Pod Insights Happy Place Philippa Perry: Why everyone has an inner critic, and how to stop believing yours About this episode Should you give your inner critic have a name? Psychotherapist and author Philippa Perry reckons giving that nagging voice in your head a silly name is the first step to stopping it running your life.
In this chat with Fearne, Philippa explains why not feeling ‘good enough’ is often less about truth and more about habit. She shares how to tell the difference between a helpful critical inner voice and a self-sabotaging one, and why negative thought patterns keep us stuck.
Fearne and Philippa also chat about the power of shame, and why talking about the things you feel most embarrassed about is the fastest way to shrink them.
Plus, how is your phone eating away at your ability to connect IRL? And what can you do if you can’t access therapy? Philippa talks through some of her favourite self-therapy exercises.
Philippa’s novel, Shrink Solves Murder, is out on May 7th.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Philippa’s first Happy Place episode https://pod.fo/e/14288
Flo Perry https://pod.fo/e/151f3
Bryony Gordon https://pod.fo/e/3fc78f
Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service.
Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/
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Transcript 11,671 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:29 Fearne Cotton? Hello and a huge welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. This is the show that encourages you to be kinder to yourself. Today, I'm chatting to Philippa Perry.
0:40 Speaker 02 I've never met anyone who hasn't got an inner critic. The difference between people is those that take the inner critic too seriously and become the inner critic, and those that can observe it and think, not today, thank you. Changing a thought pattern is a bit like building some abs. You can't go to the gym, have one session and expect, you know, the toned body. You have to go three times a week. And so it is with things like thought patterns. You have to practise noticing what they are and deciding to change them.
1:12 Fearne Cotton? I'm really excited about this. Philippa came on Happy Place in 2019, which might as well have been the Victorian era. And it's probably seven years ago. It's outrageous. We've got a lot to catch up on, but I was really excited for many reasons. One is, I've really enjoyed reading her novel. She's got a novel out called Shrink Solves Murder. And it's one of those books that's kept me reading for much longer than a book normally would. So I get very sleepy at about 10pm, just like the eyes are heavy. I'm like, I'm done, I'm out. I was up until 10.30 reading this the other night.
1:51 Fearne Cotton? And thank God I was, because my son was at my ex's house and he had to get rushed to A and E in an ambulance. And I would not have been awake to take that call had I not been up reading this very good book. He was fine, thank goodness. He is all good in the hood and there is no problems. But obviously, as a mum, it's always a scary phone call to receive. He actually loved going in the ambulance and was getting us to document everything to show his mates, so. He got something out of the experience. And what I must also say is that it's the most obvious sort of cliche thing to say, but I can't not say it, but the doctors and nurses were so fucking amazing.
2:33 Fearne Cotton? It was in A and E and it was like one in the morning and they were all so not only wonderful at their jobs and incredibly skilled, but being funny, like joking around with my son and joking around with each other, like the vibe was so lovely in the kids' area. It was just sort of a joy. So I just was like, I love you, I love you, I loved them all. They were just all amazing. So anyway, thank you to Philippa's book because I was awake to receive that phone call. It's a bloody good novel is a sort of shorter way of summarising what I've just said. And thank God Rex is okay. Anyway, let's talk about Philippa. I also love Philippa, by the way, because we chatted before in depth about loads of
3:16 Fearne Cotton? stuff and we've also had her daughter Flo on. We now just need Grayson because I'm a massive Grayson Perry fan, huge. So we're working on it. Philippa is obviously a fantastic psychotherapist. And actually, that was very much her job that she did for years, but she's now a writer, a journalist and just someone who's got a big brilliant brain. And I found her non-fiction books very useful in the past, but this is a really cool moment because she is now writing fiction too. And we talk about all sorts. We talk about the critical inner voice that we all have and how giving it a name can be quite useful. We also look at labels that we're giving in our life, actually in multiple ways.
4:00 Fearne Cotton? Labels other people have given us, like you're bossy, you're stupid, whatever in the past, but also even labels that we're diagnosed with and how that can be helpful maybe initially, but maybe not in the long term. You'll hear more about that because it's obviously quite a complex subject. And we talk about shame, which is obviously a topic that I always like talking about because I've dealt with it and I know lots of you do too. So I really hope that you find many points in this gorgeous chat really helpful.
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5:33 Speaker 05 Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.
5:35 Speaker 06 And I'm Marco Burchella.
5:37 Speaker 05 And this is Boots Off.
5:40 Speaker 06 We are friends who've spent a decade together, walking up mountains, across deserts, and along coastlines with some seriously awesome groups of humans.
5:48 Speaker 05 And something happens when you're out there, feet on the ground, surrounded by nature. The conversations just spill out of you.
5:54 Speaker 06 This series is about the adversities that lead to adventure.
5:58 Speaker 05 The adventures that lead to adversity.
6:00 Speaker 06 And how life can be one big adventure in itself.
6:03 Speaker 05 Listen every Thursday. Just search for Boots Off.
6:10 Fearne Cotton? All right, let's crack on with it. Here's the show.
6:34 Fearne Cotton? Philip, I'm so thrilled to see you again.
6:36 Speaker 02 I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
6:39 Fearne Cotton? It's so exciting. We were just talking off mic about you're in the middle of a pottery course.
6:43 Speaker 02 That's right, I am.
6:45 Fearne Cotton? That must be gorgeous.
6:46 Speaker 02 I can build things out of pottery, but I've never learnt how to throw. So now I'm at the wheel and I never realised it was so physical.
6:55 Fearne Cotton? Really?
6:55 Speaker 02 You have to put, my arms are aching from pushing the clay and trying to get it into the right shape. It's tough.
7:03 Fearne Cotton? I bet. But is it good to like a bit of a release, like you're getting some aggression into the clay?
7:07 Speaker 02 I've never been so tense in all my life. It's, no, not yet. I've only been doing it for two days.
7:14 Fearne Cotton? But how wonderful.
7:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, I need a massage.
7:17 Fearne Cotton? You need a massage.
7:18 Speaker 02 It's really, it's really tough.
7:20 Fearne Cotton? I really want to do an art course at some point. I love painting. I've always loved painting and it's like my sanity is painting. But I've never, I want to dedicate that time to painting one day and do a proper course.
7:31 Speaker 02 Instead of going on a beach holiday.
7:33 Fearne Cotton? Do that.
7:33 Speaker 02 Just go for a week's intensive somewhere and with, with a nice tutor and learn it. It's great. I'm having, I'm having quite a lot of fun with it.
7:44 Fearne Cotton? I bet you are. It's such a gorgeous thing to do.
7:47 Speaker 02 But it's not relaxing.
7:48 Fearne Cotton? No.
7:49 Speaker 02 No, it's hard.
7:50 Fearne Cotton? I don't think I understood how physical pottery was. I need to give it a go.
7:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's very physical.
7:55 Fearne Cotton? Well, I'm so glad that we can chat today and hang out because I haven't seen you since 2019.
8:01 Speaker 02 That's right. That was before, a year before the pandemic, I think.
8:04 Fearne Cotton? It was so bonkers to look back because I went through our podcast feed and I was sprawling back and like, nope, still not there. I was like, Philip, 2019. To me, that was maybe a couple of years ago, seven years ago.
8:17 Speaker 02 Seven years ago. I mean, seven years used to be such a long time. But now it's like last week.
8:24 Fearne Cotton? I know. It's terrifying.
8:26 Speaker 02 It's like catching up with old friends. I feel like, oh yeah, let's have lunch again. That'd be great. And then we say, oh my God, we last had lunch a year ago.
8:33 Fearne Cotton? I know. It's mad.
8:35 Speaker 02 Time speeds up.
8:37 Fearne Cotton? I mean, last time we met, we did a deep dive on your book, the book you wish your parents had read, which is a book that seemingly just lives on and on. A book that people are still so interested in and love reading and buying.
8:48 Speaker 02 People keep having children. And they need to know how to have relationships with them. So the book is still relevant.
8:55 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. I mean, you must still get approached a lot with, you know, parents coming up to you or kids of parents saying, this book has changed my life.
9:02 Speaker 02 Well, luckily I've got a Substack, so people can write to me with their problems about parenting or relationships or anything. So yes, they do keep coming up to me, either via email or in the street.
9:15 Fearne Cotton? Hmm. I mean, it remains, I'm, you know, obviously I have parents, I am a parent. It remains still one of the sort of most obviously important dynamics in my life, but the one that teaches me the most relentlessly. You know, you're constantly confronted with yourself and the things that trigger you, but also the things that make you feel great about yourself. It is just the most bonkers dynamic to deal with being a parent.
9:44 Speaker 02 It is. And you've written a book called Likeable, which is really relevant, actually, because you can't just be likeable to your kids.
9:54 Fearne Cotton? No.
9:55 Speaker 02 It's love plus boundaries. It's not either or.
9:59 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
9:59 Speaker 02 It's, it's got to be both. Otherwise you'd just be, well, steamrolled.
10:03 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. And also I think then your kids go off out into the world expecting like, everyone's just going to say yes to everything that I want to do. Or, you know, you're not then used to boundaries yourself if you go into the world without that.
10:13 Speaker 02 And you can't put down boundaries yourself unless you've had that demonstrated to you by your parents.
10:20 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, exactly.
10:21 Speaker 02 My daughter's incredibly good at boundaries.
10:24 Fearne Cotton? Really?
10:24 Speaker 02 A little bit too good sometimes. Not today, mum.
10:28 Fearne Cotton? Oh, okay. We've had Flo on the podcast.
10:31 Speaker 02 Oh, have you?
10:32 Fearne Cotton? Yes. Well, not only that, I painted her. Well, she came onto the podcast and then I painted a portrait of her.
10:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:39 Fearne Cotton? But we had such a great chat. I mean, she's an incredibly talented artist as well.
10:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, she is.
10:42 Fearne Cotton? And got married, was it last December?
10:45 Speaker 02 She got married last November.
10:46 Fearne Cotton? November.
10:47 Speaker 02 To a Scottish lass and they've just moved to Scotland.
10:52 Fearne Cotton? Wow.
10:53 Speaker 02 And I'm getting on a plane very soon to get in the way. Tell them where they should put their furniture.
11:00 Fearne Cotton? I love that.
11:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:02 Fearne Cotton? Oh, but that, I mean, the wedding looked gorgeous. I was looking at all the pictures online.
11:05 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah. It was, it was really good, except for one thing. Grayson, my husband, dad dancing, snapped his Achilles tendon.
11:16 Fearne Cotton? Yes. Going for it a bit too much.
11:18 Speaker 02 Going for it a little bit too much with a little bit too much alcohol in his system.
11:22 Fearne Cotton? Right.
11:23 Speaker 02 Didn't know his limits, I'm afraid. Snap, no tendon. And it's the slowest thing to heal in the body. It's much better if you break a bone.
11:32 Fearne Cotton? Oh, God.
11:33 Speaker 02 Because this takes about nine months to heal.
11:35 Fearne Cotton? Oh, God.
11:36 Speaker 02 And he gets out of the boot and he's told to do a lot of walking. You should never tell my husband to do a lot of something because he takes it literally. And he did so much walking that he, because he wanted to get better fast, that he's now got a stress fracture on his foot. And now he's got to go back into the boot.
11:53 Fearne Cotton? I mean, it's a sign of a good party.
11:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is. And, you know, the higher the number of hospital admissions, the better the party, for sure.
12:01 Fearne Cotton? I think so. It's so great. Hey, I loved reading this book.
12:05 Speaker 02 Oh, thank you.
12:07 Fearne Cotton? Oh, much. It's so brilliant. This is a fiction that you've written, Philippa. Shrink solves murder.
12:13 Speaker 02 Yep.
12:14 Fearne Cotton? And the protagonist, Pat, is expecting her 3pm to turn up.
12:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:18 Fearne Cotton? He doesn't. There's a suspected suicide, but she's assuming it's not suicide. And therefore she goes on this sort of treasure hunt of clues and trying to decipher what happens. I'm imagining as a, well, having a big therapeutic background, that actually having that sort of mindset, you're in, you sort of have got yourself in a good position to solve, if it is a potential murder, a murder. Or look for clues because you have to have, I'm imagining a very wide perspective on life and human behaviour, self-awareness.
12:50 Speaker 02 I think actually her, Pat's biggest advantage is that she knows how to rally the troops. She could not have solved that murder alone.
13:04 Speaker 02 And one thing psychotherapists are supposed to be good at is having relationships. And so it's her relationships with other people that working together, they, they get to the answer.
13:16 Fearne Cotton? Hmm, I love that. I love that.
13:19 Speaker 02 She didn't do it by herself.
13:21 Fearne Cotton? No, and there's so many things I love about Pat and I wonder how much crossover there is with yourself. I mean, whenever you write fiction, it's hard not to put lived experience or yourself in there.
13:31 Speaker 02 She is definitely an aspect of me. She is the person I kind of wish I was, but I'm not. Maybe I've got to read your book because um Pat does not worry about being likeable.
13:44 Fearne Cotton? Love that.
13:45 Speaker 02 She is the grumpiest woman you'll meet on the South Downs.
13:48 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
13:49 Speaker 02 And when you meet her on the South Downs, she'll probably tell you off for something.
13:53 Fearne Cotton? Well, she's very pissed off about someone leaving a Mars bar wrapper daily.
13:56 Speaker 02 Yes, that is a, that is a subplot, the Mars bar wrapper. That's another mystery that needs solving.
14:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:04 Fearne Cotton? But she loves cold water swimming, which is something that you love.
14:07 Speaker 02 Yes.
14:07 Fearne Cotton? Swimming in the sea. What benefits do you get from that? What do you love about it?
14:11 Speaker 02 You get really, really cold and it's so nice to warm up again. I'm, I'm not actually sure what benefits it gives you. I like moving my arms and legs in the water, but I actually would prefer if it was 30 degrees and not six degrees. But you have to, you have to go with what you can work with. It's nicer than swimming in a swimming pool because you're, you know, you're out in nature and stuff. But the downside is that it's cold, but you can get used to the cold.
14:37 Fearne Cotton? You can. And like you say, the relief is just such a glorious moment at the end.
14:41 Speaker 02 When you get out.
14:42 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. And you feel like you've achieved something. Yeah. When you're dry and warm and thinking back to the colder days, it is wonderful.
14:48 Speaker 02 It does get the blood pumping for sure.
14:50 Fearne Cotton? It really, it really, really does. So you, so you'd like, you're saying you'd like to be a bit more cantankerous like Pat?
14:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm working towards getting there. Yeah.
14:59 Fearne Cotton? I love that.
15:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. And the other thing about the book is that I've made some characters that I hope you enjoy hanging out with. Her friends, her frenemies, her enemies.
15:10 Fearne Cotton? Some are loathsome.
15:11 Speaker 02 Yes, they're fun though, aren't they?
15:12 Fearne Cotton? So fun.
15:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:14 Fearne Cotton? Imagining fun to write, loads of characters are fun to write.
15:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, they are.
15:17 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, because you can just put out all your like inner wishes.
15:20 Speaker 02 You can just imagine a friend of yours and, I say friend, and, and put them in the book and you know they're so vain, they're never going to recognise themselves.
15:31 Fearne Cotton? I love it.
15:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:32 Fearne Cotton? You've said not so much about this Pat, but if it's the same Pat in your book Couch Fiction, that you wanted to create a therapist character who was imperfect.
15:43 Speaker 02 Yes.
15:43 Fearne Cotton? Because we've all got this imagined idea that therapists are these perfect humans who just get how the world works and they're there to tell us how to live. And that's, that's not what you believe.
15:53 Speaker 02 And Couch Fiction was Pat Phillips, maybe 15 years ago. And she was an imperfect therapist then, and she's an imperfect therapist now. In fact, we have a session in the book with her, with her supervisor, who does quite a lot of trying to knock Pat back into some sort of therapeutic shape, rather than become a sleuth, yes.
16:17 Fearne Cotton? I love that mention of, of Pat meeting up with other therapists, because that is something that therapists do, right? It's essential that they have therapy.
16:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:26 Fearne Cotton? Did, did you do that? Do you still do that?
16:28 Speaker 02 I meet up once a year with 50 psychotherapists for a week. I like to get it all over, you know, in one week.
16:36 Fearne Cotton? Okay.
16:36 Speaker 02 And we all go to Mexico and we take over a convent and it's like a campus and we hang out and we do therapy on each other intensely for a week.
16:47 Fearne Cotton? Wow.
16:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's wonderful. I really enjoy it. Yeah.
16:51 Fearne Cotton? I can only imagine. I mean, therapy has absolutely changed my life, like in every way. I used to dip in and out of it and think, oh, just go. It was always like SOS moments. And then the last two years, I thought, I've got to give a more consistent approach a go and just see what happens. And my whole life's changed. I go every Wednesday.
17:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:12 Fearne Cotton? As much as I can on that, on that particular day. And it is something about going on even a day where you feel all right that seems to be the key.
17:21 Speaker 02 I think it's when you're feeling all right, you've got more power, energy to rise above your life and look down on it and observe yourself. And that's what's really useful. If you're in the middle of a really big feeling, all you've got is that really big feeling. But if you can separate yourself from the feeling and observe yourself having feeling, you realise you've got choices.
17:47 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
17:47 Speaker 02 That you don't realise you've got when you're, if you're right in the middle of it.
17:52 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, because when you're in it, you just think this is fact. This is, I have those moments of time where I'm like, this is shit and I am this, rather than, like you say, when you're maybe on a better day, you can go, oh, I have felt like that, or there's a bit of distance.
18:08 Speaker 02 Or, oh, I notice I'm talking to myself with a critical voice again. Oh, okay. Hi, whatever you want to call your critical voice, you know, Mrs. Bobkin or something. Just give it a silly name.
18:20 Fearne Cotton? Give it a comical name.
18:21 Speaker 02 Yeah. Hi, Sandra. Yeah. All right, Karen.
18:25 Fearne Cotton? I like a very human name.
18:27 Speaker 02 Apologies to all the Sandras and Karens. I love you all, but you know, you've just got to give your critical voice a name.
18:33 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
18:33 Speaker 02 And then it's, then it's separate from you and you don't take it as seriously.
18:39 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. I mean, I actually did a post about this on Instagram this morning because I could hear my critical voice piping up a bit over the Easter holidays. And my exact post was my tip of the day. Not that I know what I'm talking about, but my tip of the day from personal experience is be less of a cunt to yourself because we are so awful to ourselves.
19:02 Speaker 02 We are our own worst enemies.
19:04 Fearne Cotton? Awful.
19:04 Speaker 02 And our own worst critics.
19:06 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
19:07 Speaker 02 I have to have a lot of editors telling me, no, keep writing. Yeah. No, the book is good. Keep going. Because others, I go, is it any good? Is it? No, no, it's not. Apparently it's really good. Thanks very much.
19:22 Fearne Cotton? It's really good, but I think especially with fiction, what you're doing is asking a bunch of strangers to believe in a made up story.
19:29 Speaker 02 It's, I didn't realise that it was going to be so much more exposing than writing non-fiction. Because non-fiction, you're writing the truth, you, you put in examples from your own life. I mean, surely that's the most exposing thing. No, putting your imagination out on the page, that is exposing.
19:48 Fearne Cotton? Terrifying.
19:48 Speaker 02 That is the true you. That's what's, that's what's going on in your head all the time.
19:53 Fearne Cotton? Yes, exactly. And it, as I said, it's a big ask to go, and everybody else, please believe this as much as I do. And that's sort of vulnerability in hoping that they do. So say, you know, we could use this book as an example. You're in the middle of the book, you've got a bit of self doubt going on or a critical voice. What do you do with your knowledge and wisdom to override that?
20:14 Speaker 02 I just take no notice of it. I go, you know, hello Betty to the critical voice. Thanks very much. I'm sure you'd like me to stop now, but I'm going to go on even if I don't like it and I'm going to push through. So I do that and then I show it to someone and somebody encouraging, don't show it to your worst enemy. I show it to someone and they give me some encouragement. The people at my publishers are wonderful and very encouraging. And, you know, cheerleaders they are. It's really great.
20:46 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, we do need that. We need, when we can't find that positive voice ourselves, we, we have to find the right people.
20:53 Speaker 02 I mean, sometimes I feel like if I don't believe in me, I need to find people that do believe in me and they can just carry me over the river. Over the torrent till I get to the other side and then, oh, thanks guys. I mean, I've thanked them in the acknowledgements, my sort of like rallying team of friends and there's just support. Even if they don't know what's going on in the book. I'm reminded that my friends that have known me for a long time go, you do this with every single book you write. You always say, it's no good, it's no good. And then it goes on to be a bestseller. So will you shut up? I go, okay, thanks.
21:27 Fearne Cotton? There's a horrible little cycle, I think. Like, I've talked to friends of mine that are either right in the process at the same time as me, or we know that cycle well of, oh my god, I've got an idea, I'm so excited.
21:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:39 Fearne Cotton? It's so exciting, it's so exciting. And then either halfway through or in the edit, this is a pile of shit. I don't know even what this means anymore. What the hell is this? And you do need good people at that point to sort of salvage your confidence with
21:53 Speaker 02 You need carrying.
21:53 Fearne Cotton? You do.
21:54 Speaker 02 You need carrying. And even on my pottery course, right, I'm throwing pots for the first time, and I think it looks like a sort of wobbly egg cup. And the teacher comes along and goes, that's great, you're doing really well. And I go, really? Thanks very much. And I can carry on.
22:12 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
22:13 Speaker 02 And if she said, like, if she chimed with the voice in my head of saying, that's rubbish, I'd probably pack up my little wooden tools and leave.
22:21 Fearne Cotton? Yes. And I think, you know, so many of us lose confidence, maybe when we leave childhood, because somebody at some point has said to us, you're bad at that. You shouldn't
22:33 Speaker 02 I think if you look at children's drawings, you can see this, because children draw without any self-consciousness. This is my house, this is my mum, this is my cat, you know, circles with sticks out of them. And I don't know when it happened, seven, eight, nine, sometimes they just think, no, that's crap, that's no good.
22:53 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
22:54 Speaker 02 It's no good. And they stop drawing. And then they never get any better. But if they carry on drawing, you draw like a grown up in the end.
23:02 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. And also, you will enjoy it. Like, you're saying, you're starting pottery.
23:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:07 Fearne Cotton? You're not going to be good immediately starting something new, but to carry on doing something because it feels good, rather than the outcome must be amazing, that feels very important.
23:15 Speaker 02 I mean, especially as I can build things out of slabs in pottery, so I can make some great looking things in pottery. And here I am doing a new technique. And I just want to go, I know how to make this look better if I do my old way. But that's not the point. I'm learning a new technical skill.
23:30 Fearne Cotton? Yes. It's so good to learn new things.
23:32 Speaker 02 It's good for your brain.
23:33 Fearne Cotton? Try new things and put yourself in a position where you're ground zero. You don't know what you're doing. I think that's so important.
23:40 Speaker 02 And I think that if you were one of those children who were told, and no, you're not because you're a good artist. But you're told, don't bother drawing, you haven't got any talent. And you've stopped, you can start again, whatever age you are.
23:55 Fearne Cotton? But I think also.
23:56 Speaker 02 You can start at eighty, like Grandma Moses.
23:59 Fearne Cotton? Absolutely. I think it goes even further than outside of people critiquing what you're good at or not good at. When people give you a label, like in childhood, if someone says, you're being too loud, or you're cocky. Or why are you always the kid that does that thing? I think that stuff stays with you later in life. What's the way to start overriding that when you know you've got this label that you don't like about yourself?
24:26 Speaker 02 Like mine was show off.
24:28 Fearne Cotton? Right.
24:29 Speaker 02 So it was very difficult for me, I think, to do anything in public. In fact, I didn't publish my first book until I was fifty. You know, I worked as a psychotherapist behind closed doors and nobody knew what I got up to. And I was, I am a show off. I don't deny it. And so the show off part of me is what was like, why can't I show anybody what I do? Which is when I wrote Couch Fiction, which is a graphic novel about psychotherapy. And so I felt like now I've shown people what I can do. But what I found out by doing that book, that wasn't all that great at it actually. Because you had to write a book of truth, even if it's a book of fiction, otherwise it doesn't work.
25:10 Speaker 02 And I realised like, I'm only an average therapist. I'm not the greatest, I'm not a great therapist. But I thought, and that's good enough as well.
25:20 Fearne Cotton? I mean, you are a great therapist.
25:22 Speaker 02 I'm a therapist. No, I don't think I'm a great therapist. I mean, well, after working with forty nine other really great therapists.
25:33 Speaker 02 I realised that, you know, my talent is somewhere to go in that, in that respect.
25:38 Fearne Cotton? Do you really think that?
25:39 Speaker 02 Well, I think there's always room for improvement. Yeah, for sure.
25:42 Fearne Cotton? I mean, I've got so much from reading your books, I can't tell you.
25:46 Speaker 02 I'm not saying I'm not, but I'm probably better at writing about therapy than practising it. Because I get very impatient because I see the end goal and I kind of want to push my clients faster than they want to go to the end goal. And you shouldn't do that. You should go at the client's pace. So I do have the odd fault.
26:06 Fearne Cotton? Do you think in, you know, because not only with your psychotherapy, but you, you're, correct me if I'm wrong. Your initiation was working for the Samaritans back in the day. So that, you know, is, is another flavour of that also, learning how to talk to people, how to encourage people, how to help people recover from very tricky situations. Would you say over the course of your work in psychotherapy, there are very solid themes that come up again and again? And, you know, the circumstance will be different, but as humans, we all struggle with X, Y and Z.
26:41 Speaker 02 I've never met anyone who hasn't got an inner critic of some sort or other. And I think the difference between people is those that take the inner critic too seriously and become the inner critic. And those that can observe it and think, not today, thank you. I think that is a big theme for most people.
27:04 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, but how refreshing to know that everybody has that. Because I think we assume there are some people immune to it. They don't have it.
27:11 Speaker 02 Well, I just wonder where Donald Trump's inner critic is.
27:14 Fearne Cotton? Okay, he hasn't got one.
27:17 Speaker 02 And maybe if you haven't got one, you do go mad. I don't know.
27:22 Fearne Cotton? I think it is maybe a symptom of sociopathy.
27:25 Speaker 02 I mean, it's quite good to have a helpful critic, isn't it? So you have to know what is a self sabotaging inner critic? And what is quite useful feedback for doing better next time? And I think how you tell the difference is that a bad inner critic is a generalised, this is no good, this is terrible. Whereas a useful one is you got those bits right. This bit could do with a bit of fine tuning, but that bit's working well. If it's specific. Feedback about where you can improve and it's not a damning of your character or of the whole of you, then it's probably quite useful.
28:05 Fearne Cotton? I agree, because I think when it is that blanket coverage, you're shit. That's the thing that then stops you even bothering at all. Like, I'm leaving that, I'm not going to try that thing or do that thing. It's, it can be massively debilitating.
28:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:18 Fearne Cotton? When you've been in Mexico and you're working with these other therapists, what have you come away with? Is it, I don't know, more self-awareness or understanding about yourself? Or has it helped you heal from certain things?
28:32 Speaker 02 I think what I come away with is the more of ability to stay grounded in myself, rather than being a bit too much in my thoughts. So I think I get a little bit more in my body and be able to relate and respond from that place.
28:52 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
28:53 Speaker 02 I can all too easily, I'm a bit of an intellectual, so I can all too easily go up into my head and then miss the other person. Because really, we are bodies, you know, that's what we basically are. And although we're talking to each other with words, you know, we're also breathing together, sitting opposite to each other, we're in each other's space, we're breathing each other's air. So I think that body to body communication is really important. And if you're too much in your head, you can't receive the other person on a sort of bodily level. You know, when you walk into a room and there's an atmosphere, you go, hello, what's going on there?
29:39 Speaker 02 That's when it's an extreme body to body reaction. You're responding to the tension in other people's bodies. A word doesn't have to be spoken and you can sort of feel it. You go, hello, what's going on? And I think that can be, that reaction can be fine tuned all the way down to, you know, how do we feel together? And I think I come away with much better skills in that department, which I can forget the rest of the time.
30:07 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, I mean, it is, it's imperative when you're like reading a situation, reading a room. But I'm imagining. One step further is using that to your benefit when you're in a setting, I don't know, where you feel nervous or a setting where you feel intimidated, inferior. I've been in so many situations where I've felt inferior to a journalist interviewing me or something where I feel a bit triggered and you notice that your body language is curled up and in and you're actually, and actually if you can fake it till you make it, I guess really, and inhabit a body that feels relaxed and outward, it does help cognitively change things.
30:47 Speaker 02 I mean, a real easy way to do that is thinking, how am I breathing right now?
30:52 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
30:53 Speaker 02 And as soon as you do that, you usually slow down.
30:57 Fearne Cotton? Mmm.
30:58 Speaker 02 And get into the breath.
30:59 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
31:00 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's nice, isn't it?
31:02 Fearne Cotton? Oh my God, I love it. I used to hold my breath at the top when I was on the radio.
31:06 Speaker 02 Oh, did you?
31:07 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, and I was on the radio every bloody day and I would find myself.
31:10 Speaker 02 I never noticed. You sounded good to me.
31:13 Fearne Cotton? Oh my God, but you're like on tenterhooks. Don't, I don't want anything bad to happen, so I'm gonna hold my breath to freeze time, you know, and then as soon as you exhale, it is like the simplest way just to go, oh my God, like I'm safe. Everything's all right.
31:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:28 Fearne Cotton? I'm okay.
31:33 Speaker 05 Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.
31:35 Speaker 06 And I'm Marco Burchella.
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32:10 Fearne Cotton? What would you say are the things in your life story that have been recurrent? Where you're like, I'm in that cycle again, I'm doing that again. Like habits you've fallen into or, or cycles that you know aren't helpful in your life, that you've been able to kind of stop and check and go, there's room for change there?
32:29 Speaker 02 I think one of them is, I'm not good enough. That can come in and so it's really good to clock it and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm just acting as if I'm not good enough, rather than noticing that's what's happening and thinking, I'm probably good enough. So there's that, that one.
32:52 Fearne Cotton? I find that really surprising. I wasn't expecting you to say that.
32:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, and sometimes I can be shy. And the best way of me not being shy is to come out, talk to people, meet people, go on a pottery call, chat to people. It's practice. And I found out during the pandemic, when I didn't practise my social muscle, that it atrophied.
33:18 Fearne Cotton? Yep.
33:19 Speaker 02 So the first party I went to, which was a book launch, was my, it wasn't my best friends, who I was probably okay with. It was like colleagues, fellow writers, people I was really pleased to see and wanted to see. I just sort of got so shy, I couldn't cope with it. And so because of the lack of social practice, I'd, I'd, I'd gone back to being about 15.
33:46 Fearne Cotton? Wow.
33:47 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was bad.
33:50 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, I mean, I definitely got very hermity in the pandemic and I found it like a struggle. And also I had an operation at the end of 2024, was it four? I can't remember. Anyway, I was out, I didn't work for about six weeks and I didn't really see anyone. And then I had a work event. It was the first week back in January and I was like a rabbit in headlights, like, oh my God, all these people. And what's my face doing? Am I smiling? Am I grimacing? You know, and you, it is practice.
34:16 Speaker 02 Self-consciousness comes back.
34:18 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, of course.
34:20 Speaker 02 And normally I'm just interested in other people and don't think about being self-conscious. But that takes practice.
34:27 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
34:28 Speaker 02 And when I was out of practice, I was going, oh, do I eat a canopy? Oh, will that look ugly? Ah, you know, what? What a load of rubbish to fill your head with. Took me ages to get back, back into eating canopies unselfconsciously, you know.
34:48 Fearne Cotton? It's a big step.
34:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, thanks.
34:51 Fearne Cotton? When we look at that notion of not, not being good enough, I'm pretty sure that 90% of people listening to this, if not more, will go, well, I feel like that, or I have in the past felt like that. It's probably the number one thing that halts us from, again, trying something new, socialising altogether.
35:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:10 Fearne Cotton? Dating, you know, it's going to affect all areas of our life. How do we start to override that or to, is it again fake it till you make it? Because often there's not proof to go, oh, but I am good enough, you know, because it's not an evidence-based thing.
35:24 Speaker 02 The other thing is a silly question. Good enough or not good enough, it's not really relevant, is it?
35:30 Fearne Cotton? No, no.
35:31 Speaker 02 It's sort of like, you're here, you're allowed to be here. And some people have had more experience of some things than you have. And you've had more experience than some things that, that they have. You know, they might all be brilliant television producers or whatever they are. But you're a psychotherapist or
35:50 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
35:50 Speaker 02 You're a broadcaster or wherever you are, you know, you've got your area.
35:55 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
35:56 Speaker 02 You know your children better than they do, or whatever your thing of expertise is. You don't have to be expert at anything, but I just feel like we're all humans. And that's it really. We're, we're all human and we're all pretty much equal.
36:12 Fearne Cotton? We, I mean, we are. Do you think, is this quite a modern day concept, this like not being good enough thing? Because if I think about my grandmother's generation or my great grandma who I met, because she lived till she was like 95, I don't think that was necessarily a thought process. It certainly wasn't a conversation.
36:30 Speaker 02 By the time you get to 95, you're really.
36:32 Fearne Cotton? You don't give a shit.
36:33 Speaker 02 You're really owning it. My grandmother, aged 99 or something, I said, what's the advantage of your age? And she says, I can say whatever I want.
36:43 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, I love that.
36:45 Speaker 02 And I just thought, why not bring that forward a bit?
36:48 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
36:48 Speaker 02 Let's not wait till we're 99 before we say, I can say whatever I like.
36:53 Fearne Cotton? No, I mean, I've got lots of intergenerational friendships and my friends who are in their 70s, 80s, they're the ones that are like, I don't care and you will get to that point. But like you say, why are we waiting?
37:05 Speaker 02 Well, it might be something to do with estrogen.
37:08 Fearne Cotton? Right.
37:08 Speaker 02 Estrogen.
37:09 Fearne Cotton? Well, when that goes, we don't give a fuck.
37:10 Speaker 02 That's right. Estrogen is the hormone you've got to make sure you don't kill your children. It's the nice hormone.
37:20 Fearne Cotton? Right.
37:20 Speaker 02 It's along with oxytocin, it's the loving hormone. And when we go through the perimenopause and the menopause, it depletes and then it's much easier to give far fewer fucks.
37:32 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. How do we do that without these?
37:36 Speaker 02 Unfortunately, I was so bad with that estrogen, I was homicidal, but now I have the patches, so I'm still nice.
37:45 Fearne Cotton? You can't have it both ways.
37:46 Speaker 02 No, you can't.
37:47 Fearne Cotton? Sadly. I mean, as I said, therapy has been massively game changing for me, but I'm a lucky person who can afford to go to therapy. And we know that globally, this is an issue that we've got, is access to therapy. I mean, this is.
38:05 Speaker 02 Access to good therapy.
38:06 Fearne Cotton? To good therapy.
38:08 Speaker 02 Yeah.
38:09 Fearne Cotton? What do we do about that?
38:11 Speaker 02 Well, it's paying for it, isn't it? And if you can't pay for it, what you mentioned earlier is that every Wednesday you go. So what you have is a regular practice. Yeah. And I think regular structured practices can really help us. For instance, keeping a gratitude journal. Yeah. Sounds really simple, but if you do that every night, just after you've cleaned your teeth and before, and before you start reading your novel, just write down three things that you're grateful for today. It does over time, switch your mindset to noticing the good things as well as the shit things. Yeah. So there's that sort of practice.
38:56 Speaker 02 And also you can do mindfulness exercises, which sound really dull. And they are quite, I'm not, I'm not gonna lie. But I like to, once a week, sit down, no devices. I sit on the floor, actually, to keep myself awake. No devices, sit on the floor, back against the wall. And have next to me a pencil and paper. And any thought that comes in, I don't turn it into thinking, I keep it as a thought, just write it down. So it's sort of like, oh, I can hear clanking outside. So any old random shit. Any old random thought, all right, oh, mustn't forget that. Oh, let it go, let it go, any random thought.
39:41 Speaker 02 And then afterwards, you can have a look at those thoughts. And you have to do it for half an hour. And for the first quarter of an hour, I'm always angry that I'm doing the exercise. And then the last quarter of an hour, I really start to enjoy it and it goes really fast. Such an interesting, I've never hea-, you know, I've looked into lots of mindfulness. I've never heard of that one and I like this. It's, how to do it is in my book, How to Stay Sane. Hmm. Which has got many exercises that are good for self-therapy in it, including that one. And then you notice what your thoughts are and you can go, my goodness, I've had 25 self-critical thoughts, two practical thoughts, three thoughts about what I can sense.
40:28 Speaker 02 And then you can go, well, I could steer my mind a bit. So then you could do another exercise where you only notice uh what you can see, what you can hear, what you can taste, what you can smell and what you can touch. Like you can be aware of what the what the fluffy carpet feels like under my feet. I can be aware of what my hands feel like on my jeans. Now, this is not interesting, but it can get interesting because you just get into your senses. Um it's sort of uh the Gestaltists used to call it, leave your mind and come to your senses. Oh, I like that. Because it's about letting the chattering mind go.
41:13 Speaker 02 The other thing you can think about are things like, you can have thousands of thoughts a day. But if you classed one down and bring it down, you can make it into thinking. And you can choose whether you let go of that thought or bring it in to make it into thinking. We have choices about this. And if you sort of have some sort of regular practice where you notice your thoughts and notice what you want to do with them. It can be as good as therapy. I mean, it's a lot easier when you've got someone to work with about, you know, what's going on in your mind and unpacking your mind and seeing what you want to do with it. Unpack your mind, lay everything out, only put back what you need.
41:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, because we've got more autonomy than we believe. And what it's about is sort of journaling and things like that. What it's about is to become more self-aware. Because when we become more self-aware, we then got choices. Yeah. I've got a choice whether I do round in circles panic thinking or whether I come to my senses and notice what I can see, hear, smell, touch. And coming into your senses, if you say do that practice for like quarter of an hour, just what can I smell? It's quite fun to do it now. What can I smell? What can I hear?
42:40 Speaker 02 Oh, I think I can hear a buzzing sound, you know, it's, it's very calming. And it, and it shows you, you do have a choice about what you fill your head with.
42:49 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, we fill it with utter crap a lot of the time because we're on our phones and we're, I don't know, people have got opinions about our lives and we're taking that on and we're sort of bombarded by it.
43:02 Speaker 02 The phone unfortunately is a source of dopamine. Now, that gives you a sort of little thrill.
43:10 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
43:11 Speaker 02 But it's not the right sort of thrill. The right sort of thrill is the thrill I'm having now because I'm having a conversation with you. It's a contact thrill. And in the olden days, when we were a bit bored, we used to talk to the person next to us on the train or the bus.
43:28 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
43:29 Speaker 02 But now we're always on our phones because that's not a risk, that's easier and that's instant. Oh, you know, scrolling, in my case, lots of cats falling off buildings and things.
43:42 Fearne Cotton? Oh, same.
43:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, lovely. Yeah, nice. But, you know, 10 minutes a day, okay, but let's not forget the lost art of conversation.
43:51 Fearne Cotton? Yes.
43:53 Speaker 02 And what is so great about being on a pottery throwing course, everyone, is that you need both hands on the wheel. So there's no scrolling going on.
44:02 Fearne Cotton? None.
44:02 Speaker 02 So we're actually having, I'm having nice chats with strangers.
44:05 Fearne Cotton? That's so important.
44:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's really nice.
44:08 Fearne Cotton? And it is, like you say, so much rarer these days. I remember once I actually met an ex-boyfriend when I was a teenager because he used to get on the same train as me. That would never happen today because no one's looking at each other.
44:19 Speaker 02 You can't remember who's on the train with you now because you're just looking at Fern's Instagram.
44:24 Fearne Cotton? Exactly. We're just on these screens the whole time.
44:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. I mean, they are fun, but they, they are addictive and they're designed to be addictive. So just like you wouldn't drink too much, don't take too much of them in. I'm not saying put them down altogether because they are quite fun.
44:40 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, exactly.
44:41 Speaker 02 They are quite soothing.
44:42 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
44:43 Speaker 02 But they, it's not so much the Doing it that's damaging, I think, as what you're not doing when your hours are eaten up with that, what you are missing out on.
44:54 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, hugely.
44:55 Speaker 02 And it might be missing out on real contact with real people.
44:59 Fearne Cotton? Yeah. Oh, my God, it's just so important. I love, I'm gonna do that mindfulness exercise because I think, I know that if I get in a cycle, and it's usually an angry cycle, like I know where my head will go and it will be an angry thing.
45:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:15 Fearne Cotton? And I do have spontaneous moments where I go, I'm gonna choose to not dwell on that today or think about that. And as you say, like, bring it into your thinking.
45:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:24 Fearne Cotton? And would you say the majority of that is just actually practice in practising your autonomy? I am choosing to think about, okay, there's a situation going on that I don't like, but I'm gonna choose when and when it is relevant or beneficial to think about it.
45:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, don't have arguments with those people in your head over and over again.
45:43 Fearne Cotton? I don't sleep sometimes because of that. You know, that's where it goes, doesn't it?
45:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, we have got a choice. And I think if you put an hour a week to one side to notice how you're thinking, notice how that makes you feel, deciding what you want to do and practising that.
46:01 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
46:01 Speaker 02 It is a form of therapy.
46:04 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
46:04 Speaker 02 And you can do it with friends.
46:07 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
46:08 Speaker 02 You know, you don't have to have a qualified therapist to do it. It will help if you have my book, How to Stay Sane by Philippa Perry, because there are exercises that help you do self-therapy in that book.
46:21 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
46:23 Speaker 02 You know, that would help.
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46:58 Speaker 02 It's time.
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47:35 Fearne Cotton? The one thing I know that therapy has helped me with is saying things to somebody that, you know, I went, I tried lots of different therapists over the years, but I found one that it just works and it clicks.
47:47 Speaker 02 You know, that is the work there. Is finding a therapist that works. I had three before I found one that really worked.
47:56 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, I mean, I think that sometimes puts people off, doesn't it? Like, oh, it just didn't work. I didn't gel with them.
48:00 Speaker 02 No, that relationship didn't work.
48:02 Fearne Cotton? Hmm, I have found someone that, this person is just brilliant and obviously doesn't always say the things that I'm expecting or the things that I need to hear or want to hear, rather, I do need to hear them.
48:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, somebody who will challenge you nicely.
48:20 Fearne Cotton? Challenge me, absolutely. That's been one of the game changers is the sort of challenging of my beliefs and, and one of those has been around shame and feeling immense shame about certain things, voicing these things, and then that shame dissipating really quickly.
48:37 Speaker 02 Isn't it great how talking about shame makes it go away?
48:41 Fearne Cotton? It's mad.
48:41 Speaker 02 Shame really loves silence, really loves isolation.
48:46 Fearne Cotton? Loves it, loves it. And often, you know, I was very lucky that when I talked about certain things, the therapist that I had, and you could do this with a friend, I think, that you really trust.
48:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:57 Fearne Cotton? Is that they offer up something that they have felt ashamed about and you go, why are you ashamed about that? And it's all, the response is always, you know, you don't need to worry about that because we've built such a narrative.
49:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
49:09 Fearne Cotton? In our heads about it. But I think if you, you know, it took me a long time to say certain things. If I, there's one example I feel happy talking about. When I was in my teens and twenties, I had bulimia. And I couldn't even say the word because I didn't identify with it. That, I didn't have that, that, it wasn't that. It was something a bit different to that. Or this was just, it wasn't a, you know, a big issue. It was just something that I did and whatever. And then I started to talk to a friend about it because she admitted to me that she had dealt with it. And actually, I can tell you who that friend is because she's talked about it on here, Bryony Gordon, and she had talked about losing a tooth because of it. And I was like. Oh my God. Okay. Well, I got receded gums. And then it was like, oh, this is all out in the open. This is not something I need to.
49:55 Fearne Cotton? Hide and feel so awful about. And as soon as I started talking about it, I can talk about bulimia now without feeling any physical anything. Before I used to feel like.
50:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:04 Fearne Cotton? Tense and small and stressed out. And now I feel like I'm just talking about walking down the road to get a loaf of bread. But that took me years and years. And it keeps people in the shadows on their own. It could be for a whole lifetime about certain subjects.
50:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. After working at the Samaritans for a number of years, shame is probably the number one thing that makes people want to disappear themselves. Because it's unbearable and they think they're unbearable and they think they're unacceptable. But talking about it and having someone on the end of the phone going, oh yeah, I can understand why that felt like a good coping mechanism. Or whatever it was. Yeah, well, that makes sense that you did that. That worked for you for a while. You know, if you just accept someone when they're in the throes of shame. And you can have shame about all sorts of things like, oh, I don't really belong here. I don't really belong.
51:01 Speaker 02 When I did this, you know, big psychotherapy week with my colleagues, a lot of us were going, oh, I'm not sure whether I belong.
51:11 Speaker 02 And that's what we worked on.
51:12 Fearne Cotton? Mmm.
51:14 Speaker 02 And so interesting.
51:15 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
51:16 Speaker 02 That, you know, you can be an advanced psychotherapist and you can still think, do I really belong in this group of advanced psychotherapists?
51:25 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
51:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:26 Fearne Cotton? I mean, I think that's always so brilliantly myth busting when you hear about people the top of their game who go, I don't feel good enough. I don't feel like I've made it. You know, it's not, and it's, it's not just for certain people. It's like, most people feel like this.
51:39 Speaker 02 Do I belong?
51:39 Fearne Cotton? Do I belong? One of the interviews I love listening to recently was you being interviewed by Ryland.
51:46 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
51:47 Fearne Cotton? I love Ryland.
51:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's so cute.
51:49 Fearne Cotton? He's so great. And I just loved where the conversation went. And you talked about the first time that you had this sort of interaction with your husband Grayson, where before you'd had that belief of I'm not good enough, or
52:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:01 Fearne Cotton? whatever, however you were feeling in your dynamics. And you'd spilled a bunch of coffee everywhere.
52:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:07 Fearne Cotton? And that he was really sympathetic.
52:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:10 Fearne Cotton? Towards you.
52:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was, I was not used to that. That was right. I dropped a tray of coffee, right? And I immediately thought, oh, I've got to clean this up really quickly before anybody notices. That was my reaction. And he's thinking, where's my coffee? Comes out and goes, oh, you poor thing. And I think, oh, no one's ever reacted like that before. Most people are saying, you klutz, you know? So someone to say, oh, you poor thing. Not that I minded somebody saying, you klutz, but this was really different.
52:42 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
52:42 Speaker 02 And I thought, oh, he's helping me clear it up. Oh, he's making a fresh batch of coffee. Oh, I like this. Get used to this. This is nice. Yeah, I, I don't think I'd had that before.
52:54 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
52:54 Speaker 02 Not in my previous relationships, not in my family of origin. So to have someone be nice to me when I, when I've done something daft, uh, yeah, I'll have more of that, please.
53:07 Fearne Cotton? Did it take your brain a while to catch up to go, oh, and I deserve this?
53:11 Speaker 02 Oh, I never thought I deserved it. I always thought it was a lovely treat, but thank you for the suggestion. I'll try and take that on.
53:19 Speaker 02 I deserve it. No, I've never, never been a great one for deserving things. All in good time, phone. Give me a chance. I'm only 68. I'm nowhere near that 99 of finished yet.
53:31 Fearne Cotton? We'll get there, we'll get there. How important, I was having a very interesting chat, literally two days ago with a friend. I, I'm obviously, with what I do with this podcast, really interested in psychology and psychotherapy and, and also looking at childhood. And my friend who I was talking to is not. So I was sort of almost quizzing them about pathologising certain traits or things that they feel were problems in their life. I am probably too quick to pathologise every, my every move in life or look at what happened in my childhood or whatever and try and make connections. And how important do you think that is? Is it for everybody?
54:10 Speaker 02 I think it's interesting to know where things come from, but that's all it is. It's not necessarily useful. And it's not enough just to know why something is. It's not enough to know that you're shy because you always got told off for showing off or something. That is not useful in and of itself. What is useful is doing something different. It's changing your behaviour. That's what's useful. Changing your thought pattern or changing what you actually do, that's what's useful. But to cling on to your childhood or indeed your diagnosis as an excuse
54:55 Speaker 02 isn't going to change anything for you. So these, these things are useful in order to take the next step.
55:04 Fearne Cotton? Do you think everybody can change? Because some people will go, oh, I'm just like this. I'm just an anxious person.
55:10 Speaker 02 They probably get some comfort from it. They don't particularly want to change. It does take effort. Like, it does take practice. Changing a thought pattern is a bit like building some abs. You can't go to the gym, have one session and expect, you know, the toned body. You have to go three times a week for 45 minutes. And so it is with things like thought patterns. You have to practise. You have to practise noticing what they are. And deciding to change them.
55:43 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
55:44 Speaker 02 Or you can't change them, but observe them rather than be them, which is the first step to them shrinking.
55:50 Fearne Cotton? It's quite humbling as well, isn't it? Because if you realise you've got to change, you've got to have a look at the things you know aren't working, which is not always fun. But it's essential if you want to feel better.
55:58 Speaker 02 And sometimes you quite like the things that aren't working, you know. I, um, have I given up alcohol? No, I have not. Am I going to give up alcohol? Not if my doctor lets me still, still have a little bit, thanks very much. But when, uh, if and when the doctor says you can't have any more alcohol, then I would stop.
56:19 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
56:20 Speaker 02 You know, I, I could stop, but I haven't stopped. And maybe it is a bad habit.
56:25 Fearne Cotton? Hmm.
56:25 Speaker 02 But I really enjoy it.
56:27 Fearne Cotton? Oh God, me too.
56:28 Speaker 02 Do you?
56:28 Fearne Cotton? Oh yeah, I love a little drink. I had a period of sobriety, I don't even know why. Um, but it made me even more hermit-like, because I could, I've got the propensity to just stay at home. And actually, I love going out for dinner and having a couple of glasses of wine or a little cocktail and having a laugh and
56:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:45 Fearne Cotton? having that balance and not beating myself up the next day and just feeling a bit shit and it being okay. That's been a bit of a readdress in my life recently of just like getting that balance back a bit and going, I just kind of want to have a bit of fun.
56:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think all or nothing things, polarisations, they're not always a good idea.
57:03 Fearne Cotton? No, they're not.
57:03 Speaker 02 I think a little bit of what you fancy does you good.
57:07 Fearne Cotton? I agree. I mean, we very often hear in many different ways that there is a mental health epidemic going on, that this is, or even the word crisis is used. A, I guess, would you agree? And B, what are your thoughts on that? Why do you think we're in this mess?
57:23 Speaker 02 Uh, I would agree and I wouldn't agree.
57:27 Fearne Cotton? Okay.
57:28 Speaker 02 I think we've all got into phone addiction and we've all got into labels.
57:35 Speaker 02 And the trouble with a label is that it's a full stop. I can't help it, I've got bipolar. There you go. There's your label. And the full stop means that you stop exploring. You stop saying, how do I do this? You know, what are my triggers and what could I do to respond differently? You're not doing the work. You've just got the label and you're holding it up. And that isn't particularly helpful. It might make you feel better in the short term because it quietens the critical voice.
58:07 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
58:08 Speaker 02 But in the long term, it's, it's, you know, if you're behaving impulsively at the expense of your relationships, you're going to make your life difficult for yourself.
58:18 Fearne Cotton? Hmm. Yeah. I mean, what is our way out of it? If there is such a thing at this point in time, when technology is kind of, you know, more prevalent than ever.
58:28 Speaker 02 It's to slow down. Hmm. Slow down and notice what's happening to you. Um, sounds easy. And also have a look at your screen time. And if it's, if it's more than an hour on social media, have a word with yourself.
58:44 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
58:44 Speaker 02 If it's more than an hour on games, have a word with yourself and pick up a book. Likeable by Fern Cock.
58:52 Fearne Cotton? Any, any other books are available. Yeah, I mean, this is.
58:55 Speaker 02 By Philip Perry.
58:56 Fearne Cotton? This is such, uh, it's so enjoyable. I think having, fiction is so great because it is just pure escapism and it's such a great chance to ditch your life for a bit.
59:04 Speaker 02 Put jokes in it.
59:05 Fearne Cotton? Oh, it's really funny. It's funny and it's, you know, I'm not good with any dark subject matters, but you've managed to create a book that actually feels really jolly alongside quite a shit subject.
59:16 Speaker 02 Murder and jollity. Well, the thing is about a murder mystery book and there's, there's, you know, shrink solves murder. It does what it says on the tin there.
59:25 Fearne Cotton? Correct.
59:26 Speaker 02 The thing is about a murder mystery book is that it takes a very complex, terrible, the worst thing that can possibly happen problem and ties it up in a neat bow.
59:35 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
59:36 Speaker 02 And there's a beginning, a middle and an end. And wouldn't it be lovely if life was like that?
59:40 Fearne Cotton? Wouldn't it just?
59:41 Speaker 02 But we never know the ending. We never know what's going to happen.
59:44 Fearne Cotton? No, and that's why I guess hope's important. Got to be hopeful, otherwise.
59:48 Speaker 02 Who is this hope?
59:50 Fearne Cotton? I don't know, but I really like the sound of them. But we've got to have hope. We've got to have a bit of hope.
59:54 Speaker 02 I, I, I am hopeful. I can't help it.
59:58 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
59:59 Speaker 02 I could, I could do some work on that and become more pessimistic, but.
1:00:03 Fearne Cotton? Like Pat.
1:00:04 Speaker 02 But, you know. It's working for me.
1:00:06 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, I think I I'm I'm naturally hopeful, but I do keep it in mind. I think it's so important because when you're in a shit time, if it's not there, you're just like, what's the point? What's the point? You've got to have a bit of hope.
1:00:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, and all things pass. This too will pass.
1:00:23 Fearne Cotton? This too will pass. God, that's an important one.
1:00:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, this too will pass and perhaps I can make friends.
1:00:29 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
1:00:30 Speaker 02 Perhaps I could join the local
1:00:32 Fearne Cotton? Pottery Club.
1:00:34 Speaker 02 Local community pottery throwing class.
1:00:36 Fearne Cotton? I love it.
1:00:37 Speaker 02 Meet Phil, she's there.
1:00:40 Fearne Cotton? Before we send you back to pottery.
1:00:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:43 Fearne Cotton? There are a couple of things. First thing is, we are compiling a playlist of music.
1:00:47 Speaker 02 Ooh.
1:00:48 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
1:00:49 Speaker 02 Nobody warned me about this.
1:00:50 Fearne Cotton? No, we like to keep it spontaneous.
1:00:52 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:00:53 Fearne Cotton? If you were to put one song on there that makes you feel great, what would that song be?
1:00:56 Speaker 02 Well, you talked about hope. I've just done a podcast with Neil Brand called All About The Music, which I really enjoyed. I can only think of the songs that I I put on there, but Someday He'll Come Along, The Man I Love by Ella Fitzgerald.
1:01:12 Fearne Cotton? Oh, I love Ella.
1:01:13 Speaker 02 Can you sing that for me?
1:01:14 Fearne Cotton? Definitely not, but I'll put it on the playlist.
1:01:17 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:01:19 Speaker 02 You can cut this bit. Hang on.
1:01:21 Fearne Cotton? Okay.
1:01:21 Speaker 02 Let's see if I can do it. I haven't warmed up.
1:01:23 Fearne Cotton? No, no.
1:01:24 Speaker 02 Someday he'll come along, the man I love. And he'll be big and strong, the man I love. Anyway, it goes on like that.
1:01:39 Fearne Cotton? Yes.
1:01:40 Speaker 02 Anyway, Ella does it better, believe me.
1:01:42 Fearne Cotton? Oh, I love you in this song.
1:01:44 Speaker 02 Anyway, I hope you can edit that out.
1:01:46 Fearne Cotton? No, we're keeping that right here.
1:01:47 Speaker 02 Oh, no.
1:01:47 Fearne Cotton? And, Philippa Perry, where is your happy place?
1:01:51 Speaker 02 Oh, where? Oh, my God, I'm sorry to say, but the first thing that came up into my head when you said that was bed.
1:01:58 Fearne Cotton? Yeah.
1:01:58 Speaker 02 Bed.
1:01:59 Fearne Cotton? Bed's the best.
1:02:00 Speaker 02 Oh, bed. Oh, clean sheets. Oh, bed, clean pyjamas, clean sheets, freshly washed hair. Oh.
1:02:08 Fearne Cotton? Oh, I love it.
1:02:10 Speaker 02 And a really big bed, right? I want to do star shapes without touching anybody else, and that includes you, Kat.
1:02:16 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, Kat and Grayson better be another postcode over there.
1:02:18 Speaker 02 Okay, exactly.
1:02:19 Fearne Cotton? Oh, I love that. Yeah, bed is.
1:02:21 Speaker 02 Bed. Absolutely love my bed.
1:02:24 Fearne Cotton? Me too.
1:02:25 Speaker 02 I love getting into it, not that keen on getting out, which is a good preparation for death, isn't it?
1:02:33 Fearne Cotton? Talking of hope. Well, I've loved talking to you today. I so enjoyed this book.
1:02:38 Speaker 02 Thank you.
1:02:40 Fearne Cotton? It came at the perfect time. I was just needed a good bit of escapism and a really jolly good story and I loved it.
1:02:46 Speaker 02 Thank you, Fern. That's so kind. Thank you.
1:02:48 Fearne Cotton? And look, we've had you on, we've had Florence on, we now need your husband on.
1:02:52 Speaker 02 You better get Grayson on, yeah.
1:02:53 Fearne Cotton? Yeah, next on the list.
1:02:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:55 Fearne Cotton? Thank you, Philippa.
1:02:56 Speaker 02 Thank you, Fern.
1:02:58 Fearne Cotton? I loved that, for all the reasons that I hope you loved it. But one of them, because I got to luckily sit in a room with Philippa at the Happy Place Studios, is that I felt so calm afterwards. You know, after that moment where Philippa was like, "And just have like, and breathe." And I was like, "Oh my god, yeah, I'm really not breathing properly." You know, I think when I'm in the middle of a podcast, I'm so focused on like, "What am I saying next? What are they saying? What have I just picked up on? Where's this going next?" That I sort of forget to breathe. So I'm now feeling like 80% more chilled than I was before. She's just a wonderful person to spend time with and hopefully is now moulding a big lump of clay on a wheel. Is that the right terminology? Anyway, I love Philippa.
1:03:43 Fearne Cotton? And Philippa's novel, Shrink Solves Murder, is available from the 7th of May. If you want just a really good bit of like, I was about to say cosy murder, I don't think that's a thing, cosy crime, it really is. I don't like dark subject matters, but she manages to make it, as I said, like jolly and brilliant and mysterious. Well, I really hope that you haven't got too many plans later in the week because I'm going to be back with another huge guest in just a few days' time. We're going to be carrying on with that line of thought about menopause and giving fewer fucks as we age, which is really important. It's going to be a good one that you're going to love. In the meantime, a huge thank you again to Philippa, to the producer, Anushka Tate, at Happy Place Studios, and to you, I love ya.
1:04:55 Speaker 09 Hello, this is Susie Ruffel. And Maisie Adams. And together we host Big Kick Energy. Hey Mais, what is it? Only the best podcast ever. Yes! A comedy entertainment podcast with a focus on all things women's football, all things hilarious, all things friendship. It's a laugh is what it is, Ruffel. Yeah, and a fair bit of gossiping too. Oh, and a lovely bit of gossip. Chow down on the gossip. Nom nom nom nom nom. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Just need to search Big Kick Energy. Grab a knife and fork and tuck in, baby.
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