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Beyond the Pain – a conversation with author Madhur-Nain Webster
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Madhur-Nain Webster is a licenced Marriage and Family therapist, and accomplished author. In this episode of the Abeceder work life balance podcast Rest and Recreation Madhur-Nain discusses her latest book Beyond the Pain with host Michael Millward.
Many people structure to cope with the pain that is created by negative experiences like separation, divorce, bereavement, job loss. Each person deals with this pain in a different way. Some people allow the negative experience to control their future. This makes it difficult to move on from the negative experience.
In her conversation with Michael, Madhur-Nain describes how negative experiences impact our physical, mental, and emotional health. Madhur-Nain explains how anyone can take a proactive approach to managing how negative experiences impact them.
They explore the practical advice and tools that Madhur-Nain has included in her book Beyond the Pain.
This episode will inspire you to be honest about how you currently manage negative experiences, and provide some information about how you can improve how you manage these experiences.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Host
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida. I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Guest Introduction: Madar Nan Webster
00:00:20
Speaker
Today, I'm going to be learning about how to process disappointment from Madar Nan Webster, the author of a book called Beyond the Pain.
Podcast Production Tools Promotion
00:00:34
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, rest and recreation is made on Zencastr because Zencastr makes every stage of the podcast production process from recording to distribution so easy.
00:00:48
Speaker
I encourage every podcaster to try Zencastr. Use the link in the description to access discounted subscriptions. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
00:01:02
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. As with every episode of Rest and Recreation, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Guest's Background & Book Motivation
00:01:17
Speaker
Today's Rest and Recreation guest is Madhah Ngan Webster, the author of Beyond the Pain. Matanan is based in Napa Valley in California in the United States.
00:01:31
Speaker
It is a place that I have been. i went on a tour of the vineyards, which I enjoyed, but I won't tell you about now. If I decide to go again, i will be making my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:01:46
Speaker
because that is where I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel related purchases. You can also access those trade prices on travel by joining the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:02:01
Speaker
There's a link in the description which has a built-in discount. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation. Hello Madhanan, how are you today?
00:02:12
Speaker
I'm doing well. How are you? Well, I'm not too bad at all. Thank you very much. but Let's find out more about you. What is it that you do for a living and how did you come to write a book called Beyond the Pain?
00:02:25
Speaker
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've been doing this for about 26 years. I started writing actually probably over 10 years ago, my first book, The Stressless Brain,
00:02:38
Speaker
And then my second book, Beyond the Pain. And the reason I started writing is because being a therapist in mental health, I was reading a lot of books myself. I love learning. And one of my biggest pet peeves in self-help books that I found, not all of them, but many, was that I would read a book about Whether it's being sad or having relationship problems or some kind of mental health issue. And I found that books were really good about empathy.
00:03:07
Speaker
And I would read him like, yes, that's how I feel. Oh, yes, that makes so much sense. And then I would finish the book and I'd be so frustrated because I still didn't know what to do. I still didn't know what to change.
00:03:18
Speaker
And in my therapy approach, in my like my my umbrella approach would be that I am a solution-focused therapist. I'm very much about creating change. And I tell my clients, if you knew how to change something in your life, you wouldn't be sitting with me.
00:03:32
Speaker
So i started I wrote my first book, and half the book is actual tools on how to deal with stress and anxiety.
Therapeutic Approaches to Change
00:03:40
Speaker
And my second book, Beyond the Pain, which we're talking about today,
00:03:44
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It's about transforming grief and disappointment into growth and healing, which half the book, again, is actual step-by-step tools on how to navigate disappointment and why it's and important to navigate disappointment.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yes. When I set up Abacida as an HR management consultancy, we deal with lots of knowledge. We're generating information and knowledge and and sharing that knowledge. But one of the things for me was i didn't want any dead ends.
00:04:13
Speaker
No one should ever get a dead end as a result of interacting with me. There should always be information about what to do next and how to do it and when to do it.
00:04:25
Speaker
Right. and And I find that human nature, if we see ah ah formula, how to fix something, change something, most people will do it. Most people I think do want to grow.
00:04:38
Speaker
Now, when people get stuck in their life and they perpetuate negative behavior or thinking pattern, that usually is because of trauma and drama that creates patterns in us that then makes it hard for us to self-reflect.
00:04:53
Speaker
But when we actually see ah path through something, most of us will do it. Like if we're going on a hike and we see ah fork in the road and we look ahead, um unless we're looking for a deep you know bigger exercise hike, we're going to assess which path to take. We don't just Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. I mean, sometimes we might, but the thing is, is that, you know, when it comes to mental health, when it comes to reading self-help books, when it comes to seeing a therapist, most people are going because they want to learn how to
00:05:25
Speaker
change something, how to reflect or understand why am I the way I am. And so like, if you think about like old psychotherapy, old Freudian laying on the couch, and you literally just would talk at the therapist, and then they would go, uh-huh, uh-huh.
00:05:41
Speaker
see you next week. That is so radically changed in this industry. i tell my clients, I'll work as hard as you work and I'm a big note taker and I'm listening to them. I ask a ton of questions because I'm trying to understand what are they telling me and what's ah underlining stuff that they may not be catching.
00:06:01
Speaker
And then i formulate goals and then we start working on them to help them create change. I say to them, when you're done working with me, what do you want to see different in
Using Disappointment as a Catalyst
00:06:10
Speaker
your life? yes One of the things that inspired me to to write Beyond the Pain is that I have found that a lot of times people get really stuck when mostly we see major disappointments in our life.
00:06:23
Speaker
We get broken up with, we get fired. you know Often when we think of disappointment and grief, we think of losing a loved one. But i I really focus on the disappointment, small, medium, and large in our life.
00:06:36
Speaker
And what happens is we tend just to be kind of stuck in that space until enough time passes, and then we move forward. But that can actually create...
00:06:48
Speaker
lenses that influence how we look at people, how we treat people, how we think about life and how we act in life. And unless we actively process the disappointment, called we get unconsciously puppeteered by our trauma and drama.
00:07:04
Speaker
That's an interesting expression. If you have a disappointment, it's very easy to blame yourself. It's very easy to blame other people. It's very easy to blame everyone. Right. But what you do is you end up in a almost the feelings of of this is how I'm supposed to behave because of this experience.
00:07:24
Speaker
And those can be extremely negative and can make the actual situation a lot worse. Yeah. Yeah. What you're talking about is you have the disappointment.
00:07:35
Speaker
You can either wallow in the misery of it or you can use it as a catalyst for improvement and change. Yes. I mean, the thing is, is I have a saying I tell my clients all the time and it's on my website, which is, it's not what happens to us.
00:07:52
Speaker
It's how we make sense of it. So what happens is whatever one's analysis or interpretation is of X event, I got broken up with, I got fired.
00:08:04
Speaker
My parents were not loving. My parents loved me too much. Whichever that narrative story that we we literally regurgitate in our brains How we make sense of it is how it influences our life. So if we can self-reflect and look at both sides of the coin in whatever happened, then it can influence what how we interpret it, which then can influence how we then move forward in life.
00:08:30
Speaker
You can have two siblings from the same family and let's say it was a very verbally abusive childhood family system. And one child will come out of that system with a certain drive and a certain purpose in life and wants to move above certain things. And the other child might be stuck in the narrative that I'm not good enough and they struggle with every path along the way.
00:08:54
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And if you talk to each of these siblings, who had the similar environment, A, they have completely different experiences, even though the environment's similar. But the thing is, is what do we do
Changing Narratives & Interpretations
00:09:05
Speaker
with it? Like we have the power to change our story.
00:09:08
Speaker
We have the power to be able to look at, is this true what I'm thinking? And I tell my clients often that a lot of what we interpret is made up.
00:09:20
Speaker
And people go, well, no, but they they made me angry. i was like, well, no what they did, you interpreted and how you interpreted left you feeling angry. I'm not saying that what the person said or did is necessarily good or bad, but how one interprets any situation is how it's going to land with you.
00:09:40
Speaker
And it's going to influence how you look at life, money, work, relationships, whichever it might be. There's a, there is that, like they create lenses that then influence. And so part of really being able to process disappointment, small, medium, and large, like small disappointment could be something like I'm driving to work and I get i get every single red light. And so I'm therefore I'm 20 minutes late.
00:10:07
Speaker
And maybe I get written up and it's something I have to deal with. And that's a disappointment versus a huge disappointment where I'm applying for and new position and my colleague gets it and I don't, or a larger disappointment perhaps, which is um I'm hoping to have a baby and I can't get pregnant.
00:10:25
Speaker
And the thing is, is that there's, there's, you know, often we think about grief and disappointment. There are core emotions that happen, which are shock and denial, anger, sadness, and acceptance.
00:10:39
Speaker
And it's not a linear journey. It's an all over messy journey. Sometimes you're in shock and then you're sad. And so it's navigating, learning how to navigate the disappointment so that you can properly probably is probably not the right word, where you can sit with the emotion and allow yourself to feel it.
00:10:59
Speaker
There's a great saying by Pia Melody, who's the founder of codependency, which is feeling your your emotions can't kill you, but suppressing them can. Or you got to hug your demons or they'll bite you in your butt.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, I can see what you mean in that the aspect of our experiences, good or bad, part of whether we view an experience as good or bad is how we interpret it.
00:11:24
Speaker
And how we interpret it then has a knock-on effect about how we interpret view or interpret the next similar type of situation so we can be perpetuating something that is an inaccurate interpretation of events because we've set a foundation for how we are going to interpret it it's almost like having the view that nothing good ever happens to me right it's always going to be bad regardless of how good other people may think it is it's happened to me so it's it's bound to be bad
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's people who say, like, I always get broken up with or nothing ever good. And you hear people get stuck in that narrative. And the ironic thing is that actually can be true.
00:12:10
Speaker
But the thing is, I do believe if we can go back and look at some of these core events in our past, interestingly enough, I'm not a very big cycle analyst of our past therapist.
00:12:23
Speaker
I mean, I will go there when when necessary. But like if you think about cycle analysis and that there are therapists that do that, they train for years, you see that person for 10 years,
00:12:34
Speaker
two to three times a ah week. Like this is a very specific kind. I sometimes will go to childhood, but I go to childhood to understand why you think the way you think in the present.
00:12:46
Speaker
If you're coming to see me or you're reading my book, it means that something in your thinking or something in your personality or something in your patterns and how you behave in life, you're not happy with, or people have given you feedback,
00:13:01
Speaker
Mutter nam, you know, or Michael, like, it seems like you kind of like always have issues with friends. And you're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then after a while, you're like, God, I keep hearing that maybe I need to look at that. There's, there's a huge gamut in self esteem. If your self esteem is lower, or if it's too inflated, it's harder to self reflect that I might have an issue.
00:13:24
Speaker
But if you're somewhere in the middle, it is easier to be like, oh, okay, maybe, you know, like, God, I've had a few partners, you know, i just got broken up with again, or I just ended a relationship again. And this person said the same thing about me that my last partner said.
00:13:39
Speaker
I tell people, that's good information. Pause. Pause. Be in the moment, write it down and sit with it and ask, is there possibly any truth in this?
00:13:52
Speaker
What does it mean? And if you can't unpack it, that's when you go get help. Are there people who ask to see a therapist who shouldn't be asking to see a therapist because they should first try to resolve these issues themselves?
00:14:08
Speaker
Not necessarily. if you're If you're an avid reader and you read a lot of books, I do think that reading self-help books or philosophy books or memoirs, all those kinds of books can help us be self-reflective. Some people...
00:14:24
Speaker
can't afford going to therapy. Some people struggle with being open and and being able to actually look at understanding what their feelings are.
00:14:35
Speaker
People who have struggled with the latter, you know they can do a lot of reading, which will help them learn to reflect. But if you kind of want to just go quickly, again, you want a therapist that's active and you want a therapist that's solution focused. If you have therapists that do other approaches, they may not be as verbal and as like, I mean, I really kind of carry people along.
00:15:00
Speaker
Of course, if a client shows up and says, oh my God, this happened this week, I match them where they're at. But they're coming to me to create change in their life. Half my clients are couples, actually. So i'm one of my specialties is relationships.
00:15:13
Speaker
I tell people, if you knew what to do, you wouldn't be seeing me. Someone says, i wonder if I should go to therapy. you know It doesn't hurt to go. and I tell people, the most important thing about going to therapy is that you trust and and like the person you're working with.
00:15:27
Speaker
If you don't, don't waste your time and money. Go find somebody else. In terms of getting beyond the pain, you've included within that a whole range of different activities that people can do themselves. Yes.
00:15:39
Speaker
yes So they may not actually need to get to a therapist. Not necessarily. So the way the book is structured, the second half of the book, and you can actually um go to my website, there's a code in the book that you can then download the whole section.
00:15:55
Speaker
And each section of the second half of the book, it's 30 stages, 30 steps. thirty steps And it actually guides you how to look at things through the psychological mind, the cognitive, how to understand what is physically happening in your body. Because that's an interesting thing that I did when I when i was writing this book. The research, which I found most fascinating, is that when you experience different emotions like anger, sadness, shock, different forms of those...
00:16:25
Speaker
it actually makes your organs and glands do different things, which then can influence bad decisions. And so when you're going through the stages, it tells you what's happening in your brain,
00:16:40
Speaker
how to deal with that, what's happening in your body, how to deal with that, what's happening in your psyche, your spiritual self, not religious base, just spiritual awareness, and what to do with that. And then it has some journal props.
00:16:56
Speaker
So you could actually go through each of these stages with small, medium, or large disappointments. And one of the things I tell people is disappointment is unavoidable in life. There is nobody that goes through life that does not experience disappointment.
00:17:13
Speaker
That's true.
Influence of Past Experiences
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's just, it's part of life. Yes, very definitely. And it can feel as if you're having more disappointments, more sad moments than happy moments.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yes. And what you're saying though, is that if we are in one of those situations where we feel as if we are a disappointment or experiencing disappointment and that all the pain that goes with that, one the ways to understand how we are feeling at that point in time is to also understand understand more about our past and how we have developed an understanding of ourselves that leads us to being disappointed by something that other people might be disappointed in a different way by.
00:17:58
Speaker
but We learn from the past or influences impacts how we learn to manage the present and the future. Yes, 100%. The past does govern how you deal with the present and future.
00:18:12
Speaker
And the more aware that you can be about your patterns in thinking and feeling and projecting and analyzing,
00:18:23
Speaker
the more you can understand why you end up at the end. How you interpret all of those sections comes from the past. And I often ask clients, like, who in your family behaved the same way?
00:18:36
Speaker
Who did you learn that behavior from? And they'll be like, oh, my God, that was my mother. She was the same and she still is. I go, well, does it? And I'll look at them. was like, well, is this working for you? And they often will like, no. I go, well, let's change it.
00:18:48
Speaker
Yes. Just on a side note, not all behaviors that sometimes hurt us in some areas in our life are bad. Like i'm not, it's not about good and bad. it's It's about reflection and pausing and strengthening our self-esteem. Like your podcast name, Rest and Recreation, is that recreation can help strengthen our self-esteem. And I talk about this in my book, Beyond the Pain.
00:19:16
Speaker
Self-esteem is a superpower. People who have healthy, middle-of-the-line self-esteem. So it's not it's not deflated and it's not inflated. Inflated self-esteem is grandiosity. Yes.
00:19:28
Speaker
narcissism. Deflated is depressive, low self-esteem, low worth. You don't want either end of the spectrum. You want to be somewhere in the middle. And having self-esteem is a superpower because when you feel good about yourself, healthy self-esteem means I can feel good about myself and I know that I'm not better than anyone else and I know that I'm not less than anyone else. We are all of equal value.
00:19:55
Speaker
That being said, some of us may be better at painting with acrylics than we are. i mean, I guess art's subjective really, but some of us are maybe better at you know so sentence structures and writing.
00:20:08
Speaker
And some of us are better at sewing. Like it just comes naturally.
Balancing Health for Better Outcomes
00:20:13
Speaker
Part of it is when we cultivate, you know, in recreation, you know, I, you know, I mean, we were talking earlier, the difference between but what recreation and R&R means in different countries.
00:20:25
Speaker
Though, if if we can have that rest and recreation and rest and hobbies and being able to be with yourself, you're strengthening self-esteem, which then can help you process disappointment and grief.
00:20:38
Speaker
What you're talking about is having balanced life which involves or includes balanced mental health, balanced attitudes towards ourself, balanced expectations of ourself will help us deal better with those times when we experience disappointment on all sorts of different levels.
00:20:59
Speaker
The key part is to keep ourselves spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally healthy so that we're better able to cope with those times that are difficult.
00:21:11
Speaker
Yes. It sounds so simple to say it like that, doesn't it? But it's actually a huge... and huge task and is much more difficult than anyone might think, which is why it's so useful to have all of these different activities within the book.
00:21:25
Speaker
What would you say is the activity that you find people doing most? Exercise. I mean, that's the healthy one, that the people that it's exercise, unhealthy, it's scrolling on their device. Yes.
00:21:40
Speaker
Yeah. We seem to have people who are doing less and less physical activity and yet... yeah One of the things I have often said is that you might wake up and not want to go to the gym.
00:21:53
Speaker
You don't feel as if you need to go to the gym. There's so many other things that you could be doing and you don't really want to go. So what you really want to do is roll over and go back to sleep again. Which is fine if that's what you want to do.
00:22:05
Speaker
But if you decide, i don't really want to go, but I'm going to go anyway because it's part of my routine. I've made the commitment to me and you go. I don't think many people leave the gym or any other form of exercise not feeling better yes than when they arrived. i would agree.
00:22:24
Speaker
Yeah, they may feel tired. Sometimes they may feel physically exhausted. But emotionally, stroke mentally, they will feel an awful lot better. And that's because the process of exercising, regardless of what it is, releases all sorts of various different chemicals which improve our mood.
00:22:46
Speaker
100%. That's really important
Exercise & Self-Improvement Techniques
00:22:47
Speaker
to remember. But the key thing I'm taking is that dealing with the disappointments in life is easier. If you before the disappointment arrives, you are looking after yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and trying to create a balanced, a balanced life.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yes, I 100% agree. And one of the pitfalls that get people is complacency. When life is easy, humans become complacent. They just stop. Yes.
00:23:19
Speaker
And i tell my six, I have 16 year old client I'm working with. And, and we're trying to work on buying into the system. Like she wants to graduate from high school. She's not attending classes. i was like, well, you got to buy into the, whatever the teachers are telling you.
00:23:37
Speaker
And if it gets, if things get easy, it's human nature to, to, get to slow down, to not do it. And so there has to be some level, I don't know has to is a strong word, but there has to be this drive inside of you that I commit.
00:23:53
Speaker
Like when you were talking about waking up in the morning, I actually say something to myself, my alarm goes off and I say this, the mornings that are hardest for me. And I say to myself in my head or out loud, I whisper it, seize the morning, seize the day. And for whatever reason, that just gets me out of bed.
00:24:10
Speaker
yes One liners are really powerful and people can use them in their life. You know, if you know that my pattern is I don't go to the gym or I'm eating something or I'm buying something I shouldn't be buying because it's not my budget. or I don't need it Or I keep pursuing certain things that are not healthy for me.
00:24:29
Speaker
If you know one, I'm not saying it will fix everything, but one liners can be quite powerful. Like there's another one, stay in your lane. Everyone knows what that means. Yes, that can be taken in different ways, can't it? I can see someone saying, I'll stay in my lane because that enables me to focus and to excel.
00:24:50
Speaker
And then another situation where that could be used, where someone is saying to another person, stay in your lane, mind your own business. Yes. The way I'm talking about it is you say it to yourself.
00:25:05
Speaker
it it you know Sometimes as a parent you know with adult children, we want to tell them what to do what they shouldn't do. They're adults. let them Let them live their life. we Especially in United States, we over-involve into telling people what to do. It's not about dominating and controlling others. It's about being aware of yourself and And saying, you know, like, mutteran or whomever you don't need to you know, like, you don't need to put your business over there. Just stay in your lane, which is different than someone else saying, but out of my business.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yes, very much so. and which There might still be some truth in that. True, I suppose. But um tell me, who are you expecting will want to buy the book beyond the pain or need to buy
Target Audience for 'Beyond the Pain'
00:25:51
Speaker
the book?
00:25:51
Speaker
If you find that you have reoccurring events in your life that you are feeling just disappointed in or you're finding disappointments in some of your personality traits and you want to change them, this would be a great book because it will help you unpack how and why you think how you think and how to change it If you find that things unfairly happen to you in your life, this would also be a great book for you.
00:26:21
Speaker
And if you want to take charge of your mental health and take charge of your thinking and not blame other people, this would be a great book for you. Great. Great.
00:26:32
Speaker
You know, Madhina, it has been so very interesting finding out about the work that you do and your books, especially the new one, Beyond the Pain.
Podcast Conclusion & Book Promotion
00:26:43
Speaker
I hope you have really successful book launch and lots of people buy and read your book. It's going to be a lot of value to a lot of people. But for today, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time.
00:26:56
Speaker
Thank you very much for having me on your show. It's been brilliant. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. In this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Mudder Nan Webster, the author of Beyond the Pain.
00:27:14
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abbasida.co.uk and at Mudder Nan's website, which is muddernan.com. There are links in the description. Being healthy is a key element of enjoying life.
00:27:29
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:28:07
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You can access your easy to understand results and guidance to help you make effective lifestyle changes anytime by your secure personal wellness hub. There is a link and a discount code in the description.
00:28:22
Speaker
I'm sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of Rest and Recreation as much as Muddanan and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:35
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:28:48
Speaker
Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.