The Proud Psychologist
podcast

Hello everyone, today we’re looking at the different types of fulfilling and meaningful relationships that asexual people enjoy. This is an important topic to explore because there are some incredibly pervasive ideas around what close and important human relationships entail. Before we get started, let’s make sure we’re using some key terms here in the same way. Asexuality is the name we give to the experience of having little or no sexual attraction or desire. Asexual people, asexuals or aces are the people who identify with asexuality. Because it’s important to have words to talk about all human experiences, we also have allosexuality which is the name given to having the experience of being sexually attracted to other people and desiring to do sexual things with them. This may be a new term for some people listening. Allosexual people, allosexuals or allos are the people who identify with allosexuality. There’s a lot of nuance once we dig into the spectrum of orientations and experiences between asexuality and allosexuality and this is often referred to as the asexual spectrum or the ace spectrum - aspec for short. We aren’t going to be delving into that today, but it’s important to be aware of the fact that it isn’t black and white and that actually there’s a lot of nuance in how people experience sexual attraction and desire. 

Now, while we’re getting clear on terminology, it’s important to get at least a little familiar with the philosophy of relationship anarchy (RA for short). This is basically an approach to relationships which decides to deliberately buck the trend and go against the societal norms or expectations which state how relationships should look and operate, which get priority etc. RA allows - well, actually it encourages - people to be actively involved in customising their relationships. There are no automatic givens that all relationships of a certain nature are characterised by when it comes to RA. It is down to two or more people to agree what their connection will include based on their own specific needs, desires, commitments, availability etc. Another aspect of RA is the delineation of sexual and romantic connections. This basically means that when approaching things from an RA perspective, sexual and romantic connections are not automatically seen as more important and given more priority than platonic connections. I suspect you can already see the relevance of RA to asexual people’s relationships. For the purposes of this podcast episode, establishing this is enough for now. But if you would like to learn more then I encourage you to look online as there are some great resources out there.

Some of you may be wondering why we need to explore the different types of relationships a particular group in the LGBTQ+ community such as asexuals might have. The answer is quite straightforward. By talking about the different ways relationships can look, operate and be structured we are doing a few things. We are normalising the fact that there isn’t one way for people to have deep, meaningful connections, we are also tackling unhelpful attitudes head on and bringing awareness to options that people might not have considered possible. This all has a positive impact on ace people as well as others in the community such as aromantic and multi-gender attracted people (includes bisexuals, pansexuals, omnisexuals and polysexuals). It has positive impacts on heterosexuals too. Developing a more inclusive, expansive and open attitude to how people can structure their relationships literally benefits us all. Something to keep in mind as we proceed is that most of the following options are not mutually exclusive. Obviously you can’t have a romantic non-romantic relationship, but with the exception of direct opposites, the rest can be seen as a variety of options at a pick ‘n’ mix stand.

With that said, shall we start with romantic relationships? These are sometimes dismissed by allos as an option for ace people because there is a particularly insidious notion that romantic relationships require a sexual component with sexual attraction, desire and flirting being seen as needed in the dating phase. Romance, however, is a distinct category from that of sex and many ace people actively want and enjoy romance - irrespective of their interest in or desire for sex. They may have a strong romantic attraction to someone and be driven to give and receive romance with them. These types of relationships can be very rewarding for those that want it. There can be a real sense of frustration when trying to date as an ace person because of that pervasive idea about the requirement of sex, sexual attraction/desire and sexually fuelled flirting in dating and romance. For some ace people it can lead to not finding people to date in the first place or to dates not progressing to romantic relationships. Reasons for this may be connected to the different experiences of sexual attraction/desire or they may be connected to other things. Regardless, asexuals can have a trickier time of it in the dating world than allos. 

With that said, asexuals may also have non-romantic relationships and they may be sexual, kinky, vanilla, ethically/consensually non-monogamous or monogamous. These connections can resemble friendships or companionships, but they may also be something else that doesn’t so neatly fit into society’s preconceived ideas of what human relationships are. Relationship anarchy principles are very aligned with having important non-romantic connections because of the way it actively opposes amatonormativity - the prioritisation and normalisation of pursuing romance and romantic relationships. When looking through the lens of relationship anarchy, non-romantic relationships are not automatically given lower priority than romantic ones. We are free to decide for ourselves how much time and energy we want to invest in each of our connections with others, regardless of what others or society as a whole would have us do. 

Sexual relationships are also sometimes dismissed by allosexuals as an option for asexuals. The unspoken assumption is that asexual people are incapable of having sexual relationships because of their experience of little or no sexual attraction/desire. And if you were to look at some of the online asexual spaces, you may get the same impression there too. Not all aces are sex-repulsed and these tend to be some of the loudest voices in online spaces, in my experience. There’s good reason for this because sex-repulsed aces have a harder time existing within and moving through our sex obsessed world. They are not the only type of ace though and it’s important to recognise the experiences of sex-neutral and sex-favourable aces as well. Some of these, though not all, will be happy having sexual relationships and may actively search for one. Some of the reasons sex-neutral or sex-favourable aces may have a sexual relationship are:

• Enjoying the physical act 

• Enjoying providing satisfaction to and/or a demonstration of love for their partner 

• Having children 

• Scratching an itch (ie satisfy libido)

• Engaging in a sexual kink

There’s plenty of variety in the type of connection that an ace person can or will want to have sex. For some it needs to be in the context of a romantic relationship, others simply need a strong enough emotional bond regardless of whether romance is involved or not and others find it best when there’s little emotional connection. 

From what’s been said already, it probably feels obvious to say that ace people can have non-sexual relationships. These relationships may be romantic or non-romantic. From the outside, they may look a lot like celibacy. But the reality is very different. Where celibacy is a conscious decision not to act on sexual attraction or desire, when asexual people have non-sexual relationships it is typically because they’re acknowledging they have no interest in being sexual in the relationship. They may masturbate while not wanting to engage in sexual activity with others. Sex-repulsed and sex-neutral aces tend to be the ones in these types of human connections. Relationship anarchy principles explicitly make space for non-sexual relationships being important to us in a similar way that they make space for non-romantic ones. Allonormativity is the prioritisation of and normalisation of the pursuit for sexual relationships and relationship anarchy directly opposes it. People who live in alignment with these principles, whether monogamous or non-monogamous, are free to decide for themselves how much time, energy and importance they have for specific non-sexual connections. Sexual connections do not automatically get more time, energy and personal importance over non-sexual ones for relationship anarchists.

There’s a significant type of non-sexual, non-romantic relationship ace people may have and it’s known as a queer platonic relationship or QPR. There is a deeper commitment to each other in a QPR than, for example, a close friendship. This commitment is typically closer to that between romantic partners. Here, it seems to me that the word queer is a descriptor for the subverting of what society tells us close human relationships are. Through so clearly rejecting the ideas of amatonormativity and allonormativity which give an automatic priority to romance and sex, respectively, there is no requirement for any of the people involved in a QPR to be of any particular gender(s). It’s important to have a name for QPRs because, as with so much in our world, we need to have language to apply to them so we can understand and discuss them. These types of relationships are more well-known in the asexual, aromantic, polyamorous/ethically non-monogamous and relationship anarchy communities.

As has been referred to multiple times so far, asexual people can have fulfilling experiences in ethically/consensually non-monogamous relationships including polyamorous ones. There are so many ways of having ENM/CNM relationships ranging from monogamish to polyamory, which is the practice of or ability to have multiple loving relationships at the same time. Some asexuals engage in forms of ENM/CNM not because they want to have additional connections themselves, but to alleviate the pressure they may feel to perform sexually in a relationship with an allosexual person by changing the dynamics to enable the allo person to get their sexual needs met. This is only ever successful if the ace partner is freely consenting and has not been pressured or coerced into it. The fact that people can structure their relationships however best works for them and the people that are important to them means that it can be liberating and affirming for the asexuals who are interested in being non-monogamous. Some ace people can find ENM/CNM and poly communities focus on and give priority to romantic and sexual connections. But when there’s overlap with relationship anarchy or a less formal drive to address power imbalances, privilege and systems of oppression, ENM/CNM and poly networks can include all manner of human connections - not just those that are romantic and/or sexual. Since ENM/CNM and polyamory are ways of structuring relationships, they can be sexual, non-sexual, romantic, non-romantic, QPRs, kinky or vanilla.

Now, of course, not all aces are happy with a non-monogamous lifestyle and that’s totally valid too. Monogamy is not a dirty word and some asexual people find they thrive in monogamous relationships. Some people will find it easier to only date other asexual people, while other asexuals are happy to date allos. Mixed orientation relationships between allosexual people and asexual people can face struggles in terms of different sexual needs but they can also be very harmonious. The deciding factor here is, like in non-monogamous relationships, whether both people can happily agree on what their relationship will and won’t contain and what they are and aren’t going to do together. Relationship anarchy is a philosophy and can go well with monogamous relationship structures. A monogamous relationship may be sexual, non-sexual, romantic, non-romantic, a QPR, kinky or vanilla.

I’ve referenced the possibility of aces having kinky relationships multiple times so far. The world of kink is varied and colourful and it is also subject to misconceptions. A couple of these misconceptions are that ace people aren’t kinky and that kink is strictly sexual in nature. There are actually a lot of aces who are kinky and they may engage in sexual kinks even if they don’t have vanilla sex. Some aces keep their kink firmly non-sexual too and there are so many ways to do that. Kinky connections can be sexual, non-sexual, romantic, non-romantic, monogamous or non-monogamous.

We need to talk about vanilla relationships too because not all asexual people are kinky and even those who are may not engage solely in kinky relationships. Vanilla just means non-kinky in this context - mainstream. Plenty of aces enjoy vanilla connections with others and these can be sexual, nonsexual, romantic, non-romantic, monogamous or non-monogamous.

Thank you for sticking with me for this overview of the different forms of relationships that asexual people enjoy. As you can see, there’s no one size fits all approach and asexuals, as a demographic, are as varied as the allosexual majority. Insight like this enriches our understanding of the world and other people in it which is so valuable. It’s valuable in helping to make the world better by building our awareness of and normalising the different ways people experience life. 

It is my hope that this has been an affirming episode for any asexuals listening. I know that I would have loved to have asexuality be normalised and discussed openly when I was younger. Being ace is so totally valid and welcomed - here at least.   

If you haven’t seen it already, please check out my Asexuality 101 article on my website - you’ll find the link in the episode description!

Until next time, take it easy!

Goals. Everyone talks about them. Every year people set New Year’s Resolutions and each year it can seem like it’s expected that we will too. The people who achieve something life changing from a New Year’s Resolution are the minority though. If you regularly go to the gym or a fitness class, you will have seen the influx of people in January and the fact that it peters out after a few months. The thing with goals is that, no matter how much we may want to achieve them, we often find it a real challenge to stick to them. Sometimes we even find it difficult to get started! This podcast episode has been one of those for me - incredibly difficult to start and seemingly impossible to continue! Sometimes it’s obvious what the problem is - like when you set a goal to run a 10K but you hate running - and other times it can be more obscure - like when I sit down to work on this episode because I love working with goals and they are so important to coaching as a whole but find myself procrastinating at each opportunity. 

You may be very aware of the centrality of goals, goal setting and working towards goals in coaching already. Equally, you might not be that familiar with this so we’re going to look at it a bit before getting into the meat of today’s topic. One of the core aspects of coaching is that people identify (either on their own or with their coach) what they want to achieve and then with the support of the coach they identify the steps they need to take to start moving them closer to achieving their goal. Coaches provide some accountability to the process of taking those steps so if they start procrastinating or encounter other blocks, the coach is there to help them work out what’s going on and how to work around or overcome the blocks. We can have goals in any area of our lives so coaches like me are used to working with people across multiple aspects of their lives. There are also coaches who focus on specific things like sports coaches and executive/business coaches. We all work with goals. Sometimes the people I work with have very clear goals from the outset, other times they can become clearer as we work together. I don’t subscribe to any one size fits all approach to goal setting and it’s my impression so far that most of the people I am currently working with wouldn’t benefit from some of the really heavily structured ways we can set goals.

I want to be extremely clear right now that I do not encourage the use of SMART goals. I don’t like them, I haven’t seen SMART actually work for anyone and I won’t take anyone through that process. Goals and goal setting with me is not like the SMART goal process you might know from work! Aside from taking a different approach to the SMART one, I won’t tell anyone what goals to have. Any that get set are ones that the people I work with want to set for themselves. If there’s a hint or suggestion that someone else is pushing for them to set a particular goal, I will ask some questions to make sure it is what they want for themselves too - it’s not just been pushed on them. 

With that, I’ve started touching upon what we need in order to achieve a goal and that’s that we need to be motivated to do it for ourselves. I see this plain as day when it comes to the array of books I have dotted about the place. If someone were to ask me to tidy them up, I have much less ‘get up and go’ than if I’ve looked around and said to myself “Right, I have finished with these, at least for today, so I’ll put them back in the bookcase”. As a teenager, and even as a uni student, the tidiness of my bedroom was another great example - encourage me to tidy it and my motivation will be much less than if that same idea was internally generated! Maybe you have a relatable experience here too. I am big on finding, respecting and acting from a place of personal autonomy so I always want the people I work with to be in charge of their goals for that reason. The fact that it’s easier to motivate ourselves when we’ve set that goal ourselves fits really nicely with this focus on autonomy and I think it’s brilliant. 

So, we have the importance and impact of exercising our autonomy when it comes to goals. What else do we need in order to achieve what we set out to? The next one I want to talk about is the belief that we have the power to make the change or changes we have set for ourselves. So, when I set myself the goal of creating this podcast episode I needed to believe that I had the power to make it happen. This can also be seen in terms of feeling like whether we can achieve the goal is something we can control. I had the belief that I could create this partly because I’ve done a few podcast episodes before but also because I know the topic really well and it’s something I engage with on a daily basis. Psychologists refer to this as having an internal locus of control. When we believe we have the ability to control whether we achieve a goal or not, we tend to be more persistent in our attempts and more likely to find a way to overcome or work around obstacles. We typically don’t put much stock in the concept of luck as a determining factor in our success or failure when we have an internal locus of control because we can see and value the things we did or didn’t do that affected the outcome. Quite often we don’t have everything that is required to achieve our goal so we need to believe that we can access the resources needed. This can involve things such as consulting books, websites, journals, podcasts, documentaries and how-to videos, borrowing or buying materials/equipment, seeking guidance or assistance from others and paying someone to help get you closer to achieving your goal. 

This all sounds great so far, doesn’t it? And yet if it were this straightforward, we’d not have a need for coaches, accountability buddies etc. Most, if not all of us, have encountered obstacles and setbacks when pursuing a goal. Sometimes we know how to get around the issue like when you are mowing the lawn but your lawn mower breaks down part way through the job. Other times we can be left scratching our heads wondering why we have hit a wall and other times we can be feeling a lot of pessimism and doubt as to whether we actually can achieve this thing. 

I love the depiction of encountering setbacks in the pursuit of a goal that we see in the Disney film Queen of Katwe. For those who haven’t seen it or haven’t seen it recently, the main character Phiona discovers chess and sets herself the goal of becoming a grand master. In order to achieve this, she needs to accrue a certain number or percentage of wins at tournament level. She wins her game in her first tournament between various schools in the region but, because she and her peers come from a disadvantaged background compared to the others, she doubts whether she deserved the win and even questions if her opponent let her win. Her family’s financial hardship is really highlighted when she returns home and her brother needs hospital treatment after being hit by a motorbike but they can’t afford the medical bills or the rent on their home. The chess coach tries to encourage her to keep going with her chess, but she doesn’t feel like the goal of becoming a grand master is realistic for someone with her background anymore and she challenges him on this. It all looks very hopeless for her. The coach shares with her that he has been in a desperate place before but that he’s glad he kept going because he’s been able to experience a lot of good as well. It seems that his words land well enough with Phiona that, with a bit of time, she became willing to play chess again with her peers. With time and more stability in her life again, Phiona does start to actively pursue her goal again and invests time and energy into improving her game.
The whole film is based on real life people and events to the point where they show the real people standing smiling with the actors who depicted them at the end - just before the credits. I really do think this is a wonderful example of how setbacks and obstacles can be legitimate and real with things beyond your control, yet you can also work around them or overcome them. With things such as poverty, classism, heterosexism, monosexism, ableism, racisim, transphobia, sexism etc, there can sometimes be little you can do about the individual obstacle or setback. And I get that that’s frustrating and the prime breeding ground for despondency. It can be exhausting having to put more work in just to achieve your goals than people with a more privileged experience. And I’m not here to tell you to suck it up, pull your socks up and just get on with it. As we see with Phiona, sometimes we need to re-center, look after ourselves, prioritise other things for a bit and get some stability back before we can find our way back to achieving our goals. And that’s OK. It’s OK to say “The system is rigged against me in this instance and I need to pause so I can recuperate some energy before I can think about going after that goal again.”

When obstacles or setbacks are more personal, like with me and this podcast episode, sometimes we still need to engage in self care before getting back in the saddle again. It can be necessary. Personally, I find that to be a bit of a dangerous trap because it’s easy for me to convince myself that deprioritising it in favour of other needed things is not only sensible, but responsible and desirable. Even when I’m blatantly just procrastinating! Does that sound familiar? In cases like this, having a supportive person who holds you to account for your progress or lack thereof can be invaluable. Sometimes that’s all it needs. Someone there expecting you to do something and make some progress. 

Sometimes you can feel like you’re powerless in the face of whatever obstacle or setback you’ve encountered. It’s times like this that, whatever the problem, you might find changing the way you approach it to be helpful. In the book The Power of TED, you can find a way to do this. I’ll include the book details in the episode description. Before I go further I want to be clear, this is not an appropriate tool if the problem you’re facing is a manipulative and/or abusive person. Anyway, in The Power of TED, we are presented with a way of escaping the dreaded drama triangle which keeps us stuck in patterns of feeling powerless and frustrated. When we are pursuing a goal, encounter a setback and are in the dreaded drama triangle, it can feel like everything/everyone/someone/something is conspiring against you and it doesn’t matter what you do, you’ll never be able to get it because of the force behind the setback. The empowerment dynamic shows how you can flip that script you’re following and start approaching things from a place of curiosity and openness to see obstacles and setbacks as challenges you can learn from. I’m not saying this is easy. But the book does brilliantly break it down into easy to understand steps, stages and language. The advice to view setbacks, problems and obstacles as challenges and learning opportunities is often shared but without someone taking the time to lay it out there that this is how you can make the shift, it’s next to useless. So, if you have struggled to translate this piece of advice into your own life, I highly recommend getting a copy of The Power of TED* The Empowerment Dynamic. I am not affiliated with David Emerald or anyone involved with this book, this is not a promo piece, just a recommendation as I haven’t seen the empowerment dynamic talked about a huge amount online. Maybe I’ll write about it on my website…

I feel like we’ve talked about a lot here and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel with my own challenging experience working to achieve my goal of creating this podcast episode as we’re now at the summary/review stage. We need to bring certain attitudes, intentions and beliefs to setting goals in order to optimise the likelihood of success. These include things like being self-motivated, aiming for what we want so we can move towards it, believing that we can make it happen somehow, recognising when to pause and focus on looking after ourselves, having supportive people around us and being able to treat setbacks, obstacles or problems as opportunities to learn from so we can increase the probability of succeeding. We also need to recognise when things like systemic structures, institutions, societal attitudes, abusive/manipulative people etc are making things harder for us so we can respond appropriately.

I hope this has been helpful and I look forward to sharing the next episode with you.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Proud Psychologist. I had planned to do this next episode on goals and what’s required of us to achieve the goals we set ourselves. But you know when something just keeps cropping up around you? Well, I’ve been having a lot of that lately and it’s an important conversation topic. So, I’ve pushed the goals podcast episode aside for the time being in order to focus on this today. The discussion point is: can people who are on the multi-attraction spectrum ever be in a straight, gay or lesbian relationship? 

I appreciate that language around relationships, sexuality and gender is baked into our society and that most people generally want to go through life without hurting others. Discussions like this can elicit strong emotions because they highlight that some of the language we’ve adopted in order to be inclusive is falling short of our intention and that can leave us feeling attacked and defensive. It is my sincerest hope that you will be able to notice when this happens, allow yourself to feel uncomfortable and uncertain, and that you will be able to take some positives from this episode.

This discussion does largely hinge on language so let’s make sure the question is as clear as possible. When I use the term multi-attraction spectrum, it’s to cover all orientations that are characterised by attraction to more than one gender or where gender is not deemed to be an important basis for attraction. This includes bisexuality, pansexuality, omnisexuality, polysexuality…you get the idea. It’s often shortened to mspec so that’s what I’ll use going forward. And people often refer to a relationship between, who they perceive to be, a man and a woman as a straight relationship. Equally, they refer to relationships between, again who they perceive to be, two women as a lesbian relationship and when it involves people they perceive to be men as a gay relationship. I have more recently come across people labelling relationships as queer if there’s two people of the same gender or at least one of them is non-binary. So we’re going to be looking at what language is really the most appropriate and accurate when one or more of the people involved are mspec and the implications of the differing viewpoints. Finally, those who are attracted to people of one gender only are described as being monosexual - this is inclusive of gay men, lesbian women and heterosexual/straight people. There’s a whole discussion we can have on the terms heterosexual and straight but let’s stay on topic here with whether mspec people can have gay, lesbian or straight relationships!

I come to this discussion as someone who is very involved in the topic personally and as an observer because I see it playing out in the lives of the people I work with and others around me. Ever since I knew I was bisexual, I have not described any of my relationships as straight or lesbian. Considering that I knew before I started dating in any serious sense, that means that I've never used either of those terms for my relationships - though other people certainly have! It just never felt right to label myself that way. I was young when I discovered my sexuality and I did become aware of the wider social and political landscape in which I and others who are also bisexual existed fairly early on too. Maybe this also impacted the kind of language I felt comfortable with through the awareness of how different life can be socially and politically for mspec people compared to monosexual people. Interestingly the mspec people I see who have described their relationships in terms of gay, lesbian or straight tend to be those who are more familiar with viewing their mspec identity in terms of what they’re doing with whom - the very observable side of sexuality. When we see sexuality through the lens of ‘what I do and who I do it with’, we are using behaviour as the defining characteristic. It’s a viewpoint very much along the lines of the Kinsey scale where sexuality was, I believe, first defined as a spectrum and finding a person’s place on the spectrum was dictated by their sexual experience with men and women over a certain time period. I can see the appeal of this type of categorisation because there’s some security in it. For the straight majority, they get to stay safe in the knowledge that their lives and worldview can remain intact. For the gay men and lesbian women, there’s validation of their experiences too. Mspec people, however, are barely acknowledged to exist in their own right. The Kinsey scale doesn’t actually name any orientation other than homosexual and heterosexual - the middle part, also the largest part, only names how much someone is either homosexual or heterosexual. Words like “predominantly”, “incidentally” and “equally” occupy the middle part of the scale and at no point is a third sexual orientation named. This is probably for ease of the researchers because they were ascribing people to a place on the scale rather than allowing self-identification and I think it would have been far more problematic at the time (in the late 1940s) to create a new label and then tell people that they are this new label. However, the implication of this type of approach to thinking about and labelling sexual orientation based on observable behaviour in 2024 is not helpful for anyone. 

When we lean on what can be observed as the way to discern gay and lesbian from straight, we are dismissing any alternative from those three. All mspec identities and orientations are immediately erased from the social consciousness when we do this. This kind of erasure is insidious in our monosexual society. An example being when having legal marriage equality is seen as having legal gay marriage. The focus is on gays and lesbians being able to marry and not as also obtaining the legal ability for mspec people to marry each other regardless of gender. Further, we don't hear people saying “oh yes, so-and-so is in a bisexual relationship with this person” because that's not what our monosexual society tells us what monogamous relationships are. Our society, with it’s monosexual lens, denies the existence and validity of mspec relationships because it’s not immediately observable that either or both of the people involved are mspec. Even when mspec people have multiple relationships at the same point in their life, their individual relationships will be framed by some as straight, gay or lesbian depending on the genders or perceived genders of those involved. When an mspec person is saying to me “I'm in a straight relationship with this person and a gay/lesbian relationship with that person”, it's clear that they have internalised the way our monosexual-dominant society views relationships. They may be OK with it themselves, likely with no awareness of how it harms others when they are also labelled as such, or they may be suffering because of it. When I can see that they are torn up inside over the incongruence between their identity and the label they have assigned to their relationship, I can’t help but feel that pain too. 

Such erasure of mspec identities is harmful because it's part of the systemic denigration of mspec orientations that, by their nature, run counter to our very monosexual society. When people are hurting, confused and suffering from having their relationships seen, by themselves and/or by others, as gay, lesbian or straight when they are actually mspec, it's a real deep hurt. Assigning descriptor labels such as gay, lesbian and straight to other people’s relationships without obtaining their point of view on it first is damaging because that’s how we end up in this mess of mspec people’s identities being dismissed, erased and the subsequent hurt. They can't always say why it hurts, but self awareness is a matter of degrees and sometimes discerning why is just a bit out of reach for them at the time. Others can very clearly understand what is hurting and why - the dismissal of a part of who they are and the mislabelling of them and their relationships as gay, lesbian or straight is not trivial. We have to fight to be seen and to have our identities taken seriously in other ways so when faced with invalidating language applied by others to our relationships, it is yet another fight to be seen and taken seriously. Some people don't have the spoons to challenge invalidating language like “gay, lesbian or straight relationship” every time it comes up and others can struggle to process their feelings quickly enough so that they can challenge it in the moment. And all of that is valid. I do challenge it when it happens because it costs me less to do that than leave it unchallenged.

When I was having this kind of discussion recently, it became evident that part of what stings about these assumptions is that they also assign gender depending on whether a person is perceived to be a man or a woman. I am agender but I am not androgynous and people do read me as a woman which plays a huge role in whether someone is labelling my relationships as gay, lesbian or straight. So, there’s erasure of two aspects of my identity going on when such labels are applied to any relationships I’m in. This has implications far beyond me. Many mspec non-binary or trans people who get misgendered will likely have experienced this dismissal or erasure of multiple aspects of their identity too. The harm caused may not be intentional, but it is real.

One response I heard recently when discussing this topic is “Why does it need saying? Why can’t people just say “relationship”?” and I completely agree. The person sharing this perspective experiences hurt feelings from having relationships mislabelled as lesbian or straight but rarely is able to challenge such mislabelling in the moment. She wants to be able to say something when it happens and was earnest in it not being necessary to add any qualifiers or descriptors to the label of “relationship”. I understand that some people, typically monosexuals, feel such qualifiers or descriptors are helpful and validating either in casual conversation or in campaigning for things like equal marriage rights. The impact on mspec people is huge though. Whether someone is putting in a lot of energy into ensuring that they only enter into relationships which are less likely to be mislabelled in a way that is too painful for them, or whether they are loudly correcting each mislabelling and the associated erasure of their identity, or whether they are stunned into silence each time their relationships are mislabelled - it doesn’t matter. There is harm being done in each scenario. The language being used is inflicting that harm and it is trivial to just refer to all relationships as “relationships”. If there is a legitimate need, like both people want their sexuality explicitly acknowledged and honoured when describing the relationship, there are alternatives like “mixed orientation relationship” and “queer relationship”. Ultimately what a relationship is referred to as should, outside of the simple acknowledgement of “relationship”, only be defined and set by the people in it.. We can be more deliberate and inclusive with our language to the benefit of many, many people without actually expending much more effort. 

If you only take one thing away from this episode, I hope it is this: referring to another person’s relationship simply as a relationship is going to validate and be welcomed by them regardless of whether they are straight, gay, lesbian or on the multi-attraction spectrum like bisexuals and pansexuals. We can drop the need to add descriptors like “gay, lesbian or straight” to the simple label of “relationship” with ease to be more inclusive of ourselves as well as others.

Thank you for listening! And I look forward to you joining me for the next episode on goals!

Hello everyone, today we’re going to be looking at the Disney Pixar film Coco to see what mental health gems it contains. I’ve noticed that sitting down to analyse both Turning Red and now Coco has resulted in me becoming a big fan of them both where my previous opinion was just “yeah, it’s a good film but nothing to write home about”. This change in opinion may be because I’m a psychology and mental health geek (totally unsurprising, I know) but I would like to think it’s really because of a greater appreciation from peeling back the layers and seeing the films in a fresh light. I will be diversifying the types of films I base episodes on in the future since Disney Pixar are not the only ones producing films suitable for this podcast - it’s an exciting prospect! 

Before we continue, there will be spoilers in this so if you haven’t seen the film and would like to before listening to this, now is a good time to stop.

Coco is a film about a boy called Miguel, I’m not sure how old he is but I’d estimate about 13, and the film takes place on dia de los muertos, the day of the dead. For those of us who are unfamiliar with dia de los muertos, Miguel and his grandma explain how they celebrate their dead relatives and the beliefs behind the holiday. Mexicans believe that on dia de los muertos and the associated days people who have died can pass over to the land of the livng to be reunited with their family. They need a bit of help in this though and this is where the importance of putting photos of those family members up on the ofrenda (an altar with their favourite food etc as offerings) comes into play. Without the photos and offerings, they can’t be reunited with their family.

Miguel loves his family. There’s just one problem. He also loves music. It’s his passion in life and is the source of much joy for him. And this is a problem because his family has a total ban on music. We see his grandma extending this ban to someone playing an instrument outside their front door even. None of them speak of music, unless it’s to enforce this ban. The reason for such a severe anti-music stance reaches back to the days of Miguel’s great great grandma, Mama Imelda, and great great grandad when he left to play music on tour and never came back. Mama Imelda had to look after their young daughter, Coco (who we get introduced to as Mama Coco), all on her own. From that moment on, music was forbidden in the family and each generation has maintained this. Until we get to Miguel, at least. Miguel desperately wants to be able to play his guitar with the support of his family and he doesn’t want to have to suppress this part of himself that loves music.

I think all the viewers of this film can appreciate how difficult the abandonment Mama Imelda and young Coco went through is. It’s also easy to see how the blame for their situation landed on music as a whole. I want to dig a bit deeper here though. Mama Imelda definitely experienced a re-experiencing of this abandonment when faced with reminders of it and she avoided these reminders to an extreme degree through enacting the ban on talking about music or playing musical instruments, removing her husband’s photo from the ofrenda (a very significant and substantial measure to take, in my opinion) and refusing to speak of him. She carried overwhelming feelings connected to the abandonment and lost interest in something that she previously enjoyed after it. We can infer that she was always on guard (aka hypervigilant) against exposure to these reminders because of the effort put into avoiding them. I’m comfortable in saying that Mama Imelda displayed multiple signs of post traumatic stress disorder. Before I go on, this is all my perception of her experience based on the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, what we get shown in the film and my limited knowledge of her culture - for all I know, it may be standard to remove photos from an ofrenda after a significant falling out. I am confident about the rest, however. And regardless of whether she would or wouldn’t qualify as suffering from PTSD as our medical model of health and illness defines it, she definitely experienced the abandonment as traumatic. So traumatic that she actually disowned the traumatised parts of her. Her way of getting through it was to find a new focus in looking after Coco and building a business in order to provide for her daughter.

The film Coco doesn’t hold this trauma as it’s main focus though. Mama Imelda’s unprocessed feelings and disowned traumatised parts were still very present throughout her life and Mama Coco inherited them, alongside her own trauma connected to the loss of her father. Mama Coco also disowned these unprocessed feelings so her daughter, Abuelita, inherited them. It went on like this down the generations and it’s a perfect example of how transgenerational trauma occurs and plays out. We know this is what’s happened in Miguel’s family by looking at the way Abuelita and Miguel’s mum and dad interact with each other, with him and with others. Abuelita is shown to be flying into the trauma response of fight when exposed to mentions of music or people playing music. This looks like her shouting at them, breaking instruments, slamming doors, not being open to discussion and issuing ultimatums. It’s very much her way or the highway. All of this is clearly designed to protect her from the threat posed by music and she is eloquent enough to be able to explain how music is an evil force which sows discord and breaks up families. She’s not able to critically think about the impact of forbidding her grandson from expressing himself in this authoritarian way though and that’s because in order to do so she would be required to start processing some of that transgenerational trauma which is likely just as big, heavy and scary as when the original trauma occurred. The family as a whole can be seen engaging in some of these behaviours as a collective and this is most prominent with the forceful, aggressive attitude they adopt when Miguel’s passion for music becomes evident. His mum and dad seem to exhibit the fawn trauma response of people pleasing which involves giving into others, going along to get along and avoiding conflict. They are there but they don’t stick their heads above the parapet, even when it becomes clear that their son is being targeted for his musical interest. They avoid the conflict and encourage him to do the same. 

There are 6 trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn and urgency.

The fight trauma response is demonstrated for us in Coco through the Abuelita character but it can also show up in the following ways: shaming, mocking, insulting and taunting others or ourselves as well as talking back to figures of authority. The flight trauma response is one where we feel anxious and fearful, where we want to get as far away from whatever is threatening us or stressing us out. This can be a very physical getting away from (eg leaving and avoiding the situation where you've felt unsafe and, anxious) or it can be a more mental process where the thing you're trying to get away from are distressing thoughts, feelings and even memories. If you are keeping busy, always on the go and/or are looking to always have things to do because it helps you not feel uncomfortable, anxious or panicked, then you’re likely in a flight response. This response can also have people throwing themselves into things like work and micromanaging people/situations. Fight and flight are both governed by the sympathetic branch of our nervous systems. This means that they both are marked by a faster and stronger heartbeat, faster breathing, a greater availability of energy, muscles primed for action and a slowing or stopping of the digestive system.

The freeze response still has the energy that fight and flight are characterised but here we are beginning to see the influence of the immobilisation that our dorsal vagal pathway brings. It can manifest as giving up quickly, an inability to make decisions, getting confused over what’s actually happening, being unable to get started with things and instead spending hours watching TV or scrolling through social media, shutting down and withdrawing.

The dorsal vagal immobilisation is in full effect with the flop trauma response. Here we see some of the same things as freeze minus the energy that the sympathetic states of fight and flight have. So there’s withdrawing from people, shutting down, binge watching, endless social media scrolling, an inability to make decisions, giving up quickly and confusion over what is really happening. There’s also likely to be: a physical collapse, inability to move or speak, complete emotional numbing, other forms of dissociation and/or disengaging from people and other things in life. It’s been likened to a feigned death that humans and animals both can go into when they’re unable to escape danger. All of these trauma responses can be seen in other species in the natural world.

Then we come to fawn. This trauma response has some of the energy from both the sympathetic nervous system and from the dorsal vagal pathway blended with the energy from the ventral vagal pathway which is activated when we feel safe enough. It has this blend because we’ve detected a threat which we can’t fight, get away from, freeze or flop in response to. When we engage in the fawn trauma response it’s because we have learned that we need to soothe the source of the threat if we are to survive and feel safe enough again. This is where we engage in people pleasing behaviours which put other people’s needs and feelings as being more important than our own. This is exactly what Miguel’s mum and dad try to get him to do in the film. They try to get him to soothe the source of the threat by suppressing his love of music because that will stop the conflict and make the other family members happy. The fawn response teaches us that our feelings and needs don’t matter, that saying no and speaking up for ourselves is wrong, that conflict is dangerous and that letting other people make the decisions, call the shots and set the agenda means that they will be happy without any potential for scary conflict. 

And finally we come to urgency. This is not widely spoken about but it is most definitely a trauma response. As the name indicates, this response is based in the attitude that everything needs to be done now. It’s a totally understandable thing to experience because in a traumatic moment there often isn’t time to think and we do need to act very quickly. Sometimes this sense of urgency can last beyond the end of the event and can be triggered even years down the line. 

Living with the symptoms of trauma is difficult and we don’t always get the help we might need to heal quickly. So we can end up disowning parts of ourselves which carry the trauma and the feelings associated with it. This process basically involves labelling a part of ourselves as undesirable and pushing it away. Creating that distance between ourselves and the part of ourselves which is hurting and exhibiting trauma responses means that we can carry on as normal while the trauma just sits in a dark corner of our psyche. And as we see in Coco, the impact of the trauma isn’t contained when we do this. It affects us, we just choose to stay blind to it, and it affects those around us including our family. This is how insidious unprocessed trauma can be. Coco also helps highlight how the trauma responses work together to maintain the suppression of the disowned, unprocessed feelings.

People have been talking about the transgenerational trauma representation in Encanto seemingly without stopping to consider how Coco has addressed this topic too. This is possibly because Encanto has been a big hit with the incredibly catchy songs or because it’s depiction of trauma was simpler. In Encanto, Abuela goes through the trauma of losing her husband after being displaced during a conflict and the magic candle is the symbol & provider of safety. She works hard to maintain the safety they have through control even if it means trying to silence her kids or grandkids or disowning them entirely. With Coco, we have a richer picture of the impact that interpersonal and transgenerational trauma can have. For this reason, I think Coco has a bigger place in my heart. Even if I regularly listen to Isabella’s song “What else can I do?”

We’re not done there though because it gets better yet!

Miguel is determined to play his guitar in the dia de los meurtos talent show but his guitar is broken in the conflict with his family. He has convinced himself from a faceless photo of Mama Imelda, Mama Coco and his great great grandad that this really famous singer, Ernesto de la Cruz, is his estranged relative so he breaks into de la Cruz’s resting place and “borrows” his guitar. Stealing from a dead person on the day of the dead is severe enough that Miguel finds himself removed from the land of the living - he now cannot interact with anyone who is still alive but can now see and interact with those who have died. He meets some of his relatives, including Mama Imelda, who immediately resolve to help him get back to the land of the living. He requires a blood relatives blessing to go back to the land of the living but none of them will do so and allow him to play music. Miguel sets off to find Ernesto de la Cruz believing that he will give Miguel his blessing. I won’t go into all the ins and outs of Miguel’s quest to get back to his life, this context was important to cover for what I want to discuss next. Remember all that transgenerational trauma that Miguel’s family has, with his time spent in the land of the dead, Miguel proves himself to be something of a catalyst for processing it! He rides lots of emotional waves throughout the film, to be honest, and he generally handles them well. He feels his feelings and has supportive people around him - even if there are also unsupportive ones too. On his journey, Miguel connects with Mama Imelda through music, an incredibly vulnerable moment for her. He also discovers that he was wrong about being related to Ernesto de la Cruz, finds out who his great great grandad really is and also why he never returned to Mama Imelda and Mama Coco. In possession of this knowledge and because he had listened to the hurt feelings on all sides, he was able to reunite the family in the land of the dead. They give him their blessing to go back to the land of the living and without any restrictions concerning music. Once back in the land of the living, Miguel is able to connect with Mama Coco through music as well and the ripple effects of his actions help the family as a whole.

The whole film is a depiction of trauma and transgenerational trauma including the impact a compassionate, healing figure can have on the family system as a whole. I love it, truly love it. Coco captures the emotions wonderfully and takes the whole family on a thoroughly enjoyable and affirming journey. One of the best things about this, in my opinion, is that Miguel doesn’t reunite his relatives and act as a catalyst for the healing process by couching it in terms of “I’m a kid, this is hurting me and resolving this would be better for me”, even if that’s how he started off. Over the course of the film he shows the emotional intelligence to sit back, properly listen to others pain and invest the effort into helping them ease their pain simply because they’re hurting. Well that and because they’re family. He does benefit from the healing of those rifts and the trauma, but that isn’t actually his motivation at the end and that’s special. 

We tend to think of trauma as the thing that happens to us. But it’s actually what happens within us in response to what’s happened to us. Trauma is the injury inside and when this happens within a relationship of any sort between people part of the injury is an interpersonal disconnection. Because the damage is being done in the context of interpersonal relationships, the healing needs to be done in the same context. We cannot heal this kind of wound on our own. We need compassionate, loving, reliable and dependable people. We need people who can show us that we are safe enough with them. This is why therapy is so often highlighted as necessary for people who are traumatised. Self work can get you only so far with this stuff. Healing communities and working with people like me can be very helpful along the healing journey too. Obviously Coco glosses over and simplifies some of this in order to deliver an entertaining and satisfying story. It isn’t quite as simple as the film portrays. But they do show the importance of things such as listening to rather than dismissing the feelings of traumatised people which is so valuable. 

Thank you for listening to this episode on the psychological hidden gems of Coco. I would love to hear your comments on this so please do drop me a message. If you have any film requests for me to cover in a similar way, let me know and I will check it out! Till next time, take it easy!

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Proud Psychologist. Today’s episode is looking at what we can learn from the Disney Pixar film Turning Red. This is a coming-of-age film set in Canada following a 13 year old girl as she navigates the pulls of friends and family as well as the emotional rollercoaster that is teen life. With that said, there’s plenty of stuff here that speaks to the struggles of many adults and we can learn a lot from it as adults. I won’t be running through the whole story plot but there will be spoilers so if you haven’t seen the film but might like to, consider whether to continue with this episode right now.

Before we get started, it’s been a fair while since the last episode and I apologise for that. This was always meant to be a fortnightly podcast but life got busy, as it tends to do, and I admit that my inspiration for this really dried up. The Inside Out episode proved to be popular and I am going to see if similar episodes (like this one) are also popular. So, please do let me know what you think after listening to this! I will see what frequency of episodes is sustainable and I appreciate your patience while I figure this out. With all that done, let’s get on with the episode!

Turning Red introduces us to 13 year old Meilin (most commonly referred to just as Mei) who routinely bends over backwards to please and satisfy her parents, though most notably her mum, Ming. She’s a high achiever at school and fulfils many responsibilities around the home and the family temple because it gets her praise and positive recognition from Ming. Her dad, Jin, is obviously proud of Mei as well, but it’s obvious that his support is unconditional (if muted at times when speaking up would lead to more conflict). Ming’s approval is the thing Mei really is working for. Ming clearly isn’t interested in who Mei is, what she likes and what she values which is crushing for Mei. This is characteristic of an enmeshed relationship actually. Enmeshment happens when two people have such poor boundaries with each other that one’s individuality is subsumed by the other. Only the feelings, needs, values, views, priorities and likes of one person matter in this kind of relationship. In Turning Red, Mei doesn’t get to have her own feelings, likes, needs, values etc because Ming’s take precedence. This is brilliantly demonstrated in a couple of instances - one where Mei tries to tell her mum about the band she and her friends are big fans of but Ming’s reaction is to dismiss and criticise both the band and Mei’s friends without letting Mei speak. The other example is when Ming cottons on to the fact that Mei has developed a crush on a guy. Instead of respecting her daughter as her own person with her own feelings and autonomy, Ming unleashes her fury on the guy in question at his workplace, a shop, and in doing so humiliates Mei by showing him and the rest of the people in the shop some drawings of Mei’s that depict her and this guy kissing. What Ming is doing in these instances, completely unintentionally, is to communicate to Mei that her interests, friends, feelings, actions etc are only OK if they align with Ming’s. Mei’s friends acknowledge the wonky boundaries that Mei has with her family when they say to each other “She’s so brainwashed” after being blown of, yet again, to do the daily housework. 

Teenage years are characterised by a need to differentiate from the family and, as a result of this, friends do take on more importance. This is a necessary part of human development. The trying on of different identities, fashion styles, music tastes, hobbies and other activities is all part and parcel of it. I think we all know of someone or are someone who, as an adult, still values some of the things they explored as a teenager, it’s just that the adult version has more balance with other things. Maybe they recognised that they aren’t as die hard about it as they were as a teenager. 

One of the difficult things for parents about this stage of life is that their child can completely change their views, tastes etc in ways that sit opposite those of the parents and they can feel like they don’t recognise or can’t connect with their kid anymore. Sometimes this phase is characterised by deliberate rebellion and opposition but a lot of the time it’s just them trying to find their own identity, views, tastes etc much like Mei in the film. This transition from undifferentiated child to differentiated teenager can be really tricky. When there is enmeshment between the teenager and one or both parents, as Mei finds out, it can be particularly challenging. Ming does struggle a lot with seeing Mei engaging in things that she doesn’t align with to the point of being incredibly critical and harsh about it.

In the wake of being humiliated in front of her crush and the shoppers, Mei experiences a few different emotions including anger and embarrassment. We see her cycling through these in her room before going to bed. She then wakes up the next morning as a giant red panda. Of course, she freaks out. How has this happened, what does she do now and more questions fill her head. She eventually takes some slow, deep breaths and finds that this helps her return back to her human form. However, the strong feelings of joy and relief triggered her back into the red panda form. This time, Mei uses a couple of hairbrushes to provide some soothing physical sensations as well as doing some slow, deep breathing and she is human again. She’s unlocked the key to staying human - avoid strong feelings and keep the emotional experience on an even keel. 

What Mei is experiencing here is basically emotion dysregulation and the power of being able to regulate herself. Her uncontrolled transformations into the red panda are a metaphor for experiencing states of emotion dysregulation because her emotions are so strong that she doesn’t know how to handle them. The slow, deep breathing and the self-soothing with the hairbrushes are examples of grounding techniques which we utilise to help us get to a state where we are better able to cope with what’s going on. They are emotion regulation tools. 

As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Jin and Ming both knew Mei would encounter this problem with the uncontrolled red panda transformations because it runs in the family and has been passed onto Mei from Ming and her family. Mei is frustrated that they didn’t warn her but Ming clearly has a lot of shame around her experience of her own red panda. We are drip fed info about Ming’s red panda from a few different characters throughout the film but essentially it boils down to her not being able to control it and having hurt someone. When we look at this in terms of emotion regulation, it becomes very clear that Ming isn’t skilled in emotion regulation herself, instead opting to disown and lock away the dysregulated states, and so couldn’t help Mei prepare for or learn how to do regulate her emotions, even though she wanted to do so. It’s a sad realisation to have that we can’t help a loved one with something because we aren’t able to do it ourselves. 

Turning Red doesn’t stop there though. It looks beyond self regulation and actually addresses the often overlooked co-regulation. Co-regulation is basically the name we use for times when people come together to help one or more of them achieve a state of emotion regulation. Mei experiences co-regulation for the first time with her friends. When they first find out about her red panda transformations they are very quick to accept her, regardless of whether she’s in human or red panda form. She tries to tell them to leave her alone but instead they hug her and say “we love you, Mei”, “you’re our girl, no matter what”, “yeah, panda or no panda”. There’s a few things going on here. There’s the hugging which releases oxytocin, the bonding chemical, and helps with feeling connected, supported and calmer. Hearing her friends acceptance and support of her, at a time when she’s struggling to accept herself, proves to be a powerful thing for Mei too. On top of all of that, sometimes when people are feeling dysregulated, aren’t accepting themselves and they tell others to leave them alone, that’s actually the last thing they want. It can be hugely impactful to have people show up for us like Miriam, Priya and Abby did for Mei in this scene because the unspoken message that they’ll always be there can set in without too much opposition from the conscious mind. Being accepted “panda or no panda” is a wonderfully validating thing too.

Now, I do need to put a disclaimer in here. While these are the things which worked for Mei, we’re all different and how one person responds could well differ from how others would. I know some people, for example, who can’t accept words of affirmation like that and might even sit there and argue against them. It is totally counterproductive to spend time arguing with someone about whether you really do accept them or whether you’re just saying it to make them feel better, as an example. So successful co-regulation can look different for different people. Asking someone what they need, what helps them feel supported/cared for/loved/safe and what isn’t helpful are all great for understanding how to help someone in particular how to regulate.

Mei shows us that we can use our recollections and full re-experiencing of moments which helped us tap into feelings of being safe enough, validated, accepted, loved, connected, cared for etc as ways to stay regulated when faced with strong emotions. She didn’t need to physically be with her friends in order to feel the benefits of those connections. I am hesitant to label this as either self regulation or co-regulation because neither feels quite right. The other people are key to it but in that moment, it’s the individual who is re-experiencing the moment and accessing the feelings it contains. It’s a delicious combination of the two, is maybe where I sit on this. Regardless, in this film Mei and her friends show us the journey from being intensely dysregulated, to exploring self regulation, to discovering co-regulation and then realising that regulating people and moments can be recalled to make it easier to handle things going on in the present moment. 

A lot of adults struggle with one or more aspects of this and Turning Red offers examples of things to try as well as normalising the whole process of experiencing strong, dysregulating emotions and managing them through various approaches on our own or with others.Ming hadn’t learned how to manage her emotions and instead opts to lock away the dysregulated parts of her. This is shown to be the way of coping that previous generations had adopted too and the film is careful not to disparage it. What Turning Red does do, and I fucking love, is offer up learning how to regulate your emotions as an accessible alternative. The message here is very much one of personal autonomy and the real possibility of learning how to manage your emotions if you wish to.

Speaking of personal autonomy, this is a perfect opportunity to revisit the topic of Ming and Mei’s enmeshed relationship. Joyfully, they go on a whole journey with a massive conflict when Mei stops squashing her own interests down and instead stands up to her mum. Ming does eventually hear Mei and they manage to reach a point where both are regarded and respected as autonomous individuals with their own valid feelings, experiences, views etc. It’s a very heartwarming story arc they go on to be honest and it provides a feeling of hope. Obviously a film just under 2 hours where the enmeshment isn’t the main focus is not going to be offering a realistic time frame or depiction of the work involved in turning around an enmeshed relationship. But I think it does a good job of showing that it can be done with an overview of how the journey could look. Ie it won’t be conflict free and both sides need to meet in the middle.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this so please do contact me with your comments and whether this style of episode works for you. You can find my contact details etc in the episode description. Till next time, take it easy!

Hello and welcome to the 7th episode of The Proud Psychologist. Today I have a slightly different one for you and we are going to look at what we can learn from the film Inside Out. This is a fantastic film that speaks to people of all ages and never fails to make me cry! Before we get started, there are going to be spoilers in this. If you missed it in the cinema, it is available on Disney+ as well as your usual options of DVD etc. Also, this film conflates the emotions of joy and happiness so, while they are different from each other, throughout the film and throughout this episode the two terms will be used interchangeably. OK, now that’s done, let’s get into it!

The film Inside Out is about a kid called Riley who is, I think, about 12/13 and the film starts with Riley and her parents moving house. The focus of Inside Out is on the 5 different emotions in Riley’s head: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. These are not randomly chosen emotions as they are considered the 5 universal emotions that people from all cultures can accurately recognise in others. So Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are personified as distinctive beings inside of Riley’s head where they have a control panel and they control or influence her behaviour in response to the situations Riley finds herself in. They work together to keep Riley happy and safe. In addition to this, they also are responsible for holding, storing and recalling Riley’s memories. Each memory is depicted as a glowing orb and they are each associated with an emotion. Yellow orbs are happy memories, blue are sad, green for disgust, purple for fear and red memory orbs are associated with anger. This film also introduces the concept of core memories which contribute to the main aspects of a person’s personality. They depict this by having ‘islands’ to represent each aspect/core memory. In Riley’s case, all of her core memories are happy ones and she is a bit goofy, really into hockey, does well at school and has strong bonds with her parents. The film explores the impact that moving to a different part of the country, changing schools etc has on Riley through the prism of her emotions.

Personally, I don’t like Joy from the start. She demonstrates many traits associated with toxic positivity for the majority of the film. This shows up in her thinking that it is of the utmost importance that Riley is happy all of the time. We all would prefer to feel happy over sad, angry, fearful or disgusted. But that is just not realistic. We need a range of emotions to stay safe and cannot just deny them when they come up. Joy’s insistence that happiness is the most important and most desired experience results in her dismissing or minimising the value that the other emotions hold. She tries to control and silence other emotions to the point of imposing a “good vibes only” type policy, though she does not say those words. This is evident at multiple points starting from the moment that Riley is exploring the new house and Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness are all colouring the memories being made. 

I feel for Sadness throughout the whole film. Sadness is the hero of Inside Out in my eyes. Yet she also bears the brunt of Joy’s need to enforce only happy influences on Riley more than the others. There’s one scene where they are preparing Riley for the first day at her new school and Joy is delegating jobs to all the other emotions except for Sadness. When Sadness wants to contribute, Joy draws a circle on the ground and instructs Sadness to keep all of the sad feelings inside the circle. She does this because Sadness had been changing previously happy memories into sad ones. In this scene, Joy is acknowledging the validity of Disgust in making sure Riley looks her best, Fear in ensuring Riley is prepared for the day ahead with all the potential things that could go wrong and Anger in preparing the daydreams for the day. By banishing Sadness to the circle of sadness and not allowing her out, Joy is rejecting that she could have anything of value to offer.

Things all go wrong when Sadness leaves the circle and is responsible for changing another memory from happy to sad resulting in Riley crying on her first day at school. The memory of crying at school then becomes a sad core memory. Joy freaks out because Riley now has a sad core memory rather than all happy ones. She tries to get rid of this core memory by sending it down to long term memory but Joy, Sadness and all of Riley’s other core memories end up dumped there too. Joy and Sadness need to work together more than ever now as it is a long way back to HQ and all the time that Joy is not in HQ, Riley is not able to tap into happy feelings. Joy continues to consider Sadness as a nuisance on their journey back to HQ where she still dismisses and minimises Sadness’ importance. This is all despite there being multiple points along the way that show Sadness has value. The most touching of which is when Joy fails to cheer up another character who is grieving but Sadness is able to sit with them and acknowledge their pain. It takes a long time for Joy to appreciate that Sadness is a vital part of the emotional experience. By the time that Joy does change her perspective, Sadness has internalised the toxic positivity and declares that Joy should leave her down in long term memory. Thankfully, Joy take Sadness back to HQ with her and implores Sadness to help Riley before it’s too late. Through expressing her feelings of sadness, Riley is able to reconnect with her parents. This is the moment when Riley’s first mixed emotion memory (and a core memory at that) is created characterised by both sadness and happiness.

This film is brilliant for highlighting the need to embrace all of our emotions rather than holding some up as more important than others. It is only when Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust work together that Riley is able to properly function in life. Up until that point, the internal conflict cuts her off from being able to experience her life fully - and not just because two of her emotions were not in HQ. At its very essence, this film rejects hierarchy or importance or value amongst the different emotions. Joy is no more important than Sadness who is no more valuable than Fear and so on. I also love how they depict the fact that emotions can colour memories and how they demonstrate the fact that we can hold conflicting emotions at the same time. After that first mixed emotion memory, we do get shown the HQ on a different day where there are many mixed emotion memories so they hold true to this message of we do experience more than one thing at any given moment.

One thing that this story shows us without necessarily putting language to it is that emotions come and go. They demonstrate multiple times that Riley goes through a range of emotions in the space of a minute. So the emotions can all rear their heads, be felt and subside quite quickly. This is indicative of us being separate from our emotions. Riley is still Riley whatever she is feeling. She doesn’t change just because her emotions have. There is also recognition in Inside Out that our emotions communicate things to us. This is beautifully demonstrated when they put ideas to Riley through the symbolism of lightbulbs. The general use of the control panel in HQ is the emotions communicating with Riley too, though not exclusively. Through the emotion’s use of the control panel, they tell Riley whether to laugh, cry or shout at someone etc. Her emotions don’t just float around inside of her head, they interact with her and influence her actions. This all needs some communication between the emotions and Riley. I do love how Inside Out acknowledges that good ideas can be borne out of emotions other than happiness. 

One of the deeper and more obvious messages this film contains is that denying the validity of negative emotional experiences is damaging. It cuts us off from the ability to make positive changes or adapt to things that happen to or around us. This is seen through the treatment of Sadness. When Joy and the others are denying the value Sadness, Riley is unable to process her loss, grief and sadness. This then has the knock on effect of not being able to adapt well to changes in life like starting a new school, settling into a new home and town etc because resources are busy keeping a lid on those feelings which have been deemed undesirable, unhelpful and subsequently have been dismissed. The other big life lesson portrayed in Inside Out is that there is power in acknowledging difficult or painful emotions. By taking time to do this, it makes it OK to feel those emotions, even if it can’t make it easy to do so! If we allow ourselves to feel emotions, they resolve themselves and we can move on. This point is wonderfully demonstrated with Sadness sitting with and acknowledging Bing Bong’s feelings of loss and sadness. After crying it out, Bing Bong is stands up, dusts himself off and says “I’m OK now”. If you have ever had a good ol’ cry and then, while still snivelly, spoke those words, you know how much of a release and, sometimes, a relief it can be. While this film does deal almost exclusively with the relationship between Joy and Sadness, this principle holds true for other emotions too. All of our emotions need to be felt before they can be resolved.

They did a brilliant job with Inside Out in providing an entertaining, emotional and educational film. It is oversimplified in how it portrays emotions by only using the universally recognised 5 rather than a more comprehensive character list. But this was most likely a decision made to keep the story streamlined enough for a film, let alone a Disney Pixar film. It would have been too unwieldy to include more nuanced emotions as you can quickly reach triple digits this way. This film provides a good basis for establishing a level of emotional intelligence. It introduces key points in subtle and not-so-subtle ways which makes it great for watching again and again! 

Hello and welcome to the 6th episode of The Proud Psychologist, today I’m going to be answering the question “What is emotion regulation and why is it important?”. Before we dive into today's content, I want to thank you for tuning in. Last episode was not my best as I was unwell and the day after recording, I was confirmed as having covid. It has not been the easiest couple of weeks and I am very grateful for you joining me here. I do a lot of work with clients around emotions and I realised that it is not something that I have talked much about here or on my website and socials. So let's get started here, now. Because our emotions affect everything from how we treat ourselves to our relationships with others, from our work to our hobbies and social life. 

Basically put, emotion regulation is the ability to bring your emotions back to baseline when something happens that triggers a strong emotional reaction. Strong emotional reactions may have lots of energy like anger, excitement and anxiety or they may be lacking energy like withdrawal, depression and emotional numbing. When you get angry after someone cuts you up on the motorway, your sudden emotional reaction may be fleeting on a good day or, on a bad day, it can take you a few hours to calm back down. Calming down in the face of high energy (aka high arousal) feelings is emotion regulation in action. The opposite is the goal of emotion regulation when you're experiencing low energy (aka low arousal) emotions. Wherever you are emotionally, it’s all to do with bringing your nervous system back to baseline: soothing it when in hyperarousal and stimulating energy when it is in hypoarousal. 

This kind of approach is heavily associated with PTSD because this is where we see a lot of people getting stuck emotionally. But when you look at the different things that people struggle with and I mean properly, not just at diagnosis level, you start to appreciate that knowing how to handle emotions is central to things like anxiety, depression, stress, relationship difficulties etc. Encountering stigma, prejudice, discrimination and victimisation based on sexuality or gender (yes, these are all forms of traumatic experience) also calls on us to regulate our emotions and can cause issues with regulation. When we wake up late, don’t have time to eat breakfast, rush to get to work on time and our whole day is thrown off because of the stress and anxiety, we are trying to self regulate. Offloading to friends or immersing yourself in something that you know typically helps you forget about shit are both attempts to bring your emotions and your nervous system back to baseline. So this is something that we are all trying to do or successfully doing to a greater or lesser extent every day. 

Emotion regulation is important because it enables us to function in our daily lives once people, things, events etc that have triggered an emotional reaction in us have passed. When our ability to do manage our emotions and our nervous systems is hindered, we end up getting stuck in experiences like depression, anxiety, chronic stress and with difficulties in interpersonal relationships. It’s hard to tap into a productive kind of focus and motivation if you are stuck in feelings of danger, desperation, pain, hypervigilance, desolation or hopelessness etc. 

One tool to help conceptualise emotion regulation is called the Window of Tolerance aka the Zone of Tolerance. Now, your window of tolerance represents your ability to tolerate and cope with the ups and downs of life. So things can go well or poorly and you will be able to handle it. If you miss your train into work and need to wait half an hour for the next one, this will be frustrating but manageable when you are operating from within your window of tolerance. 

It’s when something drives you out of your window of tolerance that you run into difficulty. This can be one big thing or a build up of multiple things. It could be that your window of tolerance is smaller than normal and your ability to tolerate and handle those ups and downs is compromised. You know when you spill some milk while making a tea and it’s just the straw that broke the camel’s back. You’re then stood there in tears because even making a tea is more difficult than it should be. That’s an example of being outside of your window of tolerance. 

Now, crying over spilled milk is only one way that being outside of your window of tolerance shows up. There are many different ways and they can be categorised into one of two distinct experiences. One is called hyperarousal because your nervous system is in a very activated fight/flight state. This is where experiences such as anger, rage, being on high alert, being irritable, feeling out of control, changes in your heart rate, shaking and pacing come into play. When you’re in hyperarousal, you’re more emotionally reactive and likely to find yourself in conflict with others or feeling controlled and thrown about by your emotions. The opposite of hyperarousal is that of hypoarousal where your nervous system is in a frozen, shut down state. This hypoarousal state is characterised by feelings of depression and despondency as well as zoning out, dissociating, emotional numbing and withdrawal. When we visually depict the window of tolerance, hyperarousal and hypoarousal, the window of tolerance is in the middle with hyperarousal above it and hypoarousal below it. This is to illustrate the peaks and troughs of energy and nervous system arousal. 

The size of your window of tolerance is influenced by various things and it can change from one day to the next. Stress, detecting danger or threats, illness, sleep deprivation and trauma are all examples of things which can shrink your window of tolerance. If your window of tolerance is shrunken, it takes less to send you into hyperarousal or hypoarousal. Conversely, being physically well, rested, detecting cues of safety and being connected can help expand it again. Expanding your window of tolerance typically requires help from others and it gives you a greater resilience again to the ups and downs of life. 

The Polyvagal theory created by Stephen Porges, based on the results of various studies of the human nervous system, bears striking similarities with the window of tolerance. According to the Polyvagal theory, someone in the window of tolerance is able to access their ventral vagal system which is active when they are in a state of safe social engagement. Hyperarousal is driven by the dominance of the fight/flight activation of the sympathetic nervous system. While hypoarousal is the domain of the immobilised, shut down of the dorsal vagal system. What this theory does by connecting experiences like this with changes in the nervous system is open up options for developing our ability to regulate our emotions and nervous system. There are people such as Deb Dana who are providing us with frameworks and exercises to use with clients. These all are based on the Polyvagal theory and put it into practice so people are enabled to befriend and regulate their nervous systems themselves. 

I love using both the window of tolerance and the Polyvagal theory with my clients because it provides not only a visual depiction of and confirmation that their experience is normal, but also practical ways of taking what they are learning to improve their quality of life. 

I hope this has been helpful and enjoyable. I look forward to seeing you for the next episode! 

Hello and welcome to The Proud Psychologist. This is the fifth episode and what I want to talk about today is how to cope with the shit life throws at you when you are feeling alone. Now, throughout this I will use the words alone and lonely interchangeably as I am talking about the feeling of aloneness rather than the state of being alone which can be positive and sought after, especially by introverts. 

The other week I had a stall at Reading Pride and I loved it. The atmosphere was amazing and the different people I got to chat with was fantastic! If you came over to say hello, write on the chalkboards, scan my QR code or pick up a wristband or leaflet, thank you! I sincerely hope you all enjoyed the day. I mention this because for me Pride is an absolute highlight in terms of coming together as a community to support and celebrate each other. Yet all the Pride events and public demonstrations of support in the world can still leave that deep, dark feeling of being totally alone untouched. In some cases, it can even deepen it. And feeling alone in a crowd is already a hugely isolating experience in its own right.

So, if just surrounding yourself with people won’t make things better, what can you do?

Sometimes when we are feeling lonely, even our normally loving, caring relationships and friendships can feel empty and devoid of supportive connection. In times like this, how you treat yourself matters hugely. 

First and foremost, it is important to attend to your own biological needs. This may be an overly clinical way of saying “look after your body” but the message is the same. You need to be taking steps to ensure you are sleeping well (quality is what matters here, not quantity) because your ability to think clearly, manage your emotions etc is affected by how well or poorly you sleep.

Eating proper food will also give a certain clarity to your thoughts and help you keep your emotions in check. “Proper food” is how I refer to nutritious meals and to differentiate them from snacks, sweets and chocolate. The literature is filling up with evidence that indicates mental health is benefitted when food intake is made up of more proteins, fiber, unsaturated fat and micronutrients than when it is dominated by food items high in sugar and/or saturated fat. While terms like “hangry” are acknowledging that hunger affects our emotions, they don’t quite communicate that what you eat will also have an impact.

With the way that so many of us view alcohol and drugs as a way to numb, avoid or replace negative and undesirable feelings, we need to talk about them. They are not positive ways of coping with feelings. No matter what your personal opinions are about them, they don’t bring a resolution to feelings like aloneness, loneliness, sadness, disappointment, rejection etc. At best, they just postpone having to deal with them until another time. At worst, they can amplify and add to them. Avoid using alcohol or drugs when you are struggling and instead engage in something more positive and helpful.

One of the more positive things you can do is to acquaint yourself with your feelings. This can sound like an odd thing to say so stay with me here. A lot of us go through life not really acknowledging and engaging with our feelings. When people ask us how we are, responses are often in the realm of OK, good, not bad, fine, great, awesome (if you’re American, us Brits tend not to be that enthusiastic!) and so on. I have had clients express surprise and almost amazement at the fact that there are 100 different emotions. How often do you name more than five different emotions that you’ve experienced in a week? When was the last time you sat with your emotions and actually identified them? I have recently bought a pack of Mixed Emotions cards to use with clients and the other day I was having a bit of a reaction to something so I got them out for myself. There are 96 different emotions in this pack with some of the most beautiful illustrations. Anyway, within five minutes, I had identified 11 different emotions. Would I have rattled all of them off if someone had just asked me how I felt? No! It’s not how we work in conversational situations. But having something that made it easy to just quietly be with myself and my emotions gave me the freedom and permission to go beyond that. As I reflected on the cards I’d picked out, I was able to trace it all back to a cause and then the way forward became clear. This is the beauty of taking time to properly be with our emotions, it can give us insight into our situation and even give us a direction forward.

It sucks when you’re feeling alone and you’re struggling with that. Remember that you can offer yourself comfort. It won’t take away or make up for the fact that you are feeling so alone. It will help you manage though. Whether it’s in the form of a soft, cuddly toy, a favourite hoodie, a warm blanket or something else, you can show compassion and offer comfort to yourself. We all learn to self soothe to greater or lesser extents as young children so you may recognise these as things you already engage in sometimes.

I recently wrote an article on my website about looking after your mental health while using social media and one of the pointers was to take a short break from regular daily use. When we are feeling alone and isolated, social media can feel like a double edged sword. You are able to communicate with people at the drop of a hat but you also get to see everyone else’s happy highlights. It is OK to say to yourself “I’m going to take a break from social media this week because it wouldn’t be helpful right now”. In fact, this kind of proactive approach is a perfect example of self care. Instead of scrolling on social media for hours, reach out to a partner, friend or family member. The direct contact can feel more connective. Especially if opening up to them about feeling alone, disconnected and lonely is met with genuine care. 

I remember back to when I volunteered in a day centre and one of the service users who lived alone explained to me that they always have the radio or TV on because then it felt to them that they had some kind of company. Now, I’m not about to suggest that having background chatter will resolve all feelings of aloneness and loneliness. What I will suggest is that watching your favourite shows or films that feature characters you are emotionally connected to can help. For me, this means that episodes of House MD starring Hugh Laurie get repeated a lot as I find it comforting to metaphorically spend time with the characters. Other people have said to me that rewatching things helps with anxiety because they know what will happen and there’s no guesswork or nasty surprises. There are plenty of other reasons why rewatching show and films can be good for you when you’re struggling and I will not attempt to list them all here. In a similar vein, however, rereading books or revisiting audio books can provide some emotional connection to others (even if they are fictional) when it is otherwise lacking in our lives.

Sometimes you may recognise that you are feeling alone and disconnected from others because you are dissociating. In times like this, it can be helpful to get back into your body through intentional movement. Yoga, dance, swimming and even just going for a stroll can help get your mind and body reunited again. It is less important to do anything that will work up a sweat and more important for your movements to be completely intentional. A connected suggestion is to engage in meditation or mindfulness. 

I am going to wrap up today’s episode with the recommendation that you spend time with nature. This can be a wander over the park and noticing the birds singing in the trees, the flowers blooming, the leaves changing colour or even things like the sensations of the wind, sun, rain or temperature of the air. When I’ve been at my most unwell, the outside world sometimes felt too busy, too noisy etc etc. So you can use headphones, sunglasses, quieter routes etc to manage all of the sensory input while also being able to get out there and spend time with nature. Spending time with nature can also take the form of looking out the window at the garden or pottering about in it. Houseplants offer an affordable, accessible and ever-present option for contact with nature too. Obviously if you are understimulated then you can seek out busier environments to be with nature in. So why the focus on nature? Well, shortly put, it’s good for us. There’s a solid evidence base that shows we do better mentally if we can get contact with nature. Animals come under this category too so if you have pets or like animals then spending time with them can be fantastic for getting a mental health boost and feeling more connected.

Hello and welcome to the fourth episode of The Proud Psychologist podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about meditation and specifically the side of it that doesn’t get talked about much. Lots of people recommend meditation and they talk about the benefits a lot - we’ve had a guided meditation already on this podcast because I am totally behind putting your own practice in place for the benefit of your mental health. But we haven’t looked into the realities of meditation yet. 

Before we get into it, I would like to take a moment to apologise for the elongated gap between episodes. I am a person, like you, with my own challenges in life. The heat, especially at night, really affects me and I have been having to take things at a different pace over the past couple of months because of that. Self care is important and part of that is recognising when we need to temporarily scale things back. I will be resuming the fortnightly release of episodes now so every other Thursday, I’ll be here with brand new content for you!

OK, now that’s done, let’s talk about my meditation this morning.

Picture it. I sit down to do some work after buzzing around with housework and suddenly a cold panic engulfs my chest. It’s tight and full of a vibrating, restless energy. I recognise this. I’ve felt it before. It’s anxiety. Where it came from or why is still unknown to me. I tell myself to start and focus on work so that I can be productive and this might just disappear. However, I can’t focus. I can’t concentrate. 

My own meditation practice has been rather sporadic recently but something made me reach for the Plum Village app on my phone. This is my go-to for meditations, to be honest, and they have a wonderful library on there. I found the guided meditation called Embracing Negative Feelings, put my headphones on and pressed play.

Never having listened to this one before, I didn’t know what to expect but I reasoned that it’s only 20 minutes and if this didn’t help I could always turn to another. The anxiety was still gripping my chest as I followed the first half of the meditation. Then the voice in my ears was encouraging me to acknowledge and care for my anxiety. I couldn’t help it. My nose tingled and flared repeatedly. My eyes welled up. Soon a few tears were escaping out of the corners of my still closed eyes. I followed the directions given to me and continued to meet my anxiety with care and mindfulness. I continued to cry silently. 

Now, I can’t quite remember when I noticed that the anxiety was no longer there keeping me so tightly wound up, but it was a pleasant realisation. I continued with the meditation and then was able to sit down to work unimpeded. 

This perfectly highlights an aspect of meditation that I want to focus on today. Meditation and mindfulness are not shortcuts to only good feelings. The hashtag only good vibes has no relevance here. You cannot use mindfulness or meditation to bypass feeling crap. They actually require you to be present with whatever you are experiencing - including the uncomfortable or negative ones. So if you are anxious, stressed to the max, feeling low, angry, rejected or dejected, meditation and mindfulness will not numb you to those feelings or erase them. You will have to feel them and you may end up crying, wanting to lash out, give up, hide away or something while you meditate. 

I’d love to hear from you if you have experienced anything like this during meditation before!

Why do I feel it is important to talk about this?

Simply put, it doesn’t get talked about enough and people then get a skewed view of what meditation and mindfulness are as well as what they can do for you. I remember attending a the BPS Transpersonal Psychology Section’s Conference one year (that’s basically the member network within the BPS for those of us interested in the spiritual and mystical side of things) and, even in that context, most of the people I spoke with were not used to people talking about things such as crying during meditation. When you look more broadly at what the media and the general population know about meditation and mindfulness, it becomes even more obvious that these practices are widely spoken about only in terms of the positive things that people may experience. 

Meditation and mindfulness are not easy, convenient ways to sidestep the things you don’t want to feel and they are not shortcuts to the things you do want to feel. They absolutely can help you to cultivate more of the positive, uplifting feelings and they can, like in my meditation earlier, help you to process a feeling quickly. It’s just that there is often a bit of discomfort along the way. 

As Robert Frost said, “the only way out is through” and this applies to all kinds of different situations and feelings. 

When you numb out or distract from a feeling you don’t want to experience, you are essentially just freezing it in time. Nothing can change, for better or worse, if it is frozen and ignored. This is true no matter how you are choosing to numb it or distract from it. And yes, thinking that you can meditate as a way to stop feeling something and/or replace it with something you do want to feel is about as healthy and successful as hiding from it behind sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, work, constant busyness etc. 

It is only by going through the feeling, being present with it, that we can get out of it. 

I know this is not what you necessarily want to hear! Hell, it’s not what I want to be true either because it’s bloody painful at times! I have been doing this for a long time now and still trip up sometimes on wishing I could side-step some of the pain and discomfort. It is only human. But the real healing and progress is in accepting that our feelings all serve a purpose. All of them. They are there to communicate with us about our situations and circumstances. We can learn from them about our boundaries, priorities, needs and desires. How can we listen to and learn from them if we are constantly pushing them away or numbing them out? 

I will leave you to ponder that question until next time. 

Remember, new episodes will be dropping consistently on every other Thursday so subscribe and check back for the next one in two weeks!

Hello everyone to the third episode of The Proud Psychologist! Today we’re going to be looking at what stress does to you. Now, we’re all human and we all know how it feels to be stressed. But do you know what is going on in your body? 

So the stress response is also known as the fight and flight response and I know you understand that is controlled by the nervous system. Your nervous system has different parts to it and they do different things when you are experiencing stress. The central nervous system consists of your brain and spinal cord. The peripheral nervous system makes up the rest and has two distinct parts to it as well. The parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. When you are acutely stressed and in a state of fight/flight/freeze/fawn, your sympathetic nervous system (from now on referred to as SNS) has already kicked in. It stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol into your bloodstream. These in turn increase your heart rate, strengthen the contractions of your heart, dilate your blood vessels and speed up your breathing. Your muscles tense up to guard against pain and injury as well as to make a speedy get-away. Your pupils dilate so that more light can enter your eyes and you can better detect danger. This may be accompanied by changes in your vision. Your hypothalmus, a brain structure involved in your endocrine system, stimulates the pituitary gland to signal the adrenal glands to release cortisol and other glucocorticoids which convert glucose and fatty acids from your liver into energy. Your gut is connected intimately to your brain so your appetite likely changes and you can experience nausea, digestive discomfort and even being sick when stressed.

When the stressor has passed or resolved, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. It is often referred to as the rest and digest system because that’s exactly what it does. After the SNS activation in fight/flight/freeze/fawn which disrupts digestion, comes the parasympathetic rest and digest. Here, your pupils contract to their normal size and your vision changes back to normal. Your heart rate returns to normal, as does your blood pressure and the strength of your heart contractions. Your blood vessels return to their normal size. Your adrenal glands stop producing adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol. Your hypothalmus stops telling your pituitary glands to produce glucocorticoids. Your breathing goes back to normal. Your gut settles again and you can relax.

Everyone experiences this at various points in their lives. Our bodies and nervous systems are designed to handle short term or momentary stress well. It’s a very normal thing and occasional episodes of acute stress don’t appear to have a negative impact on your health.

What happens then if you are chronically stressed?

As you have seen, the nervous system has both an activation path (SNS) and a recovery/rest path (PNS). But what then happens when the stress is on-going and long term? 

Well, chronically tense muscles in your shoulders, neck and upper back can cause headaches and migraines. Tense muscles can also cause other musculoskeletal pain throughout your body, but particularly in your low back. It’s estimated that 60-70% of us in developed countries will experience low back pain at some point in our lives. When combined with a lack of physical activity in general, chronic muscle tension can promote other long term, stress related musculoskeletal problems. In fact, just having tense muscles over a long period of time can trigger reactions in the body and increase the likelihood of experiencing other stress related health problems. 

If your heart rate, levels of stress hormones and blood pressure are high over a sustained period of time, you are at increased risk of hypertension, heart attack and stroke. Some of this increased risk may come from the contribution of chronic stress in the inflammation of blood vessels, particularly arteries.

Your immune system suffers from prolonged stress too. The glucocorticoids that the adrenal glands release, after being stimulated to by the hypothalmus via the pituitary gland, play a role in regulating the immune system and reducing inflammation. Both of these are useful in times of acute stress. However, chronic stress can impair the communication between the immune system and the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Such an impairment has been linked to the development of problems with chronic fatigue, metabolic disorders like diabetes, depression and immune disorders. 

Constant activation of the sympathetic nervous system results in wear and tear on the body because of what that constant activation does to the other bodily systems. It is theorised that the constant activation of the nervous system like this leads to conditions such as fibromyalgia, a widespread and chronic pain condition which also has a range of other symptoms like cognitive difficulties.

When clients come to me and say that they want to be rid of anxiety or stress. That they just want a peaceful life. I always remind them that anxiety is a normal emotion and the stress response is adaptive too. These are innate and they are required for normal human functioning. I tell them that I can help them develop the skills to manage their emotions better and this does include shifting the scales more favourably towards the positive ones like contentment, happiness, peace and love. I even have ways to break the association between memories, experiences, items etc and emotions which can be hugely beneficial when these are interfering with your ability to go about your life and succeed in your endeavours. Ethically I could never bring myself to promise someone something like ridding them of basic emotions. Our emotions form an internal communication system and each of them serves a purpose. The film Inside Out perfectly demonstrates this and if you haven’t watched it, I thoroughly recommend you check it out.

So that was an overview of what stress does to us and I hope you enjoyed it. Remember to tune in again in two weeks for my next episode!

Hello everyone to the first ever episode of The Proud Psychologist! I’m recording this in Pride month and that in itself feels really significant. Then consider that this year, 2022, marks 50 years since the first Pride march in London and, albeit long overdue, the first involvement of the British Psychological Society (BPS) in a Pride march ever. Pride in London is on 2nd July and I will be there marching with up to 49 other BPS members! I can’t tell you how happy I was to get the confirmation that I was getting the chance to be a representative for the BPS at their first ever Pride event!! 

When I saw the BPS using the Pride colours on social media during previous years, I did question what they were doing to support the community in the bigger picture. I know you understand this sense of uncertainty and unease when big organisations adopt the flags for one month each year with little or no indication of more ongoing support. Well, this year they have definitely been standing up for and with us. They have been vocal in the discussions about the conversion therapy ban and how it needs to protect all of us, not just those of us who are cisgender. 

With this being the first episode of The Proud Psychologist, I want to ask the question “why do we need LGBTQ specific mental health spaces?” I’ve decided to start here because of the questions I get as an LGBTQ psychologist who works primarily with LGBTQ clients and because of the participation of the BPS with Pride in London this year.

Well, it is a sad and unfortunate fact that simply being LGBTQ leaves people at a greater likelihood of needing mental health support. This is being linked with things such as lived experience of stigma, prejudice and discrimination and the knock on effects that these can have as well as experiencing internalised homophobia, biphobia or transphobia and concerns over hiding parts of one’s own identity. In fact a recent study looking at the experiences of burnout in American medical students found that lesbian, gay and bisexual students were significantly more likely to get burntout than the straight students even after controlling for the presence or absence of actual mistreatment. LGBTQ people are also more likely to experience depression, anxiety along with other mental health problems. Furthermore, reported incidents of domestic abuse are higher for gay and bisexual men when compared to straight men and higher for bisexual and trans women when compared to straight women. Lesbians appeared to report at the same rate as straight women.

So, knowing all of this, it breaks my heart that even today the mainstream mental health services in the developed world are typically ill-prepared and ill-equipped to make sure that they are meeting the needs of the LGBTQ people who they come into contact with. Some of the time in the UK mainstream services it is simply a lack of education on how the experience of LGBTQ people differs to those of straight people or how this can affect why they are needing to access these services. Other times, however, the professionals use their position of authority and power to pathologise the identities and orientations of the LGBTQ people they are supposed to be supporting. This is why the legislation currently being debated in the UK Government about banning conversion therapy is so important and why I fully support the BPS having a presence at Pride in London the same year they are making such a strong stand for LGBTQ rights. Because even though there has been great progress in shifting social attitudes towards acceptance - especially among the younger generations - there are still practicing mental health professionals who will cause more harm to the LGBTQ people they come into contact with.

I had direct experience of attempts to pathologise my sexuality as a teenager and it is a point I am extremely passionate about. As a result, I didn’t speak in ways that revealed my orientation in any sessions for a great number of years. No one should have to navigate that when they are accessing mental health support. And I do feel that having openly LGBTQ coaches, therapists, psychologists etc makes it easier for anyone who is LGBTQ or is even just questioning their sexuality to access the appropriate support and guidance with significantly less stress.

Most of the mainstream services are built on a medical model which focuses purely on the presence of illnesses, diseases etc which are diagnosed through the identification of symptoms where the professionals have more power than the people they are supposed to be helping. This is not a foolproof method for diagnosing and plenty of misdiagnoses happen. It is also how some professionals will justify their pathologising of LGBTQ experiences.

Ultimately a diagnosis is just a form of shorthand for communicating difficulties someone may face in broad strokes. Much like how the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual and aromantic only give broad stroke descriptions of people and there are plenty of other, more specific identifiers that we use to describe ourselves. 

It also must be highlighted that there is a whole space between mental illness and mental health - just because you don’t have depression, anxiety, bipolar or any other kind of mental illness, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re the epitome of good mental health. Consider the physical equivalent - the absence of physical illness does not actually translate into an example of good physical health. So when we’re talking about mental health, I argue that we need to be moving away from diagnosis talk and more towards genuine sharing of this is how I feel and what I experience. 

One of the core things that is needed in these spheres is acceptance. If I am not accepting of my clients, they’re not going to open up to me and that then turns what could have been a fantastic opportunity for them to grow, heal and make amazing changes into, at best, a waste of time. When acceptance is there, we see clients grow, heal and flourish. The acceptance is what allows feelings, thoughts, beliefs and values to be brought out into the light and embraced or changed. It really is one of the main ingredients of successful therapy and successful coaching. An openly LGBTQ professional or a service that is openly supportive of the LGBTQ community is a beacon to those who need to be sure of that acceptance from the very start.

When people are allowed to be themselves, love who they love and have their experiences accepted as valid, a lot of the distress that some of these diagnoses capture is eased. This allows for people to actually address the things which are causing them issues or preventing them from improving further rather than the things that the professional believes are the cause. By opening the discussion up to include everyone with and without diagnoses, we can start moving everyone closer to that state of good mental health and away from the concept that simply not being mentally ill is good enough.

So that is why I so firmly believe that LGBTQ specific mental health spaces are required.

What do you think? Do you see the value in LGBTQ specific mental health spaces or are you leaning more towards another option? Have you had experiences of mental health services as an LGBTQ person you would like to share?

Please let me know as I love hearing from you all! Details on how to contact me are in the description :)