So, welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim-John Payne, and this is the second in our series of interviews with Steve Biddulph, the author of Wild Creature Mind. Gosh, I hope you enjoyed that first part of the interview. He's amazing, isn't he? In this second part, in this second episode, Steve takes us deeper into anxiety, his own experiences with that, how we can work with that, transform it, be aware of where it is within our bodies.
Steve gives a very practical and comprehensive way of working with us. And it's amazing in just a sort of a 20-minute span how far he takes us into this. Okay, I'll get out the way.
Over to Steve. Hope you enjoy. So, Steve, in a way, you know, in a nutshell, it's almost like the left hemisphere is, I think, of certain politicians who are very effective because they deal in soundbites and sloganizing, which goes, to me, is always that whenever I latch onto a slogan, I think, oh, there's my left brain, you know.
But it's also a looping, a looper, round and round and round and round. And it's a little bit of an overthinker, very focused, an organizer. Whereas the right hemisphere is the wise, wordless, bearded one.
And it's, as you're saying, it's those gut feelings. But one of the things about you write about in the book is that the right brain also has, there is an awareness that we can cultivate between this exchange of there's something going on inside me. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because that's the bridge as we move into working directly with anxiety, that there is a part of you that is, you talk about this in the book, that is watching the feeling.
It reminded me of mindfulness in Buddhism, where in one of the books I wrote, I talked about being on the balcony and being on the dance floor. You can be on the balcony and be objective about, but also be on the dance floor. Interacting.
So can you say a little bit more about that? Because you write so lyrically about that in the book. Yes, this is really the particularly great tool that people can take away from today. I'm really happy to cover this because it's an expression in English that we have, that particularly like back in Jane Austen's time, people use language with much greater precision than we do now.
And you'd hear people say things like, oh, there is something in me that yearns for the sea. Oh, there is something in me that wants to give him a good smack in the mouth. It was sort of implying very clearly, it's not all of me.
I'm not about to run away to sea, but there's something in me that would like to. And so in modern English and the way our language is structured, we say, I am anxious or I am angry. And if people listening just try that on, you can feel a totality of that.
I am anxious. It feels like it's all of me. And it's interesting because in Ireland, people say sadness is on me.
In French, people say I have fear. It's a different feeling to it. It's not quite the same.
So if instead of saying I am anxious, you say there is something in me that is anxious. Right. Then straight away, you can't you feel the difference, Kim? It's like it's like there's a spaciousness there, which is which your balcony thing exactly describes.
You know, I'm looking down on an anxious part of myself. So automatically you've begun to spring free from that. And and then the next logical automatic really step, which comes from Eugene Gentlen's work in particular, is that if you say there's something in me that's anxious, then the obvious question, where is it? And so if I'm lying in bed, you know, and before I started writing this book, I was dealing with anxiety.
The world and my own family, there were plenty of things to be anxious about in the life of 70 year olds. And there's something in me that's anxious. Where is it? And then you go down inside yourself and there it is.
There's a real clench going on in your in your in somewhere around where your intestines are or a churning or or a gripping around your heart or something. And so the method which a man called Eugene Gentlen first devised in the 1950s, which was a seminal time of the development of counseling, is that if you you pay attention to that. It's a felt sense that's going on and it's coming from your right hemisphere, as we only lately discovered.
And. And you try and put some words to it. And so you say, so you say, so I'd be lying in bed and I'd sort of think, OK, I can feel it.
I can feel the anxieties right down in my tummy. It feels really uncomfortable. But it's very undefined.
It always starts off very vague. What is it exactly? It's kind of like a it's like a churning sensation. And so I try the word churning.
And then that's never quite right. It's actually no, it's more like a clench. It's like and so I try the word clench.
And as I try that word, the sensation comes up a little bit and starts to move. And so I have worked with a very dear friend who was was caught in a kind of frozen grief. And when I asked him where it lived in his body, he said, oh, no question.
It's like I've got three huge rocks as a rock in my throat, a rock in my heart and a rock in my belly. Huge, cold, hard rocks. And so we just paid attention to that.
We just made some space for those sensations because they weren't something going wrong. Kim, there was something trying to happen. And when he paid attention in a caring and a patient way to his throat to begin with.
This enormous wailing, sobbing came out from him and I was there and able to just be right there with him. It was one of the most moving moments of my life. And but the point is, he could have gone to cognitive behavior therapy for 20 sessions.
Talk to all around the detail of everything about that. But his body was on the job. It was wanting to break through and to allow and if you've ever been with someone who's deeply releasing grief, the thinking, there's always words that go with it.
You know, I wished I could have helped her more. If only I'd done this, that accident wouldn't have happened. And so the left brain language is moving in concert with the right brain body shift and showing that something has changed and is being let go of.
And the person is coming back to balance and open hearted to the world again. And so my work as a therapist has and I'm not a fan of speed in a therapy. I don't like the idea of speed.
But nonetheless, people get better five times faster when I use the body in my work. And this is around the world is, you know, we say the therapist, the most useful question you can ask, whether it's as a parent to a child, or as a therapist to a deeply traumatized person. What's happening in your body right now? And that is the step, Steve, that you speak about, which is common, you know, to a lot of these, it's, it's, it's, it's great, feels very natural, you know, like somatic experiencing and all that.
Where, where, where is it in my body, but this step that you speak of in the book of, of I value you, you know, I hear you. Can you say a little bit more, because that seems such a crucial, like, okay, I've given it a name, almost. I've located where it is in my body, and I've given it a picture, a name, an experience.
But then there's the welcoming of it, because so much of modern society, and the way we're raised, probably the way you and I were both raised. Well, actually, I know that you were raised that way, because you tell some delightfully funny stories about, about that. But the, is to, in a sense, push away that discomfort, is to hold, is to hold that discomfort at arm's length to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's, that's, I don't want to let.
But in the book, you talk almost, almost like a Tonglin, a Buddhist, like welcoming in that, like, make it your friend, befriend it. And this, when I read that in the book, Steve, I, I kind of melted a little bit. I thought, there it is.
That's the, that's, you know, when you got something on the stove, and it gets to that melting point. And there, yeah. Can you say a little more about that? Because you write so eloquently about it.
Yes. Well, I, I can't really improve on what you've said, but, but to restate a different way. Yes, it's like, with anything in, in us, inside us that is not convenient, or kind of, you know, doesn't help our robotic functioning in the world.
We generally get, you know, very self, self-hating about that. And, you know, a teenager with anxiety will almost always hate themselves and feel, you know, I'm useless, I'm hopeless, you know, because I get these, I get the shakes, or I, you know, I want, I want to throw up and I, I can't get out of bed. And, and, and so we, we attack this in ourselves, have a terrible, you know, the most abusive relationship anyone has is the one they have with themselves.
And, and, and so, and therapy often comes in and says, yes, well, try and relax it, or ignore it, or it's not rational, so don't listen to it. There is, we're better designed than that, Kim. There's nothing in our system that is not amazingly evolved, miraculously evolved.
And so using the wild creature, it's more than a metaphor, it's, it's true, but it's, it's, it's like the wild part of you is, is shouting at you. Anxiety is when the wild part of you is shouting at you to pay attention. And so, so if you pick up on the sensation in your body, send it a welcome message, say, I see you, I want to know what you are trying to tell me, and I will make room for you in sense of time, but also that, that, that sense of, okay, if there's a tightness around your heart, soften the edges of it, deliberately give it space, let, be aware of your whole chest, including your heart, so that the sensation can move to where it wants to move to.
And another way to see it is that it's like it's the wild creature is wanting to emerge from the thickets of your mind. And if you, you know, with any wild creature, you get very quiet and you're patient and you wait for it to come out of hiding. And, and, and it's a, it's a, it's astonishing sense in your body.
It's like a, like a flower opening. The, almost all of the people that I, that I treat for anxiety, it has an upward movement. And so it, it comes into the heart, grows, comes up into the throat.
If I'm doing this, you know, lying in bed at night, nine out of 10 times, it just dissolves away. And I think you'll find this, people watching, if you try this yourself, it just dissolves because it just needed you to notice that it was there.
