Full Transcript for Unlocking Transformative Change: The Mind-Body Connection, Social Media's Impact, and Self-Care with Psychotherapist Nicholas Alexander

level, what people get back is an information I'm different, it's not safe to be me. 00:04:55.024 --> 00:04:56.326 How do you address that? 00:04:57.548 --> 00:04:57.788 nice. 00:04:57.788 --> 00:05:00.012 So I mean this podcast. 00:05:00.012 --> 00:05:05.148 The title of this session is all about the mind-body connection and I kind of have a sense of it from what I do in my world. 00:05:05.148 --> 00:05:11.245 What does it mean to you and how do you kind of navigate the mind-body connection in the work that you do with patients? 00:05:12.247 --> 00:05:13.973 How do I navigate the mind-body connection? 00:05:13.973 --> 00:05:21.490 First of all, people are very unfocused sometimes in life with their mind and body. 00:05:21.490 --> 00:05:23.023 There's a lot of conditions of work. 00:05:23.023 --> 00:05:25.971 I've talked about the biological, social and emotional connection. 00:05:25.971 --> 00:05:32.267 There's also what separates every spewing mewling infant on the planet and that's the circumstances they were born into. 00:05:32.267 --> 00:05:37.031 So you've got the nature and you've got the nurture, the cultural thing. 00:05:37.031 --> 00:05:41.230 Both those things can have a decimating effect on your life. 00:05:41.230 --> 00:05:49.281 You know your psychological and emotion colliding with where you are, conditions of worth. 00:05:49.281 --> 00:05:54.300 You are valuable if you have a home of your own, a job, a baby, all these things. 00:05:54.300 --> 00:05:56.807 What is the cost of being you? 00:05:56.807 --> 00:05:58.971 People can't help how their life goes. 00:05:58.971 --> 00:06:04.153 You don't know what you don't know you know growing up if you're not with a loving relationship. 00:06:04.153 --> 00:06:09.365 Don't know you know growing up if you're not with a loving relationship. 00:06:09.365 --> 00:06:10.547 Certain things are developed. 00:06:10.547 --> 00:06:17.305 Synapses connect the brain, frontal lobe in terms of identity and your identity in relation to others doesn't get into adult belt in mid to late 20s. 00:06:17.947 --> 00:06:22.824 You know I've said most maturity is for men, which is being said at 43. 00:06:22.824 --> 00:06:29.326 As you're growing and developing, things get into your track, your original programming. 00:06:29.326 --> 00:06:36.889 When you're developing, you have experiences, whether it's first, erotic experiences, emotional connections, as you've said. 00:06:36.889 --> 00:06:48.134 This affects how you respond, your nature, your morphology, your brain, your emotions, reacting with what's put on you, what's around you, conditions of work, changes, brain chemistry. 00:06:48.134 --> 00:06:50.377 The brain is the biggest pharmacy. 00:06:50.377 --> 00:06:52.380 The body speaks its mind. 00:06:52.380 --> 00:06:55.528 Stress is the biggest cause of inflammation in the body. 00:06:55.809 --> 00:07:07.781 All things that I know we see between us with our patients, one of them being big subset we've attracted

is alzheimer and dementia patients, and that is mind, body. 00:07:07.781 --> 00:07:17.471 You know, people running programming on circuits that were not designed to run that programming that might be emotionally, temperamentally, relationship wise. 00:07:17.471 --> 00:07:21.399 You can't have a real relationship with someone else unless you have a real relationship with yourself. 00:07:21.399 --> 00:07:25.187 What are things that hard for you to admit to you, that stick in your throat? 00:07:25.187 --> 00:07:27.410 Uh, and people. 00:07:27.410 --> 00:07:35.605 You know your nervous system relaxes when it is with the presence of someone who is authentic and of good intent. 00:07:35.605 --> 00:07:49.769 Most people are just really trying to get home, but they are very unfocused on what that original programming, where their body should be related to their mental and sociological capacities, where that actually is. 00:07:49.769 --> 00:08:00.406 It's an emotional, mental navigational landmark that affects how your body responds to stress, responding to everything it is to be human and in the world. 00:08:00.406 --> 00:08:04.420 Because we don't know what, we don't know what defines one relationship is another. 00:08:04.521 --> 00:08:16.461 One Might be two or three people in a lifetime that really get you, that make you feel at home, that align your nervous system. 00:08:16.480 --> 00:08:32.812 Some people might not have met them yet or they haven't had a therapist or an enlightened witness that handles whatever happened to them correctly, to give them permission to let go of stuff they've been carrying that is not compatible with their nervous system, which puts them in fight or flight mode all the time. 00:08:32.812 --> 00:08:36.589 You know they hit critical parent from life, their relationship, their job. 00:08:36.589 --> 00:08:39.004 How do I get my needs met in a socially acceptable way? 00:08:39.004 --> 00:08:41.576 It might be causing other people this much stress. 00:08:41.576 --> 00:08:49.254 Actually it causes me this much stress I'm not going to do and people are unaware of how much they've been carrying, how much space that takes up. 00:08:49.254 --> 00:08:54.032 You know the cortisol, the stress hormone, being inauthentic. 00:08:54.032 --> 00:09:00.610 This takes up massive stress in the mind, anxiety which affects the body. 00:09:00.610 --> 00:09:20.126 Good food, the body, good food, the drugs won't stick if your body is in the con is in an unconscious or preconscious state of stress or anxiety that overpowers every other scaffolding you can put upon your physical body interesting. 00:09:20.648 --> 00:09:21.951 I want to pick up on something you said. 00:09:21.951 --> 00:09:26.692 You said about the age of emotional maturity was 43 and it might have been for men. 00:09:26.692 --> 00:09:36.683 Apparently for women they say it's 11 years earlier, at 32, but I mean I had this thing in my mind that you know, the human brain was fully developed at 25, so what's going on between 25 and 43? 00:09:38.167 --> 00:09:39.408 well, between 25 and 43. 00:09:39.408 --> 00:09:44.506 25, the frontal lobe, in terms of your identity to relation to others, is just getting into. 00:09:44.506 --> 00:09:46.692 Adult brain might be 25, might be 28. 00:09:46.692 --> 00:09:48.238 What's going on between those stages? 00:09:48.238 --> 00:09:50.383 Normally late onset adolescence at 35. 00:09:50.383 --> 00:09:53.168 Very often patients are late onset adolescence. 00:09:53.168 --> 00:09:55.373 Um, you know, we have it in. 00:09:55.373 --> 00:09:56.644 We say in life, don't we? 00:09:56.644 --> 00:09:57.648 Life begins at 40. 00:09:57.648 --> 00:09:58.793 It's written in greeting cards. 00:09:58.793 --> 00:09:59.996 Life begins at 40. 00:10:00.037 --> 00:10:14.120 We go through that and and that reflects what I see in my practice most people are only really becoming grounded, hemorrhaging all this economic, extraneous stuff, uh, becoming simple, grounded content. 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:20.552 I only really see it happening for people around between the ages of 45 to 55. 00:10:20.552 --> 00:10:27.821 You know, by by 42, 47 people are on their second divorce because they're just discovering who they are. 00:10:27.821 --> 00:10:29.845 That's, you know, the relationship thing. 00:10:29.845 --> 00:10:32.893 So I would say what's going on between 25 and 40 is ego. 00:10:32.893 --> 00:10:35.692 Now 20s and 30s are full of ego and stress. 00:10:35.692 --> 00:10:38.984 You know, I want to get this, I want to do this, I want to climb the corporate ladder. 00:10:38.984 --> 00:10:40.027 That's what's. 00:10:40.027 --> 00:10:47.770 That's what's going on and, funnily enough, we have it at the beginning when we come out, because human beings left alone naturally want to achieve their full potential. 00:10:47.770 --> 00:11:03.967 We are an organism, we are part of nature and sometimes when you get over to old age they do recreate that condition again of information processing maybe being controlled from the experience, but in the middle is where people lose it. 00:11:04.340 --> 00:11:23.986 It takes a really long time to know who you are really does um, I know you see a huge range of different kind of patients in your practice, but are you seeing any trends, or are you seeing things evolving, since you've been doing psychotherapy a new kind of range of problems, or is it all boiled down to some of the kind of common themes that you kind of mentioned already? 00:11:33.659 --> 00:11:36.847 It was kind of easier and harder for some people because we didn't have as much access to information of the internet. 00:11:36.847 --> 00:11:49.268 But I think it's always been my opinion it takes a village to raise a child and sometimes you don't have options outside of that the internet, social media and sometimes you don't have options outside of that the internet, social media, covid. 00:11:49.268 --> 00:11:51.513 You know I

said what defines one relationship is another one. 00:11:51.513 --> 00:12:15.428 When people stopped going out there and they were at peace with themselves and had to find other resources, that created either a natural balance and awareness of what it was to be self-soothed, self-sufficient, or it aggravated external locus of evaluation through social media, through people looking at themselves on Zoom, and actually what's happened is people have suddenly got a lower toleration threshold in the world. 00:12:15.428 --> 00:12:19.345 Now, you know, because they don't have in turn locus of evaluation. 00:12:19.345 --> 00:12:27.551 It is a lot more performative, which has led to identity crises, social media being banned for young people. 00:12:27.551 --> 00:12:49.144 In Australia they started to think about not having that under 18 or sometimes under 25 for young people and mental health has been a huge explosion because there's been an awareness in conscious from COVID and from social media about what am I doing, who am I, where am I, what do I want, how am I going to get it? 00:12:49.144 --> 00:12:58.764 And this connection that we've got that's supposed to make life easier for people fills up, actually gives people less space in their brain and mind to find their identity. 00:12:58.764 --> 00:13:02.193 So people are sicker than they were mentally. 00:13:02.755 --> 00:13:10.803 But there's also an awareness because of the internet that there is a possibility to change or do something about it because you're connected to other communities and subgroups. 00:13:10.803 --> 00:13:12.587 So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. 00:13:12.587 --> 00:13:15.442 We are certainly not in the space we were. 00:13:15.442 --> 00:13:21.139 People are making much more allowances, so it's just more crowded. 00:13:21.139 --> 00:13:30.202 It's a lot more noisy in terms of what you can be, what, what you're expected to be in the world, identity most of it is related to identity and there's more choice. 00:13:30.222 --> 00:13:37.115 There's more connection, but there's more disassociation because there's more conditions and worth and opinions over what people are. 00:13:37.115 --> 00:13:39.565 So people latch on to things. 00:13:39.565 --> 00:13:42.511 There's a greater potential to latch on to things. 00:13:42.511 --> 00:14:05.048 To latch on to things, but there's a greater potential to latch on to the wrong things, which lead them further away from being alone with themselves in the room, which is what Covid did isolated people and you know, I think Vincent van Gogh says all man's problems stem from his inability to be in a room and do nothing, and the world shall need itself to you. 00:14:05.048 --> 00:14:06.672 People don't know how to do that anymore. 00:14:06.672 --> 00:14:10.927 They're just plugged in interesting now. 00:14:10.947 --> 00:14:16.668 Obviously I have a big interest in covid and I've seen a lot of patients with long covid and I'm still dealing with them three, four years down the line. 00:14:16.668 --> 00:14:30.248 I mean, are you, are we, um, have we kind of dealt with covid psychologically, or is there still this aftermath of that kind of whole period of lockdown and all the psychological trauma and everything that it brought to people, or are you seeing it starting to recover? 00:14:31.424 --> 00:14:54.977 Well, no, it's funny because in every session I have, even now just this week, people will normally bring up oh, and, whether it's a significant life event or a divorce or something they will always say and during Covid, either this changed the past of my career or some a bomb went off in the relationship, or they just got used to something that they never tasted it from people. 00:14:54.977 --> 00:14:55.600 It was very healing. 00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:57.264 It gave people an opportunity to go hang on. 00:14:57.264 --> 00:14:58.528 I've now connected to this. 00:14:58.528 --> 00:15:00.360 I can't unsee what I've unseen. 00:15:00.861 --> 00:15:04.890 This relationship with myself has now defined different pathways, ways of being. 00:15:04.890 --> 00:15:08.505 I can't go back to how I was, so it's created a crisis. 00:15:08.505 --> 00:15:10.831 It's a bit like when people go on holiday or have Christmas. 00:15:10.831 --> 00:15:32.721 Suddenly they're alone with themselves and that's when you get a higher divorce rates or change rates or something else, because we are just so busy surviving we don't get the opportunity to explore new networks, emotional, social connections that make us thrive, and most people have in another way that it's very hard to go back to what they were doing. 00:15:32.721 --> 00:15:45.703 You know, the biggest activator actually for longevity, health and well-being is the quality and amount of our social and emotional connections, above diet and exercise. 00:15:45.703 --> 00:15:54.190 And the biggest connection you know, primary, most significant relationship being the one you have with yourself, and every other relationship is a reflection of that. 00:15:54.750 --> 00:16:09.543 So I think again, like I said about social media, you know it gave people connections and disconnections and just magnified polarizing responses to COVID. 00:16:09.543 --> 00:16:13.701 Some of it was very good, which made them reject other areas of their life. 00:16:13.701 --> 00:16:14.894 Some of it was very bad. 00:16:14.894 --> 00:16:35.861 Either way, it put people in touch with themselves on a major level that they hadn't been in touch with themselves before and obviously, as it takes such a long time to know ourselves and the world hasn't quite realigned this is I'm not even going to say it's beyond years, I say it might go into decade length in terms of processing that information. 00:16:35.861 --> 00:16:37.835 It's like a rebirth, if you like. 00:16:37.835 --> 00:16:40.020 You start again, you start learning. 00:16:40.020 --> 00:16:50.763 I'm connecting to myself Because all from

the beginning, most people end up self-medicating, or either through the relationship pattern, style or habit or lifestyle choice or something. 00:16:50.763 --> 00:16:57.854 But when they started doing that, part of them stopped growing, is still there when that trauma started and covid was a big trauma. 00:16:57.854 --> 00:17:01.485 So part of them is still left there or opened up, starting again. 00:17:02.729 --> 00:17:05.586 Interesting you've mentioned social media a couple of times. 00:17:05.586 --> 00:17:10.954 You've talked about it being banned in certain countries, but I'm really interested in what you think social media young people. 00:17:10.994 --> 00:17:14.227 We realize the effect of your on young people is mental health. 00:17:14.227 --> 00:17:18.498 You know, suicide being the biggest killer of men between 18 and 16. 00:17:18.538 --> 00:17:28.624 Not heart disease, not lung cancer, but it's yeah, so I'm really interested in what you think um the role of social media and digital overload is doing to the psyche of the world. 00:17:28.624 --> 00:17:37.817 In your experience from the people you've seen and your patients' experiences and interactions with social media, where do you see social media at the moment? 00:17:37.817 --> 00:17:44.269 It's got a lot of talk and it's always in the news about something being banned or there's something going out there which is undesirable. 00:17:44.269 --> 00:17:48.458 How do you see it as being a healthy or unhealthy influence on the psyche? 00:17:49.160 --> 00:17:55.602 well, it's a distraction from something you should be looking at or it's either replacement for something that should be there that's not there. 00:17:55.602 --> 00:17:57.295 I mean a very fundamental level. 00:17:57.295 --> 00:18:03.452 We therapy, we dealing with the hole in the soul, and you know if you're in a bad place. 00:18:03.452 --> 00:18:06.221 The thing is you're inviting it into your living room, aren't you? 00:18:06.221 --> 00:18:13.794 You know you can sit in your bed and open up social media and it's like opening the door to a. 00:18:13.794 --> 00:18:16.259 It's like opening your door on the street to a stranger. 00:18:16.259 --> 00:18:22.603 Anything can walk in and if people are vulnerable, people can fall down all sorts of holes. 00:18:22.603 --> 00:18:23.551 You know a lot of it. 00:18:23.551 --> 00:18:25.635 I mean, a lot of people have a lot of screen time. 00:18:25.635 --> 00:18:28.340 They go to porn addiction, spending screen time. 00:18:28.340 --> 00:18:29.423 A lot of people come to that. 00:18:29.423 --> 00:18:37.268 It's approval or the chemicals you get released when a lot of people like you on Facebook. 00:18:37.268 --> 00:18:52.260 You know this is a shop window and it's also an opportunity to be preyed upon when they do want to put their messiness, show private faces in public, when they want to put all the rubbish out the back, out the front. 00:18:52.990 --> 00:18:54.034 It can also collude. 00:18:54.034 --> 00:18:54.515 It can. 00:18:54.515 --> 00:18:55.175 You know you can. 00:18:55.175 --> 00:19:06.233 You can then get things that are mutual collusion and delusion if you've got something off with you and you're not taking it to therapy because a lot of people won't a lot of men, won't, a lot of men won't. 00:19:06.233 --> 00:19:09.942 You know they will keep their defence mechanisms or serve them very well until they die. 00:19:09.942 --> 00:19:11.124 Go on the internet. 00:19:11.124 --> 00:19:14.134 They'll file something to support it, like these. 00:19:15.036 --> 00:19:19.704 You know killings, cults, political situation. 00:19:19.704 --> 00:19:28.633 We know with governments around the world what Twitter has done in terms of power, the major currencies we have in life money, power. 00:19:28.633 --> 00:19:35.196 And then another currency is the emotional and empathic connection, the connections you make with people by being empathic. 00:19:35.196 --> 00:19:36.259 That's also a currency. 00:19:36.259 --> 00:19:46.676 But what's happening is empathy is going out the way and you're finding people to collude with a delusion or a dysfunction that normalises it. 00:19:46.676 --> 00:19:55.542 And now we've got this at the highest level of governmental, strategic, intercontinental control. 00:19:55.542 --> 00:20:32.135 Sometimes employment can be about bullying and humiliation because someone is dependent on it, and if you let your inner self out at a time when you can go on a computer and talk to people, that's a currency that people who are narcissistic, people who are controlling, can take that emotional empathy currency, turn it and either use it against you or create a group or an organisation whereby you've created another, altered reality, let alone, having you've created another altered reality, let alone having to deal with the altered reality that you grew up with with your parents. 00:20:32.135 --> 00:20:36.676 You know what Young people people come on the phone. 00:20:36.730 --> 00:20:38.738 They we need our parents most in our 20s. 00:20:38.738 --> 00:20:41.817 Oh, their parents can't help them because they're in their 40s or 50s. 00:20:41.817 --> 00:20:46.076 They're on like 42, 47, their second divorce, knowing who they are. 00:20:46.076 --> 00:20:47.851 So they go on the internet. 00:20:47.851 --> 00:20:51.037 So you're even further from home. 00:20:53.020 --> 00:20:57.518 If you don't grow up in a loving household, you don't see a loving relationship, you don't see it how that is normal. 00:20:57.518 --> 00:20:58.259 You can't be it. 00:20:58.259 --> 00:21:01.298 And then you come in to be something else and then you find something else to be. 00:21:01.298 --> 00:21:12.685 Everyone is just trying to get home and the internet, social media, kind of distorts that or creates a false sense of security or false sense of power like why does someone need to be in power? 00:21:12.685 --> 00:21:16.520 Look at our politicians

high, visible politicians. 00:21:16.520 --> 00:21:19.911 Everyone is trying to be somebody for somebody else. 00:21:19.911 --> 00:21:21.557 That's the key. 00:21:21.557 --> 00:21:29.137 That's that's what I think aid media and social media does takes you further away from your nervous system, from health, from a sense of freedom, comfort. 00:21:29.137 --> 00:21:37.710 You're in support because it gives a greater external focus of evaluation, and my work is all about internal focus of evaluation. 00:21:37.710 --> 00:21:38.513 What do you feel? 00:21:38.513 --> 00:21:39.037 What do you think? 00:21:39.037 --> 00:21:39.598 What do you know? 00:21:39.598 --> 00:21:40.604 How do you feel secure? 00:21:40.604 --> 00:21:43.314 How can you say actually no, I'm not doing that anymore. 00:21:43.314 --> 00:21:45.298 Disoobey with grace. 00:21:45.298 --> 00:21:46.923 More to little adventures. 00:21:46.923 --> 00:21:50.559 Everyone is trying to get home Nice. 00:21:52.250 --> 00:21:53.978 Going back to the kind of mind-body connection thing. 00:21:53.978 --> 00:21:56.459 So you've been working with functional medicine practitioners for a while. 00:21:56.459 --> 00:22:16.782 Can you think of any particular examples where you know your approach has really helped somebody restore that mind-body connection and really got headway and improvements in their health because you were able to tackle that mind-body connection, that missing piece of the puzzle that perhaps people working physically had perhaps missed. 00:22:16.782 --> 00:22:19.674 Any particular things that come to mind with the work that you've done? 00:22:20.116 --> 00:22:22.244 yeah, I think it's been really important. 00:22:22.244 --> 00:22:37.662 You know when you start off with a practice, or whether it's surgery, plastic surgery, functional medicine, whatever it is, you, you, you don't necessarily choose uh, what set of patients or demographics come to you at a certain time. 00:22:37.662 --> 00:22:54.212 It sort of comes, comes about through the process and, um, I know between us one of those particular subset of patients has been dementia and Alzheimer's patients and you said about coming, things have come together that have really released us At that point. 00:22:54.212 --> 00:23:03.220 What I found is there's been a real stock taking in the process, like there's something bugging them. 00:23:03.220 --> 00:23:13.642 They don't know what it is and you know the end stage of dementia usually ends up an accelerated process of approaching end of life. 00:23:16.651 --> 00:23:30.201 You've gone and worked biologically with the biological building blocks on cellular biomechanical level, I guess, and I've had a lot of lawyers, cellular biomechanical level, I guess. 00:23:30.201 --> 00:23:51.782 I've had a lot of lawyers, people that have been in very verbally combative, confrontational situations from any field of life actually, but particularly where people have lived quite a combative, defensive life and there's something not quite right, where they can't get the hang on, they can't communicate, with problems with their relationship, the partner's suddenly alone, losing someone. 00:23:51.782 --> 00:23:56.869 The partners often come on as well, the fact it involves the whole family dementia care in psychotherapy. 00:23:56.869 --> 00:24:04.874 But for the person with the disease, with the degeneration, they want to do a stop take quite urgently. 00:24:04.874 --> 00:24:07.673 It's like what is bothering them they can't put their finger on. 00:24:07.673 --> 00:24:12.744 So it the opportunity to revisit, clear up memories. 00:24:12.744 --> 00:24:15.029 Um, while they still have. 00:24:15.029 --> 00:24:21.771 It suddenly becomes urgent because at that point it's become it's like almost too late to do anything about it. 00:24:21.771 --> 00:24:23.857 You suddenly get a realization. 00:24:25.541 --> 00:24:38.242 Clearing that by creating a greater redundancy, either through your work in functional medicine and me, with giving them a clarity in their stop-taking, has allowed them I know your question was how do they change their life? 00:24:38.242 --> 00:24:47.097 But it's enabled them which has been, I found, very affecting to die peaceably, to sort out something, to clear whatever it was, was. 00:24:47.097 --> 00:24:51.980 And it's a bit like having, because suddenly you become unguarded, suddenly all the closets and rooms of the mind. 00:24:51.980 --> 00:25:00.676 There isn't that self-censorship or containment anymore, because there isn't the integrity, either structural integrity or emotional protection, and it all. 00:25:00.676 --> 00:25:27.902 It kind of all spills out and people don't know what to do with it and they're in pain, you know, and because there's the unguardedness, clearing that up in psychotherapy, I feel, allows people, has we've seen with the families has allowed a last minute, 11th hour stop date to come to peace with things, to die at peace, and I think that has been the most life-changing thing that I've seen in terms of their specific peace of mind, because all we want is the truth. 00:25:27.902 --> 00:25:29.253 There's peace of mind in that. 00:25:29.253 --> 00:25:30.979 It can't be any greater or lesser than it is. 00:25:30.979 --> 00:25:57.779 It is what it is and they've been able to find a peace of mind or truth that either was a contributory factor leading up to the dementia obviously there's genetic things at play and to be able to sort out things with their family so that they die peacefully and well by letting go, and that really has been a life-improving quality for the very precious last sections of life. 00:25:58.049 --> 00:25:59.958 People that die in purgatory are people. 00:25:59.958 --> 00:26:01.797 When they get there, they realize what they've done. 00:26:01.797 --> 00:26:03.174 It's too late to do anything about it. 00:26:03.174 --> 00:26:05.863 If you've done everything you've sorted up in that closing end

chapter, you followed your heart. 00:26:05.863 --> 00:26:06.286 You did's too late to do anything about it. 00:26:06.286 --> 00:26:09.358 You know if you've done everything you've sorted up in that closing end chapter, you followed your heart. 00:26:09.358 --> 00:26:10.500 You did what you need to do. 00:26:10.500 --> 00:26:11.530 You don't let go. 00:26:11.530 --> 00:26:13.215 If you die tomorrow, you would be at peace. 00:26:13.215 --> 00:26:29.586 You did what you need to do, you followed your heart and that for me, that had been the most life-changing experience of my experience with functional medicine and psychotherapy, not only for the individual involved but for their family, because that is identity, a loss of identity. 00:26:29.586 --> 00:26:35.178 But you really realize how much it affects everyone else and normally you don't know when you're going to die. 00:26:35.178 --> 00:26:46.738 But in that point it's given us the opportunity to clean up and provide clarity, to die well yeah, not enough is said about quality of death, but you make a really, really important point. 00:26:47.529 --> 00:26:52.278 What about working with functional medicine practitioners, because obviously the approach is probably very different. 00:26:52.278 --> 00:26:55.278 You're working on a particular dimension, they're working on a dimension. 00:26:55.278 --> 00:26:57.554 Do you have any particular challenges with working with? 00:26:58.536 --> 00:26:59.719 functional medicine practitioners. 00:27:00.138 --> 00:27:00.519 Yeah. 00:27:01.481 --> 00:27:01.942 And how do you? 00:27:02.002 --> 00:27:02.503 overcome them. 00:27:03.890 --> 00:27:04.890 With functional medical establishment and how do you overcome them? 00:27:04.890 --> 00:27:06.093 Functional medical establishment? 00:27:06.093 --> 00:27:08.220 Well, I don't know. 00:27:08.220 --> 00:27:16.419 I think the reason we got together is because conventional medicine sometimes is like what does it do? 00:27:16.419 --> 00:27:17.602 It treats illness. 00:27:17.602 --> 00:27:24.538 It treats you've already fallen down, you already haven't been getting what you needed. 00:27:24.538 --> 00:27:29.017 Fallen down, you already haven't been getting what you needed. 00:27:29.017 --> 00:27:34.778 And it gives you crutches but it doesn't prepare the, doesn't prepare the body or the legs, because you keep on doing what you've done, you keep on getting what you've always got. 00:27:34.778 --> 00:27:40.859 Um, come on, people describe, describe sleeping pills. 00:27:40.859 --> 00:27:45.544 Okay, you sleep for two nights, two weeks, you know, by treating symptoms, not really weeks. 00:27:45.544 --> 00:27:46.569 You know by treating the symptom. 00:27:46.569 --> 00:27:48.979 It's not really addressing why you're not sleeping. 00:27:52.270 --> 00:27:54.239 I deal with the felt sense and empowering people. 00:27:54.239 --> 00:27:58.276 You know, if people stutter in the right place, they don't want to put junk in their mouth.

00:27:58.276 --> 00:28:03.698 If they're not stressed, they don't want to reach the food to get those chemicals. 00:28:03.698 --> 00:28:23.811 Life is stressing them, so it influences how they go to the relationships to get the chemicals they need, or how they go to food or how they go to their job for identity, that awareness, um, my relationship with conventional medicine, what you're talking about is, yes, that is too late. 00:28:23.811 --> 00:28:26.614 You know what I like when meeting you was. 00:28:26.614 --> 00:28:31.615 You know you're testing for genetic blicks, genetic markers that are potentially going to be vulnerabilities. 00:28:31.615 --> 00:28:39.380 In the same way, I draw attention to regard your felt sense to provide the balance where you don't end up getting sick because you're in control of it. 00:28:56.609 --> 00:29:02.423 Anyone's medical degree you told me this whereas there's no such thing as medical fact, only medical opinion. 00:29:02.423 --> 00:29:10.932 Any medical opinion, anyone's medical degree, is valid in treating stuff. 00:29:10.932 --> 00:29:20.582 But also what's equally valid is it doesn't make up for the 20, 30 years experience you have of being you in your body, with your psychological and genetic makeup, and what your body knows. 00:29:20.582 --> 00:29:30.844 You know, and it's to create that awareness through functional medicine and psychology and emotions and role, identity. 00:29:30.844 --> 00:29:40.538 Being in your column of operation, which is the strongest place you can be, through leaving lanterns to illuminate the natural landscape, you look at biological markers. 00:29:41.549 --> 00:29:50.199 The two are inextricably linked the emotion, the awareness, how the pressure people put on themselves drives morphology. 00:29:50.199 --> 00:29:54.424 Your morphology drives your mental and the sociological connections. 00:29:54.424 --> 00:30:06.675 An awareness of these things that you do between us brings us the power of health and autonomy where, if we stick in our column, you know we can operate at the limits we can go outside of it, but that's the strongest place we can be. 00:30:06.675 --> 00:30:09.739 Then we take responsibility for our own health. 00:30:09.739 --> 00:30:26.121 Conventional medicine is an A&E situation, with a car crash often of society and an unawareness of the mind-body connection, and we are creating awareness of that and giving it back to the patient. 00:30:26.121 --> 00:30:36.428 As I said, the biggest activator for longevity and health, the amount of quality emotional and social connection you have in your life, your primary being for yourself. 00:30:36.428 --> 00:30:40.153 That's a body awareness level or an emotional one. 00:30:43.741 --> 00:30:44.262 Fascinating. 00:30:44.262 --> 00:30:46.857 I don't know if you've seen this in your practice. 00:30:46.857 --> 00:30:48.035 I'm certainly seeing a lot of it. 00:30:48.035 --> 00:30:53.656 So anxiety and overwhelm seem to be on the

rise and I'm seeing it kind of physical manifestations of it. 00:30:53.656 --> 00:30:56.935 I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm guessing you're seeing the effects on the psyche. 00:30:56.935 --> 00:31:00.577 But what can people do to help themselves? 00:31:00.577 --> 00:31:08.098 I'm going to see if we can get some kind of little helpful tips for people out there who are watching, who may be in this sort of space and want to do some self-help. 00:31:08.098 --> 00:31:18.238 Is there anything that you suggest recommend do with your patients that's very effective from anxiety and overwhelm in this very kind of anxiety provoking world that we're in? 00:31:20.041 --> 00:31:22.213 Yeah, I mean again, this comes back to that thing about. 00:31:22.213 --> 00:31:26.523 I always come back to the felt sense and people being an external focus of evaluation. 00:31:26.523 --> 00:31:29.009 You know could have, would have, should have conditions of worth. 00:31:29.009 --> 00:31:32.075 I come back to this organism thing about. 00:31:32.075 --> 00:31:51.570 You know it's the quality of the connections we have, not the amount of them, and you have to be very aware of what you're letting into yourself, like you know, in relationships, um, because it is like opening a door to a street and you're letting all these things sit in with you. 00:31:51.570 --> 00:31:54.319 You know emotion overrides logic. 00:31:54.319 --> 00:32:01.810 Logic seems a logical thing to do but sometimes if you haven't got the emotion or the confidence or the well-being, or it doesn't so you can't carry through the logical thing. 00:32:01.871 --> 00:32:04.415 That job, that opportunity, this is what overwhelms people. 00:32:04.415 --> 00:32:07.761 You know it's not worth doing, it's too stressful. 00:32:07.761 --> 00:32:10.112 I know what you work with is. 00:32:10.112 --> 00:32:12.739 I'm all talking about talking around the felt sense there. 00:32:12.739 --> 00:32:16.234 You talk about the gut as well, which I believe you know the gut is the second brain. 00:32:16.234 --> 00:32:18.359 75 of immunity is in the gut. 00:32:19.162 --> 00:32:23.634 So in terms of helping people with overload, it's and everyone has a different key. 00:32:23.634 --> 00:32:33.685 It's really people's own compass, like their own emotional navigational landmarks, to go where the heels are, the healing places, the healing people. 00:32:33.685 --> 00:32:37.090 Grounding exercises, geographic, you know. 00:32:37.090 --> 00:32:40.615 If you can't get out of your mind or your body, you're overwhelmed physically. 00:32:40.615 --> 00:32:42.858 Move, you're overwhelmed physically move. 00:32:42.858 --> 00:32:46.104 Opening up geographical landscapes can open up emotional ones. 00:32:46.104 --> 00:32:55.682 Opening up social, broadening your social and emotional horizons can open up other pathways and way to cope with the overwhelm. 00:32:55.682 --> 00:33:00.012 It's not that the stress gets any smaller or the pain

or whatever the overwhelm is floating, it can obliterate you. 00:33:00.012 --> 00:33:05.521 It's just that you grow bigger around it so that it seems smaller. 00:33:05.521 --> 00:33:12.202 So you know, sometimes the best way to help yourself is to help other people. 00:33:12.202 --> 00:33:20.653 But overwhelm, stress, comes from the narrowing down of your process and realizing I'm not good enough, I can't come, I'm supposed to be doing that. 00:33:20.693 --> 00:33:26.865 We get into this tunnelled vision, separation, whatever you can do, naughty little adventures. 00:33:26.865 --> 00:33:29.656 I always have a moment of that. 00:33:29.656 --> 00:33:38.741 That might be just staying on the train one stop longer and going for a walk, disobeying with grace. 00:33:38.741 --> 00:33:42.997 We explore that to a huge extent and that means different things to different people. 00:33:42.997 --> 00:33:46.981 These might sound hokey concepts, but you really have to reclaim space. 00:33:46.981 --> 00:33:48.090 All the doors are shut. 00:33:48.090 --> 00:33:50.778 How can you open the windows? 00:33:50.778 --> 00:33:55.976 Sometimes you just do things better from having a complete break from something, from doing nothing. 00:33:55.976 --> 00:34:00.998 You know, the more you concentrate something, people try to grip onto stuff in their life and you can't be. 00:34:00.998 --> 00:34:08.197 You can hold it, but you have to hold it gently and if you're not happy, you won't have a career anyway. 00:34:08.197 --> 00:34:11.871 You cannot be better in your role than you are personally. 00:34:11.911 --> 00:34:12.474 In real life. 00:34:12.474 --> 00:34:14.985 It's all about seeing the world in terms of energy. 00:34:14.985 --> 00:34:17.414 You've got stuff coming out in different areas. 00:34:17.414 --> 00:34:18.898 You are looking around to plug into. 00:34:18.898 --> 00:34:21.431 What is it that you are plugging into consciously? 00:34:21.431 --> 00:34:26.000 Okay, therapy, go to therapy and get permission. 00:34:26.199 --> 00:34:31.405 Try and make the unconscious conscious and like you can choose to have a diet from negative food. 00:34:31.405 --> 00:34:33.628 If you go to a buffet, I'm not going to have that food. 00:34:33.628 --> 00:34:47.177 You can have a diet from negative thoughts and you can go to places where you're expanded so your nervous system relaxes either a distraction from something that you need to be looking at or to replace something that's not there. 00:34:47.177 --> 00:34:55.016 But you might be wrong, you might get things wrong, but you'll never not be truthful. 00:34:55.016 --> 00:34:57.994 You've got to own your emotions. 00:34:57.994 --> 00:34:59.699 I am humiliated, I am feeling. 00:34:59.699 --> 00:35:11.041 You've got to really be aware of that, not suppress, because anything you suppress pops up at the worst time at the least convenient space, and you might make mistakes, but your intention will never not be good. 00:35:11.041 --> 00:35:23.260 So if you're connecting to yourself on that level, it means you can connect to others in that way, which means you'll always be okay, because you've got to keep this quality of connection. 00:35:23.630 --> 00:35:25.958 Overwhelm is disconnection from things you naturally need. 00:35:25.958 --> 00:35:30.797 Widen your empathic envelope. 00:35:30.797 --> 00:35:33.177 I am humiliated, I'm angry. 00:35:33.177 --> 00:35:34.353 Now this is coming into the room. 00:35:34.353 --> 00:35:35.818 I'm wondering what's going on for you. 00:35:35.818 --> 00:35:40.219 Dialogue with whatever's overwhelming you as a personal place or job. 00:35:40.219 --> 00:35:41.576 Dialogue keeps things safe. 00:35:41.576 --> 00:35:45.697 And you know, be honest, we've all got things. 00:35:45.697 --> 00:35:48.014 We all have uglies. 00:35:48.014 --> 00:35:53.315 Easier, if you're overwhelmed, to bring them into the room than to suppress them and ignore them. 00:35:53.315 --> 00:35:55.757 You know, sit down with the monster behind the wardrobe. 00:35:55.757 --> 00:35:59.157 Anything that you actually see and address is going to be less frightening than that. 00:35:59.157 --> 00:36:02.516 But you just keep trying to wait and you don't see and you're not looking at it. 00:36:02.516 --> 00:36:09.201 So if you're over, well, work with your senses, see, taste, touch, mind. 00:36:09.201 --> 00:36:13.269 You know where can you go to put yourself. 00:36:13.269 --> 00:36:16.626 Is it a sauna, spa, massage, connection bath with your lover, with a friend? 00:36:16.626 --> 00:36:21.489 You know, time spent in company's therapy to get out of whatever you're in physically, psychologically and emotionally. 00:36:21.489 --> 00:36:27.436 Be honest, put what's on the inside out and say I'm not doing it anymore. 00:36:27.717 --> 00:36:35.465 I'm not doing it anymore what do you think about um nature and spending time outdoors in terms of um, you know, helping mental health? 00:36:35.846 --> 00:36:38.980 well, I just had this in my last session that someone said about nature. 00:36:38.980 --> 00:36:44.880 I said the thing is life's very performative, like the reason people are calming in nature and it's grounded is because it's completely non-performative. 00:36:44.880 --> 00:36:45.793 People are just being. 00:36:45.793 --> 00:36:47.920 You know dogs and children are very immediate. 00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:48.672 You're in nature. 00:36:48.672 --> 00:36:49.697 It gives you a sense. 00:36:49.697 --> 00:36:52.297 Again, this is a chemical that comes from purpose. 00:36:52.297 --> 00:36:57.961 Well, I'd expand that One of the chemicals you need is a sense of being a part of something that's larger than you, that's growing. 00:36:57.961 --> 00:37:01.175 Nature is the ultimate thing of that. 00:37:01.175 --> 00:37:03.460 You know it gives you a sense. 00:37:03.740 --> 00:37:11.219 Camping, something I love to do, you know I'm always going off to a corner of the field because it's this

being. 00:37:11.219 --> 00:37:20.217 You know it directly accesses your pathways into being a human being, not a human doing, because that's how the natural world is. 00:37:20.217 --> 00:37:25.432 You know a tree doesn't think I'm going to grow my branch, this area and then I'm going to do this. 00:37:25.432 --> 00:37:28.711 You know you just give it the right ingredients of space, light, soil. 00:37:28.711 --> 00:37:29.815 You know things just happen. 00:37:29.815 --> 00:37:34.753 You know it's like you were never meant to be like this, overwhelmed and stressed, not who you really are. 00:37:34.753 --> 00:37:39.291 Given the right conditions, human beings naturally want to achieve their full potential. 00:37:39.291 --> 00:37:45.751 So you know, physiologically, biologically, you know nature is a model for following your blueprint. 00:37:45.751 --> 00:37:48.300 You know your original genetic coding. 00:37:48.300 --> 00:37:51.208 You link to it again that thing. 00:37:51.208 --> 00:37:52.271 It's like standing in the sun. 00:37:52.271 --> 00:37:53.835 You know when you're in it, you know when you're not. 00:37:54.137 --> 00:37:56.431 Most people do know if they go for a walk along the beach. 00:37:56.431 --> 00:38:02.413 They have negative ions, they have a transference of power from the ocean, from the light, the sunlight. 00:38:02.413 --> 00:38:08.543 You know winter's terrible for everyone because they're going in, they're not being out. 00:38:08.543 --> 00:38:14.641 But also it's a time when you are constrained to heal, to sleep, to recuperate, to hibernate. 00:38:14.641 --> 00:38:17.954 It closes things down Nature. 00:38:17.954 --> 00:38:19.532 There's an ending when the sun goes down. 00:38:19.532 --> 00:38:20.771 That's it you said yourself. 00:38:20.771 --> 00:38:23.617 We are completely messed up because of the invention of the. 00:38:23.617 --> 00:38:25.179 What was it? 00:38:25.179 --> 00:38:25.740 You said Andrew. 00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:26.262 The light bulb. 00:38:26.262 --> 00:38:31.396 The light bulb Because we are organisms. 00:38:31.396 --> 00:38:36.253 We're organisms Because we were designed to be asleep when it's dark and up when it's light, and the light bulb changed everything. 00:38:36.253 --> 00:38:41.664 That's the thing, yeah. 00:38:41.664 --> 00:38:44.818 So what do you think the future of mental health looks like? 00:38:44.818 --> 00:38:52.717 As we become better at integrating, you know, functional medicine, medicine, physical stuff with um psychological approaches, where do you think we're going? 00:38:52.717 --> 00:38:53.900 What does it look like for you? 00:38:55.092 --> 00:38:57.536 unfortunately, we live in a world that's really, really connected. 00:38:57.536 --> 00:39:02.052 Um, you know, social media's changed politics. 00:39:02.052 --> 00:39:03.255 It's changed world order. 00:39:03.255 --> 00:39:05.240 It's changed, uh, how we exist. 00:39:05.240 --> 00:39:12.219 So mental health has got worse. 00:39:12.219

--> 00:39:14.342 It's worse than it was in. 00:39:14.342 --> 00:39:16.644 The food's got worse since the 40s. 00:39:16.644 --> 00:39:18.672 All the nutrients have been sucked out the soil. 00:39:18.672 --> 00:39:28.974 You know we're getting bigger populace, we're getting more and more intense, we're getting more and more connected in toxic groupthink, collective unconsciousness. 00:39:28.974 --> 00:39:33.898 Mental health has been a massive growth industry. 00:39:33.898 --> 00:39:36.177 People have since when did I start praying? 00:39:36.177 --> 00:39:38.338 Probably since about 2014. 00:39:38.338 --> 00:39:42.199 We're in a worse position now than we were 10 years ago. 00:39:42.199 --> 00:39:45.253 We're in a worse position now than we were 10 years ago. 00:39:45.275 --> 00:39:46.856 What do you see at the world? 00:39:46.856 --> 00:39:58.068 That being a macrocosm of the microcosm that we live in, like our tiny massive stories. 00:39:58.068 --> 00:40:04.177 The more people plug into this, I see mental health getting potential to get much worse. 00:40:04.177 --> 00:40:06.818 But it's also, you know we talk about conditions. 00:40:06.818 --> 00:40:08.737 It's like an evolutionary process. 00:40:08.737 --> 00:40:12.557 There are newer and older countries in the world. 00:40:12.557 --> 00:40:18.876 You know People are going through this evolutionary process and we're not very evolved, are we? 00:40:18.876 --> 00:40:21.717 You know we've got worse. 00:40:23.090 --> 00:40:29.141 If you look at the world now, it's worse people having to work harder. 00:40:29.141 --> 00:40:32.708 There's more threat, economic, this greater load of connection. 00:40:32.708 --> 00:40:34.958 Emails are supposed to free us up and give us more time. 00:40:34.958 --> 00:40:49.860 They actually rob time from us and it's getting more and more mobile and a and ai this generation, the young people that I'm coming up their challenge is going to be AI, because they need to decipher what is real, what is a human connection? 00:40:49.860 --> 00:40:55.744 Getting further away, how can they decipher that? 00:40:55.744 --> 00:40:57.007 So we're getting more and more lost. 00:40:57.027 --> 00:41:05.184 I mean, I don't want to be negative, but it's a reflection of the lack of mental health and school is all on the wrong curriculum. 00:41:05.184 --> 00:41:12.840 At school, you know you're not taught about economic well-being, who are you really, so that you don't get into narcissistic relationships. 00:41:12.840 --> 00:41:20.001 We've all been in rubbish relationships Because we were in no situation or job or that awful situation because we didn't know who we were. 00:41:20.001 --> 00:41:32.259 You know you're not taught about what are you, what's your core, what's your relating patterns, because you spend more time with your job than you do with your lover, mother, brother, sister and everyone else. 00:41:32.259 --> 00:41:33.713 I think there isn't. 00:41:33.713 --> 00:41:52.940 On the

optimistic side now I've done the negative there is an increasing awareness of mental health, so hopefully that can be brought in to counteract all the bad things, because sometimes it takes something really nasty to happen, for people to sit up and take notice, and I think that's what will happen in mental health and the world at large. 00:41:53.909 --> 00:41:58.422 Thank you, as we're coming to the end and want to end on a kind of a positive note. 00:41:58.422 --> 00:42:14.876 If you have any sort of top, maybe your top three tips for mental health self-care that either maybe you do or that you ask your patients to do as part of their kind of homework, or just to kind of yes, ok, I'll say in the three lines I've talked a lot. 00:42:14.916 --> 00:42:19.994 That's sort of some of the things I would say have a naughty little adventure, something that's just for you, that works on your senses. 00:42:19.994 --> 00:42:21.018 Disobey with grace. 00:42:21.018 --> 00:42:22.561 Sorry, I'm not doing that for someone. 00:42:22.561 --> 00:42:30.280 What you're going, what you you going to do, and sometimes the best way to hear help is to help other people. 00:42:30.280 --> 00:42:31.063 We're all in this together. 00:42:31.063 --> 00:42:37.199 That, as I've said, the most important social and emotional part that gives you health, freedom, comfort, joy and support is your quality of connection to others. 00:42:37.199 --> 00:42:59.512 Go for a walk, go and have a conversation with that old person in the village in the middle of france, because somewhere out there there's an animal, a child, a place, a person, a square situation, somewhere where you're going to be seen and heard, somewhere that's waiting to have a conversation with you and to be seen and heard. 00:42:59.512 --> 00:43:04.202 It's just very, very therapeutic in itself wonderful. 00:43:04.242 --> 00:43:06.472 What a great note to end on um, nicholas. 00:43:06.472 --> 00:43:09.119 Thank you so much for your time um on this podcast, um. 00:43:09.119 --> 00:43:15.652 For anybody that would be like to reach out, get in touch, perhaps would like to have a consultation with you, how can people get hold of you? 00:43:16.894 --> 00:43:21.043 uh, you can google nicholas alexander, psychotherapy, harley street. 00:43:21.043 --> 00:43:24.309 You, alexander, psychotherapy, harley Street. 00:43:24.309 --> 00:43:28.204 You can email me, whatsapp me. 00:43:28.204 --> 00:43:32.547 Yeah, there's contact details, email and contacts on the website. 00:43:32.547 --> 00:43:35.681 Someone have a conversation with you or any therapist you go to. 00:43:35.681 --> 00:43:36.527 It doesn't have to be me. 00:43:36.527 --> 00:43:40.003 I would say try a number of therapists. 00:43:40.003 --> 00:43:47.067 I went through seven when I was training because I didn't feel seen and heard that this was doing for me and yeah, is that thing and that felt sense. 00:43:47.067 --> 00:43:48.833 You'll get different people from different sources. 00:43:48.833 --> 00:44:01.039 Allow yourself to go whatever you need to do to get your closure, but yeah, I'm always happy to hear from anyone, either to see myself or signpost them to someone else that I think might be able to help them better than I can wonderful. 00:44:01.159 --> 00:44:03.856 Okay, we'll put your bio up on the podcast information. 00:44:03.856 --> 00:44:05.652 Thank you very much for your time this evening. 00:44:05.652 --> 00:44:06.454 Really appreciate it. 00:44:07.336 --> 00:44:07.918 Thank you, andrew. 00:44:07.918 --> 00:44:09.041 It's a pleasure to talk to you. 00:44:09.041 --> 00:44:10.954 I hope I will get to work with you soon. 00:44:10.954 --> 00:44:11.755 Thank you, bye, bye.