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Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Join Steve Bisson, LMHC as he unravels the complexities of therapy and counseling. Engage in straightforward dialogues, enriched with insights from special guests sharing a like-minded perspective. Each episode presents valuable, easy-to-digest information designed to help you perceive therapy, and those who partake in it, in a grounding, relatable manner.
Finding Your Way Through Therapy
E.169 Ann Diment on Trauma, Resilience, and the Power of Creativity
What if the key to unlocking your potential lies within the untold stories of your past? On today's episode, we sit down with Ann Diment, a best-selling author and an authority on health, safety, and recovery, as she navigates the complex landscape of trauma, mental health, and resilience. Anne brings a wealth of personal experience, sharing her journey through PTSD, an ADD diagnosis during menopause, and her emotional connection to 9-11. Her story is not just about the challenges she faced but the transformative power of kindness and holistic methodologies in healing childhood trauma.
In a heartfelt conversation, Ann opens up about her early struggles with emotional and physical abuse, parental separation, and the feelings of not belonging that shadowed her youth. These painful experiences led her to excel academically and overwork herself, resulting in repeated burnouts. But it was during one severe burnout that Anne found a turning point, seeking therapy and self-understanding that would eventually inspire her to write a book on overcoming burnout. We also explore the difficulties of managing an ADHD diagnosis and how these insights have shaped her path to resilience.
Get ready to be inspired by the therapeutic power of creativity and laughter. Ann discusses how tapping (EFT), art, and poetry have been instrumental in managing her emotional responses and stress triggers. Learn about the three-brain model and how creative activities can enhance resilience, as well as the fascinating benefits of laughter yoga. This episode is a treasure trove of insights, emphasizing the importance of reframing self-identity beyond medical conditions and the transformative journey of self-discovery. Tune in for an enriching conversation that promises to leave you with valuable tools for your own healing and personal growth.
Her website is: https://www.resilience-rebel.com/ where you can register for Resilience Reset.
Follow her on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/resiliencerebel
Freed AI converts conversations into SOAP note.Use code Steve50 for $50 off the 1st month!
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Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. A proud member of the PsychCraft Network, the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Toujours un plaisir always a pleasure to be back and welcome to episode 169. If you haven't listened to episode 168, it was Adrian Tiki who talked about recovery and I hope you got to listen to that. If not, go back and listen. It was a great interview. I thought we had a great dynamic. We talked about recovery in a very honest way, which I think sometimes can be hard, but I truly enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 2:But episode 169 will be with Anne Diamond. She is a best-selling author and leading expert in health, safety and recovery with over 20 years of experience in the sector. She wrote a book called Turning the Tables on Bird Out You'll find that in the show notes and she talked about her personal journey of overcoming PTSD and mental health challenges. She is also a holistic mindful, uses a methodology for health and safety management and was recently diagnosed with ADD during her menopausal time, and she wants to talk about how that has really helped her in her work with herself, as well as being nice to herself, and how that's changed certain things. I think we're going to talk about childhood trauma. We're going to talk about a lot of different things. So here's the interview.
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Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 169. Just happy to have Anne Diamond. Did I get it right? You?
Speaker 2:got it right, all right, great. I hope I don't have to repeat it as a guest it's been. You know I was reading her bio, reading a lot of stuff. We just talked a little bit. Ironically, this episode coming on on 9-11, which will be 23 years, I can't believe she was giving us a story about that. Want to share the story Because I think that's important for people to know.
Speaker 3:Yeah that Want to share the story because I think that's important for people to know. Yeah, sure, thanks very much for having me, steve, it's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I was visiting New York just before 9-11 and I was in the Empire State Building and I went downtown to the Twin Towers and I met some Scottish firemen and I lived in Edinburgh at the time, so I noticed that I just met some Scottish firemen, um, up at the Empire State Building and then when I went down to the Twin Towers, I noticed a local first responder, a firefighter, checking the hydrants. So I took a photograph of him, just, you know, just for my records, to show my friends. When I got back home, of course, you know, and, um, anyway, I went back to, to work to in Edinburgh and in those days we had photographs developed, you know, you had to send them off to be developed and we were watching some.
Speaker 3:I think it was a sports tournament that was on TV. They allowed us to watch TV at work whilst the sports tournament was on and, of course, I was showing everyone at work these photographs of my time in New York and we watched the whole thing unfold on TV and it was just just shocking, you know, for everyone involved. We thought it was a movie. So I've thankfully been back there to do the New York Marathon for my 40th birthday um 10 years after that. And then I went back 10 years later with my art college, when I was doing my art foundation, and went to see the memorial. So I think a little bit of closure there, you know, seeing it, the memorial, the appropriate memorial that's been put in place. So yeah, that's my story.
Speaker 2:As a newly citizenized American, we never forget. No, but more importantly, as a human race, I think we can't forget what that meant for a whole lot of people. So thank you for sharing and congratulations. Running a marathon is amazing, so no matter where you do it, but congratulations for that too.
Speaker 3:Well, actually, just to add to that, I actually walked the marathon because I was with a breast cancer charity Walk the Walk and it started in New York, nina Barath, as a protest for the treatment of women with breast cancer and we walked in decorated bras. So we went as a team and we walked from Staten Island Central Park in our decorated bras. It was quite good.
Speaker 2:Walking 26.2 miles in decorated bras is quite a sight to see.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, it was.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm happy you did that, but I feel like we're talking a little bit. You know being released on 9-11. I want to make sure I made a mention out of that, but now might be more important for me to not skip any beats and ask you more about you thanks, steve.
Speaker 3:Um, my name's and I'm. I'm uh, I guess I'd say I'm a socially engaged artist, but I've used my 20 plus years working in health, safety and well-being and uh, to sort of combine that to support people's resilience really, and help them to beat burnout. Because of my own experiences of mental health trauma, um, adverse childhood experiences and the score they can say if you have four or more, it significantly impacts your life. Well, I scored nine. So and it wasn't until I was 38 that I realized I had complex PTSD. So I spent the last 14 years I'll give my age away there healing, recovering, learning how to process what that meant, all the behaviors that I'd learned to survive and cope. And one of the biggest realizations was that I was working in health and safety because I didn't feel safe myself. I was trying to keep everyone else safe. So when I was 48, I said I've had enough of this. I went back to art college and did an art foundation and it changed my life basically well, I can't hear to hear more about the art college.
Speaker 2:Um, you talked a little bit about, you know, realizing what you did for a living was a way to stay safe, because you felt unsafe. Have you ever been in therapy yourself?
Speaker 3:yeah, once. I well, I had several periods of mental ill health during my 20s. Once I'd left the home situation that was causing me the trauma, uh, went off to university and then obviously it hit me once I was out of that situation. So I had a little bit of therapy when I was at university and then, you know, other life challenges added up, like I lost a pregnancy and and mental health stress at work. So I had various talking therapies and then, when I had the CPTSD diagnosis, I was sent to cognitive behavioral therapy, and that and that introduced me to mindfulness and meditation, which was a journey that I've been on for, you know, over 15 years now. And then, in 2018, I was introduced to emotional freedom technique tapping. I was helping a friend out who's trained as a therapist, and it had such a big impact on me that I trained as a therapist myself.
Speaker 2:You've given me, like many things, I want to ask you right now based on all that, but let's talk a little bit about you know you talked about a little bit about work and being difficult. We can start with your child, like you talked about a childhood and how that really impacted you, and then realizing cptsd, which is, you know, very impactful. So how about we start with, maybe, childhood, and be a good, be a good therapist, so to speak, and I'll start off with the beginning yeah, um how?
Speaker 2:you know. You know you talk a little bit about the impact of childhood trauma. How did that uh impact and you, and how did it bring you to healing and recovery where you're at today?
Speaker 3:well, I mean I don't know how much detail I want to go into, but basically my, my parents, my parents, have split. My mom left my father when I was five, so obviously there was a separation trauma of not being with my dad, and I'll just say that I wasn't really wanted by my, the parent that took me. They took me because they felt that they had to, so every time they had a challenge or trouble in their second, next relationship, I was the emotional punch bag or physical punch bag or whatever. So when you grow up from the age of five to the age of 17, being you know, not feeling like you belong, it has a big impact on you for the rest of your life. So you don't feel like you had.
Speaker 3:And obviously now I know I've got ADHD, which I was diagnosed with this year. There's that extra layer to add into it as well, thinking well, was it my ADHD or was it the, the family situation? So there's a whole lot of stuff that I needed to unpack. But yeah, it was leaving. I got kicked out when I was 17. I walked in an argument so I had to finish school, living with a step relative and then go to university. So I used education and be doing everything I could at school every club, every after school class so I didn't have to go home and I knew that's the only way I could get out. There was to stay on, do everything I could at school, just because, thankfully, when I was at that age in here in the UK we didn't have to pay university fees so I could go to university without being reliant on them for funding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it became your safe zone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it was my safe zone. School was my safe zone.
Speaker 2:It's good to have a place where you can have your own thought process, your own ideas, and then you know, the realization of what you've been through is probably where it really strikes you, because you know, one of the things I've always seen in the trauma work that I've done is that you don't know it's weird until you leave and someone tells you no, this was weird yeah, yeah, yeah it's.
Speaker 3:I mean, I saw my friends, families, I saw how they functioned. You know, when I went to visit my friends, how their parents interacted, how they treated them, how they spoke to them and and you know, so I did know that it wasn't right, but it was such a, it was such a challenging dynamic because, uh, we didn't have a telephone at home so the only contact with the outside world was going to the payphone up there. So that was quite isolating, um, I didn't have a key to get in. So if I wasn't home by the curfew so it was very controlling and if they, if my mother was, um angry or upset and she was taken out of me, she'd send me to the phone to reverse the charges, to call my fat dad to come and collect me, and he lived 200 miles away.
Speaker 3:So there was that whole rejection, abandonment type wound. That happened over and over again, you know, um, yeah, and then there was alcohol dependency and and, um, a serious attempted murder as well. So you know there's quite a lot of trauma going on. So you know, I I was trauma bonded, basically, I think, because what else, you know, where else would I go?
Speaker 2:right.
Speaker 3:Well, that's what trauma is right yeah, yeah, I mean, I've learned a lot about that now, so I think that's probably why I've been so keen to understand it, so I could understand myself a lot more, and I've done a lot of reading, a lot of learning, a lot of self-help books, as well as a therapy.
Speaker 2:So well, I think that you you talked about. You talked a little bit about health and safety. I understand you wrote a book.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, turning the tables on burnout because I realized that the behaviors that I'd learned to cope with the PTSD and the trauma were basically people pleasing, perfectionism, overworking you know all the classic behaviors overworking you know all the classic behaviors. And that's why I kept burning out, because, um, um, I was just exhausting myself, trying to please everybody and not listening to my. Of course, it was. It impacted more when I had a family, because I was obviously worried about looking after my children and working and balancing all that as well. And, uh, yeah, it was a combination of a couple of losses, like two, two, two lots of grief within a short space of time.
Speaker 3:Bullying at work because you know, people with adhd are more prone to bullying because of you know, that's, that's, that's, it's, it's just well known that people with adhd don't they avoid conflict too. But my additional conflict with avoidance behaviors, um, yeah, so it's a real massive combination of things. I had nine months off work. I was so ill, I couldn't take my kids to school and I just thought I can't do this anymore. It's got something, that's got to change. So I had therapy and then I realized that now I've got a break free from the cycle. So that's when I started trying to learn all these different resilience tools I sort of call my resilience toolkit and that's what the the book talks about. It's all that you know.
Speaker 2:Well, you talk about resiliency a lot, because I think that's important to talk about with individuals, because we can't change our past and we got to develop some resiliency in order to deal with the today, the here and now. If you were going to talk to my audience and said to me the one tool, the tool that really helped you the most today in your resiliency, what would you say it was?
Speaker 3:might sound really odd, but the first thing I always teach my clients is acceptance, is acceptance of where you are and whatever you're feeling right now, because it's a suppression of the emotional response and a suppression of accepting that whatever's happened happened to you that actually causes you it's it's the second dark principle I always share in my work actually being wounded. But the more you go over it and say that shouldn't have happened or they didn't, you're wounding yourself. You're not wounding anyone else or you're holding on to the anger. So the acceptance part is like this is where I am. This is a line in the sand. How can I let go of the past and move forward in a more healing way?
Speaker 2:It really sounds like acceptance and commitment therapy. If you ask me, ACT is.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, you're more expert in that than me, steve. I'm sorry I don't. Yeah, I guess it is, it's good.
Speaker 2:It's good, because I think that that's it's not weird to me, but acceptance is you'll heal once you accept reality. I think that it's hard for people to realize that. But you know, like what happened to you is what happened to you.
Speaker 3:Can't change that, can you?
Speaker 2:You know I don't mind doing talk therapy. Obviously that's what I do for a living. But even if I talked it for 20 years to you till you're blue in the face about what happened to you, if we don't get to acceptance and we don't get to, hey, this is what it is and I can't change it. What's the point? Um, I, I like I'm a Buddhist and I like to use the Buddhist uh statement of holding onto anger is like holding onto a hot coal expecting it's going to burn someone else, Um, and it's.
Speaker 2:it's that acceptance and being able to let go after that acceptance. I don't know what you think about that, but that's certainly where I go.
Speaker 3:Totally, and that's where I was coming from with the second dart thing. I mean, the turning point for me was the therapist. The CBT therapist introduced me to Jon Kabat-Zinn's work and the whole compassionate mind and the whole mindfulness-based stress reduction and that once I started getting into mindfulness and understanding and with the emotional freedom technique, understanding how your brain works, so you know the, the tapping on the acupressure points tunes into your stress response, your amygdala. Because every time you have a thought, you'll know this I'm, you know, I'm speaking to the audience here. Every time you have a thought, you know this I'm, you know, I'm speaking to the audience here.
Speaker 3:Every time you have a thought, your brain doesn't distinguish between whether it's how it happens, it's happening now or when it happened in the past. You're still releasing those stress chemicals in your body. You're still releasing that same stress response, the fight, flight, freeze fawn. So actually it comes to the point we think why am I doing this? What? What's the point of keeping and talk therapy for me? Um vessel van der Kolk in his you know, my body keeps score work he's, you know. That's why I like EFT, because it's all stored in the body if you don't have a right way of releasing it. So I explored a lot of it in my art degree actually my art program because, uh, I was trying to use creativity for well-being and I really listened a lot to Bessel van der Kolk and all those sort of somatic mindful mind-body connection therapists and expressed so much of the trauma and released it through the creative process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the creative process is a release for so many people. And you talk about tapping, you talk about your hand. I like the this area of the the sore spot here. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people talk about I'm a big fan of that stuff has tapping become something that you do regularly, or where are you at with the tapping in general?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you do regularly. Or where are you at with the tapping in general? Yeah, I, I describe it as a dimmer switch for your emotional response. So, if you're depending on, obviously, how, how your nervous system sets, like, your set point of your nervous system and how you, how you get triggered, the stress triggers, I call it, I take them in.
Speaker 3:Your stress triggers you can, when you, when you tap on, even if you tap on the side of your hand or the side of your fingers, your stress triggers you can, when you, when you tap on, even if you tap on the side of your hand or the side of your fingers or you know, you can do it discreetly without people seeing it, so you don't have to do the whole facial thing. But, um, like, if I'm in a car or something with somebody and I'm anxious about their driving, I'll just tap, or, before I'm talking, I'll tap and it just tunes down that and make the response and gives you that pause to say is this still same stress as it was the original first time? So, if you're public speaking or whatever, it's like, okay, I was anxious about that before, but I'm actually about it now, and it gives you that pause to sort of choose how you respond yeah, I'm yeah for me it's the tug of the ear which I'm wearing my oh it's an NLP thing, yeah, so I like the yeah tug of the year.
Speaker 2:It's a.
Speaker 3:It's an NLP thing yeah, so I like the tug of the ear.
Speaker 2:It's a little, it's subtle but it is something that helps me calm down. So, for those of you on YouTube, you're going to be looking for me and Anne to do some of those things right now. Okay, yeah, I'm tapping my hands here.
Speaker 3:Well, actually, this chair that I'm sitting in, I don see I'm on YouTube. I'm sitting in this rocking chair and this is one of my projects that actually was such a healing process for me in my art project because it was about um, then and now, and I found this poem called forget the past, and I can't remember the poet, steve, somebody, and it was about. The past is a series of mental mirrors that you filter through and that. So I wrote my own response poem to that. So poetry is a big, big outlet for me for to process my, my trauma and my, my emotions.
Speaker 3:And this chair I'm sitting on the seat, is the present. So I've done a lotus flower um motif on the seat cushion and the back panel, which obviously you can't see because I'm sitting on it is is in five sections, one for every decade of my life, and I've chosen elements on each panel to represent events in those five decades. So, by creating this chair, I sit in the present and I write back to the past. And that, for me, was three months of stitching, choosing photographs, creating this piece and it sits in my room and it's one of the most healing things I've ever done stitching, choosing photographs creating this piece and it sits in my room and I.
Speaker 2:it's one of the most healing things.
Speaker 2:I've ever done so. Art plays a big factor for you and being able to express yourself in your art. One of the things that I talk about with trauma is finding also these outlets for yourself to do. Is that? Is that an outlet that you discuss with people in regards to like being creative whether it's writing, whether it is stitching, whether it's dancing right, I really don't mind what people do but is that something that you talk about with other people? Because that is part of the healing process, in my opinion.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I do. I run create calm workshops online. You know they're bookable by rent, right, which I take people through, just great. And I also run in-person workshops and, um, I, I did host a podcast called creating resilience where I talked to people about how creativity supported them being more resilient and the the way I describe it, because I train health coaches here in the uk. So let's train people to have personalized health conversations, let's talk to them about what matters to them.
Speaker 3:And we talk about the three brain model, which is obviously, I know is a simplified model, but you know you've got your survival brain, which is your. You know nothing gets past that if it's going to threaten you at all, so that's your stress response. And you've got your emotional part of your brain, which is your responses to any threats or whatever. And then you've got your prefrontal cortex, which is your thinking and problem solving brain, but that's also the creative brain. So I explain to people that if you're being creative in whatever form you know gets makes you relax, whatever form you enjoy doing, whether it's your poetry, music, art, drawing and dancing or whatever if you're being creative and in flow, your brain is, by definition, calm and so it's. It's a really simple way to say look, being creative calms you, but also you are calm after being creative.
Speaker 2:So that that's how I explain it to people yeah, and I think that being able to you know, I tell people about incompatibility if you're really struggling with something and think about a child's laughter, for example, that genuine child laughter and people usually smile when I say that and I'm like see, we created an incompatible thought about what you were reprocessing from your thoughts in the past or trying to fix it or what have you. So I call it distraction, call it redirecting, call it whatever people like to feel, but I remind them like that's being creative and being able to think about different things.
Speaker 2:Like to me, I have, like, as my kids laugh at me, is there's like three reels that they put on my phone that when I really want to laugh I just watch it and then I started laughing hysterically, and it's it, and it seems silly, but it really definitely moves me from my primitive brain, as I call it, to more of my cerebral cortex and be like oh okay, I can feel good, it's okay, it's past, I'm safe now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, laughter yoga is a whole thing, isn't it? I mean, have you ever tried laughter yoga? That's amazing. I mean, you can stand there feeling really uncomfortable in a circle with people and just the act of faking a smile starts releasing those happy hormones. Because your brain, again, doesn't know the difference. If it sees those muscles are activated in your face for a smile, it'll still release the same chemicals, won't it? So you know, it's very. It's a very complex thing, our brains, but actually it's also, on the fundamental level, very simple. It's the same stimulus that's going in. It doesn't gauge time or genuineness, does it? Because if you're smiling, even if you didn't mean it or not, you still get that effect.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that laughter is the best medicine. It's the best therapy Part of the work I've done. You know talking about, you know how to overcome the impact of any type of trauma. I tell people like laughter is the key and in therapy I a little bit like this podcast. I go from you know being fairly serious to making silly jokes and the reason why is that you actually internalize whatever you learn a lot faster if you're smiling and laughing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're in that creative problem solving part of your brain so I I definitely relate to that and, um, you know, tapping helps. Uh, people always think it's funny to do tapping when they first start, uh, but once they get into it they're like, hey, this really works.
Speaker 3:I'm like, yeah, I'm a reiki practitioner so, believe me, I know other stuff that works on that level well, it's interesting actually, because obviously tapping can work on many levels and you've got your, you've got you can do yourself. You tap on yourself, which is, you know, the calming thing. But if you're working with a therapist like when I work with clients, when I'm doing eft therapy with them because I do also offer eft therapy sessions we can do the tapping, like you know, basically repeating what they've said or work using their, the client's words and working through well, but what I love about it is so creative and so imaginative because we can use so many techniques. We can use the movie technique so we can separate them from it, we can do parts work, we can take them back to their inner child. And what I love, one of my favorite things I love doing is the writing on the walls exercise, which is like Gary Craig originally did that and I take the clients to imagine them to be in a space where they feel happy and talking about their beliefs.
Speaker 3:You know they're put there mostly before the age of seven by other people, so the beliefs about themselves and that's the writing on their walls, and we talk about palace of possibilities. So we mostly stay in one room confined by these beliefs about ourselves and there's such creativity and imagination when they bring in their favorite pet or they bring in their younger self or they bring in somebody else. They want to help them clear these old beliefs. And then they just go to town with all sorts of wonderful ways of clearing and redecorating this room the way they want it and then leave the go through the door and leave the room and that creative process of clearing sometimes decades of trauma just with a simple creative exercise is so magical. And they do that obviously while they're tapping, and it's amazing.
Speaker 2:I mean, you don't need to sell me on the uh impact of tapping I. I definitely know that it brings personal transformation, not only in a creative level, but, like you you know you've mentioned so nicely, it takes away those emotional blocks, right, I mean?
Speaker 3:that's my experience anyway yeah, yeah and I and I. I think that's probably why I was drawn to it, because of the creative nature of it, because the physical act of tapping is one thing, but it's how you ask the questions or how you. You know you can go off in a complete rabbit hole, and maybe that's why that's why I like it, because my adhd brain just loves this sort of thing.
Speaker 2:From one thing to the next yeah, well, I think that we're we're all getting close to that in. In general, I think that with yeah the, the whole uh phone social media aspect of everyone. Now we have, we need this creative outlet, we need to redirect ourselves and we have trouble sometimes focusing, so finding that one thing you can focus on is so important well, that's, that's the the thing with a, the rise of ai now, isn't it?
Speaker 3:because they say people, people's one. What I'm not this is I'm not saying it's bad, but what I'm saying is there is one thought stream saying that actually it's removing our creative thinking process as well, because you don't have to think for yourself, you just put a question in and this sea of information will come out and do things for you which can be helpful to organize your thoughts. But, on the other hand, you know we've already lost our attention span, but is our creativity going to be stifled by it as well?
Speaker 2:No, I would argue that our creativity has been stifled with phones because we let other people be creative and guide us. I mean in the spirit of the political system we're in now in the united states of america. Uh, you get the feed of the people you agree with. You don't get a counterproductive point of view or being able to be critical thinkers and for me that's important to look at the world critically, not only the world, but even yourself and your own actions. Not critical, oh, you're bad, but critical. And like whom is my point of view valid? Why is it valid by only a certain people? Why can we see it from another point of view?
Speaker 2:and I think yeah, a lot of the stuff that we're missing out on nowadays.
Speaker 3:To be able to solve our trauma not supporting saying, oh look, I want to be, I want a trauma bond with my uh abuser, but also understand other points of view is very important it is and that's one of the things we do in the in the health coach training is we're trying to shift mindsets in both the medical professionals who are talking to the patients, but also in the patients, because for years they've been asked what's the matter with you?
Speaker 3:But actually the conversation we direct is what's what matters to you. And it's a real mindset shift because people have been used to going and seeing the medical professionals and therapists and expecting to be fixed but they don't realize they've got such a big responsibility for managing their own health and well-being and unequally the, the therapists and professionals think they're the experts and they know better than the patient, but actually the patient knows themselves far better than the. Obviously they've got a lot of medical knowledge or knowledge in their field, but the patient knows themselves and their needs best. So it's that changing of mindset on both sides. So one of the creative things I do in my creative well-being workshops is a simple mindful breathing exercise of drawing around your hands so you like, breathe in as you go up, breathe out as you go down, and do that so that you're calming them, calming the, calming the nervous system down, touching the acupressure points, so we get our hand. That takes away the fear of the blank page, because I've done a hand drawing.
Speaker 3:But also they've calmed their nervous system down, they've slowed their breathing down and then they can write five things that matter to them and that is such a brilliant exercise to do because it gets them thinking actually what does matter to me, and then it gets them thinking about what's what's really important to them. But yeah, that's the mindset shift in the, in the, in the health care that I train is getting people to think actually I have responsibility for my own health and well-being and I'm not expecting you to fix me, I'm expecting you to support me in this recovery journey well, you know, I can also imagine, just even touching your hand has some sort of therapeutic effect too so yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's a brilliant exercise and I'm and one of the other creative things. There is well music on percussionist and I play washboard and I have these gloves. I have these gloves with thimbles on the end and I realized I really I like playing washboard. It's because of the it's.
Speaker 2:It's literally stimulating a whack fresh points well yeah you're from kentucky, but uh, I have the accent really well I have a zydeco.
Speaker 3:I have an original zydeco um watch, but actually one of the over shoulder ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah oh wow really yeah well, you know, I I think that the other part too is you talked about thinking, taking responsibility. It's a common theme that I actually had a recent podcast uh interview where I talked about like they talked about the magic bullet and I joked around. Well, you know, you're from Florida. We don't use bullets in the northeast, we use I call it the magic wand.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah and she laughed, obviously, but it to me that's the other part too is that I have a lot of people who come in and like fix me.
Speaker 1:I'm like oh, let me get the let me get the magic wand.
Speaker 2:I'm like like no, I can't fix anyone. And you know, a common message in finding your way through therapy, too, that I like to remind people is that no one. I've seen over 10,000 people in my career. I have fixed zero people. I've given tools and assets and ways to deal with it for people so they can feel better and practice it in their own lives.
Speaker 3:But I've never fixed a human being in my career. We see, that's it. That's the problem and I think I think some part of is in the marketing, especially for therapists. They market saying I will transfer, I will help you transform in xyz or this will transform you, but nothing will transform you unless you put the work in. You can have the tools, you can have the support and the peer support and the and the sort of accountability to do it.
Speaker 3:But you know, even an evening coaching, a coach is only there to guide the person. They're not there to tell the person what to do, whatever. You know, we've been talking about directive and non-directive conversation skills. Well, you're not telling the person what to do because they're not going to do it if they don't want to. They have to want to change or have to want to do the thing. You know it's you could. Nobody can fix somebody. Can they? They've, they've given the tools and the support and the therapy, but they can't. Actually, you know, the person has to do the work as well well, I would also argue that I don't know about you.
Speaker 2:But are you fixed, because I still am working on myself?
Speaker 3:oh, no, and then actually that's implying that we're broken. You know, we're not broken. We're just parts of us maybe need some healing, but you know, nobody's ever perfect, are they well, except for me.
Speaker 2:But uh, thank you for a modest too. Yeah, yeah I appreciate that. I think that it might be important. You know you talked about, you know you got diagnosed recently in June, so only a few months ago with ADHD yeah, yeah, and I think that there's so many aspects. I think that adult ADHD and being diagnosed with that at a later stage in your life and I mean later as in 30 plus, because you live with it for 30 years and you're like oh, now it explains a lot. How has it impacted your life?
Speaker 3:Oh, massively. I mean, you know obviously I've already told you my age, so I've got menopause to think about as well. Yeah, so just persuading my doctor to actually allow me to go on the waiting list to get assessed was a challenge. So when you're already doubting yourself, you have imposter syndrome about we were, am I anti? You know what's going on and you've been through menopause and you just think you're crazy anyway, because you know most women don't realize they've been through menopause until they're through the other side. So it's like four or five lives of their years of their life when they're thinking what's happening.
Speaker 3:To me, you know, yeah, and there's so little understanding about menopause in our medical system.
Speaker 3:I don't know about the american system, but it's just shockingly inadequate.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, you're already doubting yourself, thinking what's going on, and most of the women I know who have been diagnosed late in life have realized after they've tried to get support for their children. So that's, that was my experience as well. I was trying to get support for my daughter at school and went through all the tests with her and recognized so much of it in myself, thought, hold on a minute, that's, that's kind of right. Yeah, so you've already been through the process for like three or four years before you actually get to be assessed. Thankfully, I need to wait 11 months for my assessment and the and the first thing the psychiatrist said to me was I have to apologize. You've had to wait this long for my assessment and the first thing the psychiatrist said to me was I have to apologise that you've had to wait this long for this assessment, because it's the most easily supported and treatable things you can have, and he actually apologized to me that I'd had to wait until I was 52 to be diagnosed.
Speaker 2:Well, you know you are in the UK and socialized medicine I grew up in socialized medicine in Canada. The assessments here can be a little easier to find and a little quicker, but at a price when? When you're in socialized medicine, you know. I mean the wait list in Canada is outrageous also, never mind for mental health, any type of physical health and diagnosing and stuff like that. So I get it and I know the UK is the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:The menopause part is very important too, because you know I've had a few guests on that talk about perimenopause, postmenopause, menopause and how it changes a woman's. You know they think it's oh, it's just the body.
Speaker 1:No, it changes a woman's, you know, they think it's oh, it's just a body.
Speaker 2:No, it changes your mind thinks it. Potpourri changes so many things. So I think it's very underestimated the effect on women, what menopause and all those menopausal symptomology can do. So I'm happy you got that diagnosis yeah, and what I've learned?
Speaker 3:because the only way this is well, you know, you talk about socialized medicine the only way I could get support after my diagnosis, because the healthcare system is such a huge waiting list, because there's only in 2019, I think maybe, yeah, 2019, that the UK National Health Service recognised that adults could have ADHD. So adult ADHD. So it's only been the last, yeah, it's only been the last five to six years, and obviously all the research and testing, like with most pharmaceuticals, has been done on white males or men. So there's very, very limited understanding of the hormonal cycle impact on ADHD symptoms and that's why they recognise now that ADHD symptoms are more prevalent when estrogen levels drop. So puberty and menopause are the two points in a woman and a girl's life where the ADHD is more prevalent. But if it's not recognized, because women and girls show show symptoms differently to men and boys, they internalize a lot. So there's a whole lost generation of it's a gender, it's a gender issue.
Speaker 3:I'm very passionate about this. So there's a whole generation of women and girls who have been misdiagnosed with eating disorders, with mental health issues, because they haven't recognized the adhd symptoms in them. So the only way I could get support was to pay to train as an ADHD practitioner, and that 14-week training course that I went through helped me process as I learned about what ADHD means and how it shows up. So, yeah, I paid for 14-week training, so I'm now an ADHD practitioner as well well, that's good.
Speaker 2:And I, you know, 2019, I'm like, oh my god, yeah, an international community really has to catch up. But you know, I think that you made made a lot of good points here, one of the things being the testing has been done on predominantly white males. And then, you know, young girls. I've I'm actually a child specialist. I don't work with children anymore because I can't stand the parents. I've been very open about this, but the one thing that I realized is I had people who would bring their, their, their young, you know, their teenage girls and they tell me oh, they're defiant, they're, um, oppositional defiant or they're bipolar yeah, and they're like what about?
Speaker 2:their hormones are just out of whack and most people would be like you're not, you can't diagnose that, you're not a doctor, and I'm like I don't have to be a doctor to use logic, though yeah, yeah, and you know.
Speaker 3:Rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, all those things would affect people's um, ability to form friendships, abilities to get on with relatives and because it's highly heritable, it's highly likely their parents have it too. So the guidelines in the UK, which don't get implemented, obviously because you know who's holding them to account, but the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, which is, you know, they give guidance to the UK medical professionals. They said that if somebody gets a diagnosis of ADHD, their family, family should also get. They should get emotional coaching or support to impact and their family should as well. Because if you're a child and you're diagnosed with adhd, obviously the parents should be screened or there should be parenting advice given and vice versa, if a parent is diagnosed, well, you know, there's a whole load of guilt and shame about how you parented without realizing you had a, didn't have adhd, and all that sort of thing. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's quite a big kind of worm, sir, you know I mean it.
Speaker 2:It changes how you know the emotional impact that we have, because sometimes you know what, know what? I again, I'm not a woman, so I'm not going to pretend I am but how it affects you emotionally and the impact it has on you, because you think you're crazy, you think you're going crazy or whatever. I mean. That just changes everything. When you know there's a diagnosis, such as ADHD or ADD, that can play a factor in how you're feeling in regards to your menopause, your perimenopause, that can play a factor in how you're feeling in regards to your menopause your perimenopause, your postmenopausal stuff?
Speaker 3:Yes, but actually I had to reverse that because for the last 30 years I've been told I was crazy. I've been told, oh, you're mentally ill or you're depressed or you're anxious. But actually that was the final piece of the jigsaw and I thought, no, I'm not, I'm okay, I got IDHD right. So actually that was the acceptance part. So this year has been the first year I've fully accepted myself for the first time in my life, and it's been brilliant wow, no but the problem is the people have been calling me crazy last 30 years, but they don't know how to deal with it.
Speaker 3:So, um, you know, I kind of have to let them go, you know well, I, I need to.
Speaker 2:I know you said you accepted yourself. You need to talk to me off, offline here, because that's that's the best thing in the world accepting oneself, I think, is the hardest thing we could ever do that's carl young, isn't it yeah? It is a union belief system yes, yeah, I, I am.
Speaker 2:I quoted him in my book, yeah well, you know I and and you know the the other part too is, you know I I'll tell you my view of craziness and you can correct me if you think I'm a little out there and I'm fine being out there like we're all crazy. We're all crazy differently, but we're all crazy, um, and it's really accepting where your crazy's at, if you need some support, if you need some help, or if you can do it on your own or you can do it with therapy or a group, but ultimately realizing that we all have a little side like that.
Speaker 3:It's not that we're crazy, we're just not fitting into anybody's box and they get pissed off about it yeah, well, you see, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm understanding, I'm unpacking the whole neuro, neurodiverse, neurotypical versus neurotypical thing and there's an argument that actually you know, the the term add or adhd, the disorder bit, actually is probably not, shouldn't be in the dsm really, because, um, you know the diagnostic manual, because it's not a mental health disorder, it's, it's just a spectrum of how our brains function. I, just I, just because our brains process dopamine and other neurotransmitters differently. So it's, it's an interesting debate. And then there's a whole low. I mean, obviously, you know you sort of get involved in all the different, um, different uh groups then, don't you? But it's a different debate about is it an illness? It's not an illness, it's just a different developmental condition, isn't it?
Speaker 2:and I think that that's where we need to move, also in the mental health realm, in my opinion. Is that their conditions? You know?
Speaker 3:um, it's the difference. It's just a difference, and we're all different. Nobody's the same. Even twins aren't the same, are they?
Speaker 2:I mean, they've still got slight differences yeah, and I recommend anyone who wants to go look at twin studies where they separated at birth. They'll show you that you know your environment impacts you as much as your genetics. But yeah, no, I think that it's absolutely true that you know. If when I tell people like what my biggest pet peeve is when people say I'm ADHD or I'm bipolar or I'm depressed, no, you're not, you have that condition.
Speaker 3:It's like I'm toenails or I'm fingernails, isn't it?
Speaker 2:You have fingernails but you're not fingernails. Yeah, I mean that. That's the. That's the bottom line. I think that when we have, you can call it a disorder, if you wish. And condition I like better. I think I'm going to start stealing that from you because it really is a condition. You know, like I, I grew up with my own trauma. I I have my trauma from my work, but it's not not who I am. I'm not Mr PTSD. I just happen to be a therapist, a human being who's a father, who's a boyfriend, who's a son, who's a friend, who's a neighbor, who happens to have some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder in my life.
Speaker 2:So, I like to change that view. For people, we're, not our disorders or our conditions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that goes hand in hand with how you validate yourself, isn't it? Because you don't validate yourself by your bank account or how much you're earning or what job you are or what people think of you. You know, you have to internally validate yourself as yourself, and that was the one thing that you talked about. The emotional impact, that was the one thing that I've had to I'm still coming to terms with, is who am I? Because I've had this identity for the last well, at least the last 15, 16 years is oh, I'm a trauma survivor, or I'm this or I'm that. But I've got to ref, I've got to see all that through a different lens now and say, oh, okay, well, I can understand why that happened, but I didn't know and the resources I had at the time.
Speaker 3:I felt like that. But actually I completely understand now and it's a whole new shedding of you know stuff that the stories retelling your story, basically. So the good thing is I've got another book in me now, because I've got to rewrite the whole book that I published last year through a neurodiverse lens. Keep me busy.
Speaker 2:Well, I published last year through a neurodiverse lens. Keep me busy. Well, I'm going to definitely link the book into the show notes. The other thing I want to really link in the show notes is your six-week coaching and recovery program that you talked about. Can you tell me?
Speaker 3:more about it well, yeah, it's kind of a. It's the development because I was in my old, you know, before I um, before I did the whole ADHD diagnosis, I was a stress and resilience coach and I did a resilience reset type coaching program where I took people through a burnout recovery journey to try and help them understand the behaviors that were leading them to burnout. So really, the resilience reset is supporting. So really the resilience reset is supporting. I'm really focused on neurodivergent women, because that's my passion now is to get women to understand the many barriers and inequalities they face in their life. And neurodivergent women, that's a an extra one. It's basically a three month, a six week sorry, a six week process where we have coaching calls and I give share tools and I give you WhatsApp support over the six weeks to help you start thinking. You know, where am I now, what's brought, what's got me to stage where I am and where do I want to be basically well, I'm going to definitely put that in the show notes.
Speaker 3:I think that's a great idea and with the coaching for over six weeks and talking to someone is important because it can be a lonely process, if you ask me oh so isolating, yeah, really isolating, because you say you don't know who you are and if all the things you believed about yourself and the people around you have believed about you, you just have to be unpicked and reframed, basically and I can't remember who said this, but everything you know about yourself is wrong.
Speaker 2:That's basically what you're being told.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I say our brains, carol Dweck's work on mindset and growth and all the different mindsets. Our brains are constantly renewing ourselves and constantly malleable and shaped by our environment, so much that actually we can be anything we want to be. We just have to believe it and actually support ourselves to shed anything that's stopping us from doing it and just go and do it, you know and I think that that's the important part is just do it.
Speaker 2:Um, in my office, in my uh this is my studio, so to speak, but my office there's a sign that says do or do not. There is no try. I know I stole it from yoda, uh, but nonetheless, I think that that's the important part is just doing it and getting you know, getting in that direction.
Speaker 3:So having a coach, having someone to guide you, so much more helpful yeah, and I think the key thing about having a coach is they can ask you the awkward questions that you might not ask yourself because you feel uncomfortable about them, so they can help you reflect in a safe space, without you know, and work through that fear. One of the one of the best tools that I use with the health coaches and with my coaching clients is the ambivalence grid, because it takes the fear out of well, if I do do it, what will happen if I don't? If I don't, if you do do, what won't happen? If I don't do it, what will happen if I don't do? What will happen? And just taking that fear out of any things well, could you know, it helps you to do it in a safe space and uh, yeah, you wouldn't do that for yourself. Really, you'd sort of stay in your comfort zone, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:right. Well, what I usually say to people too is if you know that thought in your head that you've never said out loud, say it out loud. And when they do say it out loud, I'm like oh, that sounds ridiculous. When I say it, I'm like yeah, because it stays stuck in your brain all this time. So it sounded logical until you said it out loud, so I'm happy that you did so. Sometimes it's getting out.
Speaker 3:That takes that ambivalence and clears it up for you and if you tap while you're doing it, you're nice and calm, so yeah, see you got you.
Speaker 2:You're just putting a nice bow on our whole conversation. Um, I'm going to obviously link all this stuff, but how do people reach you?
Speaker 3:I'm on Instagram at Resilience Rebel On Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn, anne Diamond Changemaker, and I've also got a Resilience Rebel page which I don't put very much on. I'm saying it's quite new, and I've got my website, resiliencerebelcom.
Speaker 1:Great website, that's how I linked up with ann I looked it up.
Speaker 2:But um and diamond, thank you so much see I practice a lot, I'll remember. Yeah, I also put it in a uh how I would pronounce it right here. So that way I said it right, uh, thank you so much for your time and on a just a personal note, I thank you more than you'll ever know. So thank you for that and hopefully people will go and follow you and go do the coaching stuff with you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. It's been a real pleasure and honor to talk to you, Steve. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, this concludes episode 169. Thank you so much, Anne. I really appreciate it. Go and do a recovery program. Go, reach out to everything that you can, including her book and her former podcast. If I can find it, it should be in the show notes. But in episode 170, we're going to meet with Sarah Waite and I can't wait for you to talk to her. But that's the next episode and I hope to see you then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
