Anxiety & Driving Test Nerves

This week Richard & Fiona are nattering in response to a listener question about anxiety and test conditions.

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Transcript

Richard: 0:09

And hello to you another week, another episode. It's Therapy Natters Day. Each week, psychotherapists Fiona Biddle, who I'm pointing at right now, and my good self, Richard Nicholls, who I'm also pointing at, and you can't see that, spend a little bit of time answering your mental health and therapy related questions or nattering with somebody else in an attempt to make sense of this daft gray lump of watery weirdness that's in our head that we call our brain, which is also our mind and also part of our body. And oh, aren't we complicated,

Fiona: 0:42

Yes. And weren't you ever told it's rude to point

Richard: 0:46

Sorry, I didn't mean to point. Well, I wasn't pointing at the lens. I was pointing at you on the screen. Sorry about that.

Fiona: 0:51

Oh, it doesn't matter in the slightest, but it, it just struck me as just an interesting little cultural thing. Why, why on earth is that rude in our culture? How daft is that?

Richard: 1:02

It is a bit strange, isn't it? I've never been pointed. I, it's always the meaning behind it. Why is that person pointing at me?

Fiona: 1:08

Yes. And the way that

Richard: 1:09

oh, it's you

Fiona: 1:10

the way that you just did it was friendly.

Richard: 1:13

I it certainly wasn't rude.

Fiona: 1:15

No.

Richard: 1:15

Absolutely. Always the meaning behind these things that cause the problems. I was thinking about the brain as you do, and, and in doing that thinking about the brain, I was using my brain and that boggles me.'cause that's very meta, isn't it? It really is. Thinking about thinking. Metacognition, I suppose is the phrase, but then you're using the brain to do it, but,

Fiona: 1:41

and then you are going an extra level. you are thinking about the fact that you're thinking about the thinking.

Richard: 1:46

that's right. It's, it's crazy. The way I look at it and this is just a theory, and I guess it kind of is suggested as part of evolutionary psychology that our, brain is us. That is who we are as a person, and over these millions of years, our brain has grown a body to try and protect the brain. And it's got arms and legs to wander about and find food. And a mouth to grab the food. And an intestinal system that just makes things easier to get nutrition outta that food. And here we are all these millions of years later. But us? It's the brain. And that's a relatively new concept in the big scheme of things.

Fiona: 2:33

does that apply to all living creatures? Does it apply to an ant? And if not, where do you draw the line? And if it does, what about plants?'cause they don't have a brain,

Richard: 2:50

But they are living

Fiona: 2:51

but they are living.

Richard: 2:53

if we are located in our head rather than our heart, like, we assumed a few thousand years ago.'cause we didn't know what the brain did a few thousand years ago. We just knew that if you took it out, the person died. We didn't quite know why. We thought it was for regulating temperature, I think at one point, was the consensus. It was all about the heart. That's what keeps you alive. That's who you are. And that's still a little bit of the case in, in popular culture that my, you know, my head says this and my heart says that, but it's because we get feedback from our body. That says you're doing the right thing. You are keeping me, as in the brain, safe. And sometimes that's right, and sometimes that's wrong. Sometimes that gets confused and we think we're in danger and we're actually quite safe and we're actually excited about something, but we think that we're terrified.'cause I've got this feeling in my body, which I only think of as terror. And actually, no, you're just excited that something good is about to happen or you got food poisoning. That happened to me once at an UKCHO meeting. Oh, I was in a right state. I was the only one that had the prawns off this uh, buffet that was put out. This was at um,

Fiona: 4:03

You probably shouldn't say where it was. If you're claiming they poisoned you,

Richard: 4:09

So one sip of London Pride in the pub, and oh, I was a right state.

Fiona: 4:14

Going back to the point, yes, we get all sorts of, reasons for the same bodily response. We are not sophisticated creatures when it comes down to it.

Richard: 4:24

Hmm.

Fiona: 4:24

We are, we are animals.

Richard: 4:27

we think we might be, to a degree top of the food chain intellectually, maybe. And I wouldn't arm wrestle a, gibbon, but I'd beat it at chess. So we are sort of up there, aren't we? But we, we are still,

Fiona: 4:43

Primitive,

Richard: 4:43

easily confused. Yeah,

Fiona: 4:45

we still get the chemical responses and I'm not very good on the chemical responses'cause I don't feel a need to be. But, yesterday I was watching the traitors on tv. Oh. I was full of adrenaline, but it was great fun'cause I loved it. But was really, really nervous. But it was excited nervous,

Richard: 5:07

Yeah. I totally understand. I guess it's part of empathy, that we don't have to actually be doing something for real in order to create the feelings. Other people can be doing it and we can feel the feelings on their behalf. And also sometimes it's fiction. Horror movies are really, really popular, and you'd think, why? Why would you want to be frightened? But people are, it's a way of controlling maybe their anxiety.

Fiona: 5:39

People, do vary on this. I read crime novels. And some of them are quite nasty and scary. But I've met many people who say, why would you want to do that? Why, why would you want to do that? And People who say, oh, I can't read something like that before I go to sleep. To me it's, well, why not? Because that's not real life. So it doesn't have an impact. Watching the traitors just before going to bed didn't keep me up.'Cause it was contextualized, it was contained

Richard: 6:12

It might keep somebody up

Fiona: 6:14

Yes, people vary.

Richard: 6:16

There are no rules. We have to work out what's right for us. If we excite our body, it doesn't know the difference between being excited because something good could be about to happen or something bad could be about to happen. Your body doesn't know the difference, and there's only us intellectually that does. So we process it as excitement rather than process it as fear. Which brings us onto a question that somebody asked us actually. I guess it's my turn to read it out,

Fiona: 6:45

I think it is your turn.

Richard: 6:47

it was sent in from Megan off of Blackpool and Megan. No, she doesn't say that. Megan from Blackpool, she says, I've got a question about exam nerves in particular driving test nerves. How come I can drive perfectly well on my lessons despite feeling nervous, but when it comes to the actual test itself, I become a gibbering wreck and can hardly control my feet on the pedals I have taken and failed my driving test four times over the last 12 months. But my instructor, who is lovely, says my driving skills are good enough to pass. The pressure just gets to me on the day and as the test starts and I walk back to the car with the examiner, I can feel something change in me and I just know I'm going to screw up. Thanks for the podcast, Megan. Well, thanks for listening, Megan, and thank you for sending in a quite common question. Because that comes up in the therapy room a lot. I've had loads of people over the years, especially in those early days when I was a hypnotherapist primarily, rather than just doing that with my psychotherapy. And that's the, that was our bread and butter, wasn't it, really? Test nerves, anxiety.

Fiona: 7:58

Absolutely. It's, it then it is a. Usually a hypnotherapeutic issue. And just reiterate,'cause I know we've said this before, it's one where you don't usually have to be looking for the causes. The cause of driving test nerves is the fact that you're taking a driving test. Don't usually have to go um, digging any further into the past. So, There are all sorts of things that we can do with that. And yes, so, so whether it's driving test, exams, interviews, we talked about interviews a bit lately, but it's all, all very much of a muchness. It's that pressure that is put on by external sources and compounded by the self in a particular moment in time.

Richard: 8:45

and the opposite to that feeling that your body creates would be, I don't care. I don't care that I'm here. I don't care if I pass this test. I just don't care. To feel that you're not gonna be at your best. If you genuinely don't care, because you know, I'm just going through the motions here. You're not gonna pay attention. You're not, you're not even gonna look in the mirror.

Fiona: 9:10

Well, mm. Because you do look in the mirror when you are just driving and you're not under pressure or under stress. So it adds in that element of being judged, that you have to do things in a certain way and it matters. Now, I mean, when you're driving, it does matter that you do it right most of time. But ordinarily, if you were just driving to the supermarket and you forgot to indicate at the roundabout, it's very unlikely to have a significant impact. So we don't therefore feel under pressure to do it right. We might get judged'cause you could get flashed at, or probably that's not the right phrase to use. You, you could, you could get signaled at by other drivers if you do something wrong. I mean, I know I've done that to other people. You know, they might toot their horn at you. So there's, an element of it, but it's, it's the level, isn't it? It's the level of the pressure in, in that circumstance of the driving. Got to do it right.

Richard: 10:15

Yeah. We talk about the fight or flight response a lot as therapists, and we often forget that there's more to it than that. It's not just fight or flight. We only say that because it's just easy to say and it rhymes and it's alliterative. And we follow that on sometimes with fight, flight or freeze, still trying to keep another F in there to make it alliterative so that people remember, and that freeze thing is just as common as feeling that need to fight your way out of something or run away from it. Where our brain just stops and says, I can't think, I can't think. And I think that's what Megan means when she can't control her feet possibly, and if not her, then yeah many people will understand this. Sometimes people do throw in other F, which is flop as in freeze or appease that sort of go loose. I'll just give in sort of fainting

Fiona: 11:07

Well, it's a sort of play dead, isn't it? Which is similar to the freeze. You know, if the antelope on the planes of Africa smells a lion, then flopping is a very good mechanism, I gather. I'm not an expert on antelopes, but I think it is.'cause then

Richard: 11:25

It's already dead. There's no need to attack it. It's already dead

Fiona: 11:27

Well not gonna choose it either because why is it dead? And so you don't, if you're a lion. They will not eat something that's already dead'cause they dunno what's killed it. So they would rather kill something.

Richard: 11:38

Didn't know that. Makes sense.

Fiona: 11:39

That's why playing dead can work in that context. But, in your driving test none of these options are really terribly appropriate. Punching your examiner on the nose? No, not, not generally considered a good idea. Running away. Mm-hmm. No. Can't run away. And freezing or flopping. No. Doesn't work. So then we're looking at ways to use the mind to overcome the body,

Richard: 12:12

Yeah.

Fiona: 12:12

which we can do usually.

Richard: 12:14

Yes, we can. Yeah, it takes practice. But the good thing about it is when you use your imagination, what you're practicing and rehearsing is handling it well. Whereas if you just keep retaking the test,'cause that's what a lot of people think, I just need to have more lessons and then your instructors go, you're good enough. So, okay, you need to get used to test conditions. Oh, okay, I'll practice test conditions. Well, what you're practicing if you're not careful is fear. I'm only practicing fear and that hardwires it in and makes the problem worse. So we have to practice it going well. We have to practice feeling the normal, safe, comfortable, to a degree, amount of emotion, and that has to be done in our imagination first.

Fiona: 13:01

So mental rehearsal,

Richard: 13:02

Yeah.

Fiona: 13:03

it's an amazingly effective process, mental rehearsal. I was watching on TV the other day, and a high jumper. It was so clear. I mean, she was using gesturing and you could see her mind going and she was doing the gestures, this is the and then then lifting your shoulders to show she was mentally rehearsing.

Richard: 13:27

You could see it in her body

Fiona: 13:28

You could see it. It was really so obvious. Often, of course, it's not obvious when somebody's doing it because it's in their heads,

Richard: 13:36

Yeah.

Fiona: 13:37

But an awful lot of sprinters, for example, when they're on that start line or a hundred meters and they're glaring down the other end.

Richard: 13:47

Yeah.

Fiona: 13:48

They're mentally rehearsing. Now, this is in the moment, of course but they will have done lots and lots of mental rehearsal in advance. They will see themselves. And sports people of all types will do I would hope if they have any sports psychology contribution, they will be doing a lot of mental rehearsal and there's there's research out there about things like the, the effects of mental rehearsal on basketball. you know, just standing on the whatever, three meter or whatever it is, line and shooting the balls and, and then doing mental rehearsal and those sorts of experiments have shown the effects,

Richard: 14:31

Significant significantly. It's not just, it's not just, oh, you shoot, you, you get an extra ball in the basket. No, it's, it's multiple. It really is. All because when you are rehearsing it in your head, you're rehearsing it going well. As opposed

Fiona: 14:46

You're seeing that ball going in the net. Yes. You're not seeing it miss.

Richard: 14:52

as opposed to the golfer who's having a, a negative experience on the golf course and he's thinking, oh, this, I can just see it now, this ball is just gonna go right into the trees. Oh, guess where the ball goes, if that's where your attention is? Because that's what your body was being told it was supposed to do.'cause you told it to, you'd given it some instructions. Our imagination creates our expectations, and I know that it's hard if we're anxious to have positive expectations, especially if we failed a driving test quite a few times. We build up this negative belief about self that, well, this is what I do. And yet, do you remember the TV show driving school? Early two thousands, I think it was

Fiona: 15:35

I don't think I ever watched it, but I know of its existence. Yes, there was somebody particular on there, wasn't there some woman Maureen? Was it? Yes.

Richard: 15:45

yes. she needed to take her test many, many, many, many times and was constantly making quite, it was edited, I suppose, but there was some hilarious mistakes that she was making that, oh, look at this terrible driver. She, she passed in the end. She did pass her test, but she had to talk her way through the entire test. And actually, I've spoken to some examiners recently and, and they're suggesting that to a lot of their students that says, genuinely talk yourself through it out loud and say, okay, left foot clutch, moving into third gear. They're actually saying it as they're taking their test, as they're doing it, and it's really helpful. A, it tells the examiner that this is what I'm about to do. I am actually doing it.As opposed to did they do it? Let's have a look, what. Then did they check the mirror? Checking my mirror now. They're actually saying it, which helps apparently, but I think it helps with their confidence that I do know what I'm doing and it gets them in the moment. This is what I'm doing.

Fiona: 16:48

And also it takes us back to the very beginning of this podcast where you were talking about thinking about thinking. So you're talking to your mind to tell your body what to do. I think driving is an interesting one in that, what you're talking about there is that that's making it very conscious and the aim with driving is for it to be unconscious. But you have to go through that phase. So if that helps, and if it's a process that can build the sense of confidence and, a belief that it's okay, then that seems to be a, really valid step to go through.

Richard: 17:25

We can't ignore the importance of breathing.

Fiona: 17:30

Are you sure? Can we not? Could we please try

Richard: 17:33

I'm not a mushroom. Do they? Do they breathe? Oh, I'm not sure if mushrooms breathe. I'm not Googling that right now. Therapists will talk about breathing a lot and I know it's talked about so much that we often think Uh, not even gonna bother mentioning that again. But I can't not. Because the reason for a lot of the feelings that anxiety brings in is because our brain is being told you need, oxygen. We need oxygen in the muscles so that we can fight or flight. It's the reason for the adrenaline to make the heart rate go up. The reason for that sick feeling in our stomach is to pull the blood out of our stomach.'cause we don't need to be digesting our breakfast if we are running from a lion. So it pushes all the oxygen into our muscles. Well, if there's a demand for oxygen, give it oxygen, give your body what it's actually asking for, and then there's gonna be less adrenaline because there's no need to have the heart rate through the roof if the blood's oxygenated. So breathe. But breathe efficiently. You ask most people to take a deep breath, they don't. Ask most people, Hey, take a deep breath and they'll pull their tummy in. They'll puff their chest out, big deep breath. They'll tighten up their shoulders. That's not a deep breath, that's a shallow breath. You're doing the exact opposite. You are pulling your stomach in, which then pulls the diaphragm up, makes your lungs smaller, stops the bottom quadrants of the lungs from being used, which is the most efficient area, actually. That's where all the alveoli well mo, a lot of the alveoli are that soak the oxygen molecules up. We wanna use all of our lungs, so it means that when we breathe, we stick our tummy out a little bit on the in-breath, pulls the diaphragm down, expands the lungs, gets lots and lots of air into our lungs, lots of oxygen into our blood then. As we exhale slowly and get rid of the carbon dioxide, and you take another deep breath and you hold it for a second and you let go slowly. And you get rid of all the carbon dioxide and it stops the production of adrenaline a little bit slows down your heart rate. I mean, I'm quite an excitable character. You've known me for long enough. I'm all over the place. I'm like a, I'm, I'm very much a a

Fiona: 19:52

Tigger

Richard: 19:53

Yeah, Tigger's bouncy. But you give Tigger an amphetamine and it's all over the place. You know? That's me. Yet every time I demo those simple breathing exercises, I slow down, my brain slows down, my voice slows down, everything about me slows down. I'm just a bit more gentle. Everything's just that little bit easier and less rushed. And it only, it only lasts a, you know, a minute at most before I start speeding back up again and I'm like, oh, I'm through the roof again, because that's how I live. But it's every time. And all I do is just take two or three deep breaths, let alone do it for a couple of minutes before something significant. So I know from experience for 40 odd years that that helps

Fiona: 20:43

I've got a question for you, Richard.

Richard: 20:45

Oh, go on.

Fiona: 20:46

Breathing is automatic. We do it all the time throughout our lives. We don't think about it unless we have a reason to think about it, which would be in this sort of situation, or if we're doing a guided meditation, or if we're doing scuba diving. There's rare occasions when we actually have to think about breathing. The vast majority of us, the vast majority of the time, we are not thinking about it. It's automatic.

Richard: 21:14

Hmm.

Fiona: 21:15

An adrenaline response is automatic. The adrenaline response is, as you say, causing the blood to go to the muscles in order to enable us to fight or to flee. Why therefore, does breathing get confused at the particular time when it is particularly necessary? Why do we have to consciously intervene at the time when everything else is happening automatically to do something that would help.

Richard: 21:47

I think it's because deep breathing that's efficient from an oxygenation point that normally only happens when we're asleep. You notice how people breathe when they're asleep and it is belly breathing. It is from the bottom of the lungs and babies, even when they're awake. But something happens when we grow. I think we tighten up a little bit. We stand more upright, and we don't need to use all of our lungs anymore. Maybe over these last few million years of lung, our lungs have got bigger. I don't know, maybe they have difficult to say and now we don't need all of our lungs because there was an evolutionary benefit to having bigger ones, because then we could breathe more. We could run from the lions, but now that we're not living on the savanna, these lungs are too, maybe too big. We don't need them unless we're actually fighting for our life in some way. We need to run. So breathing normally is totally unconscious, just like the adrenaline response is. But if we make our breathing conscious, we can then breathe in that efficient way that then counteracts the adrenaline, if that answers your question. And it's just an idea.

Fiona: 22:56

Yeah, it's, it's interesting I think also there's possibly, and I mean I haven't really thought about this before at all, but there's possibly a pattern interrupt going on

Richard: 23:06

Ah,

Fiona: 23:06

That it's a way of consciously saying to the unconscious, Hey, hang on a minute, mate. Let's look at this. Do we need to be in this state? Do we need the adrenaline to be doing this? Because I presume that if it was a real danger, as in being chased by a lion, you wouldn't sort of think, oh, I think I'll do some deep breathing now. You'd be running away from the lion.

Richard: 23:34

Yeah, you'd be using the oxygen that was in your blood that the adrenaline had just squirted into it and you'd be off, not necessarily to outrun a lion,'cause you probably can't. You've just gotta outrun the person you're standing next to, which is a bit sad.

Fiona: 23:50

Oh dear.

Richard: 23:51

Well, that's how it is.

Fiona: 23:53

Yes. So potentially, it's a pattern interrupt on a situation where we can consciously recognise there's too much adrenaline going on here, we do not need to be in a state of preparation for fighting or fleeing. We can let some of it go, and part of the way of letting it go is to breathe deeply.

Richard: 24:18

And that needs to be done when you're doing the mental rehearsals as well. When you are thinking about the test and you're imagining yourself walking outta the test center to the car. As you're imagining that, slow your heart rate down. The brain doesn't know the difference between fact and fiction. Once you start rehearsing something you've already done before and you knew you'd were terrified of, things are gonna start tightening up. That's eventually becoming a phobic response if it gets repeated enough times, not that it needs that many times, I suppose,

Fiona: 24:50

You can have one trial learning.

Richard: 24:52

yeah, that's all it needs to be. If you can train your brain and body to associate slower heart rate, slower breathing, an easier experience with that thing that you've just thought about. It sticks them together. And that can be repeated every couple of hours throughout the day, let alone at night before you go to bed, because that's a good time for relaxing and getting your head around preparing for the future. Especially if you're thinking about the things that you do want to see happen. Sometimes lying in bed thinking about the future isn't a good idea. It depends what you wanna think about, but if what you've normally thought about is failing, if what you've normally thought about is being terrified, then that's gonna get rehearsed and we wanna stick together and anchor maybe,'cause maybe breathing can be a bit of an anchor. We've spoke a little bit about anchoring before, although somebody did, when we did, somebody did email in and go, oh, could you go into more detail about that? I'm not sure how much more detail we can go into about anchoring.

Fiona: 25:53

we can give a little bit more detail here as to what that would mean.'cause I was thinking actually before you said it, I was thinking that connecting. So anchoring is just connecting, connecting a good feeling to being in the car. So again, you need to, you need to do the mental rehearsal to set up the anchor, get yourself feeling good by remembering past times of nice trips in the car whatever that may be for you. Thoughts have come into my mind, but they're my thoughts. So, but just connect that to being in the car. Tie the two together

Richard: 26:34

And not necessarily driving.

Fiona: 26:36

no. no. Yeah, yeah. It can be anything connected to the car. and, you could even set up an anchor to the driving test center, if you know where it is. Go there and sit there, outside for five minutes. Remember really good things that have happened to you, that you've done in the past and link them to that place. Once you've set these up, all you have to do is we use the term, fire them off, but just go there, be there, do, do the whatever it is that's linked, and those feelings will come back to you.

Richard: 27:12

And just so that people recognise that linking together, that happens by itself, there isn't a a magic word you have to say to yourself to make that happen. It is just like Tom and Jerry. You think of Tom, you think of Jerry. Word association. You hear it enough times, it goes together. So you just have to think about being there or be there and feel the way that you want to feel, or even start by just thinking about the way that you want to feel. Step one, I'm still feeling anxious thinking about this, but I know how I want to feel. It might start there of how I want to feel and I know how I want to feel'cause that's calm and relaxed, like I feel when, and you think about those top other times. Yeah. When you are calm and relaxed, even if you have to make it up, you, you imagine you're sitting in a hammock stretch between two trees swinging backwards and forwards while somebody hands you a I was gonna say espresso martini.'cause I like coffee, but what, what? Whatever your poison is, you know,

Fiona: 28:11

I will have a limoncello spritz, please.

Richard: 28:14

How refreshing.

Fiona: 28:15

Yes, I had my first one of those the other weekend. It was lovely.

Richard: 28:19

Oh, did you? Ooh, another one addicted. These things are lovely

Fiona: 28:24

Well, I've only ever had one in my life. I do not consider myself addicted, but I have bought myself a bottle of limoncello, to make them when the girls come round.'cause it does feel like a girly drink. Anyway, that is beside the point. The whole purpose of anchoring really is to utilise a natural process. We all anchor things anyway, and we have talked about this before, but we link things together naturally. Feeling angry and we see somebody on the tv, we link that anger to that person. They don't like them anymore.

Richard: 28:54

Yeah.

Fiona: 28:54

So it's just utilizing a natural process.

Richard: 28:59

How many times do people say, I've only gotta think about that person, and it makes me angry. Because they've linked the emotion to that person's face. I've only gotta see their face on the telly, and I just, I just want to, I just wanna scream. Yeah. That's an anchor. You, you've anchored that emotion to that person.

Fiona: 29:17

And quite often it will be in that instance because of something they've said, but it'll be maybe one sentence or a couple of sentences they've said, and then you feel the anger and you link it, not the whole person.

Richard: 29:27

Hmm. Yeah. And so we wanna do the opposite. We want to link and anchor together something pleasant, something good, something calm. Something may be exciting at a, that's not a bad idea'cause we can be excited and not be calm because that's, it's okay to be excited.

Fiona: 29:46

and that would work, I would think in, in the context of exam or test nerves. Because, you're not gonna get rid of the adrenaline altogether. So if you can relabel it excitement by anchoring to something exciting

Richard: 30:03

Yeah.

Fiona: 30:04

or maybe a bit exciting, then that seems to make, make a lot of sense.

Richard: 30:09

We know from lots of performance studies, there's one that's been replicated a couple of times, which was quite, quite popular when it was first done, which was to ask people as it was a surprise performance, they didn't know that they were gonna have to perform in front of an audience. Everybody was given either a mantra of having to say before they performed, I am calm and relaxed, things like that. I am calm. I am calm. And then you'd monitor their performance. They were singing so you can monitor their pitch and their voice was analyzed with computers and things to look at how well they did. And other groups were told to say, I'm excited. And the ones that said I'm excited performed better than the ones that were saying, I am calm. Because saying I am calm when you're in front of an audience. No you're not. That's unrealistic. But those that gave themselves the mantra of, I'm excited. I'm excited. And then when they went out there and they were feeling nervous in their body, but the brain says, yeah, this is excitement. You were just talking about that back there. It helped them to perform well. So there was it. There was a feeling of less judgment. be excited about a, test, any sort of exam. It is exciting'cause it means a life change. And life changes are exciting and if genuinely life changes aren't exciting to you, that's worth exploring. But that's for another episode because actually Have you seen the time?

Fiona: 31:36

I have

Richard: 31:37

This is those subjects we can natter about forever.

Fiona: 31:40

We could,

Richard: 31:41

So yeah, the next one is with Inger Gordon. We're going to be talking about couples counselling, couples therapy, I think, aren't we?

Fiona: 31:48

I believe so.

Richard: 31:49

In that case,

Fiona: 31:51

It's time to love'em and leave'em Richard.

Richard: 31:53

It's time to love them and leave them Fiona. I use, I do say that phrase a lot, don't I? it's'cause I, it's'cause I do, I'm, I'm a loving sort of person. I mean, love is a strange concept. The idea that there's people out there that I don't know, but I feel an affinity to. And I, I'd miss them if they weren't there. Yeah. That sounds like love to me. It's just a platonic one. You'll be pleased to know, I

Fiona: 32:16

am And that is something we, we could talk about another time actually love, because I, I really love the fact that love is now something that you can express in a wider sense than you used to be able to

Richard: 32:30

Yeah, some changes are very, good for us. Yeah. That's grand. Alright then. Well let's be off for now, you beauties. We will see you next week and we will natter all over again. Have a super week everybody. Bye for now.