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Intelligence Squared
How To Take the Pressure Off and Live Well, with Claudia Hammond (Part Two)
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- [00:00]
Claudia Hammond
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- [00:30]
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- [01:30]
Mia Sorrenti
Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti for this episode. We're rejoining for part two of our recent live event with psychologist and broadcaster Claudia Hammond. Hammond joined us recently at the Kiln Theatre to share practical strategies from her new book Overwhelmed. From tackling procrastination and imposter syndrome to loosening the grip of perfectionism and finding ways to live well in a world that often feels relentless, she was in conversation with Dr. Radha Modgill. If you haven't heard part one, we recommend jumping back an episode to get up to speed. But now let's return to the discussion live from the Kiln Theatre in London.
- [02:11]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I want to move on, I suppose now to one area I think of everyone's life, which always feels overwhelming but possibly even more so now. It's the way we work and you know More people working from home, you know, work going on 24 hours a day, people working across different time zones. How do we kind of find our boundaries and how do we stop or reduce the feeling of overwhelm from work?
- [02:36]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, and I think definitely tech has made it harder when it comes to work because and obviously lots of people work from home now, some of the time at least, or maybe all the time. And those boundaries between home, home and work can start to blur. And from the research that started being done when people started working from home during the Pand, people were often inclined to, it shows that carry on working because there was no why stop at a particular moment? At least if you've got your journey home in the end, you've got to go out in the rain and get that train and get home. And so it kind of can force you to stop, whereas if you're at home, you might not stop. And then of course there is the always on culture of being able to be contacted all the time. And I think lots of workplaces are now trying to come up with ways of doing this. And I think that there is some evidence suggesting that younger people might be getting better at this actually and of saying, well, I'm not going to be looking at my emails after a certain time. And obviously it would depend on your job or people using delayed send on their emails. Although as I discovered, the app's got to then be open for it to send it or it doesn't send it. So you have to be slightly careful with doing those delayed ones or just putting in the title of yours so that other people don't have to feel pressured by it. An email for tomorrow, not for today. But also resisting having a quick look at your email once there's nothing you can do about it anymore. Not checking your email last thing at night because you could get an email that really annoys you for half the night and there's nothing you can do about it until the morning and it'll probably all get sorted out in half an hour anyway. And that is one thing that is worth looking at when something, when you're really stressed out by something, and particularly if something is keeping you awake that might be a short term thing, is to look and count to see how long is it before this thing resolves itself. And sometimes it can actually be the next day or two days later. And then it wasn't worth you literally losing sleep over that and being so tired worrying about it. And so there are lots of different strategies that I talk about for how to worry less because I think the blurring of work life boundaries can be one thing where people find themselves worrying.
- [04:46]
Dr. Radha Modgill
And do you think perfectionism is on the rise? Do you think that sort of ties in with our worries about work or overwhelmed from work or our difficulty in constructing and sticking to our boundaries?
- [04:58]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, because in a way it's hard to know whether people are more overwhelmed now than say 30 years ago. If you look at time use studies from the 1950s, people on average have more spare time now than they did in the 1950s. And yet we feel like there's all this stuff. But one thing where it definitely has changed is perfectionism. Really interesting research on this from Thomas Curran, who's at lse. And by tracing back in time from say the early 1990s, the average 20 year old now is likely to on average score significantly higher on perfectionism than they did in the 1990s. And so we can see this pattern of perfectionism on the rise. And there are different types of perfectionism. So there is self, as it gets called, self oriented perfectionism, which is where you demand that yourself is perfect and you have really high standards for, I don't know how you should look, that you should get fit, that you should be successful at your work and keep on striving and being more and more successful, that you need to do really well in exams. And lots of people recognize these things in themselves. But not only that, you need to be cook an amazing meal if someone comes round and you need to be a really good friend and a really good family member and partner and you've got to be perfect at all of these things. And I think this is interesting because we know that humans have survived this long by cooperating and specializing. You know, we can't all do the same things at all. You know, I can't, I can't build my home to live in, but someone else can, luckily. So we do different things and yet when it comes to perfectionism, we kind of want to be good at everything and expect to be good at everything. And then there is the other kind of perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, where we feel that the world, society, it could be our friends, our workplace, our boss, our family, our parents, that they are expecting this of us. And again, we know with younger people that has gone up as well. And so I think perfectionism is a really worrying thing that is making people feel overwhelmed because that is sometimes causing us, you know, there are some pressures you can't avoid. Maybe you're caring for, you know, two different relatives of Completely different ages and you're trying to hold down two jobs at the moment. That kind of overwhelm is harder to avoid. And then the technique there is to find the strategies to try to find ways to make that easier to cope with. But some of the overwhelm we feel is because of pressures we're putting on ourselves to be perfect when we don't need to be.
- [07:27]
Dr. Radha Modgill
And do you think that might be related to us being less comfortable with failing in verticommas or making mistakes, or do you think it's got anything to do with that?
- [07:37]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, I think one thing is that there are far more people we can compare ourselves with now and decide that we are failures. So, you know, when I was a teenager, you could compare yourself with the rest of your class and look at what they looked like, what you look like, what they were doing. But now you can compare yourself with half the world and you can compare yourself with half the world who are curating their images on social media, say, and who are maybe doctoring them as well and only putting up the very best ones. And we know that there's been whistleblowers talking about some social media companies deliberately targeting cosmetics adverts at teenagers when they've just deleted a selfie and at the moment where they might be feeling bad about themselves. And I don't put everything at the door of social media because I think there are some amazing things about it, but I think when it comes to, say, appearance and perfectionism, that that is some of it. I think there is a much wider group of we can compare ourselves to now. And I also think there is a kind of idea that you can have it all and if you want it enough, you will get this thing. And there is this thing called survivorship bias going on there. And so, I don't know, whoever's just won Wimbledon will be interviewed and they will say they always wanted this. They imagined when they were little, winning Wimbledon. I mean, I imagined when I was little winning Wimbledon, Unfortunately, I did too, actually. Exactly. Who doesn't want to win Wimbledon?
- [09:01]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Hands up anyone who thought they were going to.
- [09:04]
Claudia Hammond
But unfortunately, you know, I'm no good at tennis and wasn't. Had no aptitude for it. I wasn't going to put in the many, many, many thousands of hours and determination and hard work and have the psychological frame of mind for it. So all of those things. But there is this kind of idea, yes, anyone, you know, anyone can do anything and you hear it on, I don't know, reality shows or, you know, that Anyone can be a singer and, you know, do these amazing things, but you can't necessarily. And it doesn't mean this may sound defeatist, I'm not saying people shouldn't try, but I'm just saying that maybe something more realistic would make us happier. Yes.
- [09:39]
Dr. Radha Modgill
And that idea of this kind of multi hyphen description of who you are, we now have these multiple descriptions of who we are and what we do. And sometimes we read about 15 of them and you're thinking, can you really be good at all of those things? It's a bit too much, isn't it? So we've just got five minutes before we're going to go to questions. So please everyone have a think about what you want to ask Claudia. And for the last five minutes, I want to focus on you, Claudia, because whenever anyone writes a book, I think it does change them to a degree if it's something that is related to them or something they've really wanted to write for a long time. So my question is for you, how has writing this book kind of changed your approach to stress or how you look at stress, I suppose your relationship with stress?
- [10:21]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, it definitely has. And in fact, ironically, as the didn't write the book in the order, it's in the right order, if you like. But I was writing the chapter about stress at the moment where the book was kind of almost late, really, and where my lovely editor was saying, is it coming soon? And so I was, and I had just loads of other work on as well and was just overwhelmed with too much work. And so I was writing the stress chapter at that moment. And honestly, I did end up putting into practice every single thing in that chapter, one of them being that sometimes the reason you feel stressed, and as I say, there is a difference between chronic stress and temporary stress. But sometimes the reason you feel stressed is that something really matters to you. And so the reason I was feeling stressed was, yes, I couldn't fit this in, didn't feel like I could fit this in the hours in the day. But also because I really minded about this and it really mattered to me and I wanted it to be really good. And so that did make me feel less stressed, thinking, yes, that's why I'm putting all this effort into this. You know, I want it to be a really good thing and I want it to work. And so, and I was trying, you know, reframing the stress and trying to do, you know, some of the techniques for worrying less and worrying less in the night and using those sorts of Techniques. And so yeah, those, those do work. The other thing I'd say is a difference is that I now and after the book on rest as well, I now do take rest really seriously. And so I've always liked gardening is what I find most restful. And it is a question of people finding the thing they find restful. But I do now take breaks really seriously and thinking rather than just push on. I am going to go outside, not today, but on another non rainy day for 10 minutes and Potter around in my tiny garden because, and not feel guilty. I used to do it anyway, but feel guilty about it. And now I don't feel, feel guilty about it because I think that there is really good evidence that breaks are good for our mental health. And I don't feel guilty when I go running, so I shouldn't feel guilty taking a break either. So I think those are, those are two ways that I definitely feel less overwhelmed and take steps to feel less overwhelmed.
- [12:21]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I think that's really interesting because I think also sometimes I know I've done this on occasion, you've been very, very busy, been very, very kind of overwhelmed with lots of different things. And sometimes you almost become that identity. You've almost sort of become used to being busy and used to being stressed. And sometimes you can label yourself as oh, I'm really stressed, I'm really stressed. But actually when you take a step back, there isn't so much going on anymore. But sometimes we can just be in that mental state of speed and I'm stressed, I'm stressed, I'm stressed. Sometimes we can always label ourselves when actually that's kind of outdated.
- [12:54]
Claudia Hammond
I think that's very true. And I think that there is a, there can be a sort of claim to, to busyness as a form of status in a way. And so, and you know, people will say to me, oh, how are you? You know, how's work going? And I'll say, oh, it's busy, really busy, a bit too busy really. And in a way, yeah, it feels like that. But that is also a bit of a claim to status saying, you know, oh, look how, look how much I've got on, look how important I am, look how wanted I am. And so I think it is worth asking ourselves, you know, which of this busyness is necessary, which is a claim to, you know, having some sort of status from that. And also sometimes you can find yourself, you know, looking at your to do list and thinking there's so much on here that I can't do any of them. I'M going to kind of run around in metaphorical circles instead. But that actually if you do decide, right, for an hour, I'm going to try and get some of these jobs out the way. Some really small, particularly really annoying life min jobs, you know, admin jobs. You can actually do loads of those in an hour if you get on with it. And it's very, very satisfying because then I can tick them all off on my app. And that's really nice.
- [13:55]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That's the best thing about a to do list is getting rid of the things on the list. So my last question to you before we go to questions and answers is if there was one takeaway sort of tip. I know it's hard when you've written a book to kind of focus on one thing, but if there's one thing you want readers to take away from this book, what would it be?
- [14:13]
Claudia Hammond
Oh, so many things. I think it is to show some compassion to yourself. And there are, you know, loads of exercises you can do for this, but particularly, say one of the chapters is on imposter syndrome or the imposter phenomenon as it's really known in academic terms. You know, we know that Michelle Obama, David Bowie, Einstein, they've all said that they suffered from imposter syndrome and we know they were really great. So we tend to think that everyone else's imposter syndrome isn't real, but our one is. And you know, that we will be found out. And so I think one of the things to take away from that is to be kind to yourself about that, even when you've made a mistake. And I think that often we are much meaner to other people and we say, I'm sorry, I mean, ourselves, we are much meaner to ourselves, we say much meaner things to ourselves than we would ever dream of saying to a friend. And so I think one test. I've done two things already. Now, one test is to say to yourself, would I say this to a friend? You know, would I say to a friend, oh, you, you failed at this. You made a mistake. No one's ever going to forget this. Everyone at work thinks you're an idiot. They're always going to think you're an idiot. We wouldn't dream of saying that. We'll say, oh, you made this mistake. People will understand. This will blow over and people will forget that and nobody will think any of the worse of you. And that is probably depending on what you did, obviously, but that is probably the truth of it. And so I think you should always ask Yourself, you know, would I say this to. Would I say this to a friend?
- [15:39]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I love that. And actually, any change we make in life is always better done with a better outcome. When there's a gentle, compassionate approach, however hard that is, I think that's really, really true.
- [15:49]
Claudia Hammond
And you can do things like, I mean, there was an interesting exercise in one study that people did just that took 20 seconds a day. And I think there must surely be 20 seconds a day free for a month. And after this time, people's levels of stress were lower, which was to simply put one hand on their heart and one hand, I can't do it because I'm holding a microphone in one hand, but one hand on their belly. And to bring, say, a mistake to mind that you're worrying about and to say, how can I be a friend to myself in this moment, literally just for 20 seconds, and to think, how can I be a friend to myself? Which is where you would say to yourself, why you think this isn't so bad and why you would comfort yourself in a way that a friend might. And I thought it was amazing. That something that is only done for 20 seconds a day can make a difference to people is amazing.
- [16:36]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I think that's also really nice to end the discussion there, actually, because when you think about overwhelm, one of the biggest things, whenever I've been overwhelmed at work or in my personal life, the thing that's helped me the most is someone being kind and gentle with me. And that instantly takes away a whole layer of stress. I think that's a really, really lovely point to end. And so thank you so much, Claudia. That's been fantastic. Thank you. So we're going to go on now to questions from you. Hopefully you've got lots of good questions. There are hands up already. I can see we have a gentleman here who's smiling, doesn't look overwhelmed at the moment. Can we get your question for clarity?
- [17:14]
Audience Member
Firstly, thank you for a great conversation. Is there a risk with this that overwhelm leads people to retreat into what Navy SEALs call a four foot square, where they just focus on what they can control and that then causes more and more problems over time because it retards progress? I'll give you an example for some context. I was talking to someone today who works for one of the air traffic control organizations, and they were saying that the US Is talking about European agencies not being able to regulate US Planes when they fly over. So literally not being able to tell them when they could land and just allowing American Airlines Flight 767 to just drop into Heathrow. And that's pretty stressful. And they were saying in response, from the top down, everyone was saying, we have no clue what to do, so we'll just focus on our tiny little bit and hope it goes away. And actually what it's doing is leaving everyone paralyzed because no one can make a decision. So the question was, is there a real risk that people retreat and then we don't move forward?
- [18:26]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah. I mean, I think what you'd hope with that situation is that somebody is looking at what could happen about these planes and how that could work, and that whoever does have a say over that is looking at that one would want to hope. I think that it's not a question of ignoring the things you can't control. And I think it's not a question of. I think it's not a question of retreating. I think it can be a question of trying to accept the uncertainty, in fact. So if I don't know enough about air traffic controls, but if you take something like, say, climate change and climate anxiety, then some people do feel very anxious about that and there is, you know, an existential threat there. And so you could retreat and decide, I'm never going to look at anything about climate change again. And if everyone in the world does that, that's not going to be the way to tackle the problem, or people can. What lots of people are doing is joining, say there's local climate groups all around the country that are trying to do things in their areas. And so some people are taking control by joining in a small way, something they can do locally. And so I think it's a question of not retreating, but having a level of acceptance, but also accepting that there's uncertainty and working out what you can do about it, if you can do something about it. And that might be local rather than a global level, if you're not someone who's got the power to do that. And I think that can help ease some of the feelings of helplessness, because we don't like feeling helpless and feeling not in control.
- [19:56]
Dr. Radha Modgill
That's a really interesting question. I suppose the corporate version of burnout or denial, personally, isn't it where everyone just sticks their head in the sand and there aren't the right processor protocols and so they either go into denial or eventually burnout and teams fall apart and there's lots of dysfunction. So pretty a lot about team leadership as well.
- [20:14]
Mia Sorrenti
Thank you.
- [20:15]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Any other questions from the audience? Yes, we've just got a gentleman at the back. Give Us one second.
- [20:22]
Audience Member
To what extent do you think technology is really to blame for this? Because if you think about, I think you mentioned notifications as an example on social media, but I mean, it's way broader than that. It's just, you know, screen time on average in my peers is probably five hours a day. If you ask someone how many hours you like to spend on your phone per day, don't think anyone would be saying 5, 6. But so many of us do it. And it's just that constant sense of, like you said, having to keep up with the news. What's your view on how much of this is, I guess, to the fault technology?
- [20:58]
Dr. Radha Modgill
We've got a few phone noises going off just in time for your question there as well, which I thought was very well planned.
- [21:04]
Claudia Hammond
I think it's really interesting, the research on screen time, because it all depends on what you're doing in that screen time. So it's not, you know, I can, I'm sure, in, you know, Dickens time, that people writing out on their ledgers all day felt, you know, stressed about having too much to do about that and spending, you know, maybe too much time by candlelight, you know, leaning with those. And so I think it's easy to have a different moral panic at different times about new technology. So I don't think there's something the evidence shows, doesn't show so far, that there is something actually problematic, if you like, about the screen itself. What there is, is whether people can concentrate and whether they're getting interrupted all the time, then that is stressful because if you're constantly having to go back to what you were trying to think about, then that increases our cognitive load. And also what you might be doing is, say, watching a TV program you really enjoy, that makes you feel happy and that perhaps distracts you from some of your worries and makes you feel rested. And so. Or what you might be doing is sometimes when people will say, oh, look at everyone on the train, they've all got. They're just looking at their phones and they're all buried in their phones. But some of those people will be trying to, I don't know, say Happy birthday to their mother, or they're trying to book a GP appointment, or they're trying to catch up with some emails, they're trying to do all sorts of different things, or they're trying to book a surprise theatre trip for somebody else. There's all sorts of different things going on there. And sometimes it all gets, I think, thought of as being mindless scrolling when it's not all mindless scrolling. Sometimes this is just the method by which we use things. And I think it is interesting that, you know, in Victorian times people were worrying about teenage girls reading too many books and that parents would despair at their teenagers, you know, with their heads in novels. I think lots of parents would be delighted now if their teenagers had their heads in novels. And so. And then people started worrying about magazines and thinking that magazines would be bad. And so I think it's really important to look at exactly what it is that people are doing at different times to see which of those bits might be problematic for them. And what is true is it's much harder now to do a kind of digital detox because you've now got to have your phone for so many two factor authentication things and things like that that it is much more difficult to decide not to have your phone. What I did find, and this is anecdote, not data, but what I did find was reassuring was recently I left my phone behind in a car in Yorkshire and for about three days I didn't have my phone until I got it back again. And the first day I was constantly. I could feel my hand twitching going for it, going, oh, I'll just check that, I'll just check that. After like a day and a half I stopped twitching anymore. I. Humans are so adaptable that you kind of adapt back to. It's annoying. I mean, it then became annoying not having it because I needed it for things, but that first day I just sort of thought, oh my God, I'm so reliant on this. But that it goes away and we adapt again. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with ebglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking ebglis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.
- [24:20]
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- [24:54]
Claudia Hammond
Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit eglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-Lily RM or 1-800-545-5979. AI is incredible. It can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem pirate style, but it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts, it knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught because Slackbot isn't just another AI, it's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more.
- [25:36]
Dr. Radha Modgill
So I can relate because I dropped my phone in a sink, would you believe, and I was really panicking like you say, for about 12 hours, 16 hours, and then the next morning I woke up and about lunchtime the next day, my SIM card had dried out. But I didn't want to put it back in my phone because I actually quite liked it. The fact that no one could contact me because it was quite peaceful and I was the one who was proactively contacting them. And then I put back in and I was like, oh, actually I'm not sure I like this. So you're right, we are quite adaptable. And I suppose it's about how we're using technology. I mean, when I take a train rather than drive, I'm actually really grateful because I can get on with doing my food shopping online or doing all these boring tasks, which actually I'd have to spend some of my free time doing if I was at home. So I guess it's about kind of the how and and analyzing it for yourself specifically rather than a broad template.
- [26:25]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, I think it is. There isn't one rule that's going to work for everybody. I mean, you could say in a way it's a shame you might have perhaps you used to would have stare out of the window and that might have been good for you and restful too. Except that at least you've got otherwise that shopping has got to be done at some point and otherwise you've got to do it at some other time. But yeah, I think it's a question of us looking at what we're doing ourselves, whether we need to be doing it, whether we want to be doing it, whether we want to be doing it all online or not. I mean, I quite like in meetings, not taking a laptop to a meeting but and just writing things in my trusty notebook. I quite like doing that and I know that there is, you know, people used to laugh at my notebook but now there's this whole, you know, analog thing going on. Some people like my notebooks but sometimes it's quite nice to decide when you're going to use them and when you're not.
- [27:11]
Dr. Radha Modgill
I think there is a bit of a kickback, actually. I think there is a bit of kickback against. Because we are getting too overwhelmed and stressed and the speed of lockdown. Life is so busy and there's so much to do and everyone expects an immediate response. I think there is a bit of a kickback to some of these things, isn't there? We're actually directing them ourselves as individuals or groups or collectives or demographics within society, which I think is really interesting in itself.
- [27:34]
Claudia Hammond
And also I think that is a thing that happens when technology might bring us a problem and then there's often some new technology which solves that problem next, if you see what I mean. And so some of these things we adapt and solve. I think it's going to be really interesting to see what does happen with social media as it becomes more and more disparate and more and more different platforms. Is it going to become less all encompassing because of that? Who knows?
- [27:59]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Brilliant. Any other questions? We've got one just at the front here. Thank you.
- [28:04]
Mia Sorrenti
Hello.
- [28:05]
Claudia Hammond
Can I ask if you have any advice for when you are in that acute phase of feeling like everything is just too much. So a typical example might be how I felt just in the week before Christmas, trying to do Christmas shopping, ordering the food, preparing for my son's birthday, also meeting work requirements which were getting busy, knowing I'd need to pack, etc, etc, and it becomes so much that you almost feel paralyzed and you don't know where to begin. And I wondered if you could suggest ways where you can break that cycle and take back control. Yes. So I think what you need to do there is now often as you say you want to take back control, but some of those things are kind of not in your control of when you have to do them. I think one of the things that definitely does help even when you're up against deadlines, is taking breaks. And there was a. And they can be really Short, they can be micro breaks of one minute or two minute, where you basically do all the things you were told not to do at school, like doodling and staring out the window and things like that. But there was research from Germany which found that when people are up against deadlines, they often postpone their break. They think, oh, I'll make a cup of tea when I've finished this and it'll be my reward for the task instead of doing it while they're still doing the task. So it's partly being nice to yourself and doing nice things while you're trying to do the task, rather than waiting for the end and thinking, well, I'd rather than get this piece of work done, I will get it done, but I'm just going to go and make that cup of tea and bring it back to my desk to make it a little bit easier. Then there is looking to see, do you have to do all those things? And you may have to do all those things in the run up to Christmas. It's reminding. I think one thing that's really important is reminding yourself, wondering how you did this last time, you know, how you coped last time, and reminding yourself that it won't. This hopefully doesn't last forever, this is not chronic stress. And that last time you did cope with this and can cope with these things and are very kind of competent at coping with these things. One thing you can do is to say things out, out loud in the third person and evidence shows that this works. So if your name is Sarah, it may or may not be exciting, but if your name is Sarah is to say Sarah is feeling she's got too much to do and that there's too much on. And there is evidence that saying what you're feeling in the third person can help. And also working out exactly what it is you're feeling will often often just use the words I'm feeling really stressed, but what are you actually feeling? Describing that can be helpful. There's all sorts of lists online of loads and loads of adjectives to think of, but that might be that you're feeling harried and worried that you won't do this well enough and that Christmas isn't going to be perfect. But, you know, could, if you're responsible for cooking a Christmas meal, could it be a slightly more simple Christmas meal? Is anyone going to notice that there are, you know, three types of vegetables instead of four types of vegetables, etc. And so I think all of those different things and then if you find yourself, I'M almost paralyzed by the worry of trying to do it. There's some really interesting research from Holland by researcher called A.D. kirchhoff, and he found that it was really effective in studies if he got people to put aside time to worry. Now, I know you might be thinking, but there's no spare time. How can I possibly worry for 10 minutes? But it then saves you worrying all the rest of the day. So you decide that every time you start worrying about all these things I've got to do, you just decide, this is for my worry time, which is at 5 o'. Clock. But you have to do your worry time. It's really boring. You have to sit at the table and worry about things and you can write them all down if you want to. You've got to actually do it. But he found it was really effective, and he actually found it was really effective with people who were ruminating in a really serious way. I mean, he started his work with people who had very, very severe depression and then found these techniques might be more useful, might be useful for other people as well, and found that that can make a real difference. So you could deliberately decide to have the worry time time as well, as well as trying this psychological distancing where you talk about yourself in the third person. So there's all sorts of different things.
- [32:02]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Great tips. Thank you. I was gonna say I tried that once, but then I got. So by the time I got to 5 o', clock, I was like, I can't be bothered to worry. I'm gonna leave it now.
- [32:11]
Claudia Hammond
Can't be bothered.
- [32:12]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Which is interesting. Thank you. Any other questions? We've got time for maybe one more question. Or maybe we can have, I don't know, too many now. Should we try the lady just in the striped top, Please. Thank you. Thanks.
- [32:25]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah, that was really interesting.
- [32:26]
Dr. Radha Modgill
My question's a little bit more on the flip side of it.
- [32:29]
Mia Sorrenti
So on that chronic stress and sort of burnout side of things, I'm just.
- [32:34]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Curious, I guess, especially in a city like London, it happens a lot and.
- [32:37]
Claudia Hammond
I'm sure a lot of people in.
- [32:38]
Dr. Radha Modgill
This room have experienced that.
- [32:39]
Mia Sorrenti
And I'm curious any advice that you might have on healing from that burnout.
- [32:44]
Dr. Radha Modgill
So looking at reducing that anxiety and.
- [32:46]
Mia Sorrenti
Coming out of that once. Once you have got to that stage. Yeah. Any tips or advice you have on that?
- [32:51]
Claudia Hammond
Yeah. So this is about burnout and coming out of that stage again and healing afterwards and coming out of that. And then, I think, you know, the old. I know it's sort of a cliche now, but the old being kind to yourself about it and not trying and trying to look at the patterns, to think, well, what led. What might be leading you to burnout? To then think, how can you not repeat those patterns? What are the things that you can change and what are the things that you can let go of? Sometimes you've got to do all these things. But it's back to the perfectionism again of thinking. You know, Thomas Curran talks about the republic of good enough. What would be good enough, rather than doing everything perfectly, because we can't do everything perfectly anyway. What will be good enough and what will be okay? And what are the things that might give you joy and make you really feel good? And is there something new, perhaps, that you want to do that you haven't tried before that might make you feel good without feeling overwhelmed by it, because you don't want to then go down the sort of route of, oh, I must improve at everything, and I must take up everything new. But there could be something that might work for you in a calmer life, as well as trying to really look at what are the activities that make you feel restored? What are the things that, when you have a break, make you feel really good afterwards? And who are the people who make you feel really good about yourself rather than not so good about yourself and trying to surround yourself with those people and see those people more. As a gp, you may have more thoughts on this as well.
- [34:20]
Dr. Radha Modgill
So, again, anecdotally, I was just thinking about. Often when people get burnout, they tend to take longer to recover. They tend to be very demotivated, they tend to not be very hopeful about things and feel very flat, generally very sort of 2D and very gray. And so I've always thought that something that's quite helpful is to find things which demonstrate sort of regeneration in themselves. So by that I mean nature, children or pets, things that, when you look around and you just take a moment to sit in or be with, you can see that there is newness and there are sort of cycles going on there. Or like pets and children, they kind of. They're in the present moment and they don't think about the past or the future. So things that give you energy, things that actually. Or music or art or things that naturally situation seem to, I suppose, imbue kind of that regenerative energy. I think is also quite helpful when it comes to burnout. Because I think a lot of the challenge with burnout is just feeling like the future is quite gray. So where is the color that you can find, like Claudia said, what are the practical things around you that are sort of free and accessible for you to kind of tap into That I think might be also just an idea.
- [35:34]
Claudia Hammond
I really like the research on oar walks as well. So this is awe, not as in the rowing type oar, but awe, awe. And there's a really interesting research again, lots of this research done in California, from California again, but good research that found that they got people to go on two ore walks a week. So these were just, they just walked in their local area, it might be their local park for 15 minutes. And they looked for something that struck awe in them. And that could be in nature. It could be a beautiful tree or it could be, you know, the skeleton of a dead leaf that's really intricate and beautiful. Or it could be something human made. It could be, you know, know how did they make that amazing bridge and make it meet in the middle without falling down? I never understand that. It could be something like that. It could be an amazing building. And they got people to do this and they found that after eight weeks of doing these walks, compared with people who just went on the walk. So they were still outside in nature, they were still looking around. But the people who looked for awe, they had more, their well being was higher and they have more pro social, nice, generous feelings about other people as well. But they found something that they weren't expecting by accident, which was that they got people to take selfies of themselves in the area, in the park say to prove they went on the walk. Because for the study they need to know that people actually did the walks. So they got people to take selfies of themselves and they found in the group who did the all walks over time in the study, they started making themselves smaller in the selfie and making the landscape around them bigger. Almost as if they were coming kind of being absorbed and getting a new perspective on things and a perspective where, you know, the park is, you know, full of birds and beetles and all sorts of things that don't care about our problems that we've got. And it's not that our problems aren't important, it's just that we can get a perspective by looking at that bigger world as well. And you know, an extreme version of that is when astronauts go to the space station. I've interviewed a few astronauts over the years. They often talk about something called the overview of effect, which is that they, they use all their spare time, which isn't much staring out of the window back at the earth because it looks so amazing and they get a real perspective on the earth and they often feel very protective over it. When they get back, lots become environmental campaigners and that they can step back and we can do that in our own way by using things that strike awe in us.
- [37:48]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Fantastic. Well, listen, I'm so sorry we've come to the end of our time. I thought I could squeeze in one more question but we're not to able able to tonight. I'd like to say a massive thank you to Claudia for joining us today and sharing lots of tips and advice. It's been really helpful and a big thank you to all of you for coming here tonight for your brilliant questions, your input. Just before we go, I'd like to see a show of hands so everyone who feels less overwhelmed please raise their hand in the air.
- [38:12]
Claudia Hammond
No pressure there. That's good to see.
- [38:16]
Dr. Radha Modgill
Thank you all so much for coming. Just to say before we ends, Claudia will be signing copies of her book Overwhelmed in the foyer, so please wait around for that. And also I'd like to say a big thank you to Intelligence Squared for organizing this event and to the Kiln Theatre for hosting us. But yes, thank you all so much. Have a safe journey home and thank you for coming tonight.
- [38:43]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a member@intelligentsquared.com membership and to join us at future live events head over to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us. Sam.