Richard  
Good day, everybody. It's yet another episode of Richard and Fiona's Therapy Natters thanks for listening. Hope you're enjoying it so far. This is episode eight. And we've got quite a lot to talk about today. Hello, Fiona, by the way, how are you on this lovely, lovely day?

Fiona  
I'm fine. I'm not quite so sure it's lovely. The other day it was sunny, and now it's freezing cold. But hey.

Richard
Yeah. This is English Spring. You never know what you're gonna get. It was snowing here yesterday.

Fiona 
Yeah. Here too, not for very long. 

Richard 
Actually about 20 minutes ago, it was doing something weird out there. But it's pretty we can't complain.

Fiona 
Well, we can we're British, we complain about the weather.

Richard
But it doesn't do anything about it. It doesn't change anything. Complaining doesn't help.

Fiona  
That sort of ties in quite neatly with what we're going to discuss today. Doesn't it was that planned?

Richard
I don't just throw it together. Absolutely. That was planned right at the last second. How can I segue this into the topic? Oh, easy.

Fiona 
Well, I'm impressed. I'm impressed. And so yes, this week, we're combining a few things, which you will see listeners or hear even how they connect with what Richard said so eloquently.
We got several questions and they all seem to have the same sort of theme. And also, we've brought in a couple of recent clients, as well. And just to say, the specifics of the clients have been changed so that they're non identifiable. So please know that that's always going to be done. But before we get to that, we just felt it was important to say that sometimes, we will be discussing an issue that might feel insensitive to others. As you'll see, one of the contributors this week is about coping with small children, and another is about infertility. can see the potential issues there, can't you? But unless we decide to avoid any topic that might upset someone, there's little we can do. If we did decide that, then our natters would be very bland, and I can't see that. That's not what we're intending. And presumably people wouldn't listen. So all we can really say is sorry, if we're discussing something that upsets you, and hopefully, this won't happen often. But on that note, the issues we're combining all have the common element of how to cope with the situation you find yourself in when you cannot change it. So, Ella asked for advice on staying sane in the madness of young children's constant needs. Richard and I can both remember that. Almost every parent will be able to relate to that one. And Pip asks, How does one cope with being infertile and the prospect of possibly never having a biological child of their own? In a world where it's such a taboo subject, and there is very little help or understanding on the subject. Greg from Hampshire asked, What do you think would be a good way for me to overcome anxiety / anger / obsession relating to mild neighbourhood noise, like a quiet bass coming through the walls, I hope you're beginning to see this theme of coping with what is.
Lily was a client who came to therapy struggling to cope with a very elderly mother's trivial anxieties. For example, She said that she had an excessive reaction to the delay in a routine dental checkup and an equally excessive reaction to a celebrity swearing on TV. Lily feels her reaction is similarly excessive, ie the mother's driving around the bend, but can't help it. And finally, Gary was a long term client. And during his therapy, unrelated, he had a test for cancer when he found a mole that had changed, and he was struggling with waiting to find the result. So five very different scenarios, but all ones about how to be when there is nothing or little that can be done to change it.

Richard 
Listeners of mine on my other podcast might have heard me use a phrase that I originally thought it must have been Sigmund Freud. But whenever I've tried to figure out what book he wrote it in or what lecture it was or what essay he wrote it in, I can never find it. And whenever I've Googled it, the only person I can ever find anywhere in the world has ever said this phrase is me in previous articles, so I'm gonna have to adopt it as my own. And that is that most people come to therapy suffering with nothing more than life itself. But that doesn't mean that just because it's life, it's not painful. It can still be incredibly painful to have the life that we have sometimes. And somebody else Nietzsche probably would have said something on the lines of life is suffering. It is what it is. Well he wouldn't have said it is what it is, that's what I chuck on the end, but

Fiona 
he would. And existentialists say that anxiety is the condition of life. And that the only way that you can be without anxiety is by basically pretending it doesn't exist, and creating cocoons around yourself to protect yourself from it, which don't in effect work. In Episode Two, we used a phrase which was I can't control everything, but I can manage anything that applies to all of these clients people doesn't it that can help them. But just before we came on, Richard and I were joking, well, maybe not joking, but saying that by the time we get to Episode 100, all we'll be going through is saying, Well, you could use this that we said in episode three, and this was said in Episode 56. Because we've got two other bits here that relate to other episodes already. One was the Sedona Method that we covered in episode six, so we won't go back to it, but it's there and acceptance, which was in Episode Six as well. So those apply, here. But what else Richard,

Richard 
I know, we've spoken about it already, as you say, but I do think it's okay, if something's important to repeat ourselves a little bit. Because for a lot of the conditions, a lot of issues a lot of life that we live, we have to learn how to accept what is and be okay with that. Although a lot of these questions do have the same sort of foundation, which is, there is something going on in my life that I can't do much or anything about. The problem with not being able to start a family if that was your expectation lies in lots of different places, because that's not just your expectation, society seems to expect that of each other, other people in your family. And we do live in a culture in a society that out of habit. If somebody doesn't have a family, people around will say, well, when will you? Why haven't you, they'll tap their wrist, come on, tick tock, when you're gonna start a family. And somebody's gonna be triggered again and again and again. And that needs to be accepted. What we'd like is to change the outside world. So people didn't behave that way. And they didn't they didn't say those things. And they didn't constantly say to anybody who's recently married or having children next. So rude, I'm getting angry, as angry as I get anyway, we can't change the culture, just like that. It's like trying to make everybody wear masks when COVID is gone, though it's not quite gone yet, as my recent cough is anything to go by. But wouldn't it be great if we lived in a world where if we started to feel a little unwell, got a cold, just a cold, just a bit of a sniffle that we put on a mask so that we didn't spread it around to the people that are in our surroundings? And there are some cultures that have done that for a generation. We haven't, because we've been particularly selfish and gone. Well, I don't care about the outside world, let them have it.

Fiona
I think we just saw it as being really rather silly. I don't think we have, well, I certainly never even thought about it. I just thought what are they doing? That's really silly. As soon as we realise what it is, absolutely. But that's that sort of attitude of other people applies through several of these I think, doesn't it? For Ella with the young children. She's almost certainly got other people around saying, Oh, how lovely is that? How wonderful. Oh, you gorgeous children? Oh, you're so lucky. Which she then thinks. And I'm mind reading here. I know. But probably you think, Well, I am. But I shouldn't complain. And you've got both things going on at the same time. You love them. You love it. But it's really difficult. At the same time. I sometimes think I would love to have a time machine to go back to when mine were little. But I think an hour might be enough. Maybe a bit more and regularly to pop back. But it's the intensity that's so tough and people giving these things and then you've got all the competition that goes along with being new parents, you go to toddler groups, and people get competitive about, oh, my child's sleeping through the night, my child was potty trained within two minutes of their first view of a potty, you have all these things going on and it really gets to you. It adds to that feeling of not being able to cope and it's all too much.

Richard 
One thing Ella said was about the lack of support around her not having not having the friends not having a family, for a lot of people and and it's been like this for 1000s of years. You lived within spitting distance of your of your family, your own mum, you probably end up even just a generation ago, you'd probably end up moving to another house in the same street. Some maybe even next door. You'd end up buying that one. Your family was just right there. It takes a village to raise a family

Fiona 
and in some cultures in the UK as well as around the world that still exists and sometimes even within the same house, which can present its own issues. I've had clients coming with issues connected to that and the lack of freedom and the interference that you get Oh, gosh, it's all nightmare, thinking of Lily with her elderly mother. Again, there's a little bit of mind reading here, although she was my client, so I know a bit more. But there's people saying, Oh, it's so lovely. You've still got your mum. And she's really healthy. You should feel so lucky because I know this person who's got that. But that doesn't help Lily,

Richard   
because it's still difficult for her. And it can feel belittling if somebody says, Oh, this could be worse. Yes I know it could be worse, but it's still horrible. What I'm going through, it still feels difficult. I still feel like I cry any day.

Fiona
Perspective is an interesting one in that I remember when I first started to train, we were very much told that it doesn't matter about perspective, whatever your situation is, Don't compare yourself to anybody else. This is the clients. Whatever your feelings, they're valid, and don't compare, it doesn't matter. So somebody who comes in as a client with let's use Lily's mother's thing about being terribly upset by a celebrity swearing on TV, that to the therapist is just as important. This sounds even weird to say it. But this is the theory that that's just as important as Pips concern about not having children, because perspective doesn't matter.

Richard
Yeah, agreed. It's like you were saying in an earlier episode, we should see the perspective. And at the same time, recognise that it doesn't matter what that perspective is, our feelings are valid. And you mentioned the pandemic, I think it was a very first episode. And it kind of forced everyone to look at the position they're in and see that there are different perspectives and situations. And we all experience it differently. The pandemic has been mostly unpleasant an experience for us all. But it did also make people stretch their comfort zones in positive ways too. Once we make a change in our life, it seems to make it easier to make another change, it seems safer. And we've seen that in in a lot of research. If somebody wants to make a big change in their life, maybe they want to start new habits a big habits. If they make a if they change a small habit first and make that big habit easier to change rather bizarre. Like cleaning your teeth with the opposite hand, if you did that for a couple of weeks before you then go on to quit smoking or change your eating habits or something big and significant. That was gonna be a lifelong change for a couple of weeks beforehand if you learn to clean your teeth with the opposite hand, it's easier to make that change. And I think the changes that happened in 2020, when everybody started to work from home, or they were just it was just a drastic shift in our life. It did plant a seed inside a lot of people's minds that says it's okay to make a change. Let's see what other changes we can make. But it was difficult for a lot of people. And right at the very start of that March 2020 lockdown, so many people said, well, this is a leveller, isn't it? We're all we're all in the same boat. Now, whether we're rich or poor, we're all in the same boat. No, no, they were not in the same boat. We're in that we're on the same sea. But some boats were flipping yachts. l

Fiona
We were in the same storm

Richard
Yeah, we were in the same storm. But we were certainly not in the same boat. It was not a leveller at all. All these wealthy people sitting in their big gardens with a gin and tonics going, Oh, this is nice. We're all in the same boat. Or there's somebody with five children that are trying to homeschool ooh I'm getting cross.

Fiona
Well, it reminds me that right back at the beginning, when somebody I knew was was actually saying how lovely This is, gives me time to do all these things that I wasn't doing otherwise. And other people around, including me were going I'm just making a face here. I can't I can't express myself properly with words, not words that should be going out publicly. The lack of awareness was amazing. But yeah, it was a change. It really was a change. Let's get back to or maybe get to what these lovely people can do, shall we? You talked about acceptance. Obviously, that's the first step. But one thing is so simple in its essence, but not necessarily so simple in execution is to express the feelings that you have. But in order to do so you have to have a place to express them. Now, here with these examples, it seems that Ella and her husband would be able to express their feelings to each other. Although we don't absolutely know that Ella might be able to express her feelings to other parents on Mumsnet and things of that ilk, Pip. Perhaps there are forums, well, there are forums for people who are going through similar things. And what makes a subject taboo. It's the fear of the other people in this context, this sort of taboo, so there will be places where she will be able to express herself. Greg, the one with a noisy neighbour. He hasn't said but could he express hisself to the neighbour? I mean, maybe he can't, but maybe they don't realise,

Richard
yes, certainly just being able to put it out there and say, it's not a problem. But just so that you know, the stereo you've got or the TV that you've got that you play the music through, or whatever, must be quite close to the wall. And I can hear it coming through. Just so you know. But it sounds so passive aggressive if we're not careful. That's the only thing 

Fiona 
you have to be very careful with the way that you do it.  I once had,

Richard 
especially as Greg's clearly had a traumatic experience in the past with a neighbour. He mentions in his message that there was past experience, I think,

Fiona 
yeah, so it's a question of how you do that. I once had a very long time ago. A very noisy neighbour. And the noises coming through the wall were not music.

Richard
Oh, I had a neighbour like that once. She was a screamer.

Fiona 
Yeah, similar.

Richard  
Have you seen the film Porkies? No. Well, those that have a laughing to themselves now, I won't go into any further details.

Fiona 
Okay. I don't know what you're talking about. 

Richard
I'll explain off mic. 

Fiona 
Anyway, I wrote a very carefully worded note, because there's no way that they knew no way they knew they couldn't have known and I just put it through the door. And problem solved. We carried on as neighbours as if nothing had ever happened. 

Richard
Okay. How British, 

Fiona
How very British, how very British. Something then just popped into my mind. I was recently in a hotel. And it's lovely hotel, except that all night. Right. The other side of my headboard. I could hear a guy snoring. It was consistent. It was just all night. It was about five in the morning. By the time I did it, but I found on YouTube. Anti snoring white noise.

Richard
And it drowned it out?

Fiona
It didn't drown it out it neutralised it. And I was able then to just doze off and sleep. Till probably about nine o'clock I was on holiday. And it was it was brilliant. So there are techniques that can be done with things like that now, which wouldn't have been doable before.

Richard 
Perspective is the right way of is the right word. If we're looking at something it is, it's the story we tell ourselves about it. An intrusive noise if the story is these people are deliberately annoying me or these people are selfish, or these people don't care then that story is going to hurt. But if the story is they don't mean anything by this, and they don't even know that I can hear them. They don't even know that this is a problem, then that's a different story. I moved house six months ago, into a quiet little village. It's used sometimes as a shortcut, because it's got a main road at one end. And further down the other way you can get to a quarry. And you can get to an industrial estate. There's a big Amazon warehouse, which for Amazon deliveries we're always very last on the list. It's like eight o'clock at night. They do it as they go ticking the van back. And every time I see these, because there's so many cars driving through the village. Now my little village, it's got 500 people in it. All these cars are not villagers going to and from their house to the shops and things like that all of these cars that go past my house. When I bought I was told it's a lovely quiet village. There's nobody ever goes through it. Yeah, thank you, I'll buy the house. Yeah, every time these cars go by, I'm reminded of the fact that they're not using the main road that takes them it's only 2 minutes. But there's a two minute 50 mile an hour main road that goes around some farms and would take them on to the main road. But it would mean an extra two minutes of them driving. Now, if you're going somewhere for the first time, this is the 21st century, you put the postcode into your sat nav, and it just takes you there. And then eventually, you don't need the sat nav anymore, because you know the route, so you just do what you've always done, I can pretty much guarantee that all the people that drive past my house that might wind me up from time to time and I go, how rude How dare you, they don't even know that there's an alternative route, they've never considered it, it's never crossed their mind. They just do not know it is not within their awareness. As far as they're concerned, this is the only way to get to their destination. I know that's not necessarily the case with the ones from the quarry who really should not be driving around this little tiny village. Because there are signs that say no vehicles above seven and a half tonnes. And I do get annoyed at those and then the typical English villages will come out and take photographs of the licence plate and send it to the police. Okay, I'll let them do that. That's their story. They need a purpose. That's fine, you do that. But the perspective being these drivers don't know. They've just put the postcode into their sat nav, and they're going from Ellistown to Hinckley or whatever, and they just go through the village. They don't know. And I think that's the story. We need to tell ourselves sometimes that people don't mean us harm.

Fiona 
And that applies really to the people that Pip is saying that she can't talk to. They don't know. Oh, you were saying earlier that might be asking her questions that are awkward. Greg's obviously is his neighbours may well not know, and Lily's mother probably has no idea. Maybe she does, but probably has no idea that she's being irritating. So it's about being able to express the feelings, but it's choosing the way to do it. So the guy who was snoring, I was only there one night, but if it had been longer, I couldn't have put a note under his door saying you were snoring all night. Because What's he supposed to do about it? He can't move the bed. Hey can't stop snoring. So it's being sensitive to the other person. But Lily might be able to talk to her mother or other family members. Maybe. Gary, the one who's waiting for his diagnosis. Maybe you can talk to family or friends. But then there's the likelihood there because it happens. So often. I say it's likelihood that he doesn't want to worry them. So there are exceptions to all these things. And this is where a therapist comes in. Therapists aren't always there to solve a problem, they can be there as a sort of almost dumping ground that you can express whatever it is that you want to express, however, unpalatable it might feel, as you're saying it, we're used to it, people come in and say the most in normal society objectionable things. It's the sort of things that you just can't say to anybody else, you can say it to a therapist and not be judged, and you can leave it behind. So that can be a really useful tool. But in terms of expressing it, you can also write it down.

Richard
Journaling.

Fiona
I've got to think about the word journal, 

Richard
you don't like it, 

Fiona
I don't like it, because it's too formal, I think I'd like if, if I have a need to do something like this, I get a piece of paper I scrawl on, it doesn't matter if I get my letters the wrong way round. And I sometimes miss letters, I usually miss letters out as I'm writing, because I'm too fast, I can't, my hand can't keep up, it doesn't matter, I scrawl on a piece of paper, get it out of myself onto this paper and then either rip it up and spread it between two or three bins. or burn it. If it's a nice evening, you've got somewhere safe, absolutely safe, like a barbecue thingamajig that you could put it in and burn it, you know, don't do it in the middle of the lounge. But somewhere where you can do that, and it gets it out. Or you can draw it, you can draw it and then because of course the thing about burning it, well, it's two things. One, it destroys it, which is a nice feeling. But also nobody else gets to see it, there's no risk of anybody else reading it, but drawing it nobody's gonna know what you're expressing anyway. Or you can do things like you can sing it, 

Richard
sing it

Fiona
sing it sing, find a song that's got lyrics that are along the same lines. And just sing, you can belt it out whether you can, or you can't, 

Richard 
Oh everybody can sing is whether they can sing in tune or not. that's another story.

Fiona
Good point, Greg with the voice of the neighbours, he could he could be singing about his noisy neighbours. But there's all sorts of ways to just get it out of yourself.

Richard 
One private way that I suggest to clients is to create a separate Gmail account because they're free, and email it. just email yourself to that new Gmail account that only you know the password for. Nobody's ever gonna be able to log into it because it's totally random. It's just for you and you email it every day. If you want it to. your thoughts, your feelings, then you can just delete your sent item. In a year's time you log into that new Gmail account and read through your history of the last year and go look how far I've come. Go look at how angry I was on Valentine's day that day. Oh, blimey, I have a read through and go. Yeah, I'm doing all right lately. It's a good place to dump stuff. Really, really is.

Fiona
You mentioned when we were talking earlier about the Serenity Prayer.

Richard
Yes. What was his name?

Fiona 
St. Francis of Assisi.

Richard
Originally, I was thinking more of a theologian Reinhold Neibuhr.


Fiona
Well I think it's St. Francis  isn't it?

Richard
potentially I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it past him. It's the sort of thing that he would do. In 1933, there was a theologian, Reinhold. I'm gonna say his name was Neibuhr. And he has been picked up by lots of 12 Step programmes, like the Alcoholics Anonymous and people like that. The serenity prayer has been parodied a few times, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And that makes a lot of sense. That's always worked quite well, for me. Really has. You're googling St. Francis of Assisi now, aren't you?

Fiona
I googling the Serenity Prayer. And you're correct. But I don't know where I got my bit from.

Richard 
If you hear something enough times it becomes real to you.

Fiona
That is true indeed. Which makes me think that I made a mistake in Oh, episode one, I think it was episode one. Yes, it was episode one. I made a terrible mistake. I said that the quote, The unexamined life is not worth living. I said it was Aristotle. But it was Socrates. Boo hiss to me. In my defence, I had a cat called Aristotle who lived to nearly 18. So that's why I always go Aristotle

Richard
Sweet. We'll let you off we love you

Fiona
thank you, but the serenity prayer, whoever wrote it, wherever it's come from, it's really the premise behind it. It's sort of stating the obvious. Why worry about things you can't change. You can't change them. So don't worry about it, and put your effort into changing the things that you can. But of course, that doesn't mean that things don't annoy you and irritate and you can get frustrated by them. Of course you can. We're all human beings, but staying in the moment, recognising that time passes at the same speed, whatever, although sometimes it doesn't feel like it. You know, the idea that time flies when you're having fun and the opposite when you're not. We all know that that feels true. But in these circumstances, you know, there's differences. But for Ella, the phase of the intensity of young children, it'll pass. 

Richard
This too shall pass. 

Fiona
Yes, Pip, this phase will pass, it might not get the result that she ideally wants, but it will move on. And there will be ways to adapt. Greg, he's not always going to be next door to these neighbours. And if he was, he really probably would get used to it in the same way that people get used to being under a flightpath, Lily. Well, I mean, this sounds really bleak. But her elderly mother is not going to be around forever, it will time will pass. And as I say that I'm thinking she's gonna go, oh, no, I don't want that of course she doesn't want that. But it's not forever. And Gary, waiting for a result. It's tough. But the time will tick by, and the result will come. Hopefully, it'll be good news. If it's not, Gary, will be able to find ways to deal with the bad news. If that happens. Time keeps going. But there's a very specific way that we can help with that, isn't there? Mindfulness?

Richard 
mindfulness, you're not a massive fan of mindfulness. So he surprised me that you'd suggest it, but only because you're a big hypno fan.

Fiona 
I'm a big Hypno fan. I just personally haven't found that mindfulness works, particularly doesn't do much for me.

Richard 
You're not alone in that there are lots of therapists and clients are saying that

Fiona  26:31  
it's absolutely fine. But I do recognise that it is exceptionally beneficial for a lot of people. So I don't say oh, just because it's no good for me, it's no good for you. It really can be and i know it can be very good for a lot of people.

Richard 
Mindfulness is a bit of an overused phrase. And it seems to be a flavour of the month that seems to have lasted for many months, and if not years, but it's stuck around. And it's been popular for a reason. It's because when somebody can learn how to accept their thoughts and be okay with that, then thoughts can come in, and thoughts can go. But practising that can be difficult, because it might take a bit of patience. practising mindfulness might mean, you do nothing for 10 minutes. And within those 10 minutes, you have lots of intrusive thoughts and frustrations. And the first time you do it, the gaps in between those frustrations are seconds, just two or three seconds, and then you're frustrated again, and then there's two or three seconds of calmness, and then you're frustrated again. But those two or three seconds become three or four seconds become 10 seconds become 30 seconds, and become the ability for five minutes just to sit and be okay with your thoughts that might take weeks and weeks and weeks, if not months for some people, but it's worth it. It really is. And if you don't find it useful, and you'd prefer hypnosis because it's a bit more. It's easier to capture your attention with hypnosis than it is with guided meditation, I think. Because there's always something to listen to. There's always something going on. Whereas with meditation and mindfulness particularly, there are these great big long gaps. But, you know, there's plenty of hypnotherapy content for people to listen to. Our Brookhouse hypnotherapy group has got a YouTube channel with hours of hypnotherapy things on there for people to listen to. We're gonna get some more on there actually. So members of the Brookhouse hypnotherapy group if you're listening to this recording, and I'm sure you are. Get recording your own hypnotherapy stuff for our listeners, because our podcast listeners want to hear more and more. So please do that.

Fiona 
And you need to do more. Richard, you've only got one on there at the moment.

Richard
Yeah, all right. At least I did one. I did a bruxism one.

Fiona
And I've listened to it. I have listened to yours myself. One night a couple of weeks ago, I woke up in the morning with jaw pain that oh, I've been grinding my teeth. It's a very rare thing for me. But the next night I thought I know. I'll listen to Richard. And=, I haven't done it since

Richard 
I'll put a link into the show notes. So everybody can go and have a listen to that YouTube channel be quite good. Well Fiona? Have you seen the time? I hope we've done our best to answer these enquiries, these questions in as comfortable a way as we can in as kind a way as we can as well. I think we did. We're always going to do the best we can. And I know that there are some times there are going to be questions that other people ask that other listeners will just not be in the slightest bit interested in. Of course, that's the way that it is. And there might be topics that come up that feel quite triggering. And if that is the case, all we can do is give you that little bit of a warning at the beginning. If things might be pokey, and you can get the episode skip. And do let us know. Let us know your thoughts and feelings about the things we've been talking about today. You can submit some questions, there is a link in the show notes as always. And you can use that just to keep in touch with us just to say anything really about us and submit some new questions as well. So we can keep on doing this every week until we get totally fed up with this. But this could take a very long time. I'm not quite sure. We've got so much to talk about.

Fiona
Yes, we've got so much. I can't imagine us getting fed up with it.

Richard  
Even if we have a break. Can we just do them in seasons that people talk about we're not going anywhere. We'll definitely be back. Right Let's love you and leave you folks because time has really ticked on. Like I say if you need anything you know where to find us, and we'll talk to you next time. Bye everyone. 

Fiona
Goodbye.