to bring all that together and make the book hopefully a therapeutic experience by reading it because you hear about all these different coping mechanisms and then one of my messages is to try and dismantle shame.

3:11So within that, I thought I'd better practice what I preach and tell my own story, my own brushes with mental health and my own ways of coping the more adaptive and the more adaptive, hopefully. Do you think that, strange question, many of those who study psychology and psychotherapy come from a place where they want to understand for themselves first? Yes, absolutely. That's so interesting. Does that make a better therapist? It's a question they asked me during training. Why did you pick this? And I found that answer a bit difficult. And actually, my supervisor at the time offered an interpretation, which was I was trying to find control.

4:00I felt quite chaotic at times emotionally. I didn't cope with heartbreak or endings very well. And I think sometimes knowing information or knowing how things work make you feel like you can control it a bit more or regulate yourself a bit more, which is sometimes true and sometimes not. Sometimes not needed at all, I think. So tell me your story. You were not always the one that understood therapy very well. And, you know, accordingly, sometimes you really had your own mental health episodes, if you want. Yeah. So I say the book covers every breakthrough, breakup and breakdown. I loved that. Breakthrough, breakup and breakdown.

4:45Yes. Yeah. It opens with heartbreak. And I would say from revisiting that and writing it, I was definitely experiencing chronic anxiety, dissociative episodes and struggling quite a lot. And my way of coping with that was distraction, numbing, keeping busy, trying to take on more and more work. A bit like, as you say, in Unstressable, we have found numbing to be adaptive. And then there's various things that happen throughout my journey. There's a loss that shocks me. I have an accident where I have a post-trauma response afterwards. Accident, like a car accident or something? Yeah, it was a...

5:34I haven't actually explained in the book what took place because I'm worried about legal... My God, living in the UK. but yeah i was involved in an accident and my neck was broken in two places oh my god yeah that is a serious accident yeah yeah um you just put it like and my neck was broken two places and you know i reframed it and how did you recover from that i i didn't realize it was broken for 10 days no Natalie? Yeah I thought it was whiplash So I was working, I was driving, I was drinking alcohol to try and numb the pain I was doing all sorts of things How old were you? 30 Wow, okay And yeah one day I was just in pain at work and I thought I'll go around to A &E and just say Give me something for the pain and they took a look at me and said i think we need to x-ray you and i just thought i've not got time for this got patience i remember thinking i was on my way to get a coffee i don't want that to be held up it matters coffees matter what broken neck you know you guys don't understand priorities in life yeah and then they stretched me they they strapped me to a stretcher and then yeah I had spinal surgery at King's oh my god yeah so after that I also didn't realize which is brilliant being a therapist and psychologist that I had essentially PTSD it was my therapist that pointed that out to me so I guess that's you know do as I say not as I do sort of not self-reflecting very much why do you think why were you so control driven or control focused why were you because because i know a lot of people especially and you know we write about it in unstressable as well where the escape is look life is going it's ticking don't interrupt me and and we just keep it exactly as it's ticking any deviation from that is not welcomed even a broken neck yeah why do we get into that i think it's the fear of the unknown i think it's paths are set out for us early on and maybe there's expectations um either given by parents or the self and i suppose it's if you attach failure to that to deviating from the path or so you tell yourself that i failed if i couldn't keep on my on the path i drew for myself yeah interesting i think so yeah i i i'm not like that i have to say i was talking to hannah my wonderful wife recently and you know one of the things that really gets to me is when i feel trapped without control different than out of control i i don't care if i were you know i'll wave my hands in the air and absolutely enjoy every minute of it if something's out of control.

8:55But if I'm trapped, so there are no clear exits and I'm out of control, that really gets to me. What's the difference, do you think? Trapped is actually a big component in PTSD. Okay. So that sense of feeling trapped. They did some research about two disasters, 9-11 and the Boston bombing, I believe. And they looked at, so afterwards people either dispersed or in the Boston one, people were kind of held. And afterwards, the PTSD symptoms were worse in those that were held in the vicinity because they felt trapped near the threat. And I think maybe that not having autonomy to move out of a situation makes us feel very vulnerable or frightened.

9:47Frustrated in my case. Okay. Where does that come from? Shall we start my therapy session? Yeah, I was just going to ask. It is so incredible when you sit next to a therapist and as soon as you tell them something like that, they start asking questions. So what exactly? My body language changed. But what were you going to ask? Where did that come from? When did you notice that? I don't know. I noticed it because I rarely ever am stressed. Congratulations. I rarely ever am. I think it's age as well. You know, very few things. With age, you start to realize that very few things really matter, actually.

10:30Most of what we really give value to is not that important. And 90 % of what you're looking for is going to happen. We only almost always obsess about the remaining 10 % anyway. But the week leading up to releasing unstressable and the week after were probably the most stressful weeks of my entire life. My mom was dying. And my mom is a very, very big thing in my life because as much as most of my intellect, if you want the processor, comes from my dad, my mom really was almost the entire database, how she handled things, how independent she was. And on top of that, I had so many challenges. Silly things like losing my wallet, so having no government IDs to fix certain things that needed to be fixed in such difficult time.

11:32And at the same time, having a business deal that became sort of unethical, if you want, unethical. Being around unethical people really gets to me. That's the feeling of being trapped. And then Hannah and I sat down to think about it because I get lots of hits from the left side that are unexpected often in my life. Often, it's, you know, because I do so much, some things will always go wrong. But then this really trapped me. You know, at the same time, I was, I had all of the plan for the book launch, so I had to show up. And we kept thinking about what was wrong. Why did I feel stressed, more stressed in that, in those situations than the typical something breaking and me trying, you know, taking care of it?

12:19And it was because of the feeling of being trapped. You know, the business deal, the issue was not the loss or the challenge. The issue was that I promised my team certain things, so I needed them to, you know, I needed to secure their path to that thing. And then, you know, the unethical side of it meant that instead of just saying, okay, I'm going to shut this thing down, I had to actually deal with the unethical person to solve it. You know, and of course, you're losing your mom is a bit like you're trapped. You're completely trapped. You know that she's going. and at the same time you know that you're have you're gonna have to leave next week to do the book launch and you know you don't know if she's gonna be there when you're done and you know it's so being trapped is a very interesting i've been thinking about this very deeply uh yeah and i don't recall traumas maybe my memory is quite vague uh i i don't i actually don't think of any part of my life as a traumatic part.

13:19I always had those progressive annoying experiences, but even losing my son didn't count in my mind as a trauma. It was more of an emotional challenge, if you want. Don't be the therapist. That's now your turn to speak. I suppose I'm just thinking about feeling trapped in the incongruence of your values and your beliefs and then this unethical situation and feeling responsibility for others yeah that feels quite very very very trapping yeah yeah and a lot of tension in that of which which way to go and i suppose a lot of people feel feel trapped in grief and in loss and not feeling like they they can move through that experience definitely grief is a has a has a very interesting finality to it because you know ali's not coming back we know that my mom's not coming back we know that my brother and sister left in the early in the year they're not coming back we know that but but my my perception of of life and death is very different so i don't i actually feel that death is more freedom than being trapped and that we're all getting there anyway um you know it's it is it is quite interesting because when you look at that those three weeks i think the word coping sounds exactly right that what i was attempting to do is to just you know i really can't solve any of it okay and i just can sort of deal with it keep the ship afloat if you want is that what you mean by coping yeah and how how were you coping can i ask that she's the therapist really I don't know if that makes sense at all but I have a very clear ability of doing what I can and what I cannot I accept and yes as much as I would have wanted my mom to stay forever I also have that keen ability to remember that my mom was 85 and that she brought so much into my life right and you know i always tell people the about heartbreaks and loss and so on that you can't feel the negativity of a heartbreak unless you felt the love so can you focus equally on both the blessing and the loss because if you do it becomes uh at least more balanced than just thinking that oh my mom's leaving life is unfair yeah and i loved what you said about i think i heard it rather than read it about framing it as Ali lived.

16:03Ali lived such a beautiful life yeah yeah and my mom lived and my you know I think that's the truth of of the matter is that there is so much beauty and joy and blessings in life but perhaps we're attached to to those so much that when they go away we forget that we ever had them it's very different than a balanced view where you actually know that you had them you enjoyed them that they were a blessing that you've never really earned them when you really think about it most of the blessings in our life and that yeah like everything they will go to life is a zero-sum game yeah a lot of people refuse to grieve at first and it can be hard to get people even to go into that transformative process so it's amazing to frame it as you know that person brought me so much love and joy yeah it's the truth don't be the therapist so so so tell me about your side of um of how you were coping when you were going through your difficult times.

17:16You mentioned heartbreak first, so clearly heartbreak is a big topic. Yes, there's heartbreak throughout the book and losses and relationships with people with varying degrees of mental illness. I don't want to give too much away. And the way I cope is, the adaptive ways I cope, I would say, is I have always talked to myself out loud. Have you? Yes. Okay. And that is something that I used to feel embarrassed about or ashamed about. But now I realize that that's part of kind of the inner companion coming out and trying to put a bit of distance and a bit of self-compassion to things. So that's a way that I cope.

18:04Do you talk to yourself nicely out loud? Yes. okay because i think we have to combat we're all very good at listening to that um persecutory negative voice and we have to build the self-companion voice to counteract that and that's what i try to do out loud to break the the negative cycle of the voice give me an example i'll even say things i've caught myself saying i wouldn't do that if i was you but I think it's the distancing it's all it is like a dialogue then with with somebody that's trying to look out for you and take care of you rather than just be the voice saying you know you can't do this or do you remember that time you embarrassed yourself or you're a failure or whatever that voice says so so you you call yourself an attachment therapist What is that?

18:59I think everything is relational and about connection. So even clinical mental health difficulties, schizophrenia is a loss of connection with other people. People having psychosis is a loss of connection. They feel isolated. And I think everything comes down to how we relate to other people, the attachments we have, the quality of those attachments. that's how we understand the world understand ourselves regulate ourselves and every coping mechanism no matter how strange or maladaptive has some sort of origin story probably from those early developmental experiences and they started as a survival strategy to bond to get that attention to get that input that you needed it's just that they don't adapt with you over time and context so then the coping mechanism can become the problem itself.

20:00So as a child you go through a specific experience and you find the coping mechanism and then you adapt that for the rest of your life. Is that what you mean? So I have a lot of patients. I'm surprised by the amount of patients that when I say what are your emotional needs they'll say I don't know or I've had a patient say I don't have any needs. And when you track back to their early experiences at home they were either marginalized or scapegoated or for whatever reason mom and dad didn't have the capacity and so they took on a role maybe as mediator maybe as clown and then they've stayed as that in all their relational encounters and they marginalize their own needs in their own minds and they stay in that that role that's not really working for them anymore because they couldn't get their needs met in the as children they basically say it's better not to have needs rather than to crave those needs and be disappointed yes yeah how does one discover that we have to go backwards and there's numerous tools you can use one i like to use is the lifeline so draw straight line this is you when you were born this is you now and then just plot the highs and the lows and you get an idea of what memories, what experiences were significant and important.

21:30As they start doing that, often other memories come up from earlier on. And then asking things like what would happen at home if you fell down or you were sick or you needed looking after? Who would you go to? What would that be like? Or how was it to be angry at home or upset at home? what was permitted, what was allowed, what was happening for you at that time. And basically by finding out those negative moments or positive moments as well are influential? Positive are hugely influential as well and I believe relationships can heal people. So as much as they can have a negative impact, they can also have a hugely positive impact.

22:13So it's about finding out both and what was meaningful. What is attachment in that case? Attachment is the bond you have with those early caregivers that set up your regulatory systems, the brain, how responsive that is, the limbic system, how you learn to cope with feeling threat. Have you heard of the strange situation? so they did um a study with uh one-year-olds and they put them in a room and they left them with a parent playing and then they did certain steps so they took the parent away and saw how the child behaved they put a stranger in the room saw how the child behaved and they categorized the children from this experiment into three broad categories and they found that from looking at those people later on when they were i think they're about 25 they behaved in a way that was in accordance with how they were as a as a toddler so for instance the ambivalent child when parent left they would be inconsolable panicked can't soothe themselves yeah i know though some of those kids yeah yeah and when parent comes back they're very angry or they're still very upset they can't calmed down.

23:34Yeah, how come you left me? Yes, yeah, how dare you abandon me? I didn't know you were coming back. Or the avoidant child will just go off to a corner on their own and play with their own toys and just kind of go into that which is the equivalent, I guess, of us throwing ourselves into work or cutting ourselves off and just dealing with it internally, but the stress is still there, the cortisol levels are still spiked. you said three categories and the third oh sorry or secure which is obviously the child that can regulate can respond to the parent when it comes back in um and they're the children that are more able to regulate themselves because they've learned that if something terrible happens to me so more and more dad will come and come and rescue me and help me i think i wouldn't have noticed is that is that the category at all at least that's what my own mom used to describe it it's like I was sort of not really in this world I'm a bit high as a child does that exist as a category yeah I mean I want to be careful not to pathologize maybe you were just very good at regulating yourself and very confident that mom and dad would come back or not who cares if not i can get on with it myself so so so we take those and they become our coping mechanisms as we grow older is that is that what you're trying to teach yeah so an ambivalent child may develop some maladaptive coping mechanisms so that their needs are so big and so great and they haven't been met that they might end up doing things like it's going very pathologizing but um self-harm is something they might do because they're going to get the pseudo care from maybe hospital staff or therapists they might struggle to form other relationships so they might struggle with coping with romantic relationships and they might have interpersonal problems um they find ways of of trying to get those unmet needs met so i so i have to ask the the question then at two layers at two levels of course we need to talk about if someone is feeling that themselves you know what should they notice about their coping mechanism how can they change it but if you notice that in your child what would you do about it if if if your child is the kind of child that will is it what is it called throw a fit or something like that when when you disappear for two minutes that's constantly crying if you don't pick them up you know that's clearly going to develop into an attachment style that basically is saying I need you here all the time what would you do about that I would reflect on myself so I'd think about how much I'm talking to the child about their emotional language so oh you fell down that that must have really hurt you that wasn't nice checking how much I'm on my phone and how much I'm engaging fully with the child trying to encourage positive self-soothing so giving them teddies or things and then playing making sure there's lots of engaged play things like that that will help regulate them and get them to make sure I'm always answering those bids for connection so whenever they're trying to get my attention try and respond So not the opposite, because some schools will say let them cry until they cry their heads off.

27:06Yeah. That's horrible, isn't it? I think that's horrible. There was, I can't remember the name of it, but there was leaving babies in the crib to cry. Yeah. That's quite frightening for me, I think. Yeah. I always say it's the worst thing I've ever done. And if I have any regrets in my life at all, actually, probably at the very top of it was when Aya was an infant. Aya, my daughter, that was the time when this was very fashionable. It's like, just leave her in the crib and she will cry for 20 minutes and then learn that nobody's coming. So she'd fall asleep. shit yes that's exactly what we don't want to teach them that nobody's coming because that basically creates a uh you know a disconnection of some sort if you want yeah i don't think that they're in isolation you're clearly very connected and i and i are one now but but it but it is something that again i share it because i think other parents i see it all the time as well because I'm on airplanes and in airports and when you see a child crying it doesn't matter if the parent's carrying it or not sometimes the parent is carrying it to make it to make the child feel safe right to to make the child feel loved and sometimes the parent's just carrying it to make the child shut the hell up right and and it's very different because one of them makes the child safe the other one makes the child very unsafe because they can read through your your behavior like shut up baby shut up baby shut up that doesn't work for them and i you know i'm i'm a huge advocate of the idea of just pour love on them and they'll eventually calm down like they they're feeling unsafe somehow even though of course you know some will say oh but you're spoiling them you're making them feel that that you know that by crying they can get what you want what they want and i think that's really where the challenge is so so if i if if you if you've been that child and then you grow older and now that's your attachment style so if you know if your boyfriend doesn't text you start to go through of it and you know you get very angry and so on what is that little smile a lot i've seen it in myself yeah yeah there's a lot of people that come into therapy with that as their their problem and they've been called too much or they have too many emotional needs and they're struggling in their relationship or they can't they can't stay in relationships okay so what should they do other than come to you as a therapist that's the yeah that's that's the best answer but yeah second best is awareness reflecting on that and acknowledging that these are defense mechanisms that are coming up and they should be respected because they're just trying to get that need met but trying to find some self-soothing self-regulatory things before you seek for that external need to be met by someone else self-soothing is a very interesting way of looking at it is if you're not complete within yourself you would constantly need seek that attention from outside you yes that's really interesting so if you're if you're anxious about the other person not being there for you are you there for yourself is an interesting question to ask absolutely yeah and i think a lot of it comes back to what's happening within the self and sometimes there's a loss of trust in the self there's fear that we won't be able to cope with things and we project that onto the other person and say you know you're not meeting my need well maybe we're setting them up to fail because they can never fully meet that need because that's based on multiple experiences of feeling rejected or feeling abandoned or that could be real or perceived abandonment.

31:03It may have happened. It may be that you're cued to see that and feel that way. The opposite is also true, I think. I'm guessing here, so correct me if I'm wrong. If someone is constantly trying to be in touch, sending messages, constantly taking care of the other person's feeling that they are seen and heard and observed and you know getting all the attention they need it could probably be the reason for you know result resulting from the same attachment style that this is how they feel that this is how they want things to be so they they broadcast out in in hope that you know others don't feel the same way or in hope maybe that they are seen by doing that yeah i think that's an excellent point people often expect other people's experiencing to be like theirs um and in trying to meet that need in the other person if they're an avoidant attachment style or somebody that shuts down in the face of emotions that's like screaming and banging on a on a shut door that's not gonna make that door open it's gonna make them hold it shut even more shut it even more yeah so let's talk about avoidant attachment styles so these are the kids that will go to the corner and play on their own and basically say you know i'm self-sufficient yeah that too yeah is that me i don't know honestly yeah so so what so so if my child is like that what do i do do i keep them that way or do i i mean how what what does it develop into as an adult what coping mechanism does it develop it develops into usually fierce independence being quite driven and self-focused oh sounds very familiar but you're very nurturing and very personable yeah not saying people that aren't that but it's it's hard sometimes to get that balance because they are so focused on meeting their own emotional needs and i think actually there's a bit of a badge of honor in that and i've been guilty of that where, you know, I don't need anybody else.

33:11I can deal with this myself. And somehow that makes you stronger. But it actually does the opposite. We need co-regulation and support to cope. So these are the kinds of people that if they don't get attention from their, you know, partner or whatever, they'll just go like, I don't need a partner anyway. Yes. That's not a lovely place to be. No. Okay. And that's basically because as a child, they sort of feel that it doesn't matter what I want. I'm never going to get it somehow. I think they learn to be mistrusting of the world, but trusting of themselves. So they self-rescue a lot, self-soothe, but don't expect that need to be met always from the external.

34:02Interesting. So the opposite, basically. Yeah, because the ambivalent thinks a lot of the world, but not very much about them, not a lot of themselves. And in that case, basically, those people are more likely to be lonely, are more likely to be workaholics. Yeah. Okay, so if my child is like that, what do I do? And if I'm an adult and I'm like that, what do I do? Yeah, it's about in adults therapy, it's about trying to encourage those people to have open vulnerability. and to learn to test opening up trusting and relying on others and that's not always going to go well it doesn't so sometimes they come back to me and they said you said to do this and it didn't go well yeah but you've got to keep because the people that they open up to are not always predictable right exactly yeah so so you know it could re reaffirm their life script exactly it's like i told you that when i closed down things are okay now you told me to open up and look at what happened yeah i'm no longer in control and i feel shame or i feel chaos or it and it feels uh incongruent to go against your defense mechanisms the brain says hang on this has been working for us for a long time don't change it so if you try and force change and then it doesn't go well the brain's kind of saying well told you yeah Yeah, and the brain's almost actually actively looking for affirmation of what it believes, right?

35:37Yes. Yeah, so, okay. And as a child, basically, does that mean that you should be in their life more to make them avoid being distant? I think it's about connected time. so I think the time that you do spend with your child should be trying to play build emotional language um I remember my brother um when he was little he didn't speak and so we didn't know whether it was his hearing or autism or you know down this path and I remember my mum taking him in to the doctor and her saying what's his favorite thing to play with and she said well he goes round on this gardening thing with wheels. He just goes around the house and it puts packets of crisps in it.

36:27And the doctor said, that's not really helping his language development. And she thought of that, you know, just playing, but it's about thinking about how do I engage and help? It's so interesting how, again, I mean, every one of us thinks of the rest of the world as themselves. and I'm clearly odd. But it's so interesting how tiny little adjustments in a child's progress, especially at a young age, become such a defining topic in the future, right? It really could make you a very different person that you cried a few times and were not attended to or something like that. well there's the concept of have you heard about the good enough mother it's a concept by um psychoanalyst called donald winnicott and it's basically saying you don't have to be perfect as a parent all parents are going to be stressed and tired and you're going to have those moments where you don't meet the need perfectly but as long as you're there consistently enough in responsive then that will help the child to learn to regulate and help those things form and and good enough is measured as that's a good question good enough is trying your best trying your best yeah and coping i don't know i i think i think people should be having kids only after they go through a driving test of some sort i think we've we've caused too much damage all of us it's uh it is something that uh that is important and i think if if someone is just trying to cope they're probably not ready yet to get someone else to to teach to cope some patients have had children as a way of coping and i've had more than one patient that have had multiple multiple multiple children 13 or 14 children oh my god because they love the nurture the bonding the you know when they're when they're a tiny infant and then when they become a toddler and they start saying no and that's mine and having autonomy and walking off their their emotional need isn't being met so they have another baby wow okay and and do they remember the name of the first one there's a patient in the book who i didn't realize until i put it together after a few sessions but she named all of her children after characters in horror films Wow So she had a Freddy and a Carrie and put them all together, I thought oh there's a theme here Okay, and why was that?

39:19Unclear, she was definitely one that was having children to meet her own needs maybe there was a link between that being quite terrorising for her subconsciously building relationships I can't honestly say Wow Wow. Okay. Keep going. Interesting client cases. Yeah, there's lots. There's lots in the book. It is my memoir and it talks about my experiences, but then it talks about lots and lots of patients that come to see me, all their different ways of coping. The good, the bad, the strange, the bizarre. Yeah, there's a lot of stories in there. I should definitely read that. I think that's quite interesting.

40:04And if I find myself in one of them, you have a recommendation of how I can become less bizarre. Well, I hope that it gives insight. So I try and explain in that person's story where it came from, what function it's serving. And when you read it, the hope is that as a reader, you read it with compassion, not with ridicule. or because you get the context and the understanding and and then you think oh okay maybe that's not as shameful as i as i thought so hannah and i we have we have uh our morning coffees together and hannah is very secretive about her clients she she would never share anything but she has that therapist mind in her in her all the time so she's constantly talking about did you know that if this happens as a child and then you grow up to be this and then And she's almost like thinking out loud about cases that she's not telling me about, just to try and make sense of them in her mind.

41:06And I'm fascinated by it. I know it sounds very like strange romance, but these are some of my most, I mean, one of the things I adore about that woman is how intelligent she is. And so I'm sitting there, and I have to admit, it just gives you so much compassion. when you recognize sort of the underlying reasons behind what some people do, right? And it's sort of almost like you want to hug everyone, basically. It's like, I get it. I get it, right? This is an actual, if I were exposed to this, I would come up with the same conclusion and accordingly behave the same way. and so I think that the idea that you you're able to of course with confidence share some cases that becomes a very eye-opening so do you think the reader of this is a therapy student as well or anyone who's just interested in what goes on with us yeah I hope so because it talks about my journey through training and what that's actually like what we learn and how we learn um and it also i go into it with very much a god complex for doctors and psychiatrists and therapists and i learn through multiple stories that we're all fallible and yes you know there's a there's a psychiatrist where i'm the junior and i'm presented in this situation with this person who's in emotional distress and the senior psychiatrist jumps out the window because he He feels like he can't cope.

42:46So there's little, you know, there's loads of wisdom. You mean actually jump off? Actually jumped out of the window, yeah. It was a ground floor, thankfully. But he was like, this is too dangerous. No way. Yeah. Wow. That's not teaching you much. Yeah. Teaching you to not feel trapped, maybe. So there's lots of wisdom from my senior supervisors. But then there's also moments where you go, they're just humans as well. And they're just coping. I think this is going to be a very entertaining read with knowledge and things to learn from it. But definitely eye opening. Thanks for coming to speak about it.

43:32And I hope people will also give it a shot. and yeah I believe that perhaps the most interesting side of everyone around you on you know on public transport at the office in the supermarket is it's almost entirely about coping yes I think everybody is just about coping everybody's just about coping thank you so much thank you thank you i really appreciate it and thank you all for joining me today this is definitely going to be my read on the next flight you know i'll probably start by just flipping through pages and seeing randomly what the universe is telling me but i may come back to all of you and say oh my god i found myself in one of the cases until then keep listening keep helping me grow this podcast so that I can get more interesting conversations and keep trying to give yourself the luxury and the space for a bit of slow down time because it doesn't matter how busy you are this week there's always a tiny bit of time to slow down I love you all for listening and I will see you next time