Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
My name is Emily and I'm a psychologist and regular guest on The Imperfects. Together with The Imperfects, I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was recorded. I acknowledge this land always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
It's summer. We love summer.
Yeah.
Don't we?
I feel tempted to sing some summer songs, but we don't have the rights for any of them.
No, that's true. Yeah. But you know what? It's summer. We recorded this in November, but we imagine we're having a ball in January.
We've got our board shorts on. We've got inflatable rings around our waist. Yep. Flamingos, sitting on flamingos. Australia's three and zip in the cricket. Well. Touch wood. Touch wood. What a comeback from Pat Cummins and hasn't Jack Weatherall been defined? Oh, I know. And good to see the bush horse back. Josh Hazelwood, that is.
I know. People said Josh Hazel wouldn't, but he did. He sure did. We're saying all this in November, so hopefully that'll come straight. These are our bonus summer episodes. That's so good. These are our summer episodes. We're having a little bit of a break.
But what we've decided to do throughout January to fill in the summer gap is to pick out some of our favourite moments from A Little More Imperfects, which is our subscriber-only show. Many of you know about this. You can subscribe through Patreon or on Apple Podcasts. It's two bonus new episodes every month for less than $10, right? Yeah. Bargain. I mean, that's incredible. Yeah, it really is.
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Chapter 2: How can receiving an ADHD diagnosis affect emotions?
And... I locked him in our garage. I closed the garage door behind and forgot to unlock the door out to the back. And my phone was calling. It was him. I was like, why is he calling? I just spoke to him two minutes ago. Yeah, he'll find his way out. And I just ignored him for a bit because I was trying to get the kids ready. I was in there for a good five minutes. Just locked in.
Yeah.
I was like, man, why are you calling me? You just spoke to me. Just come around and see me for a minute.
Yeah. He has no right to be surprised if he listens to the podcast.
Anyway, so the story you're referring to is happening in Hobart. Now, for anyone with ADHD, this is absolutely, I hope this makes you go, yep, that is something I'll do. If you don't have ADHD, this is what ADHD is like. One of my favorite things about our tour is that I get to grace different athletics tracks around Australia.
And every morning of a live show, I'll go to the local ice track and do a session. And we're in Hobart and it was early November and it was quite cold. So I decided even before leaving to go to Hobart, I will pack my running tights or my running leggings. I have this wonderful pair of Nike, wonderful, they're just great. And I packed them and got up in the morning to go and do my run.
This is in Hobart. And got all my gear on and tracksuit pants on and went, right, time to go. I went, oh, hang on a minute. Where are my tights? I could have sworn I packed my tights. I emptied my bag. I was looking everywhere. Couldn't find them. Very frustrated at myself because I just thought I'd brought them, but I couldn't find them anywhere. I went, that's okay. I've got plenty of time.
Don't get frustrated. Managed to find a place in Hobart called the Runner's Edge, I think it's called. And went in there. They had running tights and I'm a medium in every single thing I've ever bought. So grabbed myself a pair of M's. Yeah.
And how much are the M's? How much are they?
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of self-compassion in therapy?
I got another Uber out to the truck and I sat down there and I went, okay. I had my M's with me and went, hang on a minute. Let's do this. Oh, my God. My bag. Where's my bag?
Okay.
And I'd left my bag back at the runner's edge. At the shop. That's okay. I will... That's fine. That is fine. I will go back to the runner's edge and I'll get my bag.
That's fine. Radically accept this situation. Yeah. And you go... And so you get an Uber back?
Got an Uber back to... Yeah, because you didn't have a car.
You were Ubering everywhere. Yeah.
This bit is like heartbreaking, but got back to... How much is the Uber out of interest? I reckon high 20s. Okay. Yeah. I don't know exactly how high 20s. Ex or comfort? Black. No, not black. It was comfort. It was comfort.
Yeah, Josh would know about that. Josh takes comfort. Why not? Yeah, sometimes when we get to the airport and we come back from a tour, sometimes like me and the other crew will line up in a long line for an X and Josh will just jump in the short one for a comfort. Yeah, sort of a tradition. Man up my own heart.
I get it. Yeah, I'm halfway home and they're still there. It's great. The Van Comfortbergs.
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Chapter 4: How can we show up for our younger selves in therapy?
Call Uber Comfort again. Went back.
Imagine everyone at the Uber offices, they're like, he's calling another one. Look at this. He's going back to the same place he was just at.
It would be confusing for someone monitoring it. I went back, got my M's, had to explain to the people I wasn't stealing them that I just, and for some reason the guy didn't recognize me and didn't remember me. I don't know how I'd been there twice.
No, because you were nominated for Australian of the Year. Surely.
No, I didn't mean that. Because I'd been there twice already. That's just to be very clear. Excuse me, mate. I'm nominated for Australian of the Year.
Yeah, for Victoria.
I'm just going to tape these.
Yeah, I was one of the nominees for the Victorian leg of the Australian of the Year. Yeah, which I didn't end up winning.
You didn't win.
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Chapter 5: What are the benefits of top-down vs bottom-up therapy?
Anyway, things like that happen to me every single day. They do. For everyone who came to the live show, you've heard the stories. They are fascinating.
Oh, it's amazing. Every single live show, it always starts with one of these stories and they're all true and they happen to you every day. We could be doing a live show every single day and you could have some new content, which is actually, I mean, to us it's content, to you it's life.
Yeah, here's a part of my life for you all to enjoy.
Okay, well, let's get to the meat in the sandwich of the episode. So as all of you know, Dr. M comes on the podcast monthly, but last year she graced us with her presence on A Little More Imperfects, and it all started with a reflection from one of our subscribers on A Little More Imperfects.
So for people who are here just to hear Em and just to sort of sample the new Dr. Em on Little Morning Perfect, this is our subscription-only show. Yeah. We do them every fortnight. Yeah. We have a little bit of fun. Yeah. We let our hair down sometimes.
Yeah.
We have fun. And then sometimes it gets a little bit serious.
Put the hair back up. Put the hair up. Yeah. We'll probably be a bit of hair up today, I think. Yeah. My feeling is. Really? Tight bun?
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How can imagery re-scripting help in therapy?
What parts of your brain or behavior have you judged harshly in the past? How might you view them now with more compassion?
Great question.
This question was in the team mail and it was inspired by a Hughes ADHD brief episode. And this is from Mel. I spent all of my life trying to be perfect. Outwardly, I was a classic perfect student at school in the 80s and 90s. I always performed well academically, was compliant and cheerful, had a good bunch of friends and loved being active outdoors.
From a very young age, I wanted to be a vet, which slowly morphed into feeling like I was expected to be a vet because I was obviously smart enough. Internally, I could feel the wheels falling off and I didn't know why. Academically, after peaking in Year 11 with an academic award, my grades began to steadily decline.
This continued throughout Year 12 and university to the point where I had to repeat the fourth year of my VET course and did worse the second time around, resulting in being excluded from the course altogether.
I knew I hadn't studied hard enough, but managed to convince myself that I hadn't been a bad student, I just didn't want to be a vet anyway, because I found it hard dealing with the owners. Hey, becoming an outdoor educator teacher looks like it might be fun, or maybe joining the army, or hey, maybe I could just pick anything now.
Socially, I started to feel like an outsider or imposter and really buggered up some friendships over the decades because I didn't know how to deal with people. I clung to people who looked like they knew what they were doing and tried to model my behavior on them.
Deep down, I was trying to hide from the world what I already knew, that I was a shit person and not worthy of fulfilling a childhood dream or keeping good friends without doing something crappy to them. Last year, my adult daughter started the process of an ADHD autism diagnosis.
I was present for her initial appointment when the doctor asked if anyone in the family had previously been diagnosed. No, no one. No idea where this has come from. It's a mystery. I had a two-hour drive after that appointment and discovered the Imperfects episode with Janelle Booker. Hey, that's relevant to my family at the moment. I'll listen to that. I had to pull off the highway in tears.
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Chapter 7: What role does the inner critic play in our lives?
I see that all the time. And I think there's grief. There's grief in a number of different ways. So...
You know, when we get this kind of life-changing, and for some people it isn't as life-changing as it might be for others, but for some people you get this diagnosis, for example, and it opens the door to all the hardship and the acknowledgement that that little part of you was working so hard for And was really trying to do the best it could.
And so, yes, that opens you up to a huge amount of sadness and pain for that little girl or that little boy, that little child that was there. I also think it opens up to a grief about how you may have been treated. Yeah. And that can open you up to anger as well. So it's a really complex thing, actually, like our response to a new understanding of the self.
Yeah, absolutely. I feel nervous saying what I'm about to say because I've thought it and I feel like it's very taboo to say out loud. So we might end up cutting this out. I think men are smarter than women.
Just came to me.
Sorry to steal your thunder, Josh.
It's good. I have been... I have had a reaction that I really need to talk to Hugh about, so it's a pity he's not here.
It's a perfect time to talk about Hugh.
And it sort of is this natural corollary for, I think, that comes out of something that you said there, in that when, in the case of Hugh, and I think I've thought this with a few people, but mostly with Hugh because we're very similar in a lot of ways, when...
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Chapter 8: How can we change our relationship with past trauma?
It was pretty – It felt so weird to be doing it. So I've been doing, that is schema therapy, isn't it? Yeah. So I've been doing a little bit of this with my psychologist recently. I'm allowed to share what happens in my. Absolutely.
That's on you. I was like, am I doing the wrong thing? This is a privilege circle.
Yeah. Yeah. And at first I was like, this feels ridiculous. Like moving, moving to another chair, role playing the thing. But there's something, there was something so empowering about it to be
to just go with it and start to be the critic and then sit back and say how that felt and sort of play the different roles, it's kind of made them, it's akin to, it's very different, but it's kind of akin to journaling in that it takes it out of my head and it becomes something real that someone else has witnessed and that I've sort of seen as different roles.
And therefore it's easier to think about them as different identities that can be have compassion or can have different judgments rather than the, rather than the, I guess, shame and self-criticism that is attached to it by default. Does that make sense?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I did an exercise once. It might've been through Ben Crow's course. I'm not a hundred percent sure when we had him on the podcast and it asked you to write part of your life story from this place of your like biggest supporter and then also from your inner critic. And it was so brutal writing the same story and seeing them side by side.
It brought me to tears pretty quickly reading how harsh I was to myself. And I think I'm a pretty positive person most of the time, but it was really awful.
Yeah. So you can see like in writing then how the change of lens brings about a different experience, a different view of your life. So, you know, yes, I would like if you were coming into therapy and we had this really harsh critic, for example, I'd be really wanting to really understand its function and purpose.
um and also to do you know for me what feels really important and I think this kind of brings with it like the um how can I view my brain differently um is that we don't just do the cognitive stuff so um in therapy we've got so many different modes of therapy there are so many different approaches to working in a therapeutic space um but there are kind of maybe two different ways in which we can
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