And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and this episode is titled Getting to Know Yourself. And if you're ready, We'll start the show.

All right there, folks, how are you doing? I often start these episodes by saying something like, how are you doing? Sometimes start therapy sessions like that as well, actually. And therapy is a great place to be able to actually answer it properly and not just say, oh, fine, how are you? I mean, clients will say that out of habit, but, you know, we're not sitting in a pub having a chin wag.

I'm genuinely interested in how they've been feeling. And after a few sessions, they've hopefully got a bit more emotional awareness and can answer a bit more honestly. Or rather with a bit more understanding because they've been getting to know themselves a bit more through the therapy. And this is something that we can all benefit from it really is. Actually asking yourself each day, How am I?

doing And not just saying crap and leaving it at that. Now, it might start with just crap or bad, but by spending a bit more time thinking about it, you might be able to identify more important feelings. Because if you don't really know how you feel, then you don't know what you want. And if you don't know what you want, then you don't know what to do.

And if you don't know what to do, then you'll just play along with old habits and routines that don't make you feel any better and may have even been the reason for feeling a bit crappy in the first place. So ask yourself, How am I doing? Maybe your body feels a bit tight. Maybe your back is painful or your stomach feels a bit queasy.

What does that mean for you? Is that a stressed feeling, an overwhelm, a lonely feeling? What is it to you? Emotions are called feelings for a reason, aren't they? We feel them in our body, in our heart rate, in our breathing. Crikey, I work on a Thursday in a health clinic. People go in there with problems with their muscles, their back, their hips.

And after they've got more comfortable with the therapist, they can often burst into tears when they're having a physical manipulation. An osteopathy treatment. Because their brain associates certain areas of the body with their emotions. My mate Pete will pull or push on someone's leg or something and ask them about how it feels and their brain goes, you feel like a five year old being told off by the teacher. Because, for whatever reason, Their body held on to that feeling there.

We're a complicated species, and if anyone claims to fully understand us, they're either exaggerating, or deluded, or they're trying to sell you something. So, when you ask yourself, How am I doing? Check your body as well as your emotions. If you listen to my hypnosis tracks, you'll often hear me go through a body scan to help you relax.

Starting at the top of your head, working your way down, all the way down to the tips of your toes, that sort of thing. And it's something that I suggest to probably all of my clients that they do as often as they can. Every day would be great. But it doesn't have to always be this 20 minute relaxation session that they practice every day.

You can literally spend five minutes before you start the day getting to know yourself and your body well by asking, How am I doing? You close your eyes and sit still for a few moments and start at the top of your head, work your way downwards and outwards, down to your toes, out to your fingertips, and check how you're feeling.

You'll know how to better treat your body for a start if you know it well. Maybe your body is trying to tell you something, you see. Maybe you feel like a five year old being told off by a teacher. Maybe you feel like a rejected friend or an unlovable idiot. Explore it without judgement. See if you're holding resentment or impatience.

Be as curious with yourself and how you feel as I would be if I was asking you how you're really doing. Be curious and see what your body and mind tells you. And then check in with your thoughts. Cognitive behavioural therapy may have a bad reputation for being oversimplified and rejecting of our experiences, but that's only because for most people it's a sticking plaster of a therapy, or probably a better analogy would be a pain killer.

The problems that cause the pain might still be there and could get worse, but for now you can learn to ignore it and you can function in life, which for a lot of people is all the Psychoeducation that they need so that they can heal and live a happy, happily ever after sort of life. And of course that's not always going to help everyone, but the relationship with thinking, feeling and behaving is useful to learn about.

The way we think influences the way that we feel, and the way we feel influences the things that we do, and that influences the way that we think, and so on and so on. So if we have some automatic thoughts, that unless we sit still for a few moments and listen for them, they're unknown to you, then make them known.

Listen to your thoughts. And again, do so as if you were a therapist asking you what you're thinking. But you're just getting to know yourself. Remember, don't try to do too much work on yourself when you do this. There's a time and a place for that. And that might mean more reflective journaling or something if you're not seeing a therapist to talk to about that.

And that is useful. Please do all of that sort of thing at some point. You do need to bring what is unconscious into your consciousness. Because if you don't, as the old phrase goes, it will direct your life and you will just call it fate. And to get started with that, for now, take a few moments of calm before you start your day and just get to know your thoughts.

If they're self critical, then accept that. Don't argue. Accepting negative things about you doesn't make them right. It doesn't make them acceptable. It just means that you're acknowledging what you think and how you feel. Like I say so often, with that acceptance of what's going on, comes greater understanding.

And the more that you understand about yourself, the easier it's going to be to make any changes that you need to make, but take it slowly. Be realistic. Just check in with your thoughts for a minute and be curious about what you're thinking. Even if you have to say, Thanks, brain. I totally understand why you'd think that.

Thanks for letting me know. Even if you know that it shouldn't, you really shouldn't be thinking these things because they're not true. Because the more that you do this, the easier it's going to be to hear those thoughts, feel those feelings, and get to really know yourself. And if you do it with curiosity rather than judgement, then you can learn what's called to, to differentiate yourself from those thoughts and feelings.

You begin to see them as something separate from who you actually are. You become more than just your thoughts and feelings. Which makes them easier to challenge when the time's right. So if you're going to start your day with a few moments meditating like this, and I mean meditate not in a ritualistic or Buddhist spiritualist sense, but to simply become aware of yourself and to watch it almost like an observer would, and you're asking yourself these things about how you're feeling.

In your mind, and in your body, and what you're thinking, you're in a much better place to plan your day accordingly. Because you know it's going to be easier to figure out your needs. Because like I said, once you know what you want You can make a plan about what to do with yourself, whether that's in the short term or the long term.

You can make a plan, but you need to know what you want and need first. And you can't do that unless you look at how you feel first to see what, if anything, needs to change. And if you've never done anything like this before, it might feel a bit weird, especially if you've had a lifetime of never really knowing yourself or not being kind to yourself, you might have experienced a lifetime aversion to being kind to yourself. A lot of people have, especially men. For so many blokes the idea of kindness to yourself is actually quite scary. Terrifying to some, it's seen as weak, wimpy, feminine. But to not embrace that means to embrace treating yourself cruelly or judgmentally, like a critical parent or something, and that needs to stop.

So if it makes it easier, when you've spent some time going through your body, looking for how it feels, spend a few moments examining your thoughts and what you're thinking. To look at what you need, it might be easier to imagine it's as if it's someone else you're asking. If you're doing this properly you've still got your eyes closed, so it's easier to use your imagination.

Well, imagine it's somebody else you're asking. A younger version of you, maybe. Or someone else that you would automatically be kind and more understanding with. Maybe a child, you know, or something. Just someone that it would be easier to respect. If that's something that you struggle with, self respect.

And ask them what they need, to help them with the feelings that you've found. Now, obviously, this is going to be different for absolutely everybody. But common feelings that come up when people do this are fight or flight based stuff. There's, you know, anger, fear. Maybe we feel forgotten, ignored, unloved or something.

So ask, what do you need to help you with that ignored feeling? Or what do you need to help you with that anger? See what comes up. Do they need to be validated? Understood? Heard? Do they need to share something? Say something? Do something? Do they need connections? Belongingness? Attention? Do they need something practical?

Because that's the next bit. Once you know more about how you feel and what you need you can start nudging yourself in the right direction with the behaviours that lead onto healthier thoughts. And a healthier mindset leads onto healthier feelings, which makes it easier to continue with healthier behaviours.

And so on and so on, around and around it goes. So, do you need to practice saying no to somebody? Or saying yes to somebody? Or saying anything to somebody? Do you need to switch off the news? Uninstall Facebook from your phone. Stop doom scrolling and start filtering your world for the good things. The reasons to say, actually, yeah, it is a great day to be alive.

Do you need to re watch a TV show that you really like or watch your favourite film? Do you need to meal plan for the week? And I know that sounds a bit boring, working out on a Sunday night what you'll have for tea the following Saturday. But if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, don't you? And that's why pot noodles exist.

So, do you just need a rest? Do you need to tell someone that you need a rest? Do you need to go for a walk, catch up with an old friend, or share a stupid joke on WhatsApp with some people that you've not chatted with for a little while, because you think that they don't really want to hear from you anyway.

Well, prove that wrong. Do you need to exercise? Stretch? Have an early night? Do you need to listen to the Sandman on Audible whilst doing a Where's Wally jigsaw? Which, if you're an audio geek like me, The audio engineering in the Sandman series is incredible. Really enjoying the Netflix series because I loved the graphic novels, but the audiobooks, jeez, they're gorgeous.

But I didn't know I would enjoy that, until I got to know myself. I wouldn't have appreciated that stuff if all I thought I still wanted was six pints of Stella, a pork pie and some Bacon Fries, which 20 odd years ago I thought that was all I needed to get my needs met. But I know better now. Get to know yourself, even if it is just for five minutes each morning.

It's five minutes that could save you hours of therapy in the long run, so please don't think that it's not worth the time. I know that for a lot of people all of this might seem alien, might seem hard, might seem as if it would take up too much of your morning. When actually you've got things to do, but genuinely by incorporating these into your morning for what, five minutes, it can really help guide you in the right direction.

Might only be a little nudge, but like I always say, once you're facing in the right direction and you're on a different path, it might not seem like a different direction with a different destination until you've taken quite a few steps. Just stick with it and you'll see the difference in yourself. So, you do that for a little while if you like, share the concept with others if you don't, or both.

Do it yourself and share it with others. And I'll be back at some point on here or on Patreon to follow up on it, nag you, make sure that you're keeping up with all of this. So, have a super month, everybody. Ta ra!