034: Confronting Curveballs with Stuart Thompson

Welcome back to the Coffee, Calm & Connection podcast!

How do we maintain good mental wellbeing in the aftermath of challenging or traumatic events? How do we reckon with the curveballs that may be round the corner?

In January of 2022, our Sarah suffered from a stroke. Fortunately, she has made significant strides in her recovery, and so one year later, in this episode she and Coffee, Calm & Connection co-founder Stuart Thompson discuss how Sarah’s stroke has affected her wellbeing, along with the changes to her perspective and the personal development that she has undergone since. Stuart and Sarah explore how, despite our best efforts to plan things meticulously, sometimes things simply do not go as expected. Circumstances beyond our control can, and often do, get in the way of our goals. How do you come to terms with and overcome these curveballs?

 

Quote of the Episode

“We surround ourselves with information and knowledge that matches our understanding of the world. I was reading about an American psychologist recently who had been criticised because they asked him what his 10 books beside his bed were. And one of them was a book that was quite right-wing. So, people had said, ‘Well, that must mean you've not actually got a more sensitive perspective, you're reading this right-wing book’. And he said, ‘I'm reading it, because I need to understand that perspective’. But as we get older, we do it anyway. The internet and data allows us to just do things that confirm what we believe and never, never challenge it.”

In the episode, Stuart highlights the importance of becoming open to other perspectives in relation to one’s wellbeing. It is easy to operate within an echo chamber of self-doubt and self-criticism, and to try to search for solutions within your own headspace, but it can be hugely beneficial to turn to alternative approaches to wellbeing in order to make significant progress. The importance of exploring multiple points of view is true of everything, of course, and wellbeing is no exception. Your own mindset can feel like a very interior thing that nobody else is capable of understanding, leading to the view that no external input is worth listening to, but finding new ways of thinking about it and overcoming problems can be highly insightful and instrumental to one’s personal growth.

 

Key Takeaways

In the episode, Stuart pinpoints the psychological concept of ontological grief. This occurs when one’s view of oneself, and thus of the world around them, is fundamentally challenged. If something happens to you that you couldn’t have predicted, or if you act in a way that you didn’t think yourself capable of, it can shatter your self-image. There are many ways of coping with this phenomenon.

For Stuart, when bad things happen, it is key not to retreat into self-preserving beliefs that may be more harmful than beneficial, but to become open to alternative perspectives. Perhaps you need to put less pressure on yourself, or to set fewer goals. It’s easy and natural to try to search for solutions to your wellness problems within your own headspace, but sometimes turning to alternative perspectives can be helpful.

Stuart pinpoints the psychological phenomenon of Pollyanna Syndrome, which refers to a children’s story about a little girl who was told that, however bad you feel, there’s always somebody worse off. It’s true – many of us do live objectively easier lives than others – we do not all suffer from poverty or malnourishment, for example. However, if you are undergoing some hardship, you shouldn’t minimise it, or dismiss it as insignificant compared to other traumas. It is key for one’s general wellbeing to accept when things go wrong that bad things can happen, and that it’s okay to grieve them or feel low about them, so long as you give yourself time and then move forwards.

Although it can be difficult to abstractedly recognise it, bad things can and do happen. That is something that, conceptually, we understand, but in practice, we do not necessarily truly believe until we are forced to believe it, until tragedy strikes, or hard curveballs come out of nowhere.

When such events do come to pass, acceptance of this fact can become immensely difficult. Yet, you can’t allow yourself to shut down completely because of what may or may not lie around the corner, otherwise you’d never advance towards your goals or make progress. Equally, it is damaging to try and maintain a sense of control over the bad things that happen to you by attributing them to some fault within yourself – e.g., not having enough drive, not working enough, not exercising enough – when really, there is no correlation between them.

For Stuart, the way to confront the revelation that anything can happen is to consider, ‘Is what I’m doing right now good enough?’ Beyond that, there’s not very much you can do. We shouldn’t run away from the prospect that bad things can happen, but accept it. In doing so, you shouldn’t put yourself under so much pressure. You should allow yourself time to breathe. And when bad things do happen, you should give yourself the time and space to process them.

 

Best Moments/Key Quotes

“I think we've all fallen for that myth that everything is solvable, and we've just got to buy a solution that fixes everything. It's so much harder to accept that actually, this thing is going to take me ages. It's not shiny, it's not sellable. It’s to say, ‘I'm working on this project. And guess what? I'm not going to be a millionaire by next week. I'm not going to get four dragons invest in it. It's going to take me a long time and I'm gonna have to get there.’”

“I think one of the hardest things is to accept that bad stuff can happen. We tend to think well, ‘It's not gonna happen to me’ or ‘I won't think about what I would do if that happens’. And in a in a challenging way, you become the worst of Pandora's boxes, which says anything can happen at any time.”

 

“The stoics had a system where you should wake up every morning and just say that might happen today. That might happen today, and then move on and accept it. And I do think there's something in that of just saying, ‘Yeah, bad stuff can happen.’”

 

Resources

https://www.stuartthompson.co.uk/

 

About the Guest

Stuart Thompson is an anxiety specialist, and started his career working as a social worker. He has been a therapist in private practice for 20 years. Stuart is the creator of The STILL Method: a system designed to help both children and adults overcome anxiety. Stuart leads a team of around 50 anxiety coaches working in schools in the UK, USA, and Australia. In 2019, Stuart was recognised one of the most influential disabled people in the UK.

 

About the Host

Sarah Myerscough is the Sales and Marketing Director of Boston Tullis Group and the M.D and creator of Coffee, Calm and Connection.

 

Connect with Sarah

https://www.instagram.com/coffeecalmconnection/ 

https://www.facebook.com/coffeecalmconnection 

Coffee Calm & Connection: Overview | LinkedIn 

Sarah Myerscough | LinkedIn

 

Hosted by Sarah Myerscough

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The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to the host and guest speakers. Please conduct your own due diligence.

Website: Coffee Calm & Connection (coffeecalmconnection.org)