Trevor Poddery

Welcome to the National Council For Hypnotherapy Podcast, where we dive into the fascinating world of hypnosis, lifting the lid on hypnotherapy, sharing insights and tips for change as we chat. So sit back, relax, and enjoy all the wonderful possibilities of hypnotherapy. My name is Tracey Grist, and I will be your host today. Hello. I'm here with Trevor Sylvester, cofounder with Becks, his wife, of the Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Quest Institute. Trevor's author of 6 books. And trains you still training? Yes.

Yeah. The Quest Institute is, is thriving, still gonna run 1 course a year.

Yeah. And how how long have you been doing the training for now?

I think this is going to be our 20, what is it? 2024? I think it's our 24th year.

Gosh.

I should find that easy to remember really, shouldn't I? I'm just sexy with numbers. So I have to be careful. But, yeah, 24 years.

So what led you into hypnotherapy, into training, into Quest and cognitive?

Okay. Well, I, I was a police officer, had been, you know, for quite some time. And then I went to Hendon Training School as an instructor. And back then, they had a really good system of training you as a as a as a teacher. So we went through quite an intense period of learning how to teach. And part of that was also coping with a kind of pastoral care because it's an 18 week course, very intense, residential, mainly young people. So they taught us counseling and transactional analysis. And I just got really interested in, you know, why people do what they do.

I mean, as a as a cop, I already was, I suppose. But it just opened doors to me, and I thought it it felt like coming home in a way. So I looked around at how I could learn more about this stuff, and I was limited because I had I was divorced. I have my children every weekend. So there weren't that many places that I could go to learn. So I found this this guy wouldn't be possible NCH, but this is going back, you know, maybe 30 years. Where on a one to one basis, I went down to Kent and he trained me in hypnotherapy and psychotherapy through the NCH back as as it was back then. And it gave me a good grounding in in psychological and psychotherapy principles and theories, but didn't give me an awful lot.

I ended up with 2 scripts, script a and script b. I once said to him, so what happens if script a doesn't doesn't work? And he looked at me like I was an idiot and he said, well, you use script b. And that's the entirety of my preparation. So luckily, I tripped over a neurolinguistic programming, NLP, and went along on a practitioner and then the master practitioner ended up going to California and training as a trainer. And just learned so much about Ericssonian hypnosis and, obviously, all of the brilliant techniques, but also how to really listen to people and realize that the answer to how you work with them comes from them, not from you. So that gave me a good kind of platform to to begin to practice. And I did so for a number of years while I remained in the police. I worked evenings and weekends.

And then when it was my time to leave Hendon, I knew I didn't wanna be a cop anymore. I wanted to be a therapist, and so I made the leap and and jumped. And I practiced for a few years, and then Bex wanted to leave as well. And we said, well, why don't we start a start a school? Thinking how easy can how hard can that be. And so, and so we did. And we launched in 2000. We're top about 10 people. And it's just grown and expanded ever since.

And now we've got 200 over 200 practitioners practicing around the country and some internationally, and, you know, it's it's a kind of a lovely family.

Yeah. Lovely. And so so you've gone down the cognitive hypnotherapy. So there are all different types of hypnotherapy. What what led you towards cognitive?

Okay. I called it cognitive hypnotherapy when we founded the school because I I did as you say, there's lots of different approaches and I wanted to differentiate ours. And what really, I think, made a big difference was I read a book called Trances People Live by Steven Molinsky.

Yeah.

And he talked about how people's problems are the result of trans. That, you know, if you have a dog a dog phobia and you're walking on the street and you're in your normal state of mind and then you see a dog, your unconscious catapults you into this trance state in order to direct your behavior in the way that it thinks best. So it gets you to, you know, attack the dog, run away from the dog, or freeze in the presence of the dog. Classic fight, flight, or freeze. And that really blew my mind because it reversed the the classic idea of Hypnosis, where when people come to see me, instead of me having to hypnotize them to help them to recover from their issue, our job, in a way, is to discover how how and why the trance is created and then de hypnotize them from it. Find out what needs to change in their mind for them to remain their normal self in the presence of a dog or in the presence of food or a cigarette or the situation that makes them anxious or depressed. And so that, plus the lovely idea from Ericsson that people have all the answers, that you're they're not broken. You don't need to fix them.

And it's your job to listen and figure out where the solution lies within their problem. And when you do that, really, life becomes easier for you as a therapist because they you're just nudging them towards their own answers. And that kind of that was the catalyst for cognitive hypnotherapy. And I really didn't like the way therapy was going. It seemed to be becoming very prescriptive about trying to fit people into labels, you know, into boxes that you are anxious, you are depressed. And then this is the treatment protocol. You see this particularly in CBT. And I just once you recognize that everybody is different and NLP gave me the eyes for that, you know, everybody sees the world in slightly or greatly different ways.

How could one script or one treatment program possibly help everybody who just happens to share the same label? So in cognitive hypnotherapy, we don't really use labels much at all. If I see 6 people with anxiety, I'm gonna say, how do you do your anxiety? And they're gonna tell me the shape and pattern of how they do theirs. And from that, I'm going to create a true treatment program based on any combination of techniques from any approach, from gestalt, from NLP, from CBT, literally, I just and everyone I teach were just fitted into that person's model of the world to help them help them move forward in their own way. So that's really what what cognitive therapy is about and how it's different.

So rather than coming from the ailment, you're coming from the person and working with the person Yeah. What particular ailment is.

Absolutely. Because so often Endowment? That's a good old fashioned word, isn't it? What obviously we make area. We obviously make them a Pontus as well. Yes. So often people come through the door, and what they say is the problem is only a symptom of the deeper problem. Yeah. You know, after I've been a therapist, so I don't know. It's knocking on now for towards 30 years, I suppose.

And I think, ultimately, what people are mainly suffering from is their relationship to themselves. They have a poor relationship with who they think they are. And that's because I think we live in a toxic culture, which from the very beginning tries to tell us that there's something wrong with us. So they can sell us a cure, whether it's the right car, the right perfume, the right job, the right school, for our kids. All these these badges sick of success we have to wear in order to be okay. Whereas, the truth is, we are okay. And any any belief that we're not is just rubbish that our culture throws at us to try to keep us on the straight and narrow of being good citizens, which means, like the matrix, being bad choice for us to be exploited from. So, you know, you can a client can come to see a cognitive therapist with anything, you know, like nail biting or or weight issues or addictions, whatever it might be.

And they can be helped just for that one thing, but it becomes much more interesting when they begin to see that, actually, this is just the way their brain is trying to defend them and keep them safe from this manifestation of something is wrong with me compared to other people.

Yeah. Yeah. So in in terms of, like, if you could give a top tip to everyone, is it around, you know, waking up and thinking, I'm good? Or what what would you?

Wow. Okay. So you mean for the public, a a top tip?

Yeah. Like, I thought I think knowing ourselves is really important.

It is.

Understanding what our pressures are.

I would say there's a concept of, I think, called Eloc and I Loc, where Eloc is having an external locus locus of control. This means that we are how we feel is pretty much a product of what is happening around us. And then there's iloc, which is internal locus control, which says, I'm in control of how I respond to the world. Now our culture wants us to be eloc. It wants us to say, I didn't feel good today. What can I what can I what can be done for me to make me feel better? Yeah. What what pie can I eat? What chocolate? What what thing can I buy in a shop? All the different remedies that we are sold rather than actually saying, what can I do today to be in control of my responses? Because no one can make you angry or sad or unhappy. It's a choice your unconscious mind is making in response to what's happening to you.

And this has been known since at least the stoics. You know, it's not what happens to you, it's what you make of it. So I think the top tip I can give is journal, really. Journal about your day and look through this lens of Eloc and EyeLock and say how many times was control taken away from me? How many times did I not feel I was in control of my choices? And then what could I do if that happens tomorrow differently? That would mean I do remain in control as best I can. Some things are out of control and we have to accept that. But an awful lot of times, we're just being persuaded that's the case. And that's to keep us docile and in control, which is why so many people are unhappy in their jobs and depressed and anxious because they don't realize they have choices they could make which just aren't acceptable to the mainstream. So if you journal on that basis and just keep asking, NCH how was I manipulated today? And how many times did I say, NCH.

I'm gonna choose to do this. This is my action. Then gradually, you build a greater sense of control over your life. And research shows that this feeling of having efficacy, of having empowerment over your actions is one of the key antidotes to depression and anxiety. And raising our children to feel that way, I've one of the books that I wrote is called Grow Personal Development for Parents, and it's about how to raise your child resiliently so that they do feel that they have this agency as they move through the world, and then they won't get lured into TikTok trends and, you know, all the stuff that they're being bombarded with to make themselves feel okay.

Yeah. I think I think as a parent, children with agency's nightmare.

It is. It makes you difficult to tell. Yeah. It means it makes you a challenging teenage years, but they're not still living with you at 40. That's the difference.

Unless living in London, then

Unless you're living in yeah.

Yeah. NCH.

No. I think that agency bit, I'm I'm quite keen on an an element of transactional analysis, the drama triangle, and rescuer, and helper, and persecutor, and coming out of that and and taking responsibility. Yeah. What can what can we be responsible for? Well, we can be responsible for our actions.

Yeah. And I think compassionate responsibility is important, you know, to be responsible for your actions, but not to beat yourself up when those actions don't fit your ideal of you to forgive yourself and say, I wasn't quite on it today. I'll do better tomorrow. You know, every day is a reset. You don't have to wake up and be the same person you were yesterday. It's another choice we have. Who shall I be today that was better than yesterday? And it's only Maria Suarez, a wonderful positive psychologist, and she just talks about, how could I make today 3% better? Yeah. And just those kind of small manageable chunks instead of this magical waving of a wand and suddenly you're transformed.

Just do the work. Just tap it out. You know, don't go from from couch to 10 k in 10 minutes. You know, what's the rush? Build up. You know, I we have a saying in COG hip about how with a client, you know, very often when our students graduate, they're really evangelical and they wanna save the world, you know? And so they might throw too much at the clients in one go. And I'm I'm left handed, and so most implements don't work for me. And I was always in awe at how Becks could cut us a slice of bread perfectly each and every time. Really annoyed me because I would go at that branch, you know.

I'm I've got a knife. I'm strong, a bloke. It's gonna bend to my will, and there'd be crumbs everywhere and different slice thicknesses, and it was and left handedness. And I realized that what you have to do is cut at the speed of the bread. Like, the bread has a speed at which it wants to be cut, and you've got to match that. And it's the same with the client. Now we might have the greatest techniques in the world, but if the you apply them at a pace that doesn't suit the client, change isn't gonna happen and you'll probably scare the client away. So I think with ourselves as well, we need to cut at the speed of the bread, change at the speed that feels possible for us, not at the speed we're told to or that other people are changing.

You know? Because we are okay as we are, which means that the change the speed we change at is okay too. Everything is.

Yeah. But, also, I think we're trained. You know, we have all of this knowledge that people are coming to see us for, and we're looking into their maths. And I went to the gym, and my gym instructor said, right, Tracy, do more than tie your shoelaces. Here's here's a way to lift. It would crush me immediately.

Yeah. They would.

They're doing they've they've learned all the techniques to do it. That's why it's so important to go, because we forget, because it, I think, because essentially it's all psychological learning and psychological knowledge, we sort of ingest it in a different way, and we don't realize that perhaps we've got this learning and our client doesn't know about family dynamics or relational stuff, but but it becomes sort of integral to us. It becomes our water, and there's the assumption that people do know about these things.

know about it before training. No.

No. We don't. And I and I think an awful lot of therapy is just education. And but not an education where we say this is the way to think, but offering them different models of ways to think, which make and you find the one that makes them nod and go, oh, wow. Yeah. That's for me. Now for some people, it might be a Freudian model. Other people, it might be a more gesturing model, but something will make them make them go, yeah.

That fits the way I feel about this world. And then they can begin to grow from there and educate themselves. Because, ultimately, I think our role as a therapist is to make ourselves redundant to the client. You know, they they come to see me in an Elok frame of mind where they say, I'm paying you money. Fix me. I get them to a point where they recognize that it's this is you and I working together to get where you wanna go. And then after a while, they realize that they don't need me anymore. They can do it all on their own, and then they fire me.

And that's that's success. It's not me holding their hand for the next 20 years. Every time they hit a bump in the road, it's giving them access to their own resources that make them able to access them when they need them.

And I I think I had something really profound to say, which has escaped my mind.

Doesn't it happen? You know, once you get into your forties, it just starts to happen. It isn't with me.

That is.

Sorry. It's me.

Very big. And I think, well, because I think that's one of the myths, isn't it, of hypnotherapy that people come for a magic wand.

Yeah.

They because because why wouldn't you when you look at stage work or Hypnotherapy, and Hypnotherapy, hypnosis, you know, and that difference of actually coming and working together, working with your therapist for

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think, in many ways, stage hypnosis, it did us a favor because it made people believe that what we do works, but it also set up this unrealistic expectation. We click our fingers, the lights would go out, and they'd wake up cured. And so we have to negotiate that that narrow tightrope really of their expectation versus what their experience is going to be. And especially with cognitive hypnotherapy, you know, I haven't done a a trance induction in I don't know how many years because they talk themselves into trance the minute they start describing their problem. You know, they start talking about last week or last year and that's age regression.

They start, in their mind, reliving it. That's positive hallucination. These are all trans phenomena that are part of the network of how they go into their issues. So the great thing about this approach and not seeing hypnosis as a special state is that nobody there's nobody who can't be hypnotized because they're doing it to themselves. I don't need them to dance like a chicken. I don't need that stage hypnosis kind of gig. I just need them to be able to reaccess the thing that they want to change about themselves, and everybody can do that.

Well and, also, to me, that's the key component of the therapy is that autonomy,

Control of you. Nobody else is in control of you. Or in control of you. And when you realize that you're in control and you can choose to reframe, rethink, reaccess something that you that that is just ordinary to you and you can make it different, then that confidence builds that you're in control and you have that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to teach them a simple technique, like spinning, where you take just a simple shape that represents their issue, so say their fear. And and I always start by making it worse because people always believe they can they can make something worse. And so, you know, their their fear of dogs, and they spin it, and it goes from a an 8 to a 9, and they're fucking, you know, and hyperventilating. And then you bring it back down to an 8, and they realized they had control of that. And then once they realized that, they can bring it down to a 6 and a 4 and a 3. And suddenly the next time they see a dog, they can just do that technique on their own without me.

And suddenly they have more control over the dog. And and this is what we should be teaching this in schools, and the kids should be taught about emotional regulation and their choice over how they react to things. But, of course, it doesn't it doesn't suit.

No. And it's that point, isn't it, between, like, the stimulus and the reaction point?

Yeah. Absolutely. It is. All the in that half second, what's going in, going in the mind, which is different for every single person. You know? Everyone who's scared of a dog has a different point of origin for that, a different story. And mostly it's to do with a dog, though they've had a bad transaction with when they were younger. But sometimes it might not be. It might be watching TV and something that was dog dog like scared them.

You just or had one person, it was a dream they had. You know? So and we don't know know if this is true, but it's true for them, and that's all that really matters. We work with their truth to come up with their their new their belief in their solution, which isn't true either, but it works better.

And as as a dog walking person, you know, I take Bear out and he's a black dog, and so he looks a little bit more intimidating, fluffy, and

Yeah. And you can't see the eyes quite so easily. So

And he does look like a bear,

I have to his NCH. And I

you can see when people are walking towards us, if we're on the street, you can see people who are intimidated or scared or phobic. Phobics usually cross the road.

Yeah.

People who are and you can see different response levels, and you know they've noticed Bear as they're walking towards me, you know, they're watching, they're not looking at me, they're looking at Bear, life, and you can see that there's a dialogue attached to that, is it gonna, what do I do? But, and just in that dynamic, that language of their own around They're

in a trance, aren't they? They've they've taken themselves into a trance where Bear is they're projecting onto onto Bear their thoughts about a dog.

Yeah. Yeah. And you and and so people who don't have that response just walk past or they're like, oh my god. There.

Or there's

so many other responses, but but you can see it and you want to sort of go, hello. Come out of your scary

dog. Yes. Meet meet this actual dog, not this actual dog.

Yeah. But but and that's the thing. Also, I find that, particularly with phobias, people are too frightened to go and face their phobias because they think that it is about, you know, oh, I must have a dog here.

Yeah. The exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy. Yeah. God. Why? Yeah. Just don't need it. And and, again, this this projection goes on all day long, doesn't it? You know, people people, who meet you and and they find out you're the chair of the NCH. They're gonna suddenly project any issues they've got about with authority onto you without them even realizing they're doing it. They don't they're not meeting Tracy anymore.

They're meeting this person. You know, I sometimes get this funny response from people that we interview for the course where they've seen me on on the screen. And so suddenly, there's some kind of otherness about me. You know? So they're nervous of meeting me, and I'm just, you know, I'm just me. And so I don't I think what's wrong with you? And then I realized there's NCH anything wrong with them. It's it's just what they're making of me. So I you know, luckily, I'm a numpty. They quick pretty soon realize that and

Advice.

Snaps them out in a trance.

And I opened my mouth. Oh, okay.

Yes. But, you know, it's the same as when people are at work, they project onto their work colleagues and onto their bosses and things, and it what they project will either be a positive because of past associations or negatives. And so we can help them update that software, really, so they can meet people as in the moment, genuinely, not I think Adel Adelman, Jodelman described now as the remembered the remembered present. That half the time, what we think is us being present is actually still us reliving past experiences through different people. You know, and that's an awful mistake to make. So much better when you can just meet somebody genuinely as this blank slate for them to say, this is who I am.

But then it come that comes around in full circle, doesn't it, about whether we're internally flexible, mortal. Because actually, meeting people without our stereotypes or our cognitive biases, all of those things that keep us safe, are quite vulnerable. If we've got somebody

that we don't know who they are or not.

We're just trusting that they're a blank slate that we're yet to understand.

It is. It's I think that's the process of, you know, therapy is a lot is a lifelong journey for each person is figuring out what biases are working for me and which ones aren't and which ones need updating, and which ones keep me safe. And that's a constant shuffle, isn't it? And and to be alive to that need is really important. You know, I came out of the police with all kinds of biases about certain groups of people, as you can imagine. And then I worked with kids company for 3 years, and I was meeting all these amazing youngsters. And my old police spider sense would go off when some of them walked in, you know, with their trousers around their arse and and all kinds of attitudes about the police. I see. Told them straight away that's who I was.

That that's who I used to be, and we would work through that. And I just met these wonderful young people trying their hardest to get themselves out of out of an environment they didn't ask for and with so few choices because of, you know, the way our society is structured. And it was fascinating for me to sit and and feel my spider sense go off, and then go, but is this true of this person in front of me? And, of course, 99.9% of the time, it wasn't. So I wouldn't abandon it always. I would pay attention to it. But I would also update it with the person in front of me as best I could. And I think we all need to do that.

And it's having that flexibility, isn't it?

Mhmm. I think

there's so there's so much in the self help that that we're fed, that we need be going this linear process to self enlightenment.

You know? Become like the perfect person who never makes mistakes, a robot

Yeah. Other than saying, actually, this is about flexibility. It's about, you know, how flexible can I be in the face of in the face of trauma, in the face of drama, in the face of challenge, Like, how or in in my mind, how flexible can I be?

Ruma Pitino introduced me to that idea of being perfectly imperfect. And it's such a release just to go, I'm always gonna be imperfect, and that's and that's how I'm supposed to be. But, you know, if you want the job, keep trying to improve. If you don't want the job, crack on. You know? But I think it gives us a purpose to try to be better than we were yesterday, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

Us happier as well.

3%.

3%. Yeah.

That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So so what's what's future plans then for Trevor, Sylvester?

Blimey. Well, I'm 65 this year, which back in Hey. Bless you. That was nearly genuine. So for my generation, that that's kind of the age that you retire, isn't it? But I don't know what retirement really is. I had long COVID for 4 years, and that gave us that gave us both the need to make me replaceable within Quest and also gave me the platform within which I could. So we future proofed Quest for quite some years to come where I can be less involved in it day to day and it still runs as well because I've I've trapped everything that I used to teach in the room online so people can watch as many times as they need to before they come into class and then they get more practice. So the the course is actually even better than it used to be.

So it that gives me freedom to go off and explore other things that interest me, you know, and I'm interested in so many things. You know, I paint. I've recently started writing poetry again. I've I'm interested in the spiritual. So I I trained in Sweden in in shamanism. I'm interested in the overlap between therapy and shamanism. And also this, I think, this need to reconnect us to to things greater than us. You know? I think part of what is problem in our culture is this great disconnect with nature and and with people.

You know? We're the most electronically connected people who've ever lived, yet the most personally disconnected who've ever lived probably. We were driving out of bath the other day at school kick out time, and we saw all these school kids coming home. They were in their early teens probably. And most of them were walking on their own. Nearly all of them had earbuds in, and nearly all of them were looking at their phones. You know, and it was a sunny day and they were they walked past trees that were blossoming and there were birds singing, and they were cut off from all of that, but they were also cut off from the 3 d experience of each other. You know, I'd have walked home with my mates and we'd have kicked a can or something on the way and, you know, Instead, they're whatever they're doing on their phone, but it isn't face to face contact. And I think we need to get back to that.

And I think that's an element of spirituality. So I I don't know, really. I'm just everything I always thought when I when I did painting, I thought that was gonna take me away from therapy and open another door and which brought me back with new insights about therapy. Shamanism has been exactly the same thing. So I I think I'm just going to keep on looping, going back out on a as a student, and then bringing it back in to where I'm prepared I'm ready to teach something new, maybe. I really don't know. But I'm I'm enjoying I'm enjoying the looping. And somebody, Tad James, once said how important it was to read outside your field.

And I found and I used to think he just meant, you know, don't just read therapy, read sociology and read, you know, things akin, but not within. And I found that tremendously useful. But now I found the most remotely linked things are still connected because therapy is just about this experience of being human, and how can we be better at that? So, yeah, I'm just I'm just gonna be, as best I can, just looping. Student, teacher, student, teacher, or maybe just student, student, student. I don't know.

Yeah. I I think we're we're well, we're perpetual students. But I suppose it comes down to that flexibility, doesn't it?

The

flexibility, and then consolidating that learning in this.

Yeah. Being I I think being in a being constantly uncertain, I think, is actually a strength. I don't wanna be turning I don't want my brain to turn into concrete and say, this, at last, I found the truth. Because that's a kind of death, I think. I wanna I wanna be a 120 and on my deathbed going, no. I haven't finished this book yet. You know? I wanna just stay open. So you need to meet you need to meet new people for that, and you need to come across new ideas and and quest.

You know, we brought in new people to be teaching it because if I sit at the top of the quest pyramid, I'm gonna squash it. New insights and new ways of looking at things. You know, the younger generation see the world differently to me and that needs to be reflected in what we in what we offer because otherwise, I'm just gonna be this old bloke teaching young people stuff that doesn't resonate with them. So we need to change the voices to make therapy new for each new generation coming through. Permanent revolution, that's what that's what we use as a strapline within Quest at one point.

Yeah. I think it's that, isn't it? Without when you see the kids on the phones and not doing the friendship thing, and, actually, what's what's the benefit? What's the good thing?

Yeah. Yeah. And the

loneliness and the the pressure on them to conform to this to what they're supposed they think they're supposed to be. You know, the the unit the lack of or rather the uniformity of the uniform was even greater than in my day. You know? A lot of it to my old eyes really sexualized. And you think, where is the pressure from this coming? And it's probably on that screen, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, I I kinda think it goes back to shopping centers being the new church.

Yeah. That yeah.

And Yeah.

It is consumerism, isn't it? It's this this commodifying everything. That's, I think, what we need, and that's what's killing the planet. You know? And you we see this in therapy as well. Somebody comes up with a new idea, and within a couple of weeks, it's being turned into this commodity with fences around it that you gotta buy into just to get this new idea that could help everybody. And then all these new catch phrases that come along, you know, about 30 years of hearing the latest thing becoming the thing instead of just another thing and just another possibility. Trauma informed, I think, is probably the latest. Everybody's trauma informed. What on earth does that mean even? At the at its heart has tremendous benefit.

You know, Gabor Mate's work is fantastic. But suddenly, we got us wear these badges to keep up with trends. So we're no different to these school kids walking home. It's all this we've got to break free of this commodification of of

back to what what are my values, what's my sell without being told what your values should be.

Yeah. And if you're okay with yourself, that's possible, isn't it? That's why we need to teach kids okayness as their default position. I think that I've learned from my studies over the last 5 years into shamanism and indigenous truths is that is that that's pretty much been how indigenous cultures raise their children that however you are when you're born is perfect for the tribe, and it's the tribe's purpose to find your place within it. So it adapts for you. And instead, we we're born with this kind of idea of original sin, and then we're measured against everybody and everything, constantly thinking we have to jump through these hoops to be acceptable to others. Wouldn't it be great if kids didn't have that kind of pressure and they could just, you know, in Finland, I don't think they teach you or taught anything until you're 7. You're just out making mud pies. You know? I said more of that kind of way of being in the world instead of just trying to get kids on a conveyor belt into a life that the parents are probably unhappy living themselves.

So why do we keep inducting them into this cult?

Yeah. It's just it's the difficulty, I think, with every sort of parent position is it's difficult going against such a big wave. Yeah. Because the the children are being sold this way from all angles of of consumerism and how Yeah. Otherwise and keep them connected to society because Yeah.

But there you know, I am hopeful. There are, you know, these, the schools now that are doing, wilderness schools, I think, are a great a great thrust forward. You know, I see we met we met a young lad walking dogs yesterday in in the, in the woods. And we just stopped and had a chat with him, and he's probably early twenties, and he was brilliant, you know, in his connectedness to things and to and to his dogs. And it really comes away every time we meet a young person who isn't lost in a phone. You realize there's always gonna be people who are inoculated against that and are still called to follow follow whatever it is within them that's calling to them instead of drowning it out with media with social media. You know, it's I'm still hopeful, but don't wanna sound like Martin Luther King, but I I do think a change is gonna come.

Oh, I think it I think in some ways, it has to you know, you can see by the, oh, the state of the planet. Mhmm. We've disconnected from nature, how we've disconnected and gone into this consumerist use of nature for our benefit. And, you know, one would hope that that has peaked probably with our generation young. And

I hope so.

Maybe that reconnects. Well, we'll hope

It's why I I really think, and I've been preaching this a lot just recently to my students, that therapy or being a therapist is social activism. Because if we can help the clients who come to to us who are unhappy with their life to realize that that unhappiness comes from this learned unhappiness about themselves being not okay. And if we can get them to become more eye lock, then in a way just like Neo in the matrix, you can start unplugging yourself from the battery track that that society wants you to be and say, what what do I wanna choose my life to be like? And I think I'll have that from society, but I'm not gonna have that or that or that. And if enough people unplug, then society has to change. It will no longer function in the way that it does. And maybe we can just invert it a little bit and stop this drive for inequality that is, at the moment, seems endless and that's gonna kill us all. That's, you know, changing the world one person at a time, I think, is the best that we can hope for as therapists.

But also seeing that things are changing, seeing that there's more acceptance in it individuals, like, with the Black Lives Matters movement Yeah. And equal pay. Absolutely.

You know, the the changes in my lifetime have been massive. So, yes, you've got to hope. And and, of course, there's the pushback. You know, the moment, the the whole discussion around trans rights is the latest flashpoint. But it's just I think it's still just a sign of progress that whenever the pendulum moves, there's always a pressure to try to move it back from those people who are scared by what it represents to them. And only scared because they've been taught that it's scary. And if they can only open up their eyes to see, you know, difference is the only thing that unites us, we're all different, and that's gotta be okay. And we can use it to unite us instead of it instead of using it to other other people Because that's what the elites are trying to do.

They try to other people who are much more similar to us than we are to them. And so we fight amongst ourselves about stuff that really doesn't matter. You know, the England badge this weekend, you know, was crazed if you saw it. People were up in arms. They got slaughtered on Facebook about about calling it a little nonsense. It was it's the destruction of our of our civilization having a flag that wasn't red and white. Well, it wasn't 20 years ago it was expected they did it and nobody said a word, but somebody out there says, right, here's another thing to cause strife with. And we do this and we don't argue about the fact the shirt costs a 120 quid.

And it's probably made in a sweatshop in the Far East. That's what we should be angry about. Not the flag, but it's all distraction and smoke and mirrors.

I can't remember the quote. Was it a bed twin a bed twin quote where fight with your brother until your neighbor comes along, then

fight you both fight with your neighbor? It's something like that.

It'd be great if you could love your brother and then until the neighbor comes along, and then love your neighbor as well.

Yeah. Exactly. And every polyamorous, person.

Yes.

And their wives and their sister. No. Come back.

No.

Oh, well, it's been lovely talking to you.

Thank you to you as always.

I've really enjoyed it. Thank you. God bless

your heart. Thank you. Thank you for letting me rant.

Yeah. Likewise.

Thanks for Okay.

Good day. Bye bye.

Bye.