EP012 - COVID-19 - The Psychological Virus - Mark Bailey

So today we speak to Mark Bailey. Mark, you're a clinical psychotherapist for roughly 18 years. You work in private practice helping people suffering from a range of things, but primarily anxiety, depression, maybe PTSD and trauma. You studied at Regent's College in London. You were a senior producer on ITV shows like this Morning, which I didn't know about you. And you were the trainer on the UK version of the weight loss show Biggest Loser, which was shown around the world. Mark Bailey, welcome to the Whole Man Academy podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Now, first question we all throw at people is, how are you and where are you?

That's a good question. So I'm in central London and I'm really fortunate in the fact that I live quite close to where I work. So I've been seeing all my clients and patients recently in the last two and a half weeks on Skype or FaceTime or Zoom. But sometimes I'm coming into work once or twice a week just because a lot of my notes here. And also I'm lucky in that place, the position. I don't. I walk to work and I won't see another soul. It's just my office is on Regent street and it is just the most surreal thing now to walk down Regent street and I saw yesterday one street cleaner and that was it. And no buses, nothing else. And it's really quite a bizarre situation. So that's where I am and in terms of how I am, I think I'm alright, actually. It's such a weird situation. Everyone across the globe, what's going on. It's just one of the inconceivable things, I think, is that a month ago, none of us were really thinking about this. Certainly two months ago, before Christmas, I went on holiday to Cape Verde. Right at the beginning of February.

Yeah.

And I didn't even know about this other than obviously, what was going on in China. But it's easy when it's that side of the globe to think maybe it's their problem kind of thing, but also it doesn't affect us. Whereas now this really is every day beginning to fit more and more people closer to home.

Yeah, I think that's. You're so right that some of the people that we spoke to on the podcast, of course, even if you know you're fine, and maybe the people very close to you, a lot of us, it's our parents who are kind of in a firing line, as it were, and that's the difficulty, it's the uncertainty for us all, for them not being able to go out for 12 weeks.

Oh, absolutely. And it's really interesting how it raises a number of issues that you wouldn't normally necessarily think of. And like you, I'm sure so many people I've been on the phone to my parents and I think a lot of people from those older generations, their stoicism is great, but I think sometimes there's been this disbelief in what's going on and kind of ignorance about it with some people and maybe a desire not to believe it's the case and we won't be told what to do. And it's quite a shock for everyone. I think we're having to really oblige these regulations and laws that we never would have expected to have to abide by.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's a new dawn for us all, isn't it? Trying to cope with what's, you know, the rules and the frustration of the way some people have acted. I know for myself, some of my, some of my friends and people that I consider are well educated people but would still be posting pictures on their Instagram or their stories of them going out for unnecessary exercise and, or taking their kids for a picnic or doing stuff that I got really frustrated by because, you know, maybe again, maybe it doesn't affect you, but even in the last few days, you know, the media reported that a teenager, young teenager, has died. Now of course the interesting thing there is, although they may say they don't have underlying health conditions, you don't know what else is going on with that person. But of course it should remind us that a lot of people are thinking, oh well, it's just the old people. That doesn't mean that the old people are expendable. But this will touch many people, you know, the young people as well. And even if it doesn't kill them, it will have, it could have some effects on their, on their long term health.

It really will. And I think that it will have effects on all of us in ways that we can't even think of or understand now. Just like the changes we've had in the last month. It was only, must have been like 10 or 11 days ago when that phrase of social distancing came in. And I went to Tesco's near here on the way home and I saw these blocks of the cubes that the staff who are really in the firing line with this because they're so close to so many people, but they had drawn out these boxes and signs were up and I took A picture of one on my iPhone thinking this phrase wasn't even around two days ago. And now it's in a common language that I think most of us are hopefully getting to grips with and abiding by.

Well, let's hope so. We're going to jump into the. Into the effects on the coronavirus on us, specifically us men at the moment, and what you can do about it. But if we jump into just talking about yourself, how do you keep mentally strong either, firstly at this, this challenging time, but also because you're working with the clients who are having some, I'm guessing, some very, you know, very tough challenges. So how do you keep yourself mentally strong?

It's a really good question. I think as a therapist, it's one of the most fundamental things. You have to do your. All your training and all research and everything that you do, certainly in your earlier years. And we still train continually every year. We have a demand placed on us to do a certain amount of training to keep our skills up to spec and to develop them. But yet I'd say the foundation block is that you really have to keep yourself mentally strong because if you're not, even in really subtle ways, it will negatively impact clients. I think exercise for me has been for a long time now. So one of the main foundations for me in not just my physical, but my mental health, because I find it quite hard sometimes to get out of my thinking. I'm quite. I think. I don't know whether I'm that intelligent, but I think those two, not always the same thing, are they?

Yeah.

And actually I'm not one of those people that can just stop thinking. I'm one of those people that I have to direct my attention towards something deliberately. And for me, if I get out my head and into my body, that really, really helps me. So I kind of pump iron, traditionally. I love all that and I really, genuinely love the feel of it because it allows me to get out of my head and into my hands, my legs, and doing those things and just moving through different planes of movement. And interestingly, in mental health, there's been a lot of research in the last, especially 10 years, particularly with things like trauma, as well as anxiety and depression, where we know exercise is a really helpful curative thing, but it's also a protective factor as well. I think the problem with that is it's been conceptualized as you go to the gym and you go on a treadmill or you lift weights. And for many people, that really isn't the case. But I think Humans are designed with a balance both physical and mental. If we're able to move properly, we're able to get some outside space as well, which is really hard at the moment for people. That's a really difficult thing, especially in cities for people. And so I think that's one of those present considerations at the moment for all of us. But for me, exercise has been, I think, sometimes a saving grace and sometimes there is a really helpful thing.

So if you've either had a challenging day or at the end of one of those weeks for you, I've met you and you're a really solid guy. You know, you've. I'm trying to think better word than buff. And what I mean by it shows that you take your gym seriously. You can't get the body that you have by kind of just playing at it. It's obviously something you take, you know, take seriously and do often. So for you, how often will you hit the gym?

Five days a week, probably. I've had to. I'm getting older now, and it means that I can't do some of the things I used to be able to do.

None of us can.

No, not once you're into your 40s. My goodness, it changes. And I can see the sign for 50 soon. That's got me on lights around it. So I do do movement as much as I can every day. So even if that's walking, I'll walk to work. I'll make sure that I do that whether I feel like it or not, because I know I always feel better afterwards. And that's one of those interesting developments that we now know in a lot of mental health, that if we go not our mood, but what we need to do, that is a really helpful thing for us, is kind of. I kind of think it's denoting the most obvious thing, really. But it's still worth reminding us sometimes if we've had a bad day, we don't feel like doing certain things. But I know that it's good for me to do those things.

Yeah.

And exercise is one of those things, as I've got a bit older the last few years especially, I'm doing more things like mobility work as well. So it's not just the weights. I do mobility work and some stretching, which I don't particularly like. But again, I know I have to.

Actually, that's a good point. On our E letter that gets sent out at least weekly to all the guys that subscribe. I wrote the other day that, you know, most yoga guys should do some Weights and most guys that do weight should do some yoga.

Yeah, that's really interesting as well. I was talking to a physiotherapist about this and actually now they're seeing more and more yoga teachers with significant hip problems. And it's because essentially like many people in fitness, they're pushing themselves too far. And I think that's really interesting because nothing is. Everything's on a kind of spectrum where anything can go from functional to dysfunctional, mental or physical, any aspects of our life. And I think with yoga, yeah, absolutely. If we are able to get some balance, it's a very, it gives us greater strength.

Yeah, well, it's, I guess it's like you say at the end of the week, it's a coping mechanism. I mean we used to see that in the city. You know, guys either went to. You often found that it was slightly. The extreme guys either went to do exercise and that would be either heavy weights or endurance. And we're talking triathlon, ultra, etc. Or of course the other one was going to the pub and getting pissed or drugs or you know, whatever else they found. So I guess for all of us, as you say, it's a, you know, there's, it's, it's a coping mechanism. It's up to you to, to understand what level of it you need.

Yeah, it's really interesting because I was training, one of my buddies is a yoga teacher and he's also a bodybuilder as well. And I was training with him a few weeks ago and he's very, to meet him, he's real yogi. You know, he's really. I tell you what though, you see him pumping iron and he is fierce and there's an aggression in his eyes when he, his training. Then when he's finished he's kind of back to that yogi calm thing. Yeah, and that's, that's really interesting for me as well because I'm I think quite a calm, fairly passive person. But yeah, it's been very helpful for me to discover that aggression inside me because I think so. So commonly we label aggression as a bad and as a negative thing. And actually like anything again on the spectrum, it can be an incredibly life enhancing thing to have, you know, that aggression and drive and their energy. I think perhaps in places like the city it attracts, it can attract a certain kind of person and that mentality, that kind of group think in a sort of a cultural subculture if you like, can propel that idea. Yeah, we have to do this and we have to fight, we have to be aggressive all the time. And then you see that in people exercising as well. And that's where I think people can get injuries or that real imbalance in our life. And I think generally speaking, in mental health, there is this concept of if we're too rigid in a behavior or thought that can become really dysfunctional and unhelpful, if we allow ourselves some movement and some balance as well, that generally is helpful.

I guess that's if we had to sum that up. It is about finding balance and whilst we're on the kind of moving away from the fitness side of it. But my question was also, you've been to one of our Whole Man Academy events, and we were partnering with you for the manxiety workshops, which are going to, unsurprisingly, help guys with anxiety. So why. Why did you get involved with the whole Mountain Academy and what was it about it that kind of drew you into our web of fun?

I think. Well, it was Matthew who first approached me and he, I think, known of my work anyway, as a therapist. And what really I came to the first one, I think it was last May. Yes, it was last May, just after I came back from holiday. And it was just really interesting for me and really encouraging to see men of all different shapes, sizes and backgrounds talk about emotions and talk about their experiences in a really candid way, but also one that was uplifting and hopeful as well. So I remember one of the speakers who talked of his nervous breakdown, and he did it in such an eloquent way. And you saw a person who had really, I think it's fair to say, sort of things that came crushing down for him. And he'd been able to rebuild not just his life, but his expectations of life as well in a very different way. I think. So commonly we don't see that with men. I think women traditionally are really great at talking about, say, emotions. But men, I think, find it a lot harder, I hope. And with something like Olemad Academy, I hope that that's changing.

Why do you think that is, Mark? Is it through the way we've been brought up, or you think it's the media? And what would you point towards?

Is there a reason? I think it's all of those and more. I think that what tends to happen is a bit like what's happening with coronavirus as well. We see that there are two viruses going on at the moment. The actual pandemic itself and then the psychological virus that happens around it, where we follow each other. And there's all kinds of studies in psychology. We think of those famous white coat studies with Milgram, for example, where he got people to administer electric shocks based on their expectations and things. We see so many examples of group think. And I think in mental health, we see that as well. On how we think of, say, something like depression.

Yeah.

How we think of men with depression. So there are all kinds of layers to this and a lot of it is based on our expectations. What can we talk about? What. What should we probably keep to ourselves and not share? And gradually I think that that is changing and the stigma attached to mental health is hopefully lowering as well. So I think also our backgrounds and even the type of school that we went to, sometimes big boys don't cry and all that.

Yeah, it's a hot topic at the moment. Not only kind of, let's say, the men's mental health, I mean, mental health in general, but we're focusing on the men here. But obviously with the coronavirus, kind of really, it's flipped most people's world upside down, with people mostly staying at home. And if you are going out to work, which some people might think, well, at least you're lucky because you're earning money. But I bet it's bloody scary if you're in a city. It's fine if you're in the countryside. So going on to the coronavirus at the moment, what do you think the main effects of the coronavirus are on the guys that are listening to this for their mental health?

I think there'll be a number of them. I think there'll be a lot. And that's probably overall the biggest concern for people in a way, the sheer scale of this and the level of uncertainty. And it really does like, I think what's happening at the moment is any neurosis or any problem that we have, even if we have done quite a lot of work on that, it's like getting a small stamp and then projecting it onto a massive wall. So we see all our idiosyncrasies and also our Achilles heels big time. But I also think that there's a lot of opportunity in that, to be honest, I think there's. Out of this, I think some. And I'm sensitive saying this because, of course, as this unfolds, and it will unfold in ways that we don't expect, I'm saying in the light of the considerable distress that it's causing people and. And more people as well, I think in any frankly, horrible situation, however horrible it is, there is Also positive and growth that can come out of this. And I say this as someone that works in trauma. And I love working with people where they can overcome and heal from their trauma. It's not easy work, but it's incredibly rewarding, I have to be honest, because I see such amazing strengths and tenacity and resilience in human beings as they develop from real significant problems in their lives. And one thing you often never hear of, we hear, for example, of ptsd, Post Traumatic Stress disorder. What we often don't hear of is Post Traumatic stress growth. And this is.

I've never heard that term.

Yeah, it came about after. I don't know if you're old enough to remember the Zeebrugge ferry disaster. Yes.

How old are you, Mark?

I'm 49 now.

I'm nearly 42, so I'm not that. Not that far behind.

Okay. So, yeah, I was, I think, in my. I must have been in my teens, in early teens. And it was a horrific thing. Essentially, the back doors of a ferry going to Zeebrugge, or rather out of Zeebrugge, didn't close properly, and the ferry sank. And with the loss of many lives and also the. A lot of survivors who were significantly distressed from that. So we had the trauma for people, the survivors of that and seeing their loved ones die. We also know from research that afterwards, following up with some of those people, many of those survivors, a year, five years, and then 10 years, I think it was beyond that, that many of them had had a different outlook on life as a result, that life is for living, and that there was a positive legacy from it, that things that they had been really consumed by before didn't matter to them. You know, that kind of stuff that, you know, the everyday small things that seem to get to us didn't care about that at all. And I think that through any really difficult, horrible situation, I have seen people really not just heal from that, but significantly grow as well and change in ways that they may not have done without that problem.

Wow. It's such a great thing to hear because everybody knows what PTSD is, or most of us. But I really mean, you know, I work in this space, not in a clinical environment as such, but hopefully understanding something about it. And I have never heard that before. I guess for me, I would try and sum up as I've heard the term when your worst day can sometimes be your best day.

Yeah. And I think as a society now we're going through. And it's not to say this isn't really horrible and crap, because it is, and it's dire for some people. It's also, as a society and a globe, I think this could offer lots of opportunities. I have a feeling, and I really hope so, and I cross my fingers, that what's happening now will show people how incredibly, incredibly important the NHS is. I'm sure there have been mistakes along the way, but my goodness, I don't think. I wouldn't want to be a politician or a scientist in charge of what's going on at the moment, but I think it might secure the nhs. I really hope so, personally, because for all its faults, I have to say it's a hell of a lot better than the American model. And we'll look over there and we'll see what happens when you allow money to overtake health care.

Yeah, Yeah. I guess none of us can see the, you know, further down the line, the effect this is going to have on some people. Would you consider that then it might sound a bit too simplistic, but that maybe coming out of this, that people will be. Should maybe have a higher level of gratitude?

That's so interesting you say that, because when it first happened, I don't use Instagram too much. I do use it a little bit, and I use it for work, but I also use it just to recreationally look at. But I limit it to like, five minutes a day because I find it helpful. Beyond that, which is a realization, because it never came with a manual, we've had to kind of learn how to use these technologies on the hook, and we are part of the experiment. But I remember looking Instagram thinking, I wonder whether there'll be lots of pictures of people posting selfies. And I hate to label people, but this kind of vain thing that can come from Instagram sometimes with some people. And I think that is part of an unconscious culture that we've had of acquisitive society, that nothing's ever good enough, that I have to be better, that I'm not enough. And what's happened is it's taken our focus for so many in the Western world, the developed world, away from what we actually have now. And suddenly, like in a very short space of time, what's called a gestalt shift in therapy, which I don't know whether you've ever seen that picture of the kind of old lady with a hook nose, but then if you move slightly, you see now a really beautiful woman. Yes, that's. The idea came from something called gestalt therapy, which is a sharp change of focus, essentially. And we've had that. We just had this real sharp change of focus of Wow. I actually, you know, for many people there is some really great things already in my life and one day, and it will happen by surprise for many of us or shock for many of us like this, it could just be gone. So I hope that a legacy of this. I really hope that a legacy for everyone might be enjoying what we actually have while we have it.

Maybe people should kind of write that down and you know, just have a look at it maybe at the start or the end of each day.

Yeah, I know. To be honest, I have, I really have. I'm like, I've stopped myself and just like this is. I'm so lucky. I'm so blessed and so lucky in so many ways. And I think it kind of. It changes people's focus of attention to the fundamental, the most basic important things in life. And I think for most people that's not about clothes, that's not about money. They're lovely things for people. So sometimes. But it's our family, it's our friends, it's our freedom.

Yeah, yeah, I think I'm not. I use a gratitude journal, which is one. An app. So it, you know, instead of me having to remember it automatically comes at 6:45 in the morning and late at night just to kind of, you know, give you that tap on the shoulder. Otherwise you forget to be grateful. You're so busy, you forget.

There's one I found because I've used techniques like that with lots of clients over the years. And that's one of the things in mental health. It never ceases to surprise me that the most simple things can be the most effective. We do not. I think sometimes we think of mental health being very Freudian and deep and analytical and I'm not poo pooing that. But I am saying that actually simple is really good and it really works. But one of the things I discovered an app a few months ago and it's three good things. And all you do is. And it's a technique I've used for, with lots of clients over the years. And you just at the end of the day say, what are three good things? And I think right now for people, especially with the anxiety around coronavirus, that is an especially useful thing because it makes us shift our focus, that gestalt of attention to what is good about today. And so I went through to supermarket. I spent my life in Tesco's, I think, But I went in there earlier today and I got some salad and an apple and the shelves are full again. And yet a week ago, all the story was we're running out of everything, not just toilet roll. And it's like half a second. We're really lucky. I've been to a few different countries around the world and some in Africa and done some work over there. And I remember, you know, you go to an Ethiopian market, not supermarket, but an Ethiopian shop, and you're lucky if there are one or two products in there. So that's that gratitude thing again.

I think that's so important. It's certainly something that we gently tried to put across to the guys who are part of the whole Man Academy. No one wants to necessarily have it kind of forced upon them, as, you know, you must be grateful. But you know what, there's scientific research to show. It's not just us making up that it is a real benefit. And I consider that. And another reason why we talk to you, I consider that part of a toolkit for life, for a man, and again, for everybody.

Without doubt, without doubt.

Well, it's funny you brought up Instagram, because that was one of the things we were going to move on to is I've noticed seeing some of the posts from the guys who follow the whole man academy, or my personal account is that you'll see people talking a lot more about anxiety, depression and not necessarily PTSD at the moment, but maybe in months to come. We don't know how bad this will get. So for a guy, let's pick those first two, which is, you know, anxiety and depression. If a guy's having those feelings at the moment, I mean, I'm not too about suicidal, but I'm talking about, you know, he's maybe struggling. Where would you even begin to say, right, let's, let's do one or two or three, you know, as simple as things as possible to help these guys.

It's a great, really, really great question. And I've just been writing an article about exactly this because I think that there's a time to look very deeply into why we might think in certain ways, but also now might be the time when we just do some really simple stuff.

Yeah.

And I think the number and loads of research has been done on this and actually, I think an uplifting thing is we often don't need to do a huge amount of change to make quite a marked positive effect in reducing anxiety and change and reducing depression as well. And I think often those two things can be linked. There's definitely link between anxiety and depression. And one can follow the other and they can kind of. They're uncomfortable bedfellows, I think, sometimes. But with anxiety and depression, actually, I think if we're able to accept our anxiety, otherwise what we have is we have two problems. And I think this is especially pertinent for men because this cultural idea that I can't be anxious. And I know that I have had pulses of anxiety over the last two weeks. I don't know whether you have, but I know I have thinking, what will happen with my business? Will my partner be okay, will my parents be okay, will his mum be okay? All these things. And so you get these pulses. If I were to kind of say, you shouldn't have those, you shouldn't be anxious about this. I now have two problems. It's like stacking cushions. I've got the problem of anxiety and then I've got the kind of shame or embarrassment of this. And when that happens, what we tend to do is we have these parts of us, one that feels anxious and fearful. And there's another part that is kind of punitive and angry with ourselves for feeling that way. So there's kind of this conflict.

Yeah.

Sometimes you see this represented in the real world outside of ourselves, in families or in business where you might have a boss, hate, for example, who's overly critical, punitive. So the easiest thing is to reduce this path and just to say, look, let's just take away the criticism. It's really understandable and acceptable that you, like everyone else, will have anxiety, some people more than others. It's also worth knowing in mental health that there are a number of vulnerability factors that lead to anxiety. Some of it can just be brain wiring. Some of it's our background, some of its previous life experience, and especially adverse experience in childhood and adolescence that will lead to a greater likelihood of some anxiety. So I think the first thing is just be accepting of yourself. Don't beat yourself up for this. And if we can speak to ourselves how we would speak to a friend in a really kind and encouraging way, that's a, I think, a good benchmark. Because often we're a lot kinder to other people than we are to ourselves.

Yes.

I think the second thing is if we remember, anxiety is always future based. So it's a really interesting way of looking at anxiety. I think this that came about from a lot of work from cognitive behavioral therapy that we. Anxiety is essentially a perception, so kind of like an internalized cinema of a idea of threat to us in the future. So it differs in that way, from worry and stress that are in and of the moment. Anxiety is my cinematic, kind of catastrophic idea, if you like, of me being threatened in some way in the future.

So someone's running a movie in their mind of what might happen.

Yeah. And that's why anxiety, particularly when we think of panic attacks and general anxiety or social anxiety, those three types, that's why they are such rich whole body experiences. You know, we don't just think anxious, we feel anxious. And it is because the body is responding. Interestingly, what we can do is we kind of know that in terms of arrows up between the body and the brain, there are more arrows that can go up than down when it comes to anxiety loops. So actually just really simple things like breathing and also just grounding ourselves. They may sound a bit New Agey and a bit yogi and all the rest, but I promise that they work.

How do you ground yourself, Michael?

I learned a really simple good technique on a course donkeys years ago. And if you were standing up or even sitting down, just feel your feet. Very often when we're anxious, everything's up here. And also we've kind of got our eyes shut to what's actually happening around us. So some good ways of grounding ourselves are feel your feet on the ground where you are now. Focus on what is safe and what is stable and what is secure in the next minute. Like in here, in the now, not in an hour's time, not in two days time, especially at the moment, because things are evolving, things are changing, and that might be too much to think of. So if we just come back to the here and the now and just by focusing on our breathing and just also with our breathing, often we're quite shallow and superficial. And especially when we're anxious, we are. That's all we are when we're anxious. So that creates this kind of loop that exacerbates. So if we change our breathing and just breathe in, not just through the diaphragm, but kind of the whole ribcage and also the back of the rib cage as well. So we kind of allow expansive breathing. We don't breathe too deeply because that can lead to problems, actually, because it kind of makes it a bit harder to attain, but just gradually deeper breathing and just center yourself in the here and the now, just on things. Two things that you could hear, for example, and maybe one or two things that you can see and then just one or two things that you could feel. So it could be your feet or it could be your hands. And just come into the here and the now. I think just spending a bit of time on that is helpful.

I think that that is so helpful because it's something that's easy to remember and you know, it doesn't matter who's listening to that and when. Even for me now if that would allow me firstly to apply it to myself if I did feel anxious, but also hopefully to explain it in a good way to a friend if they were having that feeling of anxiety.

Would you.

I was trying to think of the best way to kind of package that up. Would you call it maybe encouraging someone to stay in the moment?

Yeah, yeah. It's staying in the moment and also tuning our awareness to what is actually safe in the moment. I think this kind of work is used a lot with people when they have panic attacks particularly and know also in the case of say panic attacks that they simply can't last that long because you don't have enough adrenaline. There isn't enough adrenaline in your body for panic attacks. Alarm. So people often conceive that they're going to die, say in a panic attack. No one's ever died of a panic attack. I know it really feels like that because I've had one and it feels like you're going to. But just having. And it can feel hard to get that next breath. But just by focusing in the moment you will get your breath back and you will be able to come into the here and the now. Because I think the other thing, without rushing too far forward, I think the other thing that's helpful here is it brings into the idea, into our idea of regulation and emotional regulation as well, which is a fundamental thing of psychological well being that when our brain is in this anxious state, frankly we can't use our thinking. We. It's not really going to be of any help for us because we're in a highly charged, reactive and frightened state.

Yeah.

So one of the helpful things, I kind of think of them like 3am Thoughts in the fact that I've discovered and I don't know whether this is true for everyone. I don't know whether you feel like this, but I can't trust any thought I have at 3am they're just useless.

Yeah, yeah.

Nothing good has ever come from a 3am thought because my brain is in the wrong gear. And if I woke up and had a 3am thought, chances are it might be fearful at the moment. So just knowing that I can think about this another time, I don't have to think about it now is probably the third idea that I would propose.

That's great because I know that for. Again, some of the people I know that have either had issues with depression and, or anxiety, it's reached a level of frustration mostly maybe at night when they can't get to sleep and they're kind of left alone in their thoughts. Because when you've got TV and distractions and work and people. But when you say guess what, it's just you in a dark room now allowing yourself to have that, hey, this is a 3am thought that can wait for now.

And I think it runs counter. Sometimes this runs counter to what people might expect in therapy in the fact that when we talk about people talk with clients and we ask them about their thinking, we do it in a very particular way and it's kind of anti, anti rumination. So we're not going, we're very deliberately not going around in circles. And I will fly questions into clients that they probably least expect to be honest in order to change the path of where the thought is going between us. I hope in a helpful way. And we always find our way through. And it comes up with that idea that thinking is not always good for us as a concept. I think that is really remarkably helpful and it's used a lot in mental health and it helps us get that distance between us and our thoughts. So when we've got anxiety and depression, we are in our thoughts. If we're able to do that thing where we are able to look at our thoughts, that gives us some distance and a bit of perspective. But we're not also beholden to them either.

Sure, that's really interesting. I spoke to David Key, who is a life coach yesterday and some of the training I'd worked on with him was. I guess it's different ways of trying to make it easy for people to see what you're trying to explain to them. So for us it would be thinking of your thoughts as clouds going across the sky.

That was just a metaphor I use. Yeah.

And you can choose which ones. You know you're gonna have dark clouds, you're gonna have some days with maybe no clouds. It's a lovely sunny day. There might be storms, but understand that each will pass and you know, clear sky will come again.

Yeah. And I think that maybe because we live in such a fast paced world and our brains, we're capable, all of us a huge creativity sometimes or insight or really being ingenious and clever many people, but actually we're also the same humans that can think in utterly Ridiculous ways. You know, a question you asked me before we were recording about light bulb moments, actually, and I just thought of. Well, I couldn't really think of any when you asked me that question. I've had, like, flickers along the way rather than. But a light bulb moment I have actually remembered is the moment I realized how ridiculous my thoughts are sometimes. Yeah. And how silly or unhelpful. And that I have found profoundly useful because I think, okay, I can't always trust my thinking. That doesn't mean I'm insane. It actually is the mark of sanity to know that we don't have to run with everything that we have.

God, that's. Again, for the guys listening. It's those little things where, you know, understanding that, you know, you're. I mean, your thoughts control your feelings, but you can't control your thoughts, especially the initial thoughts, you know, you can. You can have. You can. I was thinking of it as, let's say you and I meeting in the pub tonight, which I wish we could do instead of being a lockdown. But, you know, I walk in in a sparkly suit with a big purple hat on, and whether you like it or not, your first thought might be, God, he looks like a dick. But you haven't decided on that thought, and you can't control that as it first comes in. And so therefore, people worrying about what other people think about them is a hamster wheel to nowhere.

Totally. And we know that anxiety rates are significantly higher now than they have been. Been. I think, certainly in my lifetime research says that they have got much higher. And I'm. I guess, like many people, the research is not yet in nothing that we can really definitely say, oh, it's that. But I think there are a number of things. And one of the things that has crossed my mind is the way that in our society, there's lots of adversarial opinion thrown around, not just around Brexit, but in America. We see that with Trump and his opponent and his critics, and we see it all around the world with quite polar opposite points of view. And I think it's kind of propagated this idea that thought is incredibly important all the time. And actually it's not. It's remarkably helpful. Yeah. But also it doesn't. It's a part of being human. And I was walking to work a couple of weeks ago and I saw that. I love dogs. And I saw this bulldog. It's really cute, that French bulldog. And it was walking along and it just stopped and rolled over, scratched its back. On the pavement for a few seconds and then carried on. It didn't care about what other people or dogs thought of it. It just did what it wanted and there's no thought in there. It comes back to this story of Freud who I think someone said, Mr. Freud, I see you're smoking a cigar. Is that oral fixation? Because that was one of his big things and he said, no, it's just a cigar.

Yeah, it's simpler than that.

So if you walk in a pub in a sparkly suit, I think our culture might have this idea of let's analyze this and see what that's about. It could just be you wearing a sparkly suit. It doesn't need say anything about anyone.

Yeah.

So when we're anxious it doesn't need to say anything about us.

People should write that one down as well.

Yeah. And that's where we get that distance from the thoughts. Because a lot in cognitive behavioral therapy, certainly we spend a fair amount of time helping people analyze thoughts, but in quite different, in a constructive way and just challenging them and deconstructing. I know it's the same as life coaching as well, but actually sometimes if we just take our thoughts less seriously, what happens is our anxiety will reduce.

Yeah. Now that's, it's. There's so much food for thought in this, I think because a lot of people we're about to touch this but you know, read a lot of social or you know, see a lot of social media, read posts and unfortunately some of it isn't particularly helpful in my view. Go on to the media at the moment. Would you say that absorbing too much media, especially when we talk about the virus, is, I try not to use the word toxic. Let's just say not good for you because at the moment you can switch on and basically just watch how many people have died across the world. Update every five minutes. What does that do to us as a man in, you know, in this virus?

Well, I think so if we maybe hold the idea as well that we live in a very fast moving society. We're actually. And again, I don't think I'll be in the place where I'm referring to myself being old, but you may be too young to remember. Anthony.

Yes, dad.

Gosh, that was quite something. When someone referred to me as a daddy and I was like, what?

Takes some getting used to.

But I remember like when I was a kid when the GPO or BT in those days came round to change the phone, I think we had to wait like a month before anyone came around and then they didn't come when they said they would. Then you get a letter saying there's another day that's very different from the society we have now where we are so ingrained and used to instant gratification and instant change. And I think that kind of plays into this, how we use and how we consume media as well, that we have it on our phone. And this is like a boundary that is so invisible, but that we don't have a firm boundary between us and the world anymore. It's in our pocket. We're walking down the street and we're reading about stuff in other parts of the world that frankly, you know, we may not have even known existed before we see it on our news app. So I think we do have to limit the amount of news that we have. And even if you strip away all the psychology behind that to the bare bones and say it's a conditioning response thing. And I was reminded of this then I cycled to the gym in the middle of my day and then cycled back across the other side of the West End and I put the Boris or the Santander bike in the back in the thing and I walked to my office and I'll just go and check my emails. I thought, no, don't do that. Just, just wait. And you can do it when you're at your desk. If you're going to help people with mindfulness, do some yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I put my phone back in my pocket and three seconds later I went out to go get the phone again. And I realized I just got this Pavlovian conditioning there. It wasn't. I didn't want to see anything. I just had this thing of my hand now moves like this with my phone. So I think if we can just limit the social media and also check on those Pavlovian conditions that we have, where we got used to, to seeing a lot of media, a lot, because there is a huge amount of it and everything has a threshold beyond which it becomes dysfunctional. So the media will not set that level for us. We have to do it ourselves. I think there is an interesting thing here of. He talked earlier about safety mechanisms or coping mechanisms rather. And I think that consuming media might be one of those for us. And the fact that we. When something doesn't work for us, the bizarre counterintuitive thing is that we can actually end up doing more of it, which I think will relate in different ways. Yeah, we know it doesn't help us, but we're Kind of searching for something by doing it. There's some kind of positive intention that we're seeking. And I think many people with the media with coronavirus at the moment are still searching for this quick resolution, that this will just be over. It's like a bad dream and everything will be okay and back to normal again. Well, I don't think it will. And it will take some time for the effects to change anyway. I think this is a long burn. So just kind of accepting that means that we don't have to hurry hoping that there will be a resolution and there won't be.

It's so interesting because it's, you know, we're talking about the virus and you've just hit on an important point. People are hoping and maybe, sorry, maybe that's like the makeup, isn't it? That's a different podcast. But maybe people are thinking that life will return to normal in, even if it's in two or three months time. But I feel actually there's a, there's a huge risk at the moment that with not just the actual virus itself, but the effects of the, what should we say, the money that the government are stumping up to cover these enormous cracks. We're not about little is that there will now probably be a great, let's call it monetary depression for many, many, many years to come. And you could see property prices stay low. People think that property prices, it's always going to go back up and it will reach new highs.

Wrong.

You know, it maybe it will, but it might not do it for another 20, 30 years. And I just wondered if you could talk about for a lot of people now their income has been cut From X to 0 or very, very small. What about the long term effects for people who, you know, are dealing with the, the anxiety of and the challenges of the lack of money for the next X amount of years.

I know that for lots of people there is all of us, I think there is a worry about what will the future hold. I rent an office and it's not a cheap one because of where I am based. And I'm like many people thinking what will happen in two or three months time. I don't know. I think that if we can distinguish the what if questions to the, the kind of current and the here and now and the pragmatic, you know, what if, I don't know, what if we need to extend our mortgage payments? What if we need to do those things? Well, those are pragmatic and practical things that I can be doing. What If I need to reduce my household income, what I need to check which supermarket I'm going to and maybe the kids can't have everything that they want, but that's okay, that's not necessarily a bad thing. This idea where it might distinguish between needs and wants. And I think that as society and you see it in times of boom all the time. We saw it in the 80s where people are, you know, flashing cash around kind of thing. If you remember Harry Enfield carriage. Yeah.

Your Porsche and your big suits.

Yeah. Well maybe you can't have those. But maybe rather than framing that as a thing of loss or threat, that's actually something that could be really gainful. So I think there's the idea of the what ifs rather than going the catastrophic very future based what will happen in the year. None of us have any idea. It could be that, well, what if I can't do this next week? What do I need to do that would help me see that passage through? So I think there's that and also it kind of, it can help us to look at what they call cognitive appraisal which is how we appraise any situation, any kind of situation. And we usually. There are four different appraisals that we can give any situation. There's a bit like a gear stick and it car is either neutral here or they're seeing one of threat, one of loss or one of gain. And if we say I'm not going to earn a six figure salary that was in someone's mind. Well that might not be a loss or a threat. It might be potentially a loss or a threat to someone's status. But actually that might be a good thing that they realize they're more than that status.

Yeah.

That this could be a gainful thing. One of my clients the other day came in and he run, he works in finance and said I've no idea what's going to happen and said to me I might just do a different job, I might have a completely different career. And one of the things now is that we live with all the technology. We've seen, we've seen just in two or three weeks how people work from home, how they've changed their working patterns for better or worse, but they've changed them. Yeah, maybe the gain here is that we're highly adaptable people.

Maybe that's one of the big things. It's interesting you bring up one of the big things that will come out of this is our realization that maybe it's not a good thing necessarily, but we don't need so much face to face anymore because it's forced people, and maybe the older generation as well, who aren't completely happy to be trying to do FaceTimes, WhatsApp, video call, Zoom, Skype. But guess what? After a few times we've all learned how to navigate these random buttons. And maybe that's one of those things that will come out of it. It will encourage people to say, work more from home and not have to congregate in offices and do the daily commute and wasting hours on dirty trains and tubes and actually be able to communicate via your, let's call it the zoom world. And it's easier and quicker and more efficient.

It's interesting, isn't it, because the government have deployed what is called nudge psychology, which came about from two people in economics and law a couple of decades ago. And it's not that Cameron was the first person to really employ this idea of nudge psychology and essentially influencing people to where you want them to go. And the government have been doing it very much around coronavirus. Just these ideas that, you know, the placards that they have on the front of their, what you call those things, the things that they stand by Lecterns.

Yeah.

That, you know, say the NHS stay home, those messages. And they've used a lot of nudging psychology along the way. What's interesting is if you go to China, they used a very different kind of psychology and that was do this or that's it kind of thing. And the Chinese regime is a lot more heavy handed, obviously, because it's an autocratic regime. What's interesting is that when we are forced to do something and by that we're forced to stay at home, essentially it raises this really interesting thing of if you had to make something work, how would you make it work? Because often we have this free choice of that we don't necessarily have to do certain things. So here we are forced to use technology and self isolate and people are finding really creative and ingenious ways to do it. So it's really interesting of what we can rise to in the challenge.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's, it's, it's a, that I know we use the word adapting but you know, now you could get up in the morning and you know, you can do your yoga practice through someone on YouTube, you could do your fitness workout through someone on YouTube or Instagram. You know, you can do your cooking through someone on Instagram or YouTube or Facebook Live and you can work from home and you know, you can now have these different apps like Monday and different ones that allow your whole team still to get together. And it's adapting, isn't it? Is the thing that we all have to do at the moment.

Yeah. And I think that while we are, most of us, you know, working from home, it's that adaptation is also about how we do that work. So being able to. To close our laptop at 6 or 6:30 or something and making sure that we can, say, get dressed into some different clothes when we're at home, you know, when we are recreational at home rather than work from home and having different space. And I think that's a thing that we're getting used to on the fly. And all of this is on the fly for all of us, isn't it? And it's uncertainty, again, that we're muddling our way through. And that's largely what humans really do throughout the whole of our lives without realizing, anyway, no one of us has the answers. There was a great book written by an advertiser who died sadly about 15, 20 years ago, and he said, if you think you're right, you're wrong. And it's a premise that your construct of what's right is only ever based in what has happened, is not in the future. And so we see all of us are evolving.

I wonder if that's the. Whether. I don't know where the quote that I was like comes from. You know, everything we know is wrong. Yeah, maybe that's probably him. Well, seeing as we're, you know, with the whole man academy, if we're going back to the reason why we all kind of, you know, you and I came into contact with each other, is about getting guys talking. So for you, your job, I know it's not just men that you work with, but I guess for X amount of hours a day, you've got people coming to you with their challenges and talking things through and you're helping.

But who do you talk to? It's a really good question. So I have some colleagues that I talk to and because I'm in private practice, what we have to do is mirror what would be done, say, in the nhs so that we. I have colleagues and associates and we have to. We have to write our hours down and prove, and they do audit this as well, in the government bodies like the one I belong to, the ukcp, for psychotherapists, that you have to do a set number of supervision hours every per month, essentially, and that alters depending on the number of client hours you see, so roughly, because I've done my job for quite a long time now, I see I have about one hour to every 10 client hours that I have. And so the idea is that you just talk through client notes confidentially, obviously, and you just check you're doing your job properly and sometimes you feel you don't really need it. And then there are other times when, my goodness, you really do, because you're a human too. And if you're going to be any good, you have to embrace that humanity that people will talk about things that you're not sure about, or you don't know how to help them sometimes, or you don't quite get something right and you need to just run that past a colleague. And very often we all have sort of a psychological Achilles heel, something that we're a bit blindsided by. And that happens however experienced you are. So that's why you cannot practice as clinical psychologist or a psychotherapist without that allowance of hours. You're just not allowed to. So. Which is great because sometimes you really need other people to help you.

Yeah, I always wonder. It's that it's a bit like doing life coaching. I know one of the guys said to me at the end of the end of the coaching, their problem isn't your problem because people would take it home with them as such. And, you know, you might see if you were seeing several people a day and they've got some of them serious challenges, it's easy to kind of put those on your shoulders and take it home with you.

Oh, really, really easy. And I think, because people who do this job, I think, are largely, not everyone, but largely fairly empathic individuals, it's a fine line sometimes. And you simply can't just cut off when you finish your day. It's like anyone you know in, say, the medical profession, you can't forget patients just like that sometimes. But I think where it reverberates around your head for too long, you know that there's something else going on and that's where you need your supervisor and your colleagues as well to call upon. So that's something that, although I have set time, I may also call my supervisor and say, I just need half an hour to talk to you about something and get his time or her time for that.

Well, it's good to hear that you're. And I say this in the nice place, but you're forced to talk to someone because as opposed to a lot of men, especially in your profession where you're dealing with you know challenging issues, it would be easy to say, no, I'm fine, I can take it all on board.

Yeah. And that's the, that's the calm before the storm. There will be a crash and that means that not only are you not in a good place, but you won't be in a good place for people you're supposedly meant to be helping. So. And I also think that when you have that humility as well, when you just say, look, it's no great shame, I need help sometimes. And that comes back to that whole part of our discussion earlier about whole man academy. Yeah, we are fragile beings, we're not bloody robots. And that we all have our emotional Achilles heel and none of us are beyond that. I think as we get older we also realize the nuance and the complexity of life. Sometimes I think, God, I was so much more confident when I was 22 and I think, no, you were probably just a bit cockpit. Real confidence and resilience. It takes quite a lot of work and time to get to, I think.

Yeah, no, it's. Yeah, I guess for all of us men in our, in our 40s, if you look back to what you were like in your 20s, you probably didn't have a clue what you were thinking and what you were doing. And we're totally different. There's the old saying and none of us were born enlightened, which I've always liked. Now let's just flip onto I appreciate your time. I just wanted to talk to you about one last thing which is the biggest loser. Tell us, tell us about that. How did you get into it and what bloody hell is that all about?

So that's a really good question. So this is like we rewind now to 2005 and I was, I have been a personal trainer but I was also using things like NLP and psychotherapy then part time because I was still working in TV and someone told me that this production company was looking for a, a trainer to help on weight loss show. And that's the kind of stuff that I was doing in my part time job. And I thought that sounds like fun, I'd love to do that. And I phoned up the production company and they said okay, come along. And it was just, to be honest, it was a match that worked the other trainer who sadly no longer alive and she was an amazing woman, bloody hard to work with but she taught me a lot. She was really, I miss her greatly. And she was a fantastic lady called Angie and she was polar opposite to me in her style and the way and her execution, if you like. I was quite soft and gentle. She was tough as nails. But as the series transpired, we saw that we both had a toughness in this as well. And she had that gentility as well. So you kind of saw it on screen as well as off screen as well. So the Biggest Loser thing was they filmed them all over the world and they started in America, then they did a series in the uk, the second country, I think. And the first couple of series, they spent so much money on it. It was like, I remember walking. They rented a stately home near Western. Super near Western. No, hang on, near Bath. And it was massive and it had gardens and they built this massive gym in the garden. And then they had. They rented the whole stately home so that the contestants slept in the house. And there were originally, I think there were 24 of them, 12 on each team. And there was a blue team and a red team and I was a blue trainer. And we just saw these people who had not just weight problems and they were, some of them morbidly obese. In fact, they were all morbidly. I think they were all 18 stone or above or 17 stone and above. And I remember the first day we walked on set and all those cameras are there and we weren't allowed to meet these people before we, before they came on set. It was all very secretive because they wanted to save the drama.

Yeah.

And I have to say, the production, the production team genuinely, genuinely, really cared about those people. There was nothing of that kind of TV thing, of taking advantage of people. The producers were there to make something watchable, but the aftercare I thought was really, really good. And certainly Angie and I also care deeply about the people we work with. So it was a very intense experience, actually. And each week one of them was sort of voted off. But through that journey you saw people, some of who lost a fair amount away, other people lost massive amount, ounce of weight. And I remember the first winner, a guy called Aaron, was just one of the most inspiring people I've ever worked with. And These people were 26 stone when they went in. And I think he came in at just under 14. And that was, that was in a six month period. So huge, just astounding. And they had really good healthcare during the show as well. And they. That there were permanent medics on sets. Because I have to say, the first day I thought, what happens if one of them keels over? Unfortunately no one but they had a consultant cardiologist on the set. You know, they've done their checks and balances and as well, psychologists.

So let's say you're. I mean, this is a whole nother podcast. But very briefly, let's say you're taking a guy who's. Let's just pick a number. 20 stone. We know it's not just about what he's eating. It's about what's going on his mind.

Yeah.

So, you know, where do you work in the mind forgetting the calorie controlled. And the exercise. In a way, I guess that's the easy bit because anybody could encourage you to get up and move and, you know, change your diet. But it's the. It's the mindset of the person and, I guess, their habits.

I think there's an element of. Once we start doing something repetitively, we become that person if we're not careful. And I suppose you could see that in either a negative or a positive way, a helpful or an unhelpful way, in the fact that if someone is continually overeating, then they start associating and see themselves as a person, as an overeater. I think it's similar in some respects where people say, I am an alcoholic. Now, I know that that for many people is a helpful statement because it kind of. It labels it so clearly that they can no longer deny it. So that can be helpful. But if someone says, I'm fat and that's all that they see of themselves, then we have a real problem here because the behavior would just increase. You know, I spoke earlier about coping mechanisms.

Yeah.

Well, a coping mechanism for being fat is to eat more.

Right.

And obviously that just compounds the problem. So I think one of the things I learned on that show and have used since is just helping people extract their sense of self from what we do. That this idea that we are all more than who we think we are. And I was trying to think of an example of this the other day, and I was thinking of. And I hope it's okay to say this, because I don't mean it in any critical way, but if Jacob Rees Mogg were a black guy raised and born in Brixton and went to a school in Brixton, I wonder what he would be like. I don't know. Obviously. Yeah. But it just goes to show that culture has a big influence on us. Our upbringing has a big influence on us. And also those glass ceilings, those expectations we have of ourselves, has a massive impact on us. So I think distinguishing identity from our behavior can be a really helpful thing.

Is that the danger is the labeling?

Yeah, I think so. I think so. Because often, you know, when people certainly if they're morbidly obese, they walk down the street and they will be projecting onto other people the labels that they think the people will be giving them.

Right.

And so it becomes a self fulfilling thing. So we, that's where we do so much self identity in an unhelpful way. I think gradually, gradually changing that and allowing ourselves to be more than that person, to realize we have options, we don't have to stay where we are. But my goodness, it takes work and it takes that perseverance because it's this idea that I now fully believe something. Well, that's actually more of a curse and a blessing sometimes we can't fully believe things all the time. It's just too much of a burden. It's ridiculous. If we just allow ourselves every day to not just believe, but to do small actions incrementally that help us to realize those beliefs, they become more believable because we become more. And that's part of motivational circuitry really. The more experience we have of positive success, the more likely we are to do that.

It's so interesting because the dangers of labeling, I mean we, we spoke, have done several corporate talks for the whole Man Academy and Scott McArthur, our creative director, talks about the dangers of labeling. More so even as you start as a child. But I guess if you talk about weight loss, one frustration for me is people I know that go to, let's call it Weight Watchers, but they call it Fat Club.

Yeah.

And you know, it's like saying, well, you know, fat people go to Fat Club and they're still going a year or two later. Now that's not to say that Weight watch things don't work, but if you're still going to something two years later and they're still calling it Fat Club, I'm just like, where'd you start with that?

Yeah, I'm not sure that's it. I'm not sure that's a helpful thing. And I think it can create. It's a bit like when people say I want to quit smoking, for example, but they're still staying in the negative belief, if you like, of being, I'm missing out on something, that there's this cognitive dissonance, essentially this gap between what they would like and what they're doing. I think the other thing, just going back to the techniques that help people in lots of ways. But certainly if people are obese or with overeating generally like anything.

Often it's.

A coping strategy for emotions that we find it hard to deal with. And I think where people are compulsively overeating, we know that there's going to be something underneath that, that there's a conditioning and response for sure. But also there are emotions that are not being dealt with properly and that's where you see that impulsivity. And it's the same as drugs really. There's an impulsivity. I cannot deal with this hot emotion I have. So let me eat something or let me repress it down with some kind of drug of drink, food.

Another coping strategy.

Yeah, it is, it is.

That's a big worry, Mark. I'll tell you why, because we on one of our Instagram stories in the last day or two, I mean I'm working from home, you know, we're, I don't mean we're self isolating, we're just not going out anywhere. But I find myself in between my peaks and troughs of motivation working from home is used that funny stuff, standing in front of the fridge, looking at the door open and Emma will say what you doing? You know? And I'll say what? You know? And she'll say we're having lunch in X amount of time. And I'm like, yeah, but I'm hungry, I need to have a snack. So I put on my Instagram stories, you know, I'm changing my bio to professional snacker. Is anybody else finding this? And I mean the last time I looked, I think it was 86% of people had said yes. Now you know that obviously that's, guess what, that's not a clinical study but that gives you an example of 90% of population are sitting at home at the moment. Thankfully I'm really busy. I've got podcast record, I've got the websites to do, I've got all the different stuff. But if I'd had a normal job, I'd just be at home now with nothing to do but watch telly. And I guess a huge amount of people are going to be sitting there bored and snacking.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's really interesting that that calls upon what they call situational memory and activation, which is where if we walk. So I did this the other day, I hadn't thought of the chocolate buttons but then I walked past my fridge and I open the door and I realize that they're there and now I'm going to eat them. Had I not thought of that door and opening it, I wouldn't have. It wouldn't have been in my head. But now, because I thought of it, it's not because I saw it, it's because I realized it was in the door. So I thought of it. Now that's suddenly activating me. So as a really simple thing, if you make what is. If you make what's hard, easy, and what is easy, hard, if that makes sense. So chocolate was easy. Make that hard. Don't keep it easy. Your house during the week. So, you know, just reduce the number of times you'll see that chocolate and you will reduce the amount of chocolate. Because if you think, well, I've now got to go up to the supermarket and that should really only be essentials. For example, and it's now cold outside and I've got to put a jacket on and the kids will wonder where I am now, it's less appealing. So just by getting those small things.

Yeah, that's a great point.

We're in Rat park at the moment, I think many of us in social isolation. This is like one big in vitro experiment.

Well, I think there was that. That saying which a good friend of mine told me, which is, don't bring the devil home with you. And isn't it that, you know, now let's say we were still allowed to go to the shops for anything. If it's in your cupboard, you'll eat it. But if you actually had to say get, get changed and drive out, you'll probably think, oh, you know what, I don't need it. But I tell you what we've not done. Anybody listening to this is probably thinking, knowing that we're nearly coming to the end of the podcast, thinking, yeah, actually think about that. What have I got in my cupboard I can snack on, which has just lit my light bulbs. I've realized there's some malt loaf that's waiting to be taken down in the kitchen.

But I don't think that's what it says on the side of the packet. I'm waiting to be taken down. I think you're projecting that.

I'm sure it does. I can't. Don't quote me on that. Well, before. I appreciate you're busy, so we'll wrap this up in a second. But just the last question for you, Mark, is what one bit of advice would you give to a man so he could live life better?

Oh, that's a good question. I think probably own your emotions and know that that's okay, that we are going to have in one day often multiple emotions and certainly in one week, one Year and one lifetime, all kinds of emotions ranging from quite unpalatable ones sometimes to really hopeful and helpful and productive thoughts. So if we own our emotions without any shame, I think we can really hear ourselves properly and that positively on them. We don't. And the other piece of advice perhaps is you don't have to act on every emotion now. You know, things take time. And that's probably the one thing that's really helped me. And certainly when I referred to impulsivity earlier, it's a bit like those clouds floating by, you know, I want to grab hold of that and do it. You don't have to do anything. I remember years ago when I worked in a different job in media and I made a mistake and I said to my boss, well, I had to do something. No, you didn't. You didn't have to do anything. And it taught me a stark and important lesson that we're not. We don't have to be beholden to our thoughts.

That's a. That's a great one to finish on. And that's one of those. I feel that you might encourage a guy to hit the little reverse arrow for 30 seconds or a minute and just, you know, listen to it again. Because I've been guilty myself in the past where someone to say something and you go, yep, yep. And then you finish. And if someone said, can you just go back and tell me what that was? They said, you'll go, well, actually, I'm not entirely sure. So I would, I would encourage people hit that button, go back and listen to the last minute, if not the whole. The whole pot again.

I certainly, when I listen to podcasts, I do, I do do that. And I wrote write down just keywords because if I'm on the bus or something, I don't want to be tapping away too much or just write keywords. And often that's enough. Just interestingly, it's a technique that I use a lot in therapy of not only do. In the type of therapy I do mental health, a lot of emphasis is now placed on what's lovingly called homework. But it's exercises for people essentially to experiment with, to test things out and to see if they work for them, because they don't always work. So the person individually needs to know. But at the end of every session, I will always do a summary with every single person I work with and say, what did you get from today? What have you learned? And I will give people a portfolio during our work that they can add to, to summarize their Thoughts. Because the consensus is from research that if you do that for people, they become their own therapist, they don't have to pay someone like me. And then also they're enabling themselves because there will be hiccups later and there will be hiccups away. And those are the things that we like. Ah, I know what I've done before. I need to do this instead.

Mark, there's so much of this podcast I think guys will take from it. And sometimes I say when we speak to people, the hardest bit is what we leave out because there's various rabbit holes. So perhaps another point, we'll get you back on if you're available and kind of maybe break down one or two of the other topics. Now, how can guys get hold of if they wanted to either follow you or email you or.

Cool. So on Instagram, I have to check what my username is. It's Mark Bailey, Psychotherapist. And if people want to look at my website, I'm based in central London, but at the moment I've always, for a long time done online therapy as well. And it's actually a really effective mechanic and I'm sure you find with life coaching as well.

And it saves time. It's convenient.

Yeah, it does. I've got. I have got. I've got clients in New York, in Dubai and all over the world, to be honest, as well as London. So if people want to come and see me once we were over coronavirus, then I'm based in central London, but online I'm anywhere. And my website is.bailey bailey.net.

Perfect. Well, Mark, thank you very much for your time and all your thoughts. We'll put your details in the show notes and it'll go up on Tinstagram and everywhere else we can think of. So, Mark, we appreciate all your words of wisdom and we will speak to you soon.

Thank you so much. Thank you.