Dr Toni Lindsay joins Bre on the podcast this week for an extremely insightful yet gentle conversation about Toni’s work as a Psychologist in the oncology space working predominantly with adolescents and young adults.
Dr Toni Lindsay is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Allied Health Manager working in the Psycho-Oncology Service at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Sydney Australia.
Tune in to hear them chat about:
đź’« What is it like to work as an oncology psychologist
đź’« Common conversations had at the end of life
💫 How has the job impacted Toni’s philosophies on life
đź’« Ways spirituality and religion show up in different patients
đź’« Importance of practices of mindfulness
Toni is so generous in the sharing of her knowledge and experiences from decades of working with young people coming to terms with a cancer diagnosis.
You can visit Toni’s website HERE for more information on her work as well as view / purchase any of her 5 books including her latest, titled “Everything Anxiety Ever Told You Was A Lie – Well Almost Everything” due for release this July.
Let us know your thoughts on this episode by sharing your takeaways to stories and tagging @iambreannamay!
Dr Toni Lindsay joins Bre on the podcast this week for an extremely insightful yet gentle conversation about Toni’s work as a Psychologist in the oncology space working predominantly with adolescents and young adults.
Dr Toni Lindsay is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Allied Health Manager working in the Psycho-Oncology Service at Chris O’Brien Lifehouse in Sydney Australia.
Tune in to hear them chat about:
đź’« What is it like to work as an oncology psychologist
đź’« Common conversations had at the end of life
💫 How has the job impacted Toni’s philosophies on life
đź’« Ways spirituality and religion show up in different patients
đź’« Importance of practices of mindfulness
Toni is so generous in the sharing of her knowledge and experiences from decades of working with young people coming to terms with a cancer diagnosis.
You can visit Toni’s website HERE for more information on her work as well as view / purchase any of her 5 books including her latest, titled “Everything Anxiety Ever Told You Was A Lie – Well Almost Everything” due for release this July.
Let us know your thoughts on this episode by sharing your takeaways to stories and tagging @iambreannamay!
Welcome to the mind school, the classroom for your mind and soul where we design our lives from the inside out. He will find a human first approach to life, business and relationships to create freedom, growth and constant evolution through mindset, emotional intelligence, leadership and connection to self. I'm your host, Breanna Mae, educator, CEO, mindset and business mentor. And my mission is to teach the things we were never taught at school, so that no dream is left on the pillow, and no purpose left unfulfilled. Here, you can expect a lot of laughs and thought provoking conversation as we squeezed every drop of juice from this beautiful, precious, crazy thing called life. Welcome back to another episode of the mind school podcast or just welcome. If you're new here. I'm about to introduce you to a human who I find so fascinating. So intelligence, so insightful, so full of wisdom, and I have been studying for quite some time. And this human is in such a niche, and interesting field of work. This is Dr. Tony Lindsay, who is a clinical Samia psychologist who works in psycho oncology, which is cancer. And she has a specific interest in the management of adolescent and young adult patients, and has written lots of books which deal with things like end of life, with uncertainty with the myth of certainty. And she just has so much wisdom to share from as you can imagine a very specific line of work. And so I wanted to first of all give a little bit of a content warning, obviously, there is a lot of conversation in this episode around death. And I'm going to leave that with you to decide if it's too fresh, or if it's not something that you wanted to delve into. For me, and you've probably heard me talk before about one of my favourite books, actually is called the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. And I believe that there's a lot that we can learn about how we want to live and how we want to be in this world through pondering death, and the fact that we are all going to die and thinking about what Mark we want to leave or how we want to show up or who we want to spend our time with. And for me that question, and this topic has always actually given more purpose than intentionality to my life. And so I found this conversation, very stimulating, and very insightful. And I am just so grateful for Dr. Tony Lindsay, to be here to offer all of her wisdom and expertise. So we spoke about things like, what is it like for her to work as an oncology psychologist? And what are some of the common conversations that she has with people who are contemplating death or possibly even coming up to that phase in their life, we talked about how this job has impacted her philosophies about life and death and how to live. We talked about spirituality, and if and when that comes up in this process, what that's like and what she's observed. We talk about the importance of practices of mindfulness and being present and being grounded. We talked about so many different things that I find can be really powerful lessons to take in our life and with it with the knowing that our life is limited, and that makes it even more meaningful and even more special. And so I hope you can appreciate and enjoy this incredible conversation with Dr. Tony Lindsay. I am joined by a human who I just said off off air. I have become extremely fascinated with the work of this guest and that is Dr. Lindsay. And I wanted to say first of all a personal thank you. This is something I haven't mentioned to you just yet. The way I actually came across you was a couple years ago when my husband was struggling with accepting the fact that his best friend had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And in his process of dealing with that grief, he stumbled across you and he was so grateful to have stumbled across you. And he said to me, this was a couple years ago now you have to get her on your podcast because she's fascinating. And she's an amazing speaker. And I just wanted to say thank you so much for the work that you do and for coming to speak to me. Oh, awesome. Thank you. That's a very that's always a lovely thing to hear. Because I think one of the tricky things as I imagine you know, as well is you sometimes put things out in the world and you have no way of knowing whether they land whether they're helpful whether people are like going on God wash, you've been talking about this. So it's really, it's actually really lovely to hear that it is helpful and people can pick up on stuff. And I can imagine, I was actually thinking a lot of the time when I'm listening to you on interviews, I think of Brene. Brown. And she always makes this joke about how it's a bit of a buzzkill when you're in a taxi or sitting to someone next to, you know, on the plane, and they're like, so what are you to work? And I thought, how do you? How do you answer that when people ask what you do? What is your response? And also, what is your why I find so many people, there's an underlying why there's like a motivator or something that happened in their life, maybe that led to this journey. So how do you respond to that question? And what is the deeper why that led you here? I've got I've got two answers to the how do I respond to the question, which is, sometimes I don't. So depending on the interaction, sometimes I will just say, Oh, I you know, I work in a hospital. And people will invariably say, Oh, are you a nurse? And I'm like, oh, no, I just, you know, I do some management stuff or whatever. Kind of, you know, we'll push it off a little bit, again, depending on the context, right? If I'm having a five minute conversation with someone, probably not gonna get into it, then I guess a different answer is, if I am in a space where that's a conversation that comes up and, you know, we end up kind of going down that path. It's really interesting to see how people respond to that. Because I think, obviously, and we often reflect on this in our team. And I often think about this in my own life, where the world that I occupy for most of the week is actually a very strange world. And you know, if I think about the day I had yesterday, where I had many, many conversations with people, and things like death, grief, uncertainty, I like completely in the room all of the time. And then you kind of step out into the, I say, normal world, I'm doing that in inverted commas, is, you know, going out into the normal world where people either don't think about this stuff, they don't connect with it, they don't engage, they're actively avoiding it. And so it's really, really interesting to see how people respond. And some people are like, you can you can see them, right? Like, they lean in, and they're like, Oh, my God, talk to me about this, like, I'm really into it. And other people, you can just say go, oh, and then go, oh, that must be really hard, and then change the subject. So you kind of get a sense really quickly about like, who are the people who are like, you know, let's, let's go there. And invariably, you then end up having kind of really interesting conversations with people or conversely, you go, okay, cool. You know what, we'll go back to talking about whatever our kind of stuff, you know, like, just the kind of easy stuff that we will cruise through life with? Yeah, let's go back to the weather make people walk through. Yeah, totally. It's like, and I think, you know, the nature of my job is that I'm pretty good at making it about other so I pick up pretty quickly I've like, okay, you don't you're not vibing on this. That's cool. We'll, we'll move on. That's so I mean, the other tricky thing in this, which is maybe not necessarily the question you asked, but it I think, as well, it's, it's sometimes hard to know, like, I've I've done this job for a really long time, right. So it's sometimes hard to know, where the job starts and ends and where I start and end. And the longer I do the job, the more those things kind of probably merged together a bit. And so I actually intentionally in my life outside of work, tend not to talk I think about this stuff, because it, it kind of helps with that space to go actually, I need to be a human separate to this, as well, as a human doing this kind of stuff. It would be something that would impact your personal life and belief systems and the way you live so so deeply, because ultimately, you're you're dealing with death, which is the thing that I feel like in Western cultures, we don't deal with, like you said, it's an avoidant thing. We don't even have a lot of practices around it, we don't keep it in our forefront of mind. And I've always thought of it a lot more than I think maybe the average person and I feel like that helps me to live fully. Have you found that working with death has impacted your life personally, on positive ways? Yeah, I think it does, or has it? It shows up in a bunch of ways, actually. And it shows up in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think about, like, I think, does it show up in these kind of big how I am in the world ways? Absolutely. Right? Like, you know, I think about So, for context, I started working with young people in the cancer space when I was still a young person. So I was kind of bumping into that was a long time ago now. But I, you know, I was bumping into people who were my age, or you know, very close to my age who were bumping into these things. And so I don't know, because we never know the counterfactual, right, but I don't know what life would have looked like had I've not done that work. But my sense is I am inherently a different person as a function of doing that because you can't bump into those things and not be changed by it and not kind of go home at the end of the day thinking Hmm, well, if all of this ended tomorrow, would I be happy with what I'm doing today? And I think that's a like that's something I carry now at the conversation I have with my by patients all the time, but it also turns out, you know, my, my family invariably will always joke with me about, you know, I have these funny little things I say every day, which, on the surface don't mean much like I always say to my partner, you know, life's too short not to look at the sunsets. And, you know, you kind of look at that and go, Oh, that's a bit of a flippant remark, except it's like, yeah, but we might not be here tomorrow. And I'm very cognizant that people probably don't think about that stuff in the same way that I do. And I'm not afraid of it. It's not a Oh, my God, we need to do something about it's just like not, it's a statement of fact, like, you know, I, I spend lots of time with people think, who have always thought that nothing bad would happen to them. And then something bad happens, because bad things happen to us. And so I think that stuff changes. And it probably, you know, like I said, I don't know, the counterfactual, but my sense is just my way of being in the world is probably a bit different. And I say that, in all of the people I work with, as well, you know, we tend not to put things off, you tend to show up in the here. And now I tend to try and be more present focused. I mean, that's hard because our brain works against us. But you know, all of that stuff that is kind of a bit helpful and protective, when you're in these spaces? And what are the conversations that you find? I mean, you would have, because you work with the psychology of the humans and the emotional responses that they're having to, you know, uncertainty and the things that they never thought would happen? What are the common conversations that you find yourself having in your practice? That's a really big question. It's a little bit interesting, actually, because I think we would assume, or at least, I would assume, that the conversations that you would have about death would be correlated with how unwell people are, but it's actually not that case at all. So I have conversations with people about uncertainty. And you know, context, of course, all of the stuff underneath the uncertainty is usually fear of death stuff, you know, if you drill down enough layers, there's often a bit of padding in there. But you know, if you go down far enough, it's all about the death stuff. Because when I started this work, I kind of assumed that the people who had you know, in an oncology context, you know, the people had early stage disease that we say to them, you know, pretty reliably, you'll have some treatment, you'll go on and live a really happy and productive life, you kind of assume that none of this stuff shows up for them, except it absolutely shows up. Because the very nature of having something like this happened to you the context around which we can't say to anyone 100% of the time, this is never going to be a problem again, you know, that kind of sense of mistrust, or kind of questioning of your own sense of self in the world and your self in the context of your body and what your body tells you. Because, you know, often people will say to me, Well, I missed this the first time, so how can I trust that I wouldn't miss it again, you know, like all of those things that kind of show up. And then kind of if I think about that on a spectrum, you know, I see people with really early stage disease, but I also see people who know that they will die from their disease. And those kinds of themes or contexts are not so different. It's just that the content around them might be a bit different in this and you know, there's lots of uncertainty people find kind of bumping into, well, what's going to happen next, what's the next game? What's this next thing going to be? How do I shard well for this? And so you kind of get this whole spectrum. But the themes or the processes, probably not so dissimilar, one of the things that because I can imagine any people are listening to this, they're like, Oh, my God, this is all really dark. It's actually not right. Like, I think I have a colleague who sits in the room next to me. And she'll often say to me, what are you guys talking about? Because you can just hear these kind of raucous laughter and all of this kind of like stuff coming out of the room, right? Because lots of this stuff is absolutely hard and difficult and tricky for people. But in that there is a bunch of lightness, there is a bunch of like humans just showing up and doing what humans do. There is lots of humour, particularly I work primarily with young people these days. And so but the darkness of some of that humour is pretty next level. It's like, oh, how do your friends respond when you say that to them? And they're like, not in the same way that you didn't know that, right? You know, we had those kinds of conversations, you know, the depth stuff might be there, or the uncertainty might be there. But we're also talking about relationships. And how do you show up for this? And actually, I want to go on a date, how do I explain this thing that's going on in my body? You know, like, there's all of that stuff that kind of goes on around it as well. So it's not, you know, I often think about some of the stuff because I think people imagined that I'm just sitting and having these really intense full on conversations all day every day. But you know, some of them are pretty intense. But it's also I don't know, whether you're familiar with the kind of urban Yalom work and he talks a lot about kind of stoic philosophy and all of that stuff. But that kind of idea of the staring at the Sun stuff. You know, people can do this for a second. You can't sit in this forever. And so that's, you know, that's what I see in my clinic room. But that's also what I see people doing in the world, right? Like, they bump into these things, but then they're washing up and taking the kids to school and being in the world because that stuff kind of Occupy As a part of them, it's not the whole part of that. And on that it's something I think about quite often. You know, you just said they go on with their days, they take the kids to school, they have a routine, essentially, that's, you wouldn't know that this person is going through this thing. And I often wonder is, is it true that the idle mind is the devil's playground and for anxiety, and people who struggle with uncertainty and fear and all of these things, what have you found there in terms of keeping ourselves busy to a certain extent, but then balancing that with not burying things when busyness? Yeah, totally. And I think what you're kind of nailing there is that kind of difference between function and avoidance, right? Like, it's, you're absolutely right, we are not, you know, none of us, if left to our own devices inside our own brains, you know, you can do that for a little while, pretty quickly, it becomes unproductive because our brain just kind of spins on itself a bit. And we're not, you know, at no point in human history. Have we ever done that, like, when we don't, we're not built to just sit around and think. And I think some of the trickiness around, you know, if I think about some of the things that I chat with people about, but just about the world in general, right? It's not, you know, often we perceive that thinking is going to be problem solving, whereas actually, what tends to happen in these big nebulous spaces, and we can be talking about uncertainty and death. But we can also be talking about climate change and war and a million other things, right. And the stuff that we bump into as humans is that there's no problem solving to be done here. It's not, it's not like, if we just think about this enough, we're gonna get to a space where we're like, okay, cool, that makes sense. I'm happy with that. And, you know, so what tends to happen is our brains kind of wired to try and fix stuff for us, and to try and work it out. But if we're giving in a problem that's unsolvable, we just tend to spin. And so what tends to be helpful is having structure and purpose and meaning and things to keep you busy, while also allowing yourself the space to go, Well, if difficult stuff kind of shows up in my brain, then I'll make space for it and room for it. And I'm not going to fight against it. But I'm also going to make some choices about how much I engage with it, the kind of piece where this stuff becomes less helpful or less good is where people are kind of, as you alluded to, so terrified that if they get a second to themselves, they're going to get pulled into this spiral of thinking. And then then what tends to happen is that they work really, really hard to make sure they're never in that space. And so that's the bit that actually, it becomes really tricky, because we're then coming from a space of avoidance, where it's like, well, you know, give the anxiety example, it's like, I'm so terrified, I'm going to become anxious, that I have to make sure that I'm busy every second of the day, which in itself creates its own anxiety. And so what the work that I do, and lots of my colleagues do is actually about, you know, what the anxiety is going to show up? How do we learn to tolerate it and be present to it as opposed to trying to get rid of it? Because we know with anxiety, or you know, mood staff, or just thoughts in general, right? It's our brain doing its job, like they're showing up and doing what we want it to, we want our brain to be doing its job, right. Like it does a bunch of really important things for us. And so if we're not, if we can recognise that our brains throwing up all these thoughts, and aren't Uber helpful, so Okay, cool. Thanks, brain, I think that's off. I don't need to engage with you about that. It's okay, you know, but often people are so terrified that just even allowing a smidgen of that in is the whole worlds kind of unravel. And that's often where you get a bit of an avoidance picture going on. And I think you just said there. It's even further perpetuated with trying to solve unsolvable problems. So we sit in our intellect, we sit in our thinking brains, and I think more than ever, we love to be in our brains. And if we're trying to solve an unsolvable problem, like, what happens when I die? Like, what is going to happen? That I can only imagine that perpetuates a lot more spiralling have you because you mentioned making meaning and having a sense of purpose? In your years of work? Have you come up with any sense of meaning, or a way to accept that we die and or any sort of ideas or spiritual, even some spiritual pursuits that have helped you with this? I guess, scary thing in the Western world? It's a really big question. The short answer is yes. The longer answer is I have the absolute benefit, I would say, of seeing in reality over and over and over again, in, you know, I haven't counted but it would be in the 1000s, if not more, like then the way that we as people are kind of wired in these spaces, right. So there's some really predictable trajectories emotionally that happen around the Deaf stuff. So like if I meet someone kind of six to 12 months before they die, but someone said to them, you've got limited life expectancy. That's usually where the anxiety is the highest. Because as people get closer to death, At things get more certain we can find a level of acceptance that we can't conceptualise. And they can't conceptualise until that unit. And often even when I'm talking to people in that space, they can't put language to it. I'll just kind of say to them, oh, how, you know, how are things feeling? You know, these are people often have been really anxious, we've been working together for a really long time. And they'll just say, You know what, I'm okay now. And they can't, they can't necessarily put language to it, right? They, they can't tell me what's different, what they're thinking different. And I think that's probably a combination of kind of reality. And we're, you know, we all know that we kind of underestimate how well we'll cope. And actually kind of probably overestimate how terrible everything is going to be. And so when we bump into these really kind of hard concrete spaces, we actually tend to show up pretty well. But then the other side of that is, there's a neurological process that goes on, because we in our kind of lives, where, you know, there is all of these kinds of systems and things that help us you know, so in a really simple kind of example, we've got the processes around anxiety, keep us safe, keep us running away from tigers. We've got, you know, systems that kind of engage when we're dying as well. And so, you do you see this kind of process happen. I recognise I'm an answer to the question. Yeah. So I can I know all of this intellectually, right? I've seen it. I've been with people in the room, you know, I've had those conversations, absolutely familiar territory. To me, what I'm not convinced about is it, if somebody said to me, tomorrow, you're gonna die in six months time, I'm pretty sure that my trajectory would mirror the exact trajectory of everyone else's. Because that anxiety, that stuff would show up, because kind of going back to what you were saying before, I have a very good intellectual knowledge of what this is, I don't have the emotional knowledge of it. And they're really different things. Right, I would like to say that I've got this nailed, right. Like, it's like, if I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. So well, I've got this, like, emotionally, I'm going to be nailing this. I don't know, maybe, maybe I do. But maybe I don't, as well. And that's okay. You know, and I think that's probably where the acceptance piece shows up. It's like, you know, whatever, whatever that is, is okay. You know, I think you can't, you can't work in this space without having some ideas about how the world is, the thing that I have come to recognise is I meet people with a million different ideas about what they think is going to happen to them. We have no way of knowing, I have no way of knowing no. And as I sometimes say, to my patients, you know, if you want to come back and tell me please, like, I'm happy to hear but you know, no one can do that, right. And so, I think, you know, to sit in this space, you kind of have to, it sounds a bit strange, right. But I think you have to be okay with your own desk stuff before you can work with other people around their desk stuff. And so really interesting, actually, when you watch kind of trainees and stuff coming into this space, you can see for the first 12 months, it's just this like head spin of Oh, my God, like, there are so many things about the world that I just hadn't even thought about. And then kind of people work out their own stuff, and can then sit in that quite a bit more comfortably. But yeah, it's a pretty, you know, probably as a function of being kind of getting older, is, I think, probably when I started, I had some pretty fixed ideas about how I thought the world was, as I get further and further through this, I recognise that all of that's kind of, you know, the world just ease as it is. And I just kind of go with whatever shows up. And it's, you know, I think that's kind of probably one of the biggest ways that this stuff changes you as a human, you're just like, okay, it just is whatever that is. It's kind of like waves on the ocean, you're just like, okay, cool. Just just go with the flow. Yeah, it's like, as opposed to trying to search for meaning you just let it be, don't look for the meaning. Yeah. Do you find a lot of your patients have a trajectory that turns quiet? Because you're, you're a scientist, and a lot of what you're looking at is, you know, the neurological things going on? Does that turn quite spiritual at any point? And have you found that that has been really helpful for many patients? I will caveat this by saying the cohort of people I work with are quite young. So that might kind of skew this picture a little bit. Although even as I as I say that if I think about when I was working with kind of a broad age group, I would say it happens much less often than you would imagine. There are people who maybe come to this process really spirit surely or you know, I'm, I'm kind of lumping spirituality and religion into one pot, he I recognise that they're not the same thing, but I'm kind of just fees, often what will happen in that use kind of one of two things. So if people have come into this process, quite spiritual or religious, they will either really engage in that world and kind of go down that path in a much more kind of considered intentional way. Or conversely, they you know, and I've had particularly a few young people who've kind of then developed a really like complex relationship, particularly you know, I'm gonna say this in a religious sense, but you know, particularly with God or were around, like, how could this happen to me? And so you often watch kind of people have these really interesting explorations of like, what is my faith mean to me? And what do I do with that I have had a cohort of patients, and it's, I would say, kind of a pretty small number of proportionally, who then kind of actively go out and seek some kind of spiritual practice or, and you know, and that can vary from kind of throwing themselves into religion, which is pretty unusual if they haven't been already. But it can also be things like they go and seek out meditation or kind of become really, really invested or engaged in practices that they find helpful. So it might even be things like diet or exercise that they kind of use that spiritual kind of component around around intentionality, and purposeful, purposefulness. And then probably I would say, there's a much broader cohort of people who just go, You know what, I just need to leave every day as I need to. And that's never big stuff. Well, it's very rarely big stuff. It's I, you know, I think if you and I had this conversation and say, Okay, well, if you've got, you know, if someone says you've got a limited time, you know, you go, oh, I want to go on these holidays, and I want to do this thing, and I want to do this that almost never shows up. Because I'm in for a couple of reasons, usually what people aren't well, but also, people want to be close to home, they want to be with their people, they want to do the stuff that's familiar. It's going and sitting in the sunshine or reading a book while you're petting the dog. Like it's not, you know, people don't really seek out these big broad experiences. Because we know actually, the reality is that life is made up of a series of little tiny things rather than really big stuff, right? So really, occasionally, I have a patient who's like, Oh, dude, I need to go on this trip. And I'm like, Okay, let's facilitate that. But most of the time, that's not what happens, or you know, there might travel, but they probably go into state or, you know, have a weekend away with their friends. I mean, I think the overarching spiritual wellness that shows up in this or spirituality is very much around purpose and intentionality, you know, people are, by and large, really cognizant of their impact of this on other people. And so they're often thinking about how do I show up to make sure that the people around me are doing okay, how do we make sure that I'm connected, I'm engaged, that were doing things that feel important that we're making memories that we're doing, you know, it's often the time where people can, you know, when you watch movies, right, like, people always talk about, like, resolving these long term, whatever. Like, that doesn't come up, particularly because people are like, you know, what, I don't have the energy but be that's not how I want to spend my time, you know, I want to spend my time doing stuff that feels good or productive or helpful or connected. And so you know, really, occasionally, I'll get someone who's like, Oh, I've got this kind of relationship fracture that I want to try and heal. And then we kind of often talk about, well, a is it? Is it healable? Or B? Is it, you know, how much energy do you want to put into this? And sometimes people will say, Yep, absolutely, we need to do it. And so we'll try and kind of work out how to do that. But often people go, you know, what, actually, I don't have the space for it. And so, you know, it often becomes this, like, Okay, I'm gonna make some choices about how I spend my time, or what I want my time to look like. Wow. And I'm, as you were talking, I found myself giggling because I was a high school teacher for quite some time. And I can imagine the conversations with adolescents about how do you want to spend what what do you need to get done? They just need to touch a boob and I need to get drunk. Yes, yeah, totally, I don't, I don't get, you get a little bit of that, you get a little bit of lost, like that sense of grief around, I might not get to do those things. So you know, particularly when they're kind of situation means that they're stuck in time and their friends are progressing, which looks quite different in adults, because adults tend, you know, we tend to be pretty static, whereas in adolescence and young adulthood, you know, people are moving overseas, or they're going getting new jobs, or they're going to uni, or so that stuff is often pretty tricky for people to manage. But yeah, it's often navigating like stuff like, ah, you know, I kinda want to hook up with someone. But I'm also like, that's not a long term relationship, like, how do I navigate that? Or, like, I want to go out drinking with my mates. But, you know, how does that work with the painkillers? And more, more importantly, what's my, you know, oncologist gonna say, when I showed up the next week with my liver function shot, you know, that kind of stuff shows up, but it doesn't show up. You know, you'd imagine it shows up all the time, it shows up a handful of times, like most of the time, people are coming to see me and they're pretty focused on the emotion of it. Even quite young people, which is kind of pretty wild. When you think about it, like the maturity that people can bring to the space is pretty crazy. And so much so that I have to catch myself sometimes because I'll be having conversations and you know, we'll be talking like we are now. And then they'll say something and it just unlike your 18 like, Ah, okay, right. Yeah, this is yeah, I forgot that we don't have that context, yet. Yeah. And also, I'd say that sometimes they surprise you, like you said, with immaturity, I found young people often I used to say, like, sometimes I prefer to be in my classroom than in the staff room, because of the attitude and the maturity. And all of those things I think working with, you know, like, kind of always tying back to your, one of your original questions is like, actually, I can do this work, because actually turning up and being in that space with young people all day, every day is awesome. Like, they are like, their situations are empirically terrible. But they are awesome. You know. And so, I think, you know, people either love working with young people, or they don't, and I'm not sure, I suspect some of these be, and some of it is just like, not my bag, because it takes a very particular skill set to show up with adolescents. But you know, all if I think about the young people that come into my office, they are all like, they, they're, they mean business, they're turning up, they're engaged, they're present, they want things to, you know, they want to work with me about stuff from a like therapist is like, these are ideal people, right? Like, this is awesome. So, and, you know, you get to build these really like some of my patients, I met when they were 16, who are now you know, young people in their mid to late 20s, who are like successful humans who kind of still turn up once a year to be like, hey, just checking in want to say, Hi. You know, I have a lovely family that people that have known what feels like forever, who, you know, every year they the sign arrives with a Christmas cake that the mums baked for us like that kind of stuff, which is just like, and they just, you know, will call and check in, like, Hey, how you doing, we've got, you know, I've got families who I met when they were young people who've now got married and had babies. And so it's not, it's not all kind of sad, Deaf stuff, right? Like, there's so much kind of had a conversation with one of my patients a while ago, who I've known for a very long time. And we were just kind of reflecting on how strange it is that we both started this relationship in a very different space than where we both are now. So it's not just him, that's changed, I've changed over that period of time as well. And so you know, there's not many spaces where you get to kind of have those processes, which is actually really like, that's really lovely work to do. And the depth I can only imagine is you're not talking about the weather, the vulnerability and the connection would be insane. And the lessons like I got goosebumps when you said, the really what people want to do is live with more purpose and intentionality, they want to watch a sunset and pat their dog. And I don't know if you've read the book, it's one of my favourite books I've ever read. It's called the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. I haven't I've seen that article. Yeah. Oh, it, it has so many lessons that anyone can take from. And I was wondering what you would have seen or integrated as your lessons from a lot of these conversations? What are some of the common themes? I mean, in that book, I think the top one was I wish I hadn't worked so hard, which might not be as relevant to young people, but and I wish I'd made more time for my family like things that, I guess you would say, yeah, that's common. Is there any that you've noticed that a common themes that we can learn from I would absolutely agree with the, you know, I have never had someone say to me, I wish I would have worked more ever? I think I think you're right, the idea of regret in young people is a bit different. Because, I mean, there's many reasons why it's different, but not the least of which is that their brain kind of struggles to come up with the idea of regret at that stage in life. But if I you know, if I kind of broaden that lends out a bit, the stuff that people show up with, at the end of life, never about money, it's never about stuff. And you know, so much so that there is invariably that's a very consistent pattern, where there will be times, you know, if people are approaching the end of their lives, that they'll just stop using their phones, and or they will consistently say to me, I just can't be bothered with it, it doesn't feel important. Like why would I waste my time on that? Or things like I remember going to see a patient because I usually takes people to tell them on call me if they're on the ward or something. And I take some refuge and I told him I was going to visit so I like, you know, and you don't you don't just want the psychologist like launching into your room. Right? So you want to give some warning. But he hadn't responded. So I kind of wandered up and I was like, Oh my You know, so just just wanting to you know, I said I can't but I've texted you guys. I know I'm on my phones in the drawer. I didn't even know. He's like, I'm just teasing the room now. And it's like, right. Okay. So I often think about that kind of stuff. Like how much of our time do we just spend kind of pilfering away on stuff that doesn't matter. You know, similarly, no one ever says to me, jeez, I regret reading that book. Or having that conversation or you know, people don't talk or going for that nice walk in the sunshine. You know, no one ever says that stuff to me. Right. And convert you know, if you think about that in a functional, you know, I think about some of the ways that we spend time now. You know, no one's ever saying stuff to May like, you know, I really wish I had have stayed at home and looked at my phone rather than going for that walk, ever. But all the time, so that kind of stuff, you know, so it's not about money or things money is helpful, because it gives people choices. But past that, it's not, you know, so if you don't have money, this stuff is really stressful. But having more money doesn't make it less stressful. So you know, and the value of money changes when you've got limited time. So, you know, I remember, you know, there would be times where I'd worked with people who had, you know, works their whole lives to get to this magical retirement date. And then, you know, they get sick a month after. And so they've got all of this cash, but no time, which is, I don't know whether you've bumped into the guy with zero book from I think his name's Bill Perkins. So he's a, he's a finance guy. But he talks really beautifully about this idea of, you have to make memory dividends, and you have to, it's not all about money and investing, it's about, you know, you do the thing at the time, like, we often have it a bit backwards, where we're like, we're just going to work really hard, save a bunch of cash, and then we'll retire at this magical, you know, to be determined date, and he's like, you're not taking the backpacking trip when you're 60. Like, you need to take the backpacking trip when you're doing it, right. So like some of that stuff, like thinking about time, and how we show up. But also, I think, some of that stuff about relationships, it's at the end of the day, everything we are is relational, pretty much it's about relationships to people, you know, things, occasionally relationships to pets, that comes up way more often than you might think, you know, that, that stuff. So I think like prioritising relationship, and that's hard when we're working 70 hours a week, right? And whether that's partners, or kids, or friendships or whatever, but I think leaning into the stuff that even when I'm exhausted, and even when I'm tired, you know what, I'm gonna go and catch up with my mate for coffee, because that thing is actually really important. And they're, you know, I often think about those, you know, because hopefully most of us live to a very ripe old age, right? And I sometimes think about maybe a very stoic way of thinking about it, but often think about, okay, well, if I'm imagining what my life will be, at the end of my life, who do I want there? You know, who are the people that I want to be showing up for me? And conversely, who would I want to be showing up for in those spaces, and it's like, you don't make those relationships, when you're 65. You make those relationships as you go through life, and you kind of collect people and kind of and, you know, I suspect most people have childhood relationships they've held on to and those relationships go through seasons, right? Like, you know, I suspect you might have similar things where, you know, people that you're really close to his kids, you kind of drift apart, and then you might come back together or you know that, but I think being intentional about that stuff is kind of a bit of a key to it. Because that's that's kind of where we all land, right? It's like when things aren't going well, who are the people that I want around me? And what occurred to me, as you were talking was, how you are so wise and embodied in these lessons, because honestly, trying to find you on social media. I can see what's happened to you she knows she knows that it's actually not meaningful or important. And I want has that impact is? Am I correct? In that assumption? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I'm not well, for context, I do have a social media account that is facilitated mostly to have photos of my niece and nephew shared with me, and or have messenger groups with the girls that I serve with. So that's engagement. And it's under a fake name. But yeah, I don't I don't have Instagram I have, I have Twitter. Well, I have Twitter from this will sound as terrible as it's going to sound from a book promotion perspective, essentially, where like, once every year or however often I put out a book, I do a Twitter thing. And that's pretty much my engagement, or if I'm at conferences, often tweet. But yeah, I just did that I don't. And some of that is just, I'm not naturally drawn to that stuff. I tend to be either kind of very, like, we often have a kind of joke in our group chats or something. Like if we're trying to organise a catch up, people will have these really eloquent responses and all this stuff and my response to them like Yep, cool. See you then. Like, it's not, I'm not very good at that stuff. But I also think I just prior like, I would rather just chat with people then kind of do this stuff. So I'm probably a bit wired to that. I'm also, you know, I sometimes think you'd be there's probably a bit of a generational advantage I have in that as well, where I haven't like, you know, this stuff kind of showed up when I was already kind of at uni and stuff. Go young people and adolescents give up the phone as easily. Yeah, they do. Not know, not all the time. It's probably definitely when they're unwell. Absolutely. But as people get towards the end of their lives, but you definitely probably up until about 20 Maybe like 2324 less so, but after that, yeah, absolutely. People are much less connected. And also like careless, right? Because if you think about that, like focus of being unwell or having to kind of think about mortality and stuff, the stuff that you're seeing on social media is probably not going to feel Uber relevant. And so it's so it's kind of a bit easier, I think, for them to, you know, that said, the challenge in this is that that's how young people connect. Right. So there is an impetus around well, I have to be engaged enough in this, but often people will kind of disengage a bit from social media or or unfollow people. And that, you know, that equally goes, I think, for any of those spaces where people are trying to be really helpful, where they're like, yeah, just follow this person, because we're positive. And look, they've had their leg amputated, too, and look at what they're doing. And like that stuff. Um, for most people I talked to, it's pretty overwhelming and unhelpful. So. So yeah, so they'll often kind of be pretty selective about what they're going to follow and who they're going to connect with. It's very interesting. I actually remember having I did a retreat with teenage girls. And it was very much focusing on their mental health. And I asked them a question. And their response unanimously surprised me because I said, What if you could go to a life where we didn't have social media and phones? Would you? And do you think you'd be happier? And they all said, Yes, yeah. But they also said, they're addicted to it, because it's how they connect. And so it's very interesting to see how that plays out. Very. And I mean, I think that it's so tricky, right? Because I think I was chatting with someone a couple of weeks ago, actually. And they were talking about a study in the UK where they took phones away from the schools, and everyone was really happy about it, and everyone did better. And they were like, Yeah, life is good. Without the phone. The second the phones came back, they started using them again, because it's, you know, it's like that, you know, all psychology thing of being in a Skinner box, where you just getting rewarded constantly. So our, our brains, particularly young brains are wired to that stuff. So in asking young people to not engage in that we're asking them to go against their brain, which is a pretty, like, that's pretty hard. So and I, you know, and clearly, it's not my place to comment on how schools manage this stuff, or how we manage this stuff in the society. But I, I do wonder whether, you know, stuff was still hard for young people, before all of this, like, no doubt, right? Like, kids were still getting bullied, there was still like, lots of complex stuff that went on in relationships. And you know, being a young person is hard. We've, we've all been young people we like we know, I think we're making lives for young people even more challenging, because they have access to all of this stuff. And it's making, you know, I had a chat with someone the other day, and they were talking about, you know, they kind of just said to me, is everyone getting more anxious? And it's like, yeah, they are. Because life is, you know, when I first started doing this work, it was really, really unusual that I would have a young person come in and say, yep, I've got this history of anxiety or depression. Now, pretty much every young person I say, will come in with an anxiety story of some flavour. And that's, you know, so there's, and that's in 1517 years, right? Like there is a definite shift happening in those spaces. That's a huge conversation and disappointing. I noticed a very similar theme. And and I, you know, why I left the education system, mental health statistics were not great. And it was all, you know, in pursuit of grades, and the intellectual and academic performance is going backwards to so I thought, what are we doing here? And it's a huge question. And I think, and I've heard you speak about too, sometimes the antidote to this. And a lot of what you work with is, and it's probably an eyeroll, with this word, but mindfulness, because it's probably been overcooked, or simplified, even, is that an antidote? And how would you say for practically, practically, for people who are like, Yeah, I need to be more with my feet, I want to be more present in my life. What are the sort of practical tips that you say to people in terms of being grounded and present, it is an antidote to most stuff, and I guess my I will openly disclose that I'm not a meditator. And I'm not a particularly like, capacity to sit in a room and do mindfulness is not really my bag. So I'm just putting that out there before anyone gets any wild ideas. But actually, I feel like that can be really helpful. Because it then when when I'm thinking about present focus, or mindfulness stuff, I'm not thinking about sitting in a room and meditating. I'm thinking about how do we just bring our attention back to what's happening in the here and now, you know, if you're having a conversation with someone and your brains kind of wandered off, and you're starting to think about what you're going to say next, just kind of going Ah, okay, thanks, brain. Cool. I'm just going to come back to you, like, Okay, what colour are the eyes of the person I'm talking to? I'm just gonna get really, oh, what shape do their lips make as they're talking? You know, like coming like really back into that space. You know, really simple stuff. Like, if I'm on a walk, and I'm noticing that my brains kind of spinning I'd be like, Okay, how do I kind of bring my attention to my feet? You know, what's the sound that my feet or my He on the pavement? What if I take my ear pods out? Because, you know, invariably, people are listening to stuff while they're walking. But I take my ear pods out what? What can I hear? You know, what are the what are five things that I can? Oh, is that a bird over there? Oh, what's the noise that that making? You know, I'm thinking like really simple stuff. But you would be surprised how quickly even doing that for 10 seconds, it resets your brain. And it's like, you know, we used to have worlds where this was inherent in all day, every day, right? We were doing things like working in fields or, you know, having to write, like, physically write stuff. So we'd feel the texture of the paper underneath our end, you know, how much pressure does the pen have, you know, all of these things, we don't have that stuff anymore. You know, our devices don't have those sensory cues. Other than, Oh, it's getting really hot, maybe I've been using it too much, you know. So I think, you know, for instance, the other day, I was doing a lecture at the university, and I was just kind of walking past someone. And I noticed that they had, they would double screening me in their single screen. So they had their like notes, doing whatever. So they look like they were doing their thing, but then they've got a basketball game playing in the corner. And I'm like, Okay, I mean, my capacity to split attention is not good at the best of times. But no one's is right. Like you can't, you can't be paying attention to both of those things at once. So really simple stuff that just like brings you back to here. And now people often talk about breathing being really helpful, if you're well breathing is can be really helpful. If you're unwell or I've got some breathing stuff, don't do breathing stuff, because it will make you more anxious. So I don't tend to use it with people I say particularly. But and similarly, you know, if you've got chronic pain and stuff, you don't necessarily want to be drawing your attention to your body. So it's often better to do external stuff, because what tends to happen is if you're just doing a little bit, so there are absolutely good mindfulness programmes where you can like dip into that stuff and use it as a treatment. But if you're just kind of walking, and you're like, Oh, my back's really sore, it's probably not a great idea to pay attention to your back, it's probably a better idea to kind of put your attention into the world somewhere. So I tend to use sound because it just works pretty well. You know, if you're listening to music, just listen to one instrument drums usually work pretty well. You know, just really pay attention to that. And you'll notice your brain will like it will take you off on a little journey. It's like okay, Thanks, Brian. Come back. Come on. We're gonna we're gonna just pay attention. Yeah, so yeah, but it like, it sounds so trite. But then that present focus off actually makes a huge difference. Just the, because all of our uncertainties future based. So if we just come back to the here, and now it just really brings it back. And it makes so much sense why you go surfing? Yeah, totally. Yeah. No, no. And there's definitely the way that I surf. There is no capacity for me to be thinking about anything other than surfing because it's like, is that a wave? Yes, it's kind of okay, cool. I need to paddle up, or am I up? No, I'm gonna pull down. You know, like, there's no, I'm not thinking about anything else. kind of pretty. Similarly, when I'm swimming, because I'm a bit of a struggle swimmer. When I'm swimming, I'm just thinking about breathing, like, oh, I can manage. So those kind of things are actually really, really helpful. I resonate with that. I remember actually, the first time I went scuba diving, I thought I was quite anxious the first time I went down, and then I was down there with turtles. And I was like, to be anxious, I forgot that I'm not 30 Feet Under. Yeah. Kate presents and complete mindfulness. I want to say the two things. Okay. I want to say thank you, before we wrap up with my final question, because your brain and your philosophy on the world and the work that you do with people and everything that you've dedicated your life's work to is just so amazing. And I'm so conscious of your precious time and thankful that you are here with me and with the listeners. Thank you. So I want to say thank you. And I want to ask one final question. If you were to wrap up all of like, the greatest takeaway, or life lesson, or summary, or statement, that you feel has been a big takeaway from your work that you would share with the world? That would almost be like your tombstone statement? Oh, my God. Okay. Question, what would it be? Ah, Wowzers. Okay, I thought I thought we weren't gonna get too much harder than the death question. I would probably think about, and I'm pretty sure they're not the people that came up with it. But it's the version that's in my head, which is, there's a line out of a Cloud Control sign that just says, it's just for now. And I think that's probably the thing that I've taken more than anything out of this. And I, I would say that I apply that kind of pretty well, I try and apply pretty universally, I'm human, that probably is a very stoic thing to think, right? Like this idea that everything we have is temporary, you know, things won't always feel the way that they feel right now. And I personally find that really helpful and powerful, but I think watching people navigate the world. I think that can be a really, really helpful thing to go. Even if right now In this moment, it's terrible. In the next moment, it might not be. And you know what, I think that stuff is really, really helpful. Gonna leave it right there, because that's a mic drop moment. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully, it's helpful for people to think about this stuff. Amazing. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in to the MindScape podcast. It is a massive intention of mine to continue to grow this show. Because the more the show grows, the better the guests get. And I know that is going to be so powerful for you listening. So if I could ask this massive favour, it would mean the world if you could please leave a review, hit the Follow button or leave a rating on Spotify, so that we can continue to grow this show and bring you the juiciest, most thought provoking and expansive conversations through incredible guests. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.