E10: Mental Health with therapist Lisa Cooke

There is a clear link between physical health and mental health, but do you understand it?

Listen to my conversation with integrative therapist, Lisa Cooke who is also a Personal Trainer too.

You can contact Lisa via the below:

Email: therafitmindbodyconnection@gmail.com
Mobile: 07821456412

Social Media/Other Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifestylelegacygym
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthrevivalcoachben
Website: https://linktr.ee/lifestyle.legacy_ben

Transcript

Ben: You.

Ben: Hi everyone. I'm Ben Johnson, mental health and exercise coach, private gym owner from Newcastle Online, coach of the revival program and outnumbered dad of two strong independent daughters just like my wife and I can't get a word in with them at home. Here's my chance. Welcome to my podcast. This show is a combination of my own personal growth, life experiences and experiences of fortune people for over a decade to help improve their health, happiness and life fulfillment. There's a lot of people struggling to find sustainable physical and mental health solutions, so I want to provide you with some key insights and key tools to help. If you find this information useful or even just enjoyable, it would be absolutely amazing if you could hit the Share button or leave a comment. You can also follow me on any of my social media platforms that can be found in the description text of this show.

Ben: So absolutely buzzing to have second ever guest on the podcast. Lisa cook with us today. Lisa is an integrative therapist and that's not right, is it?

Lisa: Yes.

Ben: Oh man, it is. Integrative therapist. She's also a personal trainer and also a fellow mental health and exercise coach. How we met. Lisa's done some amazing work inside the MHEC Award as well, helping other coaches and therefore impacted not only the coaches but also the people that they coach their clients and on such a big scale. Hello Lisa. Do you mind just summarizing what you do with your company, therapy?

Lisa: Hi Ben, thank you first of all for asking me to be here today. It's my honor. I'm an integrative counselor that has had a belief for many years that we need to connect to the mind and body through exercise and therapy. So I developed my own company, therapy. It's just actually a year officially today, believe it or not. That's quite nice.

Ben: Huge. Congratulations. Well done.

Lisa: Worked as a council for many years and the work that we do is one to one therapy, group therapy and also therapy program which is connecting therapy and fitness together and working the mind and body as one. I also personal trainer, do a lot of work with children and young people, connecting nature therapy in the mind as well because there's lots of different ways that we can improve our mental health, not just by having counseling as in traditional, we can do it in other ways, including the exercise program. Yeah. So that's me.

Ben: Amazing. Doing some amazing things. Obviously you've worked we've had a bit of a link going together for the past sort of six to eight months maybe now where you've come in and you've delivered some amazing trainings for the people that I work with. And also you've worked on a one to one level with some of the members that are part of my gym and online programs as well. Can you give some examples of the areas, the struggles that you've helped people with already.

Lisa: In terms of the clients that I've worked with, for yourself, your gym, the areas that I've helped with are a lot of anxiety. So people who've been stuck in anxiety for maybe most of their life, to be honest, and not been able to get themselves out of it, feeling like it's never going to stop, and have had therapy before. In the past I've been through services, I've been trying to exercise to help that which has but then realized it's just not going away. So what I've done is worked with really deep rooted issues of where has that anxiety come from? Deep early childhood and been able to free those people of anxiety by actually getting to the root cause right underneath. And it's really lovely to see how those clients are now free and able to do things in life that they never thought they'd be able to do because of the anxiety that they had was stopping them. I've worked with PTSD from vicarious trauma, experiencing trauma, watching other people suffering. Trauma has an effect on you depending on the jobs that you do and particular client is suffering with that have been able to help understand why they are feeling the way they do and where that's come from, and release some of those traumas. Also as well supported members who have got family members that are struggling with personality disorders. And when you've got a family member with a personality disorder that may be quite a destructive form of personality, it really affects the whole family and it can really affect your mental health as well. In knowing, how do I deal with this, how do we respond to this person, what is it that's going on? So I've done a lot of support for certain clients within your community around helping them understand what personality disorder is, but how they can cope themselves in terms of their own mental health while supporting that person. And then grief and loss. When you lose someone in your life or you lose a routine or you lose something that's insignificant, it's really difficult sometimes to get yourself out of bed in the morning, just like any other sort of mental illness or poor mental health. And the grief cycle is different for every single person. No grief is the same. And it was helping people just accept that it's okay to feel the way they are on that roller coaster and have good days and bad days. So there are specific areas I've looked at with clients in your community, obviously in the wider space in terms of hammock and the wider picture with mental health and exercise. There's many other areas that I've helped.

Ben: People with, and it's been a bit of an eye opener for myself since sort of going through the mental health and exercise coaching program and meeting yourself and speaking with you, just how vast and how many people have been struggling for so long and just haven't had the support that they've needed. And it's amazing to have seen firsthand the support that you've given to my members in particular and seen how much they've flourished. Because I always say it to people and something that I always get across before doing any. Of this when I was just a personal trainer. A coach exercise side of things. The work on the nutrition side of things can only take you so far. But if there's those deep rooted issues that aren't addressed and not getting help, specific help with, then that's only going to take you so far. So we'll get into the link between sort of physical and mental health in a little bit later, but I just think it's so important to get across that the exercise side of things can probably only take you so far. And I would highly recommend that you're hitting it from both angles by getting help from a counselor, getting help from a therapist whilst also working on the physical side of things as well and the habits and behaviors that you're in control of.

Lisa: Absolutely agree.

Ben: So I think we'll have to talk about mental health and exercise coaching, the MHEC award and the importance it is in the health and fitness industry of what we do. How important do you think this award is being and is going to be in the future for the health and fitness industry in general?

Lisa: It's absolutely critical. I mean, when I first came onto the course, I was one of the first courses that Ben and Dan under mental health and exercise actually did. And the reason I went on it is because I'd already was on in my mind to the same idea as them that we need to do like mental health and exercise. This connection is desperately needs to happen. And that's how I became on board with hemet because we have the same passions and beliefs. And the thing with the fitness industry for many generations, it's only actually focused on body image and nutrition and exercise. It's never focused on, okay, well, why do people become obsessed with exercise? Why do they give up and why do they end so quickly and start and give up really quickly? Why don't people go to the gym? What's the fear of exercise? Why do they not eat right? There was none of that. What are the reasons behind all this? It was more gyms were more focusing on environment where you have to have a certain body shape and body image and you've got to eat a certain way and push a lot of diets rather than it being a healthy eating lifestyle change and all about the whole holistic. And the thing that's been missing the most is the actual one most important thing was that actually your brain controls everything. It controls your physical health, your ability to exercise. If your brain isn't working properly and you're not right, you're not going to exercise, you're not going to push your body, you're not going to get the full potential out of your body because your brain is not going to allow that. So what's been missing is, okay, the mental health side and I think it is massively key now to push this throughout the whole of the world really that actually mental health is part of exercise and working on them. Both together is the key. Because over the years, as a therapist, the reason I got to this point was, okay, people use exercise as a coping strategy because it helps them feel good for a short period of time because of dopamine and obviously chemicals being released. But then as soon as they finish, an hour or two later, if they've not dealt with the root cause issue, what's getting them down, what's making them anxious, then feelings just come back again. So it's important that we push that through society that we need to focus on both together.

Ben: Yeah, totally agree. And I think after I obviously did the award, every aspect of everything that I was coaching now then had another element to it. Is mental health a priority where, I'll be honest, it wasn't previous, so I'm qualified in nutrition. I'm qualified obviously as a personal trainer. That just doesn't necessarily mean that what I was offering and what a lot of people are still offering within the industry is healthy. When we're talking about healthy, I've spoke about this on previous podcasts, we're talking about physical, mental and social health. Yes, it might not even hit any of those three. Some of the thing that I was offering and what other people are offering right now who haven't had the sort of education that we have now just because somebody is offering a workout program, a nutrition program, whatever it is help with behaviors that might not be supporting people's mental health overall. Example being, like you say, they could be building a really obsessive relationship with exercise, making these people train 4567 times a week, twice a day. I've came across on the nutrition side of things as well, if you haven't got the mental health aspect in mind, you could be creating a very negative relationship with body image, eating disorders, all things that in the past are our hands up say that are disregarded. So, yeah, it's a huge link that I think it should be part of every coach's initial level three personal training award. It should be, and hopefully that's going to go down eventually.

Lisa: Again, that link between your physical and your mental health, which we'll talk about, obviously as we move forward in terms of the feelings, it can be addiction. So people have underlying mental health and addiction and they become addicted to that sensation, that feeling, in an unhealthy way. And people see maybe that addiction to exercise as a positive because it's good for your physical health, but too much of it is the opposite effect and the reason why you're addicted, what is that reason?

Ben: There's many aspects, you've got both sides of the coin there that you've touched on. It's the obsessive side of things, doing far too much that's going to break your health. But then there's the other side where why is it this whole stop start, inconsistent pattern that people have? Because they're not focusing on overall health. One of our main missions, or our main mission is to create consistent, lasting routines for people in terms of exercise nutrition. And I really do believe that the information from the Mental Health and Exercise Coaching Award was a key element in being able to do that. Do you believe that there's a really big lack of education when it comes to exercise and mental health?

Lisa: Oh, you could get me talking forever on this subject. Yeah, absolutely. They've been two separate things really for many years and it's not been connected and it's really important that they do. I mean, like, for years, because of the background that I am, I will walk in a gym and I'm I'm an observer because of my job. And I'll look round and I'll go, oh, I can tell they're suffering with this. I can tell that because you begin to understand just by body language and things, what people are experiencing and going through underlying. And it's like, well, I just wanted to go over and ask them, are they okay? And you need some support and you can't do that because that's not how the industry was, where now it's like, yeah, we can do this and this is needed. And it's really important that every single one of us in the industry actually takes on board this issue around mental health. And I think since COVID as well, exercise is becoming more of a social place and gyms are becoming more social, more people are doing this and going to the gym instead of maybe going out for a meal or a drink. So there's more opportunity now in those environments to help more people, if the right people are in there to help to help them understand that.

Ben: Yeah, if it's being done right and touching on COVID as well. I was going to touch on it later, but whilst we're on the subject, something I've spoke about in previous podcasts is I think people have got very comfortable with being in their bubble at home, if they work from home. And I think it's a massive issue and a massive problem around connection. And I really feel that exercise and workout is a great way to start to build those connections that people have lost over the last couple of years.

Lisa: Again, which is what you and again a lot more sedentary, that they're isolating themselves more at home, they're not socializing as much, they're not as physically active. This all has a detrimental effect on your mental health because we know we are social beings and we need to move. That's the fundamental, underlying, basic human sort of function, isn't it? So lots of people have just become sort of conditioned to that environment when really it's not doing them any good.

Ben: Yeah, definitely. For a lot of people listening, they might not understand the differences between mental health and mental illness. So just quickly, obviously everybody has mental health, sometimes it's poor, sometimes it's positive and it's always going to interchange where mental illness is a clinically diagnosed and recognized condition. My question for you Lisa, is what probably a lot of people have thought about in the past or might be thinking now or will do in the future, is therapy, is counseling for everyone? And can therapy help anyone regardless of whether they've got a mental illness or not?

Lisa: Absolutely. Therapy really in my opinion, obviously this is my opinion, can help every single person because in life we suffer challenges, we experience losses, we experience days where we feel low and life itself just throws challenges in our way. It doesn't mean we've got a mental illness if we are low in mood or finding life hard and stressful and just having that one person who you can speak to confidentially to help you understand what's going on can change your life in lots of ways. And the reason I say this is because you don't need to have a diagnosed mental condition like a mental illness, anxiety, depression, you don't need to have experienced trauma, you don't need to have a personality disorder to seek help. Every one of us at some point in our lives in some way experience poor mental health. There's so many reasons that could be so in terms of looking at your thought patterns, looking at your beliefs, looking at understanding why you feel the way you do sometimes when you don't understand it, looking at just your emotional cycles can really help you just live a happier life. But if you don't understand them, they'll always be there. So there's lots of different ways it can help. And also with your social well being as well. Those people who are quite shy have feared of going out, not necessarily got anxiety, but just maybe have had past problems with relationships and struggles. We can help many areas in terms of your general mental health. And you know what, it is true that some people do come to therapy and the like I've got anxiety, I've got depression, I really need to help with this. But sometimes people are just going through life transitions and I'm finding them really hard and just want to talk to someone who isn't family, who isn't someone they know, who is non judgmental and can help them just address all those underlying issues. And like in my time I've had people just come to me literally they want to talk about the hopes, the dreams, the fears, the disappointments, what they're hurting about, what shame they might be carrying. Me, I've had lots of young people who come and talk to me about their sexuality because they don't know quite sort of, am I feeling this way? Is it normal? Who really am I? So there's lots and lots of different reasons why counseling can help and different types of therapy, not just if you've got a mental illness or a personality disorder.

Ben: And from what you've said, then, in my opinion, therapy, counseling could be seen as self development. Really, couldn't it like understanding yourself better, having better self awareness, which I believe is such an amazing skill throughout all of your life to be able to build. And it's something that you'll constantly work on because, like, you've touched on, there's going to be transitions through your life. Like for me, going through my 20s, not having kids now into my 30s, having family and stuff, that's a huge transition. I'm sure there'll be plenty more, but being having great self awareness is such a great skill. And I think things like therapy, counseling, working on self development, putting it under that bracket, is such a key thing for people to have. And I suppose it comes to touch on the treatment versus prevention sort of thing as well, where a lot of people would maybe only just seek therapy or seek counseling when it's prescribed or it's a last ditch thing, or it's gone too far, whereas it could be a preventative task.

Lisa: Yeah, I mean, you just hit on something there. The reason I chose when I was training to be a therapist to work with the young people initially and to specialize and go into children young people, is because I was realizing when I was training and I was counseling adults, that I was dealing with children trapped in adult bodies that had never, ever had any mental health support. And I was dealing with that in a child. And it was like, well, why shouldn't I help them? Why they're little to go through life so they don't get to the coming for therapy feeling the way that they've been feeling all the lives. And that was one of the reasons why I went to prevent a lifetime of poor mental health and experiencing that. And again, if you feel you're wobbling if you feel something isn't right and you're feeling a little bit not yourself and it's like my head's just not feeling right, why not go and seek therapy if your leg was hurting and you felt like your knee wasn't working right, you know what? You go to the doctors and you go and find something out about it. What difference really, is it your mind is the function of everything. And this is a stigma that I really, really want to try and fight.

Ben: And break, which is amazing. And you've hit the nail on the head there. And I've seen it first hand from the people that I've coached. I coached a lot of people in the speak to people in the 50s, in particularly, who have opened up to me about past traumas and they might have been on sort of medication for the last two, three decades of their life. And what you've just touched on there is it's traumas that they've not dealt with, but then they've lived so much of the life with that not being resolved or even just court mechanisms to help and going in a bit deeper work. And it's quite sad to see. So it is amazing and it's such an important message to get across, is that let's try and start that from an earlier age as well.

Lisa: And I think I just need to say to you is, don't be afraid of counselors and therapists. We're human, we're like you. We're not scary. We are like good, grounded people who've been through life ourselves. And I think there's that barrier of stigma based on the history of mental health and the lack of understanding. I have so many people say to me, oh my gosh, you're so easy to talk to you, you're such a lovely person. It's not what I thought it would be. And you're like, well, what did you think it would be?

Ben: Come on and keep it on that subject then obviously, given a bit of advice there, what would you say to somebody who might be feeling that they're beyond help? So what's the point? Why should I even bother?

Lisa: So to me, in terms of that, I've had many clients who have been at the point of the worst, suicidal, and it's like, well, what is your purpose? You're here, you're still here today, want to be here and find the smallest of reasons that that person can hook onto and then nurture and push and cherish that reason. And the main thing is to talk to them and listen, because a lot of the people don't feel heard, they don't feel understood, they don't feel like anybody bothers, and they lose complete hope. And it's about giving them that grasp of hope in some way that actually you can do this because any single one of us has the ability to heal their mind. It comes from within. It's just accepting that and being able to go, okay, and having that trust in person to guide you through it and be there should you need it. I will share a client with you. amphibiously, it's confidential. I had a girl who literally had attempted suicide, and she's been going through services for since she was eight years old, and she's 27, and she's been let down. She's actually been in a mental health hospital, all sorts of things. And I started to work with her, and she was a point of giving up. She just was like, there's no point anymore. It's just like, never going to get better. And if she could be on here today, and I can honestly say this because I have feedback from her, she will say that no one's ever got her like I did because nobody got to the root of it all. And that's the problem, is the services sometimes out there that are not offering enough time and enough sessions to hit that root cause and to heal that person. And she's working now. She's never held down a job before because of this personality and mental health there. She's working now, she's happy. She's in a relationship. She understands what her feelings are telling her, which she never did. So there's always, always hope. You've just got to trust yourself and trust in a person who can help you.

Ben: And that's amazing to hear. And I think it's so important as well. We live in our minds. Everybody has a mind. We're living it. It's one thing that so many of us just don't understand at all and it's not taught from an early age. And I think therapy, counseling is a way of teaching you how to understand your mind as well. So it's so important. And I think when people get to the feeling that they're beyond help or what's the point? Counseling therapy can't help us. I might have tried different things in the past. It's about going as deep as possible, like you've just touched on there, getting to the root of the causes and really understanding your mind in a better.

Lisa: Way and also not giving up on a person in terms of sessions. Like, for example, we'll get onto this, you offered six sessions. How can someone, if it's deep, deep rooted a lifetime of hurt and a lifetime of not understanding themselves, healing 6 hours of sessions. At the end of the day, they could take six sessions to trust that therapist because they've been hurt that much in the past by relationships or whatever has gone on. And sometimes they need a year's worth of work. But it's like if you break a leg and you need different surgery, you're going to have that year's worth of work to make that leg better. What difference is it about your mind? There is none. And it's being able to understand that and invest in that and have that key person who you trust, who will take you through that journey. And I'm not the healer. You heal yourself. And that is what I say to all clients. You've got the answers within. You really have. Everybody does. They just sometimes need that little bit of understanding and guidance and safety and trust to be able to let that person come out.

Ben: Yeah, and it's just like if we touched on it, if we give a bit of a comparison, there's no one size fits all. It's like nutrition plans. It's like workout programs. You couldn't just say to somebody that, I'm going to change your life, I'm going to change your eating habits, I'm going to change your workout motivations in six weeks for every single person. Some people it might be four weeks, some six some eight, some twelve, some six months, a year. Same with the mental health, mental illnesses. You cannot just say to somebody, I'm going to speak to you for six weeks, eight weeks, and then that's going to be exactly the same for every single person. Which unfortunately, a lot of the services that are provided in the public sector, which we'll get on in a little bit, we'll touch on a little bit later. That's all they're offering, unfortunately, and we'll touch on a little bit later anyway, but on a mental health level. So again, talking about not mental illness, people who haven't had a diagnosed condition, if we're talking about trying to help people improve their overall happiness in life, what areas do you commonly work with or have you worked with or recommend people aim to work through to help their overall happiness?

Lisa: In terms of your overall happiness, your happiness comes from within. So you've got to be happy in yourself before you can be externally happy. So it's about looking at what you need for you. And the key to that is self care. And self care isn't selfish. So it's allowing yourself to do things that make you smile and that make you feel good. So it's having a little bit of a plan in your week that you put some time to one side to do something for yourself, whatever that is, and also not seeking perfection. Perfection doesn't exist. So if you're seeking to be perfect, you're never, ever going to feel good about yourself. You're not going to because it's inachievable. You can't get there because there isn't such a thing. So it's about, am I good enough? Just feeling content in your life and feeling like you can do enough. And this all links to self esteem. And self esteem is one of the biggest drivers of poor mental health because of a multitude of reasons. We could talk about that just in one session. But self esteem, working on yourself and believing in yourself and not letting others control how you feel, not, not actually working, what we call an external frame of reference, needing validation of someone else to say you're happy, you're okay. It's believing and trusting yourself and allowing yourself to have that time. Get out with nature. Get out with nature. We are animals. We are meant to be out with nature, we are born to be. So connecting back with nature, breathing in the earth, feeling the ground, just listening to the normal nature sounds is a really good way. Exercising, we're meant to move, we're meant to be physical. Putting some exercise obviously into your routine that releases your natural antidepressant chemicals in the brain, as we know. And really just focusing on feeling good enough. The main areas of improving your happiness, because it does come from inside of you. Other people may do things that make you feel happier, but happiness comes from self love inside.

Ben: Yeah. And I think. That external validation is something that I've seen. It's so common that people seek. And you're totally right when you're down that route and you're just waiting and waiting and waiting for that external validation.

Lisa: It'S not true happiness and you're relying on someone else to give you what you need, and no one else is actually really ever going to give you what you need. Only you knows what you need.

Ben: Yeah. And going back to your first point there, Lisa, about putting in some activities each week that's just for you, that's your self care. Something that we work on and I think is really important is actually understanding what is important to you. A lot of people I work with, the parents or the parents with preteens teens, adolescents, adults, children who have gone long periods, decades potentially, of just putting their sole focus into their kids, which is easily done, and it's still a priority. But you cannot just lose yourself. And it's something I always talk about with the people who are coach. You've always got to remember that it's going to be you at the end and you've got to understand what you value. Yes, that might change as you age, but it starts with actually doing a little bit of self reflection, a little bit of an assessment, and find out what really and truly matters to you to help you have those activities within your life that are going to make you feel happier.

Lisa: Absolutely agree with you. It's really key because we can get conditioned through life. We get conditioned by other people conditioned through life, and we lose sometimes who we really are and we just become part of that condition. And actually that's when you will be at your unhappiest, because you're not being your true authentic self, really. You're just doing what's expected.

Ben: Yeah. And sometimes that could come down to communication with partners and relationships as well, and making it very clear on what that means to you and how important it is.

Lisa: Early childhood trauma is a massive part of with a lot of people. Massive part of not actually knowing who you really are yourself. That's something I literally almost every day deal with. Because our personality is formed in the first three years of our lives. How we see ourselves, how we view the world, and how we view others comes from that first three years of your life. And if that's not been a good time, then how you see yourself, that's where self worth can come in. I'm not good enough. I can't do this. All those feelings that come, it can make you not trust people, because adults haven't been trusting around you in that time alive. And then the world becomes unsafe. So I have to get through this alone. And that is just me touching a very surface of early childhood experience, and that forms how we view all those things. So even if you've not got a mental illness or anything, but you know, you keep doing these certain things and it annoys you and you don't know why and you don't want to be doing them. That's where therapy can help you because it will help you understand why. It will get to the root of why and then it makes sense to you.

Ben: We'll have to sort of the podcast out for that then we spoke a little bit about it. We'll touch on it now. Can you help Lisa explain the link both ways between physical and mental health?

Lisa: Absolutely. So basically we've got to consider our mind. Our mind controls our brain controls everything and everything that we do, okay? So if that isn't working right, it's going to affect physical sensations in your body. It's going to affect how illness, it's going to affect how you function and how you move. Okay? So you can be physically fit. You can go a gym, you can put all your heart and soul into getting your body moving. You can choose to eat right and you can have all the nutrition you need. But if your mind is sick, then you're never going to feel totally yourself. And it's important to understand the connection between them. For example, if you suffer with depression, you may find that you're feeling physically very tired. It can affect your digestive system, it can cause severe headaches, it can affect motivation. Okay, there are just a few things so you can see that just because the mind is sick, it affects your physical body as well. Okay? Anxiety. Because if we've got anxiety, we're constantly in fight, flight or freeze. Our nervous system is constantly switched on. It's not meant to be. Our nervous system is only meant to be switched on in an emergency when we're scared, when we're frightened in an attack, really. And we're not meant to have it switched on all the time. So that can create upset stomachs. And the reason for that is because when we are in fight flights offering our gut turns off, it stops working because we don't need our gut to work. When we need to sort of run away from something that's scary or frightening, all we need is our respiratory system, our blood pumping, we turn off all parts of the body that we don't need to function at that time to stay alive and to stay safe. So that's where you get a lot of people with anxiety, with stomach issues. Again, this can lead to eating disorders, not understanding your gut, not trusting your gut. And also as well with anxiety because your brain is ticking, it can't switch off. There's insomnia, restlessness, difficult, concentrating, feeling and fear and on edge all the time. So the brain has a huge connection with how you're overall functioning. Now, when we're thinking of exercise and we're thinking of this, then someone who's maybe feeling this bodies won't be able to function and move in the right ways that we necessarily need them to, and it's being mindful of that. One thing I do need to mention in terms of this is if you've experienced childhood trauma, if you've experienced very early childhood trauma, our brain only starts to hold memories from the age of three, so we hold any memories before. That called implicit memories, as physical sensations and feelings in our bodies. So if you've ever had a time where you've gone, oh, I just suddenly come over and felt all weird and I don't know why that strange, I don't like how I'm feeling. It may be that something you've seen, so we link it back to senses now, something you've seen, something you've heard, something you've smelt, something you've touched, something that you've tasted, has triggered an implicit memory from early childhood. That wasn't a nice experience. And again, you could be in a gym environment. For example, we're talking about exercise, and I'm just going to use quite an obvious one, the smell of sweat. If you've had an experience as a child that hasn't been a nice one in terms of that smell, that can traumatize, it can send your body into fight, flight, off freeze. It can scare you of going into that gym environment because it doesn't feel right. Loud Noises obviously, in a gym, you've got the weights and we drop them and it's a bang. If you are running in trauma and you're in fight, flight or freeze, someone can be having a conversation with you and you hear this bang. Because you're in fight flights or freeze, you're in survival mode. You look for the most dangerous thing all the time. You're looking for it, but you don't necessarily realize you are. So you might not have heard what a coach has said, you might not have took it in. And this is where people say, I don't remember that. Yeah, I was listening, but I don't remember. Did you say that? It doesn't mean that they're not listening. It means that the actual nervous system is that switched on, that they're constantly in survival mode, so they don't take in anything other than what they actually need to take in to survive, which is the biggest fear in that room. So there's lots and lots of different reasons why the brain and physical connection is really important.

Ben: And it comes back to this whole self awareness, understanding yourself through counseling, through therapy, understanding these things, because your physical health can improve your mental health, but also your mental health can improve your physical health. Absolutely everything that we've just gone through there just shows such a clear connection between both, why it's so important to have both ends of the spectrum included in everything that you do. I want to touch on a little bit about medication and the NHS. Obviously, I firmly believe that the NHS, all the staff, do amazing things, but they're massively understaffed, massively overworked. There's huge problems, and especially when we look at the mental health side of the NHS. And unfortunately, I've seen firsthand with people that are coach, it might be that the people who are working for the NHS, that they've spoke to, their hands are tied, the services aren't available, it's out of their hands, which is probably the case. And I do feel sorry for those people because they might want to be able to offer more and do more as well. But medication sometimes what I've seen has been the first port of call and it's been not only the first port of call, but it's also been the only port of call. For me, it feels a little bit like a short term fix, but again, from experience of people who have coached short term fix that could have lasted decades, that hasn't been addressed exactly.

Lisa: I totally secondary with what you said about the amazing people who work within the mental health services and they are controlled by the system. They don't have the choices. And that is the problem. The system is the problem, not the people who are working for it. And they are tied to we can only offer so many sections. We can only do this. And this is why I'm going to be completely honest, that I wanted to go as a self employed therapist and to be able to work in the ways that isn't necessarily available as easily as it should for other people. Because, again, we've talked about six sessions. It's only covering the surface. For some people, yes. For some people with low level mental health issues and low level anxiety and depression, six sessions, it will be enough, it teaches them what they need. And it's amazing, and I'm not ditching that at all in any way. But these long term, for decades and decades of people who haven't had the right support that they need, then the system is letting them down. I mean, I'm working with young people at the minute. I've just worked with a young person. Actually, someone through a hamec asked me to work with a young person. They are healed now and are doing absolutely amazing and they're still waiting for the referrals from camp.

Ben: Scary, isn't it?

Lisa: Yeah. And that person worked with me for four months and I've got feedback this week from the person and it's like, absolutely lovely to see and hear how now her life is her own again. And if she was waiting under the system, she'd still be waiting now, but her mental health would have been getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And that is just one young person that I'm just putting out there. In terms of the adults I'm talking about, there's a specific young person who, at the age of 15, was unfortunately suffering horrendously with her mental health and eating, and ten years later, we're still feeling just the same. And I've worked with this person for five months now and recently I'm redoing my website, I've asked for feedback and from some clients. Obviously, I won't share clients names because it's not right to, but her words were, lisa is a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. The only person who's actually made me realize who I am and now I'm going to be able to live my dream. And that again really touched my heart, because why has it took ten years for this person through mental health systems to finally get this support where the system is letting them down?

Ben: Yes.

Lisa: So in terms of medication, yeah, I understand, like the NHS, straight away, if they know that they're going to be on a waiting list for like a year, we'll try to put a plaster over it and be like, oh, well, we'll give you medication, but medication is a plaster. It's not solving the root issues, the understanding the able to function. Some people do need medication because they are imbalances in the brain and they need that to help the brain settle. I'm not saying that medication is a no no, but in terms, it's so easy to go, oh, we'll just give you antidepressants, we'll just give you anxiety tablets that'll help you and we'll stick you on a list, which doesn't. And then some people get missed in the system and for years and years are then addicted to those drugs that they didn't actually need in the first place. If they'd have had the therapy approach.

Ben: Yeah, and that's the problem that I've seen firsthand. And if we go through the stuff that you've just talked about there, Lisa, if you compared this physically, the amount of this shows the sheer importance of what you're doing in more of a private sector. If you compare that to physiotherapists, it's the same thing. People could be waiting six months, nine months, twelve months for physio in certain areas. How many physios, private physios are there? There's absolutely loads in my area alone. But then if you compare that to therapists and counselors privately, there's nowhere near as many.

Lisa: But also people will pay for physical, but they don't see the benefit of paying for counseling.

Ben: Yeah. Which is what we need to change. That's the whole thing that needs to change. And I'm hoping that it is getting a little bit better and hopefully you're seeing that. But it just shows the sheer importance of people like yourself and what you do. And just a message for people who are listening, who maybe are in this similar boat, might have been speaking to their GP, might have been put into the system and are waiting for so long. Question to you is, if you had a physical problem, injury that was stopping you from walking, would you seek going private? The answer is probably yes. So the question is, why wouldn't you do the same with your mental health as well?

Lisa: Absolutely.

Ben: Yeah.

Lisa: Absolutely. And there's something I was just going to pop into that? Is that investing in yourself, that self care, no matter what it is. And it's like, if I need that, then is it worth that? We'll pay, won't we, to go out for a meal for £40 or whatever that is, and you feel, oh, yeah, I'm good for an hour. But then you come home and you feel down again, because that mental health issue, it's thinking about short term, is it best for me to invest my money in that? That's going to give me the self care I need? What is your priority and what is your driver?

Ben: Yeah, 100%. And it's something I've touched on in a previous podcast, instant versus short term versus long term gratification. And it's those short term coping mechanisms, like you say, come back, same problems are there. So, yeah, Lisa, that has been absolutely amazing. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and coming on as a guest. Some invaluable info, and if anybody is listening who wants any more information about what Lisa does, either get in touch with myself or I'm going to pop all of Lisa's contact information in the description text of this podcast. Thank you very much, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you. Thanks.