Speaker 1: All throughout our history, we have always had a deep
Speaker 1: appreciation of the role of struggle. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Sarah Wilson, a New York Times best selling author, journalist,
Speaker 1: and founder of I Quit Sugar dot Com. She has
Speaker 1: published fifteen I Quit Sugar books in forty six countries
Speaker 1: and was ranked as one of the top two hundred
Speaker 1: most influential authors in the world in two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: and two thousand eighteen. Sarah was the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Cosmopolitan Magazine Australia at twenty nine. She was also
Speaker 1: the host of Master Chef Australia and holds a record
Speaker 1: in the Guinness Book of World Records. I'll let you
Speaker 1: google y. Her new book is First We Make the
Speaker 1: Beast Beautiful, A New Journey through Anxiety. Hi, Sarah, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Eric.
Speaker 1: It is a real pleasure to have you on. We
Speaker 1: are going to talk about your book called First we
Speaker 1: Make the Beast Beautiful, a New Journey through Anxiety. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, we'll start in the way that
Speaker 1: we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 1: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and she looks up at her grandfather and she said, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parawul means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do well. I mean, Eric, it
Speaker 1: plays perfectly into the title, and that the same of
Speaker 1: my book. First, to make the beast beautiful because very much,
Speaker 1: you know the way I've been living for so many
Speaker 1: years with my anxiety, and I'm sure some of your
Speaker 1: listeners would relate to this, I've been fed the story
Speaker 1: that you know, what I had was a disorder. So
Speaker 1: the medical model very much told me that it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a beast that had to be fixed.
Speaker 1: We had to get rid of it before I could
Speaker 1: live a big, full life. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I explore in the book is, Um, I do
Speaker 1: this pretty pretty early on, is that you know what
Speaker 1: we can be both and we can be both anxious,
Speaker 1: and we can also feed a better beast, you know,
Speaker 1: the better beast, which is the more beautiful one, which
Speaker 1: is to see anxiety as as a beautiful thing, something
Speaker 1: that we don't have to get rid of. And you know,
Speaker 1: as as you know, Eric, because I know you've you've
Speaker 1: read the book, You're very well researched at all times. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a journey that takes us, UM, that
Speaker 1: takes us through an understanding of anxiety through a philosophical
Speaker 1: and spiritual lens. And I very much feed that story.
Speaker 1: So yes, your parable speaks to me big time. And
Speaker 1: also there's another there's another thought that occurred to me. UM.
Speaker 1: I was a big mountain bike rider for many years.
Speaker 1: I was twenty four hour mountain bike races and downhill races.
Speaker 1: And when you're riding a bike, UM, you you know,
Speaker 1: if you've got a gap between say two rocks, as
Speaker 1: you're hurtling down a hill several miles an hour, UM,
Speaker 1: you can't really steer your way there. You essentially passed
Speaker 1: through that very narrow opening of only a few inches, say,
Speaker 1: by by looking at it, by putting your full focus
Speaker 1: on that small gap between the rocks. And I've always
Speaker 1: had this adage, which I think is similar to your parable,
Speaker 1: which is where the mind goes, the energy flows. And
Speaker 1: I have lived by that with every business and you know,
Speaker 1: sort of enterprise that I've entered into, but also with
Speaker 1: the way I do my relationships, UM, and my also
Speaker 1: my engagement with my mental disorder or my mental illness.
Speaker 1: So I very much relate to that parable. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's wonderful, and I think the way you tied
Speaker 1: that altogether was great. In addition to ans A, you
Speaker 1: see early in the book that you know, you had
Speaker 1: childhood anxiety, lots of insomnia, bulimia, and your late teens
Speaker 1: O c D depression anxiety, and then bipolar disorder also,
Speaker 1: and so those have all sort of been a part
Speaker 1: of your path and your journey. Yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 1: I and I also say that to me, in many ways,
Speaker 1: it was all the same thing. It was the same itch,
Speaker 1: it was the same buzz, it was the same There
Speaker 1: were just different expressions of what I described as a
Speaker 1: deeper yearning. You know, it always felt like a yearning.
Speaker 1: It felt like something bigger and deeper than just an illness.
Speaker 1: You know that that had a bunch of names and
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of corresponding medications. And I still
Speaker 1: to this day see that's the same kind of itch,
Speaker 1: you know, that an internal itch that I think humanity
Speaker 1: has had its call for eon since we got upright,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, it's really interesting. It makes me think
Speaker 1: of addiction. I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic and
Speaker 1: in the A A big book, there is a idea
Speaker 1: that the disorder is related to a spiritual yearning. UM.
Speaker 1: Carl Young often mentioned and in conversations with early a
Speaker 1: A founders that you know, take the word alcohol spirit spiritus,
Speaker 1: you know, and that the alcoholic was trying to find
Speaker 1: that transcendence they felt cut off. I've always found that
Speaker 1: to be very very plausible, UM. And I love that
Speaker 1: you say that anxiety is a disconnection. UM. You call
Speaker 1: it something else, and we'll get into what something else
Speaker 1: is in a minute. But as I've looked at my
Speaker 1: own depression, as I've looked at my own addiction and
Speaker 1: all that, I do feel that this idea of disconnection
Speaker 1: and reconnection is absolutely fundamental to the problem and the healing. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and you've you've touched on something there as well. We
Speaker 1: often say these various illnesses, whether it's addiction or or
Speaker 1: a compulsive disorder or whatever it might be, as the problem,
Speaker 1: but quite often they are an expression, There are a symptom,
Speaker 1: there are coping mechanism, and I think you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that we need to start to look at. That
Speaker 1: the deeper issue is this disconnect and that's something that
Speaker 1: is common and it's something whether you've got a diagnosed
Speaker 1: disorder as such, or whether you're a human being who
Speaker 1: has these lonely moments where you get home from a
Speaker 1: loud party at night and you've got to go and
Speaker 1: sit with yourself looking at the bathroom mirror under the
Speaker 1: fluorescent lights, you know, and you suddenly get a sense
Speaker 1: of what is all of this about? I mean, that
Speaker 1: is common. And what was really interesting is that a
Speaker 1: huge number of readers. The book's been out for a
Speaker 1: while now, but readers from around the world commented on
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, some of them just didn't
Speaker 1: even have anxiety as such, but they read the book
Speaker 1: and very much related to that, that deep yearning. And
Speaker 1: I feel that it's becoming louder and louder. I would
Speaker 1: send the last eighteen to twenty four months. That yearning is.
Speaker 1: It's palpable, it's everywhere. It's playing out at an individual level,
Speaker 1: but it's playing out broadly in our society, in our politics,
Speaker 1: in our communities. I just find it also just far
Speaker 1: more nourishing to talk at that level, because it is
Speaker 1: the deeper level, and it's the deepness and connection that
Speaker 1: we that we are creating. Right, and you ask these
Speaker 1: questions early on in the book, and I think they're
Speaker 1: they're fundamental questions that I know I wrestle with and
Speaker 1: anybody I know who has any sort of Again, I'll
Speaker 1: use the word mental illness in a loose way, will say,
Speaker 1: am I really mentally ill? Am I disordered? Am I defective?
Speaker 1: Am I just weak of character and not trying? Just
Speaker 1: taking medication? Alter? Who I am? Am I less authentic? For?
Speaker 1: It is an unnatural Is it really a problem? I mean?
Speaker 1: With me in depression, I often just wonder, like, am
Speaker 1: I depressed? Or do I just have like what would
Speaker 1: have been called a long time ago, a melancholy temperament?
Speaker 1: Or could it be a very reasonable and appropriate response
Speaker 1: to the world that we're living in at the moment?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the other thing, And that comes up
Speaker 1: in particular with kind of conditions like a d h D,
Speaker 1: where I often see children struggling with the toggling and
Speaker 1: the frenetic life that they are having to now live in.
Speaker 1: And I'm not surprised that some little brains are just
Speaker 1: not you know, are just almost rebelling, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's something that I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: with anxiety or depression, you know, you summed up really
Speaker 1: well all of those questions like really, do I have
Speaker 1: a problem here? Or is this is this my soul
Speaker 1: calling out to me and going something is not right here?
Speaker 1: And maybe this needs to be looked at more deeply,
Speaker 1: and you know you mentioned the idea of that. Maybe
Speaker 1: in the past it have been called different things. What
Speaker 1: I find really interesting is how surprised people are to
Speaker 1: learn that anxiety only entered the d s M, which
Speaker 1: is the main diagnostic tool used by psychiatrists in both
Speaker 1: the States and here in Australia. Prior to night anxiety
Speaker 1: was something that probably you know, we described it as
Speaker 1: different things, um, but it was something in some ways
Speaker 1: I think that was part of life, and we did
Speaker 1: very much talk about it in a in a different way. Also,
Speaker 1: if you go to the next level, and if you
Speaker 1: look at some of these more serious it's a diagnosable
Speaker 1: conditions such as bipolar for instance, Bipolar has existed or
Speaker 1: at least the symptoms of you have presented themselves throughout
Speaker 1: history and in much the same percentages. So about one
Speaker 1: point two to one point four percent of any given
Speaker 1: population around the world throughout history of displayed these very
Speaker 1: particular you know, sort of behaviors that correlate now to
Speaker 1: what we call bipolar. And what I find and super
Speaker 1: interesting is to just read about how they were treated
Speaker 1: differently throughout history. They say now that shaman and sort
Speaker 1: of kind of spiritual leaders, like really influential spiritual leaders,
Speaker 1: tended to have bipolar because they had this incredible insight,
Speaker 1: and political leaders, I mean Winston Churchill, particularly wartime leaders
Speaker 1: tended to have bipolar, and there was an understanding that
Speaker 1: there was sort of this incredible brilliance and insight and
Speaker 1: ability to sort of work out work a community's way
Speaker 1: through the quagmire of huge trauma went hand in hand
Speaker 1: with sort of a darker side, a shadow side, but
Speaker 1: it was considered a very important part of any culture.
Speaker 1: I talked about this, as you know, all the way
Speaker 1: through the book, and I personally found that incredibly comforting
Speaker 1: to actually start to go back to your parable, to
Speaker 1: feed that storyline, to feed that aspect of the beast,
Speaker 1: that this is an incredibly important kind of quirk, evolutionary
Speaker 1: quirk that humanity has, whether it's some anxiety depression or
Speaker 1: so on, we have it there for a reason. It
Speaker 1: exists for a reason, and that's where the beauty comes
Speaker 1: into play, and that's sort of you know, I guess
Speaker 1: why I've called called it. First, we make the best
Speaker 1: beautiful first, we start to see the beauty of these conditions,
Speaker 1: and from there we can start to modulate and refine
Speaker 1: and use our condition and ensure that it doesn't take
Speaker 1: over and ruin our lives. Right, And I think that's
Speaker 1: such an important and subtle nuance there, which is, how
Speaker 1: do we embrace these things as being a beautiful beast
Speaker 1: to some extent? And how do we not glorify really
Speaker 1: destructive conditions? Like I know I wrestled with this a
Speaker 1: lot as an alcoholic in an addict, because there was
Speaker 1: a cachet is not the right word, but it's the
Speaker 1: one that's coming to mind. There was a cache, there
Speaker 1: was a literary and artistic tradition and being the self
Speaker 1: destructive artist, but it was truly self destructive? Right? How
Speaker 1: do I twease those things apart? And what you said earlier,
Speaker 1: I can't quite remember the quote, but like you said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people say, like, is it considered
Speaker 1: a sign of health to be well adjusted to a
Speaker 1: truly warped world? I'll just read what you said in
Speaker 1: the book, at one point you said, the interesting thing
Speaker 1: is back in the nineteen thirties, Nausea, which was an
Speaker 1: existentialist novel, was celebrated as a wonderful expression of the
Speaker 1: essence of the human condition. Today. The main character, a
Speaker 1: third year old loner who felt sickened by the realization
Speaker 1: that he lived in a world devoid of meaning, would
Speaker 1: be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and prescribed an antidepressant
Speaker 1: or invited to undergo a course of cognitive behavioral therapy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's how that kind of almost deviant thinking
Speaker 1: um is treation these days, because we are deeply uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with um thinking that goes beyond um what is considered
Speaker 1: you know, a safe, normal, prescribed, etcetera. I think your point, though,
Speaker 1: it is a very subtle distinction though, or subtle line
Speaker 1: that you can easily cross where it can become glorified.
Speaker 1: And with anxiety in particular, and I mentioned this in
Speaker 1: the book, that we live in a culture where it
Speaker 1: is really quite often to know where you cross the
Speaker 1: line into disordered anxiety, because we do live in a
Speaker 1: world where being busy, being frenetic is glorified. Right, This
Speaker 1: is the flip side of all of that. So when
Speaker 1: you say to someone, oh how are you, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm so busy. Oh gosh, I've got so much going on.
Speaker 1: I've just got stress, you know, pouring out of me.
Speaker 1: And that's almost a worn as a badge of honor,
Speaker 1: even insomnia, even sort of boasting about how a little
Speaker 1: sleep you had. And yet here I am functioning, turning
Speaker 1: up to the board meeting. You know. Um that is
Speaker 1: again it's sort of it's glorified and um, you know,
Speaker 1: at some point we do cross a line and it's
Speaker 1: so hard to tell a lot of people, and that's
Speaker 1: where a lot of the self berating comes into play,
Speaker 1: Like I should be able to cope with this, I
Speaker 1: should be able to you know, my colleagues are only
Speaker 1: getting four fight our of sleep at night, you know
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? And I think the big problem
Speaker 1: is that we're not talking about it at a real level.
Speaker 1: We slap a diagnosis onto somebody, We actually kind of
Speaker 1: really poo poo their the questions, the deeper questions that
Speaker 1: they're asking, and hand them some medication, and it's so
Speaker 1: on satiating. So it's so boring, it's so unprogressive apart
Speaker 1: from anything else. But I think we can have we
Speaker 1: can have nuance, and we can have refinement around all
Speaker 1: of this once we start talking openly. And I agree
Speaker 1: with you, we shouldn't all become Ernest hamming away and
Speaker 1: drink ourselves into a stupor to be able to access
Speaker 1: our creative space and feel comfortable with our creativity or
Speaker 1: our devins or our questioning. However, having some spirited, wild
Speaker 1: thinking from time to time would be something that could
Speaker 1: be of benefit to our culture right now. You know,
Speaker 1: we need to have a more beautiful conversation around all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. And I suppose that's that's the journey
Speaker 1: that I went on, you know, seven years to write
Speaker 1: that book, and it was very much about finding a
Speaker 1: more beautiful, helpful, nourishing way to talk about this. Because
Speaker 1: the friend said to me when I was part way
Speaker 1: through the researching of the book, darling, why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? Why are you writing this book? Because he
Speaker 1: was watching me become so tortured by it all, And
Speaker 1: I said, well, quite frankly, I am sick of being
Speaker 1: alone in in the conversations I want to have. I
Speaker 1: want to have more interesting conversations. I mean that was
Speaker 1: the impetus to the book, and in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: it brought me those interesting conversations I tell you what,
Speaker 1: like this one we're having right now. Indeed, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I mean, I think the debate
Speaker 1: becomes very often, not just in society but within the
Speaker 1: person about medicine, right about taking medicine. And I've I've
Speaker 1: been on this debate. You see somewhere in the book
Speaker 1: that everybody who's been on these kinds of medicines at
Speaker 1: one point or the other, tries to go off of
Speaker 1: them or is always question genning whether they should be
Speaker 1: on them. And I've I've been through that route multiple
Speaker 1: times once not too long ago. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: of psychiatric medication because I think it saved my life
Speaker 1: and lifted me out of a bunch of pits. I
Speaker 1: do think that the idea that we just go to
Speaker 1: a doctor and we're given this medicine and we go
Speaker 1: take it and that's the end of it, as if
Speaker 1: it's a cold or an infection that we want to
Speaker 1: go away. That I think is all the things you said.
Speaker 1: It's profoundly unsatisfying and boring and and it just for me,
Speaker 1: it misses the point because there's something else going on here,
Speaker 1: and my recovery from depression and alcoholism and all that
Speaker 1: has been a very challenging but has probably brought nine
Speaker 1: of the beautiful things that are in my life into
Speaker 1: my life. Yeah. Absolutely, we don't have a discourse around
Speaker 1: struggle and pain anymore. You know, if you haven't looked
Speaker 1: at the way that technology has evolved, it hasn't evolved
Speaker 1: to my life a grander experience. It's mostly about saving
Speaker 1: us from discomfort, annoyances, delays, um, you know, and avoiding
Speaker 1: struggle and pain. So we have a whole generation and
Speaker 1: we are part of that generation because it was for
Speaker 1: a big part of my adulthood. Um where you know,
Speaker 1: it's the eradication of pain at all costs and yet
Speaker 1: the spiritual traditions all throughout our history, we have always
Speaker 1: had a deep appreciation of the role of struggle. It
Speaker 1: is the thing that takes us to the next level
Speaker 1: of our development and as you say, it brings the
Speaker 1: most amount of beauty into into life. So that is
Speaker 1: one of the things that really gets missed when you
Speaker 1: chuck medication at a patient. I've always said, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm the same as you, and I'm very open about
Speaker 1: it in the book, and I get asked this question
Speaker 1: almost immediately when I do public talk, So I speak
Speaker 1: to media, well, what are your thoughts on medication? And
Speaker 1: I very openly go on and offer it um. Even
Speaker 1: to this day, I know when I need to go
Speaker 1: on it. Generally it's the look of terror in family
Speaker 1: and friends spaces. You know, I probably get to a
Speaker 1: point where I'm a little bit too much for the world,
Speaker 1: and I start to pick up the signs and I
Speaker 1: go back on my medication for a while and I pulse.
Speaker 1: You know, I know how to manage it now. But
Speaker 1: the only reason I can do that is because I've
Speaker 1: always taken medication the context of psychiatric or in terms
Speaker 1: of the therapeutic context, so I've done it in conjunction
Speaker 1: with therapy. So I always see medication is getting to
Speaker 1: you to a point where you're in a safe place,
Speaker 1: You're in a stable place where you can start to
Speaker 1: piece things out. But you must do the therapy at
Speaker 1: the same time, because otherwise what's the point you don't
Speaker 1: get to go to that you don't get to delve
Speaker 1: into the struggle and the point of it and the
Speaker 1: worth of it and the beauty of it, the philosophical
Speaker 1: purpose of it um, and that's probably the missing peace.
Speaker 1: Right medication is particularly good for young people, especially when
Speaker 1: you don't have the skills, the knowledge, um, you know,
Speaker 1: the wisdom to be able to have a conversation in
Speaker 1: and around it. So it can be great for that
Speaker 1: can be great when you've at a really hard point
Speaker 1: and you're not going to need clarity, but it really
Speaker 1: needs to be used so that you can then peace
Speaker 1: out your thoughts and you can do helpful therapy. So
Speaker 1: it's the therapy that's often missing. I have sort of
Speaker 1: really lane, run of the mill depression, which is talking
Speaker 1: about boring, Like when it comes, there's no like great,
Speaker 1: you know, passionate sadness about it. It's just like being dead,
Speaker 1: you know. It's just there's nothing there to feel anything about.
Speaker 1: And so it's not as much fun for me to
Speaker 1: come off of medicine. And I did it with the
Speaker 1: help of a doctor. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm in a really great place in my life. I've
Speaker 1: been on these things for a while. I know how
Speaker 1: to take care of myself, and so I got off
Speaker 1: all the medicines with help of a doctor. I did
Speaker 1: everything I know that treats my depression, and at a
Speaker 1: certain point I just went I feel like I am
Speaker 1: rolling a five hundred pound rock up the side of
Speaker 1: a hill every day for no good reason, and went
Speaker 1: back on a small dose of the medicine, and boom,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, there I am again, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I feel comfortable with where I'm at with
Speaker 1: it because I went through that that process in a
Speaker 1: really deep way. I would never have felt comfortable saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I should or shouldn't be on it if
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing everything else that I know is important
Speaker 1: to my depression, my spiritual life, my meditation, my exercise,
Speaker 1: my eating, well all that stuff. Like when I'm doing
Speaker 1: all of that and I still feel terror able, and
Speaker 1: I'm doing things like therapy and talking to people and
Speaker 1: I do all that and I still feel terrible, then
Speaker 1: I go, Okay, I'm okay with medicine in this case
Speaker 1: because I've kind of exhausted the possibilities. Yeah, that comes
Speaker 1: with being a little bit older as well, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: I Mean, you've got to know that you can go
Speaker 1: out on your own and exhaust a few possibilities before
Speaker 1: you do the medication. As a young person, it's extremely terrifying,
Speaker 1: especially when it's you know, it's your first time going
Speaker 1: through one of the cycles, or whether it's professional mania
Speaker 1: or combination of both. So there's not one size fits all,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, the medication based model works to that that
Speaker 1: there's a one size fits all. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think always comes as a surprise is the
Speaker 1: number of different types of medication and the number of
Speaker 1: different therapists that the average depressed or manic person needs
Speaker 1: to go through until they arrive at a solution. Now,
Speaker 1: I will also argue, and I think it's something like
Speaker 1: five therapists and seven different types of medication. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's something like that. I'd also argue that
Speaker 1: throughout my life, I've also had to pulse that I
Speaker 1: go through different types of therapists. They'll be appropriate for
Speaker 1: a year, and then I then I have a gap
Speaker 1: and then I have to go back to a different
Speaker 1: type of therapist because I evolve. And same for medication.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a constant dance. And when I can
Speaker 1: frame it as something that is about modulation, and you
Speaker 1: might remember this Eric from the book that I talk
Speaker 1: about when you've got a mental condition of any type.
Speaker 1: It's like being charged with carrying a shallow bowl of
Speaker 1: water around for the rest of your life, and you've
Speaker 1: got to walk carefully. You've got to get steadiness into
Speaker 1: your life, because if you don't and you start to
Speaker 1: get a bit wobbly, the water starts to slash backwards
Speaker 1: and forwards, and it spills all over and around you,
Speaker 1: and it bleeds through all the work that you're doing
Speaker 1: and ruins it. And then you've got to keep going
Speaker 1: back to source to fill up. And it's an exhausting process.
Speaker 1: So it's a very rough, find artful thing to live with,
Speaker 1: and I quite love it now. I know that sounds
Speaker 1: really odd, but I find that in itself is quite beautiful.
Speaker 1: Is to be able to read where I'm at and
Speaker 1: to know when I need to go back to source,
Speaker 1: when I need to make sure that I'm stable, when
Speaker 1: to know that when the slashing is getting a little
Speaker 1: bit out of hand, you know. And it was really
Speaker 1: something I had to learn, and it was a conversation
Speaker 1: I had to have um and people have been asked
Speaker 1: me for different tricks and techniques and things that have
Speaker 1: worked to get me to a place where I'm able
Speaker 1: to talk like this, you know, with you for instance,
Speaker 1: and your listeners. And one of the things I say
Speaker 1: is actually reading. I'm working on my next book at
Speaker 1: the moment, and it's been a three year research project.
Speaker 1: First We Make the Best Beautiful took seven years of research.
Speaker 1: And one of the terms that I've come across, which
Speaker 1: I'm really enjoying is soul nerding nerd ing out on
Speaker 1: the soul. And I discovered it actually when I was
Speaker 1: research and First We The Beast Beautiful. That what really
Speaker 1: helped was reading some of the texts and fiction non
Speaker 1: fiction by people who had been diagnosed with a similar
Speaker 1: disorder throughout history, whether it's Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, whoever
Speaker 1: it might be, and actually just realizing the commonality and
Speaker 1: the thread that some of these people go on and
Speaker 1: and that was incredible, And I now realize it's a
Speaker 1: worthwhile pursuit because I know that some of their struggles
Speaker 1: to maintain that shallow bowl of water, to keep it steady,
Speaker 1: um informed some of their greatest work, like It's brought
Speaker 1: some of the greatest joy to humanity. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that refract constant reframing that learning the richest
Speaker 1: side of all of this, feeding the right beast, you know,
Speaker 1: the right wolf that has brought me to this place,
Speaker 1: you know, along with other techniques such as meditation and
Speaker 1: walking and a bunch of other things I go into
Speaker 1: in the book. But it's that real awareness, that that
Speaker 1: kind of understanding of the meta the meta purpose behind
Speaker 1: it all that's helped I agree on changing directions just
Speaker 1: a little bit. I want to read something that you
Speaker 1: write in the book because I think this is so important.
Speaker 1: You say, one of the worst things we can do
Speaker 1: to ourselves on the anxious journey is to get anxious
Speaker 1: about being anxious, and that learning to stop that sacle
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest and most fundamental things that
Speaker 1: we can do for ourselves. Yeah. Absolutely, people have tended
Speaker 1: to really gravitate to that little line. It's only a
Speaker 1: small section of the book, right, But what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say is that we can choose to do anxiety once.
Speaker 1: Now what helps is to know that, yes, one of
Speaker 1: the worst things about anxiety is that we get anxious
Speaker 1: about being anxious, and then we get anxious about being
Speaker 1: anxious about being anxious, and we go down this horrible spiral,
Speaker 1: right where you know there's no clawing our way out
Speaker 1: of it. One of the things that actually helps is
Speaker 1: that as well is to learn and I learned this
Speaker 1: on the journey, is that a panic attack, for instance,
Speaker 1: only last minutes. So once you know that what's your
Speaker 1: soul lurded your way to that truth, you realize that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I could do twenty five to thirty minutes of abject pain, right,
Speaker 1: I can sit through it. And as we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: you know, spiritual traditionals, traditions throughout history have talked about
Speaker 1: the notion of sitting in your suffering, passing through it,
Speaker 1: rather than trying to beat it. And that comes to
Speaker 1: comes to fruition when you when you deal with a
Speaker 1: panic attack, If you can sit in a really bad
Speaker 1: moment of anxiety and just sit in it, right it
Speaker 1: out and do it once instead of getting anxious about
Speaker 1: the fact that you've being anxious, UM, you can actually
Speaker 1: really admit things in the bud very very quickly. And
Speaker 1: then what you do is you're not actually creating those
Speaker 1: neural pathways, You're not strengthening these anxious neural pathways because
Speaker 1: you're keeping it quite short and sistin. Do you know, um,
Speaker 1: and moving onwards. And that's a really great technique. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's as simple as that. Right. Sometimes just understanding some
Speaker 1: of the brain chemistry that goes on that helps it helps,
Speaker 1: you know, and that only comes about when we start
Speaker 1: talking beyond the medical model and we stopped just talking
Speaker 1: about throwing a pill at the situation, right right. I
Speaker 1: often think with with a lot of this stuff, that
Speaker 1: sometimes the best we can do in certain situations, particularly
Speaker 1: when we're deep in it, the best we can do
Speaker 1: is not make it worse. And that may sound trivial,
Speaker 1: but it's not, because our capacity to make things worse
Speaker 1: is is extraordinary. You know. We talked about on the
Speaker 1: show a lot. It's that Buddhist parable of the second arrow,
Speaker 1: you know, being anxious about being anxious is shooting yourself
Speaker 1: with the second arrow, and then the third. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just goes on and on and on and on,
Speaker 1: and so I often think that, like, when it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like I can make it better, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: how can I make sure I don't make it worse? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And it's a responsibility, don't you think, Eric, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that um, I that's some a
Speaker 1: bit of a part of that carrying the shallow bowl
Speaker 1: of water. It is a responsibility. If you are somebody
Speaker 1: who's being born with this condition or you've developed it
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, it is a responsibility, and you've got
Speaker 1: a responsibility to those around you, but also to yourself
Speaker 1: to not make it worse, you know. And um, quite
Speaker 1: often those of us who have some of these conditions,
Speaker 1: we tend to be a types, don't we. You know
Speaker 1: where we are. We're not laid back characters as a rule.
Speaker 1: And so what I find is that when I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to you know, a types, it actually really does help
Speaker 1: to kind of add that extra layer, that notion of
Speaker 1: a responsibility. Right, You've got a responsibility not to make
Speaker 1: this worse fire up, you know. And I know that
Speaker 1: that kind of that kind of mindset really works for
Speaker 1: me when I'm in that moment, because if I'm doing
Speaker 1: it for myself because I read it in a self
Speaker 1: help book somewhere, like, it ain't going to cut through,
Speaker 1: Like I will self indulge myself down a horrible anxiety spiral.
Speaker 1: But if I say to myself, no, this is my role.
Speaker 1: You know, I've got this condition and it comes with
Speaker 1: a responsibility and first and foremost is I'm not going
Speaker 1: to make this worse. I'm not going to add any
Speaker 1: more fuel to this fire. Let's get sensible. You use
Speaker 1: a few different words in the book to describe the
Speaker 1: process of getting better or working with anxiety. One of
Speaker 1: them is slow. Let's talk about slow. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people talk about the benefits
Speaker 1: of going slow. It's been, you know, a book. Various
Speaker 1: people have written books, and there's a whole self help category.
Speaker 1: I'm not great, it's slow. I've tended to have you know,
Speaker 1: one speed and one speed only, which is you know,
Speaker 1: surging forward. But you know, interestingly, I had an illness
Speaker 1: UM which goes part and pass it with anxious conditions. UM.
Speaker 1: I have hashymotos, which is an autoimmune disorder. And it's
Speaker 1: incredible how many people tend to have bipolar and hashingmotos.
Speaker 1: And it is a perfect disease for somebody like me. UM.
Speaker 1: I needed to almost have my body tell me to
Speaker 1: stop and go slow. UM. So when I got unwell,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a crazy exercise. As I say,
Speaker 1: I was a mountain bike rider and I used to
Speaker 1: do sand running races and I would run several miles
Speaker 1: to work and back every day, and I actually was
Speaker 1: forced to actually get very, very slow, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the best things for me. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that came out of that, and you probably
Speaker 1: noted this in the book, is walking. I discovered the
Speaker 1: absolute fundamental life saving benefits of walking, ice getting patient
Speaker 1: with walking, why walk when you could run? And getting
Speaker 1: unwell and and being forced to slow down was wonderful
Speaker 1: because um, and this is the line that I use
Speaker 1: in the book, and it's wonderful. It's walking goes at
Speaker 1: the same pace as discerning thought. And I feel that
Speaker 1: so much of what we suffer today is a lack
Speaker 1: of space and time and the right environment for discerning good,
Speaker 1: deep meaningful thinking. And when you walk, it actually literally
Speaker 1: gets you into that speed, that pace where you start
Speaker 1: to the thoughts to start to tumble in woods. Walking
Speaker 1: has just been an absolute boon. I mentioned quite a
Speaker 1: number of scientific studies that have been shown that connect
Speaker 1: walking with really alleviating anxiety. The anxious part of the brain,
Speaker 1: the flight or fight mechanism, is the same part of
Speaker 1: the brain that modulates the left right motion when we're walking.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like that part of the brain evolved
Speaker 1: at the same point that we became upright, which is
Speaker 1: also the same point that we developed an acute sense
Speaker 1: of flight or fight. You know, you can understand why
Speaker 1: all that would have developed together. And so the walking
Speaker 1: mechanism can very much modulate and calm and almost shut
Speaker 1: down the anxious part of the brain. Because it's such
Speaker 1: an old part of the brain, it can only do
Speaker 1: one thing at once. Various people call it the mono
Speaker 1: tasker of you know, sort of like the fusty old
Speaker 1: uncle that can only do one thing at once, you know,
Speaker 1: And so when you walk, it is very very hard
Speaker 1: to remain anxious. So yeah, that's sort of slow thing.
Speaker 1: I came to very much appreciate it. And one other
Speaker 1: thing that always makes people laugh is I hand wrote
Speaker 1: that entire book. And again, handwriting goes at the same
Speaker 1: pace as discerning thought. Um. Lot of people and I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're the same, Eric, when they write books,
Speaker 1: they often handwrite it because you can actually connect in
Speaker 1: with your heart and your soul um far better than
Speaker 1: when you're at a keyboard. And in many ways our
Speaker 1: contemporary life goes at the opposite or way too fast
Speaker 1: for discerning thought. So actually going back to some old
Speaker 1: school techniques like walking in handwriting can really help. I
Speaker 1: was definitely struck by that. I've always felt rescued by
Speaker 1: the computer because my handwriting is so bad. But I
Speaker 1: also have recognized that I'm not a good taper either,
Speaker 1: and I find that to be a very distracting thing.
Speaker 1: So I can at least rate by hand. No one
Speaker 1: but me can probably read it, but I can do it.
Speaker 1: But taping, I find myself having to stop and start,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's just because I make so many mistakes,
Speaker 1: whereas at least handwriting I kind of know how to
Speaker 1: do it well. There's also the risk of toggling. While
Speaker 1: you're on a computer. You're also toggling on screens. You
Speaker 1: can check your mess buy messages, UM. You know you've
Speaker 1: got your chat messages coming in UM, and it just
Speaker 1: takes you into that vortex of destruction, which it sets
Speaker 1: you up for the anxious experience like nothing else. Yes,
Speaker 1: one of the things I have learned to do is
Speaker 1: I don't do it as often as I should, but
Speaker 1: I pretty much know how to shut all of it
Speaker 1: off so it doesn't reach me. Like to do not
Speaker 1: Disturb feature on my phone is like one of the
Speaker 1: greatest things ever invented. Um, just because then nothing shows up.
Speaker 1: People are always like, I'm trying to call you all
Speaker 1: day and I'm like, well, oh well, yeah exactly. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about another word that you use, which is space.
Speaker 1: I think this is a really interesting concept. It's what
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about lately, this idea of space.
Speaker 1: So tell me when when you were talking about space
Speaker 1: in the book kind of what you mean? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I found a really useful metaphor to describe my anxiety
Speaker 1: as this sort of knotted ball of wool. And I
Speaker 1: think in our culture we tend to this idea that
Speaker 1: if we could just find the end of that knotted
Speaker 1: ball of wool, which is all just gnarly and it's
Speaker 1: sort of the threads of all kind of got knotted together,
Speaker 1: and it's all fuzzy and it's the dense you know, um,
Speaker 1: And we sort of feel that if we could just
Speaker 1: find that end of the piece of wool and we
Speaker 1: could just kind of, you know, pull tug at it
Speaker 1: a bit, it'll all unravel into a nice, unified thread.
Speaker 1: You know. Hopefully some drugs and some quick fixes out
Speaker 1: there and a guru or two will get us there
Speaker 1: and just ain't how it works, you know, And what
Speaker 1: I try to do instead is talk about this idea
Speaker 1: of loosening this ball of wool. That's our aim. We
Speaker 1: loosen it up, so we kind of just massage it
Speaker 1: out a bit and get some space in there. And
Speaker 1: I really do think that that that is really important.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you go and look at some
Speaker 1: of the techniques that a lot of experts share in
Speaker 1: this realm, it is about creating space. So you know
Speaker 1: those breathing exercises where you you breathe in and you
Speaker 1: hold your breath two, three, and then you release your
Speaker 1: breath too three. You know, it's very much about trying
Speaker 1: to find those spaces between the breaths. And it's something
Speaker 1: that is not honored, it's not talked about, it's not practiced,
Speaker 1: and we have to actually proactively go and do that.
Speaker 1: It's not about finding, you know, the fix where everything
Speaker 1: is laid out in a nice symmetrical kind of order.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just about finding space. One thing that is
Speaker 1: not actually I don't think it's in that chapter, but
Speaker 1: it is somewhere in the book is another lesson that
Speaker 1: relates to that when when I was the editor of Cosmopolitan,
Speaker 1: we did a bunch of different stories on stress and
Speaker 1: so on. I remember coming across the study that found
Speaker 1: that that the most stressed and miserable person on the
Speaker 1: planet where women in their forties who are lawyers, which
Speaker 1: you know, I found interesting, having done half a law
Speaker 1: degree myself and escaped escaped such misery in my early twenties. Particular.
Speaker 1: You are sociologists, actually decided well, he was going to
Speaker 1: go and research, and he wrote a piece for for
Speaker 1: the magazine. He thought he'd go in research, well what
Speaker 1: was it that was actually making the most happy and
Speaker 1: balanced or you know, settled women in the world. So
Speaker 1: and what he found was that most women are stressed.
Speaker 1: They've got multiple stuff coming in that they're living. That
Speaker 1: not a ball of wool life in so many ways.
Speaker 1: And many of your female listeners know exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. Um the habit all, the habit all means
Speaker 1: do it all generation and Um. What he found is
Speaker 1: that the women who were happiest were the ones that
Speaker 1: didn't try to find perfect balance, you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: try to find that thread and pull it out so
Speaker 1: that everything fell into place where your yoga quotient matched
Speaker 1: up perfectly to man of hours that you're working in
Speaker 1: the office quotient with the number of hours you're spending
Speaker 1: with your kids, soccer practice, whatever it might be. These
Speaker 1: women weren't doing that. Instead, they were tilting. And that
Speaker 1: word in itself, I think is just magical, this notion
Speaker 1: if you tilt towards what matters, feed that the wolf
Speaker 1: that matters. And I think that that plays into that
Speaker 1: idea of space. It's not about rigidly finding you know,
Speaker 1: um solutions and and right and wrong. It's it's tilting,
Speaker 1: it's leaning, it's more nuanced, it's subtle. I like that
Speaker 1: idea of tilting, and I think it speaks to I
Speaker 1: always think about with balance, like is it something that
Speaker 1: can be achieved maybe over a long period of time,
Speaker 1: Like if you want to look at like, well, if
Speaker 1: I look at the year, how did the year go?
Speaker 1: You know, as far as as trying to allocate things
Speaker 1: to the various parts of my life I care about.
Speaker 1: But in real time, like you said, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of tilting that goes on. My kid is sick. I'm
Speaker 1: tilting that direction. We got a big work project. I'm
Speaker 1: tilting that direction. I'm out of balance for a period
Speaker 1: of time, and that's just the way it should be,
Speaker 1: and that if we are intentional about what really matters
Speaker 1: to us, those things come out in the wash if
Speaker 1: we if we take the time to be intentional. But
Speaker 1: this idea of base is really fascinating to me because
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot lately about about the spiritual
Speaker 1: idea of contraction versus expansion. And what I've really started
Speaker 1: in notice for me is that like when I'm doing well,
Speaker 1: there's this sense of outflowing and moving outwards and space
Speaker 1: from me, not necessarily like my focus is all in
Speaker 1: the outside world, but it feels like the movement is
Speaker 1: this is an expansion, and when I struggle my depression,
Speaker 1: it feels like complete contraction. And it made me think
Speaker 1: about because one of the spiritual teachers I really has
Speaker 1: meant a lot to me, his name is Audi A. Shanty,
Speaker 1: has been on the show a few times and he
Speaker 1: said once that ego is just a contraction, and that
Speaker 1: hit me so strongly, And so that metaphor of contracting
Speaker 1: versus expanding, or space versus tightness has really been away
Speaker 1: for me. Without having to give a whole lot of
Speaker 1: thought to like where am I, How am I? How? What?
Speaker 1: What place am I living from right now? By just
Speaker 1: checking into that feeling, Yeah, I I am very much
Speaker 1: on the same page, Jerry. I've recently been reading a
Speaker 1: fair bit of James Hollis. He's an American Unions psychotherapist,
Speaker 1: and he has a wonderful phrase which is very similar.
Speaker 1: He asks the question throughout his life will it enlarge
Speaker 1: or contract my life? And It's become a wonderful lens
Speaker 1: through which I'm able to navigate quite a lot of
Speaker 1: my life these days. Um And I think at the
Speaker 1: moment as well, I think it resonates, particularly in a
Speaker 1: world where in many ways we are lacking a moral code.
Speaker 1: It's so hard to find your true north, the true
Speaker 1: north that will serve not just ourselves, but the broader community,
Speaker 1: which is essentially at the heart of our yearning right
Speaker 1: it has been throughout history we desire to be of
Speaker 1: service to to help humanity. And the moment, I think
Speaker 1: it's a really useful question to ask, you know, as
Speaker 1: we face all the kind of climate crisis issues that
Speaker 1: you know that that plaguing the planet is what we're
Speaker 1: going to do, Is it going to be large? Or
Speaker 1: is it going to constrict life or contract life? I
Speaker 1: agree with you that space concept, that opening, that enlargening,
Speaker 1: that loosening the ball of wool rather than rigidly trying
Speaker 1: to find the end of it, you know, which invariably
Speaker 1: makes the ball of wool even more knotted and constricted. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's that kind of thinking that we
Speaker 1: that is resonating right now. Yeah, I had forgotten that
Speaker 1: quote by him, and that is one of my favorite lines.
Speaker 1: I've I've wrote it down several times when I heard
Speaker 1: it because it's good, such a great question, because I
Speaker 1: do think it it helps answer for me a lot
Speaker 1: of things that feel thorny um, and it it just
Speaker 1: provides a clarity for me that you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of other things don't. So when I when I read
Speaker 1: that you know about space in your book, it really
Speaker 1: spoke to me what we are at the end of
Speaker 1: our time here. I think this is where we're going
Speaker 1: to wrap up, which I think is a great place
Speaker 1: to wrap up. I've had a ball talking to you.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more in the post show conversation. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about indecision, about how when you're anxious, decisions can be
Speaker 1: your undoing and I can speak to the same for depression.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a little bit about that in some
Speaker 1: ways to work with that in the post show. Listeners.
Speaker 1: If you're interested and you want to get other great
Speaker 1: things by being part of our community, go to one
Speaker 1: you feed dot net slash support. Well, Sarah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. The book was beautifully written. Listeners.
Speaker 1: I think you know you would absolutely love it. We'll
Speaker 1: have links in the show notes and thanks so much.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, bye. Yeah.
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