Speaker 1: All throughout our history, we have always had a deep
Speaker 1: appreciation of the role of struggle.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true, and yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We
Speaker 2: hope you'll enjoy this episode from the archive. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sarah Wilson,
Speaker 2: a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and founder of
Speaker 2: iquitsugar dot com. She has published fifteen iquit Sugar books
Speaker 2: in forty six countries and was ranked as one of
Speaker 2: the top two hundred most influential authors in the world
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. In twenty eighteen, Sarah was the editor
Speaker 2: in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine in Australia. At twenty nine,
Speaker 2: she was also the host of Master Chef Australia and
Speaker 2: holds a record in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 2: I'll let you google why. Her new book is First
Speaker 2: We Make the Beast Beautiful, A New Journey through Anxiety.
Speaker 3: Hi, Sarah, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. Eric.
Speaker 3: It is a real pleasure to have you on. We
Speaker 3: are going to talk about your book called First we
Speaker 3: Make the Beast Beautiful a New Journey through Anxiety. But
Speaker 3: before we do that, we'll start in the way that
Speaker 3: we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 3: talking with his granddaughter and he says, in life, there
Speaker 3: are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 3: the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 3: and she looks up at her grandfather and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parabol means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do well.
Speaker 1: I mean, Eric, it plays perfectly to this title and
Speaker 1: the theme of my book. First, we make the best
Speaker 1: beautiful because very much, you know the way I've been
Speaker 1: living for so many years with my anxiety, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure of your listeners would relate to this, I've been
Speaker 1: fed the story that, you know, what I had was
Speaker 1: a disorder. So the medical model very much told me
Speaker 1: that it was, you know, it was a beast that
Speaker 1: had to be fixed. We had to get rid of
Speaker 1: it before I could live a big, full life. And
Speaker 1: one of the themes that I explore in the book
Speaker 1: is I do this pretty early on, is that you
Speaker 1: know what we can be both, and we can be
Speaker 1: both anxious, and we can also feed a better beast,
Speaker 1: you know, the better beast, which is the more beautiful one,
Speaker 1: which is to see anxiety as a beautiful thing, something
Speaker 1: that we don't have to get rid of. And you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, Eric, because I know you've read the book,
Speaker 1: you're very well researched at all times. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a journey that takes us, that takes us through an
Speaker 1: understanding of anxiety through a philosophical and spiritual lens. And
Speaker 1: I very much feed that story. So, yes, your parable
Speaker 1: speaks to me big time. And also there's another there's
Speaker 1: another thought that occurred to me. I was a big
Speaker 1: mountain bike rider for many years. I was a twenty
Speaker 1: four hour mountain bike races and downhill races. And when
Speaker 1: you're riding a bike, you you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: a gap between say two rocks, as you're hurtling down
Speaker 1: a hill several miles an hour, you can't really steer
Speaker 1: your way there. You essentially pass through that very narrow
Speaker 1: opening of only a few inches, say, by by looking
Speaker 1: at it, by putting your full focus on that small
Speaker 1: gap between the rocks. And I've always had this adage,
Speaker 1: which I think is similar to your parable, which is
Speaker 1: where the mind goes the energy flows. And I have
Speaker 1: lived by that with every business and you know, sort
Speaker 1: of enterprise that I've entered into, but also with the
Speaker 1: way I do my relationships and my also my engagement
Speaker 1: with my mental disorder or my mental illness. So I
Speaker 1: very much relate to that parable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's wonderful, and I think the way
Speaker 3: you tied that all together was great. In addition to anxiety,
Speaker 3: you say early in the book that you know you
Speaker 3: had childhood anxiety, lots of insomnia, bolimia, and your late
Speaker 3: teens OCD depression anxiety, and then bipolar disorder also, and
Speaker 3: so those have all sort of been a part of
Speaker 3: your path and your journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, And I also say that to me,
Speaker 1: in many ways, it was all the same thing. It
Speaker 1: was the same itch, it was the same buzz, it
Speaker 1: was the same There were just different expressions of what
Speaker 1: I describe as a deeper yearning. You know, it always
Speaker 1: felt like a yearning. It felt like something bigger and
Speaker 1: deeper than just an illness. You know that had a
Speaker 1: bunch of names and you know, kind of corresponding medications.
Speaker 1: And I still to this day see it as the
Speaker 1: same kind of itch, you know, that an internal itch
Speaker 1: that I think humanity has had its call for eon
Speaker 1: since we got upright, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting. It makes me think of addiction.
Speaker 3: I'm a recovering heroin addict and alcoholic. In the AA
Speaker 3: Big Book, there is a idea that the disorder is
Speaker 3: related to a spiritual yearning. Carl Jung often mentioned in
Speaker 3: conversations with early AA founders that you take the word
Speaker 3: alcohol spirit spiritus, you know, and that the alcoholic was
Speaker 3: trying to find that transcendence they felt cut off. I've
Speaker 3: always found that to be very, very plausible, and I
Speaker 3: love that you say that anxiety is a disconnection. You
Speaker 3: call it something else, and we'll get into what something
Speaker 3: else is in a minute. But as I've looked at
Speaker 3: my own depression, as I've looked at my own addiction
Speaker 3: and all that, I do feel that this idea of
Speaker 3: disconnection and reconnection is absolutely fundamental to the problem and
Speaker 3: the healing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And you've touched on something there as well.
Speaker 1: We often say these various illnesses, whether it's addiction or
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder or whatever it might be, as the problem,
Speaker 1: but quite often they are an expression, they are a symptom,
Speaker 1: they are a coping mechanism, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that we need to start to look at.
Speaker 1: That the deeper issue is this disconnect, and that's something
Speaker 1: that is common and it's something whether you've got a
Speaker 1: diagnosed disorder as such, or whether you're a human being
Speaker 1: who has these lonely moments where you get home from
Speaker 1: a loud party at night and you've got to go
Speaker 1: and sit with yourself looking at the bathroom mirror under
Speaker 1: the fluorescent lights, you know, and you suddenly get a
Speaker 1: sense of what is all of this about? I mean,
Speaker 1: that is common. And what was really interesting, Eric, is
Speaker 1: that a huge number of readers. The book's been out
Speaker 1: for a while now, but readers from around the world
Speaker 1: commented on the fact that, you know, some of them
Speaker 1: just didn't even have anxiety as such, but they read
Speaker 1: the book and very much related to that yearning. And
Speaker 1: I feel that it's becoming louder and louder. I would
Speaker 1: say the last eighteen to twenty four months, that yearning
Speaker 1: is it's palpable, it's everywhere. It's playing out at an
Speaker 1: individual level, but it's playing out broadly in our society
Speaker 1: and our politics, in our communities. I just find it
Speaker 1: also just far more nourishing to talk at that level,
Speaker 1: because it is the deeper level, and it's the deepness
Speaker 1: and connection that we are creating.
Speaker 3: Right And you ask these questions early on in the book,
Speaker 3: and I think they're fundamental questions that I know I
Speaker 3: wrestle with and anybody I know who has any sort
Speaker 3: of Again, I'll use the word mental illness in a
Speaker 3: loose way. We'll say, am I really mentally ill? Am
Speaker 3: I disordered? Am I defective? Am I just weak of
Speaker 3: character and not trying? Just taking medication? Alter? Who I am?
Speaker 3: Am I less authentic?
Speaker 1: For?
Speaker 3: It is an unnatural Is it really a problem? I
Speaker 3: mean with me and depression? And I often just wonder
Speaker 3: like am I depressed? Or do I just have like
Speaker 3: what would have been called a long time ago, a
Speaker 3: 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 ADHD, where I
Speaker 1: often see children struggling with the toggling and the frenetic
Speaker 1: life that they are having to now live in. And
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised that some little brains are just not
Speaker 1: you know, are just almost rebelling, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of people with anxiety
Speaker 1: or depression, you know, you sum it up really well,
Speaker 1: all of those questions like really, do I have a
Speaker 1: problem here, or is this is this my soul calling
Speaker 1: 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 would have been called different things.
Speaker 1: What I find really interesting is how surprised people are
Speaker 1: to learn that anxiety only entered the DSM, which is
Speaker 1: the main diagnostic tool used by psychiatrists in both the
Speaker 1: States and here in Australia. Prior to nineteen eighty, anxiety
Speaker 1: was something that probably you know, we described it as
Speaker 1: different things, but it was something in some ways I
Speaker 1: think that was part of life, and we did very
Speaker 1: much talk about it in a different way. Also, if
Speaker 1: you go to the next level, and if you look
Speaker 1: at some of these more serious you know, of diagnosable
Speaker 1: conditions such as bipolar for instance, bipolar has existed or
Speaker 1: at least the symptoms have presented themselves throughout history and
Speaker 1: in much the same percentages, So about one point two
Speaker 1: to one point four percent of any given population around
Speaker 1: the world throughout history have displayed these very particular you know,
Speaker 1: sort of behaviors that correlate now to what we call
Speaker 1: bipolar and what I find super interesting is to just
Speaker 1: read about how they were treated differently throughout history. They
Speaker 1: say now that shaman and sort of kind of spiritual leaders,
Speaker 1: like really influential spiritual leaders, tended to have bipolar because
Speaker 1: they had this incredible insight. And political leaders, I mean
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, particularly wartime leaders tended to have bipolar, and
Speaker 1: there was an understanding that there was sort of this
Speaker 1: incredible brilliance and insight and ability to sort of work
Speaker 1: out work a community's way through the quagmire of huge
Speaker 1: trauma went hand in hand with sort of a darker side,
Speaker 1: a shadowside, but it was considered a very important part
Speaker 1: of any culture. I talk about this, as you know,
Speaker 1: all the way through the book, and I personally found
Speaker 1: that incredibly comforting to actually start to go back to
Speaker 1: your parable, to feed that storyline, to feed that aspect
Speaker 1: of the beast, that this is an incredibly important kind
Speaker 1: of quirk, evolutionary quirk that humanity has, whether it's some
Speaker 1: anxiety depression or so on, we have it there for
Speaker 1: a reason. It exists for a reason, and that's where
Speaker 1: the beauty comes into play. And that's sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess why I've called it first, we make the
Speaker 1: best beautiful. First, we start to see the beauty of
Speaker 1: these conditions, and from there we can start to modulate
Speaker 1: and refine and use our condition and ensure that it
Speaker 1: doesn't take over and ruin our lives.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think that's such an important and subtle
Speaker 3: nuance there, which is, how do we embrace these things
Speaker 3: as being a beautiful beast to some extent? And how
Speaker 3: do we not glorify really destructive conditions? Like I know
Speaker 3: I wrestled with this a lot as an alcoholic and
Speaker 3: an addict, because there was a cache is not the
Speaker 3: right word, but it's the one that's coming to mind.
Speaker 3: There was a cachet. There was a literary and artistic
Speaker 3: tradition of being the self destructive artist, but it was
Speaker 3: truly self destructive. Right, How do I tweeze those things apart?
Speaker 3: And what you said earlier, I can't quite remember the quote,
Speaker 3: but like you said, there's a lot of people say, like,
Speaker 3: is it considered a sign of health to be well
Speaker 3: adjusted to a truly warped world. I'll just read what
Speaker 3: you said in the book. At one point you said,
Speaker 3: the interesting thing is back in the nineteen thirties, Nausea,
Speaker 3: which was an existentialist novel, was celebrated as a wonderful
Speaker 3: expression of the essence of the human condition today. The
Speaker 3: main character, a thirty year old loner who felt sickened
Speaker 3: by the realization that he lived in a world devoid
Speaker 3: of meaning, would be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and
Speaker 3: prescribed an antidepressant or invited to undergo a course of
Speaker 3: cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's how that kind of almost deviant
Speaker 1: thinking is treated these days, because we are deeply uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with thinking that goes beyond what is considered you know,
Speaker 1: as safe, normal, prescribed, etc. 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, oh,
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 worn as a badge of honor, even insomnia,
Speaker 1: even you know, sort of boasting about how little sleep
Speaker 1: you had, and yet here I am functioning, turning up
Speaker 1: to the board meeting. You know, that is again it's
Speaker 1: sort of it's glorified. And you know, at some point
Speaker 1: we do cross a line, and it's so hard to
Speaker 1: tell a lot of people, and that's where a lot
Speaker 1: of the self berating comes in to play, like I
Speaker 1: should be able to cope with this, I should be
Speaker 1: able to you know, my colleagues are all only getting
Speaker 1: four five hours of sleep at night. You know what's
Speaker 1: wrong with me? And I think the big problem is
Speaker 1: 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 the questions, the deeper questions that they're asking,
Speaker 1: and hand them some medication. And that's so unsatiating. So
Speaker 1: it's so boring, it's so unprogressive apart from anything else.
Speaker 1: But I think we can have nuance and we can
Speaker 1: have refinement around all of this. Once we start talking openly,
Speaker 1: and I agree with you, we shouldn't all become Ernest
Speaker 1: Hemingway and drink ourselves into a stupor to be able
Speaker 1: to access our creative space and feel comfortable with our
Speaker 1: creativity or our devians or our questioning. However, having some spirited,
Speaker 1: wild thinking from time to time would be something that
Speaker 1: could 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: a friend said to me when I was part way
Speaker 1: through the researching of the book, you know, darling, why
Speaker 1: are you doing this? Why are you writing this book?
Speaker 1: Because he was watching me become so tortured by it all,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, quite frankly, I am sick of
Speaker 1: being alone 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.
Speaker 3: Indeed, Yeah, and I agree with you. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think the debate becomes very often, not just in society,
Speaker 3: but within the person about medicine, right about taking medicine.
Speaker 3: And I've been on this debate. You see somewhere in
Speaker 3: the book that everybody who's been on these kinds of
Speaker 3: medicines at one point or the other tries to go
Speaker 3: off of them or is always questioning whether they should
Speaker 3: be on them. And I've been through that route multiple
Speaker 3: times once not too long ago. I'm a big fan
Speaker 3: of psychiatric medication because I think it saved my life
Speaker 3: and lifted me out of a bunch of pits. I
Speaker 3: do think that the idea that we just go to
Speaker 3: a doctor and we're given this medicine and we go
Speaker 3: take it and that's the end of it, as if
Speaker 3: it's a cold or an infection that we want to
Speaker 3: go away. That I think is all the things you said.
Speaker 3: It's profoundly unsatisfying and boring, and it just for me,
Speaker 3: it misses the point because there's something else going on here.
Speaker 3: And my recovery from depression and alcoholism and all that
Speaker 3: has been a very challenging, but has probably brought ninety
Speaker 3: percent of the beautiful things that are in my life
Speaker 3: into my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, we don't have a discourse around struggle and
Speaker 1: pain anymore. You know, if you haven't looked the way
Speaker 1: that technology has evolved, it hasn't evolved to make life
Speaker 1: a grander experience. It's mostly about saving us from discomfort, annoyances, delays,
Speaker 1: you know, and avoiding struggle and pain. So we have
Speaker 1: a whole generation and we are part of that generation
Speaker 1: because it was you know, for a big part of
Speaker 1: my adulthood where you know, it's the eradication of pain
Speaker 1: at all costs, and yet the spiritual traditions all throughout
Speaker 1: our history, we have always had a deep appreciation of
Speaker 1: the role of struggle. It is the thing that takes
Speaker 1: us to the next level of our development, and as
Speaker 1: you say, it brings the most amount of beauty into life.
Speaker 1: So that is one of the things that really gets
Speaker 1: missed when you chuck medication at a patient. I've always said,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm the same as you, and I'm very
Speaker 1: open about it in the book, and I get asked
Speaker 1: this question almost immediately when I do public talk. So
Speaker 1: I speak to media, well, what are your thoughts on medication,
Speaker 1: and I very openly go on and offer it. 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 in the context of psychiatric or you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of a therapeutic context. So I've done it
Speaker 1: in conjunction with therapy. So I always see medication as
Speaker 1: getting 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, And that's probably the missing piece, right.
Speaker 1: Medication is particularly good for young people, especially when you
Speaker 1: don't have the skills, the knowledge, you know, the wisdom
Speaker 1: to be able to have a conversation in and around it.
Speaker 1: So it can be great for that can be great
Speaker 1: when you've at a really hard point and you're not
Speaker 1: going to need clarity, but it really needs to be
Speaker 1: used so that you can then peace out your thoughts
Speaker 1: and you can do helpful therapy. So it's the therapy
Speaker 1: that's often missing.
Speaker 3: I have sort of a really lane, run of the
Speaker 3: mill depression, which is talk about boring. Like when it comes,
Speaker 3: there's no like great, you know, passionate sadness about it.
Speaker 3: It just like being dead, you know. It's just there's
Speaker 3: nothing there to feel anything about. And so it's not
Speaker 3: as much fun for me to come off of medicine.
Speaker 3: And I did it with the help of a doctor.
Speaker 3: I was like, you know what, I'm in a really
Speaker 3: great place in my life. I've been on these things
Speaker 3: for a while. I know how to take care of myself,
Speaker 3: and so I got off all the medicines with help
Speaker 3: of a doctor. I did everything I know that treats
Speaker 3: my depression, and at a certain point I just went
Speaker 3: I feel like I am rolling a five hundred pound
Speaker 3: rock up the side of a hill every day for
Speaker 3: no good reason, and went back on a small dose
Speaker 3: of the medicine and boom. I was like, oh, there
Speaker 3: I am again.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: And so I feel comfortable with where I'm at with
Speaker 3: it because I went through that process in a really
Speaker 3: deep way. I would never have felt comfortable saying, you know,
Speaker 3: I should or shouldn't be on it if I wasn't
Speaker 3: doing everything else that I know is important to my depression,
Speaker 3: my spiritual life, my meditation, my exercise, my eating, well,
Speaker 3: all that stuff. Like when I'm doing all of that
Speaker 3: and I still feel terrible, and I'm doing things like
Speaker 3: therapy and talking to people and I do all that
Speaker 3: and I still feel terrible, then I go okay, I'm
Speaker 3: okay with medicine in this case because I've kind of
Speaker 3: exhausted the possibilities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that comes with it being a little bit older
Speaker 1: as well, doesn't it. I Mean, you've got to know
Speaker 1: that you can go out on your own and exhaust
Speaker 1: a few possibilities before you do the medication. As a
Speaker 1: young person, that's extremely terrifying, especially when it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's your first time going through one of the cycles,
Speaker 1: whether it's a pression, or mania or combination of both.
Speaker 1: So there's not one size fits all. And unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: medication based model works to that that there's a one
Speaker 1: size fits all. Yes, one of the things that I
Speaker 1: think always comes as surprise is a number of different
Speaker 1: types of medication and the number of different therapists that
Speaker 1: the average depressed or manic person needs to go through
Speaker 1: until they arrive a sort of a solution. Now, I
Speaker 1: will also argue, and I think it's something like five
Speaker 1: therapists and and different types of medication, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's something like that. I'd also argue that throughout
Speaker 1: my life, I've also had to pulse that I go
Speaker 1: through different types of therapists. They'll be appropriate for a year,
Speaker 1: and then I have a gap, and then I have
Speaker 1: to go back to a different type of therapist because
Speaker 1: I evolve. And same for medication. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: constant dance. And when I can frame it as something
Speaker 1: that is about modulation. And you might remember this Eric
Speaker 1: from the book that I talk about when you've got
Speaker 1: a mental condition of anyr type, it's like being charged
Speaker 1: with carrying a shallow bowl of water around for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life, and you've got to walk carefully.
Speaker 1: You've got to get steadiness into your life, because if
Speaker 1: you don't and you start to get a bit wobbly,
Speaker 1: the water starts to slosh backwards and forwards, and it
Speaker 1: spills all over around you, and it's you know, bleeds
Speaker 1: through all the work that you're doing and ruins it.
Speaker 1: And then you've got to keep going back to source
Speaker 1: to fill up. And it's an exhaust process. So it's
Speaker 1: a very refined, artful thing to live with, and I
Speaker 1: quite love it now. I know that sounds really odd,
Speaker 1: but I find that in itself is quite beautiful. Is
Speaker 1: to be able to read where I'm at and to
Speaker 1: know when I need to go back to source, when
Speaker 1: I need to make sure that I'm stable, when to
Speaker 1: know that when the sloshing is getting a little bit
Speaker 1: out of hand, you know. And it was really something
Speaker 1: I had to learn, and it was a conversation I
Speaker 1: had to have. And people have asked me for different
Speaker 1: tricks and techniques and things that have worked to get
Speaker 1: me to a place where I'm able to talk like this,
Speaker 1: you know, with you for instance, and your listeners. And
Speaker 1: one of the things I say is actually reading. I'm
Speaker 1: working on my next book at the moment, and it's
Speaker 1: been a three year research project. First we Make the
Speaker 1: Best Beautiful took seven years of research, and one of
Speaker 1: the terms that I've come across, which I'm really enjoying
Speaker 1: is soul nerding nerding out on the soul, and I
Speaker 1: just governed it. Actually when I was research in First
Speaker 1: We Make the Beast Beautiful, that what really helped was
Speaker 1: reading some of the texts and fiction non fiction by
Speaker 1: people who had been diagnosed with a similar disorder throughout history,
Speaker 1: whether it's Virginia Wolf, Sylvia Plath, whoever it might be,
Speaker 1: and actually just realizing the commonality and the thread that
Speaker 1: some of these people go on, and that was incredible,
Speaker 1: And I now realize it's a worthwhile pursuit because I
Speaker 1: know that some of their struggles to maintain that shallow
Speaker 1: bowl of water, to keep it steady informed some of
Speaker 1: their greatest work, like it's brought some of the greatest
Speaker 1: joy to humanity. And so yeah, it's that refra constant
Speaker 1: reframing that learning the richer side of all of this,
Speaker 1: feeding the right beast, you know, the right wolf, that
Speaker 1: has brought me to this place, you know, along with
Speaker 1: other techniques such as meditation and walking and a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things I go into in the book. But
Speaker 1: it's that real awareness, that kind of understanding of the
Speaker 1: meta the meta purpose behind it all that's helped.
Speaker 3: I agree one hundred percent. Changing directions just a little bit.
Speaker 3: I want to read something that you read in the
Speaker 3: book because I think this is so important. You say,
Speaker 3: one of the worst things we can do to ourselves
Speaker 3: on the anxious journey is to get anxious about being anxious,
Speaker 3: and that learning to stop that cycle is one of
Speaker 3: the biggest and most fundamental things that we can do
Speaker 3: for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, people have tended to really gravitate to that
Speaker 1: little line. It's only a small section of the book, right,
Speaker 1: But what I'm trying to say is that we can
Speaker 1: choose to do anxiety once. Now what helps is to
Speaker 1: know that, yes, one of the worst things about anxiety
Speaker 1: is that we get anxious about being anxious, and then
Speaker 1: we get anxious about being anxious about being anxious, and
Speaker 1: we go down this horrible spiral right where you know
Speaker 1: there's no chloring our way out of it. One of
Speaker 1: the things that actually helps is that as well, is
Speaker 1: to learn and I learned this on the journey is
Speaker 1: that a panic attack, for instance, only last twenty five
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes. So once you know that, once you've
Speaker 1: soul murdered your way to that truth, you realize that,
Speaker 1: oh well, I can do twenty five to thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of abject pain, right, I can sit through it. And
Speaker 1: as we mentioned before, you know, spiritual traditional traditions throughout
Speaker 1: history have talked about the notion of sitting in your suffering,
Speaker 1: passing through it, rather than trying to beat it. And
Speaker 1: that comes to fruition when you deal with a panic attack.
Speaker 1: If you can sit in a really bad moment of
Speaker 1: anxiety and just sit in it, write it out, and
Speaker 1: do it once instead of getting anxious about the fact
Speaker 1: that you're being anxious, you can actually really nip things
Speaker 1: in the bud very very quickly. And then what you
Speaker 1: do is you're not actually creating those neural pathways, you're
Speaker 1: not strengthening these anxious neural pathways because you're keeping it
Speaker 1: quite short and succinct, you know, and moving onwards. And
Speaker 1: that's a really great technique. I mean, it's as simple
Speaker 1: as that. Right. Sometimes just understanding some of the chemistry
Speaker 1: that goes on that helps it helps you know, and
Speaker 1: that only comes about when we start talking beyond the
Speaker 1: medical model and we stop just talking about throwing a
Speaker 1: pill at the situation.
Speaker 4: Right right.
Speaker 3: I often think with a lot of this stuff that
Speaker 3: sometimes the best we can do in certain situations, particularly
Speaker 3: when we're deep in it, the best we can do
Speaker 3: is not make it worse. And that may sound trivial,
Speaker 3: but it's not, because our capacity to make things worse
Speaker 3: is extraordinary. You know, we talk about on the show
Speaker 3: a lot. It's that Buddhist parable of the second arrow,
Speaker 3: you know, the being anxious about being anxious is shooting
Speaker 3: yourself with the second arrow, and then the third. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just goes on and on and on and on,
Speaker 3: and so I often think that, like, when it doesn't
Speaker 3: seem like I can make it better, I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: how can I make sure it don't make it worse?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And it's a responsibility, don't you think, Eric? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's something that I that's sim a bit
Speaker 1: of a part of that carrying the shallow bowl of water.
Speaker 1: It is a response ability. If you are somebody who's
Speaker 1: being born with this condition or you've developed it for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, it is a responsibility and You've got a
Speaker 1: responsibility to those around you, but also to yourself to
Speaker 1: not make it worse, you know. And quite often those
Speaker 1: of us who have some of these conditions, we tend
Speaker 1: to be a types, don't we. You know, we're not
Speaker 1: laid back characters as a rule. And so what I
Speaker 1: find is that when I'm speaking to you know, a types,
Speaker 1: it actually really does help to kind of add that
Speaker 1: extra layer, that notion of a responsibility. Right, You've got
Speaker 1: a responsibility not to make this worse fire up, you know.
Speaker 1: And I know that that kind of that kind of
Speaker 1: mindset really works for me when I'm in that moment,
Speaker 1: because if I'm doing it for myself because I read
Speaker 1: it in a self help book somewhere, like, it ain't
Speaker 1: going to cut through, like I will self indulge myself
Speaker 1: down a horrible anxiety spiral. But if I say to myself, no,
Speaker 1: this is my you know, I've got this condition and
Speaker 1: it comes with a responsibility, and first and foremost is
Speaker 1: I'm not going to make this worse. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to add any more fuel to this fire. Let's get sensible.
Speaker 3: We've given our Instagram account a new look, and we're
Speaker 3: sharing content there that we don't share anywhere else, encouraging
Speaker 3: positive posts with wisdom that support you and feeding your
Speaker 3: good wolf, as well as in behind the scenes video
Speaker 3: of the show and some of Gini Andiz's day to
Speaker 3: day life, which I'm kind of still amazed that anybody
Speaker 3: would be interested in. It's also a great place for
Speaker 3: you to give us feedback on the episodes that you like,
Speaker 3: or concepts that you've learned that you think are helpful,
Speaker 3: or any other feedback you'd like to give us. If
Speaker 3: you're on Instagram, follow us at at one underscore you
Speaker 3: underscore feed and those words are all spelled out one
Speaker 3: underscore You underscore feed to add some nourishing content to
Speaker 3: your daily scrolling. See you there. You use a few
Speaker 3: different words in the book to describe the process of
Speaker 3: getting better or working with anxiety. One of them is slow.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about slow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people talk
Speaker 1: about the benefits of going slow. It's been, you know,
Speaker 1: a book, Various people have written books, and there's a
Speaker 1: whole self help category. I'm not great, it's slow. I've
Speaker 1: tended to have you know one speed and one speed only,
Speaker 1: which is you know, surging forward, but you know interestingly,
Speaker 1: I had an illness which goes part and parcel with
Speaker 1: anxious conditions. I have hashimotos, which is an autoimmune disorder.
Speaker 1: And it's incredible how many people tend to have bipolar
Speaker 1: and hashimotos, and it is a perfect disease for somebody
Speaker 1: like me. I needed to almost have my body tell
Speaker 1: me to stop and go slow. So when I got
Speaker 1: on well, I mean it was a crazy exerciser. As
Speaker 1: I say, I was a mountain bike rider and I
Speaker 1: used to do sand running races and I would run
Speaker 1: several miles to work and back every day. And I
Speaker 1: actually was forced to actually get very, very slow, and
Speaker 1: it was one of the best things for me. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that came out of that, and
Speaker 1: you probably noted this in the book, is walking. I
Speaker 1: discovered the absolute fundamental life saving benefits of walking. Ice
Speaker 1: getting patient with walking, why walk when you could run?
Speaker 1: And getting unwell and being forced to slow down was
Speaker 1: wonderful because and this is a 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 much of what we suffer today is a
Speaker 1: lack of space and time and the right environment for
Speaker 1: discerning good de meaningful thinking. And when you walk, it
Speaker 1: actually literally gets you into that speed, that pace where
Speaker 1: you start to the thoughts to start to tumble in woods.
Speaker 1: Walking has just been an absolute boon. I mentioned quite
Speaker 1: a number of scientific studies that have been shown that
Speaker 1: connect walking with really alleviating anxiety. The anxious part of
Speaker 1: the brain that flight or fight mechanism is the same
Speaker 1: part of the brain that modulates the left right motion
Speaker 1: when we're walking. It's sort of like that part of
Speaker 1: the brain evolved at the same point that we became upright,
Speaker 1: which is also the same point that we developed an
Speaker 1: acute sense of flight or fight. You know, you can
Speaker 1: understand why all that would have developed together. And so
Speaker 1: the walking mechanism can very much modulate and calm and
Speaker 1: almost shut down the anxious part of the brain. Because
Speaker 1: it's such an old part of the brain, it can
Speaker 1: only do one thing at once. Various people call it
Speaker 1: the monotasker of you know, like the fusty old uncle
Speaker 1: 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: things 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. A 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 far better than when
Speaker 1: you're at a keyboard. And in many ways our contemporary
Speaker 1: life goes at the opposite or way too fast for
Speaker 1: discerning thought. So actually going back to some old school
Speaker 1: techniques like walking and handwriting can really help.
Speaker 3: I was definitely struck by that. I've always felt rescued
Speaker 3: by the computer because of my handwriting this so bad.
Speaker 3: But I also have recognized that I'm not a good
Speaker 3: typer either, and I find that to be a very
Speaker 3: distracting thing. So I can at least write by hand.
Speaker 3: No one but me can probably read it, but I
Speaker 3: can do it. But typing I find myself having to
Speaker 3: stop and start, and you know, it's just because I
Speaker 3: make so many mistakes, whereas at least handwriting I kind
Speaker 3: of I know how to do it well.
Speaker 1: There's also the risk of toggling. While you're on a computer,
Speaker 1: you're also toggling on screens. You can check your mess
Speaker 1: by messages. You know, you've got your chat messages coming in,
Speaker 1: and it just takes you into that vortex of destruction,
Speaker 1: which it sets you up for the anxious experience like
Speaker 1: nothing else.
Speaker 3: Yes, one of the things I have learned to do
Speaker 3: is I don't do it as often as I should,
Speaker 3: but I pretty much know how to shut all of
Speaker 3: it off so it doesn't reach me. Like the do
Speaker 3: not Disturb feature on my phone is like one of
Speaker 3: the greatest things ever invented, just because then nothing shows up.
Speaker 3: People are always like, I can trying to call you
Speaker 3: all day, and I'm like, well, oh well, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about another word that you use, which is space.
Speaker 3: I think this is a really interesting concept. That's what
Speaker 3: I've been thinking a lot about lately, this idea of space.
Speaker 3: So tell me when you were talking about space in
Speaker 3: the book kind of what you mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, I found a really useful metaphor to describe
Speaker 1: my anxiety as this sort of knotted ball of wool.
Speaker 1: And I think in our culture we tend to have
Speaker 1: this idea that if we could just find the end
Speaker 1: of that knotted ball of wool which is all just
Speaker 1: gnally and it's sort of the threads of all kind
Speaker 1: of got knotted together, and it's all fuzzy and it's dense,
Speaker 1: you know, and we sort of feel that if we
Speaker 1: could just find that end of the piece of wool
Speaker 1: and we could just kind of, you know, pull tug
Speaker 1: at it a bit, it'll all unraveling to a nice
Speaker 1: unified thread. You know. Hopefully some drugs and some quick
Speaker 1: fixes out there and a guru or two will get
Speaker 1: us there and just how it works, you know. And
Speaker 1: what I try to do instead is talk about this
Speaker 1: idea of loosening this ball of wool. That's our aim.
Speaker 1: We loosen it up, so we kind of just massage
Speaker 1: it out a bit and get some space in there.
Speaker 1: And I really do think 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 breathe in and you hold
Speaker 1: your breath to three and then you release your breath
Speaker 1: to three. You know, it's very much about trying to
Speaker 1: find those spaces between the breaths. And it's something that
Speaker 1: is not honored, it's not talked about, it, 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's
Speaker 1: laid out in a nice symmetrical kind of order. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just about finding space. One thing that is not
Speaker 1: actually I don't think it's in that chapter, but it
Speaker 1: is somewhere in the book is another lesson that relates
Speaker 1: to that. When I was the editor of Cosmopolitan, we
Speaker 1: did a bunch of different stories on stress and so on.
Speaker 1: I remember coming across the study that found that the
Speaker 1: most stressed and miserable person on the planet were women
Speaker 1: in their forties who were lawyers, which you know, I
Speaker 1: found interesting, having done half a law degree myself and
Speaker 1: escape escaped such misery. In my early twenties, a particular
Speaker 1: sociologists actually decided, well, he was going to go and research,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a piece for the magazine. He thought
Speaker 1: he'd go and research, well, what was it that was
Speaker 1: actually making the most happy and balanced or you know,
Speaker 1: settled women in the world. So and what he found
Speaker 1: was that most women are stressed, they've got multiple stuff
Speaker 1: coming in. They're living that not a ball of wool
Speaker 1: life in so many ways. And many of your female
Speaker 1: listeners know exactly what I'm talking about. They have it all,
Speaker 1: do it all generation. And what he found is that
Speaker 1: the women who are happiest were the ones that didn't
Speaker 1: try to find perfect balance, you know, they didn't try
Speaker 1: to find that thread and pull it out so that
Speaker 1: everything fell into place where your yoga quotient matched up
Speaker 1: perfectly to amount of hours that you're working in the
Speaker 1: office quotient with the number of hours you're spending with
Speaker 1: your kids' soccer practice, whatever it might be. These women
Speaker 1: weren't doing that. Instead, they were tilting. And that word
Speaker 1: in itself, I think is just magical, this notion if
Speaker 1: you tilt towards what matters, feed the wolf that matters.
Speaker 1: And I think that that plays into that idea of space.
Speaker 1: It's not about rigidly finding you know, solutions and right
Speaker 1: and wrong. It's tilting, it's leaning, it's more nuanced, it's subtle.
Speaker 3: I like that idea of tilting, and I think it
Speaker 3: speaks to I always think about with balance, like is
Speaker 3: it something that can be achieved? Maybe over a long
Speaker 3: period of time, like if you want to look at like, well,
Speaker 3: if I look the year, how did the year go?
Speaker 3: You know, as far as as trying to allocate things
Speaker 3: to the various parts of my life I care about.
Speaker 3: But in real time, like you said, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of tilting that goes on. My kid is sick. I'm
Speaker 3: tilting that direction. We got a big work project. I'm
Speaker 3: tilting that direction. I'm out of balance for a period
Speaker 3: of time.
Speaker 4: And that's just the.
Speaker 3: Way it should be, and that if we are intentional
Speaker 3: about what really matters to us, those things come out
Speaker 3: in the wash if we if we take the time
Speaker 3: to be intentional. But this idea of space is really
Speaker 3: fascinating to me because I've been thinking a lot lately
Speaker 3: about the spiritual idea of contraction versus expansion. And what
Speaker 3: I've really started to notice for me is that like
Speaker 3: when I'm doing well, there's this sense of outflowing and
Speaker 3: moving outwards and space for me, not necessarily like my
Speaker 3: focus is all in the outside world, but it feels
Speaker 3: like the movement is an expansion. And when I struggle
Speaker 3: my it feels like complete contraction. And it made me
Speaker 3: think about it because one of the spiritual teachers I
Speaker 3: really has meant a lot to me. His name's Adia Shanti.
Speaker 3: He has been on the show a few times and
Speaker 3: he said once that ego is just a contraction, and
Speaker 3: that hit me so strongly. And so that metaphor of
Speaker 3: contracting versus expanding, or space versus taitanists has really been
Speaker 3: a way for me without having to give a whole
Speaker 3: lot of thought to like where am I, how am I?
Speaker 3: What place am I living from right now? By just
Speaker 3: checking into that feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am very much on the same page Jerry.
Speaker 1: I've recently been reading a fair bit of James Hollis.
Speaker 1: He's an American Unions psychotherapist, and he has a wonderful
Speaker 1: phrase which is very similar. He asks the question throughout
Speaker 1: his life, will it in large or contract my life?
Speaker 1: And it's become a wonderful lens through which I'm able
Speaker 1: to navigate quite a lot of my life these days.
Speaker 1: And I think at the moment as well, I think
Speaker 1: it resonates particularly in a world where in many ways
Speaker 1: we are lacking a moral code. It's so hard to
Speaker 1: find your true north, the true north that will serve
Speaker 1: not just ourselves but the broader community, which is essentially
Speaker 1: at the heart of our yearning, right it has been
Speaker 1: throughout history. We desire to be of service to help humanity.
Speaker 1: And at the moment, I think it's a really useful
Speaker 1: question to ask, you know, as we face all the
Speaker 1: kind of climate crisis issues that you know that are
Speaker 1: plaguing the planet, is what we're going to do. Is
Speaker 1: it going to be large or is it going to
Speaker 1: constrict life or contract life? I agree with you that
Speaker 1: space concept, that opening, that enlargening, that loosening the ball
Speaker 1: of wool, rather than rigidly trying to find the end
Speaker 1: of it, you know, which invariably makes the ball of
Speaker 1: wool even more not it and constricted. Right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's that kind of thinking that we that is
Speaker 1: resonating right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had forgotten that quote by him, and that
Speaker 3: is one of my favorite lines. I wrote it down
Speaker 3: several times when I heard it because such a great question,
Speaker 3: because I do think it it helps answer for me
Speaker 3: a lot of things that feel thorny, and it just
Speaker 3: provides a clarity for me that you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of other things don't. So when I when I read
Speaker 3: that you know about space in your book. It really
Speaker 3: spoke to me what we are at the end of
Speaker 3: our time here. I think this is where we're going
Speaker 3: to wrap up, which I think is a great place
Speaker 3: to wrap up. I've had a ball talking to you.
Speaker 3: You and I are going to talk a little bit
Speaker 3: more in the post show conversation. We're going to talk
Speaker 3: about indecision, about how when your anxious decisions can be
Speaker 3: your undoing and I can speak to the same for depression.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk a little bit about that and
Speaker 3: some ways to work with that in the post show. Listeners,
Speaker 3: if you're interested and you want to get other great
Speaker 3: things by being part of our community, go to oneufeed
Speaker 3: dot net slash support. Well, Sarah, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for coming on. The book was beautifully written. Listeners. I
Speaker 3: think you know you would absolutely love it. We'll have
Speaker 3: links in the show notes and thanks so much.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it. Sorroley, thank you.
Speaker 4: You're welcome. Okay bye.
Speaker 2: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 2: consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 2: Head over to oneufeed dot net slash support. The One
Speaker 2: You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors
Speaker 2: for supporting the show,