Joining me today is clinical psychologist Dr Emma Hepburn. When she’s not working for the NHS Emma is the author of two fantastic books: a toolkit for Modern Life and a Toolkit for Happiness. Her third book: A Toolkit for your Emotions is out in January 2023. I can’t actually decide if this is just a ScotsCare podcast or more of a therapy session for myself!
Hi Emma
Hi Marcus
It’s nice to speak to you because I know we’ve been kind of around the houses with trying to get a chat between us with covid and then school holidays but it’s great to finally chat to you. It’s almost fortuitous because I was thinking about you the other night, I was watching have you seen Belfast, the Kenneth Branagh film?
No I haven’t.
No all right, it’s really interesting because it’s a great film set in 1969 and that’s a few years before I was born but not many you know? And it looks like another world, it looks like prehistoric times and I was thinking oh that’s interesting I’ll have to chat about that, and what I was thinking is that in just because it is kind of just one generation things have changed so much
you know? Technology has changed so much the every the the pressure we put upon ourselves has changed the Simplicity
seems to have gone do you think I’m just getting old or and do you think our parents were saying that or do you think
it’s true or an element of Truth I know I think there is a huge challenge of Truth in that if I think back to when
I started University I remember sending my first email and thinking this isn’t
going to take off and nobody said these things yeah okay how long was I and I
was handwriting my essay so well maybe I’m just all too about handwriting essays because we’ve done a set of
computers and there was no access to them and since then you’re from being in my late teens to now if everybody uses
email it’s the main way of corresponding you can’t work without using email it’s one of the main things factor is going
to impact it on your work day nowadays and technology has you know since the
mid 1990s moved on in Leaps and Bounds I don’t think we’ve ever had that increasing technology to that such an
extent um that it’s now in our lives so much more obviously it’s impacted Industrial
Revolution impacted on all of our lives and actually coming into our lives I
think that will leap in the last 30 years has been phenomenal yeah I was it’s interesting you see you remember
sending your first email because I don’t but do you know what I do remember really clearly was discovering Twitter
when it first came out and I was working for a company and it was it was they had called it the ventures Department we had
to investigate new technologies it basically just paid me to sit around looking at the internet which you know I
thought was a job back then nowadays I would bite your hand off for that but I remember doing it and my friend who
who was also part of this department of laws and I look at it and going so I say something like okay I’m off for a Wii
you know I couldn’t quite get why I wanted to spill my guts to everybody and there was two things that came out of it
I had no idea then that it would become in a way unhealthy I think that
everybody needs to share everything all the time and the second thing that Laura said at that point which must have been
2006 or something he said to me I don’t like this I think at one point this is going to come back and bite us all in
the ass and I think 20 years later he’s right it’s not interesting though how we
looked at it before it was so integrated in our life and now we kind of accept it that’s just part of it but actually if
we step back from it it is quite a weird thing isn’t it that we are sharing all these micro bites or
little bits of our life on Twitter and actually even when we go out to something and I find myself doing you
know it’s like Halloween what my kids like oh I could take a photo of that for social media that’s bizarre isn’t it
yeah I think I saw me myself or or uh in fact you know it was one of my kids had
to tell me what a meme was but it was like if 20 years ago you had started taking photographs of your food and a
Russian people would have thought you were insane yeah absolutely or your feet feet along the street you know people
like what are these people doing yeah well you know what I think I I don’t think things change all that much as in
some ways I think the technology changes so things get faster I remember when I left school I left University before I
had a first job I ended up working in a photograph Factory so you remember when you used to like send away your spills
yeah expensive but lovely because prize but you got back obviously hugely
disappointed when it was all blank photos and you paid for it but yeah absolutely that’s it and I used I used
to put this feed the spools in and then they would get processed and all the kit all the photographs would go do come out and I would put them back in the
envelope and send them off to the people but and what people have taken photographs I think Technology’s changed
but it’s still kind of blank photos trains cats and pornography and it’s just
it’s just the medium by which we consume these things that’s changed and the amount probably if I think of how many
photos I’ve got my camera compared to how many photos existed me you know in
the 80s 90s the amount of as well and it’s perpetual existence in our life so
you take one spool and you wouldn’t think about your camera again for a while but now your camera is constantly there so I think it’s like the amount
and the constantness in your life which has changed let’s talk about your first book a toolkit for Modern Life and what
I really liked about it was it was beautifully simple and I just wondered did it come to you organically or did
you see a need for this to come out in such an easily consumable way because you’re actually a very academic person
but this is it comes across an and I don’t mean it’s badly it’s a very non-academic book it’s very easily
digestible it’s intentionally non-academic and so I uh I do work for
the University but I also am a clinical psychologist I treat then I’ve worked discipline psychologist for nearly 20
years now with lots of different people and you know you can take
part of an economic psychologist has taken the theory and making it meaningful to people and if you talk in academic jargary
language it’s not meaningful to anybody and my most meaningful to academics but it’s not meaningful to actually take and
apply it in your life and use it because you’re not going to think about all this convoluted psychological theory so I
think part of my job has always been taking this daily that the evidence suggests Works um and helps people and
making it accessible for people at a point when I feel pretty rubbish when you’re feeling pretty rubbish your brain
is not good to want to think about lots of different things you want information you can use as digestible so in answer
to your question it was incredibly organic it came from my work so I worked
um I’ve worked with lots of different groups probably key groups that I worked with which this came from were children now you’re not going to give children
lengthy words or or you know um you know give them big books to read to
help them what do you do you sit and you draw pictures with them so I used to sit and draw pictures of volcanoes and you
know um big brains and all these different things which you’ll see kind of evolution of into the book and so that
was probably the first kind of part of it sit and make these concerts accessible for children you see how the
book is quite childlike and probably that’s developed from and actually the images are used a lot in schools which is really nice but then I moved on and
when I had children I had two jobs but I couldn’t sustain two jobs it was just too much with children so I stopped
working with children myself and I kept on the part of neuropsychology which is basically working people who have
something that’s impacting their brain so our neurological condition our brain injury and as part of that I developed
or helped develop a group for people with brain injury now that’s lots of different things they injuries many many
different things but again with brain injury um you don’t want to give people lengthy books to overburden people with lots of
jargon you want to make it accessible so as part of this group has started drawing probably take a lot of work from
children and drawing a lot of the things that we talked about so I described them at one point and said you know when you
you’re totally a fool or bursting point it’s like a cop who starts to overflow and it just came kind of quite organic
in the group I thought let’s draw this as a concept so due up this massive you know um
what’s it called down there the flip chart up on the wall of a cup and said
right so you’ve got to work out where your cup is how much capacity you have left you know if your food are a massive risk of of bubbling over and this just
people really engaged with that so they come back and they say I was thinking about a cup last weekend and I knew I
was at the point of taking over so I had to actually get my cup down before I
could go and deal with something big so people are just really engaging with the visual and that’s there that’s like yeah
these records are Scrappy drawings on paper NHS paper that I was drawn on the wall and then I bought myself an iPad
um and started just like okay draw some is a bit better and started drawing I was quite artistic when I was younger
but like most things you cannot lose them when you go into your job and you stop doing it um so I started drawing these and making
a little bit more colorful and predominantly for my work um so I make them a bit more successful a bit more fun released you want people
to engage it and be interested in it and and keep their attention and also memorize it and think oh that’s the the
copper that’s whatever it is so I started brother and I thought you know what it’s a shame for these to be sitting just use it by a few people in a
clinic room so I started to share them with social media and I was really cautious because I I was thinking oh you
know as a psychologist at social media do these two mix and there wasn’t really I know there’s loads of psychologists and lots of mental health professionals
and social media at the time but in 2018 there was virtually nobody so nobody to kind of model this idea on and I started
sharing them and I did it anonymously because I was so uncertain about it and I thought I’ll just put it up but I
thought I’ll probably get three followers uh my mom my dad and my husband and none of them ever followed
me so I didn’t get there as followers but uh it’s just suddenly rapidly grew
and people are really engaged in it and it was um you know there was people shared like a lot of smaller set shared
on my drawings which was just imagine the text message and of course wants to be my husband about that well that’s
more sense started following me husband isn’t that ironic so so it was just it was like shortly or
something I never expected and grew and grew and then I also have a lot of these drawings online
um and again I was drawn them from Concepts that people are talking about and I was drawn them from Concepts I I
work with you know I’ve drawn things that I felt were meaningful to people sometimes it’s about the current context
obviously I started drawing a lot during the pandemics that’s working and supporting um healthcare workers in a hospital
during the pandemic so it was just really things that were coming to me and things I was hearing and it just grew
and grew and then a publisher got touched me and said look newsford worked really well in a book and that’s where it came from it can do very organically
and it still surprises me that it’s kind of where it is now because it’s probably not something I ever thought would
happen one in four of us will experience a form of mental health illness in our lifetime
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well it’s interesting that the first thing you talk about there is the capacity cup because I think that must
resonate with so many people because it was the first thing that jumped out on me as well and I wonder if one of the
reasons that your book has been so successful that first book was so successful was because in some ways in
our society we have a need for it because I think I think the capacity cup what that said to me was that associated
with the capacity cap I suffer terrible guilt if I can’t do everything that Society expects me to do and I kind of
Wonder because we’ve got all all these ways of doing things and interacting with society that it just causes more
guilt [Music] yeah and I think we we live in a culture of productivity and we are constantly
doing more and looking for the next thing and we get on this kind of traveler of what’s next what’s next
what’s next that I must achieve and you know as a message that’s very much given to us and that’s
and we can’t achieve everything we can’t do everything and I guess it comes back to our initial conversation about media there’s so much more coming at us now
that actually everything is is so much more than it ever was before so it’s just impossible and we actually need to
recognize our limited capacity that and actually we need to also prioritize not doing and just and saying no and you
know giving ourselves a break to actually manage our capacity and how we’re feeling proactively because it’s
very easy to get on What’s called the hedonic treadmill when you just go in and going and going and trying to get Mutual next thing and never actually
just managing um you know or recognizing you know where you are what you have achieved so absolutely effective cultural stories
feed into how we’re feeling and lead to guilt and I think like say social media doesn’t really help with that either you
know what I’d like to talk to you about is Success I’ve got three kids I’ve got two boys Noah’s 13 Rafe is nine in in
these four and the boys are definitely very different from the girl and and Noah as an older kid he’s he’s
very absorbed in skateboarding and he’s much more of a kind of
we’ve not taught on this but he’s much more of a free spirit hippie and so it’s
largely unaffected by uh by outside influences but Rafe tends to he spends a lot of time where we control it but he
spends a lot of time on screens and he watches YouTubers and
I worry about his definition of success because if I ever say to ref well this is what do you think about doing this
you’ll say to me well is there a YouTube channel and how much money can I earn from it and I want to say it um because
because I’ve been through jobs where I’ve earned a bit more money but I’ve not been terribly happy and I don’t want
that from my kids I I kind of want to be able to allow them to Define their success as
happiness rather than financial achievement yeah and I think that comes back to kind
of what Society pushes I mean we measure success as a nation in terms of economic growth so that’s
Finance isn’t it yeah rather how satisfied we are as a nation or how happy we are or how you know or hi Mr
but we are as a measure of lack of success so it’s so interesting I think the societal message that get pushed us
about success are about achievement of an academic achievement about um monetary achievement and also now I
think your tapping is not really important for kids is about social media achievement how many followers you have
um how much um success you have on social media so this is kind of a myth of success now talk about that myself in
Boots and what really is Success because whenever it shows us that Beyond
obviously a lack of money makes us unhappy I mean poverty is is awful for
mental health and we shouldn’t see monies that make us happy because up to a certain point it does it’s absolutely
essential but beyond a certain point actually money doesn’t make us more happy
as soon as we have kind of our needs met and we can have a few nice things you know a huge amount of money doesn’t make
us any happier and also the things that we think make us happy so getting the
great job or the job you always thought would be the ideal thing or getting that brilliant exam result also don’t make us
as happy as we think so if we then pull back what does success mean to us well so success really is about those things
which makes us feel good and that’s probably not the things that Society tells us we should be chasing so I think
through the success back like just like you say and that’s what I look at let’s redefine success what is it for you and
it’s probably about tying it into what’s important for you what makes you feel good so success for me might be you know
cooking a nice meal that day which I don’t get a chance to do but actually I really enjoy doing it might be actually taking some down time it might be
connecting with friends because those things make me much happier than an extra you know bit of money or actually
chasing the are clear um promotion actually those things that
do our day-to-day basis make me much happier and success is also about probably learn to feel so that’s
actually dealing with bad times it’s because you know the stress feeling bad feeling crappy is a normal part of life
so success is also getting through those really crappy times and being able to come through the other side so I I
really think we do need to redefine success and think about what it means for us as individuals but also what
immunother as a society because success is surely about having the most people
getting the most benefit the most um well-being out of the resources we have
I do you know Russell wardrop no I don’t know him no no he’s a businessman and
he’s a a Storyteller and he’s an educator and I spoke to him on the podcast a few weeks ago we recorded a
lovely chat and it’s just something you said there and he because he was talking about purpose versus ambition and said
and you might have the ambition to be and his example was Beyonce you you know you can you tell your kid you can be
Beyonce but not everybody can be Beyonce and this is the danger if you keep on saying to you setting your kid up you’re
almost setting your child up or yourself up for failure then he when he was talking about purpose if you could have
a per what was it he said he said something about find something that you can do you don’t even have to be able to
do it particularly well but if you do it for long enough and it and it fills your
soul you will be a happier person then or maybe a more content person absolutely and that’s where talk about
in saying but you know happiness is not just about feeling good all the time happiness is as good several components
too one of those is purpose and meaning so what’s meaning thankful to you what makes you really feel kind of alive or
feel like you’ve you’ve done something important and often that is about how we connect other people and and you know
what we’re doing and of benefit not necessarily just other people but what we feel is of benefit to
um Society sometimes so what gives us meaning is usually not chasing that extra you know a few hundred pounds or
chasing that promotion what gives us mean is often much more about those daily things and that’s what’s important
finding that purpose and meaning what really it I call it your why what’s your why what’s the why of of you living your
life what really gives you that kind of sense of meaning so I absolutely agree with that and practice I mean they’re
absolute critical components of well-being and feeling good much more important in the next promotion or or
more money or more likes or whatever it is you’re chasing yes I agree I agree
and and you spoke you said your second book which was a toolkit for happiness again and again done brilliantly simple but what I took from that was when
you’re talking about happiness you were basically saying happiness is transient Joy is an emotion so happiness kind of
Peaks and trusts it and and goes away so it’s not that happiness is a myth but it’s maybe that happiness
is not what we should be we shouldn’t be chasing happiness because that’s unachievable as a
long-term emotion yeah absolutely well if we expect to feel good feel happy all
the time it’s almost like you said you’re setting yourself up to fail there is no such place of this Nirvana of
Happy Land we can’t reach this Perpetual place where we’re never going to feel bad and if we Chase happiness too much
we then can sometimes start to think that oh I’m feeling bad I’m not actually achieving my goal so we started to beat
yourself up for those difficult emotions which isn’t helpful but also we know if we make happiness the end goal and we
constantly chase that actually it makes us ironically unhappier so happiness is much more about kind of
your day-to-day when I just well what I describe as happiness is much more about your day-to-day actions and what you’re
doing a daily basis it’s about doing things that connect to your purpose connect your why connect your values but
also learn to deal with difficult emotions and think about how you respond to them because it’s absolutely critical
because they will happen they’re part of life but also thinking about the things that bring you positive emotions as well
and I don’t mean it’s that’s not to sit as a contrast with negative promotions but those
things that make you feel good because I actually do need to do them in our life that’s not just chasing positive Joy
it’s also about feeling calm feeling relaxed it’s about feeling oh it’s about feeling lots of different emotions and
thinking about how we combine those internalized in small little ways rather than waiting for it to happen
yeah that’s yes that made me think what was that is it John Lennon who said life is what happens when you’re busy making
other plans was that him I said I do the court but I think also and and you know
I think I’m guilty of chasing the angle a lot is is there something we can do on a daily basis to help us live in the
here and now is there small things we can do oh I think I think there’s many things
that we can do I think it’s can intentionally connecting to your why come back that mean and purpose on a
daily basis thinking about what is it that kind of gives me that kind of you know that boost of energy what makes me
feel you know like I’m really connected with things and ensuring that we’re doing that in our daily life and
thinking about and noticing it Julie that what we’re doing is about integrating you know things that make
you feel good on a daily basis as well so that might be just going for a walk doing connecting with somebody and
making sure we’re doing them because so often we wait for this big end goal and we actually put things aside as we’re on
this journey this mythical end goal that actually make us happy so it’s actually making sure that we integrate those tiny
little things on a daily basis and it’s also thinking about how we respond to our emotions generally so as
emotions arise what do we do with them how do we see them how do you recognize
them how do we respond to them and really key is that we don’t push our difficult emotions aside and see them as
failure because we know that actually just increases stress and makes us less happy longer terms so thinking about how
we respond to our difficult emotions as well so lots of ways we can do it and I think another way which is really
important because you talked about kind of chasing that end goal is
stopping and noticing what you have achieved because we’re so future focused
our brains designed to be future focused it’s a predictive machine but also it has a negative bias which
means that we’re much more likely to pick up the negative now that makes sense our brain is designed for survival to survive it needs to predict what’s
about to happen and needs to be kind of overload its resources onto the negative so it spots those things really quickly
to help you survive so it makes senses like that it’s very helpful in many situations but sometimes if we’re
constantly striving and looking through the future and always kind of thinking about the next
things we forget to pause and notice what is going well or what we have done and that just is simple things that’s
the things that you know for example getting your kids to school and it might be silly to take yourself and think about it but actually if you’ve got
three kids that’s actually quite a task to get them all ready and get them all going and get them the same places the
right time or just the fact you’ve sat and maybe had a bit of time with your son or your daughter you know just
recognizing these things that you’ve done on a daily basis actually you’ve done a pretty good job you’ve achieved
quite a lot and they’ve made you feel good so stopping and noticing and in the moment but also kind of after as well
really appreciating kind of what you have done and what you are doing that on a daily basis that is that you’re doing
well so let’s fight against the negative bias of our brain and actually you know tap into those
um those things that are going well for us or we’re doing well because it might actually just be that actually I went
through a really tough meeting bench I managed to get through and I actually did okay getting through it social isolation is a growing and often
unseen problem in big cities like London Scots cares leather buddies program
matches a scotscare volunteer with a client in need of company for a weekly chat to help build back connections if
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scotscare.com I I think there’s an importance because
so much of life is lived on social media and I see you know colleagues and friends that I have that say you know
I’m up ran five miles bake three loafs got the kids to school learning sawali
you know and and that that I think that kind of constant comparison to other people’s life maybe we need to put that
aside slightly just to concentrate on the little things oh absolutely I mean I mean our brain is also designed to
compare and there’s lots of kind of evolutionary mechanisms to that so you can kind of stay part of a tribe or or
you know compare compare yourself to how other people are doing it’s an evolutionary mechanism that we naturally
compare but we’re not naturally compared or designed to compare against 50 000
data points coming at us that’s just absolutely overwhelming and just it can
become that you’re comparing yourself against all these these what I would describe as little tiny
kind of Snippets of people’s lives we’ve not seen the whole picture so you’ve got your whole film in front of you your
life with all the Badness and the good bits and you’re seeing all these like highlight reels of people’s lives and it’s an Amphitheater comparison so
absolutely to kind of lean that in and one of the ways to Reign it in obviously is just reducing your social media intake so you don’t have those 50 000
data points constantly coming at you which is totally overwhelming for your brain so I absolutely need to kind of
think about how that impacts on us so as a clinical psychologist do you think
that people are born Warriors and other people don’t worry so much and have a more Carefree attitude
oh it’s a really interesting question it comes down to her nature nurture debate and um I see it it’s a bit of a mix and
we have you know Tendencies there’s obviously you know you can’t dismiss that you’re you know you’ve got
um information passed on your genes that um are you know have possibilities but
it’s a combination of that and the environment um that lead to kind of who you are and
there’s there’s not necessarily a set point people do talk about a set point of happiness and but actually I see this
variation and so much of your context determines how you’re feeling and what you’re doing so I would say there’s
Tendencies but actually and actually so much of what happens is defined by the
environment in the context you’re in that’s interesting I’m a warrior but I you know I didn’t have a bad childhood
but uh if I don’t have something to worry about I’ll I’ll find something and
I I do tend to go down a rabbit hole of worrying about work or something to to the point you know it’s almost like my
wife has to take me aside and slap me go just get into perspective Marcus okay oh
it’s okay nothing’s wrong no one’s dead it’s okay yeah we have we are different everybody’s different in terms of how
you know the Opera and the function and it’s not you know I’m absolutely saying you know some people have more tendency
to bodies everybody’s brain functions slightly different um but also there are things we can do
around that so it’s not to sit that whole but how it’s going to be or it’s it’s um there’s nothing you can do about it
there’s obviously there are things that we can do to notice those kind of Tendencies and and change and slowly for
example I am clearly a night towel I’ve always been a night owl and that doesn’t work with um with modern life so I’ve
got a natural tendency in terms of of how I you know how my brain works and how my body works to be up until about
two o’clock in the morning can’t do that so I’ve had to kind of read that in a bit so good badly and most people probably but that’s a kind of real
genetic tendency there’s things I can do to adapt but there’s always things you can do to change and adapt it a bit you
might not be able to change it totally but there’s always things we can mediate it I don’t you know being a warrior isn’t always terrible sometimes it can
help you think about things and start to step back and reflect on things but it can be kind of unhelpful at times as
well obviously so you know all these Tendencies not always unhelpful but sometimes can fall into becoming helpful
in the context we’re in our life for having to lead so we do need to intervene and moderate and change do you
struggle to get up in the morning if you stay up late absolute nightmare in the morning
we’ll catch you at 9 30 in the morning um 9 30 is okay now with kids I’ve had
to adapt a bit but um people used to joke me at nine o’clock so just don’t talk to him before it starts she’ll be
okay once it finishes but just don’t talk to her before it starts I’m not a morning person at all so uh that tend to
have to around that and I think that is the thing it’s a tendency so I have to adapt around as much as I can
you know what I wanted to talk to you about um I wanted to I was talking to Greg Kane of Hugh and Cry and he was talking
about he was talking about stoicism and uh he’s talking about concentrating on
negative thoughts in order to accentuate positive behavior and I do I couldn’t
really get into my head and then I looked this and I’ve kept this on my phone here and it says nine stoic rules for a better life and I kind of I agree
with most of them until I get to one which I wanted to ask you about well this number one is not for you wake up
early
that’ll probably kill me within a week so it’s not a great rule for my life oh I know I bought a book by a guy called
Rich Roll it’s called some like shaking or shirking off middle age and living
the ultra life and I thought I need a slice of that and on page one it says throw away the coffee machine and I just
shut the book right so number one is wake up early
number two focus on effort not results which we’ve spoken about that’s good read every day brilliant be strict with
yourself forgiving of others I like that seek out challenges I like that stay a
student cut toxic people out of your life I think that’s really important uh focus
on what you can control I I’m not great at that I suffer a bit from that but this is the last one think about death
oh no Emma that does not work for me at all I’m not gonna think about death I
mean I I I think um I guess as a culture we have avoidance of thinking about death and I
think again it’s one of these things like anytime you see these rules on Twitter they’re um you know they don’t
apply to everyone you can’t make things apply to everybody and it’s just impossible so that with that set of
rules if I live by them if I go up early every morning I would not function so therefore that’s that rules do not apply
to me and I think what they probably mean by thinking about death is we tend not too many tend to avoid it that’s not
necessarily helpful and it is helpful to kind of you know speak about it as a culture not refer it to be taboo and
that that I agree with but I guess you know I don’t want to think about death every day to be quite honest it’s not actually helpful for me but I don’t want
it to be a taboo subject as a society so that foreign
but I want to think about my life and all things in my life so I think hit some of these examples and I think this
has got half of the social media is it’s like 10 rules four or five things that
now if I have a place like that in a clinic room I’d be a really bad psychologist because if somebody came
into my clinic I’ve got 10 rules for your life you’re like yeah okay I’m going now but yeah yeah you know you’re
right to go now um but you know because of how I operate as a psychologist is that somebody comes
into my room they’re absolutely the expert in their life I’m not the expert in their life I’ve not lived their life they’re an expert in their life I know
the psychological theory um so we take their life we might chat with the
city and where things are unhelpful for them and we think about what can make it work so it’s it’s a mutual
um work together to create what we call formulation of what’s going on for them and then work out what works and what
works will be different for everybody and even when we think about or we kind of here’s a hypothesis about what might
work we could be wrong so we need to test out in their life so we’d take them and say let’s try this you know even if
we’re a little bit cynical about it because I understand it’s innocent about some of the things that psychology says works because you know they but
sometimes they do work even for your cynical background so let’s try it the one way to find out is actually test it out and do a bit of an experiment in
your life to see if it works it might not so that’s so far removed from 10
things that will work through your life that you just can’t do that with people it’s all all you know it’s all about
complexity and it’s all about matching what works for you and that’s where social media pressure can start to come
in because you can see a post like do you must go outside Club another quote says you know you must stress and it
starts to contradict each other I think and actually the whole can advise the mental health and well-being information
just start to become stressful in itself because there’s so much of it and it’s
so contradictory and I think the core messages you know it’s about testing out
what works for you with all your kind of complexities of human the complexity of the different contexts you work in and
also the complexity that we described it you know earlier but we’re all slightly different you know some people are more
worrier some people are better get up in the morning some people are really rubbish like you’re getting up in the morning
um so you know what works for me will be slightly different to what we’re actually new and I think that complexity
can be lost in social media it becomes it becomes simplistic and that’s supposed to that works seven things that
work for you and that’s what and I guess that’s why I try to do my book it’s like actually life is complex I’m trying to
capture complexity but in simple rather than kind of
and you must do this that’s these are some things that might work but try them out so I’m trying to make the complexity
simple but also trying to maintain the Nuance that it doesn’t work for everybody we must make our own and I
talk about the happiness sounds we must make our own sandwich and it’s a sandwich that works for us or we must
create our own toolbox because and I say in every boot not everything will work for everybody you know you need to try
things and I do see you might feel a bit cynical about some of these and that’s fine but try them out and the only way
you’ll know if it works for you or not is by trying out and trying out a few times so it doesn’t work after a few times you know it’s not for you or maybe
you try again a different point when things are different in your life so it’s about making the theory simple but
maintaining that complexity that exists for all of us because our brains are different our lives are different we are
different and what works for us will be different and I’m really looking forward to your new one toolkit for your
emotions which is out January 23 what are you going to cover in that one well Marcus I can tell you something very
exciting that just before you this started I got a ring on the door and um
the postman uh handed me a package which is the first time I’ve seen it so I literally haven’t looked it yet I’ve
just seen it so it’s really excited about sitting next to me so talking for emotions focuses on the new science of
emotions and the new science emotions are very much developed in the last 10 years as
her knowledge of brains has increased and it kind of trying to put to bed some myths around emotions that I think still
exist very commonly in society and try and think about what emotions actually are
and what the science tells us about what works with our emotions and it’s kind of moving away from the idea that emotions
are irrational because they’re not old International we have them for a reason it’s moving away from an idea that they’re all on the mind because they’re
not they’re very clearly in the body in our context lots of other things as well and it’s
moving away from this idea of kind of there’s negative emotions we shouldn’t feel and positive emotions should be
feeling to think in what our emotions how can we understand these how can we respond to them and what’s
beneficial what’s a science house is beneficial when it comes to emotions and I have to say the size of emotions has
changed hugely since I sent that first email I’m going to start at University what I was taught at University about
emotions is totally different to what you would be taught now because the science has changed so dramatically in
30 years and uh so and it’s quite complex it’s
all about brain um functioning and the size behind it is really quite complex so I have to say
probably the most difficult book I’ve written trying to take something that sometimes I find hard to get my head drowned because it’s changed so much as
we’ve done so much and make it simple and um so I yeah
it’s it’s trying to make this new size of emotions simple and appliable in
people’s lives that’s interesting um using about not only in the mind but
are you seeing those physical manifestations as well that you know if you are feeling emotionally stressed
that it will manifest itself in different ways physically in your person yes kind of but what I’m also saying is
that the emotions the labels of emotions are about how we feel in our body so it’s all about how we feel our body it’s
the feelings in our body that we label us emotions and those feelings are created by brain predictions and lots of
what we need to do next but also those feelings are created by lots of physical things so for example illness creates a
feeling in our body and then we label it’s an emotion so it actually a lot of it how we feel in our body is absolutely
crucial to emotions because what are we labelness emotions that’s how we feel where do we feel it we feel it in our
body so absolutely everything has physical manifestation in the body but
actually the emotions are words we use to label how we’re feeling physically so
it’s a complex mix of um language is absolutely critical to emotions because it’s about label and
emotions emotions are labels semantic labels to describe how we’re feeling and what we know is the more language you
have around emotions to label those physical feelings the variable we are to deal with
emotions as well so it’s a really interesting mix of emotions are the labels we use so they’re semantic
language but also they are um the Skype and what’s going on how we’re feeling and so many things
impacted how we feel physical illness what’s going on in our lives that we
cannot you know we can’t separate these things so what I do in the because I I write a recipe for emotions and it’s
actually a brain making emotions mixing all these things together and it’s the components that make up emotions and
it’s it’s physical feelings what works actually on our body it’s um the labels it’s a context our past it’s our it’s
our brain predictions there’s lots of different things that create emotions and that and what I talk about the book as well
is that actually I had to shift my understanding of emotions hugely in the
last you know since due to my career as a clinical psychologist and actually it’s taking me a little while to get my
hair drying back because it’s been such a massive shift for me to think about what emotions actually are because it seems so simple but once you start to
think what are emotions it’s actually really quite hard questions to answer took it for your emotions is out January
23 2023 Emma thank you for joining me on the Scots gear podcast today it’s been
brilliant chatting to you oh it’s been a great chance you Marcus speak to you soon bye-bye
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[Music] Hello I’m Marcus Railton and this is the Scotscare podcast. Scotscare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including mental health therapy, financial grants, advocacy, sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families. The Charity’s been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some Scots.