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Fight, Flight, Freeze, – a conversation with psychotherapist Noel McDermott
30 Plays8 days ago
Understanding stress is the first step to achieving balance in your life?
Noel McDermott is a psychotherapist, founder of Mental Health Works a comprehensive mental health service and host of The Well Being Show a weekly live video-based podcast available on YouTube and Facebook.
In this episode of the Abeceder work life balance podcast Rest and Recreation, Noel explains to host Michael Millward what psychotherapists do all day, with examples from his career which started by assisting people to leave long-term institutional care.
Noel also explains how well being is something that can we achieved by everyone regardless of what health condition or disability they live with.
Their conversation continues with a discussion of the four corners of well-being with a focus on how anyone can learn how to manage their own fight, flight, or freeze reactions to stressful situations.
They conclude with a discussion about breathing techniques and the truth behind the maxim, ‘a trouble shared is a trouble halved’.
This episode of Rest and Recreation is ideal listening for anyone trying to understand how to manage their reactions to difficult situations.
Discover more about Noel and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make making podcasts so easy. There's a link in the description with all the information.
Introduction of 'Rest and Recreation' Podcast
00:00:18
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Rest and Recreation, the work-life balance podcast from Abysida, where we don't tell you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysida.
Noel McDermott's Background and Career Transition
00:00:32
Speaker
Today I am talking to Noel McDermott about how to achieve balance in our lives. Noel is based in London, the capital of the United Kingdom, a big expensive capital city, which is why when I visit, I always make my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club.
00:00:51
Speaker
Because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I can access trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, all sorts of travel related purchases.
Membership Discount for Ultimate Travel Club
00:01:02
Speaker
I'd like you to be able to do the same. So there is a link with a built-in discount on membership fees in the description.
00:01:08
Speaker
Join the Ultimate Travel Club and we will both be traveling at trade prices. Now that I've paid some bills, it's time to make an episode of Rest and Recreation that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to and probably good enough to share with your friends and family as well.
Noel's Spontaneous Career Switch to Therapy
00:01:27
Speaker
Now, hello, Noel. Hi. Please, could we start, Noel, with you telling me a little bit about how you got involved in the work that you do? Because you're a podcast host as well, aren't you? Yeah, I have a podcast called The Wellbeing Show. It's video-based as well, which grew out of my involvement with a thing called Men's Radio Station, looking at mental health stuff. So I'm clinically qualified about 30 years ago um in psychological therapy, and my background prior to that
00:01:58
Speaker
was in the arts and I got involved in arts for health and well-being. Ran out of skills, um decided I needed to retrain. One of the better decisions I made in my life. And so I re-qualified, started working in initially in sort of health settings in the NHS, also so in social services and then began to spread wider into the voluntary sector and
00:02:31
Speaker
and then into private sector which is where I am now.
Transitioning from Public to Private Sector
00:02:35
Speaker
When you say you retrained, what was the sort of process that you went through to make the decision to change careers? Well, it was quite spontaneous at the time. i was already involved in, in terms of the arts for change stuff that I was involved in, I was already involved in helping people who were coming out of long-term institutional care at the time. And the sort of hospitals that were closing and the community services that being set up really didn't know what to do. it was in relatively early days of care in the community and there were lots of large institutions being closed.
00:03:09
Speaker
If I remember rightly, a lot of those large institutions were converted into very expensive apartments. It's quite expensive in Edinburgh still exists. But they just needed um creative people to try and make stuff up as it were. um And so as I was working in that field, I realized I didn't have enough skills and I met some people who, colleagues who had were qualified as therapists in various things like music and drama and art. And I thought that sounds good. Maybe I'll learn something around that. And um I phoned up a training institute one day, literally out the blue. They said, come along tomorrow. We've got an open day.
00:03:49
Speaker
I had a fun day with them. And then the head of the course at the end of day said, do you want a place? We start in a couple of months. You'll need to get some money sorted. That's really how it happened. I don't think you're allowed to do things like that anymore, but certainly that's how I changed the course of my life very spontaneously.
Managing Long-term Conditions: Well-being Behaviors
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah, because we must be talking about the 1990s then. Back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth. And I was a young pterodactyl then.
00:04:19
Speaker
is Yeah, you're probably right. there were When you think about it, I opened my first email, so it took a long time to download as well. So it was ah say it was quite a while ago.
00:04:33
Speaker
Brought to you by carrier pigeon. Almost, almost. And of course, I got the reply all wrong as well. But the um yeah you retrain. to become a therapist, art therapist, and you're a part of the move that gets people out of long-term institutional care into care in the community. yeah Which is a nice thing to be involved in. and now So tell me a little bit more about what it is you that you do now.
00:05:01
Speaker
I set this company up about 11 years ago after I faced redundancy actually. I was sort of, I thought, hmm, I don't want to go and apply for another job.
00:05:14
Speaker
I was bit down in the dumps about it all. So I'm 58 now, I was 48 or 47 or whatever it was forty eight or forty seven or what it was then and and night And I felt a bit like, I don't know what to do. I'll just get another short term contract or something like that And then I took some friends and and they convinced me that actually, why don't you just set up your own practice and you've got some good ideas. So I took some of that money from the redundancy, had a small amount.
00:05:48
Speaker
and decided to make a courageous leap into the unknown and set up my own practice. And actually, all this stuff I'd done up to then suddenly came into focus because I was in a senior management role within social services, etc. and within the voluntary sector. my My task was to manage complex situations with people dealing with complex patients. And I suddenly found a niche for that in the private sector, working... Initially as a consultant, but then gradually recruiting my own people, which I have now. It's a small company, very niche, very sort of focused on individual care planning, but working very much in complexity and long term work, which is what I've been doing but before. but now I do it in a way that feels very satisfying to me. I'm not part of sort of any crushing hierarchies. And I get to work alongside the statutory sector, other private sector providers. I get to be a consultant within workplaces.
00:06:55
Speaker
I get to go in, discuss things with prisons and schools, et
Understanding Stress Hormones: Adrenaline and Cortisol
00:06:59
Speaker
cetera. So I have a very creative and free work life now. And ru it's funny all came from um really not knowing what to do it's in between a rock and hard place and i feel like there was no other option but to sort of um throw myself some of the best things do come out of those situations where you don't really know what to do so when you make the suggestion you run with it yeah and all of a sudden it seems like it was the right thing to do and you
00:07:33
Speaker
demonstrate that through the the activities and the success. You mentioned that you talk about to people in long-term care type situations. And I'm thinking that those people probably fall into two categories. There'll be people who have yeah an actual medical condition, some type of illness which you're managing.
00:07:53
Speaker
And then there will be people who are dealing with what we call mental health conditions that are perfectly curable but actually need managing and the the journey from being in a situation to being in an improved situation can take quite a long time.
00:08:12
Speaker
Yeah. So i think with both categories, i mean, it's not a bad description, although one would argue that mental health is also biological. But putting that to aside, the core of the work, I think, and the core of life experience is how do to make the best of where I am right now, as opposed to some arbitrary sense of health and unhealth. Of course, those things exist. So always check with your doctor if you're feeling a bit jib. That's my advice. There isn't something there. But all of us can have well-being as much as possible, whatever the state of our health, if that makes sense. So... If you've got long-term mental health conditions such as schizophrenia, for example, which isn't curable, but you can still have a good quality of life if you have ah an appropriate balance of health and wellbeing services and behaviours. The key thing is health and wellbeing behaviours within the fact that you're never going to be cured of this illness. It's the same if you have a disability, for example, and you can still have a really good quality of life with the appropriate support.
Stress Management Techniques
00:09:24
Speaker
The same if you have a neurodiversity such as ADHD or autism, for example. Again, those things don't get cured,
00:09:33
Speaker
but you can manage your life with appropriate support to improve your well-being quite significantly. And for most people across all of those spectrum experience, the well-being behaviours are pretty much the same, to be honest.
00:09:53
Speaker
Well-being behaviours are pretty much the same. What does that mean? Well, there's the four corners of well-being um have been sort of well researched and you would start with those four corners and then you would add in individual things. So those four corners are relaxation, oddly enough, and learning to manage stress. So that's very important. Nutrition is very important. Sleep is very important. And exercise is very important.
00:10:22
Speaker
So those are like your, the building blocks, the four corners, the foundations, whatever metaphor you want to use. And so focus on those initially. Now stress, why is stress management important? Because stress hormones are implicated and virtually every single form of psychological distress.
00:10:45
Speaker
every single what we call lifestyle long-term illness so most versions of diabetes most versions of schizophrenia most versions of liver disease heart disease etc all of these involve stress as an underlying factor so learning to manage stress is crucial in life nutrition obviously I think it's obvious why now before we go into nutrition yeah so with the stress if we are the sort of person who feels under stress on a regular basis and that stress can become debilitating so it's like I'm feeling stressed I'm not going to do anything
00:11:25
Speaker
that level of stress could actually lead to physical illnesses. It will, not could, it absolutely will. it will Without it out, 100%. You're already physically ill at that point anyway, you just don't know how ill you are.
00:11:39
Speaker
So absolutely 100% stress hormones and stress when it gets too much. um produces biological changes in in the genome. So, yeah yeah, it's an absolutely crucial skill to learn.
00:11:59
Speaker
Right. So in terms of managing stress, yeah what would be the the key sort of things for people to think about in terms of, yeah, okay I can be like that person over there who I can tell is is in distress. Yeah.
00:12:14
Speaker
but if i learn how to manage my stress i don't need to be like that person what would be the key things that people would need to know in order to manage their stress so that it doesn't become a problem because stress is a natural part of life as well it's just We want to make sure that we know how to manage it. How do we do that?
00:12:32
Speaker
So first of all, is understanding what it is. So stress is a concept, but actually it's better understood as ah as a couple of hormones that are released into the body that have that are released for specific reasons.
00:12:49
Speaker
um Understanding that those hormones are released and why they're released, you can then learn to manage them more effectively. So the the number of times they're released into your system, your body can be reduced. But also then when you recognize the signs, um you can manage your physical response to those hormones better. And the hormones are adrenaline and cortisol. These are the two things. and People can go Google what they mean. But essentially, they are hormones that prepare your body for some sort of attack.
00:13:27
Speaker
Fight or flight type of hormone. Yeah, I mean, it's actually fight, flight, freeze. So they are very old mechanisms deeply buried in the brain in a thing called the amygdala, which determine one of three responses to an immediate threat to life. That came back from a long time ago in our evolution.
00:13:49
Speaker
to And then that gets activated inappropriately in most situations of life. Because in most situations in life, the threats, our perception of threats, are not based upon a thing that's actually going to kill us right there and then. And that mechanism is...
00:14:08
Speaker
to deal with something that's actually going to kill us in that moment. So firstly, understanding it and understanding, oh, I've gone into that sort of fight, flight, freeze mode um is important. I just want to make a small segue here. The reason why insist on using the word freeze is because there is a sort of... um some sort of gender assumption going on when we opt out of freeze. So many women, for example, who experience actual threats like threats of violence or or sexual violence, etc., will go into freeze mode more than they'll go into fight or flight.
00:14:42
Speaker
And same with children. Children will usually go into freeze mode rather than fight or flight for obvious reasons. um So I think it's important to include it. um Now, if we can see that we've gone into one of these modes and it's easy enough to tell raised heartbeats, increased perceptual awareness, increased ability with our hearing, sweaty palms, dry mouth,
00:15:10
Speaker
tense, maybe painful muscles. These are the sort of physical signs that we've been activated. The adrenaline will give you that rush throughout your body, that wave of feeling and will increase the heart rate quite a lot. You may feel nauseous, etc. If you notice those things, you can go We have the capacity as humans to notice that, look at it and notice that we've gone into that mode and then decide to manage it and manage it in a way that is healthier for us.
00:15:45
Speaker
Because what will happen is if we're not aware that we're in that mode, Our brain does what it always does. It just goes and tries to find something from the past to explain it. We'll latch onto to any explanation our brain comes up with and go, oh, that's why. And it's got nothing to do with that thing. So noticing that you're in that mode then allows you options.
00:16:08
Speaker
If your brain is looking for a reason why you're feeling stressed, it's always going to look for something negative, I presume. It's always going to look for something that is in the past, was attached to a sense of fear in the past, because the brain is always backward looking in that way.
00:16:27
Speaker
So you look for, it's called the memory stack. So it dives into the memory stack and looks for a similar type of sort of hormonal patterns and offers that as an explanation.
00:16:39
Speaker
Interesting. So noticing that you're in that. fight flight freeze mode allows you to then make decisions about what to do about it and understanding that it's hormonally driven and that it's about managing those hormones and understanding the process that those hormones go through is very helpful in terms of managing distress and stress.
00:17:02
Speaker
So here's a few tips. So first of all, adrenaline is something that will stay in your system, in your bloodstream for about 45 minutes. As long as it's not triggered again, it'll just wash away.
00:17:14
Speaker
So that's just simply by noticing, and relaxing relaxing if you can, self-talking yourself down so that you don't trigger yourself again and telling yourself that, you know, there is no threat, there's no saber-toothed tiger, et cetera.
00:17:29
Speaker
So if you feel in distress, we can as a result of that stress there is adrenaline in our system realization is that this is going to last for about 45 minutes because the adrenaline depending upon the level of stress I presume but the adrenaline is going to stay in our system for about 45 minutes we need to have a process for recognizing that and then okay bring the level of adrenaline down so that we're pulling that so it's like having the things that
00:18:01
Speaker
we know are going to counter the stress, which could be looking at listening to a particular piece of music, doing changing an activity, eating something, drinking something, going outside, changing your environment.
Biological Stress Responses and Management
00:18:16
Speaker
sorts All of that sort of stuff.
00:18:17
Speaker
If you've got a park nearby, that's always good. and The crucial thing psychologically and is in terms of your self-talk. So remember what I said about your brain just looks for an explanation and will offer it to you.
00:18:30
Speaker
So we'll offer you a variety of scenarios. you Your mind will go start racing, looking for reasons to explain. That racing mind is another symptom that you're in a stressed state. But you can use your conscious mind to say, no, I'm going to ignore all of that.
00:18:46
Speaker
I know this is just an inappropriate activation of my stress response. So I'm not going to choose to get involved in any one of those things. And I'm going to ignore that thinking pattern, that habit. So you can ignore that bit of your brain. And it's quite crucial to do.
00:19:04
Speaker
i Yes. You're reminding me about a situation I had at work once where as an HR ah professional, I had to talk to a manager and tell the manager things that he didn't really want to hear.
00:19:15
Speaker
And he told me that he didn't really want to hear them. And he certainly didn't want to hear them from me. And um he just behaved in an anappropri inappropriate way. and But I stayed calm, got back to the HR ah department, and was like my boss manager came in and said, you're really stressed out by this, aren't you?
00:19:36
Speaker
it's not the conversation is just done like wound up by it more than anything else rather than stressed out but my my terminology so like well you know it's leave early go to the gym and throw some metal around and that work that work it out of your system so to speak change the the environment change the activity work out of your system and you leave the gym smiling same doing something It was completely different because I suppose he recognised that you can get to the point where the stress level, the level of annoyance, the frustration is such that you're not going to be able to focus on doing something else.
00:20:15
Speaker
but's That's exactly right. And it also points the second bit, the second hormone, cortisol. So cortisol, rather than being in your bloodstream, goes into your muscles. And its job is to get your muscles ready to do incredibly intense physical action. So if you're going to fight something, you need your muscles ready to go. if you're going to run away like a sprinter on the starting blocks. um So the cortisol does that. And literally what that person is saying to you is go and have a simulated fight in the gym.
00:20:49
Speaker
And it's advice I give to people, quite rightly so, is that, um I mean, if you do boxing or kickboxing and you've got a gym available, it's one of the best ways, to be honest, of getting rid of cortisol in your muscles. Because it's literally, that's what your muscles are wanting you to do. That's what your body is wanting you to do. um and i do it myself i learned how to box and kick box as a way of managing stress i come from a very distressing childhood so um i have a tendency to move into it and that sort of high intensity exercise is a fantastic way of managing stress if if you can do it you know not everybody can do it um and so
00:21:33
Speaker
But it's what you see in some people's offices, the punch bags. Yeah, it's a really, really good thing to do. Like ah just a few minutes. um And in particular, a lot of women I've worked with, i I encourage them to go and be aggressive in a gym or be aggressive with a punch bag and just really get it out of your system in that way. The sort of screaming, shouting stuff doesn't really work. That just winds you up more. But it's if you understand it, your muscles are full of a chemical that will go away if you do high intensity physical exercise.
00:22:07
Speaker
That will get rid of that. And the thing about that is that cortisol, because it just hangs around in your muscles unless you do something about it. It just gets you into a state where you're trigger happy as it were. You're more likely to be triggered into a stress response in the future if you haven't lowered your cortisol levels in that way, which is why it's really useful to understand the biology of it.
00:22:34
Speaker
um Another thing you've talked about again is, and um I just want to sort of touch upon it is there's a fantastic set of breathing skills that anybody can learn. And and people also look at me slightly weirdly when I say you have to learn to breathe. They go, but I know how to breathe. I'm breathing right now.
00:22:54
Speaker
um That's what. But actually, but in reality, we don't learn how to breathe. It's a natural thing. the time we draw our first breath we are breathing we're not like whales who are like breathe when they come to the surface we are constantly breathing so it certainly makes an awful lot of sense to learn how to breathe while we're automatic breathers We certainly don't breathe in the way that we do postpartum. Like if you look at a baby breathing, they have a fantastic way of breathing. But as adults, we get into the habit of breathing or panting, I would call it, from the top of our chest.
00:23:30
Speaker
And panting, which is what most people do, is actually a sign of distress itself. so yeah But learning to breathe, there's ancient techniques like mindfulness is simply a way of breathing. The British Army used a thing called box breathing that they teach all recruits to help them manage frightening situations. and i So, you know, if you join the army, you're likely to be in frightening situations.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so they teach you box breathing or square breathing. It's sometimes core called. I would be I'm a big advocate of mindfulness, which is a specific breathing technique which people can go Google and find out about. and there's been plenty of research in the mental health field on mindfulness and its value in managing stress depression anxiety trauma it's a great technique to learn it's also a specific way of using your capacity to think of the It's a mental activity which is really useful to learn. And specifically that mental activity which is very healthy and very helpful is to learn what's called the observer position. So being able to observe your own thoughts, observe and be interested in your own physical ah sensations and your own thoughts in your mind. That comes from mindfulness and being able to be an observer to those things rather than just caught up in them is an incredibly useful tool to to develop.
00:25:06
Speaker
So we're talking about you have to understand stress, what causes it for yourself yeah and what happens to your body and your brain when you feel under stress. So the adrenaline, the cortisol that go around your body and create that anxiety within your body, the the tension, and then also how your brain is likely to react and then develop a technique that will help you deal with that stress. so it seems as if there are different types of stress and some will involve you know need to do some physical activity now i need to go to the gym i need to go for a run i need to go for a walk need to punch that bag those sorts of things and then the other sort where the breathing and the almost looking at the situation that you are in as a separate person yeah everything and going like is this as serious as it first appears am i really in the situation that i think i am in or am i creating something out of something else am i creating a storm in a teacup
00:26:15
Speaker
which doesn't necessarily always exist. Yeah, I mean, in mindfulness, you would avoid using pejorative terms like that. It's just about being interested and letting it flow rather than get caught up. As soon you start adding emotional terms like that, you become attached to it. But it's detaching from it. the's The final thing I would say around stress management, which is crucial again it's a sort of biological thing as well because they're a social animal is always talk to somebody when you're afraid yes so stress is another word for fear okay so always always always talk to somebody trusted um when you're afraid it doesn't matter whether you feel stupid about the thing that you're afraid of because it could be you're afraid of opening an email i sometimes get that But always process that experience with another human being because that's what we're built to do.
00:27:08
Speaker
We are built to manage emotions by sharing them with another human being. As soon as we start doing that, not only do we reduce all these stress hormones I've just described, but we start to bring in things called reward hormones, so serotonin, dopamine, etc., And those reward hormones themselves, not only do they make us healthier, literally physically healthier, but they also shut off the stress hormones. They shut the production off of them. And so chatting to a friend or a colleague or a boss that you'll feel trusting and safe with, as you described with your colleague in that situation, doing that is a very, very healthy way of processing these things. And you often see the sort of lone wolf violent people. they that The stress has built up so much they become violent and aggressive.
00:28:08
Speaker
And the main thing they're doing is isolating and allowing that stuff to sort of fester in their own mind. So definitely don't do that. You're missing out on the trick if you don't just talk to somebody because it's a real benefit and boost to your well-being.
00:28:23
Speaker
That's really good. You know, Noel, thank you. learned an awful lot there about stress that I didn't know before, and thank you very much. We really appreciate your time today. Thank you.
00:28:33
Speaker
Thank you.
Episode Wrap-up and Call to Action
00:28:34
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abucida, and in this episode of Rest and Recreation, I have been having a conversation with Noel McDermott. You can find out more information about both of us and by using the links in the description.
00:28:48
Speaker
I am sure that you will have enjoyed listening to this episode as much as Noel and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like, download it and subscribe so you don't miss out on future episodes. Tell your friends and family about it as well.
00:29:03
Speaker
Remember the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of Rest and Recreation, thank you for listening and goodbye.