Speaker 1: Disgusting food, and as child, did you inedible, my mom
Speaker 1: did what we called chicken mess. Oh god. It says
Speaker 1: yesterday's left over chicken with a tin of asarbaragus soup,
Speaker 1: oh god, oh god, a tin of mushroom soup, Oh good,
Speaker 1: and macaroni, and she'd slurp it around. I loved it
Speaker 1: at the time, and then I went back like there
Speaker 1: was in my twenties, and I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that really does sound disgusting. Though. I have to say, however,
Speaker 1: I can think of some brilli rank things that my
Speaker 1: mother used to make, boiled beef and carrots, spoiling beef.
Speaker 1: She's trying to find a way of doing it so
Speaker 1: it would be tender, and it turns out there is
Speaker 1: no where. Hello, I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to Many Questions,
Speaker 1: Season two. I've always loved Pruce's question. It was originally
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each
Speaker 1: other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's
Speaker 1: true nature. It's just the scientific method, really. In asking
Speaker 1: different people the same set of questions, you can make
Speaker 1: observations about which truths appear to be universal. I love
Speaker 1: this discipline and it made me wonder, what if these
Speaker 1: questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths
Speaker 1: would be revealed if I ask these questions as conversation
Speaker 1: starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines.
Speaker 1: So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own
Speaker 1: seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a
Speaker 1: person's story. They are when and where were you happiest?
Speaker 1: What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship,
Speaker 1: real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would
Speaker 1: you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has
Speaker 1: shaped you the most? What would be your last meal?
Speaker 1: And can you tell me something in your life that's
Speaker 1: grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a
Speaker 1: group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored
Speaker 1: and humbled to have had the chance to engage with.
Speaker 1: You may not hear their answers to all seven of
Speaker 1: these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt
Speaker 1: closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created
Speaker 1: the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today is
Speaker 1: best selling author and psychotherapist Julia Samuel doing my own
Speaker 1: podcast feels like therapy an awful lot of the time,
Speaker 1: so it felt only right to have an actual psychotherapist
Speaker 1: on the show. I was first introduced to Julia's work
Speaker 1: when my mom died and somebody gave me her extraordinary book,
Speaker 1: which is called Grief Works. And even though I couldn't
Speaker 1: read it right away because reading about other people's experiences
Speaker 1: of grief and loss just compounded my own. But it's interesting.
Speaker 1: In the process of grief, you reach a point where
Speaker 1: you need to feel that solidarity, or I did, and
Speaker 1: you need to feel like you're not alone. And that
Speaker 1: book helped me so much. And every time I have
Speaker 1: a conversation with Julia, I feel like I unravel some
Speaker 1: deep Gordian knot that I've been holding onto. And this
Speaker 1: conversation that we had was no different what person, place,
Speaker 1: or experience most altered your life Working in the NHS.
Speaker 1: Will you explain what the NHS is, because I have
Speaker 1: a lot of American listeners. Yes, so the NHS is
Speaker 1: held in this sort of brand of What is the
Speaker 1: best thing about the UK is that you can be
Speaker 1: ill and go into an NHS hospital or doctor and
Speaker 1: at the point of meeting you never have to pay
Speaker 1: whatever is wrong with you, whether it's acute, whether it's chronic,
Speaker 1: you will have your health needs met. And it is true.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's also broken system because the weight and
Speaker 1: burden of it is so enormous. But for me, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm now on the Ethics Commission of Imperial College because
Speaker 1: I couldn't leave it, and I still meet the doctors.
Speaker 1: So for me, I would walk there from home. It's
Speaker 1: about half an hour walk from when I was thirty two,
Speaker 1: an hours fifty six and wearing my lanyard. I loved
Speaker 1: my NHS lanyard that would give me ten percent of
Speaker 1: from the coffee shop. But also beat doors, opened the door,
Speaker 1: and as I beaked into the door, there's this crappy
Speaker 1: building that is Victorian and falling apart. But I belonged,
Speaker 1: and there was a little sign that said, you know,
Speaker 1: psychotherapists this way. And it was this thing of being
Speaker 1: part of something that was so much bigger than me.
Speaker 1: There was the building that contained me, the people in
Speaker 1: it who I knew for decades, the nurses, the amazing doctors,
Speaker 1: going up to the special care baby unit, going into
Speaker 1: the pediatric intensive care unit, working on the maternity wards,
Speaker 1: the families I met who when I was there, there
Speaker 1: was seventy five languages spoke in the hospital every day,
Speaker 1: so I met thousands of types of lives and living
Speaker 1: and beliefs, and it expanded me. And I kept my lanyard.
Speaker 1: I can't I don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1: I honestly want to kind of embalm it in silver
Speaker 1: frame it. Oh my gosh, definitely I'll do that for you.
Speaker 1: I have to say, that's the most inspiring answer to
Speaker 1: that question I think I've ever heard on this podcast,
Speaker 1: because it is the thing that makes me proudest to
Speaker 1: be British is the NHS. It's the fact that we
Speaker 1: postwar like looked at what had happened to all these people,
Speaker 1: and as a society and as a country, made this
Speaker 1: change to go. We will have socialized medicine. No one
Speaker 1: will pay for healthcare. We will take care of everybody.
Speaker 1: There was just something out a country that wraps its
Speaker 1: arms around you, and then that people go and that
Speaker 1: you work there for peanuts. You work there and you
Speaker 1: are in service. All the nurses and all the doctors
Speaker 1: and all the people that work on those wards are
Speaker 1: there in service of the people that live in that country,
Speaker 1: and there's something that is so beautiful and community based,
Speaker 1: so it's incredible. It was incredible being part of something
Speaker 1: where I saw those doctors would work fifteen hours to
Speaker 1: save a child's life. I would support teams of nurses
Speaker 1: when there's been a death, or and doctors, or we
Speaker 1: go out and have most disgusting pizza to celebrate it Christmas.
Speaker 1: But it was the best Christmas party I ever had,
Speaker 1: you know, all of those things because of the dark
Speaker 1: humor and the knowing each other and the tears and
Speaker 1: the hugs and the intensity and the exhaustion. But also
Speaker 1: they saved lives and I had a tiny part to
Speaker 1: playing that. I supported the families through them and it
Speaker 1: was just I feel so lucky. So what quality do
Speaker 1: you like least about yourself? Do you have an alm? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Actually I do quite like myself. But the one I
Speaker 1: don't like because it scares me, is I'm not good
Speaker 1: with my own anger. It kind of sits in me
Speaker 1: and it kind of ruminates and tox ifies all my
Speaker 1: other feelings. And except for my husband, I'm really good
Speaker 1: at being angry with and he's quite good at kind
Speaker 1: of dealing with me when I'm angry, I'm not good
Speaker 1: at expressing it, and then of course it hangs around,
Speaker 1: and then I kind of wake up at four in
Speaker 1: the morning wanting to punch someone's lights out, rather than
Speaker 1: as I would tell them to do if they were
Speaker 1: my client, to be a sort of talk clearly, say
Speaker 1: what you're upset about, you be specific, But I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't do it myself very much because I'm so
Speaker 1: friended of them knocking me out when I'm angry with it?
Speaker 1: Has that happened? Have you been overwhelmed by your rage?
Speaker 1: Twice with one of my children and with my husband?
Speaker 1: That is not said with pride. I understand that I
Speaker 1: feel like everybody has, and the people we are angry
Speaker 1: is with and hate the most normally well, in my case,
Speaker 1: the people I love the most and need the most.
Speaker 1: In difference is the opposite of love, isn't it not hate?
Speaker 1: So it's people that really make okay. I can be
Speaker 1: annoyed with someone at work, we don't really want to
Speaker 1: punch their lights. It's people that I really care about
Speaker 1: who really get to me. I think that's a very
Speaker 1: noble way of looking at anger. I don't know there's
Speaker 1: someone right now who I am so angry with, and
Speaker 1: they are not somebody that I love, and they've triggered
Speaker 1: in me all of these feelings of like lack of
Speaker 1: self worth and there are really in quotes powerful person
Speaker 1: and the fact that they're a woman makes everything worse.
Speaker 1: But it's funny. I've just sort of been sitting with
Speaker 1: the anger, and as opposed to being triggered by it,
Speaker 1: I've sort of been. I've been trying to be fascinated
Speaker 1: by it and interested and curious, and it hasn't shifted
Speaker 1: anything yet, but it feels slightly more or being the
Speaker 1: observer with it than being in it. It's weird. It
Speaker 1: makes my heart beat faster actually thinking about even thinking
Speaker 1: about it. It's so interesting with such little animals. I mean,
Speaker 1: we really are. We We forget because we think we're
Speaker 1: so bloody clever, but we're really not very well animals,
Speaker 1: and we respond like animals. And I mean, I would
Speaker 1: guess I have not the faintest idea and I could
Speaker 1: be completely wrong that the level of your anger is
Speaker 1: probably to do with an earlier part of you that
Speaker 1: felt overpowered by someone it is that probably wasn't this person. No,
Speaker 1: it's exactly right. It was being bullied by a girl
Speaker 1: when I was younger. It's the same feeling of powerlessness
Speaker 1: to make them like you. But that comes with shame.
Speaker 1: It's huge amount of shame because you can't help but go.
Speaker 1: There must be something wrong with me because this person
Speaker 1: doesn't like me as opposed to there is something going
Speaker 1: on with them that makes them need to be whatever
Speaker 1: it is, aggressive or intolerant of people around them. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like the idea that even someone
Speaker 1: like you who helps people all the time with the
Speaker 1: things that are difficult in their own lives, that of
Speaker 1: course you deal with things that are difficult about your
Speaker 1: own character, but that the awareness is surely what makes
Speaker 1: it bearable. I mean, I have as many flaws and
Speaker 1: battles as other people. I can probably tell you what
Speaker 1: my flaws are because I have quite a lot of
Speaker 1: insight after like thirty two years of doing this thing.
Speaker 1: But I'm as flawed as everybody else. And for my family,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievably annoying when people come up to them and
Speaker 1: say things to my husband like, oh, your wife, she's amazing,
Speaker 1: She's amazing. I mean, this must happen to you too.
Speaker 1: And he literally wants to say well, he does say, well,
Speaker 1: you should try being married to her, and then they
Speaker 1: say no, and I'm standing there. I've just been a
Speaker 1: complete cow in the car, all the way wherever it is,
Speaker 1: been a total bit And then I'm smiling. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: oh my god. But this is what When I came
Speaker 1: on your podcast, we talked about this, because I'm still
Speaker 1: obsessed with it. I think I've been upset with it.
Speaker 1: My whole life is the idea of being completely aware
Speaker 1: of a quality that is not necessarily a good quality
Speaker 1: that we see about ourselves, and the effect that it
Speaker 1: has on the world around us, and yet there doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be any evolution in the way in which
Speaker 1: one interacts with it apart from having an awareness. I
Speaker 1: literally feel like I went from being ignorant about my
Speaker 1: ship to being completely aware of it and being able
Speaker 1: to talk about it and give it a name and
Speaker 1: be articulate and probably right about it, and yet I
Speaker 1: haven't seen any actionable change. I always thought that becoming
Speaker 1: aware about something would be the kind of nascent point
Speaker 1: of the evolution of that difficult thing. And why the
Speaker 1: fund is that not true? Because you're who ever told
Speaker 1: you that knowing something and naming it would make you
Speaker 1: three hundred and six degrees unflawed. I do. I have
Speaker 1: this idea that there is this place where you can
Speaker 1: take all of the hard things about yourself, and that
Speaker 1: if you do the right things, you can clean them
Speaker 1: up and then they will heal and you will be
Speaker 1: a better person. Well, I don't know which books you've
Speaker 1: been reading, but from my understanding is it isn't that
Speaker 1: we take our bad stuff, turned it up and make
Speaker 1: it look nice and shiny and new. It's that we
Speaker 1: have all the wounds that we had. We get ignited, annoyed,
Speaker 1: triggered in the same ways that we always have the
Speaker 1: same fault lines. The thing that awareness does, it means
Speaker 1: that we can choose between response and action. So you
Speaker 1: have that moment where you choose, and in that choice
Speaker 1: is the difference between a serious disaster and actually speaking
Speaker 1: out for yourself. Because how you represent that part of
Speaker 1: you that wants to say, punch this woman's lights out
Speaker 1: will be informed by all the different aspects of yourself
Speaker 1: that are going on. But you can do it with
Speaker 1: a kind of confidence and assertiveness. I mean, I'm saying
Speaker 1: this having not been good at anger myself. But what
Speaker 1: I'm arguing is that there is never going to be
Speaker 1: a picture perfect version of any one of us. It's
Speaker 1: how we manage our fault lines and frailties and stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: perhaps that's what I can work on, or that we
Speaker 1: could all work on. Is managing I mean, Julia, I'm
Speaker 1: ashamed that I wrote a book called Managing Expectations, and
Speaker 1: yet my expectations are completely unmanageable. What relationship, real or fictionalized,
Speaker 1: defines love for you? It is my husband. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been married forty two years. I got married when
Speaker 1: I was twenty wow, and I'm sixty three, and without question,
Speaker 1: it was the single best decision I ever made in
Speaker 1: my life, and one I did really from complete ignorance.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was literally just twenty. I got engaged
Speaker 1: two weeks after my twentieth birthday. Holy ca. I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to run him over, obviously, and all of
Speaker 1: those things. But he knows me, and he loves me
Speaker 1: as he knows me, and I feel safe with him.
Speaker 1: What are the chances of two people's evolution as parallel
Speaker 1: individuals but joined together in holy matrimony? What are the
Speaker 1: chances that you would manage to evolve in concert with
Speaker 1: each other, and are there things that you both had
Speaker 1: to do in order for that to work. I think
Speaker 1: that if you look at the stats, it's just under
Speaker 1: probably couples divorce, but more couples don't marry, and their
Speaker 1: stats of separation are higher than divorce. But to marry
Speaker 1: somebody at twenty, when you're closer to a child, you're
Speaker 1: closer to being a little child than you are to
Speaker 1: being like who you are today? Like what's your husband's name? Michael?
Speaker 1: So you and Michael? Like I just find it fascinating
Speaker 1: that if he was in his twenties that twenty year
Speaker 1: old Michael and twenty year old Julia can have of two, thirty,
Speaker 1: thirty five and now sixty. My aunt who was married
Speaker 1: for sixty years, she said it was just a decision.
Speaker 1: It's a decision that you keep making every single day,
Speaker 1: and that it's no more complicated than that. But I
Speaker 1: feel like there must be some extraordinary thing that people
Speaker 1: who get married in their twenties and are still married
Speaker 1: when they're sixty one do or figure out, and what
Speaker 1: can you please tell me what that is? I think
Speaker 1: your aunt is right I think he's partly a decision.
Speaker 1: I think all the things that you've heard, you know,
Speaker 1: many times from many people before, is like if you
Speaker 1: ask yourself the question, are we a good fit? Do
Speaker 1: we have the same beliefs? Do we have the same outlook?
Speaker 1: Are we good at repairing after a rupture? Do we
Speaker 1: talk the same or collaborative love language? Do we love
Speaker 1: each other in the right way? You know that works
Speaker 1: for each of us. I mean, one of the things
Speaker 1: that works for me is that I have to work
Speaker 1: quite hard to get his attention and his love, and
Speaker 1: that is quite good for me. It really drives me nuts,
Speaker 1: but it keeps to be interested, right. And also the
Speaker 1: kind of other men that I was brought up with,
Speaker 1: they never believed in me to work or have a
Speaker 1: career or to use my brain. And he always and
Speaker 1: his mother actually always from the moment we got together,
Speaker 1: wanted me to work. I think he wanted me to
Speaker 1: work because he wanted me to be tired and less sassy,
Speaker 1: less sassy and not having affairs tire her out. Should
Speaker 1: be too tired to have an affair, should be too
Speaker 1: tired to give me lip. I think that is part
Speaker 1: of it, and the idea of me having lunch people
Speaker 1: all the time and shopping. It just was not his thing.
Speaker 1: But luckily I always worked, So I mean I worked
Speaker 1: from when I left school at sixteen. I've never not
Speaker 1: had a job. That's really funny. I love that love
Speaker 1: would be having you know, a really robust work ethic
Speaker 1: for your partner Like that's that's really sexy and romantic
Speaker 1: actually because there's longevity built into that. Well, because he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to meet all of my needs now. And
Speaker 1: I think that's also the biggest misnomer is the idea
Speaker 1: that our love partner should somehow tick all of the
Speaker 1: boxes of the things that we need from other people.
Speaker 1: It's just absolute bollocks. So I mean having a job
Speaker 1: that I find that I can do, which because he
Speaker 1: earns a lot more than me, he enabled me to do.
Speaker 1: I have a completely different work identity where I'm not
Speaker 1: known as his wife, I'm not known as a mother.
Speaker 1: I'm known for my job as a therapisn't that I
Speaker 1: can go on doing? You know, all of my lot
Speaker 1: of my friends, their children have left home, the husbands
Speaker 1: are retiring, and they're kind of you know, working in
Speaker 1: bits and bobs. But I have this kind of machine
Speaker 1: inside my brain that just wants to keep going, and
Speaker 1: it keeps me interested, and I think it keeps me interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not always interesting, obviously, but having a
Speaker 1: purpose to get up for. Freud talked about love and work.
Speaker 1: You need love for connection and meaning, but you also
Speaker 1: need work for structure and meaning. And you know, what
Speaker 1: are you for? I've always known what am I fault?
Speaker 1: It is so interesting curiosity, enthusiasm. I mean, my mother
Speaker 1: did everything she possibly could to keep her businesses afloat
Speaker 1: and was constantly making financial choices that were startling to
Speaker 1: her children and maybe to other people of why she
Speaker 1: would keep investing in things that, by their metric weren't working.
Speaker 1: And it's not the only metric, it's not. And I
Speaker 1: saw it was worth it. It was worth her putting
Speaker 1: all the money that she had into these businesses because
Speaker 1: her interest and her curiosity and her work ethic that's
Speaker 1: what made her happy. And the idea of sort of
Speaker 1: saving all her money, I think it was very much like, well,
Speaker 1: what am I saving it for? I need to keep
Speaker 1: investing in being engaged with life in the way that
Speaker 1: I see it. I really understand that, like how that
Speaker 1: fuels a life and keeps a person interested and interesting.
Speaker 1: Being sixty two year sixty three, I'm of the age
Speaker 1: in the background, and I was never expected to work.
Speaker 1: So I have a twin brother who my father expected
Speaker 1: to go to university to go and get a job
Speaker 1: and to carry on working. Whereas when the school said
Speaker 1: to my dad she should say gay levels, my father went,
Speaker 1: what for? What would you be going to university for?
Speaker 1: What is the point? And it made a decision to
Speaker 1: me From a very young age. I can remember sitting
Speaker 1: at my desk in my bedroom and to share with
Speaker 1: my sister who didn't like you at all, and doing
Speaker 1: my homework and work for me has been a savor,
Speaker 1: so using my brain, having homework to do, getting a
Speaker 1: job done, and it's probably been too much, but being
Speaker 1: determined to do it has saved me from many holes.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more work Before
Speaker 1: my son, work really was the great love of my life,
Speaker 1: I mean, and still is in a more balanced way.
Speaker 1: I think when I talked to clients, who are you
Speaker 1: know in the stage like my daughters are, of having
Speaker 1: children and working, even keeping your foot in the work
Speaker 1: door to go back to that you can kind of
Speaker 1: work part time while you're parenting, then you can go
Speaker 1: back to it, because you know, it's likely if we're lucky,
Speaker 1: that we're going to have a long life. The average
Speaker 1: life expectancy for those of us that are kind of
Speaker 1: lucky as well is a hundred. So what were we
Speaker 1: going to do with all of that time if we're
Speaker 1: not working? Yeah, it can't all be Love Island, Julia, clearly,
Speaker 1: Can you tell me about something that has grown out
Speaker 1: of a personal disaster? I can't. As it happens, I
Speaker 1: first went to a a when I was five. I
Speaker 1: started smoking when I was seven. That's a picture of
Speaker 1: me writing lines with my twin brother, Hugo, I promise
Speaker 1: I will never smoke again. And I started drinking when
Speaker 1: I was about eleven, and everyone in my family drank
Speaker 1: a huge amount. And luckily, I literally woke up one
Speaker 1: day and I thought, I just can't do this. I
Speaker 1: can't do this, And I tried doing it on my
Speaker 1: own without a and I sort of count the number
Speaker 1: of units and then I do deals with myself the
Speaker 1: whole time, like if I more today, then I won't
Speaker 1: have to tomorrow, you know, But you get pissed one night.
Speaker 1: Then you'd have a hangover two days and then get
Speaker 1: pissed like day three or for whatever it is. And
Speaker 1: so I went to A and I did not speak
Speaker 1: a word for like two years. I only went twice
Speaker 1: a week. I went at lunchtimes. It was near my office.
Speaker 1: That's what got me interested in therapy. I had no
Speaker 1: idea people could talk about how they felt. That was
Speaker 1: a whole new world to me. I always thought you
Speaker 1: just faked it and pretended everything was fine until I
Speaker 1: went to A. So that was your first experience of
Speaker 1: therapy was seeing somebody getting up to share. Was it
Speaker 1: shocking hearing them speak about how they felt about their
Speaker 1: life and the things that happened to them. I was
Speaker 1: completely blown away, completely blown away. And the only person
Speaker 1: I told I was going was my husband because I
Speaker 1: didn't dare tell anybody because then, you know, this is
Speaker 1: forty forty years ago, was still quite shaming. Then there
Speaker 1: was a diction, was still quite a shameful thing. I
Speaker 1: haven't drank since then at all, But then when I
Speaker 1: used to go out for dinner, people would like look
Speaker 1: at me weirdly when I wasn't drinking, and they kind
Speaker 1: of try and ply you with drink and stuff. But
Speaker 1: it was a complete revelation. It was amazing. But I
Speaker 1: didn't speak. I was just learning and taking it in,
Speaker 1: and I'd rehearse in my head what I would say,
Speaker 1: and I never dared actually speak it out. What made
Speaker 1: you eventually raise your hand? I can't remember. I genuinely
Speaker 1: can't remember. I would tell you, but I do remember speaking.
Speaker 1: And I didn't die, and the sky didn't fall in
Speaker 1: and people were kind. Did you have a sponsor even
Speaker 1: when you weren't speaking? I just like it was literally,
Speaker 1: like it was my secret. I'd go in on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays and sneak out. I must have been ashamed
Speaker 1: of it. Well, you stayed, which is the only thing
Speaker 1: that matters. He stayed, and I stayed sober. He showed
Speaker 1: up when he stayed sober, amazing. I was cycling this
Speaker 1: morning and I had the first time I've ever had
Speaker 1: this thought, what if I start drinking again? What would
Speaker 1: happen if I started drinking again? And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that's such a dangerous thought. That is the gateway to
Speaker 1: Julius Samon. You do not want to go down because
Speaker 1: you don't know what's the point of risking it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I second that, Julia Samuel. Yes, I'll be the echo
Speaker 1: to your Jiminy cricket, keep cycling, don't drink. So what
Speaker 1: question would you most like answered? I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to put this in context. So the context is that
Speaker 1: my specialty is children and babies dying. So for for
Speaker 1: like thirty years, I've supported families who have children and
Speaker 1: babies that and so my perception of children living to
Speaker 1: a long life has been changed by hours every working
Speaker 1: with terrible death. So my question, which actually makes me
Speaker 1: christ saying it, is are my children and my grandchildren
Speaker 1: going to live and have a long life? Because it's
Speaker 1: what I want more than anything else in the world,
Speaker 1: makes my heart stop. I'm sure I can imagine exponentially
Speaker 1: as a grandmother, but it is the worst thought in
Speaker 1: the entire world as a mother, like it is, it's
Speaker 1: heart stopping. If you knew the answer that question, would
Speaker 1: it change the way in which you lived your life? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean every night before I go to sleep, I
Speaker 1: thank God that my children are alive, and one of
Speaker 1: my grandchildren I say their name, every single one of them,
Speaker 1: and my sons in law and my daughter in law
Speaker 1: I'm not an anxious person, and I don't feel anxious
Speaker 1: all the time, but I think I would feel liberated
Speaker 1: in some way of having that as my worst worry. Yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: it's an awful to carry around having one child, having
Speaker 1: multiple children who then have partners and their own children.
Speaker 1: It's a lot and a joy, you know, it's the
Speaker 1: greatest joy as well. You know. Love is a risky business, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it really really is, and it is not build as such.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was sold a very odd bit
Speaker 1: of goods. I think by myself being the small shopkeeper
Speaker 1: that I was selling this idea that love was going
Speaker 1: to solve everything, as opposed to push you really to
Speaker 1: the limit and make you know yourself and give you
Speaker 1: all these gifts. I mean, love in all of the
Speaker 1: books and the films that you're in and and other
Speaker 1: great movies does are in is like a soft skill, right,
Speaker 1: But love is hard. It's the hardest thing we do.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that matters most. That love is the
Speaker 1: strongest medicine. It's the thing that heals us and holds
Speaker 1: us together and gives our life meaning. And when we
Speaker 1: look back at our lives, it's the people that we've
Speaker 1: loved and loved us that matter most. But also it's
Speaker 1: the hardest thing to sustain and allow ourselves to dare
Speaker 1: to love and take the risks and the costs. And
Speaker 1: it's build as a soft, easy thing, but it ain't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lot of like Hollywood and
Speaker 1: music is where the way in which it is sold.
Speaker 1: But it is rigorous. Love is rigorous and deeply painful.
Speaker 1: But then so as being a human, you know, that
Speaker 1: could also be descriptive of the fundament of being alive.
Speaker 1: You know. I remember the first head book I ever read,
Speaker 1: that's probably about twenty five, and there are lots of
Speaker 1: catastrophic things going wrong. And the first line of M.
Speaker 1: Scott Peck's book, A Roadless Traveled was life is difficult.
Speaker 1: And I thought, hang on, no one ever told me that,
Speaker 1: although it had been my entire life. But somehow it's
Speaker 1: the secret that no one had said. It's normal that
Speaker 1: it's difficult, not like I'm struggling through it and I'm
Speaker 1: the one that's failing and everyone else has got it sorted.
Speaker 1: Life's difficult, right, Okay? Boom God. I mean I wish,
Speaker 1: first of all, I wish it was taught in schools
Speaker 1: in like a robust and fluid way. I wish we
Speaker 1: were taught about love. I wish we were taught about
Speaker 1: death and were taught about these things as opposed to
Speaker 1: sort of picking it up from God knows where, like
Speaker 1: all these this little patchwork that I've used as a
Speaker 1: map in my life was created by this little child
Speaker 1: who had no idea about any of it, but piece
Speaker 1: together what became pretty good. Man. Well, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a constitution that I'm now finding it quite difficult to amend,
Speaker 1: even though I would really like to, like my ideas
Speaker 1: about love, I'm now, you know, at fifty two, I'm
Speaker 1: with this extraordinarily wonderful man, having been constantly in my life,
Speaker 1: absolutely sort of brought to my knees by my relationships
Speaker 1: with men, and in a way that I kept going,
Speaker 1: why am I not learning? Like? Why is everything seemingly repetitive?
Speaker 1: And I feel like I'm only now being able to
Speaker 1: amend this constitution that I wrote when I was little
Speaker 1: about what love is or what love is meant to
Speaker 1: be because this person has this extraordinary spirit and patience
Speaker 1: and also what he call it. He said, we have
Speaker 1: a shared fortitude He's like, it's not me being patient
Speaker 1: with you. It's that we have a shared fortitude and
Speaker 1: I love that. But I'm only now figuring that out.
Speaker 1: That's why I wish it was taught in schools, Like
Speaker 1: why I wish these big things like love and death
Speaker 1: and life were actually taught alongside physics and maths and history.
Speaker 1: I think they should be taught or at least discussed,
Speaker 1: you know, so that they're not this huge journey that
Speaker 1: a child is expected to go on with no tools.
Speaker 1: Because the tools that all children have they learned from
Speaker 1: the adults around them, and that's the map that they're given.
Speaker 1: Their kind of internal working model of love looks like this,
Speaker 1: and moods look like this, and work looks like this.
Speaker 1: You learn it from the people around you, the adults
Speaker 1: around you. It's interesting when their tools have been my
Speaker 1: mother and my father's tools bore you just get on
Speaker 1: with it, which is a very very useful tool to have,
Speaker 1: but it also has implicit in it, like not dealing
Speaker 1: with stuff. Turn away, yeah, forget and move on, just
Speaker 1: keep going, kick on. That's the English saying exactly. It's
Speaker 1: very very British, it really is. It is a very
Speaker 1: useful tool, but it needs to be augmented it and
Speaker 1: kick on and name what's going on, experience that, express it.
Speaker 1: Let the pain of it change you. Let pain is
Speaker 1: the agent of change. Let the pain run through you,
Speaker 1: and it's painful asitors, support yourself through it so that
Speaker 1: you are expanded and grow through the pain, rather than
Speaker 1: build your armor to block the pain in your life, Julia,
Speaker 1: where and when were you happiest? It was not difficult
Speaker 1: for me to choose this because I'm never happy in
Speaker 1: those big kind of scale things like your birthday or
Speaker 1: a big event. My happiest moments are those tiny moments
Speaker 1: like I remember New Year looking around the done room
Speaker 1: table and all my children were there, and they all
Speaker 1: had a partner who loved them, and they had jobs,
Speaker 1: and nobody had a problem, nobody had some awful thing
Speaker 1: that was happening, and I just felt this it makes
Speaker 1: me cry on me, so I felt this kind of
Speaker 1: relief like and then of course, by two weeks later,
Speaker 1: something terrible happened and you go off again. But those
Speaker 1: moments of all of the people I love most in
Speaker 1: the world are loved and they have kids and they
Speaker 1: are happy is an amazing amazing moment. I love that
Speaker 1: so much. I think about that so much as well,
Speaker 1: of the lily padding, the leaping from the lily pad,
Speaker 1: Like is it the respite is the anomaly? The happy
Speaker 1: moments and the stress and the difficulty is what's normal?
Speaker 1: Or is it the other way around? I look at
Speaker 1: it that the happier moments are the moments that sustain
Speaker 1: you when you go through the difficult moments. And sometimes
Speaker 1: I look back at them when it's been difficult. Quite
Speaker 1: soon after, I look back at them with a kind
Speaker 1: of poignancy, like Oh. I wrote a book called This
Speaker 1: Too Shall Pass, and at the beginning I said, you know,
Speaker 1: we say bad things are going to pass, but we
Speaker 1: have to remember things are going to pass too. It's
Speaker 1: not just a one way street. Yes, but I as
Speaker 1: I can feel the bad thing happening, I then have
Speaker 1: It's like a photograph album the moments that have been
Speaker 1: good or it's often simple, isn't it When they're simple
Speaker 1: and it's not complicated, there's nothing big happening and they
Speaker 1: sustain me, completely sustain me. Do you return to them
Speaker 1: in moments of hardship? Do you consciously sit down and
Speaker 1: remember something good? Remember sitting around the table with your children,
Speaker 1: all of them peaceful and content, And does that put
Speaker 1: a dent in the hard moments? Do you think in
Speaker 1: the peak of the hard moment, so you've just been
Speaker 1: told some bad news, it's too painful to look at
Speaker 1: the happy one because it's too far from where I am.
Speaker 1: But as the intensity lessons, then I can look back,
Speaker 1: and that's what gives me hope. And the hope is
Speaker 1: the alchemy that turns a life around, you know, believing
Speaker 1: that I can have moments of that, and that I
Speaker 1: will have moments that because I've already had them, and
Speaker 1: I know from my job at myself that my belief
Speaker 1: system is informed by my experience. And so my experience
Speaker 1: is that we can have really good times when everything
Speaker 1: is okay, they are quite rare, and we can have
Speaker 1: kind of life you know, normal times, and then there
Speaker 1: are the kind of also hopefully rare, very bad times,
Speaker 1: and knowing that we have all of those and seeing
Speaker 1: it like that enables me to kind of normalize it
Speaker 1: rather than well, I think you talk to me about this.
Speaker 1: When you're in the weather. You never believe the weather
Speaker 1: is going to change, and then it does. Yeh In
Speaker 1: the moment when one wakes up every day and it's
Speaker 1: maybe faced with the same set of circumstances that have
Speaker 1: not yet changed. It's like they've just been there waiting
Speaker 1: at the end of your bed while you sleep. And
Speaker 1: if you know, you wake up and you've sat and breathed,
Speaker 1: and you've maybe done a little meditation or you've read
Speaker 1: something good, and yet still there they sit at the
Speaker 1: end of your bed. Is there something that you do
Speaker 1: or that you recommend to people that they do to
Speaker 1: help engage with what's beyond that anxiety of circumstance to
Speaker 1: what I do? And it's so unsexy. I love un sexy.
Speaker 1: I want the flannel night dress of therapist. Thanks, I
Speaker 1: don't want the lingerie. The eighteen year army who was
Speaker 1: going forward did not see that I would be an
Speaker 1: expert on grieving a psychotherapist. I kind of thought I'd
Speaker 1: be sexy and fancy. But now, well, why I said
Speaker 1: that was because I've had to work out for myself
Speaker 1: and for other people what works, and what works is
Speaker 1: not glamorous and sexy, but practical and the thing that
Speaker 1: works the best. Because grief or anxiety, a loss, whether
Speaker 1: it's a living loss from you know, bad news, your
Speaker 1: boyfriend's broken up, that you've lost your job, or from death.
Speaker 1: It hits your body and sends your body into hyper arizon.
Speaker 1: So you're in kind of fourth gear. Your autonomic nervous
Speaker 1: system goes on vigilant, vigilante almost it can be that
Speaker 1: you own to attack. And the single thing that helps
Speaker 1: you most is get outside and take some exercise moving,
Speaker 1: even if you're in an urban environment. If you can
Speaker 1: get to a part better so cycle, run, walk fast,
Speaker 1: and even if you only do it for ten minutes,
Speaker 1: you will always feel better when you walk back through
Speaker 1: the door. If you can walk back through the door
Speaker 1: and journal for like five minutes, do a breathing meditation
Speaker 1: for five minutes, and then give yourself a stauntingly good breakfast,
Speaker 1: you will feel much much better and be able to
Speaker 1: face the kind of waves of adversity and loss and
Speaker 1: whatever the feelings are as they are, sail your body.
Speaker 1: That is so brilliant. It's what I wailed the loudest
Speaker 1: is what can I do? I wail at my lovely boyfriend.
Speaker 1: I want something actionable? What can I do? And that
Speaker 1: makes so much sense, But for you it's the sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is you go surfing, but in London it's hard
Speaker 1: because there is no sea. I've often been known to
Speaker 1: run out of my house and up to the park
Speaker 1: and done exactly what you said. Just go and sit
Speaker 1: by the certain time and try and feel differently. Well,
Speaker 1: your body feels differently. Difficult feelings sit in your body
Speaker 1: and they're like looking for a place to go, and
Speaker 1: they're kind of an alert waiting for the threat to
Speaker 1: come at you. So if you actually move your body,
Speaker 1: you tell your body you've flown, so you're throwing fight
Speaker 1: or flight. You've tell your body you've flown, so your
Speaker 1: cortisol levels drop and your oxytocin, your dopamine, your kind
Speaker 1: of connecting levels where you can connect with yourself. Get
Speaker 1: a hug from your boyfriend or anybody. I mean practically
Speaker 1: a stranger will always work for you. It's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I do love I love the practical physical response to
Speaker 1: sort of encouraging a different way of feeling about something.
Speaker 1: And like you said, you can't get from abject misery
Speaker 1: to joy. The jump is too big. But to take
Speaker 1: small steps to put yourself physically, to tell your brain
Speaker 1: that you're in a different place, to tell your body
Speaker 1: are in a different place to then find your way
Speaker 1: mentally to being in a different place. And then when
Speaker 1: you're in a different place, your relationship with what's troubling
Speaker 1: you has changed because you have the capacity to then
Speaker 1: think more clearly, to collaborate with someone else, to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with someone else, and their words, their warmth,
Speaker 1: their love and support for you can sink in. When
Speaker 1: you're like this hyper people, when they hug you, it's
Speaker 1: like your brittle, it's like your armored. It never goes in,
Speaker 1: And you basically want to punch their light site and
Speaker 1: say because they're not fixing it. But when you've moved
Speaker 1: and you've calmed down and you're kind of centered, and
Speaker 1: you've given yourself a treat, I do think you know
Speaker 1: good breakfast or whatever it is. Your treat helps you're
Speaker 1: then open your expand your capacity to connect with other people.
Speaker 1: And the single biggest thing for all of us, whatever
Speaker 1: our difficulty, that will predict our outcome is the love
Speaker 1: and connection of others. That we can't do life alone. However,
Speaker 1: we connect with others. We need to be and be
Speaker 1: close and connected to others. Oh, you're such a joy.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. It's so wonderful talking to you.
Speaker 1: It's such beautiful insights on the things that are just
Speaker 1: the hardest, that are the most normal. Yeah. Well, it's
Speaker 1: such a pleasure. It's really fun to Julia's new book
Speaker 1: titled Every Family Has a Story, will be in stores
Speaker 1: across America on November, and you can find her podcast,
Speaker 1: Therapy Works wherever you listen to your podcasts. In Therapy Works,
Speaker 1: you'll hear Julia's guests talk about the big lessons and
Speaker 1: challenges of their lives. I was on the show, and
Speaker 1: at the end of each episode, Julia reflects on her
Speaker 1: session with her two psychotherapist daughters, who share their thoughts
Speaker 1: on the conversation. I hope you enjoy listening to Julia's
Speaker 1: show as much as I enjoyed being a guest on it.
Speaker 1: Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver,
Speaker 1: Supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown.
Speaker 1: Original music Sorry Baby by Minni Driver, Additional music by
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison, No Day, Lisa Castella,
Speaker 1: and Nick Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador Kate
Speaker 1: Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support
Speaker 1: Henry Driver