Hello and welcome to part two of the stomp cast. We've just found a sunny little spot because it was a little bit chilly. It's just not, it's round degrees I think.
I'm hoping it stays like this. We're running and doing the royal parks half on Sunday. Oh, lovely. Maybe you'll run around. I am. I am. I am. I'm hoping you'll know that it's a nice, so this will be perfect. This is perfect weather. It couldn't be better, could it? Glorious. Oh, yeah. Because you run, do you run Americans and half?
I've done three marisons back in my, when I was a bit younger. So at the moment, I haven't done a proper eight in years. But yeah, back in the day, I did. I think it's actually what I'm kind of cautious of it because you do not need to, running is moving quick in the walking pace. And to be a runner, you don't need to be running races. So like, I mean, if you run two or three kilometers, that's running. So like, you know, it's trying to be careful not to be,
I love the training takes over your life. I think we ended up doing like 100 kms. It's all crazy. I actually came back from my friend, talking about doing things crazy. He did an Ironman, a second Ironman in Barcelona. It's just crazy. And I think, you know, I may well be mad enough to do at some point, but he was saying like you really have to appreciate that it is genuinely a huge sacrifice. It's actually, and he says this, it's not actually good for you.
No, it's terrible for your body. Less or so, great for you. You do it as a feat, as a challenge, but there's nothing going, oh, look, I'll run around and do Iron Man. It's something you kind of do, and then, you know, from most people, you might check that off, but that's the word. I have no desire to do that. Anyway, we're going on the challenge. My body wouldn't take it.
Okay, let's talk about learned helplessness. I think a lot of people will be like, well, what is that? It's really actually really fascinating as a topic and I know that you're going to share some of the kind of research that led to this kind of conversation. So yeah, I'm going to open the floor to what is this thing?
Okay, so the idea of learned helplessness came about in the 1960s, 1970s. This is where they forced the scopper to, they didn't experiment and off the back of the experiment then they started to look at, well what is that? Because obviously they're observing and they're looking at kind of psychologically what's happening there.
So full disclosure on this one, back in the day, they did terrible things with experiments. They weren't very nice to dogs and humans. So this experiment was done by Martin Seligman, who was a very famous psychologist. And he, I know you love your dogs, so trigger warning here. They didn't do very nice things. So they got
two lots of dogs and they put the dogs into two different boxes and the dogs in box one received electric shocks and had no way of stopping the electric shocks.
The dogs in box number two got electric shocks, but there was a panel they could press with their nose to stop the electric shocks. So terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. It's very terrible. Charlie's like very sad in the face. Do you know what, the reality is though, there's a lot of stuff used to happen, guys. Like there's a reality that we can hide away from, but a lot of stuff that we do intrigue people in that have come out very nice places. Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it right, but it's a reality, honestly.
It is, and they did dreadful things to humans as well. So they learned basically by pressing it? So you had dogs in box one, getting electric shocks, no way stopping them. Dogs in box two could press the panel and stop the shocks. And so that was part one of the experiment. Part two is they put the dogs into another box that had a panel in the middle of it.
And they put, so, the dogs that were in box number one, who had the sharks, but the means of escape. When they got shocked, they jumped over the panel to the other side of the box, and they were fine, because they weren't getting shocked on the other side. The dogs that got shocked, they didn't have the panel, got shocked, and they didn't jump. They didn't move.
So we were looking at thinking, what's that? Why is the dog just getting shocked? There was a means of escape, but the dog wasn't using it.
So they observed this and they came up with this psychological phenomenon called learned helplessness and they started to apply it into humans. And it's this idea that when we go to adverse things in life or stressors or we go through difficult times, that instead of trying to find a way out or to think about what's in our environment that we can change or that we can control,
We learn helplessness. We go to a position of, I can't change this, there's nothing I can do, this is awful. So they're not deluded, they know something bad is happening, but we don't empower ourselves. We learn to be helpless and so therefore then we say in a really like the dogs, we say in an environment that's shocking us or that is really damaging us.
But we don't look for ways to change it. So could that be, then, if we're going to think of comparable life situations? Could that be, for example, working in a working environment, for example, that's awful? So I hate to make this example in some ways. But working in, say, a really struggling hospital that's understaffed, that's overworked, that you're getting patients shouting all the time, everyone's shouting at you. I have no idea what to say.
You just kind of stay here. You just end up staying there and you're just kind of like, I'm not going to leave this situation. Is that what you're talking to? So you know that what's going on around you's not good. But you're not going to, you kind of just go, well, this is what it is. Yeah, so basically, yeah, totally. So the environments can be work, family, relationships, any kind of number of factors are the same environments really, where we basically accept their fate.
Like we say, well, that's just the way it is. But we don't actually look at the fact that we have got power. We have got the means for change. But we don't harness that. So one of the things that they kind of notice with learned helplessness is that it's kind of three parts of it, really. That kind of are the major kind of psychological components of it.
is a lack of motivation. So the person isn't motivated to try and change the environment. The second one is that we don't learn from our successes. So even though we might be successful in life and things might work out well for us, we basically put it down to the fact that it just got lucky. So we don't actually...
use the learning to help us in the future, which is kind of how we grow and learn. And we can draw upon previous experience and memory. So that's not recorded. And the final one is emotional numbness. So you'll find the people that have learned how this is quite passive, they're quite apathetic. So they might appear, well, I'm not stressed, but they've done studies that courtes our levels are through the roof. They are stressed internally, but they're not showing it.
So interesting. And in particular, what's really one of the interesting points there was the fact that people would have done it since they feel like the bad stuff is happening to them. They don't have control over. But also when the good stuff happens, it's not as a result of what they're doing. So there's no sense of their own
and participation in that. So it's basically, well, it's again, it's all external, which is well, and I hear that, I hear that from my patients, like when we talk, break it down. What would people say to that? Can you describe like a kind of case that you've seen that will bring this life within you? Yeah, so I'm going to, because I'm an adolescent psych as well as an adult psych, so I'm going to use an example which is, I think we'll resonate with other people, and apologies if this is triggering, bullying.
So Buying is a classic example of this. If you come from a family where, say, the family is a bit tough, and where maybe the parents are a little bit kind of hard on the kids, and so that child grows up with an idea of, well, I have no parent, which is kind of true, actually. We have very little parent when it comes to parenting, and the family's worrying. We just land into it. But we know we don't have a massive say in speaking back to the parents.
so the learnt hypothesis can start there and so therefore then if you've got a problematic relationship with authority i.e. your parents and you're used to being kind of maybe pushed down by your parents then if you go into school and somebody starts bullying it that feels familiar and so in that familiarity it's like well I can't do anything about this
But you can. You absolutely can. We know this with bullying. But because of that sense of, but in my life, as in in my family home, I have no power. So therefore, I don't get to know the part of my own voice or the fact I have choice or that I do have things I can control. That learned helps us this then. They bring it into the school environment.
and there's like I might say well you know we need to tell the school about this or involve your parents and the young person is very resistant to that because their sense is well it's not going to make a difference.
Well, I experienced bullying at school, and I think that for a lot of people that have had that, and very much around 50% of people would have been bullied at some point. That's the stats that anti-bullying pro and the organisations talk about. So a lot of people have experienced, it's not a unique experience at all. But you do feel a sense of like, oh, well, you know, actually, if I do something, not only will it not get better, it actually might get worse.
There's almost like a feeling that the activation of your voice will actually make this problem worse. What, as it is, it's like, it's the pain that you know rather than the unknown. And that's quite scary. It's quite a big motivator not to do anything. Because if I do something, it might be worse. And I'm guessing that learns, reinforce, behave from school.
I mean, does it do you see that then playing out into the adult lives? Is this a repeating thing? It can do. So the stats, it's interesting, like, again, following this theme. The stats we know on bullying, it's tragic really, Alex, is that young people who are bullied in school are far more prone to having poor mental health later on in life. So they're more prone to having anxiety disorders, especially depressive disorders, because they don't learn resilience.
And what they learn in life is that people are there to hold you. Environments are oppressive. So that can leave them getting that same with that learned hypothesis where they don't learn resources. They don't learn skills that help themselves. So you often find that like when I'm treating gay adult patients, like lots of my adult patients would have been bullied as teenagers. But you're sometimes trying to get what you said there is that they're in these awful work environments where the boss is a tyrant.
like terrible bosses or toxic work environments. And again, you're like, you know, you can't leave. Like, you know, there is, and also there's like, there's HR and there's like employment law, like people can't just do whatever they like. But again, there's that sense of the change feels too much. And so they stay in these awful toxic environments because it's so familiar.
From a psychological perspective, why does it happen? Because I always think, I try and look at things like there must be a reason why we have this feature by our behaviours. Because it seems rather counterintuitive to have this thing where people kind of learn to
just put up with rather than change. Because often what's really interesting is when you change, and most people listening will be able to relate to this, when you change a scenario that you're stuck in for a while, you look back and you think, why don't you do that sooner? It's even getting held back to you. I remember when I first took Anne's depressants, I'm not taking them now, when I first took them. I should have got help, but a year's before. Well, like an ECU, 18 months, I suffered from there.
Very long time, way worse, way worse than I needed to be. Before doing something about it, if I do something, what if it's worse than the current situation? Why does that happen? Because it seems kind of stupid psychological phenomenon, isn't it? So, it's time. It's time to learn healthiness. So, I often say to my patients, we can become functional in dysfunction.
So the dysfunction becomes something that we become so familiar with and we learn to survive in it and it's not great and we know it's not great but the change feels like it's going to be too much for us and particularly with mental health.
When mental health is poor, it can feel that that change to go and go and see the doctor, that to go and maybe speak to a psychologist. That feels too much, so therefore then that then doesn't feel like it's going to be a positive, so we don't do it. We go into procrastination, we go into denial, we normalise in terms of, well, it's not that bad.
Unfortunately, and I'm not sure what happened with you, Alex, in terms of what got you over the line, but my experience or my patience is it needs crisis. So it's only when we're in crisis mode where things are really falling apart. Then we're literally forced into change then because the life we're living in is not sustainable. We're not well now.
Yeah, it's fascinating isn't it? So for people listening then who are going, well actually, because of what you said, it sounds like a lot of people are experiencing this, to some degree or day, to some degree. Oh, totally. I hate doing crisis work. I hate it. And I'm sure, you know, when you were a doctor says, I hate crisis work. I hate when I get a young person into my office, under self-harming, under suicidal. I don't like those cases, because you've got to do a lot of work to get the case stable.
I would rather do preventative work every single time so that at least the person doesn't get to crisis, but unfortunately for some people in the crisis is the thing. That like it'll be a suicide attempt or it'll be the fact that they can't get out of bed in the morning.
Let's talk then a little bit about what do you do? If you're someone who's going to work out, it sounds like I have this, perhaps an over-notch crisis point. But how can we start to change this so that we don't repeat these patterns of behavior? Because you probably play out in relationships as well. I would totally imagine as well as work scenarios.
You'll stay in a bad relationship longer than you should, or you'll put up with terrible behaviour because leaving feels way more challenging than staying. I hear that all the time, which is, oh, if I leave and I've got to do this, I'm like, yeah, OK, yeah. It will be a transition and it will be temporarily difficult, but...
Look what you're staying in. Look what you're staying in. You're sitting in the discomfort that you don't actually want to choose. You never choose that discomfort in the first place. It's a really toxic environment that's wrecking your mental health. So what do we do then? So how do we train ourselves out? If we've learned something, how do we unlearn this thing? Brilliant. So first of all,
learned hypothesis is a taught disorder. It's a disorder of your thinking. So it's very important to recognize that you need to change your thinking. So learned hypothesis, we don't diagnose that. We see it in it's very common in PTSD. It's very common in depression and it's very common in ADHD.
You see, you need to do this, but actually yeah. Right, so I've got all three, so I'm screwed. Charlie's not screwed. So yeah, we do see all those and phobia where people like it.
Again, we're treating phobias as like, I can't do anything about it. Well, you can, actually, you can't do phobias ever, you treat phobias. So you're sort of doing this disorder when you're thinking. So you need to start there. You need to start looking at how you're thinking. And one thing that people who have a learned helplessness approach to life is they don't engage critical thinking. So critical thinking are those what, why, how you're critically analyzing the situation. People with learned helplessness, they're passive thinkers.
They just accept. They don't use critical thinking and they have critical thinking. But they're not engaging it. So we often call it the explanatory way. So start to explain things to yourself. Understand like, what is going on here? Why am I doing this?
and so you're using critical thinking. And due to Martin Seligman, the guy he came up with, he said, as much as you can have learned helplessness, he talked with yourself, you can get learned optimism. So okay, you might be a glass half empty person, but you can learn to be a half-class full person. So one of the things to think about that is like, are my thoughts passive?
Am I challenging myself? Am I wanting to think differently? And of course, the other piece of that is that, okay, change might be difficult.
The unfortunate with people who learned helplessness is they see the change as like catastrophic change. It's not. It's temporary discomfort. And then the change will actually bring you forward into a more positive place. What's the difference between what's the difference between being critical of
these thoughts and being critical yourself. Because I think there must be quite a combination of people that will go, well, there's nothing I can do and I'm useless and it's all my fault and I deserve this and look at that and bad person or this is all rubbish. That's not what you're talking about. No, not at all. So that's self-criticism. So that's where you're facing it, bullying yourself, you're attacking yourself, that negative inner critic. So this is very different. So what I teach my patients is you separate your thoughts from you. So your thoughts are mental processes. So you are not your thoughts.
It's one of those powerful stages that is true. It's hard to accept in your own brain, and even some of that really into the stuff. My brain still takes over confidence, and I can lose an hour in these stupid thoughts, and I go, shit, I don't have fun, sorry, I just wear it. And I'm back in these thoughts again, and you have to then step away, and become the observer again, right? You observe the thoughts and separate. It's hard, though.
It is, and I suppose that's where, you know, we're talking about this. We're going to talk about meditation, aren't we? In third part, that's going to come into it. Yeah, I would be coming to that. Which is put distance. So the South criticism, how you know you're doing it, is I am. So it's personal. So if you're recognizing that, stop the I am and focus on the external. What's going on around me? How am I understanding what's happening?
And watch as well as perspective. Changing perspective changes how you think. What do you mean by that? So, if... I'll give you an example. When we're watching movies, there might be a villain all the way to... We hate the guy and we hate the other girl. And then at the end...
There's a massive twist where you see, well, the villain. It's like an Harry Potter. Exactly. He's the devil all the way through, right? And at the end, you're like, actually, he was protected. And so we got to change a perspective. We got to see, Greg's example, how he was actually a decent guy. But all the way to Harry Potter, like, right to the end, he was horrible. Well, he was the villain, won't he? Because that was the perspective we were given. But we were given a different perspective. He was playing the role, pretending to be as awful. I think he was a complex character, actually. But I think we looked at it in a very simple way.
Yeah, on the face of he's pretending to be Voldemort's friend before, you know, sacrificing himself to save Harry. Yes, yeah. So, changing perspective can give us a massive shift in how we feel about something and how we think about something. So think about, if your perspective is negative, okay, there might be a lot of negativity in the situation, so we're not trying to spin things that can't be spun. Sometimes things are a bit rubbish, but think about what you can control.
Lots of situations in life we just default into, this is out of my control. And yet, lots of the variables might be. But that doesn't mean you have no control. One of the things you can control is how you're thinking about it.
is that idea of like we can't we have no control the future or the past but as everything plays out in the now but also becomes our I guess our collective experience and past it's the control we have is our reaction to things but also how we feel about them it's kind of thing of like I don't know it's like really bad stuff happens in your life we all have that and it's like how do you decide to
except that is what really does determine a lot of your... I know there's a debate about Freud and different kind of thinkers and young and all the different people that have looked at these things, but there is some elements that shit things happen, they are shit things, but the way that we sit with them makes a big difference in stuff that we suffer the rest. I've seen it a lot in A and E actually, I know people think we see people that go out there that door and they're gone, but I've met very many people who have been through very horrific things in their lives,
They're actually quite happy people. I'm sure they're very much layered into the type. But they seem to a lot of these people tend to have a degree of acceptance of what is. There's not this turmoil against this. Some other people have things happen and there is a great deal of inner battle and a fight against what is. And that seems to be something that makes it big.
different and perhaps that's the helplessness point as well. Feeling that I can't change the past but there is autonomy around the fact that I can accept this and I can actually move forward and learn from it. That is being active versus passive. Totally totally and I think that's a great example you say too which is like
I walk with loads of people who've been traumatised, as you can imagine, every psychologist does, and horrific things they went through. And one of the things you do want to tap your patients is that they can really struggle with it, and I understand why, but to get them to recognise you, you're a victim in this.
Because the victim idea is, well, that's a bit negative and somehow that you weren't strong enough to stop this. But the reality is, when you're a victim, you aren't strong enough to stop it. Because if you were, you would have.
So you've got to have this, you wear a victim, but you move from victim to survivor. But you have to accept that, well, part of our life did break us. And it's really important to recognize that it's okay to be broken.
Like, that doesn't mean you're, does a problem with you or that you're not as good as somebody else or you're somehow mentally weak, but sometimes in life moments do break us. But that doesn't mean that you can't heal. And they're probably the people that you were seeing in A, and I see them all the time, all the time. So what would you say then, to summarize as we come into this part then, for people that are relating to this quite heavily?
How do you begin, especially for people who have never heard of this concept before? How do you begin to move from a passive process that this is part of your life to an active one? That's part of the summarizing what you said. But how can you move towards taking a step of moving away from this, basically?
where I would begin with that is that organ in your skull is the most powerful thing you possess. So your brain is incredibly powerful and okay your brain may have been wired a certain way through your experience in life that you might have learned helplessness or the people that are meant to look after you didn't and you've been to difficult things in your life. So understanding that does context here and that the way then your brain has understood life
has been massively impacted by your life, but their brain has plasticity, which means it can constantly rewire itself. Like, to an incredible degree, so people who've had strokes can learn to walk and talk again. Like, it's incredible what it can do. So when we're thinking about changing, thinking, the power to change your thoughts is inside you. It's there, you've got it. You've got everything you need inside. Yeah.
Now, you might need help, so get yourself into a psychologist and they can help you in target. Yeah, that doesn't mean you don't need an outside help to access what you have inside. That's what you're saying, right? That doesn't mean it's not like, oh well, just deal with yourself. What you're saying is that actually, when you come along, expert, like you sit to someone, you're not putting something inside someone, you're actually helping access and mold change to work through the stuff that you want to have.
Because my page of it, what do you do? How do you get people better? And essentially what a psychologist says, we rewire people's brains. That's what we do. And we know it works because we don't know the research and we can back it up. So it's rewiring the brain. So moving from that learned helplessness to actually empowering yourself. And honestly, some of the patients I've worked with, the shift is dramatic.
And even the patients are shocked just in terms of the change and how they were living when they first began working with you at the end.
And that rewiring once the patient is aware of it, like that won't go back. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I think that's a clear message of no longer be passive, the act is like your recovery from us. Guys, let's say goodbye there, end of part two. We're going to come back in part three. We're going to talk about some psychological perspective and using our experience, of course. You know, some of the things we can do to really build mental fitness. And one of those things I want to talk about and really fascinating about this especially at the moment is meditation and mindfulness.
because I think that's something that we slightly undo and use. A lot of people have higher meditation. Do you do it? Do you practice mindfulness? Because it could change your life. Guys will come back to you in part three. See you very soon. Goodbye.
