PODCAST EPISODE TWO

Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore there may be some minor grammatical errors.

Dougie Jackson

Hi there and welcome along to Episode Two of TicketyBoo, the podcast that aims to be very candid about the anxieties and traumas that we all experience the podcast that says it’s okay not to feel okay. My name is Dougie Jackson and I’m in conversation with therapist Andy Griffiths. And we’re talking about anxiety. Now, where did we finish up last time Let’s recap.

Andy Griffiths
Let’s recap. Everybody’s anxiety is their anxiety. The underlying issue is that their anxiety levels too high, but the way it plays out in you, and the way that it plays out for me, will be different. And that’s why a one size fits all mentality for anxiety just doesn’t work.

Dougie Jackson
Everybody’s anxiety is different. It can manifest itself in a million different ways. Right, that’s a recap. Now we know it was Andy’s trip to hospital with an almost fatal blood clot that started his panic attacks a couple of decades ago. But some of those old feelings reared their head again, back in April 2020.

Andy Griffiths
Boris came on the TV and asked us all to return home and shut the pubs and bars down, we were going into lockdown. I noticed some very old feelings coming back to the surface that I hadn’t felt for quite a long time. And I knew I had to do something. That was my call to action because there was no way I was going back where I’ve been. So remembering all the things that I’ve learned over the years I went, I need to get busy, I need to do something. So I set myself a number of challenges. I had to get my brain busy solving problems.

Dougie Jackson
So, engage your brain and give that supercomputer in your head something to do get it working for you, or else it’ll start working against you.

Andy Griffiths
What I’ve noticed, when I don’t give my brain problems to solve, i.e. it’s not got stuff to do. It gets busy creating problems, most of which don’t really exist.

Dougie Jackson
Okay, can you elaborate on that for us? Can you tell us why that actually happens?

Andy Griffiths
Our brains tend to have a bit of a negative bias, very rarely do we go, this is gonna go amazing, you know, you’re gonna be brilliant at this. It’s almost like your brain is in the background running these risk assessments all the time. Be careful, don’t take too much on here, you know, it probably won’t work. That’s why we tend not to put ourselves out there. But there’s something else interesting, which is this high creative intellect. There’s an approximation of what we call the 70 and the 30 percenters. 30% of the world’s population approximately have what we call highly creative intellect.

And what that means is, you have an amazing level of imagination, right? We find the people that work in the creative industries, artists, actors, designers, painters, people that can visualise stuff or really see stuff are incredible at manifesting anxiety, because you think about it in the absence of real danger. If you’re just sat in your house, thinking about stuff, you have to have an amazing amount of imagination to create anxiety to the level that you do. And our thoughts fuel our emotions, that’s what happens. So this is why the people in the creative industries, they are really, really struggling. So rewinding back to what I said about lockdown, I set myself a load of challenges because I knew if I didn’t give my problem solving machine something to do. It was going to go off and start creating problems. So I create a pile of books I wanted to read. I had some courses I need to get online, I had some videos I needed to shoot and I literally filled my day up and went brain, I am not giving you the bandwidth to go off and start ruminating and creating and anxiety.

Dougie Jackson
absolutely fascinating. Now, before we go any further, I think it’s really important to flag up that anything said on this podcast is not a substitute for medical advice.

Andy Griffiths
Anything that I say is from my personal experience, and my experience of helping thousands of people during therapy. But if anyone is listening to this and they are genuinely struggling, please go and speak to your GP. Don’t do what I did, don’t disregard that there’s something wrong. Yeah, acknowledge your feeling something.

Dougie Jackson
Okay? Let’s return to the conversation and talk about how routine or indeed the lack of routine can intensify those anxious feelings.

Andy Griffiths
Our normal daily life has disappeared. For now. It’s away. And the worst thing you can do to a human being is remove structure and process from their life routine out the window, some people will argue that routine is mundane routine is the thing that will keep your brain in line. A lot of people are sick of routine, you know, the stuck in the rut doing the same things every day. Look what happened ss soon as that was removed, people struggled. So what do you do when you routines taken away and you’re not doing anything, you worry, you ruminate, you think about all the things that could be maybe might not ever go wrong. And you start to create anxiety, anxietty is a future based condition, our minds are off in the future trying to predict outcomes. And nobody knows what’s gonna happen.

Dougie Jackson
Especially at the moment, every way you turn, it’s bad news online, on the TV, in the papers on the radio,

Andy Griffiths
this negative bias is amplifying everything that we’re doing. So right now, the majority of the country are feeling excessive anxiety. And because of the circumstances it’s fairly normal to feel that.

Dougie Jackson
But as you said, if you just sit there with your anxiety, those feelings will just grow and grow and become overwhelming. So what’s the answer?

Andy Griffiths
What do we do, we’ve got to do something ourselves, we’ve got to take action.

It’s about taking control and ownership of, do you know what I’m struggling with anxiety. And at this point in time, the only person who can do something about that is me. Now I work with loads of anxiety clients, thousands over the years, I didn’t take their anxiety away, I show them how to take their anxiety away because it’s their anxiety and they are creating the anxiety. Yes, stuff in the outside world may have manifested it. But it’s only them who can stop feeding, ownership, right? This is going on, I need to do something about it, one of the first things you do is get some structure in your day. If you’re riddled with anxiety, the worst thing you can do is go and lie down in your bed alone with your thoughts. Anxiety is gonna roll straight over the top of you like a blanket, you’ve got to get busy. And the problem is our emotions are so closely tied to our habits, we’re creatures of habit, we tend to do the same things at the same time of day, week in and week out. I’ve got a plan. My days are blocked out, you know, I get up at this time, shower, breakfast, walk, work, you know, making something to eat, watching my box sets, I close the gaps down where my problem solving machine has bandwidth has head space to go off and start creating problems.

Dougie Jackson
Now that makes immense sense. However, for a lot of people currently toiling, it’s going to be tough to find that motivation. So I assume small steps as the answer. Yeah. I mean, we’re not talking about making massive life changing decisions are we?

Andy Griffiths
It’s not about retraining for a job. It’s about giving your brain something to do read a book, go watch a box that you like, go watch some comedy, chat to somebody on zoom, go learn to cook a meal, there’s literally hundreds of things that you can do, you have just got to get up, get your brain moving, and get it focused on solving problems, not creating problems for you,

Dougie Jackson
which means and we stress do not go online to research your symptoms,

Andy Griffiths
probably the worst thing you can do is refer to Dr. Google, you Google a headache, within four clicks, you’ve got a brain tumor. And there’s lots of anxiety groups on social media. I’ve been invited into some of these groups to sort of speak to people and comment on stuff. And they all compare their condition.

Dougie Jackson
Now that doesn’t really sound helpful at all. In fact, it sounds like it might develop into a game of anxiety Top Trumps.

Andy Griffiths
Guess what happens to an anxious brain? It goes, have we got that? Maybe we have got that? Or we could have that. And suddenly you find yourself with a whole load of other conditions that you didn’t even realise that you had.

Dougie Jackson
Which of course you don’t actually have. It’s just your imagination working overtime because you’re in that heightened emotional state. So doing research online, not helpful. Do a bit of personal detective work, though, that can be very helpful.

Andy Griffiths
Have a little think about when are you getting triggered? When are you noticing during the day, your anxiety is high and take note what are you doing? Are you sitting down watching the TV but not really watching it? Or you’re lying in your bed not being able to get to sleep and thinking about stuff? There’s a clue in that. Yeah, I can guarantee you if you’re busy and you’re running around 100 mile an hour you are not doing anxiety.

Dougie Jackson
So the answer lies in giving our brains positive things to do. We need to

Andy Griffiths
We need to move and engage our brains in other stuff. Get our minds busy and focused on what we’re doing. Simplify structure process routine. That goes a long way to getting your brain back on track.

Dougie Jackson
as always, absolutely fascinating. Hopefully you found that interesting. And that is where we’re gonna have to leave it for this episode. Next time on tickety boo though,

Andy Griffiths
little changes in our lives can have a substantial impact on our mental health. If we look after our exercise, our diet, our mindset, our sleep, and our routine, our mental health can improve incredibly.

Dougie Jackson
If you have any questions, suggestions, stories or helpful information, or if you have a media request, please contact us by email on [email protected] .

If you’ve been affected by any of the topics in this episode of tickety boo, and you’d like to access mental health support, please in the first instance call your GP. Remember, if it’s out with have normal office hours, you should contact NHS 24 on 111 the Samaritans on 116 123 alternatively, head over to the tickety boo website for a full list of the resources available to yo