Moment 131: Why You Need To Start Embracing ALL Your Emotions: Dr. Julie Smith

In support of world mental health day 3 days ago we're releasing a moment that we believe will help our listeners on the topic of supporting their mental health. In this weeks moment, discover the key to mastering your emotions in this insightful discussion with clinical psychologist, Dr. Julie Smith. In life, we often face two prevailing philosophies: suppress your emotions and power through, or embrace them wholeheartedly. But what if both of these paths lead to unexpected pitfalls? Join Dr. Julie Smith as she unravels the secrets to emotional harmony. Learn how therapy can provide you with the essential tools to navigate your emotions, to gradually confront them, and to understand your actions without judgment. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/Sew3KrnPIqb Dr Julie - https://www.instagram.com/drjulie/?hl=en https://www.tiktok.com/@drjuliesmith?lang=en https://www.drjulie.uk Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  Society has a role to play in telling us how to manage the emotions we feel when we go through life. You know, on one hand, you have this sentiment where it's like, kind of just shrug it off, ignore it, keep going, which doesn't seem to be possible. With like, deep emotions, it actually seems to be that you're just compartmentalising it in the back room and it's gonna erode your brain from, subconsciously. And the other one is that, you know, the other narrative we hear is to, when you feel strong emotions, to really like, embrace them and like, but that feels like it can be a bit too consuming, that I might not get out of bed in the morning if I really sit and wallow in my emotions. So what is the balance of embracing emotions or kind of shrugging them off and ignoring them?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and actually, it's quite sort of complex work when, when you look at sort of what happens in the therapy room. And, you know, there are people who, when they experience emotion, it's quite unsafe for them because the coping strategies that they've had throughout life have been unsafe or dangerous ones. And so, you know, we'll never kind of advise people to just, you know, open the floodgates and allow everything in. It's very sort of careful and, and there's a process of gearing people up with the tools. And I often talk to people about this when, when they're thinking about going to something like a trauma therapy, right? So, while that involves going over the trauma, no decent therapist would ever get you to do that without first gearing you up with the tools

• 1:26Speaker 01

  to be able to cope with the emotion that comes up. So, for anyone who feels like they, for example, kind of shut down emotionally and sort of block it out, you want to open up gradually to things and, and open up gradually to emotions that feel maybe less dangerous or less, sort of overwhelming, in small ways, in supported ways as well, so that you, you know you can manage it and, and it's not gonna completely be overbearing. So, but I guess on a kind of day-to-day level...

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Lots of people don't even recognise that they're blocking. They just recognise that whenever they've done something at work that's embarrassing and they feel awful, they just go home and crack open the fridge and they're just looking for anything. Or maybe it's go on Netflix for the next six hours and block out the world or gaming or whatever it is. And so often it's hidden in the behaviour. People will say, I'm fine with emotion and I smoke fifty a day. And you know, it's a kind of, you know, what's the function of this and that and the other? And it's always about looking at it with curiosity, not judgement, but curiosity. Why am I doing that? What's the function of that? What's it doing for me? And often it'll be some level of safety around something that's uncomfortable.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  But it's really key that there's no judgement there because it's something that we all do. It's human and that's because our brains are so brilliant at taking over for us and doing something very quickly that we need to make things better.

• 2:59Steven Bartlett?

  To make us comfortable, to feel comfortable in some way, even if it's some destructive medication or something. On that, you know, on that point of

• 3:11Steven Bartlett?

  we have a behavioural response to some stress or emotion we're feeling and maybe not confronting. I think I did that a lot. When people used to ask me how I dealt with running this big global business, seven hundred employees around the world, when times got really tough, I mean, on the worst days where there was no money in the bank compared to what it was today, those kind of days. I used to, I think I used to say on interviews and stuff that I used to come up with all this nonsense about how I dealt with it and how I coped with it. But in hindsight, one of the things I came to learn was the only times I ever got sick or my skin ever got bad were on like two days after that, those really high stress moments. So on the surface, I was kind of shrugging off and playing it cool. But my body as

• 3:55Steven Bartlett?

  The famous book goes, held the score. My body would tell me, even if my conscious mind wouldn't admit it. My body would tell me. And then even more recently, I've noticed that in certain situations where I'm pretending everything is fine, I'll notice maybe my eating habits or my other habits get a little bit more extreme and out of control. And I, and I always thought I was invincible. I always thought I was some tough guy. And I think people followed me.

• 4:20Steven Bartlett?

  But I think they kind of, they saw me as that, as being this kind of like, you know, mentally perfect, you know, resilient character. But even I've noticed that in my behaviour. And it's been so interesting to just pay attention to it. It's sometimes difficult because especially if you do engage in these kind of coping mechanisms, shall we say, a lot, you might find them harder to notice. But for me, I don't. So when I see any shift in my behaviour, like I, I remember going through a pattern where I was just, I was eating crap again. And I thought, why am I doing, oh shit, yeah, because of that thing you've not addressed. That's playing on your mind every time you wake up.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:54Steven Bartlett?

  And then my skin tells me straight away, I get some like breakout on my skin.

• 4:59Steven Bartlett?

  Men are the worst at this. I mean, so they say, they're the worst at talking about how they feel because of the stigmas and stuff.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, certainly. I mean, about seventy five percent of my followers are female. But saying that, of the, of the male followers that I have, they're among some of the most engaged and ask questions and, you know, come up with new topics and, and respond really positively in comments and things. And, and so I think there is a shift in the right direction. And I think, I think social media has had a lot to do with that, actually. It's enabled people to start having a conversation that they wouldn't dream of having face to face with people. And certainly I recognise that in, when I was just working in my private practice, I, I wanted to do it around the family, so I, I couldn't do it all. So I kind of left the NHS and I, I thought I would just work in like school hours and I'll manage it around that kind of thing.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  So. I thought I would have to advertise and I never did. And that's because, well, therapy is a really private thing when you're really struggling. When it works and you get better and then you're doing fine and it finishes and you go off about your life. And then you come across someone who's struggling and they go, that really helped me. Try that. And so actually, all of my work was based on word of mouth. And, and I think that's happening more and more that people, once they struggle, work out a way to get through it, then believe in the, in the tools that they learnt, whatever they were, they're willing to share that. And, and because they don't want to see other people go through the same thing. And I think that's a bit of the shift of that stigma.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  That, that people are going, oh, yeah, I went through that or something similar. Go and try that. It really helps.

• 6:45Steven Bartlett?

  And if people are sad at home and there's something that they know they haven't addressed, that's playing on their mind, that they're thinking about a lot often and trying to just kind of compartmentalise and not. What would you say to those people? Like, because, you know, they might be seeing the, the behavioural symptoms of not addressing that thing. What would you, how do we, how do we get it out of the back room and

• 7:07Steven Bartlett?

  prevent it from causing us behavioural self harm?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Well, I guess, you know, some people will go to, to therapy because they'll have access to that. Others won't even consider it or have access to it for whatever reason.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And I think whatever the situation, human contact and human connection is, is everything. If you can find someone that you trust to talk to. And even let's say worst case scenario, you don't have anyone you can trust to talk to. Or you feel so awful about this particular situation that you can't bear to talk to anyone. Write it down. Just use words, use art, whatever it is. Try and get to grips with what, what could possibly be going on here. Start reflecting on experiences, not with judgment, but just looking at what's happening, what happens here? What happens before that? What, what leads up to it? That's a lot of what happens in therapy, actually, is, you know, people will come in with a feeling,

• 8:04Speaker 01

  oh, felt this awful thing. And then, and then we'll look at, okay, what led up to that? Let's go back a week. And let's work to it. And, and you know, what made you vulnerable to that? And then equally, what came after? What did you do? Did it make things worse? Did it help? A lot of those things that. That we end up doing habitually are the things that work instantly. And they're addictive because they work instantly, right? It's going to the fridge or grabbing the wine or whatever it is that they're addictive because they give us instant relief. But in the long term, they keep us stuck. So they're the things that then get us in that cycle of the next time you have that feeling, you feel even more need for that that safety behaviour or that blocking behaviour because it worked so quickly last time.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And and actually, the things that tend to work in the long term are hardest in the moment, like sitting with it and feeling it and using skills to get yourself through it.