Bethan Higson had the pleasure of discussing the importance of Mental Health with Zoë Aston, Mental Health Expert and author of ‘Your Mental Health Workout’. Read on to understand your ‘why’, be inspired to resist hustle culture and look after your mental health.
Bethan:
I really love your book because it educated a mass audience about mental health during a really important time, given everything that has happened over the last year. Where did your passion for mental health come from and why do you think that it is important that everybody is thinking about it?
Zoë:
The book is a product of more than a decade of my own work and training. I started Comiccon a couple of years ago and it evolved over time into Your Mental Health Workout. In the beginning, I was working as a therapist and I was also really into working out. Soon I realised that what people were looking for in the wellness industry was very similar to what we were practicing in the therapy room, so that's how ‘Mental Health Workouts’ came to life. Eventually, I turned it into a book but my original entry into the mental health field came through my own experiences of therapy, eating disorders, self harm, depression and anxiety as a teenager. I got help for all of those things when I was really young and it set me up to live a life where I had lots of choices. One of the things that often happens to people is that they don't feel that they have a choice. For example, with alcohol, caffeine or cigarettes - things that are not very good for us. We don't realise that we actually do have a choice about what we do and how we behave. Having those interventions really early gave me the opportunity to realise that I have a choice about everything that I do. I suppose that's what I want to pay forward to as many people as possible because life can be hard. Some things are more difficult than others but at the end of the day, you have a choice over how you treat yourself. And that's what ‘Your Mental Health Workout’ is about - it’s like a massive self-care programme. For example, it shows people how to limit stress and care for themselves because most of us are just not very good at it.
Bethan:
Absolutely - I feel we have been trained to wear ‘stress’ as a badge of honour and ‘hustle culture’ is a big part of the problem. I feel that as soon as you are living a balanced or relaxed life, you are ‘not trying hard enough’. From my experience, ‘hustle culture’ is really pervasive and it’s everywhere - particularly in business. For example, when I started my business I was an accidental entrepreneur. I didn't think that I was going to be mentally strong enough to be able to do it because there are no entrepreneurs in my family and the TV and Media painted a terrifying picture of businessmen in suits and multi-million dollar raises. Also, when I was learning, I listened to business podcasts which were quite often driven by the same high-octane male voices. I wanted to try and emulate that but I soon realised that it wasn't working for me. I realised that you can build something successfully whilst looking after your mental health and you probably need to otherwise you will get burnt out. Obviously, that's just from an entrepreneur’s perspective but that extends to everyone balancing their job with other responsibilities.
Zoë:
I think you are totally right. Everyone wears that ‘badge of honour’ which indicates that the busier you are, the more important you are. In reality, the busier you appear, the more egotistical you seem. I have a very low tolerance for stress so people often say “Oh, you seem really busy.” or “You do so much.” I am always surprised to hear that because I purposefully keep my life quite calm. I do this by making sure that I only do things that I enjoy; things that align with my personal values, not just like professional values. I try not to agree to things that I don’t like doing and if I realise that I'm not very happy in a particular situation, I won't say yes to doing it next time. Not saying yes to everything and making sure that the work that you are doing is aligned with what you believe about yourself, not just what you think you have to do in order to be ‘successful’ are two things that you can do to reduce stress.
Bethan:
Most people know that eating well and exercising are important. Do you find that people only face up to the need to look after their mental health when they face a moment of difficulty or they are hitting a wall?
Zoë:
Yes, that is very true and that is exactly the kind of mentality that I want to start changing. What if you looked after your mind in the same way that you looked after your body before there was a problem? Some people go to the gym once there is a problem but most people go to the gym to improve the body that they have already got. It’s the same with eating healthy food, you do it because it's good for you. Yet with our minds, we wait until something's really, really wrong so we have to go and get help for it. Then it becomes a shameful thing with stigma and taboo attached to it. This wouldn’t be the case if everyone looked after themselves and knew what they had to do to protect their self-esteem. If people knew what a boundary is, what a feeling is and how to look after themselves in terms of their emotional landscape, things would change. It’s not going to change in my lifetime but I do believe that it will over time. Inequality across classes and races has led to a lot of hate in the world. As you mentioned, a lot of the people at the top of societies are white middle-class men who can't handle their feelings and mental wellbeing so there is no tolerance for those things further down the hierarchy. It’s a much bigger conversation but I do think it is where the issue lies. When I work with businesses and brands, they ask me if I can fix the communication problems or teach people how to tolerate each other. I reply by saying “Yes, but I actually need to speak to the CEO or the Managing Director, because the problem is there, not with the people you're hiring.” The problems are often embedded in the company culture, rather than being caused by an individual.
Bethan:
That’s fascinating because there have been quite a lot of examples of high profile businesses that have their B-Corp Certification - which is a 360-degree assessment of how the company looks after the environment and their people - who have employees with lots of mental health problems. Many of these problems stem from a top-down culture of fear.
Zoë:
Yes, I’ve worked with people who work for large corporate companies, such as private equity companies and banks, who advocate for their employees to look after themselves. However, they only advocate this if it does not affect the quality or length of their work. This means that when people own up to needing help, they feel sidelined or stigmatised because they are seen as not being capable. Whereas, if they had a physical injury, the company would work around that until it was fixed. Yeah, companies still think that psychological wellbeing isn't as easy to accommodate as physical wellbeing but I don’t agree, as long as you know what you are dealing with. For this reason, I break topics down and sometimes I really oversimplify things… but people get it! For example, I explain to people what a feeling is, what I thought is, what a behaviour is. The sum of this equals that and this is what you need to do to make sure that you are looking after yourself and everyone else. Once I do this, people get it!
Now people understand the reasoning behind the ‘Mental Health Workouts’, I motivate them to take action by saying “If you go to a gym class, you don't get fit by watching the gym teacher do it.” My point is that I can tell people what to do but it’s not going to help. People need to actually start taking action and looking after themselves. In the same way that you don’t achieve your ideal body after one gym session, you need to work on your mental health for the rest of your life. It takes work, hard work. It's a commitment to yourself and it's really, really, really important.
Bethan:
Also, I think sometimes we are looking for a quick fix. You want to just do one session and it will be sorted. Also, I think we are resistant to things that are simple, such as going on a daily walk, getting out in nature and eating good food. For me, these simple practices have transformational benefits and are key to maintaining positive wellbeing. Do you think people are resistant to the concept of such simple things?
Zoë:
Yes, I do. I think it’s because we don't understand why we're doing it. It’s very difficult to commit to something if you don’t understand why you are doing it. Evidence shows that it is good to get outside, be in nature and move your body. However, evidence also shows that if you are just doing it because you are told to do it, it doesn't have the same benefits. There is a lack of explanation around why these things work, which is why in ‘Your Mental Health Workout’, I ‘separated the chapters into ‘Why we're doing this’ and then ‘How to do it’.
Bethan:
Yes, I agree, I really think that the rational way that you have developed and laid out your book. It will speak to a mass audience, especially in Britain where we have a very rational culture. We would like to know why we are doing things and we are very mistrustful of things such as herbal or ancient remedies because of the way that we are brought up. We want to know what things do and if there is evidence to back it up. Whereas in the past, before too much reliance on science, we would do things because they were passed down through families & cultures. I think Eastern cultures have retained a lot more of a focus on preventative health and medicine compared to the West. For example, in China there are loads of preventative health practices grounded in the philosophy: “A teaspoon of prevention is worth a bucket full of cure.” Whereas in the UK, we wait until things become a problem and then we look for a pill to fix it.
Zoë:
When I was studying psychology, I learned that the main difference between Eastern and Western cultures was that Eastern thinking is much more circular. They often talk about people who have passed away as if they are still alive and part of the family. In Chinese medicine, they believe that what is going on in your heart has very much to do with what we call anxiety and overthinking. They believe that treating the heart is what soothes anxiety and overthinking. Whereas in Western cultures, our thinking is much more linear. This is the start and this is the end… and then it's over. When I heard that, I was a bit disappointed. Why did we do that to ourselves? We think that it’s a thinking problem rather than a feeling problem. Naturally, I’m more subscribed to working with feelings because we can think our way out of anything but our emotional connections are where the answers are.
Bethan:
Do you think that that is one of the hardest things for people to connect with? It seems like a lot of the time we consume or do things because we do not want to feel?
Zoë:
Exactly, we call them avoidance or approach tactics. There’s a list of 15 of them - including food, alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, exercise, the list goes on. Some of them are chemical and some are processes. So like exercise, you don't actually have to ingest anything to change how you feel. But it's something that you're doing to change how you feel.
There’s a hypothesis called the self-medication hypothesis. It states that if you are using any of those things to self-medicate, then you are using it to get away from how you feel. But all of those things can also be used to self-soothe and help you relax. For example, an alcoholic drink a day is actually proven to reduce stress… But only one!
Bethan:
Yes, that’s the really hard stuff because you are suddenly thinking that the second is a good idea.
Zoë:
Yes, so people need to understand the intention behind your actions. If we do something as an avoidance tactic, it’s probably a problem. Whereas, if you are doing it as an act of self-care or self-soothing, then quite frankly that’s okay. Distracting yourself from difficult things is okay as well.
For example, I've had a bit of a difficult time lately so I have been shopping more than usual. I know what I'm doing but I am conscious of it. I know that I am within my limits and I'm not spending money that I haven't got. So I can buy myself a nice dress because I deserve it but it's not something that I am going to engage with for the rest of my life.
I’m not saying to everyone never drink, never smoke, never spend your money, never exercise but you have to know what the intentions are behind it. If you’re self-medicating, the intention behind it is to get away from yourself rather than to soothe yourself and feel a bit more like yourself again.
Bethan:
Yes, I think it’s about being kind to ourselves. Do you think that the most important thing is to get to a point where you are aware of your feelings and you are able to recognise them for what they are?
Zoë:
Yes and it takes practice. I have obviously got a history of lots of dysfunctional behaviour which I had therapy and treatment for. Honestly, it helped to lay the groundwork, but it didn't fix anything… I would still act out when I had a difficult feeling. Everything changed when I changed my relationship with myself when I stopped giving myself a hard time for acting out. I recognised that I needed to act in that way to process something and then I needed to be compassionate about it and move on.
Getting to this place takes effort, work and action. I’ve been working on it since I was 19-20 years old. It’s not a passive place to be. You only get there when you understand yourself and you can moderate your behaviour. When you have spent enough time furthering your knowledge and awareness about what your personal processes are and what feelings you have on a day-to-day basis. Everyone is different in that department.
Bethan:
I feel like to get to a point where you want to start making these efforts and looking after yourself, you have to have self-worth.
A huge thank you to Zoe for taking the time to chat with me about this really important topic over a Switchel & Soda at Forza Wine. If you have enjoyed reading this conversation with Zoë, be sure to order a copy of her amazing book ‘Your Mental Health Workout™’. The book provides you with exercises, tools, affirmations and expert guidance so you can start looking after your mental health for the long term.