ALAIN DE BOTTON: WE LOOK FOR FAMILIARITY NOT HAPPINESS IN RELATIONSHIPS

Hello everyone, my name is Jamie Lang and this is Great Company. ♫♫♫ Hello, Jemima. Well, hello. We always start with the well. Okay, we'll start. I'll just say hello. Hello. I used to write scripts for Radio 4 and I would start every sentence with a well or a now. Because it's just now and hello. Well, hello. And I had met to make a real point of avoiding starting a sentence with well or now. Oh, I know what you mean because it gets you into the sentence, especially when you're saying so. Join us like that kind of thing. I used to in essays when I used to write English essays, write always more over or therefore more over. More over. That they're off. Is that so? Is that what? They're off. They're in lies. They're in lies. I like ones where it's like two words which for some reason is one word. Hey, what I realised that we need intro. We haven't done that. Yeah, I was thinking that. Hello, everyone. My name is Jamie Lang. I'm a. Hello, everyone. Well, you've walked the internet so that's better. I'm a fabulous band. Very caloric. What I can't even speak today. Hello, everybody. My name is Jamie Lang and I'm the host of Great Company. And this is. Jemima, the producer. Jemima helps me produce all of these shows. And you're very excited today. Oh my god. I'm so excited. So excited. This is my dream. I have always, always wanted to have this person any show I've ever worked on. I'm like, we must get him on. So this email came through about this individual and you've seen the title of the show. So you know, it's "Allander Bottom". Yeah. The email came in, F-A-O, Jemima. You sent me an email or a message straight away saying, can we say yes to this? Please, please, please. And of course, I would have said yes. But I just like the fact that you were so excited about it. I'm so excited. Why are you so excited to give it to me? I just think "Allander Bottom", for those who don't know him is a. I can describe him as a modern day philosopher. He's a thinker. He's an essayist. He's a writer. And he's from the School of Life, which is he set up. And it's basically making philosophy not academic. I guess psychology is kind of that thing. He's incredibly interesting. And I've heard him on some podcasts such as "Found Cotton" in Elizabeth Day. And I actually sent those guys a message last night, because we have a WhatsApp group together. What's the name of that WhatsApp group? I actually don't know. Should I find out what the name was? It's just called like Jamie Elizabeth Furn, or is it "Gorlica"? It is. Yeah, Furn times Jamie times Elizabeth. What boring name? That is a boring name, actually. You should rename that. Maybe we should change it. And I sent the message saying what does he like? And they gave the most amazing response. I almost get a bit of imposter syndrome when sort of intellect comes on the podcast. Yeah. Because I don't want to ask questions which are boring. Monday and silly. And so I feel a little bit of a sense of, God, I really want to. I think with him you just ask him a simple, simple question and just let him go. I can ask about love. Ask him about love, ask him about. I literally. I'm like the list of questions I've given Jamie is absurd. Yeah, you gave me a long list of different things. It goes right into living a life without religion, finding purpose. It's mad. I don't think we'll be galed. I think we might have them back. And you put the biggest thing in there, which is the meaning of life? Yeah. Let's find out. But I think it's interesting why we're interested in it. Because we want to. Self-aware. I don't know why when we're on the tubes, do we want to know when the next train is coming? Because we don't like the idea of uncertainty. And actually not knowing the meaning of life gives us a sense of uncertainty. And so therefore makes us feel nervous. Yeah. Why? Why does it? Yeah, this is how you should interview. Why? Are you interviewing me now? No. I just thought my answer then was unbelievable. It was all right. What? Okay. You wait till you hear a lamb. Well, okay. And it's a lamb. Alain de botan. Rhyming name. Okay. Well. Jamie Lamy. That's what your name would be. Okay, we've got to keep this high brow, but please come on. Okay, here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the podcast. Alain de botan. It's Alain. Please welcome to the podcast. Alain de botan. Hi, I'm Alain de botan, and I'm great company. What is the meaning of life? Look, I think it's always going to be your meaning. And I think that's the paradox in that phrase that we think of the meaning of life as something that's out there rather than primarily in here. And that we need to discover our own meanings of life. And really what we mean is, what are my deeper sources of satisfaction? Some of the most pleasant people to be around, are those who perhaps through lots of trials, have understood what is meaningful for them. We recognize them often have a little twinkle in their eye. They're kind of. You think this person is free. They're inwardly free because they know roughly what they're up to. It's funny, I'm in a real process with myself. And I'm going to use this as more of a therapy session towards myself if that's the right. I find it. Let's be honest. I'm going to be honest. I think a lot of us, and maybe lots of people listening, we find it very hard to sit with ourselves. We separate ourselves all the time. And I'm in a real position now of trying to lean into what I would describe as ordinary. I spoke to someone once who I said, "I just constantly am looking for exciting things." And they said, "That's not a good thing. You need a life is boring." And it's important to sit with that, and sit in that silence. And I still find that very difficult. I think it's getting worse and worse as we get older because of social media and everything. Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of the concept of the ordinary, only because it's actually extraordinary. And most of the time, if we think an ordinary life, an ordinary job is said, people recoil from that word. We have a very hierarchical system of values, which is that the extraordinary is good, and the ordinary is boring and awful. I think that some of the most beautiful moments are those when people can accept the ordinary. If you think of some of your happiest moments, maybe in childhood, maybe in a relationship or with a friend, they often are things that are very ordinary. We sat down at the kitchen table and we drew some sunflowers, and it was nice as a child, maybe even as an adult. That can be a beautiful moment. Some of the greatest works of art actually depicting very ordinary moments. We're in a hunt for things that are ecstatic. And though they have their place, we can't live on the summit. We belong in the lowlands. Making ourselves at home there is one of the challenges. It's interesting you say about sitting with yourself. I mean, look, I think we all, we'll listen, we'll have this issue as well. Sometimes we're sitting on a train and we think, I can't bear to be here. Get me a distraction. We want to put headphones on. We want to read something, etc. A thought is chasing us. The difficult thing is that when we say we're suffering from anxiety, what is anxiety? Anxiety is often a worry that doesn't know itself, that we're fleeing, and it gets worse and worse because we're running away so much. The difficult but really important thing to do is to turn around and go, okay, I'm going to be brave. I'm just going to think about what I'm actually worried about. So a pen and paper can come in handy and just acquire room. Another very useful exercise, which a therapist taught me is automatic writing. Just you set yourself a challenge of, was it, were downloading your brain, just writing whatever is in your mind for two minutes? So you set yourself a task, just get me a pen and paper. Anything, right? Anything. Just where you are now. What is your mood now? And you just write. And what tends to happen is that you find out things about yourself. If you told me to go write, do automatic writing, and just write down my thoughts and just do it, whatever came into mind, I would almost lean into it. I've got to think about something. So therefore I'm going to write, how do you separate yourself from not think, because what you're saying is don't think, but think. So how do you do that? Well, most of the time we become enemies to ourselves because we're so concerned with seeming normal to ourselves. We're sitting there with our own mind and we think, well, I should be having this sort of thought because after all I'm a sort of normal person. The truth is we're all far weirder than we can acknowledge. And in that weirderous are some very important realisation. So take love and hate. We don't love and hate as it's entirely in verticals normal to do so. So take our feelings towards our parents. For example, many people feel an incredible desire to be very loyal to their parents. It's a very natural impulse. But actually people's true feelings of what their parents tend to be coloured by a far wider range of emotions. And we could say that's a bad thing. We shouldn't allow that into consciousness. But if we don't allow it into consciousness, sometimes it can be build up of anxiety. You know the old thing that sometimes you catch yourself in a rage with a household object. The drawer doesn't open. And you think, "Damn it, why doesn't it open?" And you pull it with violence. Is there anything? What am I angry about? Now it's unlikely to be the drawer. It's probably not the drawer. Or the milk bottle, it doesn't open. You get in a rage with it. And what's tends to happen there is that somewhere along the way, the source of your true anger has become foreign to you. You've lost touch with the anger that you actually feel. Why? Normally because you feel you don't have the right to that emotion. Now, I'm not advocating for random fury with everyone. And obviously anger does need to be contained. But the acknowledgement of anger is a different thing. And that is important. You know, you might find that someone at work really angered you by something that they said. Now, again, I'm not saying you, Hannah, Sarah, you always have to tell them. But for you to tell yourself is really important. Similarly with sadness, something sadden us and we don't know. that they've saddened us. And the thing that we know is depression. If you look at it clinically, what depression tends to be is a sadness or a trauma that has forgotten itself. And so people are, you know, the opposite of a kind of, the opposite of not the opposite, but the twin of depression is what they call mourning. So in mourning, something or someone has been lost and you go into a period of sadness that has a beginning, middle, and an end. And it's over. In depression, you're also sad about something, but you don't know what it is. You've literally lost such with it. And therefore it can be endless because it hasn't been found in your own mind. This is the mind-blowing thing. Our minds don't understand themselves. I mean, this is such a strange thing. Our minds and our bodies don't understand themselves. And it's so odd because we have a name and we have an identity. And I'm it said, you know, what do you think about the, and most of the time, you'd be able to tell me. But in many areas, especially with the questions get deeper and deeper, you won't actually know. You'll think, I don't know quite why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't know why I respond. I don't know why I hate here and love here or desire here. These things are actually quite foreign and the answers take months, years, decades to bubble up to the surface. So self-awareness is one of the greatest, greatest challenges. Little children don't know themselves at all. That's what, that's what's funny about age. But by the time you grow older, you think you should be beginning, you know, there's often insights that come very slowly. But the journey's never finished. That journey of self-awareness. And much of our mental troubles comes down ultimately to failures of self-awareness. What are we really anxious about? What are we really sad about? Etc. Wow. There, firstly, that was, I'm so glad I recorded that because I can play it on a loop in my mind, slightly near. There are so many things I want to break down here because what's so interesting is I was talking about this sort of repressed feelings that we have. If you were sitting here and you were to tell a story about how you made your parents proud or you did something with your friend or your family members, that would make me very emotional because I have an excuse to get emotional because you're allowing me to have that place. I totally, I don't allow myself to be emotional about things. Or anger, for example, I find it very easy to have road rage because I don't get angry in my everyday life because I don't allow it to be a place. I can't get angry with a friend, a loved one, a parent, whatever. I don't feel like I'm allowed to, but I can get angry at someone I'm never going to see again on the road. So I can swear back at them. So let's try a little bit of light psychotherapy. Even in your past, you know, it's in your childhood. What was anger like? What were you allowed to be angry? Were people around you allowed to be? Where was anger allowed to be? Well, I think that I was one of these children who, I was like a bouncy ball, you threw me into room and I bounced all over the place. So I think I was dubbed a naughty child. And I was so frustrated, I think, that I couldn't communicate in the right way. And I think my brain was always all over the place. So I think that I was always being told off. So my anger came out in tantrums. But then when I threw a tantrum, I was put into another room. So therefore I then couldn't make a tantrum or scream or shout or express emotion as much because I was a nuisance annoying people. I remember I screamed so much once my brother threw up in the car because I was screaming. But nowadays you would see, oh, there's something, maybe there's something frustrated with that child. Maybe something's going on there with the child. Maybe they are ADHD or maybe they are anxious or maybe they are something. Right. Or one might say, you know, what was it about the caregivers, the adults around that made your difficult emotions, your tantrums difficult for them. You know, why do they need you to be a certain way, perhaps with quite a lot of force, maybe your brother too, you know, that who you were or needed to be was not quite allowed. I mean, you know, a classic thing, I'm not sure this is you, but no, but you can be as, by the way, I said, you'd be as open as you want to. I mean, I mean, in January, I don't know. But many entertainers, entertainment was not a choice. It was a necessity. They needed to entertain because someone around them, maybe, you know, many people around them, couldn't quite bear certain things. So, so I've noticed just sort of empirically that people who are very funny, often grew up in circumstances that were not funny at all. And where the humour that they're excellent at deploying is essentially a way of defusing the rage and the difficult moods of people around. So it's not so much a, you know, just a skill like any other. It's a survival skill that people have honed in order to manage the very difficult people around them. So, you know, I mean, we kind of know that in popular way, the melancholy clown, etc. But it really does tend to have origins in humour being something that you learn because otherwise people are a little too serious and often too angry. That's interesting. You say that because I remember Jimmy Carson is saying people always ask me if I'm depressed. That's why I'm a comedian. But actually, you should ask if my parents were depressed. Perfect. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, very often the wit. The wit of the child is there to ward off the parents depression. Really? Listen, people come into the, children come into the world and all of us are honed by nature to figure out what do I need to do here to survive. I mean, literally, that's how one should imagine every child. What do I need to do here to survive? Not necessarily survive physically, though, of course, yes, physically as well. But psychologically, mentally, what do I need to do? In some families, you need to excel academically. In some families, you need to fail academically. In some families, you need to be very witty. In some families, you need to be invisible. Why would you fail in some families? Oh, well, the classic one is parental envy. I mean, it's an awkward fact, but parents are huge. Some parents are hugely envious of their own children and they cannot bear that their child, who they've put on the earth, should be happier than they've managed to be. And so therefore, the child has to take early retirement from various things. And the child ends up thinking, "Oh, I'm bad at maths," or whatever, maybe, or is there someone who would be rather frightened if you were better at maths? So, families are difficult places and dynamics occur that really go way beyond what we're ordinarily prepared to tolerate. What does love mean? If I mean, kind of, adult romantic relationships, adult romantic relationships are a kind of litmus test of our emotional development. And that's why very many of us find them very, very hard. They're also a real moment where your past catches up with your present, because the way in which we love as adults owes a huge amount to the way in which we experience love as children. You could say that what we're looking for in adult romantic relationships is often a sense of familiarity, not so much happiness. People go, "Oh, I'm looking to be happy." Yeah, steady. Maybe not. Maybe what you're really looking for is a sense of familiarity, which might be. It might be that what you're really looking for is suffering and neglect, feeling that you're not that important to somebody. Really? That somebody's got something more important to do other than be with you. I mean, this is why people make such, as it were, strange choices in relationships. I mean, I'm sure we've all had situations where you recommend that a good friend of yours goes out with another good friend of yours to go on a date. Yes. And you think these people really should match and they've both got so much to offer the world. And you call up your friend afterwards. You added it go. And they go, "Really nice, really nice person." You go, "Is that a problem?" And they go, "Maybe we didn't have that much to say to one of it." Now, maybe what they're maybe perhaps struggling to say is, this person I encountered is too nice to give me the feeling of suffering that I need in order to feel I'm in love because that's slightly the way in which I may have developed that being loved and giving love is not an uncomplicated process. As I say, in many families, for example, you're only loved if you do something, if you achieve something, if you prove yourself in a certain way. It means that in adult relationships, we're often looking to recreate that conditionality. And therefore, the "ick." Why does the "ick" sometimes descend? It's very genzy of you. I know. I've been told by younger folk. The "ick" can descend in contact with a level of kindness and sympathy, which doesn't feel warranted and earned. It's simply unfamiliar. And so this is why relationships are often so complicated because we're on a track to recreate patterns of suffering that we don't understand. We're interested in recreating and which we're unconsciously repeating. So this is why relationships are so strange. We used to get into relationships because our parents would fit the middle society, would arrange what they want. Now we have marriages and relationships by instinct. We get drawn to people. But those instincts are so much more complicated than we like to think because we're not merely pulled by a desire to be happy. We're pulled by a desire to rework many of the challenges of our past. I mean, Freud put it at its best. His view was that we're looking to recreate painful situations that we experienced at the hands of our parents, but give them a better ending. So for example, someone might be, let's imagine a woman who finds herself very often, getting together with angry, intemperate, slightly out of control men. She say, "Okay, why is this happening?" We might discover that the past of this person includes a father who was very much like this. Now we might say, "Goodness, this sounds awful, this is ever gonna end." The hopeful psychotherapeutic answer is yes, because what the person's doing is not looking to suffer forever. What they're looking is to understand the pattern and solve it, ideally with somebody that they can go on a journey with, which is why, if you have an angry father and you come across a completely calm person, that might not be that interesting. You come across somebody who feels the temptation of anger but wants to work it through with you in your company and that together you might heal from this problem, that can be deeply satisfying for people. So if we wanted to be optimistic about the patterns people are involved with, I don't think people are invested in suffering forever. They're interested in finding a way out of the pattern, but they need to be close to that pattern in order to feel that thing we call desire, that desire is often ignited by proximity to a pattern of pain that was experienced in the past. I love that idea, I don't love that idea, but we're actually, we're not trying to be happy we're looking for familiarity, which is wild, because. Well, it's paradoxical, right? Well, no, it's paradoxical because, okay, I take a look at my wife, for example. So, her parents loved her. Her daddy used to come home and she would get onto his feet and dance on the shoes. And she had all this, and so she has this immense inner confidence. I've ever asked her, "She'd ever been heartbroken." I'm no one, I'm never heartbroken, ever. And I was like, "Really? You've never been heartbroken?" No, I've never experienced that. Me, on the other hand, I quite like, I think, to me, I'm drawn to that rejection, because I went to Bournemouth to go eight years old, divorced parents, that classic abandonment, probably. So, I understand from my side why, and Sophie, who is just the greatest thing to me, I think she's the greatest thing that walks on the surf. She's quite, you know, if I could try and kiss her and hug her, get off, you know, she doesn't need it. Well, I wanted all the time. And so, that's kind of why we work, I would say. And I feel very happy. But from her side, if she's experienced love, then what is she looking for? What do I offer her? Really, if she's. Have I just made this about myself? Do I, you know? Well, look, I'm interested in what you're saying. It's interesting you say she received warm love from her dad and the dance on his shoes, et cetera. But when you come close to her, she goes, no, because she's just slightly away. So that suggests a pattern of avoidance on her part. And even though she may have, at some points, had love, maybe there are complexities there, and maybe you picked her. You said you were quite interested in rejection and whatever. And maybe she rejects you just as much as you need to be rejected in order to feel you're in love. She rejected you too much, you might flee. Yes. If you didn't reject you at all, you might think, oh, not sure I can get that feeling. Yes, exactly. It's possible that you've worked out between you a happy medium where, in the classic attachment theory, you are just anxious enough for her love. And she is just avoidant enough that it works. And that it's-- The great trick in love is where are people standing too close or not close enough? If people can find the right distance from one another, it can work. But I would be interested to-- if she were here-- to ask, what was it about her relationship with her parents and her early experience of love that means that when you hunger for her love, it's a bit much. And she feels the need to go away and keep you at bay. Well, she said that her dad used to smother with a kiss and that used to annoy her and I do the same. OK. So maybe there was a way in which she experienced love as a little bit invasive. Yes. Because we think of love as true love, it's correct attunement to somebody. If somebody wants to be alone, you let them be alone. Somebody's a bit sad. You allow them to be sad. There's a more cartoonish vision of love, where it's just hugs and kisses and joy. That's-- you know, the sort of parents who goes up to a child because who's a pretty boy now and always run to make fun? When actually the child might be in a melancholy mood, let that child have that sad mood, let the child have their distance. It's possible. Who knows that your wife experienced her father as forcing-- out of affection, nevertheless forcing her to inhabit a certain emotional band, which didn't necessarily always respect what she was actually feeling. And therefore she maybe has grown up with a sense of needing to push away at moments when she might not be on the same page. And that's OK. So she means-- Yeah. I'm honestly never been more fascinated. And all my life, my brain is going wild with the questions. How do we make sure we're picking the right partner? And is life about finding a partner? Or isn't it? Extreme modesty is probably a good starting point. In other words, we probably have to acknowledge that we'll almost certainly make some mistakes. And we need to go steady. And therefore when we get married, celebrate if you like. But also cry a little bit because preemptively. Because you're going to be in for some pain because few of us are without error in our love choices. This is a very imperfect and very demanding business. And it's good just to lower the temperature. The perfect relationship does not exist. The more you insist that it does, the more you're going to have an imperfect one. So to go easy on one another, a relationship is always an encounter between two very broken people who are just trying to get by. And the other person's not trying to do you down. The other person is just struggling with their own issues, et cetera. So if that's the starting point of a relationship, it's much more helpful than we are two paragons of beauty and perfection and we're all whatever. I mean, at the school of life, we always recommend that people go on a date, one of the first questions they should ask is a relatively early question. How are you mad to the perspective partner? In other words, utility, that question is, we're all mad. Question is just, do you have any insight into what your madness is? And it's fine to be mad. I'll tell you how I'm mad. You'll tell me how you're mad. And we won't make such a taboo of it. So that helps, I think, when embarking on a relationship. Also, it does help to go and have some therapy, go and look into yourself, have a basic grasp of attachment theory. Attachment theory worked out 40 years ago now. Very useful. Who's avoidant? Who's anxious? Who's secure? What makes you wonder? What are your triggers? We don't need people to be perfect in relationships. But if they have some grasp of the areas in which they go a bit mad, that's tremendously helpful to be able to give your partner a rudimentary, but nevertheless, fairly accurate map of the bits of you that are a little wonky. This is very generous. This is a hugely generous act to say, in this area, I'm fragile. When it comes to how I might behave about the fact that you have lots of friends or that you're often down about something or that you're not punctual, or what I mean, these things are difficult. And the reason why relationships get so bitter is that people fail to remember the complicated in a way very understandable reasons for why their partner is as difficult as they are. If you can remember, OK, what I'm dealing with is not some-- an enemy who's trying to ruin my life, but someone who really struggled with their father when they were five, that's why it's so hard for them to do that thing in the kitchen that I'd like them to do. They're not trying to ruin my life. They're just trying to cope in their own way. And we forget this is so hard, but there should be a patron saint of this and there should be reminders before and after the news that this is what we all need to do. I love that you should look at relationships as we're both broken individuals, and we're just trying to figure this out together. So if you are in an argument with your partner, or your loved one, or whoever it is, then how is the best way to communicate with each other? Mm. The number one way to unwind a particularly tense standoff is always to give your partner or friend, colleague, whatever, a sense that you are listening to what it is that they're saying you don't have to agree, but you have to listen. And a very simple way is to go, I hear you, but an even better way-- this is what they teach you in class 101 when you could try and train in psychotherapy-- is you reflect back to them what they're saying. So they're saying, you know, it's all terrible because of this, that, and the other, and rather than going, OK, yes, I hear you. You say, OK, so I'm hearing that when you went to work, you're busted this, and then they did that, and you felt this, and that way it's left you feeling, and they go, yes, yes, you understand me because you've paraphrased their feeling. And I can't tell you how satisfying that is. So paraphrasing what someone has just said to you, asking them what it is, and then massively lowers the temperature because immediately someone feels hurt. And the moment they feel hurt, they're then ready to hear you. So if you do this for somebody, they will then do it back to you and then you're on a virtuous circle and off you go. Fighting fire as the worst idea, isn't it? - Of course, of course. - Love can be really painful though. And I think a lot of people listening or in this room or maybe yourself, I know I have, we've experienced heartbreak. And it's an awful pain. I remember when I was 16 years old experiencing heartbreak, I honestly didn't know what shoot to put on. I was the worst thing in the world. How do you navigate your way through heartbreak? - First of all, to acknowledge that it is one of the worst things that can, before you proper heartbreak. And of course, the people who break our hearts really badly are not horrible people. I mean, if they were just the horrible people, we'd be fine. The thing you really have to worry about is heartbreak by nice people. The people who are really kind to us for a long time, they get under our skin, they understand our pains, they're truly sweet. They sit with us through our crises, they are our best friend. And then one day, for whatever reason, they go elsewhere. This is the devastating thing. The ones who come and go and blow hot and cold for a few minutes, we'll get over them. It's the nice ones. That old expression grief is the price we pay for love. Well, there'll be a lot of grief if there was a lot of love. So it's kindness that undoes us. It's really kind of, ultimately what happens, I think, in heartbreak is that we lay ourselves bare to somebody. We give ourselves to someone. And then when they go, we are no one anymore because as it were, the we who lived with them and was with them is no longer viable. And we have to, as it were, recreate ourselves. We have to go back through every experience and unpick it and create new and parallel memories and unwind all the things that we shared. It is a sort of rebirth. And it is one of the most devastating things. And most of us will probably experience heartbreak, proper heartbreak, only a few times in our lives. But when we do, we need to pull up the white flag and go, I'm not going to be well here for a while. And give ourselves time. The great thing in the Jewish tradition, when somebody dies, you're allowed to mourn for a year, official mourning period is a year. And during that year, it's acknowledged that you will not be entirely yourself. You'll be, you might be wailing, you might be wanting company all the time, you might be wanting company another time, you might be eating too much, do little, whatever it is, you're going to be heavily unbalanced and the key thing is everybody knows it. And we need a sort of similar version of this because it is also a death when we lose someone who really matters to us. That we're not going to be ourselves. And it could be six months, three months, it could be a year, it could be more, it could be more depending on what the relationship meant to us. Have you ever experienced heartbreak? I have, I have. And as I say, one wouldn't wish it upon one's worst. It is, it's horrendous. It is, it is a destruction of oneself. (singing) There are two questions I really want to ask, but the first one, I want to give you a quote, which I think is about self-awareness. The quote is, "Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing themselves." We go through life wanting to change, create sweets, create a podcast, create a business, be the most popular, whatever it is, we never think about all what can we do to ourselves because actually what we should be doing throughout our lives is becoming the best version of ourselves. That's actually what life really is about. First, do you agree with that? Yes, partly. I mean, yes, yes. And I think in a weird way, what comes to mind is the word love because what makes this possible, how do you become the best version of yourself? You have to, you probably need the help of other people. It can't just be done alone. That's the working on yourself actually requires other people. I agree. And it requires an attitude of love. I don't mean romantic love. I mean, care, attention, sympathy, compassion, all of these things that can get wrapped under the word love. And a lot of the time, we don't have it and we don't have enough of it. We're raw from the word trauma is much overused. But it's a useful word for describing what many of us go through and have been through, which is experiences that have not been properly digested, pains that have not been overcome, and that impede our development. So look, I do agree with you. If we were able to radiate to those immediately around us, the care, the love, the sympathy that they are owed, and if we were able to do that reliably, of course, the world would hugely improve. A big question. Then if you suggest that lots of who we are is because of what happened to us as kids and your childhood, is it then nature and nurture? I think to a huge extent, it is nurture. And if you look at people and the strange or difficult things they're doing as adults, a really useful question is to ask oneself, perhaps them, subtly. In what way was this, at some point, useful for you to behave like this? Because most of the logic of people's odd or difficult behavior is rooted in childhood, where it once made sense. So for example, take somebody who, in relationships, finds it incredibly hard to connect with anyone. And we call this person closed or avoidant or whatever. And for people who try to get involved in relationships with this person, this could seem like a real bore why they like this, why they always elsewhere in their minds, et cetera. A law of psychological nature would say, look for a moment when in their life that pattern of behavior made sense. And it might be that they lost a parent really early on. And it's really helpful if you lost a parent early on not to feel anything. It's really, really helpful. It's really clever of their younger self to have worked out that not feeling is a wonderful survival strategy. The problem is that our survival strategies tend to outlive the original situation for which they were devised. They go on to have an afterlife, which is hugely destructive. So someone can't stop not feeling, even though the original circumstances where that not feeling was necessary, have gone. Or talk about funny people, imagine somebody who grows up in an environment where humor is really important for survival. They've got a depressed parent, they need to cheer them up, et cetera. So they crack jokes. But then in adults, did you meet them? And you think this person can't be serious. They are constantly cracking jokes, but they can't access anything more sincere or authentic. And this book of person becomes maddening and really frustrating to be around. But again, if one asks, when did this make sense? And the goal of psychotherapy is, can we help a person to go back to when that pattern made sense? And if a person realizes it, they can be free, for us to realize why they're doing what they're doing. Most importantly, they can start to look at their pattern with compassion, because often what happens is, and what prevents people from changing is, people are made to feel guilty or ashamed for doing what they do. Oh, you're an avoidant person, what a bad person you are, or you can't be serious, what an awful person. No one ever changes to a bad change. No one ever changes when they're hectic and bullied and feel under pressure. We tend to change when we feel in the presence of a loving audience. That's when we feel ready to change, because to change requires an incredible acknowledgement of mistakes and wrong by-ways, et cetera. We don't tend to do-- we get defensive. If somebody is attacking us, we're defensive. If somebody is loving towards us and says, you deserve compassion for that thing that you do. Even frankly, why did you start drinking? Why are you addicted to alcohol? If somebody's hectoring us, it's going to be very hard. If someone says, you learn to numb yourself because at a cruelly early age, you encounter things that were unbearable, that can provide a backdrop against which someone can go, OK, maybe, maybe. Maybe that's how it started. And then that can be the beginning of something. We were talking about the difficulties of acknowledging feelings. There is a moment when people take to drink. By the way, this is water, to the audience. There is a moment when people-- if this was alcohol, where you think, I need that drink. If you said to the person, what would you do if you couldn't drink? What might you need to think about? What might you need to feel if instead of that thing that you're trying to run away from. And often, the answer is waiting for us. It's actually waiting and, and we might surprise ourselves by how directly that answer is there. You know, in, in, this is wonderful psychotherapeutic exercises where we're invited to complete sentences. I don't know if you ever done those. Where are we trying? Can we try it? Yeah. Sure. Well, it's hard to try, but then we give you some examples. Yeah. Men are dot, dot, dot women are dot, dot, dot life is dot, dot, dot, I dot, dot, dot, dot, if only dot, dot, dot, dot, if you're asked to complete these sentences without thinking too much. In other words, without letting your conscious brain impede your unconscious difficult trickier, more complicated truths with and wonderful stuff comes out. You know, if only, you know, my father could still be alive. Men are untrustworthy. Women are good. Whatever it is, we, we might find answers waiting for us. And then, and then if you pause and go, why did you, why did you say that? Is, are you aware of still thinking about your dad. You know, he died a long time ago. And then that can be the beginning of a fascinating conversation. So these are all ways of getting our minds to unclench in order to release they're more sincere but often more complicated and awkward sides. And I can ask you a personal question. Yeah. We were talking about nature and nurture and how our sort of early experiences lead us to where we are today. You have written more books than I've read. You are fascinated by people in the world and questions and lots of different things. Why what has led you in your life to be doing what you do now? Okay. So let's take the principle. It's not just me but everybody tends to do stuff not because you know they totally have choice in the matter but because there's something driving them to do it. And very often people are either compensating or reacting to certain things. So you can just see like someone who's spending all their time trying to work out what an earth's going on emotionally etc. It's probably a reaction to the opposite which is a sense of chaos etc. Just like the person who makes a huge amount of money is probably at some level escaping a feeling of poverty. It's always tends to be got bought in someone's cracking jokes all the time trying to escape. So it tends to be some kind of compensation. So I think I experienced a world which didn't seem to make much sense to me and therefore I've been trying desperately to find the sense ever since and to calm myself down through untying knots really. We're all going to die having only scratch the surface of who we are. Let's be realistic here. We will go to the you know on most gravestones rather than going this here lies whatever. Like here lies a person who barely knew who they were at points they sometimes had a flickering awareness that they might be their own name. But most of the time they didn't know what hell's going on. They were just like steering blind. I mean that is most the time. There's this old medieval idea that life is like a bird that comes in from the cold flies through a great hall with an illuminated fire in the middle and then flies out the other end of this great hall and it's an instant of illumination and warmth and but it's blackness on both sides and it is that we have a flash of illumination but most of the time we're really in darkness about what's going on. I always whenever I think about life I um there was this amazing person who I I don't know where I've seen this clip and I mentioned it before where she's terminally ill and she's young and um she's asked the question are you not annoyed at life you're not angry and she said well the way that I look at it is this is that if someone told me that I could go to a place called earth and I could experience love and happiness and hate and cuddles and getting drunk and going to the park and I could experience all these different things but only for a short while would you want to do it of course I would want to do it 100% so even if though my time on this place is short at least I've experienced those things and I thought that's an amazing way to look at life. Absolutely and you know we are obsessed with longevity which we associate you know with more and more years but what we also know we know that paradox about experience which is that it's really the intensity of an experience that that marks it out and this is where you know we have this odd odd view of time that not all time is of the same length there's an hour and an hour it does it does depend and that blows my mind. And it tends to be of course you know we know that there's people called artists and they seem to make more of time than other people so they'll you know they'll look at a flower and then they'll paint a picture of it and you think wow that picture that flower was really significant to them they saw a lot in that. Children are also great at deepening time you know they go on holiday and there's a bucket and a spade and they will make something special of that moment and that moment stays throughout life so you know one of the tricks is is not so much the length in your life is to deepen your life. I've had about some really bad anxiety right in my life like many people have and the the really scary thing about that is you think it's never going to end. And so when you first have it which I did when I was 22 years old and I had it from a panic attack I thought I'm like this forever and that is a dare I say it's sort of a so it's a very scary place to be because you don't want to live like that forever. Why would you? So how do you then cling on and keep going and you have to do because you have to have that belief. So what do you say to people who are potentially feeling a certain way or they don't want to go down the route because maybe they sit in that uncomfortable space but it might be a year two years three years four years you know I think what can be tremendously helpful is to broaden the sense of what is normal because what is normal? Well exactly it's far broader than what we think and what tends to happen is that people get a double layer of sort of punishment or self punishment they think you know not only my anxious but I'm anxious that I'm anxious you know not only my angry I'm angry that I'm angry you you add punishment on upon punishment if you broaden the picture of what's normal and you say you know a lot of us even though it's not you know it's not generally spoken about many of us are a lot more anxious than you know we we we we discuss many of us are a lot sadder than we discuss and I think you know that's why good friendships deep friendships are often forums arenas in which people are able to broaden the kind of the sense of what what it's normal to be and do so you know good friends will go anyone else been you know weeping on the floor you know thinking it's all over anyone else been sort of you know raging at the bathroom mirror whatever it is that that suddenly there's a sense of we know life's more complicated than the advert say we know we're all madder stranger but also more beautiful more ecstatic more you know more more interesting but but but the picture is broader and that's what a good friend should be that's what a good friendship should be it's not you know how's everything oh great no it's no things are wilder and weirder but but here's someone that I can share that with and that's an enormous relief and you know you mentioned about anxiety one of the most relaxing things I find you know in a moment of anxiety is to find somebody else who is similarly anxious in order to share the basic normality and the fundamental legitimacy of the anxiety that one is going through because the most frightening thing and that's why anxiety often happens in situations if you observe it where other people are not anxious so so don't seem to be anxious so in other words I'm going to the party everyone else is normal at the party I'm the anxious one so you pit yourself against you know and a presumed opponent or companion who does not have the vulnerability you have the way to unwind it is to go imagine if seven other people at that party were also extremely anxious starts to lower the temperature like okay imagine if we thought you know I mean the conversation has really broadened 10 years ago no one talked about mental health 20 years ago they didn't nowadays there's more of a sense that we have something called physical health and we have something called mental health now what is mental ill health you know we used to picture it as craziness something abstract something strange we can't even talk about it it's you know it's it's for lunatics I mean it's going on somewhere else and it can't be put into words now what we're realizing is that mental ill health has a lot in common with what everybody knows about mental ill health is just states that we all know about without the breaks being applied in other words it's runaway it's runaway anxiety it's runaway sadness it's runaway self hatred so you know an ordinary person will go I don't much like myself today a mentally unwell person will go I can't stand myself today not only today but also yesterday and tomorrow and the next day and frankly I want to do away with myself in other words it's ordinary self hatred without the breaks on so that's something that we should all get to grips with you know anything oh so and so it's got mental health problems what we really mean is they're probably a bit like you when you had that wobble about whatever they just can't stop it that there's no pause but it's something we all know it's just without a pause so that kind of humanizes it and helps to correct the otherwise so mysterious mystique that surrounds mental illness that is a beautiful way of putting it it's it's amazing it's a runaway feeling it's not being able to put pauses between thoughts so do you think you can then teach yourself to put a break on to put a pause on whether it's depression anxiety OCD in Somnir there are ways to tackle that because there's this argument that you know always sort of comes up where people sort of say well they're clinically depressed or you're clinically anxious or they're just saying what's the difference then look at this sounds you know boring and I wish there was simpler answer but look think about ill physical health yeah you have a bad back etc. Let's say you went to a back ex but you've got a bad back or you've got you know flabby muscles your muscles not in or you not done any training etc. You went to a personal trainer they would say it's going to take a long time you know it might take six months it might take three years you might need to do this four times a week you might need to do certain exercises four times a week it's very boring you know we'd love a quick answer but it took a long time for us to get unwell it's going to take a long time for us to get well so we have to start putting in place certain practices now what are those practices for the mind you know anyone who's been through this will end up with a relatively personal list of things that work but there are obviously themes one of the themes is finding yourself in the presence of a helpful other person who can listen who can contextualize who can help you know one of the things that happens when we get out of order is that our brains, we stop being able to think properly, but we don't know we're not thinking properly. So we'll get completely wound up and we'll forget that we have lost the thread. And it's tremendously important to have another person whose brain still works if I can put it bluntly. And you can say, hang on a minute, no, you didn't do that thing that Europe's become obsessed by. You actually did something slightly different. So it's going to be okay. Or even if that thing does happen, there is still X, Y and Z that you can try, etc. And that's why the middle of the night is tends to be a very bad time. We're alone. Our Neo-Core text switches off. What is the Neo-Core text? The part of the brain that is more sophisticated required for planning, for reason, for, for, you know, what we would loosely call our rational faculties. When we wake up at 3am, those things are knocked out. And so that's why people feel a purity of panic and fear and regret that doesn't exist in the day. Because in the day, there's always a, but remember the other thing. Now, that's gone in the middle of the night. So all you're up against is raw, fear, you know, regret, whatever it is, anger. And that's why emotions tend to be so hard. Now, if we know that, if we know that we're not likely to be thinking straight, we'll put a bit less pressure on our own thoughts. We'll think, okay, I'm probably a bit mad because it's 3am. And I'm just going to bracket my thoughts. I'm not going to take it as seriously as, you know, I might do. And, you know, I may need to wait for dawn to return. So, yes, so we need, we need sympathetic others to help us keep steady. We need time. I mean, the other thing is time for ourselves, time to catch up with the thoughts that we've been running away from is tremendously important, you know, and the less time you make for yourself, the more the backlog of unthought thoughts presses against the door of consciousness and gives you more anxiety, which makes you run faster, which gives you more of these unthought thoughts and on and on it goes until often there is a breakdown. And a breakdown is really the mind saying to you, enough, there is too much that has not been thought about and I can't take it anymore. So, yeah, that's where breakdowns can be breakthroughs if they handle properly because their moments when an important piece of knowledge has a chance to articulate itself that you've been keeping at bay. And it could be something like, I'm intolerably sad that my mother died 15 years ago. That's an odd thought. You never even knew you had that thought, but it's there. Well, that can happen during this breakdown period. Totally. Totally. Or I'm sick and tired of this aspect of my life. I'm sick and tired of this happening, but you didn't allow yourself to know that. Or, you know, this relationship is not working. Or I want to try yet again with somebody else, a relationship that, you know, that I gave up. I want to try and have another go. Or whatever it is. These are very difficult thoughts. And often, we will think of anything else, the news, the weather, alcohol, whatever it is, in order to avoid that thought. And then it, boom, it breaks, it breaks through at a moment of acute crisis. And it can be a beautiful thing. Are we suddenly thinking, oh, okay, it's awkward, but, you know, whatever it is, my sexuality is not what I thought, my romantic life's not what I thought, my professional life's not what I thought, whatever it is, that can be the beginning of something. It's so true about at night time as well. I always remember my dad giving me a bit of advice. He's said, he's always said, never ask anyone to marry you at night time. Very good. Very good. And he can I add something to your dad's advice? Yeah. Never ask anyone to divorce you at night time. Because because both become very tempting after 9pm. No significant decisions. No significant decisions of this sort should be taken after, you know, after daylight. We should be extremely careful. Can we talk about your new book just for one second? So, so, when you do start to write a new book, what is the starting point? Well, let me tell you, basically this book is about everything we've been talking about. It's about mental health, it's about happiness, it's about the meaning of life, it's about all these things. And it's a selection of essays originally written for the school of life, put together into it's sort of the greatest hits. And anyone who's enjoyed this should enjoy that. Anyone who absolutely hated this probably won't like that. So, make your own mind up. But it's, yeah, it's a meander through all sorts of things about the mind and psychology really. And it's called a therapeutic journey. And if someone is thinking about going on holiday or perhaps they want some reading for the tube or whatever it is, why should they pick up your book? I tell you what else, that's nothing to do with the content. It just has to do with the style. It's quite, everything's quite short. It gets the point quite fast and it's quite fun to read. Which I know that sounds kind of weird, but we do live in a very distracted age. And when I write, I spend an awfully long time thinking, I'm writing for a very, very busy doctor who doesn't have that much time because they're saving lives and doing urgent things. Get to the point and try and get it to it directly without making it too painful. So that's what I spend a lot of time doing. Everyone's nodding their heads. They're all going to have the best way to sell a book. I know what that is amazing. It's not just about what it's about. It's not too boring. It's too much. It gets to the point. That's important in this. And I honestly, I know how busy you are and truly to sit down with you and to still your mind for now and hour and a half has been pretty special. So I thank you for that. We'd like to end the podcast with eight questions. What's the saying or phrase that always makes you smile or cheers you up? So I love a very dark phrase. Pessimism, as we know, always cheers us up. No one wants something optimistic. There's a lovely quote from the Roman philosopher Stoke, philosopher Seneca, who says, "What need is there to weep over parts of life?" He says, "The whole of it calls for tears." So, otherwise, the whole thing is a bit of a mess. And isn't there a quick way? There isn't a quick way to feeling of lightness than to think, "Yeah, it's not the exception. The whole thing is a veil of tears." Anyway, so that's my favorite quote. I really like that. What's the best compliment anyone's ever given you? The best compliment. Why don't I say, "I don't mind that you've got no hair." That isn't the worst thing. It's really for all bald people out there. It's not a difficult condition. Everyone. I'm heading that way. I really have. I really have. You've got many years left. No one laughs about people who've eaten a lot. And that's a very serious thing. But somehow the bald is still a fair target. Everyone loves to mock. Anyway, it doesn't matter. And what's that compliment? And as we've evolved and we've grown to survive, surely having hair on our head is the best form of survival. I can't understand. Because if you've got no hair, you're spending all your time with hats. There's almost no day of the year when you know I've got the sun hat or a woolly hat. So it's ridiculous. Anyway, what scares you most about yourself? Microplasticity to get things wrong, to fall into. to get it wrong. Get it wrong in big ways. So, error, error. But isn't that a good thing? No, error is error. If we're talking about errors, they're real big errors. Yeah. So, yeah. It's probably what frightens everyone about everyone. That's what we do. Do you live with the regrets or have any regrets? Sure. I mean, I think it's important to live with the regrets. You actually. Somebody who doesn't have regrets is dangerous. Of course, of course, one has to regret and mourn and think, "Oh, I did that stupid thing or that cruel thing, that mean thing or that short-sighted thing. If we're ever to have a chance to grow." If you're not embarrassed by at least 15 things that you did last year, you're not learning enough. You're stuck. You should be thinking, "Oh, my goodness. I'm so sorry about that thing, because you're thinking, right, I'm trying to get a bit better." And that's why I think we should allow people to get better. And that's what the word forgiveness is all about. Trying to allow people to have their mistakes, but move on from them. I love that because I think we're conditioned to say we don't have any regrets, but I always go, "Well, I maybe kind of do some ways to think I should have done something differently there or changed it or not said that." When was the last time you cried and why? I think very beautiful things make me cry more and more. So I get older. Sweet things. Children's books where, Bunny Rabbit gets reunited with Mummy and Daddy Rabbit. It makes you flutters of tears. Because as you get older and life, you inducted into more and more awful things and cruel things, the contrast with what's beautiful and what's kind and lovely still becomes really acute. And that's, I think, what brings on the tears. You're finding in that lovely children's book, whatever, that's where your true home is. That's where paradise is, but you're so far away from it. You've drifted so far from innocence and joy and all those things. And then you see an image of it and you think, "Oh, what you're really crying is for your own lost paradise." And that's why often you'll get little children and adults reading to them at bedtime. And the adult is in floods of tears and the child doesn't know what's going on. They fall in asleep or whatever. And the adult doesn't know why because the adults recognize the cruelty of life. If you wanted to design a robot that would cry when reading children's stories, give it some painful experiences. That's what will make it cry when they encounter something beautiful. Well, it's something you can't let go of. Can't let go of like a good thing or a bad thing or anything you want. Whatever way you interpret it. Albums from the 90s that keep listening to, they should have moved on from, but they just have a saver mentioning no names. Spice Girls. Mentioning no names. I'm going to change this question because this next one, because I won't ask you something. I think everyone has a superpower. I really think they do. What would you say your Super power is super power. Look, I think I like to chomp through a problem and try and think my way out of it. People exercise their way out of things, they act their way out of things. I'm not really good at exercising, I'm pretty good at acting, et cetera. But if I've got any power, it's to try and take things apart. So it take a thought apart. So give me a thought and try and unpack it. And that's probably where I come to life. What turns you off? People are too certain about things, you know? I like a touch of hesitation. Like people who add a maybe into things, perhaps. At least that's what I'm thinking at the moment kind of thing. I like a touch of hesitation to me. That's not weakness. That's being properly open to the complexity of things. And I think that's off no lovely thing. What turns you on other than that thing? I think people who are willing to be introspective and part of that means thinking I may not already know. So somebody who says, let me take that away. That's been rather thought-pro. Let me take that away and give that some thought. That's a lovely thing to say. It's a very generous thing to say. And last one, but I sort of ask this, what do you like most about yourself? What do I like most about myself? That sometimes I can be very silly and stuff some fun. And I think fun is quite underrated. Very difficult to do. But again, come back to why things make you cry. Fun becomes more important, the more serious life gets. You know what I mean? So a light-hearted afternoon has a value at 54 that it doesn't have when you're five. Because when you're five, so much is light-hearted. If you manage to pull off a light-hearted moment when you're older, then it has a depth to it. Well, it's quite fitting because our bonus question is, your favourite swear word? Obviously, I can't say it on air. I grew up speaking French and an oddly. a lot of them are in French. They come back in French. Which is quite good because then some people go, "I don't know what you said." "Good, good, that's fine." It's in French. And then thank you so much for coming on Great Company. That has been amazing. Thank you so much. Wow. Was you mind blown? It was amazing. I loved it. I loved every second of it. Just to nurse my ego for a second, interviewing was okay. I asked the right question. It was really, really well. Even though he does talk about quite high concepts, he is also incredibly. He explains things so well. Do you know what? I listened to a lot of the shows that we do together. And sometimes I do something like this, but this is one that I think I'll listen to a few times. Yeah, there was a moment in it, and this is how obsessed, how much we use all our tech. I kind of wanted, I almost went up to touch the back 15 seconds thing, and I was like, "Oh, it's live." Really do it again. Yeah, I was like, "Oh, hang on." He said something really interesting there. I need to hear that again. Wow, I loved that. Well, listen guys, hopefully you loved it too. I want to say that thank you so much for listening. Please share it. Please follow and subscribe to the show because it does so many things for us. You cannot even imagine. And also you can get in touch with us on email. Email. We've had an email the whole time. We've had an email all the time, which is. Great company at jamboproductions.co.uk. Everything is in the show description below. Also, you can find us on social media and slide into our DMs at GreatCompanyPodcast. Thank you so much for listening. I need to go and probably listen to your edit as soon as I get it. Lovely. I'll see you next week. Bye! You end the listener, I mean. On another episode of GreatCompany. [Music]