Ep 18: In conversation with Josh Connolly

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Welcome to the All Is Wellness Podcast with me, Emma Naylor. Join us in open and honest conversations with wellness professionals and industry experts. Welcome back to the All Is Wellness Podcast. This week's guest is Josh Connolly. As One of the UK's most influential mental health advocates, he regularly speaks on BBC, ITV and Channel 5 news. Josh has also spoken at the House of Commons, contributed to mental health policy, and even advised the script writing team on Hollyoats. He runs a resilience workshop for village schools and global brands alike. Additionally, he is an ambassador for Nacao, a national charity supporting people affected by their parents drinking. Josh, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast this week. Thank you for being this week's guest.

Absolute pleasure. Good to be here and looking forward to it.

I'd love to for you to share a little bit more about your story with our listeners. How you got to where you are today.

Okay, well, I guess my story kind of really starts for me when I was 24 years old when I got, when I, when I stopped drinking and using drugs and at that sort of stage of my life, I, you know, I just sort of looked, I never really understood my experiences. I didn't really have any idea of really the ways that I was feeling or the things that I was going through and what all of that meant. But once I got sober and started to look at my life, I realized that actually I'd struggled for large parts of my life and the alcohol was really an escape for that and an attempt to find a solution from the ways that I felt. And I've done some work in the, in the years that followed in that. And look at my life. Grew up with a, with an alcoholic father. So my dad was, had quite a bad, I say quite, he had an extremely bad problem with alcohol and he died when I was nine years old. And I sort of buried and suppressed really all of the things that I felt as a result of that buried them deep inside and ran away and ran into to alcohol and drugs. And then after I got sober in sort of the last, it's been just over nine years now in that period. In that time I've done a lot of work on myself and my life's changed, you know, quite drastically as a result. And I'm very fortunate in the work that I get to do today. I'm the ambassador, as you say, for the charity NICOA that supports children affected by parents drinking. And I've delivered training now for emotional resilience all over the world. So it's, you know, it's been a life of extremes that I've lived, but I'm sort of grateful for where I get to be today.

Thank you so much for sharing that. I think it's amazing to be able to kind of talk so openly about the kind of struggles you had, obviously, getting sober at 24. As I said to you kind of before this, before this recording, I got sober at 25 as well. So your story resonates so, so much with me. I also grew up with a father who is thankfully sober today. But I did grow up with an alcoholic father. And it was definitely a lot of the feelings that I felt growing up with that were definitely kind of suppressed and buried. And unfortunately, as soon as alcohol and drugs came into my life, it sort of added so much fuel to the fire. And I think it's really amazing to see, you know, first of all, how many of us have grown up with alcoholic parents who are in recovery. There's always kind of this conversation of, is it something that we're born with? Is it something that happens? Is it something that's kind of in our, in our family? And looking around at my family, there's definitely a lot of. There's definitely a lot of instances of mental health. There's definitely a lot of instances of alcoholism, alcoholism and addiction. So it's really interesting that, that, you know, our stories are so similar and thankfully we both kind of got sober roughly the same age. How do you sort of think a lot of people are dealing with getting sober younger? Do you think it's sort of easier now that the conversation is more open? Do you think that there tools. How, how do you sort of feel it's affecting the next generation in getting sober?

I, I do think that there seems to be now, particularly in the last sort of four or five years, a bit of a sober movement where, you know, it can be a little bit trendy now to, to be so. But I don't mean that negatively. I mean that in like a good way. When I, when I got sober, there was no sort of sober community really, outside of 12 step fellowships. Yes, it was 12 step fellowships or religion really. Nobody at my age, at the age of 24 anyway, didn't drink. So I, I do think it's improving a lot in terms of the way that it's viewed in that, you know, it's less questioned, particularly in the younger generation and stuff like that now, you know, as to whether it kind of makes it any easier to stop, I don't know. I'd like, listen, I'D like to think it. I'd like to think it did. It does. But if I look at me when I was 24 years old or, you know, a year. Let's go. When I was 23, a year before I stopped drinking, I. I don't think that the fact that there was a sober community existing, I'm not sure it really would have sort of helped me or changed anything drastically for me, you know, So I think it's great and I think it's good and I think it's needed. But. But I. I think really, if we, if we want to try and prevent these things happening, then it needs to start. You know, support needs to be for children, really, because I think that's where it kind of all starts for me.

Absolutely. I couldn't. I couldn't agree more. And I think that having grown up with an alcoholic father, seeing him go to rehab, seeing him do so immensely proud of. Of the man he is today, like, he is the most incredible father to me because of the fact that he is sober. I don't even know if he listens to this podcast, but I'm gonna make sure he listens to this one because I always try and tell him proud I am of him. And I think that when you're sober for that long, you know, he's been sober, I think it's probably about 15 years. When you're so long, I think we can forget, like, the journey that we've gone on and kind of where all that trauma came from, being so young and even getting sober. My childhood seemed so long ago that working through stuff with my therapist and working through stuff with my coach and in, you know, in the rooms. For anyone that doesn't know what the rooms are, we're kind of. We're referring to AA and NA, which is obviously the 12 step fellowship for Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous. But I always felt like I'd left that in sort of my previous life. And I really didn't realize how much of my childhood, good, bad, had really affected me as an adult. And I absolutely agree that educating children when they're younger, I don't think, in my opinion, would have stopped me being an addict. I don't think it would have stopped me becoming an alcoholic. But I think what it would have enabled me to do is have those conversations and recognize those behaviors earlier on and really be able to say, actually, I've noticed this behavior. I don't think that that's right. I know that there's a safe space to reach out to, rather than kind of, you know, waiting till it manifested into alcohol and drugs. Because if I look back at being a child, and I'm sure there's a lot of addicts that kind of relate to this is when it came to sweets, to toys, to friends, to TV shows, whatever it was, it was never enough. I always wanted more and more and more. And looking back now as an adult, as a full grown adult in recovery, I now realize that those addictions and that behavior was from when I was very, very young. So it's interesting to say, you know, educating children at a younger age, how do you. With the kind of, the work that you do, how are you sort of implementing this if you are in any way sort of speaking to the younger and next generation?

So from a sort of NCOA standpoint, it's giving young children access to support that's not reliant upon whether their parent has got themselves into any kind of recovery or support themselves. So at the moment, or certainly before we started campaigning a few years ago, there was no plan for children. And the only way a child of an alcoholic would get any access to any help and support was if their parent had decided, decided that they were going to get some help and support. Otherwise the child was left sort of on their own to kind of deal with it. And I think the complex, the complexities of the dysfunction that comes within a, with an alcoholic family environment is, you know, it starts from the very second that these children are born. I sort of believe that my need to escape was born predominantly out of the fact that from the moment that I was born, I was, I was brought into a stressful environment that meant that I was very uncomfortable in my skin. And I think like from a scientific point of view, the brain does a lot of its developing in the first four years and it develops based on the environment. And if that environment was one that was scary and one that made me kind of need, feel like I needed to escape from, then I may have developed a kind of brain that, that, that saw escape. And that's. I feel like that's been the case for me. And I think if we can start to look at any kind of addiction as being the want and the need to escape from that discomfort, then we can start to look at what do we do to children to help them comprehend the ways that they feel and how do they be in themselves, in their emotions, without feeling the need to constantly seek that, that, that escape. And that for me is about emotional literacy with children, helping children to comprehend and understand the Feelings that they're having with any kind of addiction, a parental addiction, particularly, things get swept under the carpet. And I think the kind of whole system, schooling system, societal system, also sweeps it under the carpet for children. So we sort of teach children, you know, to be okay and to be as positive as you can. When, if you're growing up with an. In an environment where you're scared stiff what's gonna, what you're gonna find when you come home from school, you need somebody to help you comprehend those experiences. So I think we need to do more for children in that sense. I do some work in schools, I've delivered. I've done workshops with children as young as 5 and 6 years old just to get them to help to understand that all, you know, households are different. We know from a result of the studies that we've done that one in five children are living with a parent that drinks hazardously, hazardously being enough, enough to impact somebody around them. So if you think of a classroom of 30 people, 30 children on average, you're looking at about six of them living with a parent that drinks too much. That's the scale of the problem and the, and I'd imagine that's increased over the last year in terms of the, the world that we've lived in. So I think there's, I think there's a lot, lot, a lot, lot more that we can do. I don't think we should be resigned to the fact that this, you know, this is just going to be the way that some people are. I think, I think we can do a lot more, but I think we'll also, without being too kind of negative about it, I think we're quite a long way away from that as a society. We still, I think, prefer, prefer to kind of punish, punish behavior rather than look at the trauma that kind of leads it.

You know, I completely agree and I think that, you know, I'm not, I'm not a parent myself, but it's so, it's so sad and so shocking to hear that children as young as five and six are being affected, you know, by, by their parents drinking. But I think it's amazing being able to actually say to these young children, you know, family households are very different. And I think growing up, we often do compare. You know, I used to do this all the time. I would compare, you know, the way my parents were with other parents. And my parents did some amazing things for me, and I'm forever thankful. And then I'd look at my other friend's parents and say, but they do this and they don't do that. And I think it's so easy and confusing growing up, really. Not, not understanding why your household is different, better, worse, whatever it may be. As a parent now, how do you feel having those kind of conversations with your children, should they arise in the future?

I make them arise. So, so I'm very open with my children. I think it's really, really important. I think children are often treated as if they, as if there's some sort of like little animals that don't understand what's going on. But if you look at a four or five year old, they're very intuitive, they're very in tune with what's going on around them. And actually if you don't give them a narrative, they'll create their own. And their own narrative will normally be self blaming. Because if any child has a parent that can't be emotionally available for them for whatever reason, in this case we're talking about because they have a problem with alcohol, that child has two options. The first one is to, you know, admit that their parent can't be emotionally available for them. And the second option is to make it their own fault. And the second option for children is, is actually safer because the first option is a dead end. And you know, so, so what happens for a lot of these kids is rather than admitting that their parent just can't be emotionally available for them, they start trying to be better. They try to be better at school, they try to be more funny or they try to get more attention. And so children will create that narrative, they'll adapt and they will pick up coping mechanisms. If they're in an unhealthy environment or they experienced an unhealthy environment, it's likely that those coping mechanisms too might be unhealthy. And so, so in my experience, what I do with my children is I'd be very open, I'm very honest with them. I don't hide any of the truth. In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to have those difficult conversations. But my children have been through those difficult times, so they need those difficult conversations. And so we have to, I think we have to look at the truth for the kids, that's what I do and help them comprehend their experiences. Otherwise, as I say, they will often make it about themselves.

It's so interesting, as I said, not not being a parent, I can't imagine having those conversations. But I'm still, you know, I'm still the child of my parents is, I'm nearly 30. And I still very much often see myself as a child sometime with them because now, you know, I have a twin sister I'm very, very close with and I was having this conversation with my dad the other day and we now have conversations as two nearly 30 year old women with my parents that we should have been having as 15, 16, 17, 18 year old children. Amazing that now we're able to have those conversations. Unfortunately, it's been off the back of some very hard, very testing times. And you know, I said to my dad the other day, I said, I really hope this is the cycle break. You know, I really want our generation to be the, to be the generation that breaks that cycle of we don't talk about what's going on. Even though, you know, I look back at my grandparents, I look back at their parents and I look at all the addictions and mental health and all the things that have all been passed down to us and we've just sort of kept moving through them. And actually I feel like there's so much amazing information, there's so much support available. And I think as you said, look, it's going to take unfortunately a long time to really get it into the school system, to really get it into teaching those younger children. But I think if we can start small and start with families having those really uncomfortable, difficult conversations, that makes such a big difference for the next generation of my children and my children's children.

I mean, without question.

Yeah. And I think that being able to start small is so powerful and I often think that, you know, I'm very much like this and I'm sure that there's lots of the. See, we want to help everyone and we want to make all of this information available to everyone and know that there's so many families and so many people that sort of need the support. But I think starting small is one of those things that sort of has a trickle effect.

Definitely. And, and you know, I, I big just, you know, trauma, trauma and addiction tends to run in families, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's genetic. That's what I say. You know, just like trauma can run in families, healing can run in families too.

Absolutely.

And, and trauma travels through families until somebody's willing to have a look at it. And if we take your example, for example, your dad stuck a fork in the road 15 years ago. Right. And that, you know, there could be some argument, I don't know your story fully, but there could be some argument that you may have found sobriety at the time that you did because your dad stuck the fork in the road, and you start to see that kind of stuff going on, right? And so then the change has already happened in you. And then, so, you know, when you go on, if you choose to go on and have children, they're going to grow up in a sober environment, right? With. With present parents who have done a lot of work on themselves as a result of their experiences, and the likelihood then of them going on to have their own addiction struggles are going to be much less, right? And then that will filter down through the family. And then that kind of suppression and trauma that carried on running through the family has stopped because of the change you made. And so the trickle effect that you're talking about is not just in the current society, but it's changing the future as well. Because my family's the same throughout the whole thing, you know, particularly on my dad's side. It was just addiction, addiction. You know, most of them have died as a result of their addiction. But. But the one thing that they all have in common is that nobody was really talking about it properly. Not. Not to children, you know, when you look at their stories. And so that, that change, we. If you stick a fork in the road now and. And the trip, you know, the ripple effects can be absolutely huge. And that's why I try, you know, I like to focus as much as I can on, you know, let's not just believe that people were born this way. Let's look at what causes this or what increases the chances of this happening to people, and let's deal with that, heal those parts, make those parts, you know, on. Put those on journeys appealing. And I think you've got a very strong chance of preventing it from moving through generations.

Really hit the nail on the head with the healing part. That's. That resonated because often growing up, I always thought just, oh, this is exactly, exactly what you just said. I was just sort of born this way and that, and that's sort of the way that I am. And actually, yes, I probably was born with certain aspects, but there was a lot of stuff that I didn't allow myself to heal from. That in turn kind of manifested itself in these ways that unfortunately were very, very destructive. So I love the kind of use of the word healing because I think whether you've had the most traumatic upbringing or whether you've had, you know, what we. What people like to say is a relatively normal upbringing, there's always so much work and so much healing that we can do on our make sure, exactly as you said, that we don't, that we kind of break the, break it here, break that chain and actually learn for sort of the next generation. So I think it's so amazing that even with your children as young as they are, you're able to have those conversations. And when the time comes, they know that they have a safe place to come to you and speak about what's going on. Because I think that's a lot of the issue is emotions. People have these emotions. And, you know, even as a, even as a grown adult, sometimes you often feel there's nowhere to sort of turn. So knowing that they're growing up with that safe space and having that children and educating other families about how to have those conversations, I think is such amazing work to be able to kind of do every day. How, how do you feel that if someone is very much listening to this and thinking, actually, I do want to kind of have these conversations, but I'm not sure where to start. Whether it's with family, whether it's with a partner, or whether they just sort of want to start exploring themselves on how they can kind of go on that journey. From your experience, what would be the best way for someone to sort of start on that?

To be honest, it is about finding. I, for me, when I, you know, my journey started off in, in 12 step fellowships, right. So that was the first place where I found a group of people who were willing to, I mean, to put it bluntly, keep their mouth shut and just listen to me for, for a moment, right? So I there learned how to explore the ways that I felt, right, free from judgment in a space where people understood me. So for me, it's about finding, finding those spaces wherever they are for you. And then once I got better at communicating how I felt amongst people that were creating the space for me, I was then able to go and communicate it to people that I found it more difficult to communicate it to, right. Because I'd had some, I'd had some practice with people that were really making an effort to create a space. So from a, from a if you're struggling aspect, I always say, go and find a group of people. There's so much online now where you can do stuff anonymously as well, so that you can kind of have that first port of call. But then on the flip side of that, I would actually speak to the rest of the people and I would say to all of us as people, as a society, what we actually need to do is slow down a little bit. Slow down and remember that everybody's got stuff going on, and if we don't create the space for them to explore how they feel, then they're not going to have the opportunity to talk about it. We do a lot of, like, shouting at everybody to talk, and we, we need to do a lot more getting people to listen. Because my experience has been when I walked into a room of people that were ready to listen to me, I started talking. So the big takeaway there is that it was the listeners, it was the people that were willing to listen that created the change. And so I think there's a lot to be said for that, too.

I love that so much, and I think that actually so much of it is. You're right. We're so ready to talk a lot of the time, but it's so, so difficult. You know, when you're very, very early on in your. In your journey, whether that be a spiritual journey, whether that be a recovery, a healing journey, a sober journey, whatever kind of journey it is that you're going on, it's often hard to find that group that you really know. You know, that's one thing I love about AA and NA is that exactly as you said, it's a room where people, they don't talk back to you. It's very much a safe, anonymous place where you can go and you can share what's going on. And I remember one of the times when I first went in, someone said, I'm a grateful alcoholic. And I looked at this person and thought, how on earth are you sitting there saying you're a grateful alcoholic? And nearly five years later, being in sobriety, I'm now that person that says I'm a grateful alcoholic. Because at any given moment, on any given day, I know I can go to a meeting, log on online, call a fellow, and they have space available for me to share. No judgment, and I can just let everything out. And I know that they are there to genuinely listen. And that, for me, is the thing that I'm most grateful for, that I'm an alcoholic and that I have other people. But as you said, for anyone who doesn't have that, there are. There are people out there. It's just navigating and getting through that really hard time of finding who your people are and who those people are who are available to hold space for you.

Yeah, absolutely. It's. That's been the case for me. That's been my experience. You know, when I, When. When I'm around people who I feel like are going to make me feel heard. I talk. And so. So it's that. That's the anecdote to getting people to talk is. Is creating the listeners.

Yeah. And it's sort of going back to, you know, there's been a lot around. Growing up, it was, if you fell over, it be, oh, don't cry. And now, you know, if I feel like crying, I will cry. My boyfriend sometimes comes home and he's like, why are you crying? And I'm like, because it felt good to cry. It feels good to get an emotion out. And, you know, for a really long time, I felt it was so negative because we are, don't cry. It will be okay. Oh, don't worry. Be happy. And it's, yes, those are all great things. But at the same time, there are also those sad feeling that we have to sit in and be uncomfortable and allow our children to cry and allow our friends to cry to us and not just say, it will be okay. Yes, it will be, but let them have that space. And I didn't realize how powerful just having space was. I did not realize that for so long. And I allowed myself to never have space, both physically, emotionally, mentally. I'd always be surrounded by people. I'd always be doing something. I'd always have plans, I'd always be on the phone. Whereas now sometimes face, I need for me to eat as adults, to kind of have some downtime, but also have a safe space that we feel we can go away from judgment.

Yeah. You know, I talk in the work that I do, I talk so much about the value in space. You know, space in. In the diary space in your life, safe spaces to share. I think so much of what we lack in the world today is space. So, yeah, I couldn't agree more.

So with the work that you're doing, you know, all of the amazing work that you're doing, I've seen. I've kind of watched all your videos and read all your bios, and I've seen the incredible stuff that you're doing. What would you say is your sort of goal with the work that you're doing?

Essentially, to bring people back to themselves. I think so much of the messaging out there around the whole sort of mental health conversation, for want of a better term, I think so much of the messaging out there is actually built around emotional avoidance. We tell people, if you're really struggling with the ways that you feel, here's a way to feel better. And that is essentially what my addictions were, by the way. I'm really struggling with the way that I feel, let me drink alcohol because it makes me feel better. Right. And we're actually just teaching nice versions of that that still practice emotional avoidance. So. So the work that I like to do is to bring people back to themselves to understand that emotionally, when we're alone with our emotions, that creates wounding. That's what I believe. And I believe that when we're children, if, you know, we don't need an alcoholic parent, a stressed parent will do it. But if, for whatever reason, as a child, we sense that we can't be in certain emotions when we're around our parents and we're seeking attachment from them, then we won't be ourselves. We'll find ways to become something different, and we lose who we are. We lose how to be in ourselves when we're in our range of emotions. And so the work that I do is about saying, actually, there's no such thing as positive and negative emotions. Our body's always trying to tell us something, and it will scream as loud as it needs to scream eventually for us to listen to it. And so if we can get better at listening to our body, come back to ourselves, listen. Listen to our sadness, listen to our jealousy, our rage, Listen to our full range of emotions. We'll understand what our bodies is trying to tell us, and we'll get our needs met. And I think, for me, that's ultimately, when I say resilience, that's the message that I'm trying to get across to people. Come back to yourself. Listen to your body. Understand where you've picked up little bits of wounding. Know that that's okay, and get your needs met. Do the things that you need to do in order to move through those. That's ultimately the work that I do.

I absolutely love everything you say, and all the work that you do is so. It's so powerful and just honestly, so wonderful. I've been following your journey for a while, and it's just been so great to see all of the things that you're doing. So I'm looking forward to sort of continuing to follow your journey. Josh, what would be your one piece of advice to any of our listeners that are listening today?

It comes back to what we've already said. I would say create space. I would say have space in the morning and space in the evening. Everybody can do it, two minutes minimum, where you just create a bit of space. Listen to yourself, Come back to your body and understand what it's trying to tell you. What, with practice, you can learn a hell of a lot from, from, from just listening to yourself.

Could not agree more. And space is something. I sometimes need those reminders and I think today has been my reminder that I possibly need to get some more space over the bank holiday weekend. Josh, if people want to find out how they can work with you, what is the best way for them to contact you?

It's probably best to just go to my website, which is just joshconnelly.co.uk all my social links are on there. I do a lot on LinkedIn, you, YouTube and Instagram, but if you go to my website, all my profiles are linked there.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest on this week's podcast. I've absolutely loved talking to you.

Pleasure. Absolute pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

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