Dr. Julie Smith
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, well, I guess I've made a bit of a career out of working with people on their emotions. And as a psychologist, I was in the NHS for 10 years and then worked in a very kind of small private practice. And I would say, you know, all of that work, however diverse it was in terms of what people were dealing with,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I think when uncertainty is, I mean, that's the big thing about something like that. And when it happens as well, it's not like this sort of big dramatic moment where you suddenly, you know what the diagnosis is, you know what the plan is, you know what the risk is. It doesn't really happen like that. It's all in stages.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So there is this sort of big period of being really uncertain about everything and not knowing what to do with that. And then not knowing who you can really share that with because you don't want to scare the living hell out of everybody else that you love.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so when there is such uncertainty in that way, the way that I dealt with it and would do again in the future is just narrow everything down. Narrow your focus down. What's the next move? What's the next step? And let's take that, get that bit done, take action.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Um, so actually it was a really kind of strange experience where the day I got diagnosed, the day after the consultant I was under was about to go on holiday for two weeks. And then we had a holiday booked for two weeks after that. And, um, and once he went, um, uh,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Some more tests came back and the treatments or the recommendations were changed, but the team wouldn't tell me what they were because that was his role to do that. So I was sort of thinking, okay, they're not going to tell me, so it must be something bad. Do I cancel my holiday? What do I do? And there's all these kind of...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
you know uncertainties around what to do and and I could feel myself I was sat there trying to edit the book and and it was just consuming me and and and rightly so right my brain saying hang on a minute let's sort this out and I could feel that sort of sense of just being in turmoil not being able to affect anything or control anything and just waiting and I thought, I'm not doing this.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
There's no way. So, you know, my husband came home from work and we just, we started doing lots of research on surgeons and consultants. And, you know, we're lucky enough that we were in a position to go and pay to go and see someone. But, you know, I started asking medics I know for recommendations, found someone who That was nearby, made those calls, got those appointments.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And in the process of just doing that, you know, nothing's changed in theory, but I am moving forward and taking action. And it felt just fundamentally different to, you know, I wasn't sitting there. shaking and weeping. I was, okay, what's the next call we can make? How much does that cost? What can we do? Who can we see? And we did. And it actually helped the process.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And I found someone to do the surgery for me and all that kind of thing. And it was really positive. But
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
yeah i think sitting there like and that's where i got that feeling of the rabbit and headlights i'm not going to sit here like a rabbit and headlights i'm going to move forward and i'm going to you do something and you can't in every situation not in every situation you can do that but um you know i'm lucky enough that um touch words i'm lucky enough that i was in that position where i could you know affect the outcomes
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And I think it's okay for that action not to be the solving of the thing as well. People often say, don't sort of avoid things by getting busy with something else. But sometimes that's necessary for improving the moment and not making it worse.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
No, and I don't think it's necessarily sort of our failure or our limitation that emotions can't be measured and quantified. I think it's a limitation of the method, isn't it? That why do we want to? We don't have to do that in order to want, you know, there was that real push actually, you know, in my career where we were asked to sort of, you know, measure things on scales and numbers and
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Um, in terms of understanding your childhood, I think it really helps to do a lot of people doing that online with kind of bits of information that come up on, you know, videos and stuff like that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Um, but I think if you want to do it in depth in a really constructive way, that's truly going to help you and not send you into kind of resentment and bitterness about everything your parents got wrong, then, um, it does help to do that with somebody else. Um, where you can look at it in a constructive way that's actually going to help.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Because, you know, there's utility in going back and processing that and creating that sort of narrative, really, a timeline of, okay, this happened and that influenced me in this way and this happened and then, you know. And that's really useful.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But sometimes if it's not constructive, it just becomes a rant of everything that was done wrong for me and all the negative impact that's had on my life. And that's quite dangerous in some ways because you can then get into that...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
that cycle of that sort of turmoil really of resentment and and feeling like a victim of it um whereas when you do that constructively for example when you do that in therapy it'll be a fairly balanced uh view and it will kind of look at the things that you wouldn't change and the things that you might do and um how they've impacted you now and how if if something that happened in your childhood got you stuck into a
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I don't know, something that you do in your relationships today that you'd rather not, then you're using that, right? You're going to use that to then break the cycle because you're going to use that to say, okay, I know what I'm doing now. It's because of something that happened earlier on and I'm going to choose to do something different. I'm going to break that cycle.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So it can be really, really productive, but it has to be carefully done, I think.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I think in some ways a part of that work is understanding where your parents have come from and that they more than likely had their own complex childhoods in which they had their own damage that was done and cycles that they were stuck in. And probably, you know, they were sort of growing up in an era where there wasn't that education around this kind of stuff and there wasn't that insight.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so they would have been living out their own coping strategies with whatever they were dealing with. So I think that's part of it is understanding that doesn't make it okay if your parents were, you know, horribly abusive. But it's one way of understanding these cycles that people get stuck in and how damage can be caused often without intention.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But also, there's a degree of, you know, in that parent-child relationship, often we carry the parent-child relationship into adulthood. And we still behave like the child in that relationship.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And actually, when you looked at how that would be applied in the room with someone when you're working with someone, it was sort of really, really limited and how helpful it could be. You know, if someone came back with some kind of mood diary in which they'd kind of added a scale of... And you get this a lot on apps, don't you? You know, rate how you feel today out of 10 and...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
In a sense that we... Mm-hmm. And, you know, possibly, but a lot of parents won't necessarily have any more insight than they had when you were a child. And so I think we can't sort of rest our idea of healing on that, on getting those apologies or getting their insight. Because often they don't have it.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And often it's about developing a relationship with our parents that they are capable of as well. So that we're not expecting more of them than they're actually able to give.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what we have to be really careful of, and you kind of see a lot of online, is this sort of resentment and bitterness, this sort of one-sided, this negative thing was done. You know, parents are the bad guys, I'm the victim of the bad guys, and now it's awful. And
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
to a degree, in the most severe scenarios where things are just awful, that's almost separate from what we're talking about here, where you can have a fairly normal childhood and there were things that negatively affected you, but there would also have been a lot that positively affected you. And so I think one way of sort of
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
really doesn't tell you much at all because you don't feel it on a scale you don't feel a number you've have a set of feelings and um that are kind of different and sometimes deep and sometimes complex and sometimes confusing and it's our sort of um often it's when people are trying to kind of sell something around mental health that they try to make it really simple um but it's okay that it's not i think what's your advice for people who are overthinking everything
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
creating a sort of antidote to just feeling bitterness and resentment towards your parents is to sort of nurture some gratitude around, okay, these were the things about your childhood that weren't ideal. What would be the things that you would repeat when you become a parent yourself?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
What were the things that you value about your childhood that you think helped you become the person that you are or that helped you feel secure? So your parents might have been emotionally neglectful and not spent lots of time with you, but actually maybe... they held down a really difficult job and endured that so that you could have food on the table every night.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And maybe, you know, maybe your mum was at home every day when you got home from school with a warm dinner and, you know, had that kind of dutiful sense of love loving you. And so there will be new ways of sort of turning something and looking at it in a slightly different way that helps you to shift the feeling and not just sit in that resentment of
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
you know, I've survived despite my parents rather than because of them.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I am now.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, absolutely. And there's always something to be grateful for and something to feel a bit annoyed about or miserable about. And I think part is a really important life skill to just have that clarity that you can choose. You don't have to be... you know, we're all human. We all find ourselves in those moments.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And, you know, when I'm talking about that, you know, health scare stuff that I went through in the summer, and I talk about sort of, you know, being the predator, not the prey and all of that, that doesn't mean every moment I was feeling that, that was a response to those dark moments where you feel, oh my, you know, what's going to happen to me? And And, you know, those dark moments.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So it's only human to find yourself in those. But just by having that awareness and knowing that it's a choice gives you that opportunity to step back from it. Put it at arm's length, see it for what it is, and then you get to choose.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But, you know, having those moments of difficulty or the moments when you're not doing that, like you say, the dark moments in the morning when you're thinking, oh, why am I doing this? It's okay to have those moments. It doesn't mean you're failing. But then you had that process of, hang on a minute, I remember that quote. Now I get to choose. And you just learn from all of those experiences.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Well, I think this is actually a really popular subject online. People, I think it's something lots of people are dealing with. And that's because I think the way that life is set up now, right? We're all expected to do... All the technology that we have, in theory, life should be really easy. It was all sold to us as if that will make life easier and you'll have more time on your hands.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
It is part and parcel of the whole experience. And you feel it for a woman. As a woman, you feel that from the moment you know you're pregnant and suddenly everything you do is about somebody else. And so you feel guilt no matter what you do, really. And with feelings of guilt... And it's important to listen to it as well.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I mean, there's kind of, you know, there's stuff online about sort of parent guilt and how, you know, you shouldn't feel it or you should ignore it and do what's good for you. And that's fine. You know, there are moments, you know, that might be in the context of taking a break because it's difficult to do that and take time for yourself.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And that's when you, you know, acknowledge that guilt and you take it with you because you know this is the right thing to do. And there are other times when it's important to listen to that guilt more deeply and go, well, am I feeding that because I'm not living in line with my values as a parent? And so, I don't know. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
if I you know feel guilty about coming here so so coming to London for a couple of days doing some interviews there's a sense of I don't want to leave you guys and and if one of my children got upset um which they didn't but if they did but um I would feel that sort of oh why am I leaving and that's at the point where I have to get that clarity of the situation where
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I'm doing this because it benefits the family. Like the payoffs thing, right? Your dad's at work all day, that kind of thing. They're difficult decisions. And by having your values really clear in your mind about why you're doing something. it's easier than to kind of not make the guilt go away. You just, you're willing to take it with you.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So you get it in your backpack and you, you know, you take it with you because you know you're doing the right thing. And because sometimes that feeling is, um, is not based on something that's warranted. You know, sometimes it's, you know, if you're, I
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
a people pleaser or something because of how things were set up in your childhood, you'll probably feel guilty all the time when you feel like you might have upset someone. And that's not necessarily warranted. That's a pattern. So sometimes...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You know, if we if we engage in sort of emotional reasoning, right, which is that bias of I feel it, therefore it's true, that can get us into all sorts of trouble. So if because I feel guilt, that means I'm a terrible parent, then I'm going to have a terrible time.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So if you feel guilt and you don't recognize it as a normal part of being a parent, then you're likely to just think that you're failing all the time.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And actually, all that happened was we increased our expectation about how much we get done and how much we can handle. And so... What we're dealing with in terms of mental load is so much more than what, you know, would have. And actually, you know, the way that life is set up now, away from traditional roles where, you know, a man might go out to work and a woman would take care of the family.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah. And it is important to listen to it anyway, isn't it? Because like I say, even if you've got the values and you know it's there, it might be an indication that, you know, I do feel guilty. So maybe I need to just redress the balance a little bit. So, you know, I think people talk about balance as if you find this perfect spot and then you just don't move. And that's the perfect way to live.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And it really isn't that, you know, if you... If you see someone on a balancing beam or a tightrope, they're always doing this. They're always moving slightly from side to side and readjusting, readjusting. Notice when you're going off too far, readjust.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And particularly for, you know, as a working parent, I find that's constantly, if you can listen to those feelings when they happen, it can be, it's information. It's, you know, do I need to just spend some more time with them?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, do I need to block out the weekend and just play?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's all about opportunities to learn, isn't it? And like you say, if a child has been used to having you there, you know, that sort of post-lockdown kind of experience for lots of parents, actually, where, you know, everyone had been at home for many months. It was really difficult for young children to then go to nursery or go to school or, you know…
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Those things were separated. But now both people are trying to do both. Actually, you're both taking on two full-time jobs. And so the mental load is there. And so it makes sense that people are living at a higher level of stress all the time. And when your stress level, your arousal level is higher, you're more vulnerable to overthinking.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, so often these things feel confusing until you hear someone's story and then it makes complete sense. I've had so many of these moments with people in the room where they come in and think, you're just not going to understand this. This is just bizarre and complex and I don't get it. And then you spend a decent amount of time going through someone's story and
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
and then you get to this lovely point where you kind of say to each other of course of course it is this way how could it not be given everything that's happened and you know there isn't sort of one story or one scenario that always leads to people pleasing there are lots of different ones and but I think it's important to distinguish that people pleasing isn't being a nice person it's it's so much more than that it's um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
It's being absolutely vigilant to how other people feel and placing that as your absolute priority over and above your own well-being, your own health, anything. It's just terrifying the thought of displeasing someone else or experiencing their disapproval or them not liking you or rejecting you. And so I've seen people who live in turmoil trying to...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
please everybody around them and keep them pleased, which is not sustainable. And so it creates chaos where you're constantly chasing your tail and it gives other people a lot of power over you. So you can end up in relationships that are sort of exploitive or just not healthy for you. I think it's one of those things that's banded around and it's something that a lot of us do in bits and bobs.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Sometimes I'm like that or in certain situations I'm like that and some people spend their lives really, really struggling with it.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I think is one of the most important skills anyone will ever learn, actually, because you put yourself at risk. If you can't say no when you need to, or you can't hold boundaries, and there's that people-pleasing tendency. So if everything is about everybody else and what they want from you... and that's where it's not the same as being a nice person.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So, you know, if you're, um, if everybody else's needs and wishes and desires come first and you don't have the ability to put a stop to that when it doesn't fit, then you'll end up doing things that you regret and don't fit with your values or that don't feel like you're being a nice person, but it's because somebody else has more power over your behavior than you do. Um,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So a lot of people think I'm overthinking something because there's something wrong with me or I'm just a worrier. And I always say to people, don't label yourself as just a worrier because that gives you that sense that you can't overturn it or you can't do anything about it. which is wrong.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So I think assertiveness skills are a big part of what's taught in therapy, actually, you know, teaching people to manage difficult people and people who perhaps have more power in a relationship or, you know. It kind of sounds easy to be able to say no. And it's not because it's always packed out with lots of emotion and the complex dynamics between two people.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so it can be really difficult, but it's absolutely learnable. And so that's where it's important to... Remember that even if you've had a habit for life of putting everybody else first and being the, I don't mind, I'm fine, whatever you think type person, that you can begin to change, but it's often about learning specific skills.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So a lot of it is practice in lighthearted ways. You know, we talked about the sort of acting opposite to urges, using polos and kind of, you know, situations that aren't necessarily the most emotive, the most difficult for you. You kind of grade situations. You could even make a list, to be fair.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So you can make a list of the different situations where it's difficult to be assertive or state your own needs. And you take the easiest one and you start with that and you practice and you have a go and then you come back and you see how it went, what went well. And so I was working with someone on dealing with those kind of assertiveness skills or needing to state your own needs in a workplace.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
and, you know, going home on time or taking a holiday, those sorts of things. And so we started with something really that felt the easiest. And then we just assessed it. So, you know, stress test things and then learn from it. Actually, The anticipatory anxiety about it was much worse than actually the awkward moment of saying what I needed to say.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And their reaction was not as bad as I thought it would be. You know, I had all that fear and discomfort, but that died down as soon as the moment was over. And then actually... I got what I needed and the situation was better than it would have been. And I'm not living in resentment.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So when you start small, you get these small victories that give you that momentum and give you that sort of drive to move forward and go for the next challenge. But you can't expect to suddenly go, right, from now on, I'm going to be boundaried and assertive and strong.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You know, it's a habit as much as anything else, but it's also something that is more likely to happen when you're already stressed. So, you know, if someone came into the room with me and said, you know, I'm just overthinking everything, what shall I do? Actually, what we would look at is
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, right. It's just not going to happen. You have to do these things gradually and start with the easiest thing. Something that almost feels a bit silly that's so easy. It's almost a bit kind of, really, am I starting here? But then you get that little easy victory and then you move on to the next one, which is a little bit more difficult and so on.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And you're just scared of their emotional reaction or their disapproval. And it's, you know, it's motivated by fear of what their reaction might be rather than, you know, your own values around what should happen in that situation.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
mostly the common problem was there's this feeling or set of feelings that I have and I don't want to have them. And there's these other feelings that I would like to have more of the time, but I'm not sure how to access them. And nobody has this sort of manual for how to manage emotions and how to understand them and We don't even really have a great vocabulary for that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
life as a whole like the full context of it's not only what are you overthinking and how can you stop thinking about it in that way it's you know what is going on with the your stress levels in general that's causing you to be at that state where you're looking for the worst case scenarios so because that's what you're set up to do right it's not a fault in your brain your brain's doing a really good job you're probably giving your brain lots of some sort of lots of signs rather that um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, and like you say, it's all about...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
the choice and you know that you clearly have an awareness of it now and so if you found yourself in a situation where it was really detrimental to you and you knew that you probably should say something different but you'd said x because um because of that people pleasing tendency then you'd be in a better position to be able to choose something different because you have that awareness and and that's the key isn't it is it's okay to have that as a trait and that sort of tendency um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Because if you're aware of it, then when it becomes troublesome, you stand a chance at doing something different. It doesn't mean you have to eradicate everything and clean slate and start again. And that's the thing. A lot of stuff now is about, like you say, pathologizing everything and as if it's something that's wrong with us. And actually, those tendencies can also be
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
really lovable parts of us and things that other people appreciate about us or that we appreciate about ourselves, but that don't always work in every context.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Oh, so with passive aggressive behavior, I think it's one of those things that you feel it very subtly. And you start to question yourself. I think that's one of the key signs is that something will happen. Maybe it's a compliment that feels more like an insult or something that's where on the surface, everything seems friendly, superficially. And
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
things aren't okay. You know, maybe your blood pressure's high, maybe you're on the go all day. And so your brain is getting those signals from in your body and from your surroundings that we're not all, you know, not all is well here. There's a lot going on. We've got a lot to deal with. Be alert because something could be unpredictable here. So that's your kind of state of readiness.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
but you come away feeling like you're not sure if they really liked you, or you come away feeling sort of wounded in some way, or maybe you're being kind of subtly excluded. And that sort of behavior is inviting you in to become, especially if someone is being a passive aggressive by taking on role of a victim in a situation, they're inviting you to come in as a perpetrator. And
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And passive aggressive behavior is one of those things that it's really difficult to pinpoint exactly what it was.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah. So someone could, you know, I don't know, let's say, you know, something great's happened in your life. You've been really successful. One of your friends has a problem with that. And so he starts sort of ignoring you or trying to exclude you and stuff. But as soon as you pick up on that and say, are we all right? then all is denied, right? Everything's fine. I've just been busy.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I haven't been able to, you know, and so you're kind of stuck in this place of, I can't really address it because they will deny it. And yeah, I feel terrible and I don't feel connected to this person anymore. I feel like they maybe don't like me or something's going on. And the trouble is the more you then
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
get sucked into kind of joining the circus in that way and playing the game um the more you lose i think um so a lot of it is about watching and learning you know if someone reveals themselves to you that they're not okay with you in a certain way or um that that friendship is now conditional on you i don't know making yourself smaller or um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
not doing certain things or associating with certain people um then all you can do is learn from that and make your own decisions then about whether that's a friendship for you or whether that's something that the friendship can overcome you know it might be a blip but it might also be something bigger yeah i am intimately familiar with passive aggression and uh
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So I think when you're dealing with overthinking, it's important not to just deal with overthinking, but to look at everything as a whole.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Is that what happened for you in your situation?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah. And there's a big decision to make, isn't there, when someone is behaving in that way towards you. And, you know, friendships are valuable. So, you know, it's important not to make that decision impulsively, but to, like you say, do that over time. So, you know, someone might make a mistake because they're having a hard time and that might change and get better after a while.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Or it might not. And so with that sort of watch and learn approach, take it in, adjust the amount that you trust someone. So adjust how much you share with them, adjust how much you trust them to know certain information or whatever.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So that you can kind of, not so that you're always guarded, but so that you're just protecting yourself if this person is revealing themselves not to have your best interests at heart. And then gradually come to a decision about whether this friendship is really for you or not, whether it really adds to your life or if it actually takes away from your life.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But yeah, I think sometimes that decision has to come just carefully and considered so that you're not sort of impulsively pushing someone out and then later realize that there might have been an explanation for it.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I mean, it's quite common, actually, this sort of avoidant person getting into a relationship with an anxious attached person. So if you're sort of anxiously attached, you might always be worried about what that other person feels and you will want more affection from them and more reassurance that they still love you. And that's based on those early attachments. Whereas the avoidant person...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
they still need love and they still need that reassurance, but they're not going to ask you for it. And when things get too sort of intimate, then that will fill them with some sort of uncomfortable feelings, maybe fear, and they will kind of shut that down. And it doesn't mean they don't need love from the other person. they still benefit from connection.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
They just find it really difficult to reach out for it and to sit in that sort of exposed state, that vulnerable state of being close to someone or being intimate with someone. So I think what you're doing when you're working with couples who are in that kind of relationship, the risk is that
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
The relationship ends because the avoidant person becomes so overwhelmed by the anxious person who keeps trying, keeps trying, keeps trying that they kind of push back or become sort of rejecting. And then that's too much for that anxious person. And in the end, they say, I can't do any more of this. And they move on.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so what you're aiming for in that scenario is to, and it's important to, I know you said at the beginning there about someone who doesn't love you back. This is the kind of scenario where these people do love each other. They just have different styles of attachment.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so what you're aiming for is awareness of each person's cycle, own sort of cycle or pattern of dealing with people in the relationship. Yeah. So that they have some level of appreciation and a degree of patience for the other person and what they're experiencing. But for both of those to aim for a more secure attachment style.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So to the edge towards somewhere in the middle, which involves compromise from both people. So it involves, you know, the person who's more avoidant building up their tolerance for intimacy and closeness and for the anxious person to build up their resilience for intimacy.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
uncertainty and the tendency to kind of seek reassurance and calming that so it involves both people kind of working to fit together and it's absolutely possible you know there are lots of couples with those sorts of styles that work really well yeah
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, I think, you know, there are just, I don't know, probably thousands and thousands of books written on that kind of scenario, that sort of unrequited love and things. And I think, you know, when we're talking about the people pleasing side, some people will have that tendency to
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
stay in relationships in which the other person has no affection for them because of the fear of being alone being rejected and I think you make better decisions about those kind of relationships
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
if you work on having your own back so it's much less scary the idea of leaving someone or being rejected by someone if if you know that you will look after yourself and do the best by yourself and you know you're much more resilient to any of that and you're much less likely to put up with
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
someone who doesn't love you back and treats you poorly if you have your own back and you're looking after yourself. So having that kind of good relationship with the self where you come first helps you to be able to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, and it's a risk, but it's a risk that's worth it because we do a lot better in relationships than we do outside of them. And, you know, you... There is so much to gain from that risk that it makes it worth it. You do make yourself vulnerable going into a relationship, don't you?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So when you're kind of at a stage where you're not sure whether the relationship is going to end, like you say, when people have been so into a relationship and sacrificed so much of themselves that it's become all about the other person, ending that relationship then can be this process of rebuilding.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You don't know what your preferences are because you've spent so many years prioritizing somebody else's. But it's absolutely possible to do that and to rediscover yourself and your own preferences and the things that you like to do or your own goals and your own values. But it takes a bit of work.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
It's interesting, isn't it? Because when you're in the moment and you're angry with someone, it feels as if the best feeling is going to be when you prove that you're right and you come out on top and you're the only person that thinks you look good when you win.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And actually, if you're in a loving relationship with someone and you prove yourself right and you feel like you've won the argument, what the other person then feels is is probably a bit crushed and a bit disappointed in you for being so ruthless with them. And so it's so important.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And I think you learn this over time, the longer that you're in relationships, you learn how to argue in a way that leads to reconnection and The aim is no longer to work out who's winning and whether the relationship is going to continue. The aim is to resolve it in a way that doesn't hurt either of you too much.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And arguments that focus on reconnection and repair as opposed to winner and loser are lead to much, much stronger relationships in which you can argue and still trust each other.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, so if you're worrying, I think there's a lot of work that you would do around building awareness of what's happening at the time. So we formulate, so we pretty much draw out the cycle on pen and paper. We look at the scenario that comes before, so what tends to happen in the lead up to the overthinking and what's the things that are contributing to that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
For it not to be perfect at the beginning. So, you know, I've been with my husband for like 20 years and we don't argue in the same way that we did when we first got together.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You learn to... Yeah, your relationship evolves and as long as you're always... doing your best to try and improve on yourself and how what you bring to the relationship and making adjustments when things don't work well um then what you have is this amazing flourishing strengthening thing over time um whereas i think you know if you if you
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
base your choice about whether you continue a relationship on um you know how you're arguing right now as if that's the only way it can ever happen then you might end a relationship that could have improved or got better so it's all about sort of learning from each experience isn't it and then trying to you know do better if you feel like you've not really bought your best getting onto the individual what's your advice to people that have got a critical inner voice
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Do you know what? In my years of sort of doing therapy with people, I've come across so many people who are highly self-critical, painfully so, and yet hold onto it for dear life because they think that that's their source of drive and motivation and productivity and achievement.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so they'll defend it like it's doing something for them until they learn that actually it's probably doing damage or it's holding them back. Because often they'll come with some other problem and won't necessarily recognize that it's being perpetuated by
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
that that tendency to um not only be self-critical but just you know psychologically hammering yourself into the ground when things go wrong or when you're not perfect and that sort of thing um but i always like talking to people about the idea of okay we all want to do well in life right we want to you know be at our best and but if you take that idea and you take i don't know elite athletes um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
there is no elite athlete out there that chooses not to have a coach or support around them to do their best, right? They recognize that that's helpful, but they also don't choose their high school bully to come and coach them and come along to competitions with them or they'll choose someone that they trust, someone that is honest with them, but delivers that honesty with respect and,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
and someone who genuinely wants them to be at their best and achieve and so if you take that idea of a sports coach and everything that they have to embody to be decent at that job to get the most out of someone why wouldn't you want to also do that for yourself in your own head um you know the differences um between you know that kind of high school bully sound or you know the um
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
abusive parent or whoever that voice is in your mind, that is never going to get the kind of outcome that you would get from a really good coach or someone who genuinely wants the best for you.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And then what are the types of thoughts that you're having? And so you build this awareness that they are usually horror story thoughts. You know, it's the worst case scenario that you can possibly come up with. And you play it out in your mind over and over again. And that ramps up your anxiety. And then when you feel those symptoms of anxiety, whatever they are for you,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
you then become more vigilant and you sort of look for more things that could go wrong. And so when you do that, when you look at the cycle, even though the minute details will change depending on what's going on for you and what the situation is, the cycle will pretty much always be the same. And so you get this sort of insight into the cycle that you're going around in. And when you do that,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Well, we're going to start with a big question, Zoe Cress.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, and I think a lot of people get the impression that if you're not sort of verbally hammering yourself, that the alternative is some kind of airy-fairy, you know, you're lovely as you are and that kind of thing that you just can't believe in and just feels... And there's a lot in between, isn't there?
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So, you know, when I talked about the kind of fear chapter and that sort of inner voice that I needed when I was going through all my health stuff in the summer, I needed a hard voice. We are not victims here. We are being strong here. We are doing this. And it was very sort of powerful. It needed to be a powerful approach. It needed that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I think what wasn't there was the contempt, was the digging at yourself. I think what stops a lot of people from trying to challenge how they speak to themselves is that they think, The airy-fairy stuff is the only, self-indulgence is the only alternative. And it's not, you know, actually self-compassion has to be honest all the time.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And if you're not living in line with your own values or you're not making yourself proud, you have to be honest with yourself about that. But in a way that's also respectful. Yeah. And that doesn't make you recoil in shame and then unable to learn from it. So there's this kind of whole spectrum and variability and choice about what that tone is like.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And those sorts of responses are often going to increase the urges to escape and avoid, which aren't going to lead to success anyway. So even if you feel like shame or fear or something like that has worked to get you set on a better path, it's not sustainable because it's more likely to lead to failure. the need to use those escape methods and later on.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So yeah, it's recognizing that even if it's been useful, it's really helpful to find other resources as well.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, I think with self-doubt, a lot of the stuff online is a sort of like, you know, just don't do it. Just believe in yourself. And again, honesty has to be part of that. So with self-doubt,
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
um sometimes it's useful to listen to it because it's some of it's valid and warranted you know so if you're you know really doubting your ability to perform i don't know in an exam um because you haven't studied then you want to listen to that self-doubt but in a constructive way so it's like why am i feeling this okay i haven't studied let's
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
book in a load of study time and let's make it happen so there are certain you know you don't want this sort of like you know happy clappy i'm never going to be honest with myself i'm just going to be happy with myself all the time um it's okay to feel these things all of those emotions that we can feel including the negative ones they are information
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I mean in therapy you do it in hindsight right so you go and you look at the week that's just gone by and you say yeah this happened and I was really worrying about that and that's how I dealt with the worry and often you're looking at you know what you did in response to that feeling that then actually fed back into the cycle and when you see it on paper and you see that when you you know you did something to get rid of that feeling but then actually it brought you back round you can see that you're doing things that actually contribute to making it worse and
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
and we get to choose what we do with that you have to choose to listen to it first off and when you're listening to it you kind of have to ask yourself is this warranted and is it a fair reflection of reality and is it in proportion to reality as well so you know some people will have self-doubt because that's a really useful natural thing to do and it reflects a need in the situation
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And other people will just chronically doubt themselves all the time. And sometimes that's more of a pattern that's developed that doesn't always reflect reality. You know, it's a learning experience that has happened possibly earlier on in life.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah. And that's why I wrote the book, actually, this idea that when you're in it, when you're in the storm, what you don't need to hear is someone saying, well, maybe you should have learned to meditate six months ago. You'll be all right now. Right. What you need then is you need someone to kind of, you know, grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eye and say, OK, I know a way through this.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Follow me. Here's what you need to focus your attention on. And here's the next step you need to take. And we're going to take that together. And It's really difficult when you have a flood of emotion because of whatever situation you're in. It's difficult to work out which way is up, let alone what step you need to take.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
There are these moments of your brain is sending you lots of information in the form of emotion in its attempt to... apply meaning to what's happening and to work out what's happening and what you need to do next. So in that moment, you know, the best thing for our nervous systems is each other and is someone else.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You know, we're quite limited in you think about the sort of the diversity of the different sort of minute feelings that you can have throughout the day that apply to different situations. It was slightly different. You know, if you say, I feel joy one minute. Joy in a certain scenario might feel quite different to joy in a different scenario.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And so I always say, I think I say it in the introduction, actually, you know, the inner world is a bit like a sauna. There is benefits to being there, but only if you don't stay too long. And so if you're struggling, reach out to somebody else, another human being that you trust for connection. And that will be the most helpful thing to you if you have someone in your life like that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But not everybody has that. But also even the people that have it, sometimes that person isn't with them all the time or in the moments that they most need it. And so that's what this was really about. It's about kind of talking to someone in the moment and say, okay, right, we're in this situation. It is what it is.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
here's here's how we deal with this moment find some calm find some clarity and then work out which way we get through this because the only way is through it if as soon as you numb all that emotion well that's all information for you so if you numb it you're not going to be able to use it but it's just it's not easy to kind of work out in the moment because life is complex and it throws stuff at us right
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
and and it has to be a kind of careful process of self-discovery um and when but when you do it you you begin to get this awareness in the moment as it's happening so you start with it in hindsight you're looking back and then the more familiar you become with it the more you start to when you're in it go oh i know where i think that that's that thing again that we thought about last time and now it's happening yeah that's interesting using uh sort of retrospective
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah. And some people are able to do that individually and kind of sit with it and listen to it and be with it. And other people need support to do that because it feels dangerous. It only feels comforting if your body feels a safe place to be. So for some people, that's not the case. And it's terrifying and leads to all sorts of unhealthy strategies. But
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So that's when it can be really helpful to do that with someone else who can kind of guide you through listening to that. And then when things get too much, kind of pulling back a bit and coming in again. And, you know, these things can be done really carefully and piece by piece. And by teaching some of the skills to begin with, to cope with how distressing that can really be.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You know, some people have a lot...
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
um a lot in the past that they've been really successful at numbing and covering up and so the minute you ask someone to take a look at that well there is a reason they've been numbing that for a long time and so well because it's really painful and it's really scary um so you know no therapist worth their salt would ask you to sort of do that without first teaching you the skills to be able to cope with how distressing that could be
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
I'm on Instagram and YouTube and all the platforms just as Dr. Julie. But yeah, the book's available everywhere, I think.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yes. Do you know, I actually rewrote the chapter on fear in this book. So over the summer, I went through some health problems. I was diagnosed with cancer. And at that point, I was about six weeks away from finishing the book. Are you Yeah, I was six weeks away when I started going for tests. And then I was about two weeks away from handing the book in when I got my diagnosis.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So I was so determined to finish the book. And at that point, I was just reading it through. And I just happened to read through the chapter on fear the day after. And I thought, this isn't what I need to hear right now. This isn't right.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Hit delete. So it was probably more gentle than I wanted, than I personally needed. And I think generally that can happen. You know, lots of people do need that approach. But at the time I got selfish with it and I thought I need something a bit different to this. So I hit delete and I rewrote it for myself.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So it's much more about, you know, in that moment, okay, fear is here and it's necessary now. And it's information. It's telling me that not all is well and I need to be alert and I need to think about how to work through this. And so I'm going to use that fear, but I'm not going to be the victim in this. I'm not going to be the... You know, there's often... People talk about cancer.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
There's often this idea that that thing is attacking you and you're victim to it. And I just did not want to be in that place at all. And so I wanted to kind of turn the tables. And so in the chapter, I talk about this idea of... Choosing to be the predator instead of the prey.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
So always being on the front foot and forward motion and looking at what's my plan and what am I going to do next and taking action so that I didn't feel... Because you still feel fear when you're on the front foot, but you're using it. And that feels so fundamentally different. Mm-hmm. to sitting in fear and just allowing it to implode.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
You know, the qualitative differences are there and you can feel that, but we don't necessarily have the words to express it. And we certainly don't have the sort of models to understand it. And, you know, it's only in recent years that people have even started to talk about them. So we're in the early stages, but it's, you know, exciting. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And a lot of it is being able to recognize urges and override them. So recognize that urge to go for safety and comfort and act opposite to it. And in the same way that you do in kind of more lighthearted situations. So, I don't know, exercise, you know, you get to a point where your body's sort of hurting a bit and you would rather stop. Yeah. But you practice sort of overriding that.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And that's a big sort of skill set that is actually taught in certain therapies, acting opposite to urges. And you can do it in really small ways. So, you know, you might put a polo in your mouth and resist the urge to crunch it. And So you can do it in really lighthearted, kind of simple ways.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
But then what you're doing is you're kind of practicing that mental muscle, really, to be able to recognize that in moments when you need it most and to be able to do it. So it's not the first time you're doing it. You know the process.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
Yeah, and I think people want to feel courageous and strong. And I think what we forget is that fear is a core component of that. It's a core ingredient of courage. You can't really call yourself courageous if you didn't do something that filled you with fear.
Modern Wisdom
#910 - Dr Julie Smith - The Science Of Emotional Intelligence & Self-Understanding
And you do, when you face things that scare the living daylights out of you and you do that with sort of forward action and take a sort of commanding composure in the face of those really scary things, you start to feel that and you start to discover that what you thought were your limits
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. And I'm generally not that public about my personal life a lot, but the reason I kind of shared about that was because I knew there would be other busy moms and dads like me who were tempted to put their own health on the back burner. So
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You know, that's just something I would say to anyone out there who is listening, who has any kind of health concern and is tempted to wait and put it off until they're less busy. Because I did. I was six weeks away from handing in the manuscript to OpenWen and discovered a lump in my breast. And I thought, should I just wait until I've got this book off my desk before I go?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You know, I'd had lungs for months before. I knew it wasn't a great, nice process. And I thought, do I have the mental capacity for this right now. And you know, lots going on. But in the end, gave myself a bit of a talking to and thought that's a stupid idea. Went and got the tests and time was my greatest tool. So my greatest weapon against this thing. And now I'm fine.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But so anyone out there who has a kind of health concern and is tempted to put it off, don't just do it. So yeah, I got diagnosed then. So that was about six weeks before I handed the book in. Then I got diagnosed. I was about a week or two away from handing the book in. So I was at that stage where I was kind of reading through, editing, polishing things up, ready for my editor to see it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I just happened to be reading through the chapter on when fear shows up. Isn't life funny? Oh my goodness. And I kind of, I read it and I thought, this just isn't, the kind of words I need to hear right now. It was very gentle and a lot of people like that approach, but I just thought I need something much stronger here. So I hit delete and I sat there and then rewrote the whole thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
It was very much a shift in language. When something like that happens and life throws you a massive curveball like that, so you're faced with the prospects of your own mortality, The fear is just catastrophic, right? I was like a rabbit in headlights. That's what I felt like, that I was just stunned. Because you don't find out everything at once either.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You don't sort of find out and then find out what the treatment plan is and what the prospects are. You find out in bits and pieces. So there was so much uncertainty and I did not want to feel like the prey. I didn't want to feel like I was trying to work out which way to go. And so I kind of used the power of that language to write myself. Each chapter begins with a letter from me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So I wrote this letter to myself. And it's very much a sense of you cannot control the fact that fear is here, right? but it can help you to move through this thing. It's now your responsibility to cultivate that courage to move through and out the other side. And there was lots of language around becoming the predator instead of the prey.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And there's this fundamental difference between those two, right? So that prey is darting around, just avoiding threats and pitfalls and trying to survive it. Whereas a predator has a goal, has something in its sights and it's on the front foot and uses all that drive and that action to make something happen. And so I thought, right, yeah, this cancer isn't coming after me. I'm coming after it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You better watch out. And I felt fundamentally the situation was the same. but I felt fundamentally different in terms of how I was dealing with that. I wanted to be on the front foot and I wanted to be active.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And actually the quote at the beginning of the book, it was never going to be in the book, but I had to put it in the end because it was so fundamental to my experience was, get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue. If you care for yourself at all and do it while you can.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And it kind of makes me emotional just even saying it there because it takes me back to that moment of I had it on a post-it note that was on my desk. And every time I read it, I felt that drive, that kind of fire in my belly to do something that was active in my own rescue. So...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I feel like it reflects everything, this whole journey and all those people I was with in therapy who felt that they were at the mercy of their emotional experience. It doesn't have to be those kind of extreme experiences, but normal emotional ups and downs, relationship ups and downs, they can feel so just chaotic, can't they?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And often that chaos is, I don't trust myself to be able to cope with whatever comes up. And that's what fundamentally changes when you change the language and you choose to focus that spotlight of your attention where it is going to be most helpful to you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So that you can have this vision of, as I move through this and as I get out the other side, I want to look back and be so proud of how I dealt with it. And have that as your vision for how you're going to move forward rather than the darting of the, you know, the rabbit in the headlights, ah, which way is left, which is right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You know, I wanted to have that absolute focus and it really worked for me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I think the key there is that the fear is still there, right? We're not eradicating the fear. We're not making you feel like everything's fine. But it was a way that helped me to get through it. The idea that I could use fear to my advantage, I didn't have to make sure it had disappeared before I did something useful that could help me move forward. It felt fundamentally different.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Yeah. Because I think it's key here that I've never wanted to give the impression that I then didn't have some really dark moments in that, right? That I'm a human just like everybody else. And so dealing with something in that way doesn't mean that you don't feel overwhelmed at times.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So, you know, I had those moments and the way that I deal with those sort of big emotions and that overwhelm, was to allow it to be there and to recognize, you know, I've sat in so many rooms with people and just helped contain those feelings and help people through them, not to eradicate them, but to sort of hold their hand as they experience it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So I talk about that in the book, actually, this idea that your inner world is a bit like a sauna. There are benefits to being there, but only if you don't stay too long. So, you know, when you're really struggling, the best thing you could possibly do is reach out to a human being that you trust and connect in that moment because they will help you to kind of regulate that emotion.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But if you don't have someone there in that moment, being sort of in a...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
position where you're not trying to numb it you're not trying to push it away you're just allowing it to wash over you then that's exactly what it will do and i did a video ages ago about the idea that if you stand in the ocean up to your waist right and the waves are coming and when the wave comes they kind of it lifts you off your feet a bit so imagine if you try to hold back one of those waves you're gonna end up taking a tumble and mouthful of water and it's not gonna be pretty
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But if you accept that those waves are coming, then you do something different, right? So maybe you turn to the side or you brace yourself and bend your knees so that when you do come off your feet, you're going to land again. And in the acceptance of that sort of emotional wave coming, you're better prepared to then deal with what it does to you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And it will naturally pass without causing you too many problems. And that's really what emotion does. If you can kind of soothe your way through it, knowing that it's temporary, knowing that it will, even if it goes away and it comes back again, you can do that again and again and on repeat and listen to what it says.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
At that point, when I felt that overwhelm, it was telling me I was scared about what was going to happen to my children and what was going to happen to me and what the future held and how sick I might become and all those kinds of things. And I didn't have the answers to those things in that moment. And so the fear was there and that was okay. And yeah,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And then we focused on, okay, what's the next step that I need to take in order to keep moving through it?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So for a lot of people, when they feel resentment, the tendency is to look at the person who you feel is making you feel that way, right? That they're doing something wrong or they're overstepping the mark or they're breaching your boundaries. And... And again, for me, that's very prey rather than predator, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
That's the sense of, you know, it's being done to me and therefore I don't have control of that feeling. And resentment will just destroy a relationship if you allow it to continue. And the only real way to kind of respond to resentment is looking at what it's telling you. And it's often that you've not been putting healthy boundaries in place, right? to prevent that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Or maybe it's a gratitude problem. So another sort of real great remedy for resentment is gratitude and looking at maybe you're being hard on the other person and maybe you're taking them for granted and maybe there's other things to feel grateful for in that relationship.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But often it's that sense of you've allowed certain barriers to be breached or certain healthy boundaries to be breached and walked over and then you're going to be bitter about it. as opposed to taking responsibility for holding them up and doing the really difficult thing, but the thing that's going to create that kind of healthy experience in your relationship again.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Do you know what? Something I see a lot of, not necessarily in therapy anymore, but just in real life, is when people start to compare themselves to the wrong people. So when you start to compare yourself to your friends, and it just destroys the friendship because you set yourself up where you could have been a team and two people that walk through life together and support each other.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
suddenly you put a scoreboard between you, which means that their victories mean some sort of loss for you and vice versa. Then you can't share your personal victories because they see it as a threat. And so then your conversations are censored between you. There's things you can't say. Or even when you're
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
telling them about something that's gone wrong for you or something hard that you're dealing with, that's a bid for connection, right? A bid for support. But they'll come back with, oh, well, I had something worse. So suddenly you're in this competition with the person who you're supposed to support and they're supposed to support you back. And so anytime that you compare yourself
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
to someone that you're in a decent relationship with is bad news. And that's often what I talk about in the book about the social comparison stuff is online people will tell you, just stop comparing yourself to other people. And that is impossible, right? Because we're human beings.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Often the problem is not that you're comparing, it's that you're making the wrong comparisons that's going to lead you down the wrong path.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So let's say you want to get better at something, right? So let's say you want to do better at tennis, then comparing yourself to one of the greats is when you're just starting out, it's probably really unhelpful. But also what you want to do is compare yourself to someone who... is going to help you get to where you need to go.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So let's say you want to improve your backhand and there's someone at the local club who does that really well. And they might be a few steps ahead of you in their journey. But what you can do there is you can look at that and learn from that what they do well. So you've got to be really concrete. It's got to be very separate.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So not comparing personalities or types or self-worth, you're comparing something that is actually going to be helpful for you in your path with what you want to do well at. So you can see how that could be a great learning experience. Of course.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
When we can use that sort of ability to compare in a way that's really constructive... then it can really go places and your life starts to shift in this really positive way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
This is kind of quite a personal one for me, really, because I remember I was such a shy child, right? Really? I read a lot. It was mostly because I was the shy, quiet one in the corner. Nobody would ever have dreamt that I would do stuff like this, including me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I even remember when I got to clinical training and I'm sat in a room with someone and I'm being assessed, doing an assessment of that person. That's horrible. And I remember thinking in that moment... why? Why have I chosen this career? I hate talking to people. I hate being looked at by other people. And here I am doing both at the same time.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And then the idea of putting stuff out there publicly only started because it felt like a nice thing to do. Never imagined it would turn into something where I was doing live TV or radio. And I was terrified of doing that stuff. And
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And in all honesty, I had to keep doing it because I felt that I had to practice what I preach about how if you struggle with being around people or talking to people or public speaking or whatever it is, you have to spend time doing it. If you want your confidence to grow, you have to be able to go where you have none and to be able to sit there for a
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
and stick with it and look after yourself when it doesn't go well. That was key. I think with the going on live TV and things like that, the only way I was really willing to do that was if I fully committed to myself that I would have my own back. If it all went wrong, you know, if I tripped over and flashed my underwear to the nation, whatever. I was not going to kick myself when I was down.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Academically and things like that, I guess I was always quite hard on myself and that highly self-critical stuff was probably quite there when I was younger. But I had to say, there's no way I can do this and be this vulnerable. if I'm going to speak to myself like that, just not a chance. So I had to be fully committed to being in my own head, being like a coach.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So someone who would have the absolute, my best interests at heart the whole time, not speak to me like I was, you know, a piece of shit and treat myself in a way that, you know, a coach would treat an elite athlete to say, you know, when you're down, this is how we get back up and we move forward.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Well, I guess there's two things here. One is that you take your time. You don't start with the scariest thing. Any type of fear that you're tackling, what we would do in therapy is we create a scale. So we would list all the things, all the different situations that are scary with the least scary at the bottom.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So maybe if it's a social anxiety thing, maybe the idea of saying hello to that person at the local store when I pick up my paper or whatever fills me with anxiety. But I know I could do it if I really tried. that would go at the bottom. And there may be a sort of 100% worst case scenario is I've got to speak at a friend's wedding or something like that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And there's loads of scenarios in between that are all slightly tweaked and slightly different that you might think are more or less scary. And you don't start at the top, you start at the bottom. So you start with a thing that feels kind of manageable, but a challenge. And you repeat it as much as you possibly can. Because
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
What you do is everything that's new and novel, you will get this hike in your stress response. So your brain is saying, we're not sure about this. Anything could happen. So we're going to increase your level of alertness so that you're ready for anything. And that's really what it is. That's what's happening. You're getting that level of alertness so that you can cope with it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But you experience that as stress, so it's uncomfortable. And so if you're tackling those scenarios... What we often get people to do when they're in it is focus on that idea that your attention is a spotlight and you have control of that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So when you're socially anxious, your focus will be inward. It will be on how are other people perceiving me? Am I standing funny? Am I fidgeting? Am I saying stuff wrong? How am I coming across? And it will be all this kind of inner turmoil stuff that just keeps triggering more and more anxiety. Whereas someone who's confident and not socially anxious will not be focused inwards on themselves.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
They will be focused on the other person and trying to get to know them or find stuff out about them and And actually, I've sat in rooms with people who've really struggled with anxiety and paranoia. And we've had to have kind of big care meetings with all their different professionals. And I remember sitting with someone and getting them to take notes. about what the plan was.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so all that was, was a focus of that spotlight of attention. So rather than thinking, who's looking at me? Who's thinking what? It was, who's just said something that is part of the plan? Let me write it down. And you just take control of that spotlight of attention. And then what you do is you get this experience that... it can go well. It can go okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I can practice where I focus my attention and it influences how I feel. And that is the superpower starting to really open up this idea that I can take control of this one thing in this scenario. and it influences the feeling or it makes that feeling slightly more manageable. So it doesn't take it away. It still might always be a little bit awkward, a little bit uncomfortable.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
The self-doubt might always be there in a little way, but you know what to do with it. And that's the key is you're not trying to take it all away. You're just showing yourself, proving to yourself through action that you can do something with it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. And every time you get yourself through it, your brain clocks another bit of evidence that you can, that even when it doesn't go really, really well, you survive it anyway. And that's what you need is your brain learns through evidence of action. So you've got to kind of build up as many of those experiences as you can.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And then, you know, confidence is a sort of byproduct of doing that on repeat as much as possible. Yeah.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. I think looking at your relationship with failure is huge and a real game changer, actually.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
When I talked about this idea of going on live TV and it being terrifying and that I needed to commit to looking after myself, it was really, that was a shift in my relationship with failure that I committed to looking after myself in the face of setbacks and humiliation and failure that might happen. That if the inside of your head is not a safe place to be, How are you ever going to take risks?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I can't tell you how excited I am to be here. I'm a massive fan. So thanks for having me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
How are you ever going to move forward? One of the things I used to talk about in therapy when people were highly self-critical is this idea that imagine if I was going to lock you in a room for a whole year, so 24-7 for a whole year, you couldn't come out. And in there, I was going to put your high school bully, the worst person you can think of from your early days.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And you're going to live with them 24-7 for a year. How might you feel when you came out? Horrid.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Yeah. So someone who just hammers you all the time. Oh my God. Yes. You're never going to come out of that feeling at your best.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But imagine now if I said, okay, I'm going to lock you in that room for the year, but you get to take your best friend. How would you feel different when you came out? I'd feel fantastic.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Like a holiday, right? You would have a great time and you would feel encouraged about whatever you're going to do next and happy. And really that idea of being in that room with a person is you inside your own head. The way that you speak to yourself can either be... a really good friend, or a bully.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And because you're with yourself 24-7, it will have the same impact as that scenario of, am I spending time with someone who's having a positive impact on me or someone who's having a negative impact on me? But the The great news is that you have control of that and you can begin to shift how you speak to yourself.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Well, I think if you're looking back... And you're seeing how hard you are on yourself. The fact that you can recognize it is a sign of progress, right? When I look back on my early videos that I put out onto the internet, and I think, oh my goodness, I can barely watch it. I just can barely look. And my response then is always, that's a sign of progress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
If we weren't doing better videos now, I wouldn't be so cringy when I watch the old ones, right? So it's a sign that you're learning and you're progressing. And so when you look back and there's something you regret or you think, how could I be so stupid? How could I get that so wrong? That's a sign that you're not there now. And I love this idea of...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Elite athletes employ coaches with so much thought and precision, right? They don't employ that high school bully to get them through really difficult competitions or help them improve their game or anything like that. They employ someone who... has their back, has their best interests at heart, believes that they have huge potential and need to do some hard work to get there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And someone who's always going to be honest with them, but is going to bring that honesty with kindness and compassion and forward thinking. And so when we think of that kind of idea of, you know, people employ coaches like that because it works and because it helps them to bring their best. But you apply that to normal life and we all want to bring our best, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
We all want to keep progressing and learning and bringing out the best in ourselves. And so what you need is to be the coach for yourself. No one else is there 24-7, not even our family. But if we can have that idea, you know, it's not so much exactly what you say every time, you know, what are the words I need to say to myself? It's... an idea of what would a coach say to me right now?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
How would a coach help me to get back up when I've fallen down or I've really messed up? What would they be saying? They wouldn't be calling me names because that wouldn't help. And so it's just giving yourself this idea of this concept of what is the voice that I need to hear right now that's going to help me through. And
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And that's where the idea with the book came, where each chapter begins with a letter from me. It's this idea that often in those moments, you just need someone to bring the right words that helps to shift your attention in the right direction and give you that sort of drive in your belly that's just going to get you back up and pushing through this difficult moment.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So it's really hard to do that for ourselves in the moment. It takes time and training and practice. And I think often we learn that from hearing it. And so if we don't have anyone in our lives that seems to bring the right words that we need to hear, then we can get it from a book. Yes, you can.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
A line that's often used in therapeutic work when we're helping someone build and train in kind of self-compassion is, I did the best that I knew how with what I had at the time. And I have new insight now and new skills now that I didn't have before. And we were talking earlier about the kind of idea of where you focus your attention and what causes anxiety.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
If your attention is focused on the past, too much, you will get depressed and you will get miserable. If your attention is always focused on the future and things that might happen but haven't happened yet, you're going to get anxious. And if you're focused on the present moment, there's much less to be depressed or anxious about. It's just the present moment, just me and you and here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And that's mindfulness, really. That's the idea of choosing where you focus your attention and so being able to like you say say something like I did the best I knew how with what I had at the time even if I had very little at the time in terms of skill and now I'm going to bring myself back to here.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think when everything's uncertain, a lot of the distress that that causes is when we're trying to control it. It's a bit like your book, isn't it? With the let them, right? It's the allow life to be uncertain. Every move in life is uncertain. Nothing is given. Nothing is fully controllable.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so it's probably one of life's most important skills to be able to tolerate that uncertainty and to know that when everything becomes really stressful and really uncertain, it's narrowing your focus is probably the most helpful sort of real-time tool to just focus on the next couple of steps ahead.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
What am I doing that's keeping me moving forward even in times of great uncertainty or stress or all sorts of problems that might be up ahead? And certainly that's for me when I talk about the whole cancer experience. It's something that does to you
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
That takes away, I mean, you always, I think everyone probably worries about, you know, will I get this or that when I'm older and when will that stuff like that happen? But when it does happen, you realize you had a certain degree of safety. This idea that happens to other people mostly.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Even if you're a bit worried about it, there's a kind of distance that you have. And I remember thinking, I don't want to be in this club. I don't want to be in this club. I did not sign up for this. And I think that was this sense of anything can happen. Like right now, it feels more possible than it ever did.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so even once you're okay and out the other side of treatment, when so many people survive it, it's just fantastic that people are having successful treatments, but it leaves with you this sense of anything can happen. And probably the most fundamental way that I deal with that is saying yes. That's why I have to live as if I have a future. Because otherwise, I'm back to rabbit and headlights.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Anything could happen, so I can't live. I can't carry on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Because if you don't, you have nothing, right? You have to live as if you have a future because otherwise you start dropping into this sense of doom that everything is pointless if you feel that you don't have a future. And so you have to live with that meaning and purpose because if you don't act as if you have a future and then you do... you mess up your future.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So a lot of it is about sort of bearing that kind of suffering side of it and moving forward anyway. And then you get these little pockets of time where things feel a bit better or you open up the possibility of experiencing kind of pleasure or meaning or purpose despite the fact that the world is often scary and uncertain. And in some ways, it's always been that way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think there's this kind of mix between the emotional stuff. So understanding that there is a way to deal with emotion and that when you experience a bunch of negative or painful emotions, that that doesn't mean something is wrong with you. Linked with relationships.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think it's a mix of dealing with my emotion in the relationship and dealing with someone else's emotion in the relationship. And I think we're lied to, especially on social media now, about this idea that, you know, you hear all this stuff about, you've got to be healed before you get into a relationship. Oh my God. Like, when are you healed?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I mean, if I had followed that rule, I would never have married Matt. We've been together for 20 years, you know? And, and It's this idea that you've got to become this sort of perfect idea of human being. And the other person's got to have done the same work so that when you get together, you have this perfect fairytale relationship and it's never hard. And it's just utter rubbish.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
It's just not true whatsoever. And so when people then struggle in relationships because you're both dealing with emotion and stress and all the ups and downs of life, people then think that it's not the right relationship or you're getting it wrong.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And actually, that is the process of a relationship is building that together and going through those things and learning about each other in the process and forgiving each other for when you bring your worst to each other. And you just build so much strength through that. So I think there's this combination of what on earth is emotional about and how do I deal with it?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But also then what do I do with that in a relationship? When the relationship shows me up to not be my perfect self and I'm not being my best self, What does that mean? So yeah, some sort of combination between those two, I think.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
No relationship is perfect, but that doesn't mean you have to give up on it. I think the strongest relationships have often been through the most together, right? Because you feel safety when you've been through stuff together and it's pulled you together and not apart.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah, and that's really the main idea behind it. All of the chapter titles came to me at about 5 a.m. one morning when I was just, you know, I was awake too early. I was just, you know, churning all these things over. And there's just so many scenarios that we all face at some point, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think in this whole misconception that everything's got to be perfect, otherwise it's not the right person or it's not the right relationship.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah in some ways I would ask why they're trying to get them to open up what's going on there because we can only change ourselves and we can only improve ourselves and again it's that focus on what am I bringing to the relationship because it's an okay way to be if you're not a talker and you don't really talk about emotions that much. that's okay. For some people, that works.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And we don't all have to be really insightful or psychologically minded or anything like that for stuff to work. And sometimes I think that's okay. I mean, like Matt and I, for example, I'm well into this. I'm a full-on psychology nerd, constantly reading about stuff. I'm a therapist, so always reflecting on things. And he's probably the opposite to me in that sense. But
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
That means we have different strengths and we even each other out. God, can you imagine how we'd talk for hours if we were both psychologists? Dreadful. We'd have no fun. Oh my God, it would be awful, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. God. And actually, you know, you look online about some of these sort of apparently ideal ways to repair an argument or those kind of things. Actually, for us... Probably a lot of the time, we just use humor and we know each other so well now that we can kind of go, oh, you're doing that thing again. And then we both have a laugh about it and then we're back in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And it's okay for it to be that way. We don't all have to be therapists to have what could be an ideal relationship.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
That everybody goes through, but none of it comes with any kind of manual or sense of what you should do about it. And all those situations leave you in turmoil, you know, sort of not knowing which way is up or, you know, often there's emotion to deal with and it's confusing and you're not sure which way is through. And I'm ready that the whole idea for this book came from the first one.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think probably one of the first bits is the idea that anxiety isn't something that's wrong in your brain. It's not a problem that is a fault of yours. It's not something that's wrong with you. It's an experience. And often what happens in therapy is this process of someone kind of says, you know, I'm feeling this or this is coming up for me. And then what follows is a judgment
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You know, that means I'm weak or I'm not coping and everyone else can do this. And what we do is we kind of go, okay, notice that judgment. Notice how you just judged yourself, how you're feeling right now. Or, you know, comparing, apparently everyone else has it together, then no one else feels this way. And let's just drop the judgment and turn back to that feeling with curiosity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Isn't that interesting that you feel that way? What's going on that makes you vulnerable to that feeling at this point? Let's say, I don't know, a new mom, for example, who finds themselves totally isolated, has no idea what to do and how best to look after this baby. And, you know, husband's gone back to work. And the anxiety is just huge.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I remember thinking when I first had a baby, I don't know if I can handle this degree of fear about how am I going to get it right for this little human being forevermore? I don't know if I can deal with... And a lot of it is this idea that if you turn towards that feeling with curiosity... you can hear what it has to say.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And often, it has something to tell you about what you need at the time. And so, for example, in that kind of new mom scenario, usually, that's around, I need human connection. I need some reassurance. I need adult conversation, or I need to feel safe in this situation. And And so the answers start to appear when you're just willing to look at the emotion and ask, what are you telling me?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
What is this? And sometimes it has a lot to say and other times it might not have a lot to say and that's okay too because what we teach in kind of emotion regulation work is to feel an emotion, look at it and say, is this warranted? And is it proportionate to the situation?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Because sometimes if I haven't had enough sleep or I'm dehydrated or I've had too much coffee, I might have a really extreme reaction to something that I would normally have a small reaction to. So that would be disproportionate to the situation because of those other factors that made me vulnerable to that. So if you're willing to kind of look at, okay, what's going on here and
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
then the answers start to appear. But because so many of us are not willing to look at it with curiosity, we just judge ourselves for the fact we've had the feeling and then we try to numb it and push it away. And then we're in a battle.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So why has nobody told me this before was my first book, which was always kind of insights from therapy and things that you could spend time practicing to kind of build your resilience so that when stuff happens, you're better equipped. Right.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I think that probably brings us to the one tool that I probably use the most in the most formal way from therapy, because it's just so helpful, is the values stuff. So it's just working out what matters most to me at this point in my life. because that changes and fluctuates, right? Okay.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so every few months, or sometimes when I just feel a bit out of sorts and I feel like life's, you know, everything's upside down, I will just get a piece of paper and I'll split it into different boxes and I'll have all the different aspects of my life. So there'll be parenting, marriage, friendships, health, education, career, whatever, you name it. I'll put them all out.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And then in each box, I'll just ask myself, what matters most to me in this area of my life? So not what I want to happen to me, but how I want to show up in good times and bad. So what I want to kind of represent in that part of my life. So I might have a few words or a few sentences, and then I'll rate that just a crudely kind of out of 10.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
How important are those values to me in this area of my life? So zero, not at all. 10 out of 10 is max. And then you rate it again. And this time, how much I feel I'm living in line with these values in the last couple of weeks. So then what you get is, you know, zero, not at all, 10 out of 10 is definitely. And then you get all of these kind of different boxes and these different scores.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And it's not a tool for self-criticism. It's a tool for... finding where you need to focus your attention next because you'll get this idea of okay well if something over here is 10 out of 10 important to me but i've just rated it as 2 out of 10 in terms of how i'm living in line with that at the moment then that deserves my attention and it's and it's not because you're failing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I had these lovely comments coming through, some stories that were told to my mum actually, saying, we find the book so helpful, we're keeping it with us so that when we're in a crisis or a panic, we can open the book and see what it says. And that was such a nice thing to hear, but I could not get it out of my head that I just didn't write it for those moments.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
It's because life pulls us in different directions, right? You can't fill all of those at the same time. So I might be busy with a project trying to finish a book or something. And so I haven't been taking the kids to their clubs recently. Someone else has done it for me. And I just noticed that pull that I'm not being the present parent I want to be.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so then I'll say no to a few things at work so that I can do that. And so there's this constant kind of shifting and moving between things. But going back to your question, when you understand and you have that clarity in terms of what matters most to you at that point in your life, then it's much easier to make the decisions about what you should and shouldn't be doing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Because our tendency is to go, okay, I'm only going to do the things that feel good and I'm not going to do the stuff that makes me feel bad or uncomfortable. Yeah. But if you make decisions based on comfort and discomfort, it's not going to lead you anywhere meaningful. Your life's just going to shrink.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Whereas if you make the choices based on your values and what matters to you, that will inevitably involve you doing things that make you feel terrible sometimes, right? So I know having children was really, really important to me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But my goodness, you know, those night shifts where every cell in my body wanted to stay in bed and be comfortable and warm and not get up to the crying baby who was desperate for me at that point. But I did the uncomfortable thing because it mattered most to me at that point.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So avoidance of the thing that you fear, it lies to us. So it tells us that we are making everything better, but it makes fear worse over time, right? So let's, I mean, I talked about this in one of my videos with this kind of rainbow thing. And let me explain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Well, I used to draw this out in therapy actually with rings. So I would kind of have, you know, you in the center of the page and then lots of rings that represent the different layers of your life. But this is the, you know, the rainbow represents the different layers of your life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So let's say suddenly something, well, let's go with, rather than flying, let's go with something that kind of has that different layer. So maybe the social anxiety stuff again, right? So let's say suddenly going to really crowded places with lots of people you don't know starts to fill you with anxiety. And you're not sure why, but it just does, right? It just doesn't feel comfortable anymore.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So you decide, well, I'm not going to do that anymore then. I'm going to take that out of my life. So you now no longer go to any situations where there's big crowds, which means when your friend is getting married next week and they're having 200 people at the wedding, you're not going to go to that either. So you take that bit out of your life. And then being on a crowded train or bus or boat,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
If you're in the thick of it and you're in a crisis, the last thing you need to hear is, well, you probably should have started practicing mindfulness six months ago because then you'd be equipped now. What you need is someone to kind of grab you by the shoulders, look you in the eye and say, I know a way through. Follow me. And often that's just a shift of your attention, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
suddenly becomes anxiety-provoking. So you take that out of your life so you can't travel. And then being in a crowded restaurant, even with friends, suddenly becomes fearful. So you stop doing that too. And what happens is every time that something falls outside of your comfort zone and fills you with fear, the natural instinct is to avoid it, right? And even the moment you decide to avoid it...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
you get this relief, this, oh, phew, I don't have to deal with that today. So it's quite addictive. But what happens is over time, when you keep doing that, when you live by that rule, your life shrinks.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And suddenly there's so much stuff that you can't do because your life is sort of focused on, and all of your decisions are based on that rule that I cannot do things that cause me anxiety or fear.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
and by the time people come to therapy they've got rid of a lot of these layers and and they feel that you know life is depressing because it's so much smaller than they ever imagined it would be and a lot of those layers include things that mattered to them right so you know your best friend's wedding or traveling across the world to visit family or whatever so it puts all of these different things out of bounds so it becomes so difficult to live in line with your own values it's so sad
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Absolutely.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
It's focusing on the direction that's going to see you through and out the other side. And, you know, for me, I guess the person that does that in my life for me is probably my husband, Matt. You know, he probably doesn't even realize he does it, but he says this. Don't tell him. No. Yeah. He said the right things that will just kind of shift me back on track and then I'm back on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think the key is you don't have to do it all at once. Okay. I would get clarity, you know, do that values exercise. I think it's in both of my books, actually, because it's so helpful with so many different scenarios.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But really simple, you know, do that pen and paper bit and look at what matters most to me at this point in my life, because that makes all the decisions about the direction you want to go in much easier. Because why face your fears if it doesn't matter to you? And that's key. You don't have to, you know, if you have no inclination to ever travel, then Don't worry about going on planes, right?
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If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But I think most
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah. Well, I think sometimes it's triggered by things like having children or getting into a relationship because then doing certain things matters to them. So I always had a fear of heights, right, growing up, and I was totally just allowed to avoid that. It was just something I was scared of, so Julie doesn't have to do that high ride or whatever it was. And once I had children...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And I knew all this kind of stuff from therapy that it was changeable. There's no way I want to pass this on because it holds you back. And so at no point do I mean, we don't live in a big city, so I'm never really exposed to, you know, high buildings or balconies, that kind of thing.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But every time we go away and we do stuff as a family, I will never allow myself to avoid doing something that is high and
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But even for people that, you know, lots of people don't have that person in their life, but even for people that do, that person isn't always there at that time. And I was thinking about, gosh, when my kids grow up and they leave home and, you know, what could I send them off with that would see them through those difficult moments when I can't be there to give them a hug and say, I'm sorry.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah, and I think if you imagine that kind of, it's you stood on this little island that's surrounded by water, that's scary, then all you do is you just dip your toe in. So you're just stepping out of the comfort zone, just enough. that it creates a challenge for you, but one that's doable. So you're not diving in and then struggling to swim.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You're dipping your toe in, you're paddling in the water, and then you're stepping back and you're repeating it, repeating it. And every time you repeat it, you gain a little bit of So that's where these parts of the rainbow come back. So you work on one layer, just one thing that feels a challenge and you repeat it as much as you possibly can.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And what happens is when you do that and you spend time in that place that feels a bit vulnerable, it starts to become your comfort zone. The thing that you do every day becomes your comfort zone. And so then your life expands a little bit. The trick here is to keep going. So you then have to dip your toe in again.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I know the way through this. So yeah, it's the one I want to stick in the suitcases of my kids when they leave home or send off to family and friends when I can't be there for them.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah, so then it becomes, because on that first day, if you had said, I'm going to go out and talk to somebody, you wouldn't have done it. So you've got to scale it right back. to, you know what, I'm just going to go out with a friend, not even the idea of kind of meeting new people or anything like that. I'm just going to practice being out there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So that might be taking back another layer, practicing being out there, even with the person you trust the most, you know, the closest friends, not even trying to date again. And then maybe I'm going to allow myself to go out with friends when there are other people there that I don't know yet. And
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And then maybe a few sort of events in, maybe I'm going to speak to someone that I don't know and I'm going to introduce myself. But it's really about doing it at your own pace. But when you do that, you're much less likely to give up. If you go for it, you know, and you...
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
expect too much of yourself in one go, then you're much more likely to just, you know, if things go wrong, then you retreat again and then you're having to start from scratch again. So it's making it manageable and not expecting it to be, you know, oh gosh, you know, nature takes its time. So why shouldn't we, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
It still happens, but you have to give yourself that time to do it layer by layer. You Then speak to someone when you're comfortable in the coffee shop. And then, you know, whatever comes next.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I think it has always been the knowledge that you do not have to be at the mercy of your own emotional experience. Hmm. that there are so many things you can do to influence it. And that's one of the first things I teach people in therapy is this idea that emotion is influenced by so many things. So we can't necessarily wake up and go, I want to choose to feel love and pleasure today, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
We can't kind of choose it and then make it happen. But we know that emotion and emotional experience is influenced by what we do, what we say, who we're around, what we eat, how we move and whether we move and the work that we do, all of those things. So those are the things that we can influence and control. And when we do, our emotional experience starts to change as well.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So that just knowing that, that I have a degree of agency in how I feel as I go forward, then that's everything. Because without that sense of having any kind of sense of agency, you just don't try.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
My parting words. Oh my goodness. That you're not alone. There's nothing wrong with you just for having a hard time in life. It is because life is hard. And there's this arsenal of tools that are often hidden behind therapy room door. But we're making them available. We're getting them out there. So, you know, just keep learning because they are so helpful and they are changing lives.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So there's no reason why you can't learn it for yourself and change the game for yourself.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And you know, I just know I broke it, you know, when I'm kind of throwing it behind. One of them just snapped straight up. So we had to kind of sellotape it when I put it back on.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I want to go to put them back on. So I'll put them here so I can then put them back on. I'm about getting your life back. Okay, great. That's such a nice ending. Thank you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Okay. Well done.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I've definitely been swimming against the tide professionally because you've got the therapeutic stuff and the clinical work, but then moving that educational aspect of stuff out of the therapy room because I recognize that it's not therapy skills, it's life skills and it's stuff that I was finding helpful, my friends were finding helpful, my family were finding helpful.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And a lot of these people that were coming along for therapy who perhaps weren't at that more severe end of the scale, they didn't have any sort of clinical diagnosis or they were just struggling to deal with whatever life threw at them because they didn't trust in their ability to be able to deal with the emotion that came along with it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And they didn't necessarily have some of the skills that you need to be able to move through that emotion or to deal with the relationships or moods or whatever it was. And And so once people had that information, they were just raring to go. And so I wanted to kind of get that out there and make it more available to people.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And so that's really what I'm doing is sharing the stuff that is the juicy bits that have come out of all this great stuff that is used in clinical practice. But we should all be using it because whether your problems are big or small, it's still useful. And so, yeah, I'm kind of making sure that everyone is armed up to the hilt to deal with life because life is really tough.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
We actually did a video on this quite a while ago. We used lots of rice just as this idea of representing the population of the world. So let's say the rice here, this white rice represents the population of the world, okay? So you've got... all of this, and one in four people will experience a mental health problem at some point this year, right? And the wild rice represents that one in four.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
But when you mix them up like that and you give it a little kind of mix, you realize that that one in four is a huge number. And even if you just take one little pinch of
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
of people so let's say that's the people in your life even if you're lucky enough not to be struggling at this moment the chances are you're going to be rushing shoulders with someone who is so you are never alone when you're struggling because even though people you know you won't be able to see it in this visual way that you do with their eyes because people don't often talk about it when they're struggling but someone else will be dealing with something and so recognizing that we need to be kind to each other all the time dr julie
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
There is such power in being able to recognize that what you're experiencing is a normal human experience. Even when you feel like you're the only one experiencing it at that moment, knowing that that doesn't make you abnormal, that it's a normal part of the human experience that other people might have experienced at some point, even if they're not going through it now.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
means that you don't have to judge yourself as not being enough or not getting this thing called life correct or right. Normalizing something helps you to take the judgment out of it and start looking at it with curiosity.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah, absolutely. It changes and it's temporary. And those thoughts are so simple and yet so powerful because if you know that something is changeable and that sometimes you're okay and sometimes you're not, and that's a normal human experience, then you're able to accept it and allow it to pass over you in that way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Yeah, there are absolutely, there are so many things you can do to help bring yourself back to baseline and to prevent it from happening so much of the time or to prevent those emotions from being so intense. You know, lots of skills you can do that you can learn and get better at that help you do that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
there's loads to that depending on what you're facing at any given point. And I would kind of break it down into, there are certain things where people struggle, no matter what the details of your problem is and what life's throwing at you, a lot of people struggle with, okay, emotions. So,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
People will often come into therapy, you know, diagnosable or not, people will come to therapy and they'll say, you know, I've got these feelings that I don't want to have. I'm having too much of those. And I'm missing a lot of the nice, pleasant ones that I used to have more. I would like some of those back, please. So a lot of it is a sort of, there's some skills around emotion regulation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So there are things you can do to help you regulate the negative emotion, not make them disappear. So that there's a learning about, okay, emotion is normal human experience and it's information. It's not something that's wrong with you. If you experience sadness or anger or anxiety, it doesn't necessarily mean there's something wrong with you. It's a normal part of human experience.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
So often what we do in therapy is we take the judgment out of it and we look at it with curiosity instead. All emotion is information. It has something to tell you, usually about what you need or what's going on around you. So there's this kind of shift around emotion regulation and learning about emotion. But then there's also stuff about thoughts.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
that people struggle with with thoughts so all this stuff online about you know only positive vibes and don't have negative thoughts and and that really sets people up to feel like they're failing because inevitably they have negative thoughts they have judgments they have self-critical thoughts and when they have them they then think they're failing at being a positive person and
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
Whereas often what you would use in therapy that's really helpful, and I use this all the time, is the idea of kind of thought diffusion where you get yourself a bird's eye view of what's going on in your head. And you kind of look at the pattern of, okay, these thoughts are coming in and those thoughts are coming in.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
And these are all possible perspectives that I can take on this, but I have the choice. So it's this idea that your attention is like a spotlight. And if all your kind of thoughts were actors on the stage, you've got control of the spotlight. So what most people try to do is scramble up onto the stage and pull actors off the stage.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
I don't want to think that and I don't want to have that thought because that's horrible and I just want to think this. And you can't control it, right? But what you do have is the spotlight. So all these different thoughts will be coming into your mind and you can just choose what you're giving most of your time and attention to. And that will impact how you feel.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You’re Feeling Uncertain & Anxious, You Need to Hear This
You don't have to eradicate those other thoughts. There are other possible scripts that you could listen to, but you get to choose which ones you give the limelight to.