Ask Me Anything #2: Men's Mental Health, Addiction, Burnout, Grief, Dating apps and Critical Thinking

This is a recording of a Q & A session at Riddlesdown collegiate, a secondary school in South London. For this session, specifically aimed at male staff, Alex was interviewed by Deputy Head of College Andrew Edwards.

Today we cover topics including male mental health issues, lifestyle factors influencing mental health, work life balance, the economics of discomfort, the signs of burnout, cultural trends affecting dating & relationships, criticial thinking and much more.

Dr. Alex Curmi is a consultant general adult psychiatrist with a sub-speciality in addictions who completed his training in the South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust. He is also a UKCP registered training psychotherapist, and has a special interest in mindfulness meditation. 

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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

 Welcome back to the podcast. My name is Alex. I'm a consultant psychiatrist for our second Ask Me Anything episode. I'm sharing a recording of a Q&A I recently did with Riddles Down Collegiate, a large secondary school in South London. They're trying to prioritize the mental health of their staff, and they asked me to do a Q&A specifically for the male staff. So I was interviewed by Andrew Edwards, the deputy head of school, and we answer questions all about work life balance, how to optimize your mental health in different ways, addiction, the specific problems men are facing with their mental health nowadays, culturally, in wider society, and much more. If you like this kind of Q&A episodes, please do send me any and all questions to Thinking Minds podcast at gmail.com. And similarly can send any questions to our social media accounts, which you can find in the description. In addition, if you'd like me to do a talk about mental health, psychiatry, psychology, self-development therapy, send me an email to Thinking Mind podcast at gmail.com and put Speaking Inquiry in the subject line. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. This is the Thinking Minds podcast, a podcast all about mental health. Thank you for listening. If you like it, do share it with a friend. Give us a rating. Give us some feedback. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Okay. First of all, thank you very much for agreeing to do this. Um, first things first, we'd love to hear a little bit about your background. Um, as a doctor in medicine, um, a bit about you as a psychiatrist. And tell us a bit about the podcast. Firstly, thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah. I've been lucky that I've been able to build a career largely by following my interests and going off different tangents as different interests arose for me. I obviously went to medical school in Malta, where I'm from, where I grew up, and I decided to do that because I was interested in the human body and how it's worked. And quite quickly, within medical school, I realised I was more attracted to things like neuroscience, how the brain works. Psychiatry really interested me for a lot of reasons. I think I was interested in how people behave, why people do the things they do. So there's a deeper layers of human psychology, and that's what motivated me to, after my first couple of years of like general medical training, where you're doing like medicine, surgery, geriatrics, etc. I then decided to specialize in psychiatry, kind of following that interest. And then within psychiatry, I found the area I really liked was psychotherapy, which is the art of how you can help people, how you can improve the quality of their lives by talking to them and going even deeper into the psychology of people. What are the underlying motivations? What are the psychological conflicts that people have? Why do people fall into the same problems again and again and again? So alongside my psychiatric training, I then decided to also, uh, undergo formal psychotherapy training, uh, of which I've done three out of five years. And then alongside that, I decided to start a podcast about all of these topics psychiatry, psychotherapy, self-improvement and self-development topics which aren't necessarily always presented alongside each other. I decided to do that because I think there's a tremendous amount of overlap between these different areas, between, you know, how one can improve the quality of their lives without the professional necessarily, uh, formal mental health problems. And of course, like the art of psychotherapy, I think there's a really interesting area of overlap, but also some really interesting differences between all of those areas. So on my podcast, I've had interviews with the expert guests from around the world, but I've also produced my own work, uh, produced my own essays, which I put out on the podcast. And my goal really is, I think, as with a lot of podcasting, to provide like high quality information without a gatekeeper. So you can come to the podcast, you don't have to be a mental health nurse or a psychologist or a psychiatrist or anything like that. And I designed the podcast as much as possible to be accessible so that anyone can more or less understand it, but at the same time get quite deep information about what's going on in the mental health world if they want to train in it or pursue a career in it. But also they have a relative who's experiencing a mental health problem, or if they might be experiencing a mental health problem of some kind. That's kind of the goal of the podcast. So now my career kind of rests on those three pillars. I practice as a psychiatrist. I also have a private psychotherapy practice, and I put out the podcast. Excellent. And just for just for a novice, how would you quickly sort of sum up the difference between psychiatry and psychology? Because I think from a novice point of view, it is sometimes hard to differentiate between the two. So the best way to to to discuss the distinction is they're different disciplines. So psychiatry is a medical specialty. So you become a medical doctor first and then you become a psychiatrist, which is a doctor that specializes in quote unquote mental illness. Typically things like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, psychotic conditions like schizophrenia, but also things like personality disorder, forensic psychiatry, which is the psychiatry of criminals, either when criminals become develop mental illness or when people commit crimes because of a mental illness, and also things like addictions and psychotherapy. Uh, psychology is a separate discipline. So psychology is the discipline of trying to understand how the human mind works. And then there's different areas within psychology, like you can become a research psychologist, where you go into academics and try to design experiments and do research to try to figure out how the mind works. Or you can become a clinical psychologist, which is when you're using the information we know about psychology and apply it in a psychotherapy style way to try and improve people's lives. Obviously, there's. There can be a lot of overlap, so a psychiatrist can end up becoming a psychotherapist and a clinical psychologist. Their work can look quite similar, but it can also look quite different. So the work of a psychiatrist say working on a hospital ward can look very different to that of a research psychologist who's designing experiments at a university. But those are roughly the differences. There are different disciplines. One's a medical specialty, and one is just the broad discipline of understanding the human mind. And you can do that in a research capacity, but then you can apply it in a clinical setting as well. Excellent. Thank you for that. So let's let's get on to the sort of the main body of what we're here to discuss. Um, what would you say are some of the key issues facing men, specifically men today in terms of mental health? Um, we know suicide rates in men are higher than women. Um, so what would you sort of say are the are the key issues facing men today? Yeah. Firstly, I'd like to comment that I think it's a really good thing that we are discussing, that we are discussing men's mental health in particular. And you told me before we started recording that the two have been divided, and I think that makes sense. Of course, there's a lot of commonalities between the problems that men and women face, but there's also a lot of important differences which will go into and I think I'm happy about it, because I think one of the trends I see in our culture more broadly is this kind of denial that men and women have a different experience, and of course, they have a very different experience for important reasons. They I think both men and women are having a terrible time with their mental health and kind of different but important ways. So talking about men specifically. Firstly, I'd like to talk about the I'd like to make the distinction between the problems men have always had and maybe newer problems that men have in a modern, specifically Western context. So in terms of the problems men have always had psychologically. Men have always had the burden of performance. This I this notion of are you going to make it? Are you going to be successful? Are you are you going to be able to provide? Men have always had that anxiety. Literally. It's literally called performance anxiety. You can make an argument that men are very, in many ways, the more experimental arm of the human species. Um, men are about trial and error and then hopefully success. And you can see this in lots of different ways. Um, but but ultimately, what it comes down to is men have this anxiety that they're not going to, quote unquote, make it. Now, newer problems have developed again in a modern Western context, in that I think one of the most important aspects of male psychological development is being denied. And that is the capacity to integrate and use your aggressive impulses. As a man. I think that is now being the the cultural undercurrent is denying a lot of this and saying that men actually should largely switch off their aggression because men have this capacity to be, let's call it toxically masculine. And so there's no. Has the ideal of masculinity that men can aspire to. Now, that's not exactly true because because of alternative media spaces, there are like male ideals which which men can pursue. Some are more toxic than others. I think there are healthy ones and less healthy ones, and we can talk about that if you want. But I'm talking about the mainstream undercurrent of society. I think there is a there is a lack kind of diminishment of healthy masculine ideals. And, and generally the masculine ideal is the capacity to realize your aggression and to use it in a healthy way. And you see that happening in things like sports, martial arts, but really, any pursues. And when I say aggression, I like to use a very broad definition of aggression, because obviously when I use a word like aggression, people might take it as like violence. And I don't mean it in that sense. I mean the broad definition of aggression, which is more like the capacity to go into the world to take risks. To try and create a vision, to try and manipulate the world in a way that you think might be good, to try and make change, try and have an impact. Now, obviously that can manifest itself, manifest itself in a way that's very destructive and very healthy. But that's what I see as aggression. And so it's very important that men come to understand and become very familiar with their aggressive impulses and then learn how to use it in a productive way. And that could be anything from, like I said, becoming really good at a sport to developing a particular profession, to learning how to date and form relationships with women. All of these require the healthy integration of the aggressive impulse. So Carl Jung is a very famous Swiss psychiatrist who talked about this and this is his. This is encapsulated in his idea of integrating the shadow side. So we have this dark side, uh, which can be used for both healthy reasons and for destructive purposes. We need to integrate that ability to become a well-rounded, um, human being. So I think that's that's definitely one major problem. May not be encouraged to kind of switch off their aggression. Uh, and to just be sort of compassionate. And I think that can be a problem. Um, I also think in a capitalist society, the burden of performance and I and I don't say this as someone who's anti-capitalist by any means, I say this more in a matter of fact way. A capitalist system has raised the bar and I think what men actually need to achieve. So on the one hand, they're being told to switch off their aggressive impulses. On the other hand, they're being told they need to be like billionaires. There's this undercurrent that they need to be hyper successful. We live in a world where on your phone you can open an app called Instagram, and you can see what Jay-Z is up to. And psychologically, what that means is Jay-Z is effectively your peer. He's not this other. He's kind of in your social orbit. And so we're comparing ourselves to people who are more and more incredibly successful. And I think that can be very demoralizing. And then the last thing I'd like to mention, in terms of problems men are facing, is that we live in an increasingly isolated society, more atomized, less community, less families. Men are getting into less relationships, men are having sex less all of these things. And men are just more vulnerable to isolation because men are less likely to reach out. They're less likely to in the relationships they are, and they're less likely to be emotionally intimate and vulnerable, and they're less likely to recognize their own needs and more likely to repress them. So all of this means, in a society which is becoming more and more isolated. Men are probably going to suffer the brunt of that isolation and be less likely to have those safeguards against it. So I think there's a lot more to say about all of those points. But roughly that's that's what I think, I think. I'd also like to mention, and this obviously is a problem for women as well, that dating and relationships are a bit of a disaster at the moment for complicated reasons. One, I think you can relate to that switching off of aggression in men that is being encouraged. A lack of healthy aggression, but also dating relationships are primarily being formed on dating apps. Now, I think something like 60% of relationships are being formed on dating apps. And dating apps have had a problem, have a problem that no one ever intended. So when they first came out, the idea was, it's this amazing thing that we we know the internet can do this. The internet can connect people that have sort of desires in common. So eBay comes out and all of a sudden, what is to most people, a piece of junk in your garage can do. Another person thousands of miles away can be exactly what they want. So the internet is amazing at connecting sort of supply and demand. And when the dating apps came out, we thought the same thing would happen. You know, now everyone's going to be able to find the perfect match, because surely there's someone somewhere that wants to date me. And, you know, that's. Kind of a reasonable way to think about it, but it's really wrong because what? Dating app companies didn't take into account was that it would amplify certain aspects of how men and women choose each other in a way that's quite harmful. Uh, I can talk about that in more detail if you like. But roughly, I think I think dating apps have been a net negative in terms of people forming healthy relationships and meeting each other. That's really interesting. I actually just want to go back to, to a couple of the points you made in that, um, one about social media, um, and the and the issues there of you can click on and see Jay-Z and what he's up to. Um, and obviously we work with young people, but broader for our own sort of usage of social media as well. Do you think that's particularly damaging? And then you also referenced, um, positive role models when you were talking about male aggression. Um, is there any one that springs to mind in that sense as well? So your first question was like, do the whether or not I think social media itself tends to be harmful. Yeah, I think it definitely can be. I actually think social media probably has a worse effect on women overall, but I think it has a negative effect on both men and women. I think the way to think about social media is by drawing an analogy to food. So we know that this food that's like good for us, that's healthy, that's what support us. And then this quote unquote, junk food, you know, food that feels really good. It's like really entertaining. It gives you a lot up front. But then like feed too much of it. You don't feel very nice, like you can feel the after effects of that. And somehow it's a it's a cheap it's a cheap version of calories. Like empty calories is what people talk about. Socializing is extremely, extremely important for human beings. The reason why we're so successful, the reason why we dominate the planet, is because we have ability to socialize and collaborate in groups on a scale that other animals just can't. We're not the strongest. We're not the fastest, we are the most intelligent. But part of our intelligence is like our ability to collaborate. And if you want to learn more, you can read a book called sapiens, which is all about that. And so we need social contact. Social media is cheap social contact. It's a junk food version of social contact. If you use it in small doses, it's fine. If you have a great circle of friends who you meet in person, and you also use a little bit of Instagram. There's no harm in that. You can actually you can use these apps even to meet people in real life. And that that can be a good thing. But often people choose the path of least resistance, just like with junk food. People often choose the path of least resistance. This is why two thirds of people are over overweight or obese. And I don't say that as a knock against those people. I say that as an indicator of just how seductive junk food is. And similarly with social media, incredibly seductive and the temptation the path of least resistance is for social media life to substitute your real social life. And I think when that happens, it can be incredibly harmful because you're not getting what you really need from social contact, but also those other problems I mentioned. It makes your peer group. Wildly different. All of a sudden, you're comparing yourself to, like, the most successful people in the world. Or at least that's a lot of what can happen. And even regular people on social media, they obviously tend to present the very, very best versions of themselves, the very best versions of their lives. Uh, I'm so you're comparing yourself to to a highly edited, curated version. You know, I spoke to a psychiatrist named in May. Gilchrist once wrote a really good book called The Master and His Emissary, about the differences between the right and left side of the brain. And he said, like, the best way to summarize the modern world is we're living in a simulacrum. So we're living in a kind of fake virtual world. And I think, you know, I don't I don't really think we're all living in a fake virtual world, but I think more than, more than ever before, it's possible to live in a world which is mostly virtual. You can, if you have a job working from home, have very little contact with the outside world, very little contact with people, and the trend is going more and more in that direction for for a lot of us. Obviously, technology can be very useful. It allows us, for example, to have this kind of conversation, even though I'm I'm in Texas right now in the United States and you're in the UK, we can have this wonderful conversation. But obviously technology can be used for all sorts of destructive means as well. Okay, great. And there's a nice segue in there a little bit with with the junk food that led me on to my one of my next questions. We all know, um, diet and sleep and exercise is good for us. And when we're getting each of those in, in sort of correct measures where we feel good about ourselves, why is it why is it so challenging, do you think, for people to to get those balances right? You mentioned it was like the path of least resistance with junk food, but sleep, exercise, diet, it is important. We all know that. But, but but why do we not prioritize that more? Uh, it's a good question. I'd like to talk about this idea of the deal with the devil. So what's the deal with the devil? That is, when you're presented with a bargain that's really feels really good upfront, but. Takes from you on the back end and every basically every bad choice in life that people tend to make will feel really good up front in the short term. But then take for me on the back end. So if you look at nutrition, you know, eating junk food, as I said before, is highly seductive. It's actually, you know, it's worth understanding that a lot of junk food is actually designed by scientists to be what's called hyper palatable, like the most addictive possible. They look at flavor, they look at texture. They even look at things like how crunchy the food is to maximize the degree of how seductive that that food is. Um, but obviously, as we all know, if we use too much junk food, it's going to destroy our minds and bodies and makes us feel terrible causes things like obesity and metabolic syndrome. Uh, and this is just a really useful shorthand to separate, like, good decisions from bad decisions. Another idea I like to talk about is. This, this idea, the economics of this comfort, and this is the idea that discomfort is inevitable. In life. We will always face discomfort. We try as much as possible, consciously or unconsciously, to avoid discomfort, but it's going to be there. The only choice we have is how we face that discomfort. In general, good choices are choices where you feel a little bit uncomfortable up front, but then you feel much better. It pays off in the long run, and bad choices are ones which feel really great up front, but then take from you on the back end. So getting up at 6 a.m. and putting on your jogging shoes and going out. And January when it's freezing cold for a run, really like uncomfortable on the front. But then after you do that you feel really good, you feel a bit more motivated and that's the sign that you've actually made the correct choice. So I think this deal with the devil idea is this really good filter for good choices and bad choices in every area of your life. If you're willing to tolerate a little bit of discomfort up front consistently for a long period of time, you're going to get disproportionate benefits. Uh, in the long term, the reason why we're so vulnerable is because our brains weren't really designed for this landscape. Our brains weren't designed to have a situation where we have access to unlimited calories in extremely seductive, junk food like forms. Our brains weren't designed to be in a situation where we don't have to exercise. Our ancestors have all evolved in an environment where exercise was just a mandatory part of life. You have to get from A to B, you have to hunt, you have together, you have to be outside. You have to move. This is all new in many ways. Human beings are kind of victims of our own success. We've created a situation. You know the reason why we seek comfort. The reason why we seek short term gratification, why we seek these things, is because they were so rare in the environment that we evolved in, but then we got so good at getting them that now we've created this situation where we've totally mollycoddle ourselves or put ourselves in these cocoons. Uh, and because our brains didn't involve evolved for that situation, uh, it's incredibly damaging because as we can go into later, you actually need to move. You need to eat food. That's basically roughly the kind of food we eat that we evolved to eat. We need to sleep. We need to spend time outside. We need to socialize, as we discussed before. So all of our instincts. Evolved in a situation which is very vastly different to the situation we're in now. And so we've created this positive feedback loop that that undermines us. And do you feel that if we don't get the balance right between sleep, exercise, diet, can you have a sort of positive mental health without without those three things? Um, or is it or is it extremely difficult? I think the simplest way to answer that question is the worst. Any of those are the the more like the the, the worse your mental health is likely to be. And you can you can do this. You can just use an extreme example to illustrate this. If you deprive someone of sleep, they can go psychotic. They can start hearing voices. In fact, people can't survive without sleep. And obviously having really good sleep is really good for your mental health. And then there's everything in between. So roughly the better your sleep is, the better your mental health is likely to be. The better your nutrition is, the better your exercise program is. And they also all affect each other. So the better. If you exercise, you're more likely to sleep better. If you sleep better, you're more likely to make the correct nutritional decisions. If you make the better nutritional decisions, your exercise will go better. So they all affect each other, but they all obviously affect your mental health. I don't think it's about being perfect. I should say it's not like there is no perfection really, but the better those all are, the better your mental health is likely to be. And the opposite is also true. Right? And one of the things you said in that previous answer, um, about knowing that you're going to be facing tough times at certain times in your life, um, it reminded me a little bit. I think it was Stephen Fry who referenced mental health being a bit like the weather. It's sometimes it will rain, but you need to sort of prepare yourself. Um, I don't know whether you've heard that quote before. Um, but I quite like that quote. Sometimes it will rain, but the rain will stop. Um, and then the sun comes out and then but, you know, the rain will come again. So she's about preparing yourself and, I suppose sleep and exercise and diet if you can get those things right. That's part of your preparation. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, in our external lives, we're gonna have our ups and downs. There's this word called. This word called vicissitudes. I feel like life is full of these vicissitudes, these ups and downs, and they're inevitable. Like our lives are very, like, difficult and tragic in lots of ways. And reflecting that our mental health has its volatility, its ups and downs. And I absolutely do think treating it like the weather can be very useful, because it means you're not as identified with it. So, for example, rather than being like, I am sad, it's the distinction between I am sad or oh, I'm noticing I'm having some feelings of sadness today, so it gives you a little bit of detachment where you're not fully identified with every negative experience that you're having. But also, just like with the weather, it doesn't have to, uh, totally affect your behavior. Like just because it's raining, it doesn't mean you can't go outside. You can put on a rain jacket and go outside. And indeed, just because you might be feeling a little bit anxious, or you might be experiencing some low mood or sadness, even though it might compel you to to not do the things that might be good for you. You realize there's a choice there. You know, just because something doesn't feel good, it doesn't mean it's not a good decision. And this is another point I'd like to mention. Talking about mental health, I think is really good. Developing awareness of mental health issues is really important, but it can be a little bit of a double edged sword as well. I think a constant focus on mental health can also can can even make people worse at times, and especially if people who aren't so experienced, uh, at it or knowledgeable about it, talk about it. They can make some very, uh, important mistakes. And I think the main mistake would be confabulation saying discomfort with poor mental health. So being uncomfortable is a normal, natural part of life that should be faced sort of voluntarily and forthrightly having like quote unquote poor mental health is an entirely different animal. And in fact, in my experience, and you learn this a lot in psychotherapy, the more you avoid discomfort, actually, the more likely you are to have poor mental health because you're not developing yourself into sort of a robust, dynamic problem solving creature, which is ultimately what humans are, and you're making yourself more vulnerable and fragile. So some of the problems I see with the way people can talk about mental health publicly is they can confuse mental health with just feeling bad in any given short term moment. And that is a dangerous mistake to make, because feeling bad is a part of life. Is that a little bit linked to, uh, toxic positivity as well? I've read a little bit about toxic positivity, those people who try and, um, turn everything into a positive or say things that are great and when actually sometimes you just need to recognize that things are going bad. But let's, like you say, problem solve and find a way through it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Another term I've heard for that is spiritual bypassing, which is where people try to become this sort of fake spiritual persona, which I think can be this unilaterally positive attitude to everything towards life. And I actually I think spiritual pursuits can be incredibly valuable and important. I think we've lost a lot of spirituality in our society, and I think that's a bad thing overall. Um, but people can try and shortcut their way to being quote unquote spiritual and not really develop themselves meaningfully. Uh, I do think the way out is through. I think confronting and acknowledging things that are negative is also important. I can see problems on both sides. I can see people can use negativity as a coping mechanism, and people can use positivity as a coping mechanism. I think what a person should try and move towards is just trying to see their situation as realistically as possible, appreciating the positive, using the negative as important Information and how you can move to a more positive space. But if you're either leaning too hard on negativity or too hard on positivity, both can lead you in bad directions. I think leaning too hard on positivity can mean that you don't see and tackle problems that you need to tackle, and you can end up with this kind of like saccharine persona. Uh, leaning too hard on negativity can make you cynical and make you, like, withdraw from life and withdraw from relationships and withdraw from the world. I think sometimes negativity can be an excuse to kind of sit your life out on the bench, and I think that that can be harmful. I can see how both of these things can become like a kind of an unhealthy coping mechanism. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, next question might be a little bit more sort of specific to to education, but do you know anything that specifically teachers might face in terms of mental health, in terms of workload hours, and what should we be looking out for in terms of burnout? Um, with with teachers. So I mean, I don't I know I have a few friends that are teachers. I don't know a huge amount of teaching as a profession, but what I understand is actually the work hours are really long. I imagine it's a huge responsibility, especially if you really aspire to be good at your job. Teaching is kind of bottomless as a profession, like what makes a good teacher? You could talk about it endlessly. I, I suspect that teachers might face a similar problem to healthcare workers. So one problem in healthcare is that people that tend to go into into healthcare tend to be high in a personality trait called agreeableness, which means they care about people, they're empathic, they like to coach people. They want people to do well, which is why they become health care workers. The problem with being too high and agreeable and not being in being too high in agreeableness and and not cultivating the opposite personality trait, which is this agreeableness is you can fail to give people their own responsibility and autonomy. So one problem that I suspect, and you can correct me if I'm wrong about this, that teachers may face, is they can empathize with their kids so much, and they take way too much responsibility on for the development of their kids. And actually, kids need to slowly start taking on their own responsibility, their own autonomy. And so I think teachers can fall into the predicament of just feeling like it's all on them, like the kids success or failure in class, and maybe even more broadly in life is down to them. And in the psychotherapy world, we're very careful about this. We're very careful about what is the therapist's responsibility and what is the client's responsibility. The therapist job is essentially to create the best possible environment for the client to grow. And the way the client grows is up to them. And if they do the work and take on the responsibility, that's that's up to them. And I think I would encourage teachers, if they think they're facing the similar problem, to do the same teacher's job is to create the best possible environment for their kids to grow and develop. But then a lot is on the kids and obviously on their own families as well, and their own situations to to to do the best that they can and when things don't go wrong. Sorry, I'm when things go wrong. I would encourage teachers not to, whether it's conscious or unconscious, take on the burden of that too much on themselves because, you know, there's a limit and limited amount of control. Uh, I imagine that people have over the, over the situation. So that's that's one problem. You can tell me if you think that's a problem that teachers face, but that's one problem I suspect they would face. Yeah. No. Absolutely. And and teachers do put a huge amount of work and effort in into their jobs. And sometimes, um, things can go wrong through no fault of their own. It might be that a young people turn up not in the in the right mind frame, uh, to listen that day or to be engaged with what you're trying to deliver. Um, and that can also be pretty demoralizing. You're trying to get the best possible lesson across, or you're trying to put the help and support in place, and they're going to throw that right back at you sometimes in a pretty rude, in a pretty aggressive way at times. And that can have a really severe impact on on your mood as a teacher. Um, so I think a lot of, a lot of people's go to then is to work, um, that bit harder and spend more time on the planning and more time on the relationships that you're building and water. But if you carry on like that, then I think that's where you get your burnout. There has to be. I think what you just referenced is an understanding that not everything's going to be perfect. And you it's not just simply putting in more and more work and effort. It's an understanding that things will go wrong and things are going to be tough at times. Absolutely. You have limitations. You have a finite amount of attention and energy, and your job is to use it as wisely as possible, but not to be perfect and not to make everyone's life perfect, because that's not possible. And we may have, you know, one of the things you might uncover in a psychotherapy type situation is you may realize you have these unconscious drivers to be towards perfectionism. So and you don't necessarily need to do this through therapy, but recognizing those drivers and developing more of a, let's say, a good enough strategy rather than a perfectionistic strategy can can be really helpful. And what would what would you say burnout for staff looks like with it within a school setting? What sort of things should we be looking out for within our own staff cohort and to support staff? What would we see with burnout, do you think? Yeah. So burnout will manifest itself in all sorts of ways. You know, physically you're going to be more tired, more fatigued, more listless. You may actually have sleep problems. You might find that you have work on your mind all the time and that you can't like really separate from from a separate yourself from it. You may feel like that sense of emotional fatigue that emotionally you can't face up to the tasks that you need to do every day. It's a good sign of burnout, where tasks that used to be quite straightforward for you, you now find your procrastinating around you're avoiding. There's something about them which you can't bring yourself to do them. Uh, more advanced signs of burnout. You might find yourself feeling more cynical. You might start feeling hopeless. You might start feeling a sense of, like, futility and overwhelm. A sense of impotence that you. That you just don't feel like you can make a difference, uh, in your job. And then obviously, you can start to experience more advanced mental symptoms as well, like anxiety and panic attacks, low mood. Uh, in addition to disturbed sleep, your appetite can be disturbed. Um, you might find yourself getting sick more often. You might find yourself not doing sort of the regular activities you need to do to take care of yourself. You might find you might find yourself leaning on less healthy coping strategies like alcohol, drugs, uh, other ones, even things like pornography and things of that nature. So all of the the way to think about burnout syndrome, it's all sorts of, uh, different manifestations. And it tends to be quite insidious most of the times. Like it starts very slowly and then slowly, slowly ratchets up over time. And in terms of practical things, either the individual or us as a school can do to support if we think someone is suffering from burnout. I would only practical things you think we can do as a school or as an individual as well. How would you protect yourself from burnout? Yeah, I think I can probably speak more to the individual level, but as an individual, I would encourage people to start thinking of themselves kind of analytically as a system, like we're systems almost thinking of yourself as a country. Uh, you, you have a finite amount of energy, although with the correct choices you can increase your amounts of energy, of course, but you have a finite amount of energy, and your job is to just to decide how best to use that time, energy and attention. I also like to encourage something called enlightened self-interest, which is this idea that the people who are most able to take care of others basically take care of themselves first. People who take care of themselves are actually in a much better position to take of take care of other people, which is why on planes they tell you if those oxygen masks come down, put on your own mask before helping other people. And it's the exact same principle in life. Firstly, to see yourself as your own functional entity, taking care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally and that's going to put you in the best position to take care of, uh, other people. Now, assuming you are in a good position to take care of other people. Again, not being perfectionistic as we mentioned. Having clear boundaries between like work and not work. Continuing to do the things that that you need to do to take care of yourself, to maintain yourself, and also just being aware if there are like systemic problems, like if you are just being given too much work and there's more work that you can handle. Reaching out to the people who are sort of above you, who are the authorities in your system? Try and communicate with them and try to create a dialogue of what's likely to be more manageable for you, and trying not to let, as I said before, like unconscious drivers just make you take on way too much. So there's this idea of martyr syndrome, which is when people take on too much. Indeed, they sacrifice themselves, and those are people who are really likely to get burnt out. So martyr syndrome is in fact the opposite of enlightened self-interest. It's like I'll take care of everyone else first, and then if there's some left over for me, then that's okay. And that's you just want you just want to do the the opposite of that. Really. Okay, great. And in terms of us as a school, I know that the focus there was the individual. And on a sort of wider question, do you have you heard of anything really good that bigger institutions are doing? Organizations are doing full. Fall there. Um, employees? Um, there's obvious ones that that I think a lot of people try, whether that's suggestion boxes or, um, free pastries in the morning or whatever. There's, there's obvious sort of rewards, but is there anything practical people are doing that you've heard? Um, for their employees, that's really useful. So I think I might comment more on a, a philosophy or a mindset that the school could have. And then the practicalities kind of would emerge from that mindset or philosophy. Um, I think you would want in an ideal situation, you want to create a workplace where the workers feel like they can be heard and understood at an individual level, where there's a degree of flexibility, that if they have particular needs or desires, that there's some dialogue that can be had with the higher ups in order to facilitate them, even if there's obviously compromise involved, even if there's not perfect, that's not perfect. There's some sort of dynamism where where conversation can take place. I think people really need to feel like they can derive meaning and fulfillment from their work. Um, and I think they really need to feel like they can have an impact and again, that they're cared about in an individual level, and that if they should falter or be vulnerable, that that will not be taken as a sign of failure. Now, all of the what you might actually do in, in your organization can be offshoots of that, whether it's like having sessions where employees can talk about their needs, whether it's the availability of counseling, whether it's creation of certain flexible work options. Uh, there's an infinite amount of practical solutions. But I think the the basic principles are workers need to be felt like the workers need to feel like they can be understood as individuals with their own needs, that those needs can be accommodated to some degree, like their work is fulfilling, like they can be effective in their work and actually have an impact and actually, uh, enact change. The opposite would be. And what you often see in people who are burnt out is this idea of a learned helplessness, where. People so often feel that they can't, that nothing they do will change their circumstances or change anything else, that they descend into this kind of dull listlessness with depression, perhaps with anxiety as well. And that's the opposite of what you want. You want to move away from this sense of learned helplessness, and you want people to feel like they have some control or some autonomy. Yeah, they can't call all the shots. Yeah, they can't get everything they want, but they have some ability to maneuver in their environment to enact change and to be on some level, like masters of their own house, if you know what I mean. Yeah. No. No. Absolutely. What external support, um, is, is particularly good out there for men at the minute with mental health issues. Where would you signpost, um, someone with with mental health issues at the minute in terms of, um, apps or websites or, or something broader. So it is to some degree it depends on the area that they're living in in terms of actual local organizations. But again, speaking more in terms of principles. Mental health professionals haven't existed for a very long time. We're kind of a new subspecies, and there are lots of ways that human beings know how to handle their mental health, which they've moved away from. And partly societal trends make this worse for any individual who's like listening to this. Your first port of call should be always to design a life that has in-built support, and that's obviously includes friends, family, and an intimate relationship. These things are very important to the extent that you don't have these things and you can like, get them into your life. I would highly encourage you to do that. If you don't have a lot of friendships. Take steps to get more friends in your life. If you're single, you don't have an intimate partner. Take steps to make that happen. If you disconnected from your family. Try and see if you can improve those family connections to the extent that you can have it, to the extent that you can, and within each relationship that you have. Trying to improve the quality of that relationship and what makes relationships. High quality is your ability to be intimate and understood and communicate your real life experience to that person. So a lot of it is around truth. Like, the more you can communicate the truth of your life and your experience and your problems, but even the positive aspects of your life to a person that you're in relationship with. And the more they can communicate that truth with you, even if those truths don't fully align, the richer that relationship is. That's intimacy. And maybe what I would add on top of that, aside from shared truth, is shared problem solving. So one thing that brings couples closer, for instance, is their ability to go through those vicissitudes of life I mentioned together and to tackle problems together. And that's obviously a feature of romantic relationships, but also, of course, work relationships where people are solving problems together and friendships and family still truth, uh, problem solving, having those relationships organically as a part of your life. Now in terms of where men can go. Men often will like really bond more naturally in situations that are like built around the shared activity. So women are more likely to socialize for socializing sake. Uh, because that's that's how they're predisposed. Obviously, not all women are like this, but that's the general trend. Uh, whereas men tend to bond and form connections more over a shared activity. So if you don't have a lot of friends in your life, we don't have a lot of social contact. I would encourage you to look in your local area and see, is there a gym you can join? Is there a martial arts class? Is there a writing group? Uh, is there a football team? Whatever the thing is, that's going to be typically the kind of sort of environment where men find it easier to form friendships and camaraderie and bonding, usually around some shared activity or again, like solving some sort of problem. Uh, if we're dealing, we're we're on the more serious end of things like this isn't just like I need more friends in my life, but I'm having actual mental health problems. And by that I mean I'm really low on mood, not just occasionally. I'm really low on mood all of the time, and I can't sleep. I feel anxious all of the time, even around things which previously I found quite easy. Or I'm having a panic attack all the time. Or even more serious than that, I'm hearing voices, or I'm experiencing visual hallucinations. Uh, or I have thoughts of harming myself. That's when it's time to think, okay, this is not just the problem of I need more social connections in my life, although you might, but also you probably need more like professional help. Um, a good first port of call is typically your GP, who will be able to connect you to local mental health services like NHS mental health services. Uh, if that's necessary. Uh, I would also look in your, uh, local area for charities that could offer low cost counselling or therapy. Now, again, it depends on the intensity of the problem. Uh, if they're more like generic psychological problems, I'm having these problems with relationships or I feel a little bit depressed, so there's a bit anxious, then therapy or counselling might be like the right option. And most places have their own local charities which can offer therapy for no cost or like low cost. Uh, but again, if it's on the more serious side of things, then it might be the time to to go to someone like your GP who could connect you to local mental health services. It's also worth knowing whoever you are, wherever you are, if you're really in crisis, if you think it's an emergency, a mental health emergency can always go to any A&E. There's always a mental health team and any, any, uh, and you could get seen by either a psychiatric nurse or a psychiatrist there. And then they can give you the appropriate option. So kind of depends on the intensity and the seriousness of the issue. But but that's kind of what what the landscape would look like. I would also mention if it's an option for you, if you can afford it. There's lots of ways to access online therapy now. And there are apps called like BetterHelp is a very popular one, and I'm not affiliated with BetterHelp, but the apps like that and other ones can connect you to an online therapist quite quickly. So again, if it's not on the super intense side of things, if you feel like it's appropriate for something like therapy or counseling, there are lots of apps now that can connect you to like accredited, uh, licensed therapists. And I could also talk a little bit about what you can expect from therapy and how to, like, find a good therapist if you would like, but it depends how much detail you want to go into. But definitely something that we can talk about in the future, I think, um, just yeah, just 2 or 3 more if we if we do have a time and there's a lot of sort of pop psych psychology out there online, um, things should we avoid this? Should we avoid sort of trends? Um, you've already referenced Instagram, but a lot of, um, inspirational things online, which we avoid. I think you've already referenced non-professional, uh, people that might be online. Should we should we be avoiding this in our life or is it harmless or or is it not harmless? I think the the safe answer that I could give for this question is like, just go for people who are professional and accredited and stay away from people who aren't. But I don't think that's actually the right answer. So I think the right answer is not to avoid people necessarily avoid or engage with people based on their professional credentials. And I don't think that's the right answer, because professionals can give advice, which is bad and maybe a bit superficial, and non professionals can give really good advice and they can have a lot of value to give to people. The better answer is if in any subject you want to learn about and develop some competence in, whether it's mental health or anything else, you need to develop a critical thinking and the ability to critically appraise what the information you're being presented with and judge for yourself whether you think that's useful or not, and what you want to do is develop your own corpus of knowledge. So that's how I approach mental health is I feel I've developed and I'm always developing a corpus of knowledge which is flexible. And if I encounter data or new information which contradicts, importantly, contradicts things which I previously held to be true, I might have to change my corpus of knowledge. It's an ongoing thing. So if you want to develop more, uh, ideas, knowledge on mental health and self-improvement, I would I would just immerse yourself in it. Obviously, professionals probably on bands are more likely to give you good information, but you should really just develop that acumen and that instinct for like, am I being fed snake oil or am I, um, or am I being given high quality, valuable information and also just being aware of a few other principles, like being aware? You're probably going to be predisposed to really liking one kind of information, one set of knowledge, and try to go against your predispositions. Try to anything that you think is definitely 100% true. Try and develop your own internal counter-arguments for that. Try and say, okay, I really think this is true, but in what situation might it not be true? Or uh, why might this not be true? Why am I this thing which I hold to be so sacred, why I might be wrong? And then. And this is really important. Any knowledge? That you get from anyone. Think like, how can I test this in my real life? So one of the reasons why I feel I can can talk quite confidently about the information I've given today is because most of it has been tested. I've tested myself. Uh, if if someone says exercise is really good for your mental health, test, it don't just take their word for it. Try some exercise and see it doesn't make you feel good. Uh, if someone recommends therapy, try a couple of sessions of therapy and see how that goes for you. If someone recommends socializing in person rather than socializing online. Test that out. Uh, your corpus, your body of knowledge is only going to be as good as it is. It's only going to be as good as its informs you how to live practically. Like, I think philosophy personally should be a very practical discipline. Usually when people deride philosophy because they think it's too intellectual, too disconnected from our life. But I think when philosophy is done well, it's philosophy that actually informs how we should live our lives and our micro behaviors every day. So if you want to develop your own philosophy about something. Develop those critical thinking skills. Immerse yourself on knowledge from different sources. And really, a really good corpus of knowledge is a corpus that's been developed from a variety of sources, like I've been lucky enough to develop knowledge from doctors, psychologists, psychotherapists, but also people in the self-improvement space, authors, etc. and similarly, people should be seeking out a variety of sources, a variety of different kinds of experts, even because often the cross section between different areas of expertise can be really valuable. And then test it out in real life, like test it in your life and see like it. Does this advice actually cut the mustard? Like is it actually effective. So that that's that's how I would go about approaching that. Fantastic. Um, I we've got time for a couple couple more, maybe practice. Yeah, yeah, let's let's go through 2 or 3 practical sort of situations. Um, made up situations, if you like. Um, but examples of things people might go through. So. Couple of bereavements in a short space of time. Um, difficulty um, managing bereavement and work. Um and family life. From what sort of, um advice support would benefit that person? So someone who's had a couple of bereavements who's experienced his experienced bereavement. Yeah. So again, with bereavement, it's important to say bereavement has been around much longer than mental health professionals have been around. It's a normal part of life, of course, although it's also a very tragic and difficult part of life. So the first thing to say is grief is a normal process that people are going to go to go through. And that just like with what we talked about before, your first port of call would be to fall back on your actual support systems that are organically in your life, your family, your friends, your relationship, your, your, even your work and the sense of meaning and fulfillment you derive from your work. Those are usually the best things to see through a difficulty like that. Grief is a process. It involves a number of difficult emotions. Like classically, you think of things like anger, depression, bargaining, those so-called stages of grief. But it's important to mention it's not linear. It doesn't follow the same path for everyone can take a long time, like what we call quote unquote normal grief. Although we can argue about should you ascribe a normal range, but typically something like up to 18 months. But of course it can be longer than that. So I think the first thing is to realize to, to to accept that it's a normal process, a difficult, unpleasant, tragic process that's going to come in stages and waves, uh, that you kind of have to some degree, let it happen and not try to interrupt it. So I think the biggest problem that people can make with grief is they can either not accept it and suppress it because it's unpleasant and so just not go through it at all. And I think if someone does that, what likely is going to happen is it's going to come out in other ways, um, later on and that it could come out, for example, in like death anxiety, for instance, or procrastination or addiction or depression. It can come out in all sorts of ways. So the first mistake would be suppressing it. The second mistake would be to allow yourself to be being consumed by it. I think the first mistake is more likely to be made by men, but not always. And the second mistake is more likely to be made by women, but not always. So being consumed by it and letting yourself not actually move on with your life at all because you're too busy grieving. And I think that that can be a problem as well. So. If it's if you feel if this individual feels that their grief is being faced, if it's being processed, yes, it's up. There's ups and downs and it's unpleasant, but you feel like something's moving and you're moving through it, even though it's taking a long time, then I think relying on your friends, your family, your relationship, your work is entirely appropriate. And indeed, most people who go through grief, even if it's severe grief, don't need professional help. But if something stuck, if you feel like you are suppressing it and you don't know why you can't fully face it, or if you feel you're being consumed by it. If you feel like for a really prolonged amount of time, you just can't function in the way that you're able to function before. And I would say that's like six months or more where you feel like you can't face your work, you can't face your responsibilities, then it might be time to seek some professional help. And I think with grief specifically, that would probably be more the remit of a grief counselor or a therapist with specialisms in grief than someone like a psychiatrist. Because, as I mentioned before, psychiatrist specialties really mental illness and grief is not a mental illness, but so so something like a grief counselor or a therapist would probably probably be the most appropriate option. Okay. Fantastic. Um, addiction. Um, I think it's very easy. Um, especially with talking about men's mental health to get to an end of a tough working week. And, um, first thing you might want to do is go to go to the pub, have a few beers. Um, just to sort of finish the week off. Um, in that sort of way, um, is that a good thing? Um, obviously there's the socialising within that, or if that obviously we see that becoming a common becoming problem with addiction further down the line. So balancing I suppose out your relationship with alcohol is the key aspect of that. I sorry, it's not really a question. I haven't had an answer that asked that question very well. But male relationship with alcohol certainly towards an end of a working week. Just getting the balance right. Um. Yeah, that's the key, right? I think just like, you know, we discussed with social media and junk foods with alcohol, it's like a little bit. Probably will be fine. Uh, and but the more you drink, probably the worst your mental health is likely to be on, the worse your overall life is likely to be in a continuum on a continuous scale, ranging from two beers to alcoholic. You know, things get proportionately worse as the amount of alcohol goes up. There is no safe amount of alcohol, like there's no amount of alcohol to drink. That's like, good for you. There was this previous notion of like 1 or 2 glasses of red wine might actually be good for you. I think that's been debunked. Um, so I think experts I've heard have said something like maybe 1 or 2 drinks, like units of alcohol per week is probably fine. And the more you drink beyond that, the worse the more likely it is you're going to put yourself at risk of different mental and physical health conditions. But I'd like to speak about this more because we all kind of know this, but I'd like to speak about it more psychologically. I think the essence of self improvement is to substitute bad coping mechanisms for better coping mechanisms continuously. And there's a whole range. Alcohol is a coping mechanism. It's probably not the worst coping mechanism that exists, but it's not the best. And it comes with lots of downsides as we've just described. If you feel that alcohol is not just this kind of 1 or 2 drinks and you know, I enjoy it recreationally, but actually maybe I'm leaning on it, maybe I'm using it to deal with the stresses of my life. Then it's if you if you if you're interested in looking at that, it's worth asking yourself the question, what exactly am I dealing with? What am I using alcohol to deal with? And that could be anything from work stress, family stress, your own anxieties. Um, and then trying to figure out, okay, if I have this set of problems that alcohol is helping me with, What is a better way to handle that problem? And in what way is alcohol actually shooting myself in the leg? Another question you could ask yourself is by drinking alcohol, what am I avoiding? Am I avoiding having that conversation with my boss? I know I need to have about how I need to redesign my schedule because I'm too busy. Am I avoiding having that conversation I need to have with my wife or girlfriend? Am I avoiding doing the uncomfortable things I need to do to get into a relationship? So perhaps someone's drinking alcohol because they're single and lonely. In general, alcohol is to suppress your emotions, to kind of numb your emotions. And so many people drink too much because there's something in their life which they're avoiding. And again, getting back to that economics of discomfort idea I mentioned before, alcohol will feel good up front and then to take from you on the back end. So typically the things you're going to need to do in your life so that alcohol. Seems less appealing are going to be a little bit uncomfortable. And then they're going to feel good in the long run. So the exact same principles we talked about before. So I mean, I worked in an addiction clinic for a year. And the biggest mistake that people made is they focus too much on the drug, on alcohol itself, and not enough on what would my life have to look like so that alcohol or drugs are not an appealing option? That is the key question. So for the individual who asked that question, it's like, what does my life have? What would my life have to look like? So that at the end of a workweek, at the end of a workweek, actually getting drunk isn't that appealing? Because I can do X, whether that's, you know, uh, going out with my girlfriend or playing football with my friends or having a really good Saturday because I didn't get drunk on Friday and I'm not hungover, I think it's all about what are those key questions? Probably. Also, you know, as an aside, worth mentioning that some people are more likely to fall into an addiction than others. Genetically. Uh. Some people are more predisposed to addictive behaviors, which is fair enough. And recognizing that vulnerability might mean you might actually take more extreme actions. But maybe for you, you might have to not drink at all where someone else can have 1 or 2 drinks and stop. But in addition, whatever your predispositions might be, asking yourself that key question like, what does my life have to look like so that alcohol is less appealing in all probability? You're going to have to go through a period of discomfort to get to that point by recognizing if you do that, you know that's actually going to make your life a lot better, a lot higher quality. Excellent. Final, final question is about work life balance. And, um, I, I know a number of people I've spoken to about this of, um, sometimes in life, you know, obviously really career driven and a lot of your mind, um, and energy is going into your career and then you've got your whole life, um, and potentially your family and children. Getting the balance right is really tricky. And sometimes if you're focusing too much on one. You might eat, the other can suffer. Um, any sort of tips or information of getting a positive work life balance in terms of a mindset? Um, for does that make sense, that question? Yes, yes. So the first mindset I would advise is something you alluded to, which there are seasons to life, and I think so that, you know, there's times in your life which is all about socialising like school, university. There's times in your life where it's all about career, like typically like mid 20s, mid 30s. This time in your life, it's all about family life. Like when your children are really young, obviously they can be overlapped, but there are these seasons. So I think one mistake they can people can make is to feel like their lives have to be perfectly balanced all the time, and that in is itself the goal. And I think that can be a mistake. So sometimes actually just giving yourself permission to have an unbalanced life. But like actually for the next two years, let's say your 25 year old man in a very particular situation, actually, for the next three years, my life is going to be all about work, because if I can do that, then it will get me to this point and then the balance might shift. So recognise that at many points in your life, your life will be quite unbalanced. And that can be okay. Um. And also to the extent that you are trying to achieve balance. Again, not being perfectionistic, allowing yourself to make mistakes, allowing yourself to mess up even within a year. There can be cycles where like three months can be all about work, and another three months can be more oriented to family, recognizing there's no perfect answer. You know, one of the more sobering realizations I've made as I've gotten older is there's no answer in the back of the book. We're all just kind of trying our best. But then the last thing I would say about work life balance, um. Every area of your life will have unsolvable problems, so you will always have a bit of a backlog in your to do list for your personal life. You'll always have a bit of a backlog at home, will always have a bit of a backlog at work. You're never going to be done. There's no being done. That's not how life is. What I've found helpful is to because there's so many variables and unpredictability and unsolvable long term problems in each area of your life. Giving yourself permission to leave things mentally unfinished, like when you're leaving work, giving yourself permission to draw a line and be like, okay, there's a bunch of problems I need to think about on Monday, and Monday is indeed when I'm going to think about them, because I don't need to think about them today. Developing and cultivating a sense of how much work is good enough for any particular day, and then leaving the rest for another day. And another way I like to think about this is putting trust in your future self. Like the problems that you're faced with now that you can't handle right now. Because your attention needs to be goals you need your attention needs to go to your wife or to your children, etc. uh, and putting that trust, my future self will handle it and my future self will be capable of handling it. I think a lot of people, especially hard working, perfectionistic type of people, can feel they need to solve every problem right now. By the time they go to sleep, all of this stuff needs to be solved. But actually being like developing the sense of this is good enough for today and I can leave this to my future self who is a very competent individual and they can handle it next week. I think that that can be helpful as well. That's really, really useful. Um, well, everything you've said has has been incredible. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for doing this from America. Um, and really looking forward to hopefully getting you getting you into school at some stage as well. I think that'll be a really powerful thing for us. Thank you very much for the invitation. And yeah, I'd be happy to do this again.