Hope, Hulp and Human Tricky Things with Jacky Power

In this episode, I talk to Jacky Power about feelings — the ones we hide, the ones we soften, and the ones we’re not always sure we’re allowed to have. We explore what it means to be seen, and why that can feel both deeply wanted and quietly risky. There’s something here about the tension between expression and protection — how we might say things sideways, through poetry or humour or busyness, and hope someone understands anyway.

We talk about loneliness, and the difference between being alone and feeling emotionally unseen. About anxiety and overwhelm, and what happens when we start to understand our emotions not as problems to fix, but as signals from a nervous system trying to find its way back to safety. And we spend time with the idea of “hulp” and why it can be so hard to ask for help, even when we need it most.

Jacky Power is a therapeutic poet, trauma therapist, and transformational speaker working at the intersection of psychology and performance poetry. With an MSc in Addiction Psychology & Counselling and advanced EFT training, she has spent years helping "cycle breakers” - people interrupting intergenerational patterns  - find language for what they've been taught to swallow. She is the creator of the HULP to HOPE framework, host of the Words in the Wilderness podcast, and has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe with her one woman show ’Stop the world I want to get off’ and has a poetry collection out under the same name. Her next book, From Hulp to Hope, is due out this summer 2026.

Substack | Website | Instagram

We also mention: The work of Dan Siegel | Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird | Deb Dana, Polyvagal Theory bk | Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart | We’re Going on a Bear Hunt | Charles R. Snyder's hope theory

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of A Thought I Kept, a weekly podcast about the ideas that stay. I'm your host, Claire Fitzsimmons, and I'm so thrilled to be sharing today's episode with you. Because my guest and I this week talk about some of my most favorite things. We talk about poetry and Brady Brown, we talk about words and publishing, we talk about creativity and feelings. We get into how hard it can be just to be a person today. And how therapy or the therapeutic landscape is maybe supporting us or not supporting us through that. Because today I'm talking with Jackie Power. Jackie Power brings together therapy and poetry. She's a therapeutic poet, a trauma therapist, and a transformational speaker. She performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with a one-woman show that was called Stop the World, I Want to Get Off, which might be a sentiment many of us share right now. And that became this really wonderful poetry collection that came out in the same name a few years ago. She is now working on her next book, From Hope to Hope. And that's due out this summer. She has also just launched a new podcast, Words in the Wilderness. And she used to have a podcast called The Therapeutic Poet. And it's well worth returning to those episodes too. So let's find out whether the thought that Jackie brings to the podcast this week is one that you will keep, whether it's one that you will share, whether it's one that you will hold on for a lifetime, or even one that you might forget by the end of today. Here's my conversation with Jackie. Hi, Jackie. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Thank you, Claire. Delighted to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

It's so nice to see you. I've been reading and watching and experiencing your poetry for a while. So it's such a delight to have you here. I'm wondering how you're arriving here. Like, how are you feeling today on this Spring Friday? I'm feeling very happy with myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Very actually, because I've just finished the last round of edits for my book Help to Hope this morning. So I had like I had five, I had four remaining edits to do that were that were tough that I really didn't want to kind of approach. And I was just, who's the person that says I eat the frog? I can't remember who that was, but basically there was a writer I think that used to say, like eat the frog, like do the first thing in the morning that you don't want to do. So I did that this morning and I'm happy with what I've written. And that's that's done. So yay! Does that mean your book's done?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Like done is in an editing sense.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

No, it's it's the first round of edits. So before it goes to sort of proofreading editing and line editing. So this is like the the kind of the structural ideas and the way that I'm presenting things before getting into the nitty-gritty of it all. How has that experience been writing the second book compared to the first? Well, the first book, well, this is actually my first book in a funny sort of way, in that I wrote it, I started writing this in about 2018, if I'm honest. And it was called Our Human Tricky Things. And it was just a collection of things that I found like difficult, like things like loneliness or God, I've got so many illness, for example, and all of these kind of things that we don't necessarily talk about that kind of get pushed to the outsides of our kind of consciousness. So it I had these human tricky things and then the antidotes. And then as time's gone on, I have the poem called I Help, which is about those moments when you swallow like that howl and gulp, like those moments of loneliness when you realise, oh, it's not actually safe for me to speak up here in this way, so I've got to put on that kind of mask and and censor myself here. And I started thinking about all of these different things that I've written and formed a framework around it, basically. So it's really developed. So the so in the meantime, whilst I was writing that, I did a show in 2022 called Stop the World, I Want to Get Off. My Top 10 Reasons Why I Want to Leave the Planet. Probably up to about 20 now at this stage. And and I put the poems that were in that show into my poetry collection. So that went out in 2022. But I have I haven't been I haven't been an organized writer. So at this time it feels nice to, I know what my framework is, I know how I'm pulling everything into that, and it's and it's taking readers on a proper journey. And I've integrated poetry with clinical psychology type insight, and then my own story as well. So I'm kind of using myself as a guinea pig, which it might not be advisable. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

What is your experience of doing that now that you're it sounds like you're bringing yourself more into the narrative than before?

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Well, it was interest, yeah. Um it's interesting because what I realize is how much I hide behind my poems. So I write poetry and I say that, you know, poetry is my grown-up version of code. It's the way of being able to hold something heartfelt at arm's length so that it doesn't ever feel quite so exposing or raw. And what I'm doing in the book is is it's a bit of a Wizard of Oz moment, you know, where I'm lifting kind of the curtain back and saying, you know, not it's not just the Jackie Jazz hands moment of the poem. This is this is actually the experience behind it. Or I'm using them to kind of accentuate a point that I'm making. So it's felt it's a very vulnerable book, like it's a very honest book, and I have wobbled at times about what I'm sharing in it, but I'm very committed to the idea that I think it will help other people, and that's why I've written it to the depth that I have. Because I think in the therapeutic, coaching type of world, a lot of us, I know it's in my experience with the people that I know, come in as the wounded healer, but then it often gets to a stage where as a as a therapist, you're very much encouraged not to talk about your experience, which I which I understand that you don't want to make a therapeutic session all about you. I totally get that. But I do think we're missing that sense of a human connection and that understanding that underneath it all we're all human. And so I think part of writing it, it's not exactly a rebellion against that, but it's just being very grounded in what my approach is, which is I think it's important when there is wisdom and experience to share, to share that in a discerning way. So that yeah. And that and that and that's my experience. That like, you know, when I've had therapy and the and the therapist has shared what some of her experience has been, I found that incredibly helpful. So I'm yeah, it's from a place of hopefully, you know, me wanting to help others and not kind of just splay my wounds out there for all to see, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

How do you know when you've reached the wound when you're writing? Like that the part that you are aware is there, and that you are then willing to share and then willing not to share. Like, how do you know what that is for you so that you keep yourself safe within the writing context?

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, it's been interesting. It's been, I wouldn't say it's been a challenge, because I think I've got a very strong sense of who I am now, and a very strong sense of what is the purpose of this piece that I'm writing. Like the way I've written poetry, that has been my accompaniment, that's been my witness, that's been my uh source of validation, which sounds really sad, doesn't it? It's like a very lonely existence, just writing poems to myself. But it has, it's been amazing. And and so that's not been part of it, but there are definitely things within my own story that I think when does it become a bit of a sort of a rubber-necking exercise, you know, and sort of this is all the pain and gore? And when is it all what's the lesson from this? And I don't think I think everything is so sensationalist. I don't think we need more noise of drama. I think what we need is is wisdom. And so it's it's been discerning in that is each time I'm writing something, is am I bringing wisdom to the reader or am I bringing my shit show?

SPEAKER_00 8:47

The two are quite different. Do you have a sense that like with everything that you do, there feels like there is somebody else in the room with you? Like in therapy, there is your client, in your poetry performances, there of course the audience with your writing there as a reader. And you're always in a sense in relationship. Do you have a sense that that is what you're doing, or or how much of this is like a solitary pursuit that that's a really interesting question.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

I'm I because I don't actually f yeah, I don't you're right. That there is often someone there, but it doesn't hasn't really felt like that actually. It's felt more like I'm doing something by myself. But I'm letting someone in rather than in relation with. I mean, obviously working with someone in a therapeutic manner, that's relationship. And yeah, when I'm d performing poetry, again, that's that's the therapy and the poetry are really about me creating a space, kind of a forum for us for things to be discussed. And I'm very passionate about trying to provide a space for those unspoken conversations. That's what a lot of the poems are doing, that's what a lot of the therapy is, I think. But the writing that does feel more of a solitary thing where I'm really letting someone read my diary, in a sense, you know, and that's how I begin this book, is like when I was a kid, I had a diary that I used to write in code. And I thought it was because I didn't want people to read it, but what I've realized is I didn't want people to make fun of what they read because that was my fear. And poetry has been my grown-up code. It has been my way to say, well, I already feel misunderstood, so let me write it in a poem. And through the metaphor, I can anticipate that you might you might say to me, you don't understand, and that's okay because that's the beauty of a poem. So it's like I've twisted it to my own advantage, you know? And and then any time that I don't feel understood, I feel understood within the poem. And if um but what I've noticed is is uh when other people get it, and and that's through experience, right? That's not a logical, oh, that makes sense to me, or I'm understanding what you're trying to say there. That they're they're connecting on a on a heart level and and they're saying, Oh my gosh, you you know, we're beating kind of at the same frequency on that issue.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

I guess where I go to with that is like the moment that you have started to identify as a writer rather than as a and I I wonder whether you differentiate them as a therapist or somebody sharing or creating a space for therapeutic conversations. And I wonder whether there is something more recently about stepping into the space of being a writer.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, I think you know, there's that idea of the shadow artist, isn't there? And I think very much that I I realized this year I was doing some archetype type work, and I was like, oh, I keep on holding spaces for other people's stories, and I'm actually a storyteller. I know. Why like oh, that's why it's not quite feeling aligned, you know? And so I mean, I I and I I've taken quite a bold step because I've just gone, I'm not gonna do that anymore. So from a from a therapy perspective, I I'm not doing one-to-one therapy work anymore. I'm working within groups and I'm doing sort of group facilitation, my permission to feel workshops, because that feels like it's a collaborative storytelling. And I think I'm not even sure that I'm an in one sense, I'm a natural therapist. Because, you know, I'm probably more of a coach actually than a therapist. And I think certainly working in the addiction world, often that's needed, that direction is needed. Because, you know, if if someone is is constantly relapsing, they don't need you to ask them, well, how does that make you feel? Right? They need you to say, okay, let's have a look at your triggers and let's let's track this back, like you know, what, and and they need to understand about sort of brain automaticity and that actually part of this relapse situation that you're in is completely unconscious. So, how do we track that back and how do we stop that from happening? That's a very, very directive way of working. And really, the reason that I got into therapeutic work was I went and did some psychodrama work in the States for like for myself to heal my own trauma. And I came back and said to my therapist, I I want to do what they do. Like I I love that. And and that led to me doing a master's in addiction psychology rather than actually, which I loved, and I'm really glad I did that. But rather than actually like solely training in psychodrama, I did train in psychodrama after that, and then lockdown happened, and I didn't, you know, I just didn't extend that to the level, and then I started training in EFT tapping because that was a really good way of working on like do you know what I mean? So I ended up sort of in these sort of tributaries from the main source that that was so far from what I'd originally intended, and I think I'm doing a massive sort of bit of a corrective course right now. Yeah, to get me back online.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Which parts of traditional therapy do you find yourself resisting?

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Oh, I can feel that.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Oh, back away, back away.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

The power differential, the sense that I I whether it's spoken about or not, this idea, and I I see even with friends, and friends will turn to me and they'll go, Well, you're a therapist. Like you like you know best, or you know better, or you've got the ideal. I think, I think, and certainly if you look at the way that things have moved on social media, I think there's a lot of, you know, five ways to improve your relationship. And and I don't, I I've think about this, like, why do I resist that? Because because what if it doesn't work? What if those five ideal ways don't work? What are you left with then? And I'm interested in in in that bit. And I think what I also find is this is there's a fashion and there's gurus, right? There's a fashion of EMDR's the flavour of the month. And I but I come back to I do quote him an awful lot, but I come back to Dan Siegel's work of what he says around for a child to feel secure, they need to feel safe, seen, and soothed. And I think it's exactly the same for us as adults. And often instead, we say we're fine and we're isolated, medicated, and dysregulated, you know. And so I think how I would rather work with those principles, and the way that I feel soothed is going to be different to the way that you feel soothed, and that changes over time, and the same for feeling seen, and the same for feeling safe, right? And I think that that's that's my rub against the therapeutic world is is there's not a curiosity, there seems to be a certainty in this is the way that we do things, and if you suggest that it's done a different way, then somehow you're not being compliant. And I think you see that in it's sort of in the medicalization of our emotional distress, right? Like in the way that everything is called disorders. I mean, you know, it's a grief disorder if you're really struggling after six months of your loved one dying. Like, really? What about environmentally, you know, that there's impacts as well, that that's meant that now you're not living where you've been living before? And it meant that actually there'd been a row over the will, and now your children are no longer speaking to you. And so you're feeling all of this grief and you're presenting, and someone's saying, Well, you know, it's over six months since you're why six months?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Who says that? Like I know it's ludicrous, isn't it? That that emotions have an expected arc to them, they have an expected time frame to them. And if you're not meeting or complying with that, you are fundamentally doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

Yeah. And so that's an issue for me. And then I think the final thing is I love educating myself. I'm very curious. I love learning, but the way that we are almost like we're kind of we need to be monitored like children, of you know, to be to be part of the BACP, you have to make sure you've done, you know, you're recording everything. I am not a good recorder of everything that I do. Like I'm I move too quickly for that. And so I get I there's a real teenage part of me that rebels against that. Like, you know what? I'm holding, I'm holding people's distress. Give me some credit. And then also the way that I think therapists and coaches are left completely exposed. You know, we're asked to have all of this responsibility, but certainly if you're working in private practice, it can feel incredibly isolating and uh yeah, like their sense of responsibility is massive.

unknown 17:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

So that's that's my rebellion. My rebellion today has been that I haven't asked you the question that I ask everybody within about five minutes, and already we're part way through. So I would like to ask you what the thought is that you've kept and what that is for you, and what has stayed with you.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

So when I was training uh in my masters, we had to do sort of group therapy work, and I was going through a difficult relationship breakdown with family members, and I rem and it's it was causing me an awful lot of distress and grief. And the the woman leading the group, you know, I was doing a sort of a piece of work and she said, You you can't look in the same direction as your family members and look in the same direction in you know, in the direction that you want to go in. You have to choose a direction. Do you do you know what I mean? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

You have to, you just the way you looked at me, I was like, Am I making sense? Like you're making too much sense. That's the problem. I'm like, okay, I know that. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Oh, that was that was a that was a clunk moment. And she was right, that was it.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

And I was like, that's and sometimes I will make a decision that is facing in someone else's direction, maybe. I'd you know, but actually rarely now, because I'm in touch with what my values are, and so I'm always working to like what to be in line with those. And then I also think if anyone is asking me to stop looking in my direction and prioritize their direction, I need to question that relationship. Which also I've got this sort of nagging voice in my head as I say that, which is kind of like, well, doesn't that make you incredibly individualistic? But I think what we need is more people grounded in the sense of who they are and what their values are, to kindly live within that space, you know, not but not be like not the nice thing, but you know, be clear about what you're okay with and what you're not okay with. Because if we don't, that's when we get all of the appeasement, that's when we get the resentment, that's when we get the gossip. And I'm just I'm I'm just not up for that. Wait, what did you believe before then? If I have different values or if I if I want different things, I can't look in my direction and also be sort of facing their direction when they're opposing views. And I used to think, oh, it's only because I haven't explained myself properly, it's only because I haven't persuaded them to look in my direction. So actually it's a hugely arrogant kind of perspective to have.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Because you believe that you could persuade them. Like you believe that what you the direction you were facing in, you could make them come to your direction.

SPEAKER_02 20:58

Yes. And but but not in a aren't I brilliant way, but it's oh my god, there must be there must be something I'm doing wrong that means that they don't want to look in this direction with me. I'm I'm aligned to this direction. But the fact that they're not, there must be either something wrong with me looking in that direction or not being able to convince them. And then it was just this, I wouldn't say it's just this moment, actually. I think it's been a million little moments of kind of going, oh, we just have different directions. And the best way that I can describe it, which is slightly changing my analogy of the directions, is do you remember that optical illusion of the old, I think it's called the my mother in law and my wife or something, where it's the old lady kind of hag looking. And then if you look at a certain way, you see a young maiden, it's that black and white picture. And I've I found like thinking of it in those terms incredibly comforting because it's like, oh, they see. Young lady, I see the hag, or vice versa. You know, and you can't you can't see both at the same time. You have to kind of adjust the way you look at it to either see one or you see the other. Which is so much of your work.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

It's so much like that, like sitting alongside multiple perspectives, like really like allowing opposing things to coexist in a sense.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Yeah, I think that that absolutely. And so having that realization, it it helped me drop my shame of, oh, you know, there must be something wrong with me. I'm wrong to be looking at it this way. Because that's what I would tell myself. Wasn't, you know, I it was very much that that they must be in the right. And then it was like, actually, this isn't about right or wrong. This is about them doing what they're doing because of all of their human tricky things and them trying to figure out life. And this is me doing my the way I'm doing life because I have all of my human tricky things. And unfortunately, we cannot find a compromise in that. And yeah, that's I'm not I am not going to compromise myself anymore in order to be okay with, you know, with the way that they want me to be.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

How do you know when that goes from acceptance of two different directions to separateness in those two different directions? When I hear it, I hear there is something about I accept that I'm going in a different direction. And I also hear, and maybe this me projecting, I also hear something about I'm alone in going in that direction. There is a separateness in me in going in this direction. And there is something about in choosing that direction, you are determining that you're walking a different path. Yeah, it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

But the consequence of not doing it is self-abandonment. I'm not just I'm not gonna do that anymore. So it's not like it's nearly.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

So instead of self-abandonment, what how do you see that?

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Self-expression, self-trust, self-acceptance, amusement at myself. Like rather than berating myself, it's like it's a weird it's weird because it doesn't mean it's not there's not grief and loss and longing, but there's a real sense of belonging to myself as well, which I just know if I did it any other way, I wouldn't have. You know, and and you know, there's no way I would have done the podcast, performed at Edinburgh, I went to the States last year and and you know, spoke at the story conference. Because I wouldn't have been so in tune with myself to be unique to have something to say.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yes. So this moment for you, this statement that you heard in this group context, what was the consequence for you after that? The immediate consequence? The next thought.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

I stuck to some pretty hefty boundaries. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

That was hard. Knowing what the boundary even could be for you, and then keeping to that boundary.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

It was such a shit show. It's been so messy. No, because it's it's not that simple.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

It's not like, oh, now I know the boundary and now I'll it was it was a stumble, it was it was like it was like going on a bear hunt. It was stumble trip, stumble trip, stumble trip. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

It was like Oh no, because there is something, isn't there, about the awareness, like you have the awareness, but now you have to do something with it.

unknown 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

And that was that was horrible. And I think this is the funny thing, isn't it? It's like the promised land of wellness and do this and everything will be better. No one talks about, oh my god, it it's hot, it's hard and it's lonely. And then you sort of think, well, I I know someone said to me, like, why why bother? Why on earth bother? I I and I bother because I can't not. I don't know if I'm incredibly stubborn. But but sort of to to answer your question, I I think what I'd done is I had said out loud some boundaries, but then I hadn't trusted myself insofar as I didn't stand by them. So I'd say a boundary, and then that boundary would get transgressed, and I would I would kind of go, okay, oh, it's okay, then don't worry about it. You know, oh, it must again, it must be me have got something wrong because if if I'd said the boundary in the right way, then they'd follow it.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Rather than Yes, because it is a right way of saying it, and there's a right way of holding it, and there is a right way of doing that. And you're obviously doing it wrong. Or you're telling yourself that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Yeah, exactly. Right. It's like, okay, it's like there's like, okay, this is the word equation. And then if I say it in this word equation, then they can hear that and they can honor my truth, and they can, you know, it's when you when you do that, I feel like I mean, I've said this to clients myself, right? Like, you know, yes, you all that does, all that does is gives me reassurance that I am saying something in a clear and kind way. I have no say over how that gets received. No say. And what I've got to watch for is that when I know that this is the healthy way to do it and it's not well received, that I don't then descend into self-righteousness. Which, you know, like, well, I've got it all right. And and that's what we see, right? That's what we see everywhere. Well, they're so toxic. Well, here's narcissistic traits, and it becomes this self-righteous narrative of, well, I'm fine. And it's not that simple.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Hmm. I'm wondering, we started to talk about this a little bit before we came on this podcast. And there is something about doing the work on ourselves, there is something about creating our sense of awareness, there is something about even learning the language of how to set a boundary, how to speak to our values, how to be aligned with our own direction. But there is a moment that it meets other people, and there's a moment that it meets a toxic boss. There's a moment of like, I have said this out loud to myself, I have said this to a therapist, I have read a poem that is making me now understand and believe something differently about myself. And then that awareness, that peace now has to be in relationship, has to go outside the moment you read a poem, has to go outside the moment that you're in therapy. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

So basically, how do you manage the battlefield of kind of staying aligned to what you want and other people not interested?

SPEAKER_00 29:07

And and how is that a bit- I love that you call it battlefield. Yes. Yes, because so much there is shame in that. If we're not then able to, this is what I find anyway. If we're not then able to keep hold of the thing, we feel shame that we have thought that. We might feel guilty that we tried that, we may feel frustrated, and it brings a whole other set of things.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

Yes, yes, yes. I'm so excited about my book now because I've written about this in here.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

So, so, okay. Starting off, I speak along the lines of something I call the frustration triangle, right? So when we're frustrated, we either go into blame, self-shame, or what I call up your game. Of course, I have to make it rhyme. So my understanding is when I'm in a place of blame, actually it's about accountability. Either somebody else is not taking accountability or I'm not taking accountability. I I tell a story in in the book about going to a literary festival. I'd written these fake news fairy tales. So it was told from the perspective of a character within the fairy tale that you've never heard of, but that's pivotal to the plot in inverted commerce. So I had like mattress Mick, who was the mattress seller in Princess and the P because someone needed to sell. You know, it was it was I loved them. They were they were very funny, very reverent. Went to the festival, and three different agents went, don't give up your day, Joel. Because, and I wrote a poem called Bitterness after that. I get it you're clever well done, right? On the way home, I was like, and I was getting like it was like Anne Lamotte talks about writing your shitty first draft. This was, and I think we need that as feelings, right? You need a feelings shitty first draft, where you kind of so that was that was what this this poem was, this bitterness poem. And by writing that, it gave me perspective. So you've asked me how do I get out of writing poems? And I say by writing more poems, but writing that poem, I got perspective of I can look at this from a sort of a self-piteous kind of pride perspective. Or actually, even just writing it, it made me laugh at myself, and I could say, you know, they they were doing their job and they were doing it well. And I went in there underprepared, really enthusiastic. They told me some key things about children's fiction, like it needs to be aimed at a certain age, who knew? Like, do you know what I mean? So it really helped me to be self-reflective and then decide what I wanted to do next.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

So I think Yeah, so you didn't stay in it and you didn't keep hold of it, but you understood it, took the learning from it, and you shifted something.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

Shifted something, yes. And the shift for me was I'd gone from blaming them to realizing I wasn't taking accountability for my own literary growth. Right? So it wasn't their account. I was trying to push it onto them, they don't understand. So it was like my teenage self is like really like out there. And then it was like, oh no, it's me. Like it's me. Okay, so I need to do something about that. So that's the first kind of point role in the triangle. The second is sort of the self-shame, which is, oh, I've done something wrong. Which so this was my, this was often my where I would go. So you can quickly flip then into up again. I've must I've done something wrong, I need to try harder, right? But when I'm in that sort of self-shame of I've done something wrong, normally there's there's something that we need, right? That we're not actually meeting. So, you know, what I needed was I needed to honor my values in that, and I needed to accept that this was really important to me, and I needed to respect myself, right? So that's where you can be in self-shame. And then the up you game is a different kind of needs. It's like there's something here, there's a vulnerability that I either need support in, guidance in, protection from, or nurturance with. And I'm not reaching out for that. Instead, I'm telling myself, be needless, just try harder. Yes. And so sort of working through this, that's what I do. Each time when there's something and there's a frustration there, it's like, okay, where am I going? Am I in blame? Am I in self-shame? I'm am I in up your game? And then what do I need as a result of that? So it's a nice little formula. I love that. And it works.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

I have questions. Okay, tell me about the first bit. So sometimes what I see is that when you say to somebody, in some way, let's talk about your needs, and there's this automatic, like, ooh, needs, what are those? Oh, needs. I don't have those. I don't get to have those. They're not for me, they're for this other person over there. What do you how what do you come to understand about even the awareness that we can and do have needs?

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Okay, so I'm not a fan of the Maso hierarchy of needs, because I think it's a bit, I mean, I'm not saying like it obviously isn't a thing. It's just it's it's not very relatable. Like, you know, we all need shelter. Oh, okay. What am I meant to do with that? There's there's human systems, which has been developed. I can't think of their full name, but I know it's something Colby. And she talks about needs in terms of individuality, personal growth, safety, and relationships. And she has this circle that's separated out into those four things. And then it says, like, so for it for in safety, for example, it might be predictability, control, like whatever. When I'm working with clients, I'll present this wheel and say, like, this is the basically every human needs these. So there's two things. One, let's track, let's look at your feelings. What feelings are signposting which needs. Let's have a look at those needs because we all have them, and let's just work from there. And actually, it's not that you don't have a need, it's that you don't know how to communicate that need, or that need brings up fear because you've been taught that actually, if you do speak up about that need, you're going to get shouted down or attacked or whatever. So then it's sort of tracing back to more of their or or my if I'm doing it for myself, you know, story. And what I really like about that is it's just very straightforward. It's like you, it's not even an argument, it's not even a point of argument that you don't like it's just it's a wheel. Yes, yeah. Here's the wheel with them, you know. But then, you know, I the when the shoulds are in there, the shoulds are the signposts for shame. So what what shame is there? What is there you're telling yourself about you're wrong in some way, that you're defective in some way for having these needs, or you know, that's that's a block.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

So it's yeah, it ends up being quite formula formulaic, really. Okay, let's go to the other piece of that that I heard, which which was about vulnerability. And when it is can be so hard for us to realize that we need support or there is something that isn't just about us trying, isn't about just us doing the thing, but is about we need someone else in order to help us, support us, be with us, care for us. What have you come to understand about that piece about being vulnerable in how we ask for help?

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Well, I love Carrie Quinn. Actually, she was on, she was on the old podcast and she had a book called Better Boundaries. And she talks about, I don't know if it's a committee or it's it's like basically having it's almost like having this circle of trust. So looking at all the different areas of your life, like, you know, about relationships, about finances, about work, about and having a look at all of these different areas and going, well, who is it within my circle of trust? So professionals will be in there, dentists, doctors, therapy, you know, all of that. And then identifying where do I have a vacancy. So it's not, it's knowing who it's knowing who to go to. And that's what I love about the the writing process, the poetry process. And I went through this actually in the talk that I did last year, that when I wrote that bitterness poem, and that what was underneath that is what I call this, these hulp moments, these vulnerable moments of I you know, sharing my creativity is a risky thing to do. I my voice doesn't get heard, and if I'm visible, I will be humiliated. Okay. So that's a very different conversation to go to somebody and say, Oh, I didn't, you know, these agents all refuse me. I'm so pissed off, versus that experience has brought up real real feelings of inadequacy. And and that's really hard to deal with. And then, you know, for me, I've got a couple of absolute trusted friends who can meet me in that that shame response. And I literally, and I've learned through lots of calls that haven't worked out. I've learned to recognize it. And that that for me, that recognition is it feels like my skin has been pulled off. It feels so raw. I want to shrink down. I it is such a dark little hole. But I know now, I I I can recognize that that story I'm telling myself isn't true when I'm in there, even though I don't, even when I don't want to reach out, that I've learned enough and have enough resilience now when I'm in that to be able to reach out to one of those people and say, I'm in that space, and what I need to do is to tell you what I'm telling myself about myself. And this is the really crux for me, and for you to repeat that back to me. Because in those shame moments, we need an absolute witnessing. We do not need any, oh, don't feel like that. I don't, you know, or I look because anything that anyone says when we're in that shame spot, our shame will twist it into the story we're telling ourselves. So if someone says, Oh my god, I can't believe that happened to you, then it's like, well, you would say that because you're on my side. Right? So it's like every everything gets gets can't be taken in. But when it's mirrored back almost word for word, there's this, oh I'm not alone. Because what does shame do? It just isolates us. Totally. So what I need is that is that mirroring. And if you think back to, you know, early, early, early childhood attachment attunement, that is what a good enough mother, a good enough parent does, is that emotional attunement. And that's what we're needing when we're in that spa.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

Do you think we're now too quick to try and fix that to say there are I read this article that said five ways to solve this relationship? Or I think you should pick up the self-help book, it's really useful. Or there is a podcast about this. Do you think we can be too quick to go to let me give you a resource, let me give you an idea, let me give you a therapy speak, something. Do you think we have a tendency now to do that piece rather than to sit alongside all in or with?

SPEAKER_02 40:54

100%, because there's so much information available. I have a poem about this called Don't Tell Me Not to Worry About It. And we are, we have been conditioned to think that discomfort is a disorder, right? So if if we're sharing, and I share about this in the book as well, uh a time when I felt really lonely, because we'd moved house and I didn't know anyone, and I was fine for the first few months and then I was lonely. And I I shared with um a friend of mine, I feel lonely, and they were they were like, let's change the subject, you know, all all went into fix. So we'll just get out. Just and what I needed was for someone to go, oh yeah, yeah, get that. It is lonely, isn't it? Moving house. You think you everything's new, and then the novelty wears off and got no one to just pot around for a cup of tea. Yeah, I hear that.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

So maybe that means that we could go on to feelings. Because there is something here that's about how hard it is to be with feelings. And only because we only because we we don't know how to read them. So tell me about that. We don't know how to read them in other people or in ourselves?

SPEAKER_02 42:10

I think first of all, in ourselves. I mean, you know, we before we started recording, we were chatting about Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart, and in that, you know, to quote her, we've 87 feelings. Most of us can name three. I think it's sad, happy, and angry, right? Like, so we don't have vocabulary for those experiences. Everything nowadays, which is a real bugbearer of mine, gets this shorthand of is bad for my mental health. I lost my job, is bad, it was bad for my mental health. My mother died, it was bad for my mental health. No, you lost your job and now you're feeling confused and disappointed and inadequate. Your mother died and now you're feeling lonely and grief and like we don't talk about these different feelings. We apologize for crying, even though when you cry, it releases a hormone that makes you feel better. Like our bodies are amazing. We just have to trust them and we we we don't. We've gone so much into our heads. And I think if you I mean, I think if you look at sort of the the mental health world and the way that that has come about, is it is grounded in this idea of logic and and and mindset rather than us being mammals that are in fight or flight or freeze or you know, fawn or flop. And and and each of these behaviors that we're doing is often trying to get us back to our sense of homeostasis.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Yes. So do you think there's something in there about like the feelings that we numb and the feelings that we allow ourselves to notice? That sometimes they're we numb our feelings, we try and get away with from them, we try to shove them aside, we try to medicate our way out of them. And there are some that we do allow ourselves to notice. But maybe they're fewer far between.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Well, I think there's some that we then try and dial up more, right? Like so it's not just about numbing, it's also about heightening. And that's what I mean, that's the roots of any addiction. That's essentially what someone's trying to do. They're trying to medicate their pain away, or they're trying to uh through numbing it or through exacerbating those dopamine hits.

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Yes, because they're the ones that are more welcome and are more sought after.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

So you can't. And for some of us, based on trauma, it can be more almost like more deficient, right? So there's so that there's research now that trauma impacts our dopamine senses, senses as to how much you know you're able to kind of access that as a hormone. And that and that varies. And also how our fight-flight, how the amygdala and hipp hippocampus are changed through trauma, which then means for some people they're going to be much more on hyper alert. So it's just if you think of you know trauma and attachment, like we're this is not a level playing field when we're talking about feelings. You know, we we're yeah, it really isn't.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

So I have five words for you, and they're all emotion words. Okay. And I'm just curious about what they bring up in you. And some of them are the perceived negative emotions, the things that we might tend to run away from. And the first is grief. So what has grief come to mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 45:31

I actually love talking about grief and I love being with people in grief because it's such an honest emotion. It's a really honest emotion in that you're vulnerably talking about loss and longing and love and powerlessness. And I think that it's an invitation to really witness and honour. And that's why so often when grief is in our lives, there is that ritual, there is that validation, whether it's a funeral or whatever. But I think a lot of us are living with unresolved grief because it doesn't fit into the standard, you know, it's not it's not that somebody's died, it might be the loss of a dream or a relationship or you know, something else. So I think it's it's such a quintessentially a human emotion as well. But actually that's not true, is it? Because if you think about pets, like pets grieve for their for their owners when you see that with dogs, like dogs, you know.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Yeah, but it's it's a it's remind it's a heartbeat emotion, right? It's you know, it's a real emotion of the heart.

SPEAKER_00 46:51

Overwhelm. Overwhelm is one I hear a lot right now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Well, I it it's funny, isn't it? Because is it any well? Like there's overwhelm and underwhelm, but what what is whelm? I think with overwhelm, it starts with what stories are you telling yourself? Because there's gonna be a bunch of shoulds in there. And yeah, it comes back to storytelling, overwhelm. What are you telling yourself? What is true? What can you do about it? What can you let go of? What unrealistic expectations do you have about yourself that that other people have put there that you've put there, and that actually it's you know, you might not be willing to go with the consequences of addressing that overwhelm. That's really what badge of honour is it, right? What you know, for some overwhelm's a badge of honor. I'm so busy, so needed.

SPEAKER_00 47:49

That's so interesting. Yes. Okay, loneliness. So you touched on this earlier, but I know that you've been speaking about and writing about, thinking about this recently. So loneliness.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Yeah, I did a workshop on it this, yeah, this week. So, and look at social loneliness versus emotional loneliness. So I have a poem called The About the Lady at the bus stop, which I don't know of by heart, but it's about this lady who was abandoned at the bus stop and didn't go on her workouting. And she was, you know, she she had additional needs. She was it she was some like community type volunteer, and basically her boss said, I'm not dealing with you today, you're not coming. And she was left at the bus stop crying. Well, no, actually she wasn't crying. We started chatting on the bus, and then I I said, Oh gosh, that sounds really hard. And then she started crying, right? So there's that social loneliness of really wanting to connect with people and it not being there. And then I think there's that emotional loneliness of I might be in a crowded room, but don't no one sees the world in the way that I see it, and I feel misunderstood and um and I don't know where to put that. I don't know where to how do I share that? Because again, like you know, as human beings, we're super wired. We've got mirror neurons in our brain that fire off when someone else does something, as if we're doing it. Like we're super wired to connect. And so loneliness, you know, it really is that signpost for connection. And I I loved the workshop I did on Tuesday because there was someone there and they were talking about loneliness, and it became clear that actually there was a story that they were holding from 40 years ago around grief, and they were that they were holding their story in a particular way. And when I did this exercise where they got to write from their loneliness, and what does the, what does they what does your loneliness want to tell you? And as they did that, all of this truth for them came out, and it was like this unburdening, you know. So it again, like we we wanna, we don't want to own it, we want to push it aside, we want, we want that to we don't want to have that loneliness. But when we bring it up close, say what are you saying? If we can get skilled in that, then it just makes our whole life so much richer.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

Yes, yes. And sometimes I wonder whether those perceived negative emotions, we have such a fear that we'll get stuck in them. Like it doesn't add to our lives and just make them richer. But what it will do is like turn them into grains grayscale, or we'll get we'll get lost in them. We'll drown in them, we'll be overwhelmed by them.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Yeah, and I think that's really kind of part of what my mission is when I'm saying like rehumanize one poem at a time is kind of there's there's a through, like the only it is like the bear hound, the only way is through, but there is a way through. And and it's you know, and but some people don't have the guideposts for that. Because if you're surrounded by people that are all numbing out their emotions or medicalizing them, no one's got the skills to be able to say, ah, that loneliness, you know, maybe it's that let's have a look at it. What is it saying? What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Where did you learn that from? Let's go into another one that is around a lot right now, and that's anxiety. Anxiety can be something that people want to stop, get rid of, have nothing to deal with. It's an emotion that we can be afraid of as well. What have you come to learn about anxiety?

SPEAKER_02 51:20

I think it's kind of a collective umbrella term. I think I think people talk about it as if they own it like a dog, like my anxiety. Like, you know. What what an identity thing. Yeah. Like actually, I think when you it's a bit like anger. Like anger can be this sort of secondary emotion. Underneath that, there can be a sense of vulnerability and hurt and boundaries transgressed, right? I think as far as is this it is this umbrella emotion of like I really it can be fear. Again, it can be the stories we tell ourselves. So that anxiety might be excitement, actually, even like physiologically, where are we feeling it? I think it's around we're seeking safety. And through safety, we seek when we don't feel safe, we seek control. And if that control isn't available to us, then we feel out of control, and that gets labelled as anxiety. So I it doesn't for I for me it comes fundamentally down to how do you not feel safe.

SPEAKER_00 52:23

Okay, my last one is a perceived positive emotion, which is hope. Where are we on hope right now, Jackie? Do you still want to get off the world? That's what I want to know.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

I I think at the end of that book, I've got my poem I hunted for hope. I hunted for hope in the cupboard. What is the option, what is the alternative? I I think there's uh there's there's a person, Charles Snyder, I think is his name, who was a psychologist who looked into hope, and he says that we need three things. You know, you need a goal, you need an agency to complete that goal, you need a pathway to be able to achieve it. And I think hope is a gap about accountability. How can I create hope for myself? What is my realistic goal? I think often we lose hope because the goal that we have isn't necessarily a realistic one, and that we might need to realign that with what's what is possible. And that uh alongside hope then comes grief, right? Because there's some things that we will not have power over, that we will not be able to do, and that's a loss. It's a loss of that expectation.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

What do you feel hopeful about right now?

SPEAKER_02 53:40

I I'm struggling, I'll be honest. Like I think it's really hard time, I fear, for what's on the horizon with with so many things, but I come back to which I say in the last few lines of that poem, but we are alive and that's magic. A once-in-a-lifetime chance. So I take hope by the hand again and I ask it once more to dance. Like the the hope in the everyday, in what Deb Dana calls like the glimmers, right? That I am having a human experience where I get to see and touch and taste and you know, hear and all of the other senses. And that's amazing. So, how can I bring more of that into my world today? And how can I this opportunity to love, to love other people, you know, to to love myself, to love nature around me, how can I bring more of that into my day? And really keep it on a daily basis. And I just thought we think of medieval times as well, right? Like if I lived in medieval times, I'd have no idea what was going on in the next village, probably, until three weeks later. Let alone think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Let alone like what we are now aware of. Our brains are not, we don't have capacity for what we're being exposed to. So it's to remember that as well. But yeah, really keep it in the day.

SPEAKER_00 55:11

Another thing to remember is your thought. So how do you to end, how do you how do you hold on to it?

SPEAKER_02 55:20

I think I really I think, you know, that that came to me about 15 years ago. And I think now it's such a practice that I I you know I can really feel that discomfort when I'm not living aligned to it. And now it's not an oh, oh no, I feel that discomfort and that's terrible. Now it's a oh that discomfort is my sign that I've I need to get back on course. How do you hope someone else will remember it? I think dropping the shoulds, how can you drop the shoulds? How can you get curious about the shoulds that you're carrying? And who are they serving? And what a service you're doing by dropping other people's shoulds, because that gives everyone permission to drop their shoulds. And I think we'd live, you know, you talk about hope, I think we'd live in a much more expansive, creative, and hopeful society if we were all. I mean, imagine it. We wouldn't be the advertising world, would be like, would be completely different because we wouldn't be shouldding ourselves in that way, we wouldn't be shouldding our kids, we wouldn't be, we'd all be just like, oh my god, look, we're in this amazing human experience. How how wonderful. What have you noticed today? You know? We'd live in the world. I think I want to live in that world. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Jackie, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

Thank you for sharing your thought.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

Pleasure, thanks for asking me. I really enjoyed talking to Jackie today. There are some things I think I could talk about endlessly, and our emotions is one of those things. So let me know if this is a thought that you will keep, that you can't look in the same direction as your family members, and look in the same direction that you want to go in. You have to choose a direction. What does that mean to you? What does that suggest? What are you noticing about what Jackie brought today? This might be a thought that you hold on to. It might be something that you share with a friend, it might be something you forget by the time you press play on the next podcast. And all those things are okay. There'll be some thoughts that really do land for you, that really do resonate, and others that just don't hold the same thing. And that awareness, I think, is a form of information. Too. If you like thinking about, talking about, discussing, sharing ideas, I think you'll really enjoy my Substack More Good Days. That's my community where we get to go a little bit deeper on some of the themes of these episodes. If you need more one-on-one support, some more guidance, and maybe even the opportunity to talk about your feelings, then do check out if Lost. Coaching, workshops, events, even online journaling sessions that can help you with your emotions. I will see you next week with another thought that one of my guests has kept. And you might want to as well. Or maybe you won't. Let's find out. See you then.