Therapy Natters
Therapy Natters
Good Habits
Not all habits are bad, sometimes a habit can be a good thing.
So this week Richard and Fiona have a little natter about how we can make that happen.
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Hey there, you absolute legends! Welcome to the Therapy Natters podcast. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and with me, my co host here, another psychotherapist, is Fiona Biddle, and we're here to talk about all things therapy. Hello, Fiona. Welcome to a new day.
Fiona:Yes, a new day here on planet Earth. Where's that from? That's from something, isn't it, where they say that? Another day here on planet Earth.
Richard:Was it somebody's jingle on a radio programme?
Fiona:Might have been, yes, yes, it probably
Richard:Yeah, is it Chris Evans or Steve Wright or somebody like that? Yeah,
Fiona:have been Chris Evans. Yes, yes, his breakfast show.
Richard:I like the idea of being from planet Earth, and I know that we aren't the centre of the universe, like we first thought. There's a lot more to us. Well, there's a lot more to the universe. But don't we feel like the centre of the universe sometimes?
Fiona:and everybody feels like they're at the centre of their own universe, which is normal and natural. It reminds me again, this is a radio thing, when years ago the DJ asked the caller where they were from and they said Plymouth. They said, what do you like about Plymouth? He said, well, it's the center of everything.
Richard:What Plymouth? I mean, I've been there a couple of times. It's
Fiona:yes, but that's its perception, isn't it? And also another, another one on this was somebody talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. wanting to go into space. And this person, it might have been Ricky Gervais, but somebody like him, even if it wasn't, said, look, we're already in space.
Richard:Yeah. Oh
Fiona:And I just thought, yeah, that's, that's, that's brilliant. We are aren't we? we're attached to a planet.
Richard:Spinning around space. So when you zoom out and you look at planets that aren't close together to us. It's relative. To us it looks like there's this massive gap between us and the moon and it's, it's right there. It's right there. It's really close. If you zoom out and look at it, it's all relative. And I think thinking outside of the box like that is quite useful for people. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to think that Oh wow, I am just a tiny, tiny speck of absolutely no importance in the movement of the universe whatsoever. That's true. And that's okay.
Fiona:sort of, well obviously it's okay, but it's sort of a bit scary. But then if you think about it the other way round, how many trillion cells do we have in the human body? How do you get your head around that? We've got trillions and trillions of cells. Baffling, isn't it?
Richard:And then we spend 20 minutes worrying about what our neighbour thinks of us because we put the bin out and didn't have a conversation with them. No big deal
Fiona:It was you, was it? Yes.
Richard:Oh yeah, absolutely ignorant me. I'll always ignore everybody, me. Literally the opposite. Annoyingly so. And I don't mind if my neighbour thinks, Oh, it's him again.
Fiona:But these, these things are significant. I forgot to say thank you to somebody the other day for something, and it went round and round in my head. Not for very long, because I just sent a WhatsApp message to say, sorry, I forgot to say thank you. but that person said, oh, didn't even notice.
Richard:Didn't even notice.
Fiona:And most of the time they don't, but what if I'd said the wrong thing that, to me, made perfect sense, and for them, didn't, and you wouldn't never know? Oh, gosh, it's life. It's a complicated thing.
Richard:And we never, or we very rarely, do we stick the phrase, and that's okay on the end of it. I was thinking about my neighbour. I moved house last year, and I was going to buy their house, actually. And we viewed it, and we put an offer in on it, and we were going to buy their house. And then they changed the estate agents and it cancelled our offer. And we weren't ready to move. The reason they moved the estate agents is because they were obviously looking at other options. We went, Oh, okay. The estate agent says, I'm really sorry. Your offer is now void. Let's, let's have a look at other properties. And I really wanted to live in that street. It's a really nice street. And then the next door neighbor's house came up for sale. Oh, now there's a choice. Well, we preferred this one. Sorry. It was just one of those things. There was some work that needed doing. Well, it's already done here. That saved us a lot of time. More expensive, but it saved us time, which means I can work more and then pay the mortgage. So it all worked out in the end and I didn't have to do the work in the garden or the extra bits anyway. And I was hoping he wouldn't recognise me.
Fiona:but he did.
Richard:Oh, of course he did. And when I said to Dawn, He wouldn't remember me. She went, no, he wouldn't remember me, he'd remember you. You've got a lot of personality in one person, he would remember you, and he did. And he said, oh by the way, was it you that came around last year? And I said, yes, it was. Yeah. He went, Oh, so what happened there? And I explained, he went, Oh, I shouldn't have changed estate agents. No, he shouldn't, but it is what it is. But how easy would it be if I was in the wrong frame of mind to think, I've caused this man all these problems. And he might be thinking, Oh, I've caused myself all these problems. And it's not
Fiona:he might be, he might be thinking you caused him all those problems but that's not your problem.
Richard:Yeah. But I did feel guilty. Because it'd be weird if I didn't feel somewhat guilty.
Fiona:Except it was taken away from you. So where's the guilt? What did you do wrong? You would have bought it.
Richard:Yeah, it's one of them.
Fiona:That's a good phrase as well.
Richard:Yep, use it
Fiona:lot.
Richard:It's just one of those things. It's true though, because the secret to a lot of stuff is acceptance, and that's what
Fiona:that
Richard:means
Fiona:Yeah.
Richard:We have to accept this is what it is. Catchphrases are interesting because they can become a habit. Whether it's a catchphrase or a mantra or something that we say to ourself, if it's useful then it's a good habit. Keep it up. It is what it is. It helps.
Fiona:And good habits often get a little bit neglected. We sort of take them for granted, don't we? Cleaning your teeth. I mention that quite often because I think it's actually a really good example of something that most people have a habit of doing. They don't give very much thought to it, so they don't need to think, How am I going to motivate myself to clean my teeth tonight before I go to bed? But it's a good habit. And there are lots of good habits that people have. They just think, Oh, that's just the way I am, or that's just the way to be, without recognising that they have at some level chosen to have that habit
Richard:Until it became an unconscious process and you do it
Fiona:but that's what a habit, that's what a habit is, isn't it? It's an unconscious process that you just do without thinking.
Richard:Bad habits and good habits, and if you can take what is a conscious good habit and turn it into an unconscious good habit, the amount of effort required to do it is minimum. Because It's unconscious.
Fiona:Can you have a conscious habit? If there's an unconscious good habit, bring it into the conscious to say, oh yeah, I do do this, don't I? And this is great.
Richard:Hmm.
Fiona:But if it's a conscious good habit that hasn't got to the level of being in the unconscious, it's not really a habit. It's just something you're choosing to do.
Richard:So it's a routine?
Fiona:habituate, is that the word? Make it a habit.
Richard:Yeah.
Fiona:Get it into the unconscious. So we can work on getting rid of bad habits. But today we were wanting to talk about creating good ones
Richard:Hmm. Because like you say, if it's a habit that you step out of the shower and after you've dried yourself, you then clean your teeth, you do it without thinking. It just sort of happens and you have good dental hygiene and you're not going to sabotage your life by having painful abscess. Or
Fiona:and, My little grandson at the moment is six months old. He's, he's having his bath every night at the set time. So, routine and habit has a lot of connection.
Richard:And those good habits of setting up a routine, because I'm assuming by the sound of things he has that bath closer to bedtime, it's at night.
Fiona:Yes.
Richard:And it sets up that routine ready for bed. I remember doing that with, with, with my son. And for years we had the same routine. I used to sit and read him stories at days old, probably. He had no idea what I was saying, but I was reading him a story. That's what happened. He had a bath, and he sat in my arms, and I spoke quietly to him and read him a little story. I could have been reading an Ian Rankin novel, but it didn't matter. But I was sitting reading to him. I wasn't. I was probably reading Spot Eats Biscuits or something or whatever.
Fiona:These things are part of setting up the routine. And, you know, a lot of us, I mean, I still read before bed, but I tend to read to myself.
Richard:And it sets the brain up. If your brain says, as it always does, because we're pattern recognition machines really, if this then that. If I have a bath I feel relaxed, if this then that. If you can set that up or set anything up with that repetition so that your brain goes if this then that, then your brain is already firing off the neurons to do that thing before you've even done it. And that's motivation. Because you create an expectation. Whether that's about, well, every day after work I immediately go and get changed and then go for a run for half an hour before preparing the evening meal. That's what I always do. And it would feel weird when you don't. I remember when I first started jogging, and I did it, I think it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then either Saturday or Sunday. It felt weird when I didn't do it. I'm like, hmm, I haven't done that. Like eating my daily banana. I have a daily banana. When I was learning to like bananas, like we were talking about before. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was, wasn't it? It was weird to not have a banana. Actually, I don't have a banana every day anymore, I like them now, so I don't need to repeat it anymore. My brain's got used to it, my mouth's got used to it, so whatever. But when I was having one every single day to get used to it, I missed it when I didn't, because my brain said I was expecting one. And if we can set that up
Fiona:Yeah, I remember my brother saying, because my brother's always been a bit of a gym bunny, but he was in China during Covid, and for a period of months, he was not allowed out of the door of his apartment.
Richard:Yeah.
Fiona:Literally, not allowed out of the door. You know, he was literally stuck and I can't go to the gym, can't go to the gym. So he made his flat into a gym. He just recreated it because that's what he had to do rather than say, right, okay, I can't go to the gym, so I'll take this time to do X, Y, Z instead. But the fear of the losing the fitness for him was just impossible. Just something you said earlier about when you come home from work, you get changed, you go for a run. So we're not talking about stopping habits in this episode, but You can overwrite them. So it can be a way of creating a good habit is to overwrite an old bad habit with a new good one. So in that instance change that habit of changing into your pyjamas and pouring a glass of wine to changing into your kit and going for a run or doing some yoga or whatever it is. It doesn't have to be a run, obviously. It can be whatever works for you. But you can see those the two things in tandem sometimes.
Richard:A lot of people don't have faith that if they do stick at something that it will become second nature, that it will become part of who they are. Because they've never done it before, they've got no past experience. Well, in that case, like we were talking about the other week again, do you know somebody who does?
Fiona:Yeah,
Richard:is it physically possible for somebody to achieve what you want to achieve? Yes, it is. Because I know dozens of people who do exactly the thing that I want to do. Then it is realistic for humans to do. Are you a human? Yes. Do you have a brain with neurons that worked in exactly the same way, or close to it, to everybody else? Yes. Then in the absence of a severe learning disability, you are going to be able to learn how to make the conscious unconscious and habitual.
Fiona:One of my favourite catchphrases, if you like, is If other people can, I can. But there are limits. This is off the beaten track from what we normally talk about. Let's say I happened across a motorbike show and they've got all these people wonderful, sparkly, huge, great big motorcycles and I thought those look fun. I think I'll, I'll do that. No, no, no Fiona, you can't do that.
Richard:You'll drop it.
Fiona:I mean, I only ever went on a, on a, well, a moped once and I, I crashed that and that was within ten meters. And then I was fit. It's, it's not for me. So that needs to come into it, but generally speaking most of the things we're talking about in terms of setting up good habits. If other people can do it, I can do it, you can do it. It can be done. And there was some research quite a few years ago now, I remember reading about it in Psychologist magazine, where they found that if you repeat something 66 times, then a habit is formed.
Richard:Seems to be, yeah.
Fiona:Yeah, I mean obviously there's variations on that, but it's quite a nice number. that works quite nicely. You can also tie that in with hypnosis and the idea that the unconscious mind doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality. So you can do some of those 66 in your imagination,
Richard:I did that learning to play the guitar. I was learning some chords. And I just relaxed. I went to bed. It was night time. But before I went to sleep, I would use what I would call hypnosis. Somebody might call it mindfulness. Others might just call it sleepiness or just daydreaming. But we call it hypnosis because that's what we think of it as. And just relaxed. Softened my thoughts, softened my body. And took myself into the room where I would normally play the guitar in my imagination and just went through the chords. So I want to get, there's only three chords I think when I was learning, I think it was probably A, D and E, because you can just jump between them three and you can play anything. And just played those in my imagination whilst I fell asleep. Literally the next day it was effortless to jump between those three chords. My fingers did it for me. Now, it wasn't my fingers. There's no such thing as muscle memory. My muscles don't have the memory. Not really. It's the brain. It's the neurological structure of the brain sending signals to my fingers, but it's outside of conscious awareness.
Fiona:and it is so automatic that it feels like it's in the, it's like driving a car. It's not your foot knowing when to hit the brake. It's your mind knowing when to hit the brake, but it's so quick that it feels like, oh, my feet know what they're doing here, which of course they didn't when you first started.
Richard:No, I'm all over the place. I remember when I started driving an automatic rather than a manual. My left hand is looking for a stick that isn't there. Because it's just automatic for my brain to go, but this is what I do. I'm about to slow down, so my left hand reaches down to think about changing gear. My left foot starts moving to hit a clutch that isn't there. If I'm not careful, I'm going to left foot brake and slam my face into the steering wheel at this rate. It took, probably 66 goes of driving
Fiona:Yeah, you have to really plant that left foot in that corner, don't you,
Richard:Have you got an automatic now then?
Fiona:No, but I have driven them from time to time. I specifically didn't want to, when I changed my car recently, people were saying, Why don't you get an automatic? And I said, No, because I don't want to lose the skill of the manual. I'd rather it that way round.
Richard:totally understand. But Dawn, my wife, for listeners who don't know who Dawn is, she's got a manual car. When I drive that, I don't have a problem. I've got both skills now. My brain says,
Fiona:I feel I've got both, but I don't, I feel I would lose that one. Or might, so I don't want to risk it. But I do want to just address sort of the habits around eating, drinking, those sorts of things. I mentioned the wiping out the glass of wine as the automatic habit, but, so many people, or probably most people, have habits around food. It could be routines, call it that. But it's always useful to have a little think about what your habits are and what they are giving you. And quite often you might find that, the ones you have are not giving you what you thought they were giving you. And that there could be better ones that you could choose. So, drinking more water is a very good thing fashionable thing. Trendy, isn't it, to say, You need to keep hydrated. And all these water bottles that you can get with measures of, you have to drink to here by 10am, and you drink there by noon, and those sorts of things. I mean, when I was, when I was a kid, nobody was ever dehydrated. It didn't, it wasn't a thing. I mean, it could be if you were ill, but, unless you were
Richard:thirsty a lot. I don't, yeah, I don't remember being thirsty at school.
Fiona:Seems like that's progress to, to be able to keep yourself healthier, but for each individual I think it's to think about what works for them rather than necessarily, taking on any more rules from society that maybe don't suit. It's like that thing about breakfast is the most important meal.
Richard:That research was sponsored by Kellogg's,
Fiona:Yes. But so many people, so many people do say that it, for them it is. But we shouldn't presume each person can think about what's, what's right
Richard:because every, every body physiologically is different. The way, even the brain, the way it processes glucose and the things that it prioritises, everybody's different. You've got to work out what works for you. For some people, and some cultures of course, leaving food on your plate would be culturally problematic. There are some cultures where if you did go around their house to visit and you, you left food.
Fiona:They would feel very slighted, wouldn't they?
Richard:Yes. And then others where, Oh, you've eaten everything. Well, I better give you some more. I didn't give you enough, did I? If you've eaten everything.'cause you clearly want more and you.
Fiona:You've got to navigate that. Know which it is
Richard:both of those are right and wrong. You've got to work out your rules. I tend to eat everything on my plate. But maybe that's because I get my portions right. Maybe. Not sure. Whereas Dawn, she'll always leave something. Might just be a couple of inch square morsel of food. But she'll leave something because it'd be weird if she didn't.
Fiona:Oh. Now for me, it's, it's, it's, purely on what I want at the time, so usually I'd be leaving something, but sometimes I don't, and when I do eat a whole meal, if I'm with other people, because it doesn't happen if I'm on my own, luckily, somebody would say, oh, well done,
Richard:Well done?
Fiona:yes, well done, good girl, you ate everything, well done, good
Richard:Well, you've done well today, yes. Yeah.
Fiona:should be proud of yourself, you ate everything. Very strange that one, isn't it?
Richard:But it makes sense how those things start, how those attitudes start. New parents particularly, we're fascinated with making sure that our kids are healthy. So we want them to eat. Are they eating okay? Yeah, they're eating okay. And it starts right there. Their stomachs are small, they don't
Fiona:it's, it, it is, it's a sort of, oh, good boy, good girl, you, you've eaten everything, yeah,
Richard:We can play with that as the years go on, that what we don't want is then to be disturbed 40 minutes later when the kid says, I'm hungry. Oh for goodness sake, you should have eaten your tea. I'm hungry. Oh, we just want, can you, so we can get them to eat their dinner now, they're not going to come to us later on and ask for chocolate biscuits. Who knows? You work out, you work out what's going on and not just assume that the habits you've got are the right ones. Because it might be causing a problem and that needs addressing. But then it might not be because nothing's a problem unless it causes a problem.
Fiona:And sometimes a habit can be a sort of negative behaviour of not doing something. So, I've, I've lost count of the number of weight control clients I've had over the years, who part of their issue is whenever they stop for petrol, they buy a sausage roll
Richard:Woah!
Fiona:Or something along those lines. It doesn't have to be that exactly, but that seems to be very stereotypical thing.
Richard:Very British, isn't it? Sausage roll
Fiona:Or the, the one who's, working in a an office and everybody brings cakes on their birthday. And there's a lot of people in this office, so a lot of days you have cakes. So there's these sorts of things where the negative but positive habit would be to not do it.
Richard:Yeah, if somebody's got a habit of checking in with their body and if they aren't hungry not eating, then that's a good habit.
Fiona:mean, pay at pump is useful because you don't get the chance to have a sausage roll. The pump doesn't say, Would you like a sausage roll with that?
Richard:Yet.
Fiona:Yet, yet. Oh dear, just giving somebody a business idea there. But people get worried about the one where they have to reject something. But there's ways to do it. There's ways to say, actually, thank you, but, um, just don't really want that right now. You could always say, can I take maybe half of one for later, and then later fit it into your daily meal, or not. But, compelling other people to eat is a big part of culture, unfortunately, so many places, that you need to, if that's, if that's you who's eating things when it's not right for you, there needs to be a way to be able to say no.
Richard:And although it might be easy for me, with the habits that I've already got, or the confidence, however you want to call it. I don't necessarily think of myself as an overly confident person. I'm just normal. But it's easy for me, and maybe that is confidence, if somebody was to say, I've got this for you. For me to say, Oh, I've had a lot of that lately, I'd rather not today, thanks. And it not be a problem. And maybe I say that in a way that doesn't reject them. And if they feel rejected because, Oh, you're rejecting my offer of a slice of cake. That means you're rejecting me. Well, that's on them, and I can't do anything about that.
Fiona:But it's the way you do it, and that's the, that's the thing, it's the way to do it, to not offend. And so my Ukrainians regularly offer me food. And sometimes it's, it's great, but sometimes it's they're offering me a meal when I've already got one planned and so what am I going to do with that one if I have that one? And they often bring cakes and desserts and things, but I just set it up right from the get go that I said I don't eat a lot, so please don't be offended if I say no, but often I'll say just a little bit, just a little bit. And they know that and they just smile and give me a little bit and then that's, that's nice.
Richard:It's a good habit to get into. Just a little bit. If you need to. Because certainly those bad habits of, well, I have to eat everything that's in front of me. Because I just do. Because my brain doesn't feel satisfied unless that thing is gone. And that's just expectation. I say just. It's a powerful thing, expectation. We wouldn't have anxiety without expectation. Believe me, that's powerful.
Fiona:And it also depends on frequency, I've had many clients who've moved in with in laws, for example, and the in laws, usually mother in law, of course, is doing the cooking and then they don't feel able to reduce their intake. They feel they have to say yes. Now, if that's on a daily basis, that's a problem. I mean, if I was getting a sausage roll every time I filled up the car, it probably wouldn't be a problem because I fill up the car probably once every three or four weeks. So, no big deal. But if driving is your career and you're filling up the whatever it is, every day, then that's, that's a thing.
Richard:Yeah, I do remember, this is going back, maybe I would have told you about it at the time, but it would have been nearly 25 years ago now. Wow, I've been a therapist a long time. It was very early on in my career, a lady came to me for weight loss. And she went through, all of her meal plans and things like that and it sounded healthy. The portions sounded small. Didn't seem to be any problems here. And yet, she was gaining weight. And, I made some suggestions that might, I don't know, maybe there's something going on with your thyroid for all I know, best speak to your GP. But, are you, are you getting enough water? Maybe is this water retention? What's, is there, are there other things going on here? She said Oh I drink plenty. The kettle's always on. Because since I retired, I get visitors every hour. Whether it's from one of the neighbours, or my sister, or one of my kids pops around. It's literally every hour somebody comes around constantly drinking tea. I said, oh, do you have sugar in your tea? Yeah, three. Oh, wow, okay. I've always had three sugars. Yeah, but you haven't always had three sugars. Three teaspoons of sugar, twenty times a day, yeah. And, she then mentioned that there'd always be a biscuit with
Fiona:each cup, I was going, in my mind, I was going towards, this is biscuits, but,
Richard:Yep. It soon mounts up, because, well, this is what I always do. I've got to have a biscuit with a cup of tea. You can't have one without the other. Yes you can.
Fiona:what's that called in NLP? Complex Equivalents.
Richard:Oh is it? Oh,
Fiona:Yeah, it's one of my favourite bits of NLP is the complex equivalents where people think in their own minds that x means y, so tea means biscuit, cinema means popcorn, Indian restaurant means poppadoms, pillau rice, naan bread. So NLP calls that the complex equivalents. Those things aren't, are not equal to each other.
Richard:Change the rule.
Fiona:You can go to the cinema, and not have popcorn. It's, it's not written down anywhere. You're going to get shot if you don't.
Richard:You don't have to have butter and jam on your toast.
Fiona:Do you know, I was just thinking of that, but with Marmite. I was thinking, yeah, when I, when I was a kid, you had, if you had Marmite on toast, you had butter first. What's the point? Can't taste the butter.
Richard:Yeah.
Fiona:So there's no, there's literally, to me, zero point in putting butter on that, but plenty of Marmite. Ooh, lashings. Lashings of marmite.
Richard:I'm sure I could learn to like it. It would take a while. Um, Fiona, I'm conscious of the time.
Fiona:I'm conscious that you're going to have a bit of editing to do because we have nattered rather a lot
Richard:Well, that's what we do. That's the whole, that's, it's a, it's a podcast, not a lecture. So,
Fiona:Somebody asked me this morning about, well, what do you do? I said, well, we natter.
Richard:yeah,
Fiona:That's what it says on the tin. We natter about
Richard:therapy We natter about therapy things, yes. And hopefully you like what we natter about. If you do have some ideas, if there's something you'd like us to talk about, or you've got a question, you've got an experience you'd like to share with us and get our insight on, let us know. Links are in the show notes. Contact details are all over our website, as well as in the description in the show notes and so on. We're everywhere. You can Whatsapp us, you can email us, you can text us, you can, write something on a piece of paper, fold it into an aeroplane and throw it out of the window. You never know, it might get to us. If you don't ask, you don't get. So. Message in a bottle. Yep, chuck it in the cut, see if it lands anywhere in the Midlands. Which is where I am. Are you classed as the Midlands? You're not really middle, are you now?
Fiona:Um, South West, technically. But, it's really, it's on the edge.
Richard:It's on the cusp. The cusp of the middle. We'll leave you to it for another week, you beautiful people. Like I say, get in touch if you need anything, and we will be back next week. Have a good one.
Fiona:Bye bye!
Richard:Bye!
