Dr Julie Smith: How To Build Secure Relationships, Control Fear, & Live With Uncertainty.

0:00I've often seen online these things about how you've got to heal your own stuff before you get into a relationship. If I'd have followed that rule, I never would have married Matt. Dr. Julie Smith is a clinical psychologist and best-selling author. There's this thought that our relationship is stronger if we just don't have any conflict. Why would you want a victory over someone that you want to have a partnership with? The only person who thinks you look good in victory is you. That underlying theme is we are a team. We're going to win together or we're going to lose together. People will say, I feel like I keep having the same relationship over and over again with different people.

0:40And sometimes that can be to do with the best thing for our own nervous system is each other. We're social beings, right? We live in groups because we survive better in groups. What's almost the litmus test to determine if your partner is far enough on their healing journey for you to be able to commit to them? I think it's whether they're able to commit to you. If you are anxious or avoidant, what's the number one thing you can do to become secure in your attachment? It comes down to communicating with your partner. I know I'm this way and I know I'm doing these things that drive you crazy. Here's what I'm going to try and do.

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1:43Can we begin with where you were born and the circumstances in which you grew up? I was born not far from where I live now, down in Dorset. And my parents then moved to Wiltshire. And so it went around sort of the southern counties of the UK. My mum and dad both grew up in difficult circumstances in poverty. So my dad grew up hungry. But once he met my mum, they managed and they had us children. They worked their socks off so that we could have the kind of security that they hadn't had. I'm one of three girls. So I've got an older sister and a younger sister. Yeah, and that was us. So you're the middle child.

2:26Yeah. Now, sometimes we hear the middle child is the wild child. Which is absolutely not the case. You know, I'm the sensible one, the boring one, the one who always did my homework. I was the shy one, the quiet one. Even within the sort of family, you know, we'd go to my grandparents' house and all the cousins would get together and things. And I remember my grandmother always saying, you know, Julie's the quiet one. She's in the corner. You know, I read a lot. I worked really hard at school. I had friends and good social life and social skills, but I'm just an introvert, I guess. And so I also liked that kind of quiet side.

3:07Yeah. Okay, fair. So you're an introvert. Yeah. Would you also say that you're shy as well? Yeah. Yeah. As a child, for sure. Well, I guess that's still there to a degree. I just have the confidence and the skills to override it now, probably. But my natural inclination is to step back. But I think I've become more aware as an adult and as a clinician that those tendencies to step back or I call it kind of, I would always grace people with my absence. so I you know felt like a bit of you know they don't want to bother with me so I would step back or I would you know disengage and and I now see that as other people can read that as well they don't want to engage with me um whereas that was just a symptom of kind of being shy I guess interesting young person yeah where does that stem from because I've I'm unsure you know I hear that introversion is a component of how we're born and genetics etc but that shyness is more so socialized is that true or not i think there's a combination of the two i think you can't really separate them i think you have that that natural tendency and your own kind of personal traits but they're born out of um not only your genetics but also the environment you grew up in as well In different circumstances, maybe a child who had the tendency to be shy might become something different.

4:34But with me, I don't know. I grew up in the 80s, 90s when things were a certain way. Yes. I was able to sit quietly when I needed to. I wasn't sort of pushed out. But actually then when I got to senior school and I was in my teenage years, I loved theatre and getting involved in it. And I think there was something I recognized at that point as well, that it was because I could be someone different and completely, I always played sort of really wild characters who were a bit off the wall and could do kind of crazy stuff. And I loved that maybe because it was a bit of a freedom to be able to do those things.

5:14I maybe felt too shy to do normally. I was introverted. I still am, you know, introverted. A lot of people say, no way. I'm sure they say the same thing to you. But I am. And I was shy as well. However, what happened is that we moved quite a bit when I was younger. And I was in different circles. And I realized that I would come alive in certain circumstances. And then distance myself in others. And theater was something I enjoyed. And so I would come alive. And it's connecting for the first time. maybe it's because of what you're saying is the ability to step into another character. Yeah. Yeah.

5:57There's a freedom in that, isn't there? Because it doesn't say anything fundamentally about who you are if you get it wrong or if you do something a bit kind of different. There's no consequence to it. It's nice. Yeah. Freedom. It is. So you met your husband when you were young. Yeah. Young, young. Really young. Yeah. But you didn't marry young, young. No, it's a bit of a running joke that it took him 10 years to persuade me to go out with him because we met when we were 11. So we both went to the same. We were in different kind of junior schools and then we met in the senior school. And we were all kind of in the same small town.

6:35We were in a sort of similar friendship group. So we all hung out as kids. And it wasn't until I went off to university, he started a business in our hometown. and then we met up in my final year of university just before my 21st birthday and we got together then but um because we were already you know best friends it um it just made sense it just worked and we all and you know our relationship has just got better and better because we've always had that underlying friendship we know each other so well um and we enjoy spending our time you know if we went together together we'd be mates so it yeah it just worked if i was single now and i met someone i only know about their life what they tell me and there's something strange about that isn't there it requires such a huge leap of faith in someone um whereas when you know someone and you know all the people that they know uh there's no guessing games about what someone's values are or whether a trustworthy person or not.

7:44So, yeah, I'm really thankful for that. That is insightful. That's insightful. You then, so you rekindled the friendship, right, in your 20s, and then you were married by? So that would have been 2005 when I graduated, and then we got married after I completed my doctorate in 2011. Okay. So, yeah. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, so we lived together in that time. Yeah, so as I was graduating, I was going to go off traveling. And he said, you know, he'd been running a business. He said, I'm about to buy a house. If I buy it, will you move in with me? So that was a kind of big judgment of, oh, do I go off and do the, you know, crazy traveling stuff?

8:26Or do I give this a shot? And I said, okay. So, yeah, and we never looked back. You gave it a shot. Yeah. You gave it a shot. I have to explore that just for a quick second because there's so many people I believe are in that quandary of, okay, I have door A or door B, right? Door A is my partner wants me to do this thing over there. That means I'm settling down with them. Or B is I can go off and do something adventurous. You chose A. Yeah. Why?

9:00Because it felt fundamentally different. because you know what before so before I um came back and Matt and I met again um I'd had a you know a boyfriend while I was at university who knew I had we both knew I had the plan to go traveling and I never occurred to me to stay um that we knew that was going to end and I was going to go and um but with Matt and maybe that's maybe that's love maybe that's the the strength of the feeling you just know something is this is big and this is not um not just anyone and you know australia is not going anywhere so i can travel later but this is now and um and actually when i think about what i want to be doing with my time do i want to be over there thinking about this guy or do i want to just be here building this relationship and so um i think the ease of the decision was a good indicator of the fact that it was right you know but when you're sort of oh shall i shanty um maybe that's because you're not so sure about the person i don't know um yes yeah yeah yeah so at your doctorate and your you were studying specifically clinical psychology clinical psychology yeah why why clinical psychology do you know what i think um people often ask me if i have like an epiphany moment where i thought this is what i want to do and and it really didn't happen like I wish I had a great story but I really just followed my interests and um I didn't even have a big thing about wanting to you know save people or you know do great things for people I just found it fascinating and you know that kind of like quiet child thing I read a lot as a kid and all this when I look back the stuff I read I didn't read sort of fantasy stuff or science fiction I read stuff about real people in real lives that sort of you know relationship stuff and um things that told me about the intricacies of people and and how they relate to each other and how people deal with things I just interested me and you know I didn't think anything of it at the time but now I look back and I see that fascination that was there and and as a child I used to I have memories of laying in bed at night where I must have been under the age of like seven a dark winter's night cold outside raining and I would sit there unable to get to sleep because I was worrying about all the kind of animals that live outside and would they be cold would they you know what about these children across the world who were starving or in a you know or children who didn't have parents so I would just kind of sit and worry about and it was almost like a a magnification of um or exaggeration of empathy and compassion it was you know gone too far really because I was up at night worrying about it um so there was that inclination but when I started studying I was just gripped I just all the research and this is okay what's this and what about that and and I just couldn't stop asking questions and and so I just it made sense for me to do that at university, even though I didn't know what to do with it.

12:10It made sense. After my undergrad, there was a job, a research job in an addictions unit that sounded fascinating to me. So I thought, well, let's try that because I don't know what I'm doing. And then while I was there, there were other students there who were trying to get onto the clinical course and then kind of showed me the path. Well, I get to study psychology again. So let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. Because it lights you up. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And still now, you know, So even though it's my work, if I have free time, I will generally read psychology stuff. And yeah, that's a good indication, isn't it, that you're in the right job?

12:46This is definitely your passion. Proper geek. Yeah, you are proper. All the geeks are the coolest people on the planet right now. So you're very cool. You're very cool. I know. I say to my kids, you know, don't diss the nerds because, you know. The nerds end up running the world. Exactly. All right. Right. Now, even to go back around that time, you worked in the NHS before private practice. Yeah. So during the NHS, what is that experience like for a psychologist? And also, if you can clarify this, I've often heard that the waiting time to see a psychologist in the NHS is long as a result of there not just being enough psychologists.

13:28So what was your experience like at the NHS? Yeah, it's tough because you do your training and there are all these kind of ideals about how you can do therapy and how long that would take and what can be achieved with that. And then you get into a real environment like the NHS where I worked in an acute ward that was just for guys from the MOD and girls from the MOD at the time when we were in Afghanistan. So lots of military trauma and stuff. I worked in intensive care wards and outreach teams for people who were really poorly and might need to come to hospital, crisis teams, and then community teams as well where people are living at home, but they come in for help.

14:09And in a community team, that team might have, I don't know, a couple of thousand people on their books. And there would be a team of nurses and a few doctors. And then there would be one, maybe two psychologists. Wow. um so a fraction you know a fraction of the people that get into the community team would ever see a psychologist and then because there's such a weight and hardly any people get to see them there's that pressure to get results fast but results don't happen fast because you know these people are dealing with problems that have built up over their entire lives it's not going to change in a month you know you need time and to work on things um to have any significant so you feel like you're trying to do your job with your hands tied behind your back a lot of the time and and I don't think there's any clear-cut answers to that um it's really tough for and what I could see was lots of people individuals whatever their profession was who so badly wanted to do so much good for people in their community and just did the best that they could and and often did more than was expected of them um to try and kind of help people and stuff.

15:23So yeah, it was good work, but tricky. But tricky. Yeah. When I look at the trajectory in terms of the number, the decrease relative to the population of clinicians, you think what is going to come of the future? And is that probably what informs your work today? Because it just doesn't feel like there are enough clinicians in the world for people who are in need of therapy. Yeah, and it was, at the time, I didn't really know what the answers were. But I just remember feeling like I just wanted to help more people than we could. And seeing there was so much need there. And once I had two of my now three children, I realized I couldn't do it all, not well anyway.

16:09So that was when I thought, okay, let's take a break from the NHS, let's do some private work so that I can manage it around the children and be a parent. and um and it was in that time that i realized a lot of the people coming along found the educational stuff really helpful they didn't need long-term therapy they just didn't have any sense of agency in managing their own mental health and they didn't realize the the positive impact they could have just by learning a few skills or a few concepts and practicing that uh so i used to just yeah poor old matt used to listen to me going this should be more available and you know why should people have to pay to come and see people like me to find out how their own brain works and uh so he said well go on then make it available so he said well let's make a few youtube videos or something and you can put it out there and then you can direct your clients to it when they're not with you and stuff and um yeah i made a few terrible youtube videos that i hope to never see again um and yeah and then he said oh look at this app i've seen tiktok look look at there and there was all these kids on there like dancing and there's some comedians and a few people were expressing their distress you know saying they were struggling couldn't find any anyone responding to that with anything decent you know kind of mental health education or anything like that so why don't you do like you know and i said no not a chance i'll get laughed out there or trolled out of there and um and he said well you know if no listens or it doesn't you don't respond well we'll just close the account down and that'll be that so we gave it a go so i do the school run come home prop my phone up on the table say a few things that came to mind and uh within like two weeks it was just um every video was getting more views people were messaging and emailing and putting comments what's the next bit what's the next step i'm waiting for the next video and i thought oh my goodness this is actually reaching people and and they're interested um and like hungry for the next bit and and so we just kind of went with it and followed i said as soon as they stop they stop being interested we'll we'll forget it and that didn't happen that didn't happen that was that was 2019 yeah yeah look at that yeah what do you believe it was about you what you were saying maybe what the need was etc that made your video so popular?

18:38Probably the simplicity of it because a lot of the ideas are really abstract and really difficult to kind of have any kind of substance to it. It's difficult to... And when you're competing against that scrolling thumb of if it's not interesting, people are gone. So we saw it as a bit of a creative challenge. How can we make this visual? or you know and there was some stuff that you already made visual in therapy so certain I had like these different props around my therapy room and stuff that I would use to help explain a concept that would usually take 20-25 minutes to explain suddenly I've got 60 seconds that was a creative challenge as well um and yeah we so we would just use these props and then whenever we did something like that and made it really visual people got it and and they responded to it and and they wanted more and and so yeah so we use a lot of that kind of stuff that really helps but you know the secret ingredient that you haven't mentioned you know what it is come on you know it is you know what it is go on julie say it say it do you know what i try to talk to the camera as if it's a person and i've spent years sitting in rooms with people talking to people and even though i feel super awkward and i could at the beginning i couldn't even have my husband in the ring when I was filming because it just felt so embarrassing and awkward and horrible and um but I would try to yeah just imagine that I'm speaking to a person and even though I had a script and stuff like that um because we tried I hated it I hate hate being in the you know um the limelight and stuff like that so I said why don't we try and do some videos where I'm not in it but we'll use some b-roll and then I'll write a script and I'll record and they just didn't go anywhere that people just didn't like them so they wanted you but but do you do you know but do you know why they they wanted you i mean this this is now i'm connecting this for the first time someone who uh has watched many of your videos right and and and meeting you do you know what at least do you know what it is do you know what your magic is the hair the hair works the hair see look this is why i can't get anywhere it is because of your authenticity you are the same person that i meet here yeah before talking you know before here we're talking like you know backstage yeah um on your videos on stage You are authentically you.

21:12You're consistent. And what I see happen so often, especially in the television industry, is that you see, you know, people are not. They don't walk their talk. They present one way in one area and totally different in another. But you are consistent. And that consistency is so refreshing. And I believe that is the key in addition to all these other things that were mentioned. I kind of I it's in some ways it made it really difficult to because I I've got a daughter and I'm really aware of the toxicity of a lot of the social media stuff that's out there and so I always wanted to not be a part of that and not do something that could have a negative impact on someone so I always try to be kind of as you know normal as possible and not present this sort of like I've got my life sorted so just be like me type thing because I'm just a human like everybody else right I didn't want to try and present anything that was unrealistic or not true but that also means being a bit vulnerable and I'm also a professional and I have clients and so I felt like I was on this sort of tightrope really where I was like um you know how much of myself do i share how much of my family do i share and there's always and i think we're the first people that are really navigating this um because it's all so new isn't it there's no guidebook is there there's no one who's done it before and sort of sailed through and no yeah no we're finding our way yeah and i think as we're walking this path what we're looking for is just any type of uh affirming by any means that okay we're on the right path and i would say that probably and correct me if i'm wrong here but probably the first massive affirming that you got that you are on the right path was the success of your first book yeah i mean that's like can we talk about that for a second do you know what i um when i handed it in i had this moment of i don't want it to be a you know a failure i don't want want anyone to read it no you know that sort of vulnerability of put lots into this but this is really exposing it's the shy girl part right and um I definitely had that moment and and and I had no concept of what publishing success was how many do you need to sell like what's a lot I don't know um I had no idea therefore I had no expectations I just got my head down and I worked and worked and worked and made videos and went on podcasts and you know just tried to kind of say it's out there if anybody wants help and um uh yeah it was the it went to number one on the sunday times on the first week and yeah it just kept selling and and that that's how it works with therapy right when i did private therapy i thought oh my god i'm gonna have to learn how to advertise and do all this didn't do that it was i never thought it would be word of mouth but it's very private it when you're in it.

24:23And then when you find something that helps, and you're on the other side of it, you then come across someone who's struggling, and you go, try that. That's really helpful. It worked for me. And you can't wait to help people. And I think that's what's happened with this stuff. Why has nobody told me this before is the book. So what's the pressure when writing Open Wind? This is your new one. You must have pressure. Yeah, it made it such a different experience on publication. I think I was better at the writing experience because the first time I there was a lot every day I had to just get over myself and that fear of I've convinced everyone I can do this can I and and then had to you know get over that to be able to start typing whereas the second time around I knew I could write but um there was more expectation for everybody else whereas the first time I didn't know what success was I didn't know you know what to expect I just went with it whereas this time it was will it get on the Sunday times or won't it or and so it definitely changed the experience a little bit now when you were writing open when you went through a life-changing yeah experience yeah can you talk about that and how it impacted not just your writing but your life yeah um so i was about six weeks away from handing the book in so last march um and i found a lump in my breast and i had i'd been through that before I'd had lumps and bumps um got them tested they were nothing it was all fine didn't expect it to therefore be anything and I genuinely had the thought like oh six weeks so much to do so little time should I just wait until the book's in before I go and get this sorted um then gave myself a bit of a talking to and said don't be so silly pick up the phone make the appointment made the appointment and then about a week or two before i handed the book in uh got the diagnosis of an early stage breast cancer so as early as you can possibly find it which is you know i was in the best position i could be in in that situation um but nonetheless scary as hell and can we spend a moment on that yeah because you are in your late 30s you know um you get an early cancer diagnosis yeah how do you how do you handle that um do you know what there's that moment i i told my husband i told matt don't worry about coming with i'd been through it before it was it would always turned out fine and my son was not very well at that point so someone needed to take him to the doctors that day i said why don't you take luke to the doctors i'll go and sort this out and then we're done and i just i think because they just called me like 48 hours before the appointment or something to say you've got an appointment day after tomorrow i think matt kind of thought that doesn't sound right i'm coming so he came along thank goodness um because then we walked into the room and the consultants there and and the mcmillan nurse is next to him and you just i remember as i sat down i just got this sort of like this rush of adrenaline just went through my body and I just sort of like heated up and he's leaning forward looking sad and and I'm just sort of like not really registering all of the words but thinking like I'm free falling like what what on earth is happening and um and I remember Matt sort of he'd been given a chair a little way over and he kind of shuffled in and grabbed my hand kind of thing and um and I almost couldn't I remember I think at that point I kind of took my hand and I almost couldn't um you know like it's the someone hugs you and you burst into tears thing like I just needed to go into okay let's what is this what do we need to do when do we need to do it how we did blah blah I needed to go into sort of business mode of let's sort this out and and I needed to kind of register what the guy was saying and then so we didn't really have a moment till we then left the room because it's weird you find out in bits and bobs so they say well you know it's these pre-cancer cells and we're gonna have to take it out but before that they've got to do lots of other tests to find out how far it's gone where you know if it's spread or those kind of things so there's still lots of uncertainty it's not like you find out your fate on that day um so yeah we had a bit of a moment after when they said okay you've got all these other tests to do and biopsies and stuff um which i knew was just horrible procedure um and so they said you know take 20 minutes go have a drink and and we sat outside and um and that was i think when we had this like what the actual you know what what What is, what's going on?

29:17Yeah. How do you handle that moment? Because you have the theoretical experience now on how to handle moments like this. Yeah. Thank God you have an incredible partner that's with you. But at the same time, you're a human being. You know, you're a mom. Yeah. You know, so how do you handle that? Yeah. I think that was the biggest thing was your mind immediately goes to your children. I need to be here.

29:52And there's that, you know, it wasn't a huge amount of time. It feels like a huge amount of time at the time. But that period where you don't know and you have all those tests and then you're waiting for the results. The results came back. And the recommendation changed. And we didn't want to tell the kids until we knew what the plan was and that I was going to be all right and all that kind of thing. I was trying to get rid of the book, so I almost finished. I was just reading through and editing, and then I wanted to hand it in. And I just happened to be reading the chapter on fear, When Fear Hits You.

30:27And I read it. I thought, this isn't what I need. So I pressed delete, deleted the whole thing, started again. The whole chapter. I wrote what I needed to hit with a sort of letter. so each chapter is a scenario and it starts with a letter from me uh that's a bit of a pep talk it's like okay here we are here's the deal here's what to focus on and then the skills come next and um and and the letter just was really gentle a bit like how you know matt had tried to grab my hand in the meeting and i'd gone no let's just focus um i needed that focus and if you read that chapter is a bit like like a sports coach or something okay here we are we can't change the fact that fear is here and it's the worst kind of fear and every time I read it it got me back on the front foot and a sense of action and so that time when we didn't know what to do um I I read that chapter that day and then me and my husband just started calling people and then we planned in the operation and uh and got it done got it done yeah there you go and today you are well that's not word but touch word i'm on the other side you're on the other side thank goodness thank goodness for all of us yeah when i look at society today it feels i feel as if there are a lot of messages around self-love you gotta love yourself you gotta love yourself but very little on what does that actually mean?

31:56And why is it technically important? So let's start with that part. Why is self-love so important? I think first and foremost, you have to be honest with yourself. So I'm not part of that kind of, you must have high self-esteem all the time. You must tell yourself you're great all the time. Like all the stuff online about like positive affirmations and tell yourself you love yourself and you're amazing. in the in the mirror and then you'll believe it and and that's fine if somebody already has a fairly decent estimation of themselves i might make them give a little boost in the moment it won't last it kind of tails off but if someone has a sort of quite um destructive core beliefs and they don't love themselves or they don't believe they're strong or they don't believe they're worthy of love and you get them to start kind of saying that stuff to themselves over and over again they don't start to believe it they come up with in their mind all the reasons why it's not true and it starts this internal battle of you know i am worthy well actually you're pretty rubbish at this and you're pretty you know you just start this internal kind of destructive pattern of of thought which can then just become all consuming for people so um the way that we learn and change our beliefs is about it is through evidence of action so for me I think if I'm working with someone and they they don't have that kind of basic care or love for themselves is to look at how they can start delivering it through actions so you have a duty to to look after yourself as if um as if you have a responsibility to do the absolute best by yourself you know if you were you know not everyone is parents but you can imagine if you were responsible for a child or a young person and and it was your responsibility to make sure that they you know lived a full happy life and you know um reached their potential and had good relationships and kept themselves healthy what are the decisions you would make for them right how would you treat them and when they tripped and fell and they made mistakes how would you speak to them then and and it's that sort of like it's okay to feel something isn't it but but do you then follow it up with action and behavior yes because that's the stuff that convinces us okay um so those thoughts that you were talking about before that intrude and say you know um negative thoughts in essence is that this uh metacognition um idea uh so yeah that is Yeah, so metacognition.

34:43So we all have the ability to think. And then we all have this incredible, we think it's a very only humans kind of thing, but this ability to think about what we're thinking about. Okay. So I can, I don't know, I'll knock my drink over and I'll start thinking, oh, you absolute idiot. You've made a fool of yourself. You're very clumsy. And then I could go, oh, wow, I'm being so self-critical right now. I'm being really harsh on myself. And that's the metacognition is thoughts about the thoughts. And that's really what we do in therapy is, you know, people will come into the room. They'll offload about the week.

35:19And then I go, wow, look. Wow, look at how you said that. or what does that mean? So what were you thinking at the time when you did that? And so it's all that process of just getting a kind of bird's eye view on the situation and being able to see your thoughts for what they are. So metacognition is the thoughts about the thoughts. And it's just having a thought about the thought. It's no other further analysis. It's just the thought about the thought. Yeah, so it leads to further analysis. so you can then look at okay was that warranted or was it true or um because you know most thoughts are biased because you your your thoughts influence how you feel and how you feel influences your thoughts so people might often think of it in the first way so they'll say you know if you're self-critical then you'll feel depressed or you'll feel low but actually also if you're emotional for whatever is let's say you're really stressed out you've got a lot going on and you're exhausted so your your emotions are heightened then you're also more likely to be self-critical in those moments yes and the fact that it's influenced in that direction as well shows us that thoughts are not factual because how can they be if they're influenced by your emotional state yes which fluctuates all the time yes um so there's real power in that because we often have um what's called emotional reasoning as well so you'll feel something so i feel like an imposter therefore i am one or i feel like a fraud therefore i must be one and i'm not worthy to be here or you know i feel like a failure therefore i am and so it's so um emotional reasoning is when we we uh feel something therefore we believe it must be true okay yeah fair enough so then how do we when we So we've done the analysis from the metacognition.

37:14How do we then change our thought? What do we do to increase the positivity in how we're talking about ourselves? And two is, actually, let me go back to this, is what is self-love? Because that is also something that I hear 15 different definitions of what's self-love. What is it? I think it's a set of choices um you know you can you can feel love for someone else I mean it's the action thing isn't it do you show that in what way do you show that and how do you have evidence of that okay you might you might experience something in terms of feeling when you're around them or when you're thinking about them that kind of thing um but but then what does that mean in terms of what you do and and so I think it's for when it's talking about loving yourself it's about treating yourself as if you're someone you love isn't it and and having genuine compassion for yourself and genuine um so when I do things like like the live tv or something when I go on this morning and it's genuinely pretty terrifying or at the beginning um the way that I managed that was not by saying you know I'm really good or I'm the best it's if those uh horror stories in my mind come true you know I fall over flash my underwear to the nation whatever you know humiliation um I'll have my own back I'll look after myself as if I would if it was my daughter doing it um I will not kick myself if I make a mistake I will not kick myself while I'm down um I'll be very careful about how I speak to myself in response to that and how I treat myself in response to that um because if I haven't got my own back then who has and you know if I'm putting myself into situations where I feel vulnerable the only reason I'm going to have the drive to do that is if I'm going to look after myself through it as well yes um so I think there's something about that isn't there that it's a commitment to having your own back and having your own best interests at heart because if you really love someone you have their best interests you want the best for them you do you do and and i and i love it's interesting as a parent it's i i i'm with you it's it's so easy to say okay this is how i i treat my child yeah so therefore i i should be treating myself the same way yeah but i would imagine for anyone it is any one that you love.

39:52It could be your dog, right? Any being that you love. Are you treating yourself that way? So then to go back to the metacognition, you're having the thought about the thought. So let's say we're on this morning and we're nervous. We're nervous. We're going to fall. The thought about the thought is, oh my, I am an idiot. I said something that was, I shouldn't upset this then then how do we correct that so that we are self-loving so some people correct it so so in certain therapies you'll go down the route of things like um thought challenging so you might look at the evidence for it so you try to kind of break down or loosen the belief in it so you might do that by challenging it and saying well is that true is it warranted um what's the evidence for it being true you know and you you do the take your thoughts to court thing where you go what exactly if we were taking that thought to court in real life where would the evidence be that that was actually true and what would be the evidence against and you kind of just weigh it up in your mind and that is it can be pretty effective for loosening off certain beliefs especially things about sort of um with anxiety and stuff like that where you're predicting things that are unlikely or something like that but for some people it's it's a bit like the affirmations in the mirror thing where it sets up an argument in your mind and what happens is you just become too consumed with um trying to challenge these thoughts and then another one comes along and and it's just too much so for those people we do or what i call kind of thought thought diffusion so this is part of acceptance and commitment therapy where you you try to take a step back so you put that thought at arm's length okay so you can see it for what it is right so if i if if i have a thought and it's here and i all i can see is that thought and i'm going to accept that as fact that's my reality whereas if i push it back to here like okay there's a thought then you can kind of see what it is see it for what it is which okay it could be biased it's one possible scenario it's one possible perspective on this situation yes but by by putting it back there i've got some room to look at other possible scenarios okay so so So in this example, let's say, because I think everyone could empathize and sympathize with this is calling yourself an idiot.

42:14I think we've all been there, right? I've been there five times today. You know, so it's like, okay, I'm an idiot. Yeah. But you're saying keep that at arm length. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I would say one way of putting it at arm's length is to say, I notice I'm having thoughts that I'm an idiot. And just by adding that to the beginning, I'm having thoughts that I'm an idiot, reminds you that they're thoughts. That's powerful. Yeah. It's powerful. Because you're not just saying this is a fact. You're saying there are a load of thoughts coming into my head that I'm an idiot. Or, you know, when I was going through the cancer thing, there are loads of thoughts, you know, horror stories coming to my mind about I'm going to die.

42:56I know that there's a set of thoughts there. But because I've seen that as, you know, I've labeled them as catastrophizing thoughts. they're the horror story thoughts, the worst case scenarios, just by labeling them as a type of thought, I've already taken some of the power out of them. And I know it's one way I can go. And I know if I go down that route and give those all my attention, I know exactly how I'm going to feel. Absolutely awful, terrified. They're always there as an option. What are the other options I can consider? There's power in that. That is. You know, two game changers already is I love take your thoughts to court.

43:32Yes. Oh my gosh, that is good. I'm going to be using that. That is very good. In an argument. Yeah. But then also, you're right, is I notice I'm having thoughts about. It feels like what it does is it gives me more authority. It gives me more. It's like I'm taking the power back from the thought. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Can you believe that 80 % of relationships end in heartbreak or dissatisfaction? Do you want to know why? Because of the myths we believe about love. So much of what we've been taught is wrong. Like, true love means never feeling attracted to someone else. Myth. You should never keep secrets from your partner.

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45:41What about, you know, still within the self-love is, you know, self-esteem and how self-esteem is wrapped into self-love. So, A, how do you define self-esteem? Because I think it's important for us to all be on the same page. Yeah. And then how do we boost it? And should we always be in this zone of constantly trying to increase our self-esteem? self-esteem is almost your sort of your estimation of yourself if you're like you know um whether you regard yourself as as good enough and and you know a decent person whereas i've totally moved away from that idea to i think what's more important is self-compassion because a you have to be able to be honest with yourself so if it's all about sort of blind self-esteem it's like you are you are good you are doing great you're you know um but you also have to have room for improvement without feeling terrible about yourself so so um i don't know there's um within the sort of self-compassion so i'm trying to think of an example i would use in therapy where um let's say you took an exam and you didn't study and you got you failed it and you're feeling terrible about yourself and you're saying you know i'm a failure i you know i should have studied my life's over you could have a friend who would say don't worry it doesn't matter like it's just an exam like you're great you're brilliant don't even think about it pretend it never happened that would be kind of self-indulgence right yes let's it's trying to boost your self-esteem make you feel fantastic and is ignoring the fact that you haven't fulfilled your potential or you haven't done what you now realize mattered to you whereas another friend who perhaps was compassionate might say you know that's really tough to go through and you know tough learning experience i get that studying law or whatever is really important to you um so let's work on it together what happened what what happened what stopped you from studying there is still potential to do this again and to improve and um but let's work on it let's do the difficult thing that really matters to you so that as you start to work on that and get through it you can feel good about yourself yes but it doesn't require you to feel good about yourself right now it just requires you to treat yourself with respect and to say i don't think any less of you because you made a mistake just know that this is something we need to work on yes you know and it's it's that idea that that you can only love yourself when you're successful or when everything's right no no you just you just have that basic respect for yourself and care for yourself and a duty to do the best by yourself um so you could be honest so the best friends are the ones who are honest but but deliver that honesty with compassion and respect and and you know they want the best for you so if my if my child says this happens a fair bit i don't want to go to school say mom i'm tired indulgence would be okay we'll go back to school when you feel like it yeah said my parents never so compassion would be i get it i didn't feel like getting up this morning either it's tough some days but it's really important that we go sometimes even when we don't feel like it um because your education is really important let's go and i'll you know help you get there and then we'll have an early night tonight and we'll do what's best for you but recognize that this is our priority today um you know because you're not poorly or whatever um so compassion is often do it it's given a bad rap because people confuse it with indulgence but it's often doing the hardest thing that has your best interest in the long run i see i see I see.

49:47So self-compassion, much more powerful in your eyes than self-esteem, especially in this day and age. If you have compassion for yourself, then you can get through a period of time where your self-esteem is lower. Okay. So self-esteem might fluctuate depending on successes and failures, but you can face failures if you do that with compassion. With compassion, okay. Does confidence read into this in any way? Because I've often looked at confidence and I've heard a lot of people describe confidence as a muscle that we just need to continually build. And when we have confidence, we're able to treat ourselves with more self-compassion, more self-love.

50:25So what to you, what is confidence? And is this something that we need to be focused on building constantly? Yeah. so i would say a lot of confidence is situation specific but we don't necessarily realize that because we tend to kind of funnel into our own lives right so um uh you know i'm coming into your podcast space that you're you know fairly used to by now and so it's very familiar to you but my stress response might give a little spike because it's novel to me so my brain is saying be alert because we don't know this situation um we need to kind of deal with this we can't it's not automated yet whereas if i took you into a mental health hospital you might be like i don't know what i'm doing here i don't know how to get it right or what to say or you know so it's um it's situation specific yes and so if there's something you want to to master and to feel more confident at I would always say don't aim for confidence confidence is a byproduct of being willing to be vulnerable be the beginner put yourself in a situation where you don't feel confident and sit with it and repeat it again and again and put the work in until your brain starts to automate some of that and be when your brain is able to predict a scenario and how it will run and you feel able to have agency in that situation you know you could handle different scenarios then you have that confidence that that you can kind of deal with it yeah i see that yeah i see that so how does that relate to our relationships you know so you think about people who say gosh i just don't feel confident dating you know is it okay go out on five dates so you can build that muscle is that in essence what it is that would be a great thing and that's generally what happens in therapy you know with um like phobias or social anxiety and stuff like that you'll do you'll do the work on the thought stuff like we were saying earlier about you know um dealing with kind of negative thoughts or anxious worries and that kind of thing but you also do a behavioral side so you'll make um a scale and you'll look okay what's the scariest situation you can think of in terms of social interactions dating or whatever maybe like a big group date with speed dating or something is like the scariest thing and and maybe the easiest thing is just going out for coffee with my friend and someone else i don't know yet um and and you don't start with the scariest thing you start with the easiest thing that feels like a challenge but doable because you need an easy win to begin with yes so you do something that's just a little bit challenging and you do it again and again until it feels easy and and what happens you kind of have like your comfort zone and then you have a kind of you know fear zone outside of that you just want to step slightly out and and keep doing that until what happens is the comfort zone grows to encompass that so the thing that you do every day will become that comfort zone right so you do that and then you step outside of it again and and you keep so the idea is you have to repeat it quite frequently okay so if you you know go on a date once a year it's always going to be terrifying right because it's always new we're a bit like me with the kind of tv stuff if i do it a lot it's fine if i have a break it's like starting again um and it's you know it's scary again so and that's just your brain saying this is novel be alert get your a game on because we can't remember how to do this.

54:01Sure. By the way, I have surveyed endlessly around what's the scariest dating scenario. And you almost got it 100%, but you missed one thing. Right. So you said big group speed dating. Yeah. It's big group naked speed dating. Who knew that was a thing? It's a thing. Tell me it's not a thing. It is a thing. Oh my God. That would be the scariest thing. That would be the scariest thing. imagine being so comfortable oh yeah i make it's group speed date all the time you know wow that is it's wild julie the streets are wild the streets are wild okay so i'm small time folks all right so what about and this reads i think uh you know specifically into building up that confidence is criticism and disapproval right because i feel as if this is uh this is it we're critique, especially on social media.

54:59Everything. To the point where I was talking to someone else about this, where my son, he's going to hate me for saying this, but I have to say it is, so he's 14, right? And he'll go onto socials and he'll look at the comments. And this is how, actually, this is how he determines whether or not he will look at a video, is he won't look at the header of the video. He won't look at the thumbnail. He'll go into the comments and he'll look for whether or not there's critiques of the video. Before he's watched the video. Before he's watched it. And I thought this is so, for me, it feels so bizarre.