Rise: Surviving and Thriving After Trauma by Sian Williams

CRAIG

Hello, and welcome to Desperately Seeking Wisdom, with me, Craig Oliver. This is a podcast for people who want to live a simpler, more fulfilled life, but aren’t sure how to get there. A little while back I hit the buffers, and I decided to look for a different, better way of living. So, for Desperately Seeking Wisdom, I’ve been talking to some wise people. People who’ve managed to change or have had change forced upon them. What was the wisdom that got them through it? What would they say that would help others, who like me, were struggling?

SIAN

Because this has been the most extraordinary thing I've ever done in my life, because I've been invited into people's worlds and they have trusted me with that, and I have learnt immense amounts from them. That has been, that has been just an extraordinary thing.

CRAIG

Joining me for the final podcast in this series is Sian Williams, one of television’s best known news presenters. As a reporter, producer and anchor of some of the most watched news programmes, she has also been an eyewitness to some horrific events. She’s also had her own fair share of challenges, including some serious health scares and a breast cancer diagnosis. Like many of us, she often used to wonder how to deal with such trauma. But Sian took things one step further. She re-trained as a psychologist so she could help people emerge from their worst moments, to grow in wisdom and happiness. So how are you?

SIAN

I'm well, I'm really well, thank you, yeah.

CRAIG

Um, so you've been studying to do a clinical doctorate, can I call you doctor yet?

SIAN

You can't yet, no, because the finish line is so close but I'm not yet there, and we know that in all races, you can stumble at the last, and so… I can just, I can almost, almost touch it. So I've been training to be a psychologist for the past 10 years. A couple of months more and a 45,000 word thesis and I’m there.

CRAIG

So when I came in, I saw in the walls of one of your room, you had these like, very large pieces of paper which are completely filled with scribbles and notes. I mean, you almost can't see the white. Um, is that just - that, obviously that's the way in which you've been working on it.

SIAN

That's my head. [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG

And that's the thesis?

SIAN

[LAUGHST] Well, it will be, if I can, if I can corral it into 45,000 words and a couple of publishable papers, yeah, that’ll be it.

CRAIG

So it looked - I mean, to me, it looked like this forest of words, but it obviously makes sense to you.

SIAN

Well, yes, yeah. I mean, it's the only way I can do it. I think it's - I think it comes from the, the journalist, actually. Er, I was trained a long time ago, 35 years ago to be a journalist, and at that stage, you would just write everything down, everything down.

CRAIG

We'll get to loads of that, um, coming up, but first of all, this is a podcast about change, and the wisdom that helps people get through it, or the wisdom that they get from it, and some people that we're talking to have very consciously chosen to change their lives, and other people have had change forced upon them. When I was looking at you and reading your books, and reading about you and looking into you, and also from having known you, it seems to me that you've had change forced upon you through your cancer diagnosis, but also you've chosen to change. So you've chosen to train as a psychologist. I'm just interested in sort of reflections on that, and the differences between them.

SIAN

And how they fit together as well, I guess, ‘cos inevitably, I think they do. Although I started doing this before I got cancer, so I started being interested in how the brain works and how it processes difficult stuff when I was at the BBC, and just because at that time, er, I was doing a lot of disaster reporting, and I think I wasn't really effectively processing the stuff that I was seeing, and I know that.

And when I got back, um, I noticed a lot of my colleagues who were also covering difficult stories were not reflecting on it, not attending to it, bottling it up. And it will come out in different ways, and I started getting interested in that.

CRAIG

But a conscious moment to change, to learn about something else and [Yeah] have your life be different in some way.

SIAN

Well, I don't think at that stage, I thought, I want my life to be different, or, or that I could see the direction in which I was going. In fact, I, I've never really had a direction in which I'm going. I just think ‘Ooh, that sounds quite interesting, I'll do that’ and, ‘That sounds quite interesting. I'll do that’.

But when I started doing the, the trauma assessing, that did just spark something which is, ‘Now why does the brain do that?’ You know, ‘What's going on here? I need to learn a little bit more about that’. And I was at the BBC at the time and that's when I started doing the MSc in psychology. Completed that and then I got cancer, as I was writing a book about trauma and realising actually that I wasn't very good at processing the trauma myself.

So it was a case of, well, I know all this stuff, I know it now, [LAUGHS] why aren't I applying it to myself? Why am I s- why am I struggling with this? With this - not the diagnosis, actually. I was diagnosed, I had the surgery, I thought that I'm lucky. I didn't have cancer in the way that a lot of people have it, and I've subsequently been, um, counselling a lot of people with cancer, so I know how horrible and ghastly it can be. And, and for me, they caught it early. It was the stuff afterwards; it was the, ‘Right. Now you're sorted. Now you're recovered. Go back to normal’, and I felt far from normal.

CRAIG

So I want to go really deep on that. So, let's go right back to your childhood, and reading your book and reading some other interviews and things that you've talked about, it seems to me you were obviously very close to both your parents, but in your book, you write about how emotion wasn't sort of front and centre, or sometimes it was almost deliberately like, you shouldn't show too much emotion and it should be kept in its place.

SIAN

It's interesting, ‘cos my mum was actually very emotional and passionate, and she was a - intensive care nurse, incredibly caring woman. Um, so she showed emotion. I think - my father comes from, er, an environment where, you know, he - it was quite tough for him growing up. He, they, they both grew up in Wales. There wasn't a lot of money around, and I think there was a sense, perhaps, that came from him, and I wonder whether this is the post-war generation, which is we've got a lot of opportunities, we're very lucky, and we should get on with life. You know, that, that difficult things happen, and we ride them out. We do it as a family, and it's all gonna be okay, and not to dwell and think -

CRAIG

But that's interesting, because when you use the word ‘process’, because I was thinking, does that actually mean boxing it up and sometimes not processing? I think a lot of people of our age would perhaps recognise that kind of approach to life, which is, well, that was tough, that was difficult. Right, now time to move on. But have you actually properly dealt with it?

SIAN

I think sometimes you have, yeah. People deal with, with trauma and grief and difficult things in very, very different ways, and, um, sometimes it feels safer to put it in a box and store it at the back of your head and think, ‘I'll get to that when I've got the time and space to do it’. Again, sometimes it's not always the right thing, it is not always the right thing to -

CRAIG

Interesting you say that -

SIAN

- to be in trauma and to, to start looking at it and tearing it apart.

CRAIG

- because a lot of, a lot of psychology is, though, sort of seems to me as a complete amateur looking at it, um, you know, you have to deal with these things, or they will deal with you, and quite often stuff that has happened quite a long time ago that you may think is done and dusted can actually burst forth, er, because you haven't actually properly processed it.

SIAN

Yeah, no, no. I do, I do agree with that. I do. I, I think sometimes - so for example, if, if you talk about something like grief, and I've had a, a few clients who h- were recently bereaved, um, because of cancer, or because of COVID. And it's not a good idea, necessarily to, to get it all out and pull it apart and dive deep, as you're saying, at that moment.

Sometimes it's… sometimes you just need to be with someone as they are processing it slowly and that does mean a lot of back and forth, and it's not a straight, linear journey from being in trauma to being in growth. There's no, [Yeah] there's no way of doing it that's the right way.

CRAIG

I, I think, and I think that's right and that, that it takes time. But there, there’s a, isn’t there a famous book was that, you know, fee- feelings buried alive, [Yeah] basically screw you up? [Yeah] So there is a difference, I think, [Yeah, yeah] between taking your time and it being a circuitous route, and actually, which often is a very British thing, to push it down and not deal with that.

SIAN

And we are very good at doing that. It's that stiff upper lip thing. Yeah, absolutely, and that, and that is a cultural thing as much as anything, as well. Um, and I think this, this generation perhaps is, is changing. And yes, a lot of it will be going back to how we were brought up, the lessons that we were taught, how we process stuff, how we were taught to manage our own emotions.

Difficult stuff that is going to come up, because suffering is universal, everyone will suffer. Er, how do we manage that? What's the best way to do that? Who do you do it with? When do you reach for the outstretched hands? When do you reach for help? It’s, it is incredibly important to process it. I guess what I'm trying to say is it's, it's not a one size fits all. [Mm] It's a very, very individual thing.

CRAIG

There's so many of the people that I've been looking at and reading, who, who, who are talking about this kind of thing, and so that you basically have a choice, and I think one of them describes it as like, having a thorn in your side. You can either create a whole lifestyle, which is designed to stop there being any pressure being put on the thorn, [Mm-hm] or you can go through the traumatic but shorter process of just taking the thorn out and then healing. [Yeah] And I think [Yeah] a lot of people end up, when you think of that analogy, a lot of people do construct lives and approaches, and things which are all about, ‘Don't go near my thorn’.

SIAN

Yeah. Well, I was listening to - I was hosting an event and the Dalai Lama was there yesterday. It was a 10th birthday party for a movement that he's patron of, called Action for Happiness, and he said that worrying takes up so much more energy than acceptance, and I thought that was such a wise thing to say, because that's right. Of cour- it does, taking enormous amounts of emotional and cognitive energy, to, to go through worry, to hold on to rumination, to worry about what's going to happen, or to worry about what's already happened.

What your brain is doing the - there's a bit of the brain called the amygdala, it processes threat and danger, it's very alive to those sort of, it sort of senses threatened danger, and then it's like a big alert system, like a red light going on, and when that goes on, it's really hard to process, it's really hard to think. The, the prefrontal cortex, the bit of your brain that, that does all the, the reasoning and - that doesn't get a look in, ‘cos your amygdala is running the show.

So what you've got to do is, is notice it. Okay, what's this? Ah, right, I know. My hands are starting to sweat, my heart's starting to beat fa- this is anxiety. [Mm] You know, I've been here before. I recognise it, I notice it. So you acknowledge it, you allow it to be there, so you're not pushing it away. And then you just say, ‘Yeah, I accept it’.

CRAIG

That word acceptance, I think is really interesting because it becomes absolutely part of talking to people about issues they've had, and it was something that I struggled with quite a lot because acceptance, you kind of think, well, does that mean giving up? [Mm-hm] And actually, in reality, what it means is, I can be in conflict with reality, as much as I want, and that will just make me unhappy and frustrated and difficult, or I can accept that that person is the way they are, and I can suggest things to them or say, ‘Well, maybe that's a different way’. But if they don't wanna do it, they don't wanna do it, or any number of other things. So, I think a lot of people struggle with that concept of acceptance, but once you get it, life seems to go a bit easier.

SIAN

And I wonder whether that is something to do with control, because what I'm hearing you saying is acceptance somehow feels like perhaps a bit of a weakness. [Mm] You know, like, you're, you are giving up, you're giving in, your l- and that - it isn't. It isn't. It is a strength, a huge strength because you are saying, ‘I have a choice. I have a choice over how I react to this person who's annoying me, or this thing that's happened, and I can go one of two ways. I can either let it control me, let it dominate my thinking, or I can choose not to.’

‘I can accept it and I can take a different route’. And that different route is not about weakness, it's about the strength and resilience and self-compassion. It’s about showing yourself kindness, which is also quite a difficult concept, I think, for a lot of people.

CRAIG

There's a guy called Michael Singer; I don't know if you've heard of him, but he’s very interesting on this subject, and he gives a lecture, which is essentially talking about this area, and the first sort of 45 minutes is him describing the history of the universe from Big Bang to now, which is 13 and a half billion years, and you kind of think, ‘Well, that's all very interesting’ and it is genuinely fascinating, but I'm not sure what it's got to do with this.

SIAN

The journalist in you is going, ‘Get to the headline, [Can you get to the point] get to the headline, Michael’.

CRAIG

And then he does land the point, and his point is, so 13 and a half billion years of activity, um, coincidence, things coming together, has resulted in this moment where you are here, now, and then he drops the bomb which is, so what makes you think you can really control anything? [Yeah] And at that moment you go, ‘Oh yeah, God, that is right’, you know. So if I can accept that things are the way they are, then maybe I'll get through it a bit easier.

SIAN

Yeah, and, and actually, you can only control the little things that you can control, but you can control how you react to things.

CRAIG

Exactly. Talking of which, you know, your mother had bowel cancer when she was 70, and she initially decided not talk to you about it, or tell you that it was coming. Why do you think that that was the case? Why do you think she did, did that?

SIAN

Um…I think there was a little bit of the ICU nurse in her that was, it’s all going to be, you know, let's just - let's just manage this medical annoyance. [LAUGHS] Um, because we didn't know it was terminal at that stage and, and she, she possibly didn't either, and - maybe she did. Er, how do you tell your kids that stuff? Whe- when do you tell them? So -

CRAIG

How did you feel about the fact that she'd had it for a while before you knew?

SIAN

I'm not sure she - well did - she had it f- you know, she was diagnosed in, um, July, just after her 70th birthday, and she died in November, so it was incredibly swift, and by that stage, by the time they, they found it, um, it had already progressed to her liver, and when it goes to secondaries, you know, that's, that's hard.

And we were looking for surgeons who would operate on her liver, and I think when they told us, it's, it's not operable, um, that's, that's when - that's when we knew, and that was so, so hard. Remember a Macmillan nurse telling me that. I mean, how do you tell? How do you tell people that? Um, yeah, so [SIGHS] I think there was a stoicism, which both my parents showed.

Um, and… I think we - me and my brothers perhaps who are a, a bit more emotional and wanted to do something and control it and manage it, and get people in who would sort it and… and I couldn't.

CRAIG

It's so interesting, isn't it, whe- when you experience somebody close to you that is dying, how people react in different ways, and some people very much want to think that they can organise things, or that they will have this magic thing that will make a huge difference, [Mm] and shift things around, because it's a, it’s, it’s a kind of denial, isn't it?

SIAN

Yeah. Some of the most amazing moments we had together, gosh, it was just such an - it was such a bizarre time because I was tr- doing some dancing for Children in Need. Me and some other BBC news readers were gonna do this big Beyonce number for Children in Need, which was in November, and she was at that stage, er, house bound really. Er, and so I'd present breakfast, and then I'd get on the train and go down and see her in Eastbourne, and massage her legs ‘cos they were swollen from the steroids, and paint her nails. [LAUGHS]

And make her a couple of boiled eggs, ‘cos she wasn't very hungry. And we’d w- we’d watch Pointless together, and, um, and it was a - it sounds curious now, doesn't it? But those moments were perhaps some of the closest moments I'd ever had with her, because we both knew what she was facing.

CRAIG

You witnessed a lot of other people's trauma as a journalist, and you've experienced a lot of trauma of your own, and you’ve sort of dedicated yourself to understanding it. Let's start with the trauma you saw as a journalist. Um, you tell a story of like, reporting from the, the Pakistan earthquake and then noticing that you were coming back and having seen such horrific scenes and scrubbing your boots and remembering the smell, and [Mm] that kind of thing. That obviously had a deep effect on you.

SIAN

Yeah. I think there was a, I think there was a guilt there, that I was able to go back to a hotel, eventually. We were sleeping in a car for, while we were doing the broadcasting. Nobody had any shelter at all. The generosity of people who had nothing, when they were given an ounce of something, was - I was blown away by that, actually.

So we waited for days for food to come in, for days. And people had lost their homes, they'd lost members of their family. Er, they were in the most terrible, terrible situation and when the food started coming in. it was rice, just rice and water. And so they would boil up the water on open fires, er, and cook the rice.

And then they called me and my producer over and wanted to share the rice, and, and I guess when you walk away from that and after - we were there for about five days, I think, and then went back to Islamabad, um, and from, from the heart of the earthquake zone, in, in Kashmir. And then of course when this, you know, the, the incongruity of suddenly being in a five star, four star Islamabad hotel where you've got a soft bed and, and yeah, I was washing my boots and I was aware that I was washing all this stuff away, and it felt wrong. I had this guilt of leaving, I guess, of trying to wash it away, and, and I thought, ‘Ah, what's going on here?’

CRAIG

I had a career in journalism and edited, um, TV news bulletins, and one of the phrases that you use in your book, talking about some of the journalism which resonated with me, you talked about sometimes, is a kind of emotional vampirism to, um, to journalism and I think when I w- I was thinking about that, it is like, you go to the disaster, you've got to get it on the news, you’ve got to get a bulletin.

You actually, in order to tell the story, you need some emotion, you need real case studies, that kind of thing. But it's all done at this kind of accelerated speed, [Mm] so there's a danger in which people can be kind of commoditised, or that kind of thing.

SIAN

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that phrase, emotional vampire came from - I did some research into journalists for my Masters, um, who had seen lots of trauma and difficult things, and it was a woman who had witnessed a lot of really nasty stuff in Syria, and she used the word, ‘It was like being an emotional vampire, sucking out all the best bits of people to spew out onto the television, for entertainment’. And of course, it's not for entertainment, it's to, it's to highlight what's going on. It's to - we, we bear witness, right? That, that’s the job.

CRAIG

It is, - can - yeah, in - entertainment feels too strong to me, but it is part of a product that needs to be made, [Of course] in order to communicate something, [Yeah] but also a product that is made, and then you move on.

SIAN

Yeah, you do, but they don't. [Yeah] And, and I s- I think sometimes, when we do that, and we have a deadline, and we want to tell the story, and we want to tell the story in the best possible way, which often means emotion, I think, because sometimes emotion is how we communicate.

Um, or we see the impact of something on someone is, is the emotion they're feeling around it. So if we, if we get that, and we put it on air, it makes for a more powerful, poignant story, but then the following day, we're on to something else.

CRAIG

So, w-we both worked together in television news, latterly at the BBC. Um, it seems to me that it is a frenetic culture, and there's not much time for considering others because you've n- you’ve got the reality of these big blocks of news that need to be - come out and if you're not there on that second, um, it's, you know, the programme's not going to get out.

And so it isn't a very gentle or particularly forgiving environment where you're particularly concerned about another person's, what they might be going through. The reality is you have to be professional in order to get it out. Would it be wise to try and rethink, change that environment a bit, do you think?

SIAN

I think it is changing. Er, I - I think within the last 10 years, actually, it has been changing, I think people have been thinking more about mental health. A lot of that has been driven by the young. Um, and I notice when I give lectures, or when I talk to younger reporters coming in, how their mindset is very different.

They know that they need to protect their brain as much as they do, you know, putting on a protection vest, if they're going out into, into the field, into a riot zone or something like that. You know, they do need to protect their mind as much as their body.

CRAIG

Interesting. I started as an ITN trainee, and there was a, an editor that we had to cycle through the different programmes, and there was an editor who was known for blooding the trainees by where if they made a mistake, sort of grabbing them by the shirt, and - or the blouse and pushing them up against a wall and shouting in their face. Er, it’s weird that that was considered acceptable and normal, and actually, people looked at that and thought that there was almost something, ‘Oh, what a character’ sort of thing.

SIAN

Yeah, yeah. I know. I know. I remember that time as well, and I'm really glad that we don't have that anymore, that because that was… that was tough. I ended up in the ladies loos sobbing a lot of the time when I was working in the BBC, when I came down to London.

Um, but, er, but yes, I think, I think there is a shift. I think we still need to push for it, and I'm very much still - I'm working for, for ITN now. I’ve left the BBC quite a while ago, but I was pushing for change there. I will continue pushing for change because I think there has been, er, a culture of we, just get on with it, we've got deadlines.

Um, it's a weakness talking about mental health. You know, let's just get on and do our job. You know, that - of course we've got deadlines and of course, we've got programmes to run, but you won't be able to put out the best stuff unless you've got people in the best frame of mind, and they'll be in the best frame of mind if they’re, they are in a supportive environment where their mental health needs are being looked after, just as much as their physical health needs, and that's very much what I've been focusing on for the past couple of years.

CRAIG

And let's move on to the trauma that you've experienced in your life. You've been in and out of hospital a lot of times when I was reading about you. [LAUGHS]

SIAN

I have. Er, you make it sounds like I’ve had a really unhappy life. [LAUGHS]

CRAIG

I’m not saying you’ve un- had an unhappy life, but it is true that when you do [There’s a lot of hospital visits in there] the research on Sian Williams, there's a lot of hospital in there, and some [There is] a lot of dramatic moments.

SIAN

I know. I know. I know. I tend - phew! I do tend to die quite frequently, actually and be revived again. [LAUGHS] My husband's always saying that. He's saying, ‘Please don't go into hospital again because something dramatic always happens’. Um, I had some surgery which was going to be quite routine and I woke up and said, er, ‘Did everything go alright?’

And he went, ‘Well, your heart stopped beating on the operating table, but you know, it was, it was a couple of minutes and, and everything was alright’. So, ‘Oh’, so, so I effectively died for a couple of minutes. ‘Yeah, but you know what? It was fine. You know, we gave you some adrenaline, we - everything was absolutely fine’.

And so, and so I thought, ‘Now, do I tell my husband this?’ because there have been a number of times when I almost - I almost lost my third child, and I was very lucky to survive that and he was very lucky to survive that too. Um, so yeah, so hospitals and, and me, I have ultimate faith in them.

You know, I come from a, a very medical background. I have ultimate faith and the people who are operating on me. It's just a strange quirk that something always seems to happen which is rather unexpected. I think the last time I was in hospital for an operation, which was last year, I came out and I was recovering, and my oxygen levels dropped dramatically.

And I was put on oxygen for a while. And I think that was probably COVID related, I don't know ‘cos I wasn't tested, and at the time, people aren't talking about COVID, so -

CRAIG

It's great that you’re matter of fact about it and that you've obviously dealt with it well, but pretty traumatic that you've got this disease, cancer, and then you've got these moments in the hospital, which are, you know, very dramatic, concerning, must make any normal, rational person feel worried and afraid.

SIAN

I think it is more frightening for the person who's standing by watching you, than it is for you at the time. And I remember when, um, Seth, my third son was born, and, er, I had, I lost four pints of blood, and - very quickly - and I remember go- as I was being taken down to emergency surgery, somebody putting a pen in my hand to sign something.

I was going in and out, drifting in and out of consciousness, to sign something, which I imagine was whatever you do will be okay, um, or, or giving consent for something, I don't know. Um, but I remember feeling quite calm at that stage, even, even though I knew that, ‘Oh, death’s probably happening here. Death is probably happening’.

I thought, ‘Well, you know, Paul is, he's, he's very good at looking after the children’ and actually Seth at that stage had been, he, he, he did fit quite a lot in his early years, but at that stage, he was quite stable. That's my third son. So at that stage, I thought, ‘Well, Seth’s okay. The other boys are okay. Paul is okay. Everyone's okay. Everyone will be looked after’. But, but at the time, I felt quite peaceful.

CRAIG

Do you feel, looking back, that it's enabled you to learn things, be wise and get things into more perspective?

SIAN

I wish I was wiser. You know, I really wish I was wiser. It’s, it’s so true that the more you know, the less you know. And here I am about to, you know, have a, a couple of letters in front of my name, which I think A) I probably don't deserve, but I've had imposter syndrome since I don't know when. I still - I've been a journalist for 35 years; I still don't really feel like one. I've been a presenter for 25, still don't really feel like one.

CRAIG

But that is ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, you are a very, very successful journalist. It's just so interesting, isn't it, that you can have spent that amount of time and then still feel somehow not quite worthy?

SIAN

Well, I've got a very strong self-critical voice. [LAUGHS] I don't th- I don't think I will ever feel like I've done enough for people.

CRAIG

So you trained to be a psychologist, and I'm interested and you talk about that, because you wanted to help people with, with trauma and [Mm-hm] understand it better, and I totally buy that. I'm not diminishing that at all, but I suspect some of it as well is about understanding yourself too.

SIAN

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I have learnt a lot about myself in the time that I've been doing it, certainly. Um, I am a little bit gentler on myself, and I think helping other people be gentler on themselves has been something that, that has helped, that has helped me

CRAIG

And when la- you are gentler on yourself, does life go easier on you?

SIAN

Yeah, it's that thing about worry taking up too much energy. The struggle is exhausting. [Yeah] And I've done, er, a mindfulness course. I did an eight week mindfulness course. I was very sceptical of mindfulness. I have been from the beginning, and I had to go and look at the science. I had to, ‘Right. Show me. Show me where it says that. Show me the - show me the brains of people who've meditated and let me see what happens to them so that I’ - Which is why my research is on mindfulness and people with cancer, to see whether it makes a difference to their brooding, depressive, ruminating, self-critical voices.

CRAIG

So I’m, I'm not a scientist, but I I've recently read quite a lot of people who are scientists [Mm] and it seems to be that the ones that are often, often very thoughtful and interesting are the ones who basically start talking about the limitations of it. [Mm] So they talk about how you can rationally dissect something, and, and that, obviously is a fantastically good thing and… But when it comes to the brain and our psychology and all that kind of stuff, we are in the foothills of understanding [Of course we are] and all that sort of stuff. [We are] So actually, sometimes it gets in the way a bit.

SIAN

Yeah, it does. I mean, I guess, you know I - my Master's was in science and, and, and I like the science, but in the end, you have to feel it as well. You know, the, the head might tell you one thing, and actually, this is what a lot of clients say. They say, ‘Yeah, I know this stuff. I know this stuff and yet I'm not feeling it’ And it’s working on the feeling it. How can we get - how can we change that? [So] How can we move from, from what we cognitively know, to actually embodying it?

CRAIG

And I, I do - I wanted to talk a little bit about that sense of during lockdown, I felt millions of people during lockdown took a pretty hard look at their lives and thought, ‘What do I want? Is this, is how I want to live my life?’ [Yeah] And I think a lot of people get to a stage where they look at their lives and think, ‘I was told certain things’.

Or part of our culture is, if I work hard enough and push hard enough, then there'll be a line that I cross and I’ll be fulfilled [Huzzah, here I am] and happy, and that's, that's certainly [Yeah] true of me. And I was also thinking about it in terms of like, you know, pop culture. You know, the 90 percent of pop songs are all about finding the one, and being in this extraordinary state of love, and believing that there's another person out there who you can sort of subcontract your happiness to, or whatever.

And actually, a lot of those kind of assumptions and things are built into life. People sort of go, ‘Well, I sort of believed that, or I followed that, and it's kind of not worked. Maybe I need to have another look’.

SIAN

And I felt that just this morning, actually. I went for a dog walk. I was thinking about the doctorate, because I, I always, I always am at the moment, um, which is crossing that finish line that you're talking about. And it’s -

CRAIG

And you never do.

SIAN

- and, and of course you never do, and actually, I thought, ‘How important is it to have Doctor in front of your name? And why is it important for you to have that? And if you didn't get it, if at the very last you stumble and fall and you don't cross the line, will that matter?’

And I thought, ‘It won't actually’, because this has been the most extraordinary thing I've ever done in my life, because I've been invited into people's worlds and they have trusted me with that, and I have learnt immense amounts from them, and that, that has been - that has been just an extraordinary thing.

CRAIG

So we're also talking to Lucy Kellaway, who's a journalist you may have heard of. She worked for [Mm] The FT, and she's basically trained to become a teacher, and has set up a charity that is to h-help people who are a bit older become teachers, and she talks about having to unlearn things, [Mm-hm] from having been a journalist, to, to this, and that a lot of the things that worked for her just are not strategies that work in this new environment. I just wondered if, reflecting on that, was that true of you in terms of the shift from journalism to psychology?

SIAN

Yes. Yes. [LAUGHS]

CRAIG

What did you have to unlearn?

SIAN

Oh, loads of stuff, loads of stuff. When I first became a student, I remember my supervisor saying to me - I failed one of my assignments, and I was horrified ‘cos I thought it was really well written. [LAUGHS] So I actually went into him and I said, ‘I don't understand why I failed, and I don't understand what you've written here’.

CRAIG

I can imagine you doing this, [I tell you-] you're pointing your finger as you’re saying this. [LAUGHTER]

SIAN

Sorry! Um, and, um, and he said, ‘You might be a journalist and consider yourself a success out there, but in here, you're a student, and you have failed, and you must learn from that failure’. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is how it's gonna be’. Um, and so there are a few things I've had to unlearn. Um, first is, you may have had a career and still have a career, ‘cos I'm still a newsreader. You may have had something, but when you come into a different environment, you start from the bottom.

CRAIG

It's so common, isn't it as well, because people thinking that they've been a success at one thing, therefore they should be listened to on any number of subjects.

SIAN

Yeah. Er, well, there was - I think there was quite a degree of scepticism when I first started in psychology, of people saying, ‘Who do you think you are? Jumped up television presenter coming in here, thinking you can do psychology?’ You know, ‘Go away’, and so I did go away, and I did learn, and I came back and, you know, then I started practising, and all those sort of - but it takes a long time, [So] and I think -

CRAIG

What did you expect, and then what was different about what you expected?

SIAN

I think it's har- I think it's harder than I expected. The doctorate has certainly been harder than I expected, because it's a professional doctorate, which means there was a - I've done 500 clinical hours with, with families and individuals, and you also do assignments, and then you do research. So that was quite difficult. I think in terms of the unlearning, what I've had to unlearn is asking too many questions of people who I'm with.

CRAIG

It's funny, I can imagine as a journalist, you're trying to get that soundbite or that quote that perfectly [Yeah] encapsulates something, and that will be of use later, but actually, that's not necessarily what you're really trying to do.

SIAN

I think as a journalist, you're after the narrative. So you go from one place to another, to another, to another, and you want the story. When you're in a session with someone, it can go all over the place, and it's led by the client, it’s not led by you. And, and th- it's their hour, it's not your hour to get something from them. You are alongside them, helping them process something, helping them deal with their difficulties.

CRAIG

Is it sometimes hard to be patient with that? Because I imagine that people get stuck on things, [Mm] or I, I've certainly been in positions in - where I feel like I'm going round something for a very long [Yeah] and then suddenly it breaks and you move on, but that's, sometimes I think that must be frustrating.

SIAN

I think what it taught me, and another thing I had to unlearn, was that with a - when you're working on a story, there’s a start to the story, there's an end to the story and you move on to the next story. When you're dealing with people's lives and brains and emotions, and feelings and sensations, sometimes there is no easy answer, and sometimes it takes a long time to get somewhere, and sometimes there may not be resolution when you expect it. It might come later.

CRAIG

And I think, I think that's so interesting. As a child I, you know, read a lot, watched loads of movies. As a journalist, you know, you want a story and a narrative and everything in there - and I realised actually, that I had been expecting that that was what life is like. If you watch a movie, there's a character who’s in a certain position and by the end, they've learned something and they’ve -

SIAN

The hero’s journey.

CRAIG

They - yeah, they've been on the hero's journey and they've, you know, they've been - they've learned something, or they've red- deemed something, or things are resolved, [Mm-hm] and that is so much part of stories, both in terms of fiction and nonfiction.

But in reality, sometimes things just don't end, or so y- things that you desperately and emotionally want to be made right or okay, in other people or whatever, [Mm] it just doesn't work like that, and like, learning that and accepting that I think is, is, is a big moment of wisdom, but it's pretty hard to do.

SIAN

It is, and I think I, I learnt that actually as a, as a client. When I first saw a psychologist was, I was, I very much came with a journalist brain, which is, ‘Alright, there's this, and I need it sorted. So can we do it in six sessions?’ [Yeah] Um, ‘And if so where will I be at the end of it, and how will we measure success?’

And, um, it doesn't, it doesn't work like that, and I think there's a lot of learning in the mess and complexity. So I think sort of being down in the dirty stuff is really, really important. I remember somebody saying to me, you know, I needed to go into the labyrinthine sewers of my mind, but when I got there, it was really quite interesting to explore them. Um, and, and exploring them can be dark and painful, and messy and dirty, but that's when it's most important.

CRAIG

I agree with that, but there is also a sense in which it's not just exploring them, so the dark and messy and dirty stuff remains, except you've explored it. It's - there is a bit of like, trying to clean it up, isn’t there?

SIAN

Well, there has to be a point to it, yeah. I think it's about saying, ‘Okay, when I feel like this, now I know where this comes from, and in knowing where it comes from, I can be a little kinder to myself in the feeling of it’. [Yeah] So I'm not being down on myself, or beating myself up for having this feeling again. Here it comes again. Why am I still feeling like this when I've got A, B, C, and D and I should be feeling - that word - I should be feeling like this. Why am I feeling like this? And being able to say, ‘Actually, I know where this comes from now. It comes from here, and so I can be a bit kinder about it’.

CRAIG

And, and the key word there, I think, and you've written about this, is ‘should’ [Mm] and actually in so many ways, that's kind of the worst word, isn't it? It’s like, this should be this way. That person should be behaving this way. [Yeah] I should be better, [Yeah] and actually, the truth is, there's no reason why that should be the case. [Mm] But actually, if you're gentler and more - on yourself but others and accepting, that you move away from should to might be, or actually does it really matter?

SIAN

Mm. Might is harder to hold, isn't it, than should? Because we've been, we've been brought up on shoulds and musts. You must do this and you must do that, and you mustn't do this and you mustn't do that. And so might, um, when you think, ‘I should do this’, if you replaced it with might, it feels a bit loose and uncontained and uncertain, and I think we struggle with uncertainty.

So I think one of the reasons we still have shoulds and musts is because they convey a sense of certainty and control that we don't actually have, and that being in a place of uncertainty, where we don't have control, can feel uncomfortable.

CRAIG

You've been incredibly generous with your time and we've covered a lot of ground. The one question I'm sort of finishing a lot of these chats with is, if there was one piece of wisdom that you could hand on to people, what would it be?

SIAN

Gosh. Be mindful. Be grateful. Be kind. That's it, I think.

CRAIG

And each one of those words is sort of like the pinnacle of a very big pyramid, aren’t they? [LAUGHTER] So, you know, be kind, be grateful, be mindful. They’re, they're all - they are the tip of quite a broad way of thinking and big.

SIAN

They are, but you can do it in little ways. You can start small, and I think, you know when we're talking about, I don't know, moving from this sort of fast driven path onto a different path, it sounds like a huge corner turn, doesn't it?

And, and it - and that's why it feels quite threatening, because it feels so unlike perhaps, you have been for such a long time. So I think it's about doing those things, being mindful, just for a few moments a day, just being present, just taking a breath.

Sometimes our breathing is so high and shallow, we forget to take a deep breath during the day. Being mindful, being grateful. That point that you were making, Craig, about just - I mean, it's remarkable we’re here in first place, so let's see life as a gift, not as a grind. And being kind. So, being able to show kindness, yes.

We’re kind of alright at doing that, I think in the main. We're less good at accepting kindness from others and showing it to ourselves

CRAIG

My thanks to Sian Williams. I’m pleased to say since recording this, Sian has received her doctorate. Congratulations to Dr Williams. That was the last episode of this season of Desperately Seeking Wisdom, thanks so much for listening. We’ll be back soon. Many thanks to Gloria, Barney and Georgia for their help putting this together. Please like and subscribe to this podcast and tell a friend who you think might like it. You can also find all of our episodes at our website: desperatelyseekingwisdom.com. I’m Craig Oliver and this is a Creators Inc Production.