Vital Signs: A Functional Medicine Perspective
What are your body’s vital signs really telling you? Join Dr Andrew Greenland, a dual-trained medical doctor and functional medicine expert, as he explores the deeper story behind chronic illness, cognitive decline, and hormonal imbalances. Discover root-cause solutions, cutting-edge strategies, and practical tips to transform your health. With every episode, gain insights to optimise your wellbeing, achieve peak performance, and build resilience for a vibrant, healthier life.
Vital Signs: A Functional Medicine Perspective
Unlocking Transformative Change: The Mind-Body Connection, Social Media's Impact, and Self-Care with Psychotherapist Nicholas Alexander
Episode Overview
In this episode, we explore the profound connection between mental and physical health, emphasising the role of emotional well-being in achieving overall wellness. Nicholas Alexander, a highly experienced psychotherapist, shares his insights on modern mental health challenges, the impact of social media, and the importance of fostering authentic relationships.
Key topics include:
- How psychotherapy strengthens the mind-body connection
- Nicholas’s multifaceted background and how it shapes his therapeutic approach
- The role of emotional maturity in personal growth and resilience
- The lasting impact of COVID-19 on mental health
- How social media influences psychological well-being
- Effective strategies for managing anxiety and prioritising self-care
- The role of nature and meaningful relationships in healing
- The future of mental health in a hyper-connected world
Nicholas also discusses his approach to therapy and how potential clients can seek support on their healing journey.
About the Host – Dr Andrew Greenland
Dr Andrew Greenland is a dual-trained medical doctor, specialising in Integrative Functional Medicine and emergency medicine. Committed to uncovering and addressing the root causes of chronic disease, he integrates the best of Western medicine with a personalised, systems-based approach to health.
As the founder of Greenland Medical, he has built an internationally recognised clinic focused on health optimisation, brain health, and longevity. He is particularly known for his expertise in the Bredesen Protocol, helping individuals prevent and reverse cognitive decline through evidence-based, functional medicine strategies.
Beyond clinical practice, Dr Greenland is a speaker, educator, and entrepreneur, sharing insights on functional medicine and peak performance. His work empowers individuals—especially high-performing professionals and entrepreneurs—to achieve resilience, vitality, and lasting well-being.
📩 Email: info@greenlandmedical.co.uk
🌍 Website: www.greenlandmedical.co.uk
📞 Phone: 020 8787 5750
About the Guest – Nicholas Alexander
Nicholas Alexander is an accredited psychotherapist (MBACP) offering high-intensity therapy in several London locations, including Harley Street, Mayfair, EC1, and Richmond. With over a decade of experience, he combines psychotherapy with principles of functional medicine to address mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
His approach integrates psychoanalytic, humanistic, person-centred, cognitive-behavioural (CBT), transactional analysis, Gestalt, and Gendlin techniques. This allows him to tailor therapy to each client's unique needs, facilitating personal growth and resolving deep-seated challenges.
Nicholas has worked with leading organisations, including CRI (the UK’s largest drug and alcohol addiction agency) and Cruse Bereavement Care, offering in-depth support for individuals coping with loss. He currently collaborates with youth development programmes for local authorities and runs a private practice, specialising in abuse, addiction, bereavement, family dynamics, and relationship counselling.
His holistic, integrative approach enables clients to achieve rapid progress, often requiring fewer sessions with more sustainable outcomes. His work underscores the deep interconnection between mental, emotional, and physical health, helping clients cultivate resilience and long-term well-being.
📩 Email: info@nicholasalexander.org.uk
Okay, hello everyone and welcome to Vital Signs. This is the functional medicine podcast, where we talk about all matters functional and integrative medicine, and I've got a very interesting guest with me this evening. His name is Nicholas Alexander.
Speaker 1:This is somebody that I have been working with for many, many years. He's a chartered psychotherapist and it's very important to bring this into the equation because I work holistically and I see people with very complex medical problems. But we have to remember there's often a psychological element to that person their illness, their condition and it does need some attention. And Nicholas helps me a lot with my patients in helping to really address things holistically by exploring that mind-body connection and seeing how what's going on in somebody's mind is influencing their disease and vice versa. So welcome, nicholas. Thank you for coming on to the podcast. Many people may not know much about you. Maybe just to give us a little bit of background and about how you got into psychotherapy, because I know you came into it a little bit later on. But just tell us a little about your journey, just to give people a bit of context and background.
Speaker 2:Well, it takes a really long time to know who you are in life. Um, I think I have uh clients that come to me the same stages of life, or the majority of them, as you do, you know. Um, I had a career in musical theater, I was in the merchant navy. Um, I've worked in medicine, uh business with entrepreneurs or very various fields.
Speaker 2:Um, I think people come to psychotherapy as a career because you can't be better as a therapist than you are person in real life and actually it's very important, whatever you do, to have a life, to experience different walks of life, emotional, psychological models, the way we have to interact with people it all tests us. You know most people are living lives that are not compatible with their nervous system. Given that the average age for most maturity in men has recently been set at 43, we have all this expression life begins at 40. It probably takes people a really while to come into then leading a life that's compatible with their nervous system, whether that's career-wise or relationship-wise. I don't think I can take my client anywhere.
Speaker 2:I haven't been myself and at this stage in life, you know, I hope for my body of work that it's part of evidence that I've been a lot of places, so I work collaboratively with my patients and clients and it is the relationship, in my experience, that is the most important and significant activator for change, most primarily significant, one being the relationship you have with yourself.
Speaker 2:People will often say to me oh, I'm starting to feel really relaxed in the session and also I'm glad that's happening. Why is that happening? And what will come often come back is oh, I think it's because, um, uh, you're so good at being yourself and that's really what we ask of people and, um, you know, the functional medicine side of stuff, uh, the diet and the other stuff has a hard time sticking if your brain or nervous system is in a state where it's on edge or you're fighting to keep up something or you're not living in your natural balance, which is the psychological, emotional and genetic programming you're born with. And I guess you explore the biological side of it and I explore the emotional, social, modifiable lifestyle, lifestyle very interesting.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned about um. You know, coming into this later on, you've done many different things before. What do you think of some of the things that have given you the best preparation for what you do, working with patients, um, you know, in a psychotherapeutic angle?
Speaker 2:being an outsider. I think, uh, having my own set of emotional, psychological and genetic blips I know you do. Testing for that and really gaining the confidence I feel is in world to gently we are representing ourself Always. This is my operating system. This is how I am. What is your achilles heel? What we struggle with, with the morphological, psychological, genetic makeup we're born with can seem, you know, might not be the same as everyone else's. It might cost us different areas. It can seem like a weakness, but through therapy you address biological deficiencies I addressed, addressed emotional and temperamental ones. We can change our Achilles heel into our strength. I think if you're underpowered in certain areas, you have to explore and be resourceful in other areas, which means disobeying with grace. That's a concept I work with. Having naughty little adventures, bumping into other people, continues to define who you are, and I've had to do that because, on a greater or lesser level, what people get back is an information I'm different, it's not safe to be me. How do you address that?
Speaker 1:nice. So I mean this podcast. The title of this session is all about the mind-body connection and I kind of have a sense of it from what I do in my world. What does it mean to you and how do you kind of navigate the mind-body connection in the work that you do with patients?
Speaker 2:How do I navigate the mind-body connection? First of all, people are very unfocused sometimes in life with their mind and body. There's a lot of conditions of work. I've talked about the biological, social and emotional connection. There's also what separates every spewing mewling infant on the planet and that's the circumstances they were born into. So you've got the nature and you've got the nurture, the cultural thing. Both those things can have a decimating effect on your life. You know your psychological and emotion colliding with where you are, conditions of worth. You are valuable if you have a home of your own, a job, a baby, all these things. What is the cost of being you? People can't help how their life goes. You don't know what you don't know you know growing up if you're not with a loving relationship. Don't know you know growing up if you're not with a loving relationship. Certain things are developed. Synapses connect the brain, frontal lobe in terms of identity and your identity in relation to others doesn't get into adult belt in mid to late 20s.
Speaker 2:You know I've said most maturity is for men, which is being said at 43. As you're growing and developing, things get into your track, your original programming. When you're developing, you have experiences, whether it's first, erotic experiences, emotional connections, as you've said. This affects how you respond, your nature, your morphology, your brain, your emotions, reacting with what's put on you, what's around you, conditions of work, changes, brain chemistry. The brain is the biggest pharmacy. The body speaks its mind. Stress is the biggest cause of inflammation in the body.
Speaker 2:All things that I know we see between us with our patients, one of them being big subset we've attracted is alzheimer and dementia patients, and that is mind, body. You know, people running programming on circuits that were not designed to run that programming that might be emotionally, temperamentally, relationship wise. You can't have a real relationship with someone else unless you have a real relationship with yourself. What are things that hard for you to admit to you, that stick in your throat? Uh, and people. You know your nervous system relaxes when it is with the presence of someone who is authentic and of good intent. Most people are just really trying to get home, but they are very unfocused on what that original programming, where their body should be related to their mental and sociological capacities, where that actually is. It's an emotional, mental navigational landmark that affects how your body responds to stress, responding to everything it is to be human and in the world. Because we don't know what, we don't know what defines one relationship is another.
Speaker 2:One Might be two or three people in a lifetime that really get you, that make you feel at home, that align your nervous system.
Speaker 2:Some people might not have met them yet or they haven't had a therapist or an enlightened witness that handles whatever happened to them correctly, to give them permission to let go of stuff they've been carrying that is not compatible with their nervous system, which puts them in fight or flight mode all the time. You know they hit critical parent from life, their relationship, their job. How do I get my needs met in a socially acceptable way? It might be causing other people this much stress. Actually it causes me this much stress I'm not going to do and people are unaware of how much they've been carrying, how much space that takes up. You know the cortisol, the stress hormone, being inauthentic. This takes up massive stress in the mind, anxiety which affects the body. Good food, the body, good food, the drugs won't stick if your body is in the con is in an unconscious or preconscious state of stress or anxiety that overpowers every other scaffolding you can put upon your physical body interesting.
Speaker 1:I want to pick up on something you said. You said about the age of emotional maturity was 43 and it might have been for men. Apparently for women they say it's 11 years earlier, at 32, but I mean I had this thing in my mind that you know, the human brain was fully developed at 25, so what's going on between 25 and 43?
Speaker 2:well, between 25 and 43. 25, the frontal lobe, in terms of your identity to relation to others, is just getting into. Adult brain might be 25, might be 28. What's going on between those stages? Normally late onset adolescence at 35. Very often patients are late onset adolescence. Um, you know, we have it in. We say in life, don't we? Life begins at 40. It's written in greeting cards. Life begins at 40.
Speaker 2:We go through that and and that reflects what I see in my practice most people are only really becoming grounded, hemorrhaging all this economic, extraneous stuff, uh, becoming simple, grounded content. I only really see it happening for people around between the ages of 45 to 55. You know, by by 42, 47 people are on their second divorce because they're just discovering who they are. That's, you know, the relationship thing. So I would say what's going on between 25 and 40 is ego. Now 20s and 30s are full of ego and stress. You know, I want to get this, I want to do this, I want to climb the corporate ladder. That's what's. That's what's going on and, funnily enough, we have it at the beginning when we come out, because human beings left alone naturally want to achieve their full potential. We are an organism, we are part of nature and sometimes when you get over to old age they do recreate that condition again of information processing maybe being controlled from the experience, but in the middle is where people lose it.
Speaker 1:It takes a really long time to know who you are really does um, I know you see a huge range of different kind of patients in your practice, but are you seeing any trends, or are you seeing things evolving, since you've been doing psychotherapy a new kind of range of problems, or is it all boiled down to some of the kind of common themes that you kind of mentioned already?
Speaker 2:It was kind of easier and harder for some people because we didn't have as much access to information of the internet. But I think it's always been my opinion it takes a village to raise a child and sometimes you don't have options outside of that the internet, social media and sometimes you don't have options outside of that the internet, social media, covid. You know I said what defines one relationship is another one. When people stopped going out there and they were at peace with themselves and had to find other resources, that created either a natural balance and awareness of what it was to be self-soothed, self-sufficient, or it aggravated external locus of evaluation through social media, through people looking at themselves on Zoom, and actually what's happened is people have suddenly got a lower toleration threshold in the world. Now, you know, because they don't have in turn locus of evaluation. It is a lot more performative, which has led to identity crises, social media being banned for young people. In Australia they started to think about not having that under 18 or sometimes under 25 for young people and mental health has been a huge explosion because there's been an awareness in conscious from COVID and from social media about what am I doing, who am I, where am I, what do I want, how am I going to get it? And this connection that we've got that's supposed to make life easier for people fills up, actually gives people less space in their brain and mind to find their identity. So people are sicker than they were mentally.
Speaker 2:But there's also an awareness because of the internet that there is a possibility to change or do something about it because you're connected to other communities and subgroups. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. We are certainly not in the space we were. People are making much more allowances, so it's just more crowded. It's a lot more noisy in terms of what you can be, what, what you're expected to be in the world, identity most of it is related to identity and there's more choice.
Speaker 2:There's more connection, but there's more disassociation because there's more conditions and worth and opinions over what people are. So people latch on to things. There's a greater potential to latch on to things. To latch on to things, but there's a greater potential to latch on to the wrong things, which lead them further away from being alone with themselves in the room, which is what Covid did isolated people and you know, I think Vincent van Gogh says all man's problems stem from his inability to be in a room and do nothing, and the world shall need itself to you. People don't know how to do that anymore. They're just plugged in interesting now.
Speaker 1:Obviously I have a big interest in covid and I've seen a lot of patients with long covid and I'm still dealing with them three, four years down the line. I mean, are you, are we, um, have we kind of dealt with covid psychologically, or is there still this aftermath of that kind of whole period of lockdown and all the psychological trauma and everything that it brought to people, or are you seeing it starting to recover?
Speaker 2:Well, no, it's funny because in every session I have, even now just this week, people will normally bring up oh, and, whether it's a significant life event or a divorce or something they will always say and during Covid, either this changed the past of my career or some a bomb went off in the relationship, or they just got used to something that they never tasted it from people. It was very healing. It gave people an opportunity to go hang on. I've now connected to this. I can't unsee what I've unseen.
Speaker 2:This relationship with myself has now defined different pathways, ways of being. I can't go back to how I was, so it's created a crisis. It's a bit like when people go on holiday or have Christmas. Suddenly they're alone with themselves and that's when you get a higher divorce rates or change rates or something else, because we are just so busy surviving we don't get the opportunity to explore new networks, emotional, social connections that make us thrive, and most people have in another way that it's very hard to go back to what they were doing. You know, the biggest activator actually for longevity, health and well-being is the quality and amount of our social and emotional connections, above diet and exercise. And the biggest connection you know, primary, most significant relationship being the one you have with yourself, and every other relationship is a reflection of that.
Speaker 2:So I think again, like I said about social media, you know it gave people connections and disconnections and just magnified polarizing responses to COVID. Some of it was very good, which made them reject other areas of their life. Some of it was very bad. Either way, it put people in touch with themselves on a major level that they hadn't been in touch with themselves before and obviously, as it takes such a long time to know ourselves and the world hasn't quite realigned this is I'm not even going to say it's beyond years, I say it might go into decade length in terms of processing that information. It's like a rebirth, if you like. You start again, you start learning. I'm connecting to myself Because all from the beginning, most people end up self-medicating, or either through the relationship pattern, style or habit or lifestyle choice or something. But when they started doing that, part of them stopped growing, is still there when that trauma started and covid was a big trauma. So part of them is still left there or opened up, starting again.
Speaker 1:Interesting you've mentioned social media a couple of times. You've talked about it being banned in certain countries, but I'm really interested in what you think social media young people.
Speaker 2:We realize the effect of your on young people is mental health. You know, suicide being the biggest killer of men between 18 and 16.
Speaker 1:Not heart disease, not lung cancer, but it's yeah, so I'm really interested in what you think um the role of social media and digital overload is doing to the psyche of the world. In your experience from the people you've seen and your patients' experiences and interactions with social media, where do you see social media at the moment? It's got a lot of talk and it's always in the news about something being banned or there's something going out there which is undesirable. How do you see it as being a healthy or unhealthy influence on the psyche?
Speaker 2:well, it's a distraction from something you should be looking at or it's either replacement for something that should be there that's not there. I mean a very fundamental level. We therapy, we dealing with the hole in the soul, and you know if you're in a bad place. The thing is you're inviting it into your living room, aren't you? You know you can sit in your bed and open up social media and it's like opening the door to a. It's like opening your door on the street to a stranger. Anything can walk in and if people are vulnerable, people can fall down all sorts of holes. You know a lot of it. I mean, a lot of people have a lot of screen time. They go to porn addiction, spending screen time. A lot of people come to that. It's approval or the chemicals you get released when a lot of people like you on Facebook. You know this is a shop window and it's also an opportunity to be preyed upon when they do want to put their messiness, show private faces in public, when they want to put all the rubbish out the back, out the front.
Speaker 2:It can also collude. It can. You know you can. You can then get things that are mutual collusion and delusion if you've got something off with you and you're not taking it to therapy because a lot of people won't a lot of men, won't, a lot of men won't. You know they will keep their defence mechanisms or serve them very well until they die. Go on the internet. They'll file something to support it, like these.
Speaker 2:You know killings, cults, political situation. We know with governments around the world what Twitter has done in terms of power, the major currencies we have in life money, power. And then another currency is the emotional and empathic connection, the connections you make with people by being empathic. That's also a currency. But what's happening is empathy is going out the way and you're finding people to collude with a delusion or a dysfunction that normalises it. And now we've got this at the highest level of governmental, strategic, intercontinental control. Sometimes employment can be about bullying and humiliation because someone is dependent on it, and if you let your inner self out at a time when you can go on a computer and talk to people, that's a currency that people who are narcissistic, people who are controlling, can take that emotional empathy currency, turn it and either use it against you or create a group or an organisation whereby you've created another, altered reality, let alone, having you've created another altered reality, let alone having to deal with the altered reality that you grew up with with your parents. You know what Young people people come on the phone.
Speaker 2:They we need our parents most in our 20s. Oh, their parents can't help them because they're in their 40s or 50s. They're on like 42, 47, their second divorce, knowing who they are. So they go on the internet. So you're even further from home.
Speaker 2:If you don't grow up in a loving household, you don't see a loving relationship, you don't see it how that is normal. You can't be it. And then you come in to be something else and then you find something else to be. Everyone is just trying to get home and the internet, social media, kind of distorts that or creates a false sense of security or false sense of power like why does someone need to be in power? Look at our politicians high, visible politicians. Everyone is trying to be somebody for somebody else. That's the key. That's that's what I think aid media and social media does takes you further away from your nervous system, from health, from a sense of freedom, comfort. You're in support because it gives a greater external focus of evaluation, and my work is all about internal focus of evaluation. What do you feel? What do you think? What do you know? How do you feel secure? How can you say actually no, I'm not doing that anymore. Disoobey with grace. More to little adventures. Everyone is trying to get home Nice.
Speaker 1:Going back to the kind of mind-body connection thing. So you've been working with functional medicine practitioners for a while. Can you think of any particular examples where you know your approach has really helped somebody restore that mind-body connection and really got headway and improvements in their health because you were able to tackle that mind-body connection, that missing piece of the puzzle that perhaps people working physically had perhaps missed. Any particular things that come to mind with the work that you've done?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think it's been really important. You know when you start off with a practice, or whether it's surgery, plastic surgery, functional medicine, whatever it is, you, you, you don't necessarily choose uh, what set of patients or demographics come to you at a certain time. It sort of comes, comes about through the process and, um, I know between us one of those particular subset of patients has been dementia and Alzheimer's patients and you said about coming, things have come together that have really released us At that point. What I found is there's been a real stock taking in the process, like there's something bugging them. They don't know what it is and you know the end stage of dementia usually ends up an accelerated process of approaching end of life.
Speaker 2:You've gone and worked biologically with the biological building blocks on cellular biomechanical level, I guess, and I've had a lot of lawyers, cellular biomechanical level, I guess. I've had a lot of lawyers, people that have been in very verbally combative, confrontational situations from any field of life actually, but particularly where people have lived quite a combative, defensive life and there's something not quite right, where they can't get the hang on, they can't communicate, with problems with their relationship, the partner's suddenly alone, losing someone. The partners often come on as well, the fact it involves the whole family dementia care in psychotherapy. But for the person with the disease, with the degeneration, they want to do a stop take quite urgently. It's like what is bothering them they can't put their finger on. So it the opportunity to revisit, clear up memories. Um, while they still have. It suddenly becomes urgent because at that point it's become it's like almost too late to do anything about it. You suddenly get a realization.
Speaker 2:Clearing that by creating a greater redundancy, either through your work in functional medicine and me, with giving them a clarity in their stop-taking, has allowed them I know your question was how do they change their life? But it's enabled them which has been, I found, very affecting to die peaceably, to sort out something, to clear whatever it was, was. And it's a bit like having, because suddenly you become unguarded, suddenly all the closets and rooms of the mind. There isn't that self-censorship or containment anymore, because there isn't the integrity, either structural integrity or emotional protection, and it all. It kind of all spills out and people don't know what to do with it and they're in pain, you know, and because there's the unguardedness, clearing that up in psychotherapy, I feel, allows people, has we've seen with the families has allowed a last minute, 11th hour stop date to come to peace with things, to die at peace, and I think that has been the most life-changing thing that I've seen in terms of their specific peace of mind, because all we want is the truth. There's peace of mind in that. It can't be any greater or lesser than it is. It is what it is and they've been able to find a peace of mind or truth that either was a contributory factor leading up to the dementia obviously there's genetic things at play and to be able to sort out things with their family so that they die peacefully and well by letting go, and that really has been a life-improving quality for the very precious last sections of life.
Speaker 2:People that die in purgatory are people. When they get there, they realize what they've done. It's too late to do anything about it. If you've done everything you've sorted up in that closing end chapter, you followed your heart. You did's too late to do anything about it. You know if you've done everything you've sorted up in that closing end chapter, you followed your heart. You did what you need to do. You don't let go. If you die tomorrow, you would be at peace. You did what you need to do, you followed your heart and that for me, that had been the most life-changing experience of my experience with functional medicine and psychotherapy, not only for the individual involved but for their family, because that is identity, a loss of identity. But you really realize how much it affects everyone else and normally you don't know when you're going to die. But in that point it's given us the opportunity to clean up and provide clarity, to die well yeah, not enough is said about quality of death, but you make a really, really important point.
Speaker 1:What about working with functional medicine practitioners, because obviously the approach is probably very different. You're working on a particular dimension, they're working on a dimension. Do you have any particular challenges with working with?
Speaker 2:functional medicine practitioners.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And how do you?
Speaker 1:overcome them.
Speaker 2:With functional medical establishment and how do you overcome them? Functional medical establishment? Well, I don't know. I think the reason we got together is because conventional medicine sometimes is like what does it do? It treats illness. It treats you've already fallen down, you already haven't been getting what you needed. Fallen down, you already haven't been getting what you needed. And it gives you crutches but it doesn't prepare the, doesn't prepare the body or the legs, because you keep on doing what you've done, you keep on getting what you've always got. Um, come on, people describe, describe sleeping pills. Okay, you sleep for two nights, two weeks, you know, by treating symptoms, not really weeks. You know by treating the symptom. It's not really addressing why you're not sleeping.
Speaker 2:I deal with the felt sense and empowering people. You know, if people stutter in the right place, they don't want to put junk in their mouth. If they're not stressed, they don't want to reach the food to get those chemicals. Life is stressing them, so it influences how they go to the relationships to get the chemicals they need, or how they go to food or how they go to their job for identity, that awareness, um, my relationship with conventional medicine, what you're talking about is, yes, that is too late. You know what I like when meeting you was. You know you're testing for genetic blicks, genetic markers that are potentially going to be vulnerabilities. In the same way, I draw attention to regard your felt sense to provide the balance where you don't end up getting sick because you're in control of it.
Speaker 2:Anyone's medical degree you told me this whereas there's no such thing as medical fact, only medical opinion. Any medical opinion, anyone's medical degree, is valid in treating stuff. But also what's equally valid is it doesn't make up for the 20, 30 years experience you have of being you in your body, with your psychological and genetic makeup, and what your body knows. You know, and it's to create that awareness through functional medicine and psychology and emotions and role, identity. Being in your column of operation, which is the strongest place you can be, through leaving lanterns to illuminate the natural landscape, you look at biological markers.
Speaker 2:The two are inextricably linked the emotion, the awareness, how the pressure people put on themselves drives morphology. Your morphology drives your mental and the sociological connections. An awareness of these things that you do between us brings us the power of health and autonomy where, if we stick in our column, you know we can operate at the limits we can go outside of it, but that's the strongest place we can be. Then we take responsibility for our own health. Conventional medicine is an A&E situation, with a car crash often of society and an unawareness of the mind-body connection, and we are creating awareness of that and giving it back to the patient. As I said, the biggest activator for longevity and health, the amount of quality emotional and social connection you have in your life, your primary being for yourself. That's a body awareness level or an emotional one.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. I don't know if you've seen this in your practice. I'm certainly seeing a lot of it. So anxiety and overwhelm seem to be on the rise and I'm seeing it kind of physical manifestations of it. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm guessing you're seeing the effects on the psyche. But what can people do to help themselves? I'm going to see if we can get some kind of little helpful tips for people out there who are watching, who may be in this sort of space and want to do some self-help. Is there anything that you suggest recommend do with your patients that's very effective from anxiety and overwhelm in this very kind of anxiety provoking world that we're in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean again, this comes back to that thing about. I always come back to the felt sense and people being an external focus of evaluation. You know could have, would have, should have conditions of worth. I come back to this organism thing about. You know it's the quality of the connections we have, not the amount of them, and you have to be very aware of what you're letting into yourself, like you know, in relationships, um, because it is like opening a door to a street and you're letting all these things sit in with you. You know emotion overrides logic. Logic seems a logical thing to do but sometimes if you haven't got the emotion or the confidence or the well-being, or it doesn't so you can't carry through the logical thing.
Speaker 2:That job, that opportunity, this is what overwhelms people. You know it's not worth doing, it's too stressful. I know what you work with is. I'm all talking about talking around the felt sense there. You talk about the gut as well, which I believe you know the gut is the second brain. 75 of immunity is in the gut.
Speaker 2:So in terms of helping people with overload, it's and everyone has a different key. It's really people's own compass, like their own emotional navigational landmarks, to go where the heels are, the healing places, the healing people. Grounding exercises, geographic, you know. If you can't get out of your mind or your body, you're overwhelmed physically. Move, you're overwhelmed physically move. Opening up geographical landscapes can open up emotional ones. Opening up social, broadening your social and emotional horizons can open up other pathways and way to cope with the overwhelm. It's not that the stress gets any smaller or the pain or whatever the overwhelm is floating, it can obliterate you. It's just that you grow bigger around it so that it seems smaller. So you know, sometimes the best way to help yourself is to help other people. But overwhelm, stress, comes from the narrowing down of your process and realizing I'm not good enough, I can't come, I'm supposed to be doing that.
Speaker 2:We get into this tunnelled vision, separation, whatever you can do, naughty little adventures. I always have a moment of that. That might be just staying on the train one stop longer and going for a walk, disobeying with grace. We explore that to a huge extent and that means different things to different people. These might sound hokey concepts, but you really have to reclaim space. All the doors are shut. How can you open the windows? Sometimes you just do things better from having a complete break from something, from doing nothing. You know, the more you concentrate something, people try to grip onto stuff in their life and you can't be. You can hold it, but you have to hold it gently and if you're not happy, you won't have a career anyway. You cannot be better in your role than you are personally.
Speaker 2:In real life. It's all about seeing the world in terms of energy. You've got stuff coming out in different areas. You are looking around to plug into. What is it that you are plugging into consciously? Okay, therapy, go to therapy and get permission.
Speaker 2:Try and make the unconscious conscious and like you can choose to have a diet from negative food. If you go to a buffet, I'm not going to have that food. You can have a diet from negative thoughts and you can go to places where you're expanded so your nervous system relaxes either a distraction from something that you need to be looking at or to replace something that's not there. But you might be wrong, you might get things wrong, but you'll never not be truthful. You've got to own your emotions. I am humiliated, I am feeling. You've got to really be aware of that, not suppress, because anything you suppress pops up at the worst time at the least convenient space, and you might make mistakes, but your intention will never not be good. So if you're connecting to yourself on that level, it means you can connect to others in that way, which means you'll always be okay, because you've got to keep this quality of connection.
Speaker 2:Overwhelm is disconnection from things you naturally need. Widen your empathic envelope. I am humiliated, I'm angry. Now this is coming into the room. I'm wondering what's going on for you. Dialogue with whatever's overwhelming you as a personal place or job. Dialogue keeps things safe. And you know, be honest, we've all got things. We all have uglies. Easier, if you're overwhelmed, to bring them into the room than to suppress them and ignore them. You know, sit down with the monster behind the wardrobe. Anything that you actually see and address is going to be less frightening than that. But you just keep trying to wait and you don't see and you're not looking at it. So if you're over, well, work with your senses, see, taste, touch, mind. You know where can you go to put yourself. Is it a sauna, spa, massage, connection bath with your lover, with a friend? You know, time spent in company's therapy to get out of whatever you're in physically, psychologically and emotionally. Be honest, put what's on the inside out and say I'm not doing it anymore.
Speaker 1:I'm not doing it anymore what do you think about um nature and spending time outdoors in terms of um, you know, helping mental health?
Speaker 2:well, I just had this in my last session that someone said about nature. I said the thing is life's very performative, like the reason people are calming in nature and it's grounded is because it's completely non-performative. People are just being. You know dogs and children are very immediate. You're in nature. It gives you a sense. Again, this is a chemical that comes from purpose. Well, I'd expand that One of the chemicals you need is a sense of being a part of something that's larger than you, that's growing. Nature is the ultimate thing of that. You know it gives you a sense.
Speaker 2:Camping, something I love to do, you know I'm always going off to a corner of the field because it's this being. You know it directly accesses your pathways into being a human being, not a human doing, because that's how the natural world is. You know a tree doesn't think I'm going to grow my branch, this area and then I'm going to do this. You know you just give it the right ingredients of space, light, soil. You know things just happen. You know it's like you were never meant to be like this, overwhelmed and stressed, not who you really are. Given the right conditions, human beings naturally want to achieve their full potential. So you know, physiologically, biologically, you know nature is a model for following your blueprint. You know your original genetic coding. You link to it again that thing. It's like standing in the sun. You know when you're in it, you know when you're not.
Speaker 2:Most people do know if they go for a walk along the beach. They have negative ions, they have a transference of power from the ocean, from the light, the sunlight. You know winter's terrible for everyone because they're going in, they're not being out. But also it's a time when you are constrained to heal, to sleep, to recuperate, to hibernate. It closes things down Nature. There's an ending when the sun goes down. That's it you said yourself. We are completely messed up because of the invention of the. What was it? You said Andrew.
Speaker 1:The light bulb. The light bulb Because we are organisms. We're organisms Because we were designed to be asleep when it's dark and up when it's light, and the light bulb changed everything. That's the thing, yeah. So what do you think the future of mental health looks like? As we become better at integrating, you know, functional medicine, medicine, physical stuff with um psychological approaches, where do you think we're going? What does it look like for you?
Speaker 2:unfortunately, we live in a world that's really, really connected. Um, you know, social media's changed politics. It's changed world order. It's changed, uh, how we exist. So mental health has got worse. It's worse than it was in. The food's got worse since the 40s. All the nutrients have been sucked out the soil. You know we're getting bigger populace, we're getting more and more intense, we're getting more and more connected in toxic groupthink, collective unconsciousness. Mental health has been a massive growth industry. People have since when did I start praying? Probably since about 2014. We're in a worse position now than we were 10 years ago. We're in a worse position now than we were 10 years ago.
Speaker 2:What do you see at the world? That being a macrocosm of the microcosm that we live in, like our tiny massive stories. The more people plug into this, I see mental health getting potential to get much worse. But it's also, you know we talk about conditions. It's like an evolutionary process. There are newer and older countries in the world. You know People are going through this evolutionary process and we're not very evolved, are we? You know we've got worse.
Speaker 2:If you look at the world now, it's worse people having to work harder. There's more threat, economic, this greater load of connection. Emails are supposed to free us up and give us more time. They actually rob time from us and it's getting more and more mobile and a and ai this generation, the young people that I'm coming up their challenge is going to be AI, because they need to decipher what is real, what is a human connection? Getting further away, how can they decipher that? So we're getting more and more lost.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't want to be negative, but it's a reflection of the lack of mental health and school is all on the wrong curriculum. At school, you know you're not taught about economic well-being, who are you really, so that you don't get into narcissistic relationships. We've all been in rubbish relationships Because we were in no situation or job or that awful situation because we didn't know who we were. You know you're not taught about what are you, what's your core, what's your relating patterns, because you spend more time with your job than you do with your lover, mother, brother, sister and everyone else. I think there isn't. On the optimistic side now I've done the negative there is an increasing awareness of mental health, so hopefully that can be brought in to counteract all the bad things, because sometimes it takes something really nasty to happen, for people to sit up and take notice, and I think that's what will happen in mental health and the world at large.
Speaker 1:Thank you, as we're coming to the end and want to end on a kind of a positive note. If you have any sort of top, maybe your top three tips for mental health self-care that either maybe you do or that you ask your patients to do as part of their kind of homework, or just to kind of yes, ok, I'll say in the three lines I've talked a lot.
Speaker 2:That's sort of some of the things I would say have a naughty little adventure, something that's just for you, that works on your senses. Disobey with grace. Sorry, I'm not doing that for someone. What you're going, what you you going to do, and sometimes the best way to hear help is to help other people. We're all in this together. That, as I've said, the most important social and emotional part that gives you health, freedom, comfort, joy and support is your quality of connection to others. Go for a walk, go and have a conversation with that old person in the village in the middle of france, because somewhere out there there's an animal, a child, a place, a person, a square situation, somewhere where you're going to be seen and heard, somewhere that's waiting to have a conversation with you and to be seen and heard. It's just very, very therapeutic in itself wonderful.
Speaker 1:What a great note to end on um, nicholas. Thank you so much for your time um on this podcast, um. For anybody that would be like to reach out, get in touch, perhaps would like to have a consultation with you, how can people get hold of you?
Speaker 2:uh, you can google nicholas alexander, psychotherapy, harley street. You, alexander, psychotherapy, harley Street. You can email me, whatsapp me. Yeah, there's contact details, email and contacts on the website. Someone have a conversation with you or any therapist you go to. It doesn't have to be me. I would say try a number of therapists. I went through seven when I was training because I didn't feel seen and heard that this was doing for me and yeah, is that thing and that felt sense. You'll get different people from different sources. Allow yourself to go whatever you need to do to get your closure, but yeah, I'm always happy to hear from anyone, either to see myself or signpost them to someone else that I think might be able to help them better than I can wonderful.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll put your bio up on the podcast information. Thank you very much for your time this evening. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, andrew. It's a pleasure to talk to you. I hope I will get to work with you soon. Thank you, bye, bye.