E63 - The Four Thoughts that F*ck You Up (with Daniel Fryer)

Daniel Fryer is a Bristol based psychotherapist and author. In this podcast we discuss his book, the Four Thoughts that F*ck You Up, based on the principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. We also discuss hypnotherapy, the barriers to change, self-sabotage, psychedelics and much more.

You can learn more about his work including his book here:
https://www.danielfryer.com/

Interviewed by Dr. Alex Curmi - Give feedback here - thinkingmindpodcast@gmail.com Follow us here: Twitter @thinkingmindpod Instagram @thinkingmindpodcast

If you would like to enquire about an online psychotherapy appointment with Dr. Alex, you can email - alexcurmitherapy@gmail.com

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Transcript

 Nearly most of our dysfunctions in this world are protective. When you get to the heart of the matter. Why am I like this is just a dysfunctional protection. Maybe it was functional at one point, or maybe it was the only choice you had at that point, but it no longer serves you as a form of protection, so you have to drop it. You have to let it go. 3s You have found the Thinking Mind podcast. 4s Welcome back to the Thinking Minds podcast. Today it's Alex and we're in conversation with Daniel Fryer. Daniel Fryer is a psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, and author. He's the author of the book The Four Thoughts That Will Fuck You Up. We all know on some level that a lot of what makes us unhappy is and just what happens to us, our extended circumstances, but our minds interpretation of what happens to us. And we all know that our mind can get in our way in the four thoughts that fuck you up. Daniel goes into detail about rational emotive behavior therapy and describes four distinct categories of thoughts which are holding us back and sabotaging us. And then goes on to describe four alternative thoughts that we can have. And then also goes into a six week plan and how to put all of this in action. So on today's podcast we talk in depth about his book, but also Rational emotive behavior therapy, hypnotherapy, psychedelics, and many other topics. This is the Thinking Mind podcast. There are many ways you can support it. You can follow on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Share it with a friend, give us a rating or if you want to support us further, you can check out the Buy Me a Coffee link in the description. Thanks for listening. 11s Welcome back everyone. Today I'm with Daniel Fryer. Daniel, thanks so much for joining me this morning. Thank you for having me. You practice as a psychotherapist and a question I like to ask psychotherapists because they normally have a different answer every time, is what does practicing psychotherapy mean to you? 1s I always like to think of it as if we were living in age old times, like hunter gatherer societies or small villages. I'm probably the strange hermit, one in the last house in the village, or the last tent there, helping maintain the psycho spiritual well-being of his local community. So you have a problem. You come to me, I talk, I help you understand the problem and effect a solution. And that's got pedigree going back thousands of years. And I think that's I've, I, I share that sentiment that. 1s There seems to be a gap in our society for how how do we. 1s How do we face these problems that people are facing? And because there is a decline in religiosity in our societies, because we're seeing a degradation of these institutions, a lot of people, they don't know where to go. A psychotherapy, I think, is one place they go, and then they go to a number of other places as well. Absolutely. I mean, we've done a lot of work in destigmatizing and mental health so that nobody feels so bad approaching a therapist anymore. And and we'll use the word therapist and coach interchangeably. And I provide the therapy that provide is useful as both therapy and coaching. 1s But there is a decline in religiosity. But there's also people are turning more to spiritual practices once more. And there was an article in The Economist earlier this year or late last year, where it said that shamanism was the fastest growing religion in this country. And that was a little bit incorrect because shamanism isn't a religion, it's just it's a form of psycho spiritual healing. The actual fastest growing official religion in this country is drudgery. But even that's not really a religion. That's also a form of nature based healing. So people are turning to therapy because we stigmatized it, but they're also returning to kind of spiritual practices as a way of enhancing their well-being as well. And I think that's quite important. And psychotherapy sometimes is a little bit like medicine. 1s We treat the mind, but not the body. We forget that it's the both at the same time and areas, as well as my body. The mind and the body has a psycho spiritual. It's not all about symptomology. So do you worry that with psychotherapy, as with some aspects of psychiatry, that. We're putting words around people's problems like anxiety or depression, for instance. That obviously can be helpful, but at the same time. 2s It diminishes the problem. It somehow dilutes the nature of the problem. I'm talking about, for example, when people might be facing really important issues in their life, maybe spiritual issues, maybe existential issues. And we try and, you know, almost to make everyone feel calmer, to make us feel calmer, to make them feel calm. We say, okay, you have an anxiety disorder. It neatly captures the problem, but might be missing out a lot of important things at the same time. Absolutely. There's that. That's again, that's not an easy thing to answer. I'll try to be as succinct as I can. And first of all, yeah, things became too pathologized. And all our diagnoses really come from diagnostic manuals. And there's the DSM and there's the OECD, which is the International Classification of Diseases. And they initially started out as just reference manuals for psychiatrists. So there was areas of commonality. And but then insurance companies got in on the act as well because it helped them to understand them. Between the insurance and the psychiatry, they became Bibles. They became de facto and. 2s I think sometimes that we forget that they're guidelines, they're references. They're not. The thing itself. And some therapies say it's all anxiety, so it's all bad and we will just try and reduce those symptoms as much as possible. Or it's all depression and it's all bad. And we will try and reduce your symptoms as much as possible. But some therapies actually recognize the legitimacy of our emotions. It recognizes that there are challenges and it recognizes that there are adversities. And so in the face of that challenge or adversity, there is a healthy way of expressing that emotion and an unhealthy way of expressing that emotion. And so with that kind of method in mind, you would seek to address, or somebody is telling themselves so that they can express that emotion constructively rather than not constructively and enable a change, maybe bring a little bit more hope into the room, but just also acknowledge the validity of those feelings. Yeah. So is that where rational emotive behavior therapy comes in you as a kind of therapy that can help people to acknowledge their challenges and, and see the difference between healthier or less healthy expressions of emotion. Absolutely. So is one of those therapies that does that. It was, in fact, I think is possibly the first to say, hang on a minute. Your emotions are actually valid. And for every single unhealthy emotion there is a healthy rational equivalent. And again, it recognizes there is an adversity and has this thing. It's called the ABCd model of psychological health and stands for adversity. And B stands for your beliefs or your thought processes about that adversity. And C stands for the consequence. That's where the emotion sits. And anxiety is a consequence. Depression is a consequence. Anger management is a consequence. And we would dispute those beliefs. That's what the D stands for hopefully leading to an effective rational outlook. The effective rational outlook means there's still an adversity. However, the way you think and the way you feel and the way you act in the face of that adversity has changed for the better for you. 1s Yeah, because ultimately a huge amount of our psychological well-being is not about what happens to us, but our ability to elegantly or less elegantly deal with or react to the things that happen to us. Yeah, ultimately, it's about resilience. 1s They're dealing with things elegantly or less elegantly. Oh, life's full of challenges. Always has been. The challenge is change. They may increase, but they will always be. 3s This like this is the kind of wisdom you see in stoicism, for example. 1s It's been around for thousands of years. You can see something similar in Buddhism as well, but would you agree that we still have a culture that's very much based on being happy equates to accumulating certain things, and that's the path to happiness, is to get money, to get success in dating, to get career success. That's the way you get you get happy. And it feels like that's the blueprint that's shot out to us every, every day. Um, it is. And that's a factor in why mental health issues are going up, not down. 1s And we have to change that concept. And I'm certainly RBCs based on stoicism in part and also Buddhism in part. And we do need to lose, um, that attachment to material achievements. So 1s makes a distinction between what we call self-worth and self esteem. Self esteem is where you attach value to your achievements. So if you achieve something and you as a person goes up, your self esteem is increased. If you fail as something, your value as a person goes down, your self esteem decreases and so your value as a person and your mood is attached to the achievements or lack thereof, because that's how we're taught. Self-worth is about accepting yourself unconditionally. So you are absolutely fine as you are. You do not have to achieve a single thing in this world to become more worthwhile person, and failing at things doesn't make you a less worthwhile person. You are worthwhile in and of yourself as you are. And this means that when you achieve things, your mood lifts. Yeah, feel better. And when you fail to achieve things, when you make mistakes, your mood dips. But as your mood goes up and out, your sense of self remains more stable because you're accepting yourself as you are worthwhile and fallible. Fallible means you made mistakes. All means you have flaws and but don't just advocate. I'm also a big fan of positive psychology, and positive psychology. Again, just removes that whole notion. And you have to be achieve things in this world to be happy. In fact, positive psychology is the study of human happiness about what makes you tick and what makes your life worthwhile. And, you know, studies are very, very clear on the matter. And. 1s It's not achieving things. That makes you happy. In fact, achieving something is quite disappointing because you work towards it. You work towards that. You worked, was it, you achieve it. Yay! And then this is sudden drop because you think, oh heck, what now? Yeah. I mean, achieving things gives you that temporary dopamine rush as you approach the achievement. And then once you actually have the achievement, you get the full of dopamine as he described. Absolutely. And I mean, human beings are goal directed. Don't get me wrong. Um, only if we don't have goals, if we don't have a direction, our mood will suffer, will fall by the wayside. We are more prone to depression, to anxiety. So it is good to have goals, but it's not the achievement of the goal. That's the point is actually the journey on the way that provides the reward. It's what happens on that journey. The people that you meet, the sidetracks, the side roads that you go down as part of that journey. And if you can keep your focus on that, that's how you can maintain your happiness, because all you need to do is keep realigning with new goals, adding yourself in new directions. So that that's what is that the, the main takeaway from positive psychology that it's about setting goals carefully so that you choose goals which are perpetual, that never ends like that, keeps you on that journey, focusing on the journey as your source of happiness. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our life changes all the time. I mean, I see I do a lot of work with people who have just retired. 1s And then they get really stressed and they get really anxious because they don't know what to do next. And you're like, all we need is help setting a new goal in line with their new position in life. It doesn't have to be about work anymore. It can be something else. And but really, I mean, if you look at them and stoicism, really, they're clear. The meaning of life really is just to find your joy. What makes you happy? And then do that. What gets in the way of that is this materialistic society based on the treatment. 2s So you wrote a book which I. Really enjoyed reading the four thoughts that fuck you up. And incidentally, this episode is a shout out to my friend Alan who recommended the book. Thanks for the recommendation. Thank you Alan. 2s Um, how did you like what was your motivation for writing this book? And then how did you arrive at these four thoughts? And I didn't, so that the book is all about it. So was developed in the mid 50s by a guy called Albert Ellis, um, sadly deceased, um, a genius and an unsung hero, really, of psychotherapy in a professional list through decades ago now, he was considered one of the most influential psychotherapists in history. In fact, he beat Freud in the bowel. The only person above him was Carl Rogers, who's the father of humanistic, person centered therapy. He was at number one. Albert was number two. Freud come in at number three is influential figures in the field, but nobody's really heard of him. Or and itself lies under the radar and 2s says there are four main beliefs or attitudes. Types of thoughts that disturb you. 1s And in the face of any given adversity, in the face of any given problem, you're disturbance. Whether it be anxiety, whether it be depression, whether it be something else will be a result of a combination of those four attitudes. 1s Um, for instance, let's, let's, let's say I've got an exam coming up, and it's important to me if I'm telling myself, um, absolutely must pass, that exam is going to be awful. If I don't pass that exam, it's going to be unbearable. If I can't pass examined, if I don't pass the exam, it's all my fault. I'm a loser. How am I going to feel about that exam? 2s It's going to be tricky. It's got to be tricky. I'm going to be stressed. I'm going to be anxious. What's my sleep going to be like? Not good. No good. What's my revision going to be like? It's going to be hampered by anxiety. Hampered by anxiety and poor sleep. So I'm going to arrive on the day anxious, stressed, sleep deprived and poorly revised. It's not going to go well. Well, there are four thoughts in that statement. There was a demand. I must pass the exam. There was the thing called authorizing or catastrophizing. It would be awful if I didn't pass it. There's another one called low frustration tolerance. I couldn't stand it if I didn't pass it. And then finally there was a value of myself. I am a failure. I am a loser if I don't know the fourth thoughts a demand authorization, low frustration tolerance and a put down. They are the four thoughts according to our list that I say fuck you up. 1s And each one of those beliefs has a healthy, rational, constructive equivalent. So let's say I've got exactly the same exam is still important to me, but this is my attitude. Yes, I'd like to pass it as my preference, but no, don't have to. Doesn't always happen like if I don't. But it's not the end of the world. I might find it difficult to deal with, but I'll get through it. And I'm not a loser. I'm not failure. Even if I don't pass, I'm a worthwhile, fallible human being. Thought like that. How would I feel about the exam? Everything would feel a lot easier. Easier. I'm still going to be nervous, maybe. Maybe even nervously excited. But everything's going to be a lot easier. So what will my sleep be like? It'll be better. Better? What will my revision be like? Probably a lot more effective because when you're calm, a revision is more effective. Exactly. So I'm going to arrive on the day calmer, better rested, and my revision has gone well, is constructive. So I'm going to do better on the day. So we meet. Here is the art of taking somebody who thinks along the dysfunctional lines. The must be awful, the can't stand it, the put down and helps deconstruct that attitude system and reinforce the healthier, rational version. I'd like to, but I don't have to do is bad, but it's not always difficult. I'll deal with it. No failure. Worthwhile, fallible human be. 1s I feel like, well, I, I mean, the first thing I want to say is I really like this paradigm because it highlights that it's your thoughts fucking you up as opposed to the situation. So we're normally focused on the situation like the circumstance is my enemy. Yeah. Whereas what we're saying here is we're introducing a new entity, which is your mind and your mind's. Tendency to get in its own way, essentially. So I really like that aspect of it. Do you think, in my experience, most of us have these kinds of thoughts most of the time? Is that is that your experience as well? Have you found any naturally wise people who who don't have this as the factory settings? We all have them. Even the wisest office have our moments and so are we. Says that, you know, we all have preferences for things, preferences, preferences for how we like to be, where we like to be, how we like to be treated, where we like to be at any given station in our life, and preferences for where we like to eat, and preferences for what we consider our social circle. And as long as we stick to our preferences, we are reasonable, we are rational. We are constructive. Even if our preference isn't being met. We are reasonable. We are rational. We are constructive. Unfortunately, it's just a biological human tendency. The stronger the preference, the more important it is to us, the more likely unconsciously, we're going to turn it into a demand. 1s Unlimited. It becomes a demand. It becomes irrational, it becomes dogmatic, it becomes non constructive. So the way we think, the way we feel and the way we act isn't helpful applies to all of us, even the wisest. 1s Um, and it just takes a lot of mental effort to adopt this more mature way of looking at things when I when I think about. The four thoughts. It makes me think that maybe our our brains are very predisposed to think about, predisposed to thinking about things very much in the short term and in acute settings, and hyper emphasizing the importance of any given situation. Like, I think, you know, I imagine a 16 year old boy, for example, going on his first date ever, like, to him, that's the most important event, one of the most important events of his life at the time. And he's probably having demands about it. He's probably feeling like it could go amazingly or it could go awful. He might be thinking he can't cope, etcetera. Now imagine that man as a 50 year old, you know, several decades later, reflecting on that event, his then thinking it wasn't such a big deal at all, and automatically just because of by virtue of the passage of time, he can now take this more mature position. So it feels like it's it's just a difference. It's a kind of a difference in perspective, almost, and a just a tendency to attach way too much gravity to whatever event or situation happens to be right in front of us. And that's lack of ability to take the the bigger perspective. 1s Absolutely. And it's okay to have gravity. It's okay to have things that are important, even super important. Um, but when you demand that they must or must not be, it becomes the be all and end all. It becomes all encompassing. And you lose that perspective when you bring the preference back into the room. And that thing might still have gravity or weight. It will still carry the same level of importance to you, but it doesn't become the be all and end all. You remain with that sense of perspective. We bring it back in the room if you've lost her. 1s How do you when you're working with people clinically, how do you help them move from the first position to the second position, from the from the four thoughts that are fucking them up to the more mature position. 1s And, well, I mean, everybody's different. I mean, there is a formula and but you can't be formulaic because everybody's different. But they come in, they talk about their problem or problems, and you come up with a problem list and it doesn't matter whether there's 1 or 2 problems on that list, or 10 or 15 problems on that list, you would pick a priority problem and then work on it according to that ABCd model. So you would find out what their beliefs were in the face of that specific adversity, and you would weaken and dispute those unhealthy beliefs, strengthened by disputing those healthy beliefs again and again and again through a process until they've achieved that effective, rational outlook. You can then work on the next problem in similar fashion in the next and the next. But one of the nice things about is that not only is it a psychotherapy, not only as a coaching methodology, it's also considered to be a school of thought in its own right. So if you adopt those principles in your life in general, life in general becomes calmer and more rational. And so when you're working with an individual, you're hoping for a tipping point where they stop applying it to just their specific problems on that list. And then there's a penny drop moment and they just apply it to the whole thing. Do you find that typically people are particularly, uh, faced with one particular thought that tends to be dominant in their situation, or does it tend to be a combination more often than not? It can be one. It can be the other. So there are there's for so a dogmatic demand. We don't like words such as must and mustn't, shouldn't shouldn't got to and have to says that's always there, always, always look for. The demands are easy and a demand is the rigid expression of a desire for something. So in that exam analogy, it was the rigid expression of the desire to, to to pass you says there's always a demand, and then you may or may not offer that demand. You may or may not be exhibiting low frustration tolerance for face that demand. You may or may not be putting yourself or somebody else down in the face of that demand, and that's in the face of that specific problem. But some people recognize their own themes so that they will recognize that they are very demanding in a number of areas, or they recognize that they tend to catastrophize many, if not all, of the events in their lives, or they tend to recognize that low frustration tolerance is a key theme for them, or they recognize that putting themselves down or other people down automatically is a key thing. So if they recognize that, you can broaden it out immediately. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're you authorize this problem, but where else are you authorizing and where else would it help you to adopt that anti authorizing attitude. So awful becomes bad but not the end of the world. And so you go specific people now. I found the chapter about putting yourself and other people down particularly pertinent and moving. And I also think it's really helpful for people to be able to draw that connection between putting themselves down and other people down and putting down the world. I, I don't think people generally connect those, but it's really helpful for people to recognize, firstly, that putting other people on the well down is doing them more harm than anyone is that it's a it's kind of a toxic mental habit, and also that it tends to be linked to self-critical criticism if you feel very critical of yourself. You're much more likely to put down external events or to put down other people. Yeah. So yeah. So that that, that, that put down that has three main areas. So there is self damming I'm putting myself down so don't get what I want. Therefore I am rubbish. I am a failure or it's the other person. You're stupid. You're an idiot. By world's damning we actually mean things mean yes. You can put the world down. You can say it's completely horrible. But we also mean things. So I could, I could make a mistake in this podcast and walk away with that. Was it. That forecast was completely rubbish and I can make it work. Or things could not be going well at work and would decide that my whole job is completely rubbish. It's like a global negative statement about yourself. I'm a failure, others you're an idiot or things. That thing is rubbish and it tends to mean if it's self damning, it's self criticism and you're going to be unhappy. It's other damning is criticising others and you're going to be unhappy. And if it's the thing, you're still going to be unhappy. 2s If someone tends to chronically put themselves down. And of course, shame is a feature of this. And shame is a very specific emotion and an emotion that I think people are. Rarely ever conscious of when they're experiencing it, and yet it's so debilitating. Are there any specific interventions that you use to to garner that unconditional self acceptance? 1s Absolutely. 1s Disputing is a key factor in our disputing our various exercises that challenge your beliefs. Over and over again in a variety of ways. So let's take let's say I am a failure if I don't pass my exam. Will you challenge that mediately? You can't be a failure. Even if you fail that exam, you can't be a failure because you can evidence other successes in your life you have achieved in other areas of your life. You will have good points, strong points, exams under your belt from previous institutions. Your life is full of achievements so you cannot be a failure. When you say I am a failure, it's a blanket term, but you can disprove it with all your achievements and successes. 1s It doesn't make sense to say you're a failure just because you failed at something. You can fail at something. That's one thing. That's one aspect. But it doesn't make any sense to broaden it out and define all of you in your entirety by that one aspect. And it doesn't help you to do that either. It's not the language of confidence. You're right. It's the language of shame or anxiety or depression or whatever the mood problem is based on that belief system. 1s So you will be creating that mood by that statement. That isn't true, isn't logical, isn't helpful. The alternative, meanwhile, is everything that that belief was. And so I'm not a failure even if I fail at this exam. Fallible human being. Well, you can prove that you're not a failure. You've got successes. You can prove that you're worthwhile. Everybody is is an innate human condition. Born will live. You'll die as we do the living bit. We're just making it up as we go along. We're doing the best we can. All the same. Worthwhile really means you are sufficient as you are. But you are also fallible. And if you fail that exam, that's evidence of one of your abilities. So you can prove the whole statement true, valid, not a failure. Here are my successes. Worthwhile as I am and I'm fallible. And if I fail, that's proof of my fallibility. 1s And that is the only sensible way of looking at anybody, see any logical way of looking at anybody. You can rate individual aspects of yourself. Good at that rubbish that succeeded here, failed there like that. About myself. I don't like that about myself. But the only way to look at the whole picture is the stepping back and going as me in its entirety, worthwhile and fallible. And again, if you adopt that, it means your sense of self stays the same. So you can get things wrong, but you accept yourself. You don't have to like it and you won't. But it doesn't mean that you have to attach anxiety to it or shame to it. You can have a much more healthy negative emotion. So you might be worried or remorseful. And I can imagine those kinds of I mean, there's a lot of wisdom in those interventions, especially the. 1s Because. Because I think, for example, embracing that we are worthwhile. Again, that's something that's something you see on Instagram quite a lot, isn't it? Embrace that you're worthwhile. But also. What people are more reluctant to do, perhaps, is to embrace their fallibility. And there's something, even as I hear, that there's something very refreshing about the idea of embracing not not even not trying to minimize the fact that you have flaws, but just embracing the fact that you have flaws and you've gotten some things wrong in the past, and you're going to get some things wrong in the future, and that that's okay. Is amazingly refreshing. However, like those those interventions, I can imagine them working amazingly well. They're very rational and they work really well at a cognitive level. I can imagine them going on to affect someone's emotional state. But do you find that some people require a kind of intervention that works more at a purely emotional or somatic level? Because I work with a lot of people where. 1s More rationalistic interventions. There's a there's a limit that it kind of works and they kind of are able to change their beliefs. And yet there's something deeper that isn't being moved by that kind of intervention. Yeah. So it does go deeper. So there's the rational emotive behavior therapy. The emotive bit's really important. People think that we're trying to churn out rational people, robots so that you're supposed to go through life going, that's completely logical. I do not have an emotional reaction to that. Well, we want you to emote, emote, please emote in a healthy way, in a rational way, and dispiriting when you say, well, is it true? Does it make sense? Does it help me? That's that is by its very nature, a very rational exercise. It's very robotic, it's very Vulcan. And but then we go deeper and we go emotional. We go, okay, well, now we've disproved your unhealthy beliefs. Let's look at what they get you. Let's explore your life. How do they make you think? How do they make you feel? How do they make you behave? 1s How do they stop you from doing that you would like to do? Or do they make you do that you don't like doing? Who else are they affecting? Let's explore you. 1s It's very challenging and it is very visceral. And people write these answers down, they're painting a picture and it's an unpleasant one, but they can't escape. It is there. It's in black and white. 1s So there is that visceral reaction. 1s And then you build another picture. Well, let's look at the healthy beliefs. They are true. They are sensible. They are helpful. If you embraced them, would they get you? What would change? What would be different? How would you be thinking? How would you be feeling? How would you be feeling? What would they get you to do that would be different? 1s And it's a very somatic experience. It has a feeling attached to it. There's a shift attached to it, and people reportedly come back and they go. Something has changed. I can't quite put my finger on it. Say some of them or it's been revelatory, say others. But there is a sensory shift. Um, but I'm also a clinical hypnotherapist. And so you can bring the therapy into your rational emotive behaviour practice as well. And you can help people make shifts emotionally and semantically by using that as a tool. But when you use hypnotherapy and you're using it in the service of its ethos, so it's all still about undermining those unhealthy beliefs and reinforcing those healthy beliefs. And yet you can use any tool from the therapy toolbox to do so. So it feels like because I've actually spoken with Dr. David Spiegel, who is a an expert on hypnotherapy, and from my understanding, it's like at least in the way that you're talking about it here, hypnotherapy is like the vehicle that you can use to help people internalize a lot of the frameworks and the beliefs from our body. Is that is that a reasonable way of putting it? Yeah. I mean, that's just one of the things that you can do with it. Yes. It's a very succinct thing that you can do with it. So obviously the therapy is working with the power of the unconscious. 1s But if you think about it, those beliefs that were working on the unhealthy ones are unconscious. They're automatic. They're default. The healthy ones aren't yet. But also the consequences of the see in the ABCd model. So your anxiety and all the thoughts and behaviors attached to it that's also unconscious is pretty automatic by the time you come to therapy. We've spent a long time practicing our dysfunctional beliefs and thoughts and behaviors. Yes. So hypnosis works at that level as well. It can help imprint break apart the unhealthy, imprint the healthy. 1s Maybe we should then go back a little. What? What is hypnosis? And how do you hypnotize someone? 1s Um, well, hypnosis is is an altered state of consciousness. First and foremost is an altered state of consciousness. It's a trance like state. And it's not weird. It's not unusual. As human beings, we are drifting in and out of these trance like states ten times a day. And when you are nodding off at night, you don't immediately fall asleep. You drift into sleep. That's a hypnotic trance. You wake up in the morning weather, even if it feels like you've just opened your eyes and woken up. You haven't. There's a stage as you come up to sleep and to wake up. That's hypnosis. Having a nap during the day is trance. Zoning out of anything? Is trance. Daydreaming? Is trance. 1s Anything where you focus also becomes trance. So if you like reading and you lose yourself in that book, you are in a trance. If you like movies and you lose yourself in that movie, you are in a trance. And if you drive, we've all had the experience. After we've been driving for a while, you'll get in the car. Point out you will get out of the car point B, and then you will go, oh, I don't really remember that journey. And then you worry that you're in a dangerous driver when you haven't. You've actually been in a driving trance. And actually, because you're in an unconscious driving trance, your response times are better than if you were concentrated. So if you put the daydreaming and the nodding and the napping and the books and the movies and the cars and you're all together as human beings, we are drifting into trance a lot. 1s And therapeutically speaking. And hypnotherapy is just a therapy conducted in that state of trance. Different therapies for different things depending on what you want to achieve. Maybe it's therapy for weight control, pain control, stopping smoking, anxiety, depression therapy is conducted in that trance. Your mind is more suggestible in trance. Your deep seated feelings and unhealthy beliefs are more accessible in trance. Your conscious mind likes to block. He likes to protect you as much as he can. Unless we're not going there. No, no we're not. Why is that? Why is our conscious mind trying to. What's it? What's it trying to do or to trying to protect us from? 1s And ourselves our fears. Nearly most of our dysfunctions in this world are protective. When you get to the heart of the matter. Why am I like this is just a dysfunctional protection. Maybe it was functional at one point, or maybe it was the only choice you had at that point, but it no longer serves you as a form of protection, so you have to drop it. You have to let it go. Right. So like anxiety is like anxiety is essentially I don't want to die. Well absolutely. Right. So anxiety is about threat. It's about danger. But it only needs to be applied to things that are life threatening. So let's say that you are listening to the radio and you hear that a tiger has escaped from the local zoo and it hasn't been fed. So there's a big hungry tiger on the loose and you think, okay, that's a bit worrying, but then you leave your house, you walk down the road and that tiger leaps out in front of you. 1s Blood curdling fear is the only thing that you need in the face of that situation, because that fear will even make you run for your life, fight for your life, or route to the spot riddled with fear and with a tiger probably rooted to spot as the best form of protection you've got, there is a life threatening danger. You need that anxiety. 1s But if it's not life threatening, you don't need that fight or flight. So know if there's a traffic jam or there's a poor exam result or there's a review at work is worrying. There's a concern. It's a pressure that isn't life threatening, so you don't need the same responses. But because of our unhealthy beliefs, which triggering that unhealthy, life threatening, oh my God, I'm going to die response. And I guess we just we're just getting that response. All the time. And sometimes our fears are really abstract, like it might be a fear that we're going to die, or fear that we're going to lose status. But sometimes it's even a fear that we're going to learn something new about ourselves that we don't like. Or we're going to learn that the story that we're that we've told ourselves is wrong about ourselves. So it's even non-specific, deep rooted fear of change or distortion that things are going to be somehow different in a way that we can't manage. And that's, I guess, what you're hinting at, that that's what our conscious mind is trying to protect us from. I think you hit a wall most people actually come with, which is a fear of change 1s or a fear of adopting a new story. 1s Well at this story. They have been selling themselves. Their whole life has been wrong. Yeah, I used to work in an addiction clinic. I worked in a in an addiction clinic for a year, and something that a lot of the clinicians there told me when I started was, just be careful that when people enter treatment and recover from their addictions, start to recover from their addiction. One of the big things they start to face is depression. In the face of regret, of all the time that they spent, sometimes decades spent addicted to a particular substance. So even recovery in some circumstances can be very dangerous psychologically. 1s Absolutely. Sometimes that's like the final hurdle is that realization of of just how much it's got in the way. And so what you have to help people try and understand is your new life begins now. Thank God it's now. And not next year or another five years or too late. He died. And bye bye. By all means, be a bit regretful. That it wasn't sooner. 1s But also accept yourself as you are. 1s Worthwhile and fallible. And it was now, not sooner. So we went on a bit of a tangent there about how our conscious mind is protecting us, but continue on the along the lines of hypnosis. So hypnosis is hypnosis is helping us break through these conscious dysfunctional protections. And what happens next? I like to work in a very goal directed way, whether it's hypnotherapy, whether it's. 3s This is where you are. This is where you want to be. Let's look at how we're going to get you there. And what will it look like for you and you out there? And you just give people whatever they need to help them on their journey at all. A resource, a new way of thinking, a belief statement and all hypnotherapy does really is just reinforce that really rather beautifully. I compare it like this. Let's say that I've got very negative self-talk. Let's say it's very easy to spot negative self-talk. So you pay me a compliment and I go, oh no, no, no I'm not, no I'm not. No. You have a nice smile. You say, no, I don't. That's very negative self-talk, healthy self-talk. You pay me a compliment. You've got a nice smile. I'd say, well, thank you. 1s Well, in hypnotherapy, you would just take that person and go. You do have a nice smile, you two. You have lots of lovely qualities, including this and this and that and, and and you do have a very nice smile. And because it's working that unconscious level and it has sidestepped your conscious mind for a little while. When you come out of hypnosis, that means the next time that somebody pays you a compliment, you may automatically go, no. But then there's another little thought below there. Now, yes, I am. And so you will also say thank you and smile and feel happy. And after a while that new process becomes automatic for you. How many sessions of hypnotherapy do you find this typical that someone can typically need to to meaningfully change their psychology around the particular situation? That's that's always essentially that. So how long is a piece of string question. Ah, it's better at answering that. One is says if you have one specific problem, say anxiety about exams. We are reasonably confident that we can get you at that effective, rational outlook position in about six sessions, as long as every single session goes according to plan. But people will often surprise you and they will come in after two sessions and go, I've got it. I don't think I need you anymore. Well, they don't get it. And six sessions becomes ten. Hypnotherapy can do amazing things. They can take somebody with a lifelong anxiety, and they come back on session two and go, I don't know what you did to me in the last session, but I'm right. Thank you. Run! Off they go. Other people, they just want layers and layers and layers and layers. So it becomes a lot longer. And I guess with hypnotherapy, and it's important for people to be aware that some people are much more hypnotized than other people, and some people aren't hypnotized. Well, at all. Is that right? Well, I mean, yes. So a big rule of thumb. 90% of all human beings are sizable to some degree or other. 90 in the 10% who aren't or can't. First and foremost, we put people who think that hypnosis is a load of old rubbish or dangerous or weird, and they cannot be do not want to be under any circumstances hypnotised. Absolutely fine. My job is not to fight you if you don't think you can. You can't. You're right. Bye bye. 1s We also put very, very young children in there because their brains are still forming. And you really don't want to be fiddling around with that. So it's not that they can't. It's that we don't want to. It's not ethical. Uh, but also we put people, um. So addictions at the beginning of your, your journey into therapy if you're a hardcore addict of somebody. So if you're like 2 or 3g of coke a day, every day, if you're like, and several bottles of whiskey and a ten day blackout level of addiction, hypnotherapy will not work for you at that point, your brain is still too fried. Once you have got clean sober for a period of time, then we can bring it into the room. But at that point we can't hypnotize you. Your brain is already elsewhere, and it's the same with people who are heavily medicated for their mental health issues. You might not be able to get through the medication. Also, if they've got a psychosis. It's not that you can't use hypnotherapy, but hypnotherapy is a little dangerous because they've already lost touch with reality. So you have to use it. You decide not to use it at all or use it very, very carefully, very, very sparingly. 1s How do you hypnotize someone? 2s And first of all, you just want to help them relax. 1s And I have a little bugbear. I'm so I've. Before I was a therapist, I was a journalist. And so I'm very clued into the features and news and things. And my entire career, nearly every single person has ever written an article or a blog or a feature about him. Therapy has said you will be forgiven for thinking that hypnosis is all about mad staring eyes and swinging pocket watches. And it's not by saying that you're enforcing the stereotype that it is. And to 20 years, 1s nearly every single but 95% of articles start off with something like that. It's not about swinging pocket watches. It's not about man staring eyes. Except it can be. 2s They used to. Hundreds of years ago. 1s You use a swinging thing? There was a surgeon called James Braid who pioneered him therapy for surgery, and he realized that you could help somebody to tire out by swinging something rhythmically in front of them. It could be a pendulum. It could be a pocket watch. Could be your finger. Why are she doing is tiring somebody's eyes. I'm tired. Eyes want to close. The minute you close your eyes, you can't help it. You begin to relax. Once somebody is beginning to relax, you can take that relaxation down. You deepen it. So the first stage is called an induction. You just want somebody to close their eyes. The mad staring eyes, be it that belongs to Mesmer, who was the father of a what we call mesmerism, which is hypnotic like. And he was very theatrical. He gave a performance. He thought that he could command you with his voice, with his eyes. And, you know, that was discredited hundreds of years ago as well. But you can stare as somebody. Somebody really is having trouble going into a trance. You can stare at them until they get so uncomfortable. They close their eyes, they close their eyes. They begin to axe. Once they relaxed. You deepen the trance with various methods, so you are just helping them drift down into a deeper level of relaxation or not. It depends on the therapy. For some therapies you don't want a very deep level of trance, and for some you do, so you deepen the trance to an appropriate level for the therapy. It is really, really deep. You're spending a lot of time getting into that deep, deep level. 2s And however, what you experience is no indication of depth of trance anyway. It will think that it to be deeply trance. You're going to be completely unaware and that's not the case. You can be in a really, really deep trance yet hear every single word I'm saying. Most people who drift in and out of conscious awareness, they do remember bits and pieces, but not the whole thing. Some people do actually just switch off. They kind of remember what I was saying at the beginning. The next thing they know that I'm asking them to wake up in the therapy bit in the middle is a complete blank to them. 1s But that's all good. Is your conscious mind that does the listening or they're not listening? We don't work with the conscious. We work with the unconscious. And that will remember everything that's been said to it. But saying don't remember doesn't mean you were in a deep trance. It just means that your conscious mind drifted off somewhere else for the. 1s Period. We were in trance. 1s Can you give me some examples of let's say you. Let's say you're working with someone who is trying to lose weight and they are using hypnotherapy. This makes sense to me, because eating is such a deeply rooted behavior that it makes sense to be working at the level of the unconscious. We often eat unconsciously. What kind of messages would you be suggesting around that particular issue? 1s Yeah. It depends. So 1s let's I work with healthy eating and unhealthy eating and. 1s More at the habit level. So quite a lot of our eating problems are just habits that have got a little out of control. We don't question it anymore. There's a lovely saying by a guy called A world around we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence isn't a skill as a habit, but we are. Anything we repeatedly do becomes habitual. 1s Unfortunately, once it becomes habitual, we no longer question why we do it. We just do it automatically. And that includes. Which is which is a feature. It's not a bug. It's designed so that we don't have to be thinking about everything we do. That means you can unconsciously just keep selecting pizzas and burgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken as your food options. And so hypnotherapy is really good at breaking that habit. And I tend not to use aversion therapy. I don't think it works. So aversion therapy would be. Chicken is disgusting. Is greasy is five hated stinks of pool. 2s You can go for direct suggestions. You stop eating and fried chicken. You stop eating burgers. You stop eating this. 1s Or you can use what we call indirect suggestion. I wonder when you stop eating those things, I don't know. Maybe it'll be today. Maybe it'll be tomorrow. All I know is that when you do decide to stop, you're gonna feel really good about it. 2s Though there's direct. You stop now and there's indirect. I don't know when you stop, but when you stop, you feel gray and not quite often. You just use a mixture of the two, and you leave them in and out of each other. And a few sessions of that is enough to start that healthy eating habit. And I emphasize the word start because healthy eating then becomes a habit. So hypnotherapy starts being maintain that process. And then eventually with repeatedly choosing healthy eating options, that becomes your new habit. It becomes your default. It becomes the thing you don't question. So every time you sit down with the menu in front of you, you automatically go, well, silently. Yeah. I've seen some really interesting hypnotic suggestions. So for example around eating. Or around smoking. I've seen hypnotic suggestions which take the tone of something like your body is defenseless and you must take care of it. 1s And you should take care of your body by choosing the correct food. So by not poisoning it with cigarettes. Yes. And things along those lines are those suggestions you've ever encountered or that that you use. And I've seen them. I don't like those either. You're your friend, okay? It's not your enemy, but he isn't defensive. 1s I'm sorry. Defense less. Your body has defenses. It has. But you want to be in line with those defenses. You want to be allied to those defenses. So yeah. Okay. You're going to stop smoking. Yeah. And your body's going to love you for stop smoking. Believe it or not, your body never liked that. Smoke it, didn't you think? It absolutely doesn't. And it's going to be so happy that you've now chosen not to smoke. 1s So you work with your body and your mind. Now, you must do this. To do that, your body is defensive. Is. Now it is. It's gone. And once you on board or on. 1s Have you ever thought, how does hypnotherapy or reboot? How do they interact with someone who's had a significant trauma in their lives? Do you find there particularly effective, or maybe that some other intervention is warranted? Does does having a trauma effect sort of someone's outcomes in either of those? So the willingness to a change or not is what affects the outcome. Um, you know, eMDR has become the de facto treatment for trauma. Um, but it doesn't mean that other treatments can't work or be just as effective. So RB is good for trauma. If the therapies excellent the trauma. What you're trying to do is reprocess the memory. Trauma is that the memory is still replaying. It shouldn't be replaying. It's buried at the back of the library of your mind. But it isn't. It's at the front. It's like a curtain up reading it. So you reprocess that memory, you file it away correctly, you know it's there, but you no longer take it off the shelf. So for people who don't know, eMDR is eye movement desensitization reprocessing. When I, I was thinking about it, when you were talking about eye movements and hypnosis, do you think there's any correlation at all? Maybe you don't think there is. Do you think there's any correlation at all between how those eMDR and hypnotherapy work? And I don't know enough about myself to talk about the correlation between and the eye movement patterns that they use in the eMDR are particularly structured to do a certain thing eye movement patterns in hypnotherapy. Well, first of all, you're either just trying to tie his out or you're talking about our movements because they're in a deep trance and it doesn't mean not reprocessing. They are. Do you think there is space to cultivate a particular or maybe it's it's already happened, but to cultivate a particular form of hypnotherapy that could be specifically for people who have had trauma. 1s Oh, yeah, you can even. There are even courses that teach you how to use eMDR and hypnotherapy together. So short answer that one is yes and mean. At the end of the day, every single therapy is trying to do the same thing. They just use it with a different perspective, a different philosophy, a different modality. The whole idea of every single therapy is borne out by a very famous quote, I'm so famous I can't even remember who originated it. But the whole idea is that each way you look at things, the things you look at change. Yeah, and you change and you change. Yes. And to me, that's the essence of any therapy. It doesn't matter whether it's CBT, therapy and the person centred counselling. It's the idea that if you can change the way you're looking at that thing. The thing you're looking at and you change. And even psychedelics seem to be working by the same basic mechanism of that, opening up and changing our thinking patterns from more rigid to more flexible. Absolutely. And I don't think psychedelic therapy for me can't come fast enough. Oh, yeah, just the things we could have achieved if they hadn't been, 1s you know, banned, illegal. 2s The only just now starting to open up to the possibilities of therapy with psilocybin, with LSD, ketamine. And they produce wonderful, prolonged results. 1s And you're in Bristol, where I believe Dr. Ben Sessa is researching it. Absolutely. We've got an awaken life sciences clinic here using, I think, predominately ketamine based therapy, but not exclusively committed with ketamine based therapy, I think predominantly, but not exclusively for addictions. Yeah, yeah, I think it's really, uh, it's I think it's it's really exciting. And certainly it's one of the cutting edges that are being developed in psychiatry and mental health in general. Absolutely. For my next on my list next to is some psychedelic integration work because I not some people are because it's still illegal. And as a study it's in its infancy. Lots of people are making up their own mind and doing things themselves. And and although it's still illegal, you can't do that as a therapist. Well, you can do is say somebody you said, look, this massive trip, I've been given all this information and you don't know what to do with it. Please help. You can do the integration work. Yeah, you can help them to integrate the stuff they learned on that experience into their own lives. So it can lead to meaningful change. Yes. Yeah. What do you think as a psychotherapist? 1s What do you think has surprised you the most about human nature, as you've come to learn about human nature? 2s And just how resilient we really are. 2s And you get particularly harrowing stories nearly every day of your life. But, you know, life itself is incredibly challenging. We tend to think that life isn't that challenge more challenging now than it ever was? But life has always been horrible, life has always been challenging, and we are incredibly resilient. And therapy is just empowering people, really just to remember how resilient and marvelous they actually are. I think that's a wonderful note to end on. Daniel, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. You're welcome. Where can people find you? Learn more about your work. 1s There's my website, Daniel Fryer. Com. I practice in Bristol but also online. So I see people nationwide and all around Europe, and I've got one book out already and the fourth, so I've got another book on him, therapy, coming out in May. I also blogged regularly on Psychology Today. Underneath a column called Keeping an Even Keel, and my blog on my own website regularly as well. I'm not as regularly used to, but I'm trying to get better at that one. Excellent. I'll put a link to your website in the description the four thoughts that fuck you up. Go read it. Stop getting fucked up by your thoughts and I'm looking forward to your new book as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Bye bye. 9s Thanks so much for listening this week. If you've got any feedback, as always, do get in touch. If you enjoyed the episode, why not give us a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts? Because it really helps other people to find us. If you want to get in touch, you can find us on Instagram or Twitter, or you can drop us an email. And if you value the show more generally, why not buy us a coffee? Thanks so much!