Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a posh word that psychologists use to mean the idea of someone's subjective and individual experience.
We could all have exactly the same experience but feel completely different about it and it's important we understand why.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Phenomenology 0:02

And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and today you'll learn all about phenomenology. And if you are ready. We'll start the show. How do folks, have you had a good month? If you have, I wonder how you knew. What was it that you experienced that made it good? 'cause it's quite possible that you had exactly the same week as someone else, and they might have felt that they'd had a bad week. It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? But the thing is. If it felt like a bad week, then it was a bad week, even if in hindsight there was nothing bad about it if you were to compare it to someone else's. You see, it's really common for someone to either say to me in their therapy session or to write to me in an email something like, I shouldn't feel this bad. Other people have a worse life than me. And you know what? They're probably right, aren't they? Let's be fair. It's true to say that all of us right now are in a better position than someone somewhere else on this planet. But to be honest, that's irrelevant, actually. Knowing that somebody somewhere is having a worse time than you doesn't mean that you are wrong to be hurting. It shouldn't mean that you can't feel pain or grief or rejection. One person's experience is gonna be completely different to someone else's, and it's worth being aware of that for many reasons. Some of your listening might remember the ITN News presenter, Alistair Stewart. He had to resign from presenting the news on ITV, a couple of years ago now. Because in a Twitter spat with a politician, he quoted Shakespeare. Which is not normally worth resigning over unless, of course, in doing so, you accidentally call a black man an angry ape. Which did not land well. And at the time the papers were all over it saying it's political correctness gone mad. As they do. And in some ways it kind of was an overreaction. He wasn't being cruel himself. In fact, what he was doing was treating someone in the exact same way that he'd treat anyone. And that's the exact opposite of prejudice, isn't it? Isn't it? Well, maybe not. Giving two people the exact same situation doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to have the same experience. Similarly, my son, my wife and I, we were around a mate's house once and we'd mention that we were gonna go out for an Indian meal that night. And so she puts on this Indian accent and says, oh, you're going for a curry are you Mr. Richard, oh Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. And my son sort of, squints one eye and cocks his head as if to say, Ugh, really? And she went, oh, I suppose that's racist, isn't it? And we changed the subject. Well, I didn't wanna embarrass her, but she obviously felt guilty and it was on her mind. 'cause later on she put on an Australian accent and then said, well, how come impersonating an Australian isn't thought of as racism, but putting on an Indian accent is. We had a nice little debate about it. Hopefully opened her eyes a bit and made her think differently. 'cause like I say, everyone has their own reactions to their experiences. Everyone's experiences are totally unique. So saying G'day cobber to an Australian colleague on a Monday morning is gonna make them feel completely different to walking up to an Indian work mate and greeting them by impersonating Apu from the Simpsons. Now, in theory, there's no difference is there? But of course there is. How often is someone beaten to death just for being Australian? How many Australians have been chatting with some friends in a pub and had someone walk up to them and tell them that they should piss off back to where they came from? How many signs have ever been put up that say. No Australians? Have you ever seen some graffiti on somebody's door that says, Aussies go home? So someone moving to the UK from Australia isn't gonna feel the need to find or create an Australian area of the town so that they can feel safe in it, so that they can create a sense of belongingness, are they? I remember reading an interview with Naomi Campbell once. She mentioned that when her parents came to the UK from Jamaica, there were still those famous signs on the hotel and restaurant doors that said, No Irish, no blacks, no dogs. Just think about that for a moment that before the Race Relations Act of 1968, which was just a few years before I was born really. Someone could refuse to sell someone a house. They could refuse to offer them a job interview, refuse to serve them in a pub for no other reason than they weren't white Brits. And I'm not sure how far we've really moved on, really. So taking the mick out of an Irishman or a Jamaican or an Asian is going to feel very different to taking the mick out of an Aussie or a Canadian. It is 2025, and yet we still sometimes hear monkey chants on the football terraces when a black player gets the ball, don't we? It happened in an arsenal game earlier on this year. So calling a white man an ape is going to make them feel very different than if you called a black man an ape. The amount of rejection and pain that a white guy would experience is maybe 1 outta 10 on the, I don't feel safe scale, but the black guy, he might already be living at 5 outta 10 as it is, and it is gonna be generations and generations before this changes. And it's only going to change if we understand that this process exists. If we acknowledge that what doesn't injure one person a hundred percent hurts somebody else. That what doesn't bother your friend might really bother you. Not because you're sensitive, not because you're weak, not because they're strong, but because they are them and you are you. That we all have our own phenomenological view of the world. Phenomenology is this show off word we use for the study of subjective experience. Do you remember the Double rainbow guy? That bloke at Yosemite National Park called Bear, who in 2010 got massively emotional over a rainbow. That was when YouTube properly peaked and it was turned into a song and all sorts, and it was lovely. And in the video a fair few times, this guy Bear, he says. What does this mean? And he cries like it was his wedding day or something, repeating the phrase, What does this mean? And it meant something to him because he wanted it to. But it meant something different to me. Yeah, it was a beautiful rainbows, bright and sharp. And you know what? I used to live on the top of a hill, and with the sun at the right angle and the rain in front of me, I saw some beautiful double rainbows. Science of rainbows is brilliant. The light splits bounces around inside the raindrop and comes back out at just the right angle to hit your eye. But the key thing is, my rainbow isn't your rainbow. You'll see it from a slightly different angle through your own lens. Only you can see your rainbow, which means that everyone's rainbow looks a bit different. Everyone's rainbow is completely unique to them. And don't even get me started on the illusion of colour. 'cause actually colour is completely unique as well. Colour is created by our own brains. Not only is my rainbow gonna be different to yours, but my red is totally different to yours. For all I know. The colour that you call red. I'd call orange. If you were blind at birth and you've never seen the colour red, no matter how good someone's language is, no matter how well they tried to describe it to you, you're still not gonna be able to imagine it. You cannot experience it in the same way that a sighted person would. There's a guy on YouTube called Tommy Edison, who's blind and tells some fascinating perspectives. Every woman he's ever been with is a 10 he said. He knows that other people see a blue sky, but he doesn't know what that looks like. He dreams in darkness. His dreams are about sounds and smells and sensations just like ours, but just like his awake experiences, there's nothing to see. He has no concept of what things might look like. Because his phenomenological perspective is different to anyone else's and so is yours. Think about this. You watch some people on a rollercoaster and they go up and they go down and they wave their arms in the air and they scream and they all get off again. If one by one you ask them to describe how it felt, they would all describe it from their own experiential perspective. They'd be common themes, maybe. But it would still be unique to them and you could listen and understand how it was to them. But if you then went on the rollercoaster, would your experience of it be the same as any of theirs? Probably not, no. And would after speaking to the dozens of people that went on it, but that mean you don't need to go on it anymore yourself, because you already know how it feels. No, you still need to actually experience it in order to know how it feels. So, despite my enthusiasm and my passion for equality, do I know what it feels like to be a black man being called an ape? No. Do I know what it feels like to be a woman in a culture of patriarchy? I don't. A client with a history of sexual abuse once said to me once that no therapist could ever help them unless they'd been abused themselves. 'cause they wouldn't know how it felt. And we had to work on that because even if they were to work with a therapist who'd had exactly the same experience as them, it still wouldn't be felt as the same experience. Your world is always gonna be your world. Someone might find something very easy to do that you might find really difficult. One person might enjoy something and get excited by it, but you would find it horrendously anxiety provoking. When your man Bear in Yosemite saw that bright, crisp, double rainbow all across the sky. He had a phenomenological moment. When I see videos of babies laughing, I have a phenomenological moment. When I read stories about bullying or neglect, I have a phenomenological moment, and so would you, and so would everyone you know, and because it's a phenomenological moment, it's different for each of us. I likely see threats where you don't. You might see threats where I don't because you have a unique view of the world, but even if I feel safe and you don't. That doesn't mean that the way you feel isn't valid. Your feelings are valid. When someone with an eating disorder who loathes and despises the way that they look, gets told by their friend that they shouldn't be so stupid, that friend is the one who's made the mistake. When I say the word Christmas to you and ask you to think about Christmas, how it feels and what it means, it is gonna be completely different to somebody else's for a million different reasons. Christmas to an Australian will generate totally different experiences to Christmas to someone who's Irish, the phrase Get off my land! Is gonna feel very different to an Australian born man than it would to an Irishman. I went to Australia once and was walking along Bondi Beach and there was some stencilled graffiti on a path that simply said. On aboriginal land, and those words are gonna mean something different to everyone. Some people would read it and feel guilt, some would feel shame, some fear, some pride, some curiosity. And that's how it is with other things. That's how it is with attachment injuries. Someone with insecurities, is gonna feel completely different to someone who is more secure in their connections and attachments with people. When they try to have a conversation with a friend over lunch and their friend is constantly looking at their phone, the insecure person will feel rejected, ignored, belittled, inferior. And the secure character might feel amused or superior or nothing. Trauma or neglect in life can create a genuine pain that other people might not even come close to ever understanding. And not everyone knows this. So as far as other people are concerned, the only reason they can see for you feeling rejected when they didn't reject you is because to them you are too sensitive. You need to toughen up and not take things personally, which in itself is equally as critical and threatening as any other rejection. Because you'll get a sense that they don't know you. And if you have a dichotomous mindset that people are either with you or against you, and there's no middle ground, Well then they must be against you. Please recognise that whatever you experience and however painful it is. That pain is real. That pain is valid. You don't have to justify your pain by comparing it to someone else's. You just have to let yourself feel it. That's how healing starts. Like I so often say, just because someone has things worse than you, doesn't mean you shouldn't be in pain too. Yeah, broken legs are painful, but some are broken toes. I speak from experience. Anyway, that's a good spot to end on. Let's go for today. I'll be back on Monday on Patreon, as usual. With an episode about imposter syndrome. So if that's something that you're interested in, sign up. It is free for seven days and if you're not that interested in supporting what I do, I'm not gonna hold it against you for sure. I'm secure enough that I don't need everyone to like me. Actually, last month I did a shout out to some random patrons and I meant to do it again. I did open the webpage with the randomiser on it. Let's have another go Shall we? On wheel of names.com, right? Let's open this up and let's see on this wheel. Thomas Armstead, thank you for being a patron Thomas. Um, let's have a look who's next. Lucy, I dunno who you are. Lucy. Lucy, somebody. Thank you, Lucy, for being a patron of the podcast, Ivor Dalton. Thank you too for being a patron on patreon.com. Vicki L oh one of my favourite Ls, um, who's next, Lesley Smith. Thank you Lesley. And let's have one more Mick, just Mick. It's Mick. Alright, let's have one more. Um, Rob Main, oh, I know that name. I've seen you about somewhere. Rob, do you follow me on social media? Laura Graves, hello to you too and Rachel Chambers. That's a nice place to end. Thank you very much for being a patron. Have a super duper week, a super duper month and I'll speak to you again very soon. Love ya. Bye bye.