Mental Health

TRANSCRIPT

Interviewer:

You're listening to the Drive show on youth talk radio. And as we do every Thursday on the other end of the line, I've got with me Dr. Patrick Jones, founder of Perth Psychologist, here to discuss a different facet of mental health. Patrick, how have you been keeping this last week? 

Patrick:

Yes, good, thank you. 

Interviewer:

Excellent. Beautiful. So what I thought we'd look at, and this is based on a cue that you had given us a little while ago, is the subject of mental health itself. Now, initially were a little bit like, well, that's quite a broad thing, but I feel like we've narrowed it down into something a little easier to manage. 

Patrick:

Yeah, for sure. I think there are a few ways that we can tackle this one. 

Interviewer:

Yeah. And I think the thing that I was facing and considering when were approaching this interview was, of course, a lot of the things that we've talked about have to do with mental health because it impacts mental health, but they've been things that are taking place in your lifestyle that then contribute to fluctuations in your mental health. And so it feels like this week we're more looking at the things that you may feel or that may arise as a result of fluctuations in your mental health. And one of the things that were looking at was healthy thinking patterns. And when I saw that I was like, well, that's a very hard thing to identify as being unhealthy. So I wanted to ask the first question, what are the criteria for an unhealthy thinking pattern? 

Patrick:

Well, one of the common things that we might look at is under the category of what you could call cognitive distortions, which are all how our processing is not clean and clear and you could almost say unrealistic. So different categories could be put into and a few of them that are quite common, that people could look at in terms of their thinking patterns. One of them would be like all-or-nothing thinking, which is, am I looking at things in an absolute black or white sort of category versus the fact that there is some gray hair? Sometimes I will do this, but not all the time. 

I think when people are in an emotionally reasoning place, they sometimes lose a little bit of realism and logic and they go into this never works, or you always do that. So that's the first one. A common one is have I kind of engaged in say, all-or-nothing thinking? Another one might be, say, overgeneralization is also a common one, which is, say, viewing a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat versus just a one-off. Another would be emotional reasoning where people might reason from how they feel, so they're feeling really bad at the time. So therefore life must just not be working at the moment. And that probably is a slightly realistic version, but when you're emotionally upset, sometimes the diagnosis of the moment is a little bit on the negative side. 

Interviewer:

So just to check, am I in an emotional reasoning place? Am I looking at it in a balanced way? A common one is I talk about people are personalizing things and often the word thrown around the moment is someone might be like a narcissist. And that comes from a clinical diagnostic category, narcissist personality disorder. And the opposite is borderline personality disorder. And in a nutshell, the narcissist version is if it's a success, it's because of me. If it's a failure, it's because of you. Whilst people who are a bit more on the opposite end, a bit more on that borderline end, we're all somewhere on that continuum. Mind you, it's not like everyone is people are just one or the other. We're all somewhere on this. But the people on the other end would be, if it's a failure, it's me. 

Patrick:

Probably something you did. And that's also a really good example of too much polarized thinking and have I got myself into that kind of habit? So there are lots of different elements to unhealthy thinking, but these are some categories or some self-checks that we could go, well, am I a little bit in any one of those at the moment? And just then, once we know our mental style and our tendencies to be able to manage that and go, okay, I need to rein that one in a little bit. 

Interviewer:

So it sounds from what you said there, that there's a focus that needs to be put on your self-awareness to then develop some methods for overcoming your unhealthy thinking patterns. But what are some of those methods that can help us overcome them and avoid getting into thought traps? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, what you've just sort of said about self-awareness, I think is pretty key. I also like the continuum of pessimism realism optimism. Where am I generally on that continuum and just that self-awareness you mentioned just to sort of check? Okay, so I tend to be a bit more of a pessimist, which you can also say is a bit more risk-aware, just to kind of check, or I'm a bit more an optimist, so I'm a bit more opportunity-oriented, but I miss some of those risks. While a pessimist catches the risks, they miss some of the opportunities. 

So the first step would be to kind of know what's my general tendency in terms of my style and to always try and come back to that middle path, which is being aware of the risks but also open to the opportunities. So that first step, but then in the more professional arenas, some classical methods CBT is a pretty common one in the professional scene, cognitive behavioral therapy. And you could almost say in a nutshell. One of its methods that is asked simply is what's the evidence for this? I've just presented a belief or an assertion about something. It's just to check what is the evidence for that and to look realistically and openly versus when people are in that emotional state. They aren't very evidence-based. That's the first. 

And then I guess the more common one also a dominant technique in psychology in a range of fields is the mindfulness one we often talk about. And its approach isn't so much to ask what the evidence. It's more to sort of see thoughts as passing mental events. They're all self-constructed theories. They're all thoughts that came from us and they're not realities. So being able to step back and know I created that thought and that objectivity also gives us a little bit more choice. 

Interviewer:

So Patrick, over the last five weeks you've come on the show and we've talked about a different topic. And a lot of the discussions we've had, the focus has been on things that we can do to sidestep some of the problems that we experience. It's a very sort of self-resilience-building way of approaching it. But of course, you're a psychologist. A lot of people out there potentially will have seen a psychologist or know somebody who has. But I think for a lot of people, the divisive aspect of it can include knowing when to reach out and seek external help. Again, whether that be a psychologist or simply even just telling your family members or your friends. Really what I'm asking is how do we know when the problem has become too much for us to bear personally? 

And in which case, when should we then seek help? 

Patrick:

Yeah, for sure. I'm a retired clinical psychologist and I've been in the field for 20 years. So I have seen a lot of the different approaches that people have. I'm doing more work now in the area of the mindfulness space because I think that's got a lot of power these days. But if you were to see someone, it can be a range of people. There are also counselors and mentors out there that make a difference. But I think that the central position is that we generally are okay with most things. And it's because of this. What the research has found is this adaptation reflex with most difficult events, traumas if you like, there's an eight to twelve weeks time period in which we tend to go back to our well-being within that or by that time frame. 

Interviewer:

Our well-being may get knocked around, but we tend to recalibrate back to that baseline usually for most things. So I think we kind of need to acknowledge that we are pretty good almost, you could say, as a species, as people. But there are times when, and I would call it almost like economics there are greater demands than there are resources. And that pushes prices up. And this is where sometimes life pushes us past our current set of resources and there's no shame in that. And that in fact, is an opportunity to go, all right, so this is when I need to go externally to source some input. And I think that's the kind of clue am I able to manage these demands with my current resources? And if not, where can I go to get more resources? 

Patrick:

I think that's a tremendous response. It means there's a lot of growth opportunity there as well from that particular event because it's triggered us to go further than our current resources. Which means that just with some help. 

Interviewer:

And for some people, that process of reaching out to someone else can be quite an independent one. But of course, some of our younger listeners may have a parent or guardian to contend with in then asking to seek external help, in that case beyond the family. How do you feel we should go about approaching a parent or guardian, about seeing someone outside of the familial unit or reaching out to seek external help? 

Patrick:

Well, you know, the Are you okay day that they had. That's an annual thing that's based on the idea that keeping the lines of communication open is essential for mental health. So I think that the first thing I would recommend is not to wait until it's too hard, but to practice self-disclosure along the way, how's it going? And just keep the lines of communication open. That's sort of the first step. If that hasn't happened and now it's kind of a little bit further, then you perhaps have to broach a conversation that's not a common one. But typically most people tend to open up to self-disclosure versus judge it. I think people are a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more open. 

I think my experience personally, you could say, and professionally has been that people do open their hearts out to someone who is sharing that things are a little bit tough. So that's the first step. And then also to acknowledge that it's not unusual for one in four people over their life to have some kind of mental health issues at different times and it's quite common to struggle with things. And so there's a certain normalizing. I think that the second thing is to sort of normalize it. This happens to all of us, I suppose. 

Interviewer:

You've almost halfway answered the next question I'm going to ask you, which is more feelings about the stigma you might feel about seeking help for your mental health. And I mean, even if it's not about worrying about what your parents might say, I know that it almost feels like an unfortunate prerequisite of being at school or being in a friend group where you worry about what the others might think. In that case, what is your advice for those who feel judged or feel they will be seeking help for their mental health? 

Patrick:

Yeah, well, I think of amazing sports stars, Michael Jordan, or the past or current people. And no matter how good they are, they all have coaches and coaching for sport. The goal of it is to be able to lift your game. And so I just see it as a little bit like that. And in some ways, perhaps because of the industry I've been in for so long, the idea of people not analyzing and reflecting and then getting input to me is a little bit strange because in every other area, business, and so on, you have consultants. And so I like it. I think it's a great opportunity because problems are a chance for growth. 

In all the business training I've done, personal training, and I've done so much over probably 30 years, the knowledge base and the skill sets I have are largely to do with the fact that I've consulted experts across different areas that have improved my game. So it's, to me, a very sensible thing. And probably just to finish, by comparison, there's a nice quote, which is the insanity is to know what doesn't work and to keep on doing it. And so I think this is the. 

The antidote to that, of course. And I think one of the things that you mentioned, I think from one of my earlier questions to do with looking at unhealthy thinking patterns and the difficulty that I could see arising, say, if I were to do the same thing where you were mentioning look at causation and looking at it in the scope of something bad happened, It happened because of me. And in those scenarios, that in itself is an unhealthy thinking pattern. But then I envision a scenario in which that is the thought pattern that also happens to be true, in which case there is a problem that needs to be solved that has to do with rebuilding yourself. 

Interviewer:

And so I wanted to ask how you sort of negotiate or discern what is an unhealthy thinking pattern or what is the kind of worthwhile self-criticism that we've talked about in the past that is a prerequisite for self-betterment? 

Patrick:

Yeah, it's a good distinction because we also don't want to, as they say in philosophy, never argue with someone or always distinguish. In other words, identify which bit is right, and which bit is wrong. So I think that's sort of clever thinking in a way. I think some of the clues, probably in terms of some of those distinctions, would be to see if am I falling into some of those cognitive distortion traps. If we sort of just list some of them, the all-or-nothing thinking one that's just easy to do, a little bit of a checklist. I had a checklist of those ten areas and I'd get people to rate themselves zero to ten on just where they were across them. And some people were stronger and weaker than others. 

But that would be one thing just to check am I in one of those? So to get rid of the negative thinking, first I'd have to be one not thinking in absolute black or white categories. So as long as I'm not doing that, then I'm partly way there. Another would be to make sure, as I mentioned, not to view this negative event as always, but just in this case, and am I including the positives rather than just focusing on the negatives and selecting out the positives? So just checking each time am I doing all these things? So it's almost like I clean up my mental process first so then I can have a better cleaner processor to problem-solve the thing that's in front of me. 

So I think there's some of the things that you would look at and I think just to check have I not emotionally reasoned this, you know, because I'm feeling really bad. Does that mean, you know, I'm you know, am I seeing it? If I'm being emotional and if I'm not, sometimes a bit of a timeout strategy would be useful. Look, my thinking style is just too pessimistic at the moment. It's probably better. Or I leave any problem-solving until I've cleaned up my mental process. And sometimes just time out is useful. So once all that's been done, in a nutshell, however, you do that and check all those little points so people can look up cognitive distortions, they might be able to come up with some lists on the Internet, but you can. 

Interviewer:

Once the processing is clean and clear, then you can do the problem-solving, which I think is relevant in terms of whether am I partly responsible for any of this. And then to be able to also what they talk about funneling up in stats, they call concurrent validity, which is what do other people think about this? Not just me, so kind of getting other input. So step one, clean up the mental process. And then step two, do some problem-solving about the situation. And then potentially step three, get some input from others. In terms of am I seeing that? 

Patrick:

One of the things you mentioned in answer to the question about the stigma around seeking psychological help or help for your mental health had to do with why people would even feel anxious around doing so, where in so many other areas of their life they're going to be inclined to better something that they know not to be working properly. And that is something that you hear about as being something that permeates around certain social cultures and everything like that. For example, the idea of the stiff upper lip in upper-class Britain and everything like that. And I don't quite know where that births out of. I mean, if I was going to think out loud about know, maybe it's because, in the scope of a mental health problem, it is so centralized to that person that it's almost like, well, it's you. 

You can negotiate that problem because it is by definition you. Whereas, say if there was a broken down wall, that is very much a problem that you need to go out of your way to reconstruct. Whereas the problem of mental health is just so internalized. And I suppose if that were a way that stigma arises, I suppose there is also the thing of we talk about different ways to help ourselves in the way of balancing mental health. But is there a clear-cut division between the kinds of things that you can negotiate yourself and the things that you need to seek external help for regarding your mental health? 

A few ways to look at that one I think is as I indicated earlier with that adaptation reflex is to sort of just check how successful am I currently with being able to adapt to this. And the adaptation reflex is on multiple fronts. It's what they call cognitive-behavioral. So it's mental processing, it's behaviors. How am I thinking about this and am I managing it on a mental level behaviorally? How am I behaving? Have I stopped going to parties or leaving the house? How has it affected me behaviorally? And then sort of socially, where am I in terms of my relationships with people? I think just checking, just have I successfully or am I making some progress to negotiate those? And I think if the answer is no, I mean, initially everyone can take a hit. 

Interviewer:

But are there signs that I'm beginning to make my way through it? And if I'm not, I think that's the point when we go to external help or when we look at it. But I also think it's important to just acknowledge the positives and the fact that the adaptation it's a term, obviously, but it does represent our ability as humans to successfully negotiate so many issues. And we do it all the time with anything. It's like, okay, so that's a problem. All right, just need to fix that, need to do that. And we almost could list how many things during the day where we might do that. I think it's important to acknowledge how powerful we are as individuals spiral to do many things. 

Patrick:

So I think that's also a big part of it, just having a kind and positive approach to our capability and then sourcing out help if we're finding that we're just struggling a little bit. 

So I suppose it does depend on the person in that case when it comes to those problems. Whether something that you might find incredibly easy to negotiate yourself, someone else might find difficult. And I suppose much of the same advice that was there around not feeling judged or not worrying about the judgment you might encounter for seeking psychological help might also come about when you're worrying that you may be judged for seeking psychological help for something that is seemingly quite easy for other people. I guess. 

Interviewer:

Yeah. That ties into the whole number one predictor of self-esteem is social comparison. A very unfortunate finding. We need to get our sense of self from a knowledge of who we are versus what we think other people think of us. That classic line, what people think of us, think of me is none of my business. I think it's very important to get out of that style. And I think also, people who love us unconditionally, can also provide that mirror if we can't provide it ourselves, do they accept me regardless? And I think sometimes it's like if you look at one of Jesus's sayings, love your neighbor as yourself, sometimes I flip that and go, well, if we did love our neighbor, that we loved ourselves, how happy would they be? 

Patrick:

Because sometimes the way people love themselves or view themselves is quite mean. And so that's how you love your neighbor. They're not going to be too happy. So I think it's important. And I'm continually harping on about event-based well-being versus inner well-being. It's critical to find that sense of self-independence on other people and their views. And sometimes they're just great ways to be able to do that, whether it's in nature or for some people, it might be in prayer or meditation or just music or something where you can just find those quiet still places where everything is just okay. You can sort of rest in that sense of self that is not run by the world and other people's opinions. 

Interviewer:

I think that's the place of well-being that helps us in these times versus going to what other people might think about us. 

Patrick:

And I think back to what you were saying there about what other people might think about us. I think back to imagine in primary school, I remember there being a big thing to do around the kinds of shoes you wore. And if you were in this group, it was like, oh, you needed to wear this particular brand of shoes or this particular style of shoes. And when you go through school, those kinds of divisions or assertions aren't as egregious as that, but they do exist. And it's only really a realization that I reached after getting out of high school if your friends are basing their friendship on you based on what shoes you're wearing, you probably need to get better friends generally. 

Interviewer:

Yeah. I remember when this craze took off when shoes started to become that commodity and people were being mugged for their shoes and like, you got to be kidding me. 

It was a crazy town because it's like the thing that's great about having a friend group or having close friends is that there's stuff that you have in common, but you're different enough that encountering them and hanging out with them is a worthwhile exchange of ideas. And you're not just sitting in an echo chamber of three people who are the same. 

Patrick:

I think for all of us to be aware that those shoes simply take different forms as people mature, and when people are in different age brackets and different wage brackets, those shoes become houses and those shoes become careers, and those shoes become any kind of stuff or education. All these things, they all are. Again, this event-based well-being thing. And the way that works with social comparison is that it's where you and your group have their value, but there's no actual absolute value. It's more just what you guys have placed as valuable. So for another group, it might not be shoes, that might be houses. We don't give a damn what your parent's house is because we never really go there. But your shoes are what's critical. Add another ten or 20 years to that person and the shoes may change. 

And it might be the house, but the disease is still the same. It's event-based well-being and it's social comparison causing your well-being. And it's really important to kind of nip it in the bud now because certainly becomes a big tree, because it doesn't just take a little nip is my point. It needs to be challenged right now. Am I in event-based well-being or wellbeing, and am I promoting that with my friendship circle? I think that's critical. 

It also doesn't even need to necessarily be a physical thing either. It can be an idea that someone holds like it's that whole thing of oh, we can't hang out with this person. That person thinks that Nickelback is better than the Beatles kind of thing and then ostracized for that reason, as it's for I suppose it's almost like a message of anti-conformism in that way. 

One of the criteria that they have used for psychological maturity is being able to put up with ambiguity or complexity or difference without trying to make it the same. And I think that's almost a bit of a clue here. If people are being too polarized, then they're not able to hold multiple things at once and that's a sign of immaturity. If you can't hold Nickelback and beetles together, then there's something going on there. But of course, well, whilst it's easy for all of us, including we potentially can have an opinion about that, it's also important to look at where our versions of that might be and just to know it's a human tendency. Perhaps some people might say it's almost a survival tendency. 

If you want to go back to the jungle or wherever it is in terms of you look at examples there where the young and the weak are picked off more than the strong and so people don't want to be associated with that. But it's based really on a survival sense that isn't relevant now because we can create our world and our own you know, I don't think those tendencies while they're there, I don't think they're relevant. I think we're much more powerful than them when we have a look at who we are. 

Interviewer:

And the idea that we're much more powerful is a good way to end the interview. Thanks for getting in touch with us again this week, Patrick. I hope to speak to you again next week. 

Patrick:

Yeah, no, good. Nice rant. 

Interviewer:

Excellent. See you later.