Why it's important to talk about death

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Okay, so welcome to two old psychologists
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talking about stuff. This episode is slightly different in
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that it's being brought to you in conjunction with podcastthon.org
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now podcasthon is in its third iteration in 2025,
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and it's a movement that's all about convincing as many podcast
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hosts as to dedicate one episode of their show to a charity
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of their choice and then to release those episodes simultaneously in
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a coordinated effort. This time it's mid March 2025.
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So the idea is to create a huge sort of international wave of
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inspiring audio content that is also about raising awareness
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for a large number of charities worldwide. It's not, it should be said,
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a kind of donation drive. It is really about raising awareness.
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And should you wish to donate to our chosen charity, there'll be a
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link in the show notes for you to do that. I've asked Ray because
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I think we've already established Ray's a much nicer guy than me,
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much more likely to do charitable work. So I asked Ray to pick our
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charity for today. So do you want to say a bit about the chosen charity,
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Ray? Yeah, absolutely. Obviously there are many great
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charities either of us could have named, but I've chosen a
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UK based charity called Winston's Wish.
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It's a childhood bereavement charity that was
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founded by a clinical psychologist, actually, who worked in palliative
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care and end of life care and who noticed that
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very often one of the. One of the most difficult consequences
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of the death of any person really was the impact on
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children, and particularly children who didn't, for whatever
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reason, receive the kind of family or broader support
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in their grief that they should have and so set up a sort of
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an innovative charity about 25 years ago now
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that still rolls forward and that is Winston's Wish. Okay,
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thank you, Ray. So we're going to come back to Winston's Wish and we're going
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to come back to the broader topic of grief in a moment. And as is
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customary, though, I want to start out by just catching up with you and finding
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out what you've been up to. And what have you noticed in the time since
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we last spoke? Well, what I've noticed just in the last couple of hours
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is my legs are really aching for an unusual reason which
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I could either just hang there as some mystery or I could explain.
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Which would you prefer? Well, I do like the teasing option
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and I feel like I can't contain my curiosity for
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another hour or so. So spill the tea. What's going on this afternoon?
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I was lucky enough to attend an online training event
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where I was learning about the application of the kind of
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psychology that you and I are both involved in, Mitch, this acceptance and commitment therapy,
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but particularly as applied to sport.
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And two brilliant sports psychologists called Dr.
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Alison Maitland and Jenna Ashford were presenting this
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workshop, couple of hours online. Great. They wanted to
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sort of demonstrate to us one of the ways that they show athletes
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how they can get more used to the idea that
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feeling uncomfortable with something is sometimes something
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we have to be able to make room for in order to do something that
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matters to us. And they wanted to demonstrate it to us. So they had us
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doing wall squats. I don't know if you know what a wall squat
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is. It's where you have your back to a wall, then you kind of
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like sit down so your knees are at right angles, and you just try and
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hold it there for uncomfortably long period of time,
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whilst in this case, doing the psychological piece of work of either resenting
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and hating and kind of like wishing the feelings went away,
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and then alternately being willing to have them saying, yep, I know you're
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here. Pain and trembling in my case, and I'm
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willing to have you if that's what it takes. So, you know, it's a principle
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of psychology we're both very familiar with. I'd never really experienced
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it in that way. As a psychological experience,
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very valuable. But given it's probably about 40
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years since I used to do that exercise regularly, it also really
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hurts my legs now. Well, you are an old psychologist,
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so it's fitting you didn't film this, did you, by any chance?
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Tragically not, actually. The workshop
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was filmed and I think I was on camera at the time. But that's highly
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secure. That's only in our select patrons only
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channel. I noticed that you looked at me when you said, I don't know if
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you know what a wall squat is, Rich. You had a look on your face
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that said, you don't know what a wall Scott is, Rich.
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That's at least what I interpreted from the look on your face just then.
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And you'd be right. I had no idea what a wall squat was.
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So literally like sitting in a kind of seated position.
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It's not an oxymoron. Standing in a seated position against the wall.
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Yeah. So the idea is like, your hips are at 90 degrees, so your back
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is flat against the wall, hips come out 90 degrees, knees 90
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degrees. There's variations on it, but for certain sports,
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skiers do this a lot. But I'm not a skier. In my youth, I Played
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a lot of volleyball and we used to do that exercise a lot. Sounds really
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painful. After a while, it really is. Okay, well, wall squats.
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So there's a new thing. Every day's a school day. There we go. I've learned
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a new thing. I won't be trying it later. Tragically,
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today's school day is pe. Yeah, I've got a headache, sir. And what
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about you? What have you been noticing? Well, in a kind of antidote
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to what seems to be the sort of parlour state
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of the world, you know, reference to our previous episode, I've been trying
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to. I guess therapists might call it attention training or
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positive data logging. Like trying to deliberately skew my
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attention in a more, I don't want to say happier
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direction, but trying to look for more signs of positivity
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as an antidote to the overall gloom that I seem to
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be generally feeling at the state of the world at the moment. So one of
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the things I noted or tried to pay more attention to was
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random acts of kindness. So I would like to mention on
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the podcast, deliberately, two random acts of kindness.
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So one of them you were party to. Some friends of ours, and I
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know that they are also listeners of the show Lydia and Tom.
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They made us. I'm not entirely sure what it was, right.
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But it was a. It was. It was a. It could either be a medallion
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or perhaps Christmas tree ornament, but,
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like, it was kind of a brass plaque of. Of our podcast logo
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as a consequence of. Of them not putting the right
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stamp on. I didn't get my. It was meant to be a Christmas present.
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Right. But I didn't get it till relatively recently. Mine arrived in the post.
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I'd kind of forgo that. I'd already seen your one when we
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met previously, and so that was just a lovely surprise. I thought what a nice
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kind thing that someone could. I mean, it's like a thing of beauty,
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this thing. Maybe I'm going to find a way of making it the
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logo for today's episode. I'm going to do that so people can see that.
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That would be fantastic. Yeah. For people who can't visualise it, it's kind of like
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a stencil, like made of a kind of copper or a
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brass. Because when I brought it home, the reaction at my house was
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fantastic. You could use that on the top of a cappuccino to, like dust
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it with cocoa powder and then people will be drinking your
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and my faces. I was thinking you could use it as a graffiti tag
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as well. But, yeah, so that was just a really nice,
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kind thing to do. Right. And that was a lovely thing. So that was one.
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Then the other one, I'm gonna shout out to our friend Mark Oliver, who,
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like, I don't really know Mark. I would say he's kind of like a professional
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friend. That. That makes it sound like I pay him to be a friend,
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and that's not the case. What I mean is he's someone that.
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He's in the same field of work as us. I would meet him at conferences
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and things, and so I've got to know him over the years. We live in
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different parts of the country, wouldn't really hang out in between times. And he listened
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to a few bits of training that I've done. I think he listened to a
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few of these podcasts. And the last time I met him, he just brought me
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a book. Brought me a book out of nowhere. This guy that he's an
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acquaintance. What a kind thing to do. It was a book all
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about consciousness, and he knew that I would enjoy that.
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And I thought, what a lovely thing to do. And so in this
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world where it feels like there's a lot of reason to
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be sad and downbeat about the state of things,
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there are these little islands of kindness, and I've wanted
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to try and deliberately notice those things, and I
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thought it would be nice to just mention those here tonight. Do you think there's
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a reason, going back to our kind of mission statement for the
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podcast, that looking at what some psychological
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ideas behind common experiences are,
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why do you think we are so much more likely to notice the bad stuff
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going on than the good stuff? I mean, I don't know.
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And I think that some people perhaps think,
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when you're a psychologist, you just sort of know the answer to everything. And spoiler,
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that isn't the case. When people ask me stuff like that, though, I think where
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my mind tends to go to is just sort of evolution in
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the sense that we are somewhat predisposed
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to look out for threat. And there's a good reason for
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that, because if, you know, think if you were back in the hunter gatherer days,
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if you saw, you know, I don't know, a yellow patch in the midst
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of a bush, and you thought, oh, look, there's a load of flowers, and you
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ran towards it. Those people probably didn't live as long as
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the people who thought that might be a tiger. I'm going to run the other
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way. And so I think sort of a
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predisposition to look out for threat and Generally speaking,
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stop me from getting too technical. Bad stuff is probably
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built into us. Like we are the descendants of
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the more cautious, anxious, avoidant people
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who paid more attention to threat in their environment. I guess that's the way I
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would think about it. Right. So kind of failing to spot a
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threat has much worse consequences than failing to
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spot a nice thing. Okay, that would make sense.
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There's another, slightly more detailed answer which isn't mine. This is
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inspired by. So this is a book called Determined by a guy
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called Robert Sapolsky, who's one of my heroes.
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He talked about the idea that with evolution
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by natural selection, there's no sort of plan or design as such.
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And if you were natural selection
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and you were planning how to make an organism
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pursue survival goals such as, you know, eating food
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and reproducing, like how would you design their
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brains? And he came up with these sort of three things. So firstly,
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you'd have to make the organism experience pleasurable
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sensations upon completion of the task. So, you know,
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you, you drink a coffee, you feel good, you eat a
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delicious meal, you feel good. Secondly, you'd have to make that
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pleasurable sensation quite short lived in order that rather
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than sort of basking in the joy of that forever,
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you know, this is a wonderful meal, I'm never going to eat again. You would
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have to make the sensation short lived so that the organism would go and seek
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that experience again and again and again. And thirdly,
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the organism's brain should focus on the fact
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that pleasure will accompany the reaching of a goal rather
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than on the fact that the pleasure will dissipate shortly thereafter.
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Does that make sense? So you wouldn't want an organism that goes,
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no, I'm not going to eat because the pleasure is really short lived.
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You want an organism that's going to go, oh, I'm going to eat because it
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tastes amazing and I feel really great. Focusing on the pleasure is more
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likely to encourage the organism to pursue the goal.
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Whereas focusing on the fact that it dissipates
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would probably encourage the organism just to question why am I putting so much effort
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into something that's so short lived? So the
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idea that you can take from that is that human beings, like any
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other organism, we're creatures that are sort of prone to striving
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for goals. But we're also creatures for whom pleasure's quite fleeting.
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And so we're kind of prone to dissatisfaction
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almost. So we then pursue the
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pleasurable things like food and sex that are kind of
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required for our survival, reproduction and the proliferation of our
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genes that was probably more of an answer than you were expecting.
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Yes, and that's a really interesting answer,
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particularly about the focus upon the acquiring
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of it and the sort of. It's not exactly what was being said, but almost
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as if like programmed forgetting of the fact of how short
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lived some of it was going to be. Because yes,
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certainly I can think of lots of examples of things that you kind of really
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crave and actually, yeah, quite soon the pleasure of it dissipates of
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that particular food that you were really looking forward to or that sort of like
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slightly splurgy meal and you already know
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in advance. Well, actually you're only going to really have enjoyed it
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briefly and you might feel a bit bloated or,
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you know, not happy with yourself or whatever afterwards. And you kind of know that,
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but you don't think about that while you're anticipating and enjoying the meal. That's a
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really interesting perspective. The research kind of bears
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out this, the notion that natural selection, I'm talking
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about natural selection as if it's got a motive. It hasn't really, but I'm
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sort of, you know, retro engineering this idea, but that
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natural selection doesn't want us to be happy, it wants us to be productive.
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And the way to make us productive is to be kind of dissatisfied
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and to make the anticipation of pleasure like a strong.
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It's a strong drive, but the pleasure itself has got to be quite brief.
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And you can see this in scientific studies in the sense of
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dopamine receptors light up earlier and earlier along the path
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in anticipation of reward rather than at the point of the
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reward. So I mean, an obvious example of this is training a dog.
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If I go to the fridge and I start crackling
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the container of little cocktail sausages, the dog will
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get super excited. He's not had the sausage, right.
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He's excited at the anticipation of the sausage.
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So it's that notion of the reward getting earlier and earlier.
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But I think we sort of, to go back to your question, we spend a
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lot of time being dissatisfied so that we
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pursue those rewards, the things that are key to our survival.
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Say that weren't true, or rather say that the argument is
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true, but we could somewhere turn that off and that humans were no
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longer like that. I wonder what difference we'd see in human behaviour.
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Because of course an argument exists that a lot of the setting conditions for
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evolution by natural selection at the sort of live,
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die, reproduce, don't reproduce level, some of that selection pressure
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is, if not off, is somewhat different in modern humans
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because of the way we've societally re engineered our environmental niche,
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that actual sort of micro engineering of
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seek more fat, seek more sugar, seek more mating
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opportunities arguably isn't as essential
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for survival as it once was and sometimes is actually counter
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to our survival. There's a very, very good book on adopting healthier
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lifestyles called Healthy Habits Suck
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by Dana Lee Bagley. And in that she makes the argument,
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I think she's drawn it from other people, that most of the things which we
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now recognise probably are healthier for us. Cutting down
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fat intake, cutting down sugar intake,
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exercising more things that are for most people in the modern world
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probably pro healthy would actually be survival terms catastrophic
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for our ancestors to turn down sources of nutrition,
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of vitamins and minerals, of laying down fat against the winter
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or against famine, and particularly the concept of burning
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off energy, not in the pursuit of running
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away from a tiger or running towards food. We can't
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suicidal to waste energy by just running
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for the sake of running. So, you know, we have this, like long history
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of those things being a terrible idea and now because
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of this very unusual niche we've constructed for ourselves, suddenly they're the things that
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can keep you healthy and let you live longer. Yet somehow
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are we surprised that we can't just click our fingers and adopt
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these healthy habits because they make sense now. That's really interesting.
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What a cool perspective. I guess the thing it makes me
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think of as well is that we sort of live in an age where those
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things are abundant, go back 10,000 years or so.
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You had to work really hard to find those things. And now they're everywhere.
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I'm getting the image, you know, Wally, the film,
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there's that idea. All the humans have
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left the polluted earth and they're off in this big spaceship somewhere,
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all, you know, enormous and almost unable
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to walk because they've just got everything they need right there.
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Yeah. Like the 20th century marked a shift in it and it was the first
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time more people died from having too much than too little.
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Yeah. And kind of brings us to our topic for
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today, which is mortality, grief and working
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around the end of life. Obviously this has a really clear link
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to Winston's wish. Because this is your area of expertise,
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I'm going to defer to you largely with regard to this episode.
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Before we dive into this topic of grief and mortality.
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Anything you feel like we need to say. Yeah,
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absolutely. Lot of controversy these days, but the idea of
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things like trigger warnings, you know, and whether saying,
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look, we're about to discuss themes of, you know, what we see at the beginning
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of TV programmes and films, whether that actually helps
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people deal with stuff and has any impact on their
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ability to manage their internal state around it. I think
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when we talk about something like this, it's not something I don't trigger one.
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It's about content and it's kind of about informed consent,
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really. We're talking about what is famously
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one of the things that unites us all, our mortality.
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And often the hardest bit isn't our own mortality, it's the mortality of
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others that we love, which we'll come back to. I absolutely don't know who's listening
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to this, and I don't know what they've been through recently. And it might be
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that either way back or more recently, they have
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lost somebody that they love, are they anticipating losing
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somebody that they love, or they have a significant challenge to their
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own health. And that might mean either this
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isn't really a thing they want to listen to right now,
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in which case, yeah, you know, other episodes are available,
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or it might be exactly the episode they want to listen to,
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knowing that in talking about this stuff and thinking about
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this stuff, strong feeling may show up and
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maybe strong feelings showing up, tears showing up,
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isn't actually a disaster when we're turning
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towards something that is important enough to create those
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feelings. I suppose one of the first things then to ask about this
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is why do you think it is that we find it so hard
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to talk about? And I would want to emphasise
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cultural differences right away. I mean, you know, we live
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very close to Ireland, where I think they just do death
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a lot better. It's. It's much more of a kind of open
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thing, this. It feels like there's more of a celebration around
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the passing of someone. It's more of a community event.
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It feels like there's. There's less freedom,
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less willingness to talk, talk openly about death, mortality,
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grief, all of those things in. In a UK setting.
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But given that's where we are, why do you think we find it so
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hard? Well, I think what you've just acknowledged is one of
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those things in this setting. You know, it's argued in English
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type settings, contemporary USA kind of settings.
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One of the things we've seen in the last century,
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maybe a bit longer than that, is the removal or
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the separation of death from everyday life, that the end
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of life more often takes place in somebody like a hospital or in a
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care home, rather than in earlier times,
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where perhaps, you know, again, we're talking about sort of white, Western European
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kind of culture, people less Living in extended
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families where there are older members of the family who are,
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you know, valued members of the family and get ill and are looked after and
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die probably in the house. So people talk about sometimes
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the sanitization of death or the medicalization of
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death is certainly one of the changes that has happened.
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And one of the consequences of that, one of the serious consequences of that is
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that it becomes a more mysterious process and
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therefore a thing that people more fear from a distance.
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People have less idea of what dying looks like.
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So an excellent book by a
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palliative care doctor called Dr.
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Catherine Mannix is called with the End In Mind.
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And it's simply an exploration of what
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death, well handled and well looked after and well supported,
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will tend to look like. And she wrote that in order to sort of
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demystify something that probably a while back wouldn't have been a mystery,
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but because we see less of it and the care is
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being handed over to specialists more often,
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it's helpful for people to have the idea of what that process
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can look like. Do you know, I'd never really thought about that.
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That is interesting to me, the idea that the sort
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of sociological context around death has changed
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due to the sort of medicalization of it.
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And again, I'm just going to contrast with something I know about, which is Ireland,
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and the idea of sort of having the death, the deceased person
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in the house, I think, feels odd to a lot of English people.
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I don't know, almost like you'd be scared of it somehow, or there's
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something bad is going to happen, like there's some kind of disease or something.
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Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it feels like it's one of those things.
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It's sort of become taboo in
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a way that other cultures don't struggle with. And perhaps
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that is because it's hidden from us. Yeah, absolutely.
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And again, sort of going back to maybe Victorian times and
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before, very often that equivalent thing of the
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body being laid out in the home and people visiting at the home and maybe
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awake being in the home was more common because the other thing
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that goes with it is the advancement of medicine.
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So the fact that people by and large live a lot longer these days,
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that lots of conditions that couldn't be cured
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before can now be cured, has seen kind of
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like a shift. So most, you know, the argument is that go back a couple
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hundred years, virtually all medicine was palliative care. I should explain what
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I mean by palliative care. It's the term we use now for
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care. And within that palliative medicine,
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where the person has a condition from which they will die.
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And the treatment is not being aimed at the disease.
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It is not. The treatment is no longer aimed at attempting to
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rid the person of the disease or hold it off indefinitely, because that can't be
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done anymore. Rather, the treatment is aimed around comfort,
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symptom management, retention of choice, dignity and
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those kind of things. And the argument goes, actually, if you go back a couple
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of. A couple of hundred years, actually, most diseases were like that.
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The chances of a medical treatment making the difference between whether
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the person lived or died other than in sort of like acute injuries and infections
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and things like that, was very low. One of
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the shifts we've seen is with conditions like. I guess one of the
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ones I've worked most with is cancer, cancer being more
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treatable, which is fantastic news. I mean, it is brilliant
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news. One of the things that maybe is crept alongside
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that is the idea that death is a failure
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of medicine, which is a new idea. The idea that
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medicine should be able to cure, should be able to allow people to live,
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and therefore, if we get to the point where it hasn't happened,
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then somebody has failed. That's not
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really realistic view of how human bodies are given the absolute inevitability of
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mortality. But there is therefore that kind of cultural vibe
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that death is also to be fought to the very last threshold
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and then sort of pushed aside.
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And that's new. There's something in there for me that I find
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interesting about, like, I think if you ask the average person,
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do you think we should create a situation whereby humans
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are immortal? Most people would go, oh, you know that there's something sort
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of weird and horrific about that. But if you ask people, you know,
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do you think we should continue to try and work to find a cure for
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cancer? People go, yep. Do you think we should try and find
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a cure for heart disease? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do you
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know what I mean? Like, incrementally, it feels like exactly what you're
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saying we should. It's almost like a moral imperative.
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We ought to try and cure these things. But nobody
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would go for immortality, or some people would. But I
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think most people would find the idea a bit sort of distasteful. If you kind
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of engineering things, you can imagine things like that, you know, I guess one
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could have a compromise. That said, some of the absolute definite
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kind of like suffering that comes with those diseases, you know,
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even if we accept a level of mortality that you have
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your either, you know, your three score year a 10, or call it 85,
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call it 100, maybe one day, it's 120. Who knows if we
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could get through that time and have
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as much of that time as possible relatively healthy until we
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kind of have a quite rapid but well managed
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decline and death compared to what can sometimes
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happen with these illnesses that causes more prolonged suffering and more
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prolonged difficulty. I think there's a lot to be said for being on top of
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as many diseases as possible, even if that doesn't
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mean immortality. What do you think it
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is that people are resisting
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when they resist the idea of death? I wonder what. I mean, you must have
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a lot of experience of people talking to you about their fears.
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Just from a personal point of view. I think I've probably
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mentioned before I don't have a religious faith and I think
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some people look at that, they look at atheism for example, and they see
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like I want no part of that kind of black hole of
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despair. But I don't see that. I kind of think, well,
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because I don't believe in an afterlife. I wasn't alive for,
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I don't know, 13 billion years. Didn't bother me.
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I feel like it probably won't bother me after I've gone
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because I won't be there to be bothered. I'm more worried about old
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age, if I'm honest, than death. But what do you think
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people are scared of? What are they resisting about death?
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I mean, inevitably it's a range of things. And one big caveat
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here is the difference between you and I sitting here with,
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you know, our health being however it is, but you know, can't speak
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for you, Richie, at this moment. And I am, I am actually touching wood as
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we speak. I am not aware that I have any
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life limiting condition in me at this moment.
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I can think about the idea of dying and I'm sort of looking
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at it from over here as this kind of not entirely
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abstract but like hopefully somewhat distant event.
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I think it is sometimes different when people know what
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it is they are likely to die of and some broad
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idea of it being sooner rather than later. I think that does change perception
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somewhat. But the things that people talk about most,
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for some people it is what comes next.
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So as you were saying, for some people the idea that there might be nothing
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next is troubling, unlike for you or
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they may have a significant faith and have concerns
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that what happens after their death might not be what they
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want. So, you know, going to hell or whatever. And I have
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met people who that has been there, source of terror
461
00:28:14,432 --> 00:28:17,696
actually later in their life. I Think
462
00:28:17,768 --> 00:28:21,424
that's actually in the kind of settings I've worked
463
00:28:21,552 --> 00:28:25,152
less common for some people the fear is
464
00:28:25,176 --> 00:28:28,608
what is it going to be like to die? You know, what's actually those
465
00:28:28,664 --> 00:28:32,912
moments or those hours going to be like. I think for
466
00:28:33,096 --> 00:28:36,752
more people it's what's the run up to it. Like you know,
467
00:28:36,776 --> 00:28:40,096
sort of the deterioration of losing function,
468
00:28:40,208 --> 00:28:44,290
of experiencing whatever symptoms you're experiencing that they fear
469
00:28:44,370 --> 00:28:47,506
and the knowledge that that's kind of a one way trip,
470
00:28:47,698 --> 00:28:50,770
you know, people can have, be significantly ill and have hope for
471
00:28:50,810 --> 00:28:54,802
you're going to come at the other side of it. But knowing you're not can
472
00:28:54,826 --> 00:28:58,386
change that a little bit. But I've got to say the commonest
473
00:28:58,418 --> 00:29:01,778
one that I've heard and looking at the research and talking to other people,
474
00:29:01,834 --> 00:29:05,442
I think this is probably representative. Certainly in
475
00:29:05,466 --> 00:29:09,474
the places I've worked. People's biggest fear about dying is what the impact
476
00:29:09,562 --> 00:29:13,248
is going to be on the people they love. Both the
477
00:29:13,304 --> 00:29:16,864
impact as they get iller, the impact of their dying and the
478
00:29:16,872 --> 00:29:20,816
impact of the grief that comes afterwards. That's the biggest
479
00:29:20,848 --> 00:29:23,216
source of pain and guilt.
480
00:29:23,408 --> 00:29:26,864
Guilt alongside fear and sadness, actually guilt, one of the strongest
481
00:29:26,912 --> 00:29:30,032
emotional experiences that people facing their own death
482
00:29:30,216 --> 00:29:33,100
certainly end up talking to people like me about.
483
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:37,444
Guilt in the sense of like they're leaving and they're,
484
00:29:37,552 --> 00:29:41,360
they're leaving other people. I'm leaving, I'm leaving the other person to suffer.
485
00:29:41,860 --> 00:29:44,440
This is going to be harder for them than it is for me.
486
00:29:44,820 --> 00:29:48,252
Occasionally there is that kind of like I shouldn't, you know,
487
00:29:48,276 --> 00:29:51,004
I should have looked after my health more, I shouldn't have smoked or whatever.
488
00:29:51,052 --> 00:29:54,188
Yes, sometimes there's that concrete one, but there's more often a more
489
00:29:54,244 --> 00:29:57,612
general one of I know this person who I love
490
00:29:57,636 --> 00:30:01,548
is going to suffer after I've gone and I am in some sense the cause
491
00:30:01,564 --> 00:30:05,040
of that. Even though I haven't chosen this. And that could be a really hard
492
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:08,192
thing for people to deal with. Yeah, I feel like I want to backtrack on
493
00:30:08,216 --> 00:30:12,352
what I said earlier now because you're sort of unpacking a
494
00:30:12,376 --> 00:30:15,536
number of different issues connected to death rather
495
00:30:15,568 --> 00:30:20,192
than death itself. I think what I, I don't fear death itself for
496
00:30:20,216 --> 00:30:22,960
me because I just don't think, well I'll be dead,
497
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,560
I won't know anything about it. So the idea of not being here
498
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,602
doesn't bother me. The idea of death, the journey to
499
00:30:30,626 --> 00:30:34,470
get there, particularly if it's sort of a painful and you know,
500
00:30:34,850 --> 00:30:38,170
debilitated one that, that bothers me. I do
501
00:30:38,210 --> 00:30:42,506
think about the impact upon other people who might be affected by my
502
00:30:42,578 --> 00:30:45,550
dying. In a sense, the biggest.
503
00:30:46,370 --> 00:30:49,914
The. The most kind of intense version of that
504
00:30:50,082 --> 00:30:53,658
that I have tended to come across has
505
00:30:53,714 --> 00:30:56,770
been where the person you're worried about is a child.
506
00:30:57,630 --> 00:31:00,822
So, you know, the loss of a grandparent
507
00:31:00,886 --> 00:31:04,262
can be devastating for a
508
00:31:04,286 --> 00:31:08,166
child. I guess things. Things that are, though slightly more acute
509
00:31:08,198 --> 00:31:11,670
when it's the death of a parent where their child is
510
00:31:11,710 --> 00:31:14,902
still fairly young. That's one of the things that
511
00:31:14,926 --> 00:31:19,130
can weigh most heavily on that person or the surviving
512
00:31:19,470 --> 00:31:22,968
parent, which is kind of one of the reasons why, when we were kicking around
513
00:31:23,094 --> 00:31:25,492
what will be a good charity spotlight for this event,
514
00:31:25,596 --> 00:31:29,236
that despite working for a few different charitable organisations
515
00:31:29,268 --> 00:31:32,932
or being associated with them, the one that struck me most for
516
00:31:32,956 --> 00:31:36,372
this conversation was Winston's wish. And so
517
00:31:36,396 --> 00:31:40,100
their main aim is to support grieving
518
00:31:40,180 --> 00:31:43,812
children, is that right? Absolutely. Grieving children,
519
00:31:43,916 --> 00:31:47,588
but also it can be children who are facing grief. So for children
520
00:31:47,644 --> 00:31:51,012
who are facing the loss of a parent, a lot of their
521
00:31:51,036 --> 00:31:54,660
work is in grief beyond it. It started more or less
522
00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:58,116
locally in Gloucestershire, but it's now a national
523
00:31:58,268 --> 00:32:01,716
organisation. One big thread of it is that
524
00:32:01,788 --> 00:32:06,388
it is really, really hard for people to see a child suffer
525
00:32:06,564 --> 00:32:10,372
and to see a child breaking their heart.
526
00:32:10,556 --> 00:32:14,452
Many years ago, an excellent Channel 4 documentary was
527
00:32:14,476 --> 00:32:18,260
made about Winston's wish and one of their. They have,
528
00:32:18,300 --> 00:32:21,540
like, a weekend sort of camp for bereaved kids where
529
00:32:21,660 --> 00:32:24,404
they have the opportunity to talk about the person they lost and do lots of
530
00:32:24,412 --> 00:32:27,732
activities and ask the doctor section, and then
531
00:32:27,756 --> 00:32:31,236
it's like sort of a ritual thing. Brilliant event, with everybody's
532
00:32:31,268 --> 00:32:34,756
permission, done very, very sensitively. Film crew followed
533
00:32:34,788 --> 00:32:37,860
that. But interestingly, the producer
534
00:32:38,020 --> 00:32:41,848
talking to the team who ran Winston's wish, said they
535
00:32:41,904 --> 00:32:45,256
probably wouldn't be able to use some of the footage because inevitably
536
00:32:45,288 --> 00:32:49,016
there were children who are just breaking their heart. And they said, that's actually
537
00:32:49,088 --> 00:32:52,360
probably too much to put on. It would probably be counterproductive.
538
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:55,864
You know, this wasn't a sensationalist programme. Yeah. So one of the
539
00:32:55,872 --> 00:32:59,320
difficulties is really hard to do that. And our urge,
540
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:03,400
of course, is to protect children. And this is
541
00:33:03,440 --> 00:33:06,184
where out of that urge to protect,
542
00:33:06,312 --> 00:33:09,906
sometimes inadvertently, we. We as adults, cause more difficulties.
543
00:33:10,018 --> 00:33:13,890
While it is absolutely right to be careful and thoughtful
544
00:33:14,050 --> 00:33:17,506
about how much information is shared as we, for instance,
545
00:33:17,538 --> 00:33:21,666
go through the final illness of a person, the idea of withholding
546
00:33:21,698 --> 00:33:25,090
all information when there's clearly something going on can easily be
547
00:33:25,130 --> 00:33:27,870
made out of a desire to protect the child.
548
00:33:28,490 --> 00:33:31,954
Sometimes it's also driven by how difficult and uncomfortable
549
00:33:32,002 --> 00:33:35,186
a conversation that would be to have a person's avoiding their own discomfort
550
00:33:35,218 --> 00:33:39,410
as much as protecting the child without realising it's. And in grief,
551
00:33:39,570 --> 00:33:43,410
in order to protect the child, sort of not talking about
552
00:33:43,450 --> 00:33:47,218
the loss, not talking about the person, not encouraging
553
00:33:47,314 --> 00:33:50,626
things that really bring that person and the pain that comes with that
554
00:33:50,778 --> 00:33:54,594
back. Charity like Wisdom's Wish and other charities are doing equally
555
00:33:54,642 --> 00:33:57,522
superb work in this are about redressing that balance a little,
556
00:33:57,626 --> 00:34:01,282
supporting the parents with good advice about how
557
00:34:01,306 --> 00:34:04,770
can you talk to your kids, but also providing the stuff directly to the kids.
558
00:34:04,850 --> 00:34:08,310
And one of the things, I guess, since I was more involved many years
559
00:34:08,350 --> 00:34:12,070
ago now in this online world is they have properly moderated and
560
00:34:12,110 --> 00:34:15,702
safe online groups for young people where they can
561
00:34:15,726 --> 00:34:19,670
talk about what it's like. And this is the other half of the overprotection
562
00:34:19,750 --> 00:34:22,410
equation. Kids protect adults.
563
00:34:22,990 --> 00:34:26,886
They don't say stuff that they know is going to really upset their grieving mom
564
00:34:27,038 --> 00:34:30,566
or grieving dad. So they kind of tend to hold it in.
565
00:34:30,718 --> 00:34:33,702
The only people they might possibly talk to are people their own age, but most
566
00:34:33,726 --> 00:34:37,434
of their friends their own age haven't experienced what they're experiencing. So the chance
567
00:34:37,482 --> 00:34:41,066
to have contact in a safe setting with
568
00:34:41,138 --> 00:34:44,394
other young people who've been through similar things is absolutely golden.
569
00:34:44,522 --> 00:34:48,138
And access to trained professionals who can give additional
570
00:34:48,154 --> 00:34:51,274
help where needed can make a huge difference to people. One of
571
00:34:51,282 --> 00:34:55,322
the things that would probably be a fairly central tenet
572
00:34:55,386 --> 00:34:58,618
in acceptance and commitment therapy is the idea of
573
00:34:58,754 --> 00:35:02,222
when we engage in avoidance, we are
574
00:35:02,246 --> 00:35:05,598
usually doing so because we are trying to
575
00:35:05,654 --> 00:35:09,790
get away from uncomfortable internal sensations. So uncomfortable
576
00:35:09,870 --> 00:35:13,070
thoughts, uncomfortable emotions, physical pain,
577
00:35:13,230 --> 00:35:16,638
we engage in avoidant behaviour as a means of keeping that stuff
578
00:35:16,734 --> 00:35:20,606
at arm's length. And whilst that can work really
579
00:35:20,678 --> 00:35:24,030
well in the short term, it can have some obvious
580
00:35:24,110 --> 00:35:27,598
benefits. It tends not to work well over the long
581
00:35:27,654 --> 00:35:31,300
haul. So if you kind of make it your mission to
582
00:35:31,420 --> 00:35:35,332
never feel uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, that can take
583
00:35:35,436 --> 00:35:39,300
quite a toll on you over a long time because you are constructing your life
584
00:35:39,340 --> 00:35:42,756
in such a way as just to avoid the bad stuff,
585
00:35:42,948 --> 00:35:45,840
so that usually thereby making your life quite small.
586
00:35:46,140 --> 00:35:49,044
And of course, if you make your life quite small to avoid the bad stuff,
587
00:35:49,092 --> 00:35:52,404
you tend to shut out a lot of the good stuff too. Where do
588
00:35:52,412 --> 00:35:56,548
you stand on that in relation to grief? Does that sort of basic tenet hold
589
00:35:56,604 --> 00:36:00,020
up that like avoidance can be useful in the short term,
590
00:36:00,060 --> 00:36:03,892
but if you just avoid the subject, if you avoid the pain of it over
591
00:36:03,916 --> 00:36:06,868
the long run, it's probably not going to be that helpful?
592
00:36:07,044 --> 00:36:10,916
Yeah, I think some of Those sort of classic mechanisms
593
00:36:10,948 --> 00:36:14,148
we've talked there are very relevant in grief.
594
00:36:14,244 --> 00:36:17,684
Not who griefs are alike, not true losses are alike. It's worth spelling
595
00:36:17,732 --> 00:36:20,580
out here not what we mean by some of these words, but how I am
596
00:36:20,620 --> 00:36:24,692
using some of these words. So, you know, the loss is
597
00:36:24,796 --> 00:36:29,140
the death of a person or the end of a career or the
598
00:36:29,180 --> 00:36:32,148
loss of a country if you have to flee, you know, so that's the loss
599
00:36:32,204 --> 00:36:36,212
is the event, as it were, and the removal from your
600
00:36:36,316 --> 00:36:39,040
environment of something that was important to you.
601
00:36:39,500 --> 00:36:42,852
Grief is the kind of sum total of
602
00:36:42,876 --> 00:36:46,708
our response to that emotional in our thoughts
603
00:36:46,884 --> 00:36:50,998
and in our behaviours. So inevitably
604
00:36:51,174 --> 00:36:55,078
all griefs differ. One of the things about grief though is it's probably
605
00:36:55,254 --> 00:36:58,566
the most common source of high
606
00:36:58,638 --> 00:37:02,166
level distress in humans. Most people, if they're lucky,
607
00:37:02,198 --> 00:37:05,638
aren't going to go through a period where they have sort of like repeated episodes
608
00:37:05,654 --> 00:37:09,142
of panic disorder or crushing depression,
609
00:37:09,286 --> 00:37:12,598
or go through periods where they're hearing highly disturbing voices.
610
00:37:12,694 --> 00:37:15,778
Most of us aren't going to have those things so much.
611
00:37:15,934 --> 00:37:19,322
Anybody who's old enough and is lucky enough to have love in their
612
00:37:19,346 --> 00:37:23,338
life will experience loss and because of that loss is
613
00:37:23,394 --> 00:37:26,874
highly likely to experience grief. So there's a
614
00:37:26,882 --> 00:37:30,250
famous saying that the risk of love is
615
00:37:30,290 --> 00:37:34,270
loss and the price of loss is grief.
616
00:37:34,690 --> 00:37:38,378
So absolutely, that attempted avoidance
617
00:37:38,474 --> 00:37:41,830
of unwanted emotional experience that we were just talking about
618
00:37:42,150 --> 00:37:45,710
ending up sort of shaping your behaviour and narrowing your life can go
619
00:37:45,750 --> 00:37:48,750
on. One of the things with grief though is it tends to like just break
620
00:37:48,790 --> 00:37:52,062
down the walls a lot. It tends to punch through quite a bit,
621
00:37:52,086 --> 00:37:55,326
you know, quite often there, particularly in the earlier months,
622
00:37:55,398 --> 00:37:58,782
years, there's no real way of avoiding the
623
00:37:58,806 --> 00:38:01,770
question is more often what you do when it shows up.
624
00:38:02,790 --> 00:38:06,094
And there can be that sort of escape avoidance.
625
00:38:06,142 --> 00:38:09,342
There could be attempts at distraction, there could be
626
00:38:09,366 --> 00:38:13,038
trying to dull the pain with alcohol or other behaviours and
627
00:38:13,094 --> 00:38:16,670
there can be an attempt to suppress. So one of the things
628
00:38:16,710 --> 00:38:20,206
I often hear from people in grief is a desperate
629
00:38:20,238 --> 00:38:23,774
hanging on to not allow emotion to happen as much,
630
00:38:23,862 --> 00:38:27,486
not to let it flow. And the most common sort of metaphor that naturally
631
00:38:27,518 --> 00:38:31,470
occurs to people is the dam will break. I'm kind
632
00:38:31,510 --> 00:38:35,054
of holding on and maybe the person's got responsibilities, they've got kids or
633
00:38:35,062 --> 00:38:37,934
whatever, they've got to hold it together. I've got to hold it together. But if
634
00:38:37,942 --> 00:38:41,102
I allow myself to cry and grieve, the dam will
635
00:38:41,126 --> 00:38:44,302
break and disaster will follow, which is
636
00:38:44,326 --> 00:38:48,414
an interesting metaphor. The issue with the dam breaking is the
637
00:38:48,502 --> 00:38:52,062
problem kind of is created by the creation of a dam, rather than
638
00:38:52,086 --> 00:38:55,294
being like a dam or a set of walls that try
639
00:38:55,302 --> 00:38:59,406
and hold back emotion at all costs, which one day will get overwhelmed
640
00:38:59,518 --> 00:39:03,150
catastrophically. A way I prefer to think about it and talk about it with people
641
00:39:03,190 --> 00:39:06,484
is be more like a floodplain. People are probably familiar with
642
00:39:06,492 --> 00:39:10,036
the idea that a small stream or a small river and the,
643
00:39:10,108 --> 00:39:12,580
you know, the level of the river will rise and fall over the year,
644
00:39:12,620 --> 00:39:16,340
But a couple of times a year you get more water through and
645
00:39:16,380 --> 00:39:19,876
then you get this distinctive pattern of all the fields around flooding.
646
00:39:19,908 --> 00:39:23,700
Not very deeply necessarily, but there will flood and then over
647
00:39:23,740 --> 00:39:26,960
a few weeks that will drain down and things will continue.
648
00:39:27,420 --> 00:39:30,218
And the point is, if you know that's going to happen,
649
00:39:30,324 --> 00:39:33,950
you don't attempt to stop the process. It works,
650
00:39:34,030 --> 00:39:37,598
things return. Actually, what happens is loads of nutrients get. Get washed
651
00:39:37,614 --> 00:39:41,850
down and the fields get very fertile. And it all works until
652
00:39:42,150 --> 00:39:45,822
somebody tries to dam that, build walls
653
00:39:45,886 --> 00:39:49,518
in order to be able to build a new housing estate or something. That's when
654
00:39:49,574 --> 00:39:53,262
the natural rise and fall of emotions sometimes
655
00:39:53,406 --> 00:39:56,690
can end up with really unwanted consequences.
656
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:01,232
So my argument would be try to be more of a
657
00:40:01,256 --> 00:40:05,328
floodplain and less of a dam. Yeah, don't build the dam and the dam
658
00:40:05,384 --> 00:40:08,656
won't break. Yeah, a dam has a permanent structure.
659
00:40:08,768 --> 00:40:12,160
You know, it's really important to be kind of realistic about this,
660
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,680
that even in the early stages of grief, and this is one of the faults
661
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:19,424
with some of the traditional models of grief that you go through this stage,
662
00:40:19,472 --> 00:40:22,944
you go through sort of shock and then you go through anger and bargaining.
663
00:40:22,992 --> 00:40:26,152
And this one of the problems with that is the suggestion that there is a
664
00:40:26,176 --> 00:40:29,688
predictable, pretty unidirectional path through it.
665
00:40:29,744 --> 00:40:33,032
And actually that doesn't seem to be how people are. What you see
666
00:40:33,056 --> 00:40:36,056
is people swinging backwards and forwards even within a single day,
667
00:40:36,208 --> 00:40:39,720
between sort of a loss orientation, where we are thinking about
668
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:43,100
the person perhaps looking through photographs being tearful,
669
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:47,736
and then sort of a rebuilding or restoration orientation
670
00:40:47,928 --> 00:40:51,462
where people are having to learn new skills, find a new
671
00:40:51,486 --> 00:40:55,462
way of living. And part of that may occasionally be very, very temporary,
672
00:40:55,526 --> 00:40:58,710
kind of holding back the tears, keeping it together for that half
673
00:40:58,750 --> 00:41:01,878
hour while you have to go and get the death certificate signed.
674
00:41:02,054 --> 00:41:05,510
But my advice always would then be it's okay to try and hold it back.
675
00:41:05,550 --> 00:41:08,422
It's okay to do what you need to do to get through that bit.
676
00:41:08,606 --> 00:41:12,422
Just make sure there's room later on for whatever to
677
00:41:12,446 --> 00:41:15,862
come out that needs to come out. Yeah, I really like that idea.
678
00:41:15,926 --> 00:41:19,592
I guess I'm. I am going to like it, because it feels very familiar to
679
00:41:19,616 --> 00:41:22,744
me with regard to the way that the act talks about emotions
680
00:41:22,792 --> 00:41:25,944
more generally that, like, they're never wrong, are they emotions?
681
00:41:25,992 --> 00:41:29,592
They're just doing what they're doing. What's that famous actism that,
682
00:41:29,616 --> 00:41:33,048
you know, the problem isn't the problem, the solution is the problem.
683
00:41:33,184 --> 00:41:36,680
So, you know, there's nothing wrong with being anxious, for example,
684
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:41,048
but what tends to be problematic is trying really hard not to be anxious and
685
00:41:41,184 --> 00:41:44,762
constructing your life in such a way as to avoid all of all anxiety.
686
00:41:44,896 --> 00:41:48,246
It tends to sort of keep anxiety or the fear of it
687
00:41:48,318 --> 00:41:51,446
like front and centre. So I guess the same can be said of grief
688
00:41:51,478 --> 00:41:54,566
if you. If you try really hard not to grieve,
689
00:41:54,678 --> 00:41:58,326
you're keeping it really front and centre rather than just letting
690
00:41:58,358 --> 00:42:01,606
it ebb and flow as. As it will, you know, that feels
691
00:42:01,638 --> 00:42:05,222
like a more functional way of going about it. Yeah. And I
692
00:42:05,246 --> 00:42:08,854
think some of that urge to do it the other way actually comes from
693
00:42:08,942 --> 00:42:12,832
a way of regarding both intense
694
00:42:12,896 --> 00:42:16,720
suffering and a sort of full and meaningful life, you know,
695
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:19,984
and in one way you could say that sometimes people see those two as
696
00:42:19,992 --> 00:42:23,824
being in opposition. You know, whilst one has intense suffering
697
00:42:23,872 --> 00:42:27,360
of grief, by that very definition you can't have
698
00:42:27,480 --> 00:42:30,592
a fulfilling and meaningful life. Those are kind of
699
00:42:30,616 --> 00:42:33,856
like opposites of each other. And for people who are struggling
700
00:42:33,888 --> 00:42:37,072
with that, sometimes some of the kind of the therapeutic work in grief,
701
00:42:37,216 --> 00:42:40,672
one way of describing it is with changing that to be.
702
00:42:40,696 --> 00:42:44,112
Instead of those two things being the opposite of each other, change it to
703
00:42:44,136 --> 00:42:47,632
being more like. The pain and loss of grief are
704
00:42:47,656 --> 00:42:51,248
part of a meaningful and fulfilling life, that we move
705
00:42:51,304 --> 00:42:55,056
forward in our meaningful and fulfilling life with the pain of sadness
706
00:42:55,088 --> 00:42:58,336
and loss, because that's an inevitable part of having love
707
00:42:58,408 --> 00:43:01,632
in our life. In technical terms, it always says there's like
708
00:43:01,656 --> 00:43:05,380
a hierarchical relation between that
709
00:43:05,420 --> 00:43:09,140
pain and a full and meaningful life, rather than
710
00:43:09,180 --> 00:43:12,804
an opposition between the two of them. I'm interested in asking
711
00:43:12,852 --> 00:43:16,452
you about your own sort of role in it because I
712
00:43:16,476 --> 00:43:19,364
guess of all the things you could do as a psychologist,
713
00:43:19,492 --> 00:43:23,540
you've not picked an easy area, you've picked something that
714
00:43:23,580 --> 00:43:27,284
is somewhat taboo and you've picked an area where you're going
715
00:43:27,292 --> 00:43:31,046
to be spending your time with deep sadness and
716
00:43:31,118 --> 00:43:34,838
pain. It feels like an obvious question to ask you, almost a cliche,
717
00:43:34,854 --> 00:43:38,534
but I wonder, how has that impacted upon you, do you think?
718
00:43:38,622 --> 00:43:42,070
And your own thoughts about your own mortality?
719
00:43:42,230 --> 00:43:45,462
I mean, that's a really good question and one that I think in this kind
720
00:43:45,486 --> 00:43:48,902
of field you do end up reflecting on.
721
00:43:49,006 --> 00:43:52,630
At times, it's a weird word to use in this context, but there's a,
722
00:43:52,750 --> 00:43:56,564
you know, what we sometimes call a survivorship bias here. I ended up working
723
00:43:56,652 --> 00:44:00,164
for best part. Well, I still am working part of my time in IT.
724
00:44:00,252 --> 00:44:04,212
So I have been working for sort of 34 years
725
00:44:04,396 --> 00:44:08,308
in this kind of stuff. The very fact that I've continued
726
00:44:08,324 --> 00:44:11,732
to work means that, you know, there's something about it that matches me and
727
00:44:11,756 --> 00:44:15,124
that I'm okay with and I can make room for, you know, it might be
728
00:44:15,132 --> 00:44:17,780
different for other people looking at it for time and then go on to something
729
00:44:17,820 --> 00:44:20,980
else. And of course, this is one
730
00:44:21,020 --> 00:44:24,244
flavour of suffering. There are plenty of flavours of
731
00:44:24,252 --> 00:44:28,036
suffering out there in the world, and some of them I know I couldn't
732
00:44:28,068 --> 00:44:31,668
work with. So some of this is a horses for courses
733
00:44:31,844 --> 00:44:35,252
kind of a deal. You know, I know in the past, bitch, you know,
734
00:44:35,276 --> 00:44:38,788
you've worked in forensics, in units with people
735
00:44:38,844 --> 00:44:42,100
part of the criminal justice system, some of them who sort of done sort
736
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:46,084
of really bad things in the world. And I think I would find that harder
737
00:44:46,132 --> 00:44:48,800
to work with than some of the people that I've worked with.
738
00:44:49,100 --> 00:44:52,628
So there is that little bit of individual difference.
739
00:44:52,724 --> 00:44:56,340
I think one of the ways it affects me is you
740
00:44:56,460 --> 00:45:00,116
can't pretend it's not there. One of the things is,
741
00:45:00,268 --> 00:45:03,620
because most of the time, most of us aren't thinking about death. And that
742
00:45:03,660 --> 00:45:06,948
makes sense. If you walked around with it right in front of your face
743
00:45:07,084 --> 00:45:10,948
every hour, every day, you wouldn't get on with much that wouldn't be very successful.
744
00:45:11,124 --> 00:45:14,526
Lots of time people just sort of push the whole thing away.
745
00:45:14,708 --> 00:45:18,394
Something only happens to other people, only happens in fiction, on tv. And I
746
00:45:18,402 --> 00:45:22,058
guess working in this area, you can't pretend that's true because you're
747
00:45:22,154 --> 00:45:26,394
very close in with families, not just as cases or
748
00:45:26,482 --> 00:45:30,410
diagnoses, but, you know, talking to them about what life was
749
00:45:30,450 --> 00:45:33,018
like before and their hopes and their fears and all this kind of stuff.
750
00:45:33,034 --> 00:45:37,018
So these have become really whole sort of real people to you very rapidly.
751
00:45:37,194 --> 00:45:39,670
So you're kind of very aware of that.
752
00:45:40,300 --> 00:45:43,572
And I guess it does have a variety of effects. And sometimes,
753
00:45:43,636 --> 00:45:46,532
yeah, it can have an effect of. There have been times in my career where
754
00:45:46,556 --> 00:45:50,692
I've been astonished I've made it to the end of a year because your sample
755
00:45:50,756 --> 00:45:54,644
base becomes so skewed. You only get to see the people
756
00:45:54,812 --> 00:45:58,480
for whom something like this is going on. And when people tell you their story,
757
00:45:59,740 --> 00:46:03,476
it struck me once if your first interview
758
00:46:03,508 --> 00:46:07,054
with somebody and they say, well, one day I Woke up and I had
759
00:46:07,062 --> 00:46:10,766
a really bad cough. The story's not going to end up with
760
00:46:10,918 --> 00:46:14,062
it turns out it was just a cough. So every time you hear
761
00:46:14,086 --> 00:46:17,694
one of those early symptoms, it's always going to end up with something catastrophic
762
00:46:17,742 --> 00:46:21,054
or else they wouldn't be telling you. So you're kind of, you know, when you
763
00:46:21,062 --> 00:46:23,582
get a bit of a cough or you get a bit of a bad back,
764
00:46:23,766 --> 00:46:27,502
you've got this massive database of
765
00:46:27,606 --> 00:46:31,566
how horribly wrong that went for some people that you met. And so sometimes,
766
00:46:31,598 --> 00:46:34,446
you know, you can become, I guess, a little bit more. Oh,
767
00:46:34,478 --> 00:46:37,546
no. About any of those things. There are the moments
768
00:46:37,578 --> 00:46:41,050
of that. But the thing that I guess strikes me most
769
00:46:41,090 --> 00:46:45,290
is a positive thing and that is knowing that we do die
770
00:46:45,450 --> 00:46:48,762
and knowing some of what goes on kind of around that.
771
00:46:48,866 --> 00:46:52,906
Two sets of things kind of then impact me,
772
00:46:53,058 --> 00:46:56,522
one of which is the things that make a
773
00:46:56,546 --> 00:46:59,946
difference, you know, so like some practical things,
774
00:47:00,098 --> 00:47:03,612
even though, yeah, again, touching wood, relatively healthy,
775
00:47:03,676 --> 00:47:06,860
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Since I was first
776
00:47:06,900 --> 00:47:10,140
doing this work in my, like 30,
777
00:47:10,260 --> 00:47:13,228
I've always had an up to date will. More recently,
778
00:47:13,284 --> 00:47:16,332
I've always had an up to date power of attorney.
779
00:47:16,476 --> 00:47:19,884
Power of attorneys are really important document. It's what says that
780
00:47:19,892 --> 00:47:23,388
if you lose capacity through illness or injury,
781
00:47:23,484 --> 00:47:26,764
that you cannot take decisions you normally would take independently.
782
00:47:26,812 --> 00:47:30,692
You've nominated another person who could do that for you. That can make all the
783
00:47:30,716 --> 00:47:34,004
difference at a time like that. It's a legal process. It needs setting up.
784
00:47:34,092 --> 00:47:37,556
That's all done. Even though there was no particular concrete triggering
785
00:47:37,588 --> 00:47:40,612
reason for doing it. Well, no music I want at my funeral, all that kind
786
00:47:40,636 --> 00:47:43,812
of stuff. So there's that sort of practical side
787
00:47:43,996 --> 00:47:48,356
and sometimes knowing that that's handled takes the weight off anyway.
788
00:47:48,548 --> 00:47:51,684
But the other thing this is. I'm always weird when you say this.
789
00:47:51,692 --> 00:47:54,874
It kind of sounds a bit trite or cheesy,
790
00:47:55,052 --> 00:47:58,430
but when people at the end of their life and time is very
791
00:47:58,470 --> 00:48:01,662
short, sometimes they will talk about regrets or things
792
00:48:01,686 --> 00:48:05,246
that they're missing. I very, very strongly believe that
793
00:48:05,318 --> 00:48:08,926
at that kind of like end of life thing, people don't look back and say,
794
00:48:08,998 --> 00:48:12,222
I wish I had one more healthy day in order to go
795
00:48:12,246 --> 00:48:15,310
and see the pyramids or to go and climb Everest.
796
00:48:15,390 --> 00:48:18,490
You know what they say is, you know, one more afternoon with my family,
797
00:48:18,950 --> 00:48:21,934
one more night in the pub with my friends, one more really good cup of
798
00:48:21,942 --> 00:48:25,316
coffee I can really taste. Those are the things
799
00:48:25,388 --> 00:48:29,252
that people miss at the end and anticipate
800
00:48:29,316 --> 00:48:32,468
never being able to do again. And the good thing about all this is.
801
00:48:32,604 --> 00:48:35,956
We can still do that. Whatever your version
802
00:48:35,988 --> 00:48:39,332
of that is, you can still do that today, tomorrow, this week.
803
00:48:39,356 --> 00:48:43,012
So do it today, tomorrow, and this week, because there
804
00:48:43,036 --> 00:48:47,252
will come a day when you'd give anything to be back able
805
00:48:47,276 --> 00:48:50,792
to do it. So do it. Wow.
806
00:48:50,856 --> 00:48:54,424
That certainly makes you think. I'm sure you. You're aware of this. It's going
807
00:48:54,432 --> 00:48:57,896
to be the only thing I can bring to the party in this episode.
808
00:48:58,008 --> 00:49:01,992
You know, Bronnie Ware, she was a nurse working in your field for
809
00:49:02,016 --> 00:49:05,576
many, many years and came up with this. This concept of the
810
00:49:05,728 --> 00:49:09,016
top five regrets of the dying. Oh, yeah,
811
00:49:09,048 --> 00:49:11,512
yeah, I know that. So here they are. I don't know if these are in
812
00:49:11,536 --> 00:49:14,904
order, but number one, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true
813
00:49:14,952 --> 00:49:18,460
to myself. Number two, I wish I hadn't worked so
814
00:49:18,500 --> 00:49:22,044
hard. Number three, I wish I'd been brave enough to express
815
00:49:22,132 --> 00:49:26,360
my feelings. Number four, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends.
816
00:49:26,660 --> 00:49:29,760
Number five, I wish that I had let myself be happier.
817
00:49:30,580 --> 00:49:34,520
When I first saw that list, that really kind of hit me as being,
818
00:49:35,140 --> 00:49:38,332
you know, so here's the experience of someone who's worked
819
00:49:38,396 --> 00:49:41,020
like you have with people at the end of their life for many, many years.
820
00:49:41,060 --> 00:49:44,702
And these are the sort of top five things. Much like you said,
821
00:49:44,726 --> 00:49:48,030
it's not about the pyramids. It's those kind of simple things,
822
00:49:48,070 --> 00:49:51,598
isn't it? And really struck by, you know, no one's
823
00:49:51,614 --> 00:49:55,250
saying, well, I wish I'd worked harder or I wish I'd got that promotion.
824
00:49:55,670 --> 00:49:59,390
It's. It's none of that, is it? Yeah. You know, the difficulty with
825
00:49:59,430 --> 00:50:02,222
all of these things is we, the likes of you and me, are always going
826
00:50:02,246 --> 00:50:05,118
to sort of then mess it up by saying, well, it depends. And.
827
00:50:05,174 --> 00:50:08,782
Yeah, and context is everything, you know, So I literally
828
00:50:08,846 --> 00:50:12,078
have met people, we said, I wish I'd worked harder because they'd
829
00:50:12,094 --> 00:50:15,422
had opportunities they didn't take. They could have provided differently for their family.
830
00:50:15,606 --> 00:50:18,462
You know, they thought they could have been really good at something if they just
831
00:50:18,566 --> 00:50:22,142
had stuck at it a bit more. I think with all these things,
832
00:50:22,326 --> 00:50:25,502
as with absolutely everything I have said, you know,
833
00:50:25,526 --> 00:50:28,958
we need to kind of remember the individual and we need to remember people will
834
00:50:29,014 --> 00:50:32,766
differ. The best thing we can do is by not backing off
835
00:50:32,838 --> 00:50:36,280
and not being scared of having the conversation, because people
836
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,992
who are in this situation, who know they're facing their own death will
837
00:50:40,016 --> 00:50:43,672
say that they see people literally cross the road to avoid talking to them.
838
00:50:43,856 --> 00:50:46,808
Not because they're bad people, not because they think it's going to catch,
839
00:50:46,984 --> 00:50:50,632
but because they don't know what to say and they fear making it worse,
840
00:50:50,776 --> 00:50:53,944
where actually that rejection is the thing that tends to make
841
00:50:53,952 --> 00:50:57,832
it worse. So if we could talk to people and just be willing to ask
842
00:50:57,856 --> 00:51:01,064
them how they're doing today and have whatever
843
00:51:01,112 --> 00:51:04,472
level of conversation that person wants back at us, whether they want to tell
844
00:51:04,496 --> 00:51:08,080
us the deepest, darkest bits or they clearly just want to talk
845
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:11,696
crap about what's on tv, just respond to that as
846
00:51:11,768 --> 00:51:15,616
whatever the person needs. We don't need to know a whole
847
00:51:15,648 --> 00:51:19,392
stack about it beforehand. You just need to try and engage with
848
00:51:19,416 --> 00:51:23,312
the human even at that time in life and in grief, where the same
849
00:51:23,336 --> 00:51:27,168
things play out. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that same thing
850
00:51:27,224 --> 00:51:30,880
is a common experience for people who are bereaved. Right. It's people
851
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:34,590
avoid them because they don't know what to say. You get the kind of trite,
852
00:51:34,670 --> 00:51:38,830
I'm sorry for your loss, one line as the
853
00:51:38,870 --> 00:51:42,590
kind of substitute for anything meaningful because people really don't know
854
00:51:42,710 --> 00:51:46,142
how to address it. It is curious. I mean, the more we talk about this,
855
00:51:46,166 --> 00:51:49,758
I think it's really curious, isn't it, how it's so taboo,
856
00:51:49,934 --> 00:51:53,758
given that, as you said earlier, it's the only thing that's
857
00:51:53,774 --> 00:51:56,942
going to. Well, that's the only one of the
858
00:51:56,966 --> 00:52:00,400
very few things that's going to touch everybody. You know,
859
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,776
far more so than depression or psychosis. You know,
860
00:52:03,848 --> 00:52:07,200
grief is gonna. I can't think of anybody I
861
00:52:07,240 --> 00:52:10,880
know that hasn't been touched by grief. And oddly, I was teaching on grief
862
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:14,448
in. In Sicily, of all places, last weekend,
863
00:52:14,624 --> 00:52:18,352
which is brilliant, met some fantastic people. And two
864
00:52:18,376 --> 00:52:22,112
of the fantastic people I met were the translators who, because I have no Italian,
865
00:52:22,176 --> 00:52:25,606
although most of the audience had, you know, great basic English,
866
00:52:25,718 --> 00:52:29,014
we needed to be right about what we were talking about quite technically
867
00:52:29,062 --> 00:52:32,214
at times. And the translators were saying, actually there's
868
00:52:32,262 --> 00:52:35,798
no exact translation of grief to Italian. There is loss,
869
00:52:35,934 --> 00:52:39,238
there is mourning, which is more like the behavioural component
870
00:52:39,334 --> 00:52:43,654
of grief. But, you know, kind of the closest we could get was
871
00:52:43,822 --> 00:52:48,230
the pain of the loss, which isn't bad, but it's odd that
872
00:52:48,270 --> 00:52:51,702
there wasn't a single type translation. These were top level professional translators.
873
00:52:51,766 --> 00:52:55,020
It was not a shortcoming in them as people. The fact that this
874
00:52:55,060 --> 00:52:58,812
thing that we all experience is something that sometimes
875
00:52:58,876 --> 00:53:02,364
we literally don't have the words for is odd.
876
00:53:02,492 --> 00:53:06,700
And I think it's important that we can notice that and
877
00:53:06,820 --> 00:53:10,444
do our best not to make this some separate and untouchable
878
00:53:10,492 --> 00:53:14,332
area of human experience. But rather make room for it
879
00:53:14,516 --> 00:53:18,492
as part of what comes with being alive and particularly if we're lucky enough
880
00:53:18,516 --> 00:53:21,544
to have people, are things that we love in our life.
881
00:53:21,712 --> 00:53:25,100
I wonder, just in terms of trying to summarise
882
00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:28,776
what we've been talking about. I'm sure there are, you know, there are bound
883
00:53:28,808 --> 00:53:33,380
to be people listening for whom this is a very current issue
884
00:53:33,840 --> 00:53:37,576
or it's going to be in the near future. I wonder
885
00:53:37,608 --> 00:53:41,240
what you would say to people in terms of takeaways, I suppose.
886
00:53:41,400 --> 00:53:45,144
What have you learned in terms of trying to forge a healthy
887
00:53:45,192 --> 00:53:49,166
relationship with grief? I guess I'd sort of reiterate
888
00:53:49,198 --> 00:53:52,206
a couple of things that have popped up during the conversation.
889
00:53:52,398 --> 00:53:55,662
It's not simply accepting that loss, whether it's loss
890
00:53:55,686 --> 00:53:58,370
of others or loss of ourselves,
891
00:53:58,950 --> 00:54:02,462
is important and an inevitable part
892
00:54:02,486 --> 00:54:06,270
of life, but more particularly that sadness
893
00:54:06,350 --> 00:54:09,902
and other emotions like guilt or anxiety come
894
00:54:09,926 --> 00:54:13,410
with that and that we don't need to
895
00:54:13,510 --> 00:54:16,986
squash those down, we don't need to pretend that it's not happening. We can
896
00:54:17,058 --> 00:54:19,722
communicate and we can even communicate it to people.
897
00:54:19,906 --> 00:54:24,202
Natural protective instinct makes us try and hide it from,
898
00:54:24,386 --> 00:54:27,978
you know, whether it's our partners, whether it's our parents, whether it's
899
00:54:27,994 --> 00:54:31,850
our children. It could be quite helpful to say I'm really
900
00:54:31,890 --> 00:54:35,242
sad today because. So trying to keep the communication because
901
00:54:35,266 --> 00:54:38,394
we don't have to fix anything here. There's nothing here to be fixed,
902
00:54:38,522 --> 00:54:41,070
but we can keep communicating and keep supporting.
903
00:54:41,450 --> 00:54:45,234
What else would I say? Actually, the really pragmatic
904
00:54:45,282 --> 00:54:48,322
stuff is really helpful. While I was talking about wills and powers of attorney and
905
00:54:48,346 --> 00:54:52,226
stuff, and letting people know what your wishes might be around a funeral,
906
00:54:52,418 --> 00:54:55,826
actually, you can save your loved ones
907
00:54:55,938 --> 00:54:59,202
an awful lot of stress and pain and heartache
908
00:54:59,346 --> 00:55:02,738
by getting that sorted out now. Doesn't mean you're giving in, it doesn't mean you're
909
00:55:02,754 --> 00:55:06,114
being morbid. It just means you're protecting people you love from
910
00:55:06,202 --> 00:55:09,832
even more hassle at a time when they're potentially devastated if
911
00:55:09,856 --> 00:55:13,320
you die. And the other bit would be
912
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:16,792
exactly what I was saying before and takes us back
913
00:55:16,816 --> 00:55:20,420
to your start point, actually, of the things you've been noticing about,
914
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:24,632
as well as paying attention to the difficult stuff and
915
00:55:24,656 --> 00:55:28,200
the threat is also paying attention to the stuff that
916
00:55:28,240 --> 00:55:32,280
we have now that we will lose either with our
917
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:35,740
illness or with the death of somebody we love and rather be
918
00:55:35,780 --> 00:55:38,940
paralysed by the prospect of that loss. Make sure
919
00:55:38,980 --> 00:55:42,796
that we're making the most of it now, not in some. Having to hang
920
00:55:42,828 --> 00:55:46,732
on tight. And every day has to be perfect. Every holiday has to be perfect,
921
00:55:46,876 --> 00:55:50,732
but just the simplicity of those moments and
922
00:55:50,756 --> 00:55:54,252
small behaviours that really mean something to us.
923
00:55:54,436 --> 00:55:57,772
Make sure you still take the time for them and enjoy them
924
00:55:57,796 --> 00:56:01,462
for what they are while you still can. Hmm. Thank you.
925
00:56:01,486 --> 00:56:05,078
Yeah, that's real. It's real food for thought, isn't it? I think just sort
926
00:56:05,094 --> 00:56:08,966
of going back to what I was saying earlier. Just like, I think life's
927
00:56:08,998 --> 00:56:12,518
amazing. Like, I genuinely don't know what happened before I was
928
00:56:12,574 --> 00:56:16,102
here and I don't think I'll know what will happen after. What I
929
00:56:16,126 --> 00:56:19,606
do know is I've got this sort of wonderful gift of whatever
930
00:56:19,638 --> 00:56:22,758
that might be, 70 or 80 years if I'm lucky. And,
931
00:56:22,814 --> 00:56:26,960
you know, life is just amazing. There's so much about life that can be appreciated.
932
00:56:27,070 --> 00:56:30,764
There is something about the sort of fast pace of life in a Western
933
00:56:30,892 --> 00:56:34,652
liberal democracy. Everyone's spinning 100 plates, nobody has
934
00:56:34,676 --> 00:56:37,996
time to do anything. Yeah. Just the simple art of slowing
935
00:56:38,028 --> 00:56:41,320
down and noticing what you have around you does feel like a really important.
936
00:56:41,940 --> 00:56:45,388
Yeah. If somewhat Miss Worldish thing to say.
937
00:56:45,524 --> 00:56:49,420
It does feel important. Doesn't really
938
00:56:49,460 --> 00:56:52,764
does. You know, we can't be like that all the time. It will become another
939
00:56:52,852 --> 00:56:56,536
incredible pressure to be mindful and grateful every moment
940
00:56:56,568 --> 00:56:59,592
of the day. That sounds like hell to me. But moments of
941
00:56:59,616 --> 00:57:03,380
it can really make a difference. Okay, thank you.
942
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:07,016
So we're gonna end that conversation there, but there's
943
00:57:07,048 --> 00:57:10,280
still time for me to ask you a question, if you're up for it.
944
00:57:10,400 --> 00:57:13,940
Oh, I think I still am. Let's go and ask Ray, shall we?
945
00:57:15,120 --> 00:57:19,256
All right. You ready? I'm ready. So, somewhat in keeping with
946
00:57:19,408 --> 00:57:23,000
the theme of reflection and looking forward and looking
947
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:26,646
back, what is one thing that,
948
00:57:26,798 --> 00:57:30,742
if you had the opportunity, you would tell your
949
00:57:30,846 --> 00:57:33,730
childhood self? Oh, that's a good one.
950
00:57:34,430 --> 00:57:37,334
Okay. This might not be the most profound answer you could ever get,
951
00:57:37,422 --> 00:57:40,822
but when somebody offers you tickets for one
952
00:57:40,846 --> 00:57:43,702
of David Bowie's last tours, don't think,
953
00:57:43,806 --> 00:57:47,046
oh, no, I'm too busy at the moment. I'll catch it later. Because he'll
954
00:57:47,078 --> 00:57:50,422
never tour again. So I would definitely have taken the tickets
955
00:57:50,486 --> 00:57:53,826
to see him. I mean, that's the biggest regret or the biggest piece of advice
956
00:57:53,858 --> 00:57:57,410
I've got looking back. That's not bad, really, is it? That was a
957
00:57:57,450 --> 00:58:01,186
pretty big mistake that you made there. But, yeah, not bad in
958
00:58:01,338 --> 00:58:05,026
things. In the scheme of things that can go wrong. You're on fairly
959
00:58:05,058 --> 00:58:08,674
safe ground there. Fairly safe. Have you got anything like that?
960
00:58:08,762 --> 00:58:12,070
What would you tell young Master Bennett?
961
00:58:12,650 --> 00:58:16,242
I think I would say, don't be so Frightened? Well,
962
00:58:16,346 --> 00:58:19,454
would I? I think I wouldn't. I wouldn't say that. That sounds a bit mean.
963
00:58:19,542 --> 00:58:23,054
I think I would say don't give in to your fear
964
00:58:23,102 --> 00:58:26,526
quite so much. Right. Try. Try and have your fear rather
965
00:58:26,558 --> 00:58:30,270
than let it have you. I think anxiety's probably got
966
00:58:30,310 --> 00:58:33,822
in the way of me doing things at various points in
967
00:58:33,846 --> 00:58:37,582
my life. Not regrets as such. Dunno be
968
00:58:37,606 --> 00:58:40,462
a bit braver. It's going to be uncomfortable, but it's not going to kill you.
969
00:58:40,566 --> 00:58:43,662
So that might have been a nicer lesson to pick up earlier. Yeah, I think
970
00:58:43,686 --> 00:58:47,042
it took a long time to learn that. Yeah. And I think there's good
971
00:58:47,066 --> 00:58:50,386
reasons why that took a while. And if I could time travel and
972
00:58:50,458 --> 00:58:53,890
give myself a bit of advice, I think that's what it would be. So,
973
00:58:53,930 --> 00:58:57,122
you know, anxiety is. It's uncomfortable and that's the worst thing
974
00:58:57,146 --> 00:59:00,402
about it. You don't have to allow it to hold you back. That's a much
975
00:59:00,426 --> 00:59:04,270
more valuable message than my one about Bowie tickets, isn't it?
976
00:59:05,930 --> 00:59:09,330
Although, you know. Although if you're out there and your
977
00:59:09,370 --> 00:59:13,680
favourite band's touring, you know, go and see them. Go and see them because
978
00:59:13,720 --> 00:59:17,056
they or you won't be around forever. That feels very in keeping
979
00:59:17,088 --> 00:59:20,240
with what we were saying earlier. Okay. On that piece of sage
980
00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:23,408
advice, I think we'll leave it. So thank you very much,
981
00:59:23,464 --> 00:59:27,680
Ray. It's been a very thought provoking and moving conversation.
982
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:31,120
So thank you very much. Thank you, Rich. And thank you for
983
00:59:31,160 --> 00:59:34,688
being willing to have this conversation today. You're very welcome.
984
00:59:34,864 --> 00:59:37,102
I'll see you again soon. See you soon,