The Richard Nicholls Mental Health Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Question: When is an Eagle not an Eagle?  Answer: When it thinks it's a Chicken. Despite being an Eagle, if you think you're a Chicken can you really fly above everyone? Become a patron of the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/richardnicholls Subscribe to the newsletter for free extra episodes and hypnosis downloads. https://www.richardnicholls.net Social Media Links Twit...

Send us Fan Mail Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  Or as Albert Einstein once said "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." Today is all about my 5 tips on a more enthusiastic life! That and a massive rant at the end about mental health priorities in government policy making, sorry! Become a patron of the po...

Send us Fan Mail Despite New Year being a time associated with making changes, today I want to talk about what seems at first like the opposite of change.  Although it might still be a change, and might even be the best one you could ever make. Because there are surprising benefits that come from accepting yourself as you are, in making the decision to not changing and instead enjoying being you i...

Send us Fan Mail Today is all about having meaning and purpose to your life, something that crops up a lot in emails from listeners and definitely comes up in the therapy room.  Become a patron of the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/richardnicholls Subscribe to the newsletter for free extra episodes and hypnosis downloads. https://www.richardnicholls.net Social Media Links Twitter https://twitter...

Send us Fan Mail Over the last couple of years I've had a few messages from listeners about their fear of an uncertain future, and it's cropped up in the consulting room quite a lot too.  One thing that has been a big cause of it has been Brexit. Not knowing whether something about your future is going to be easier, more difficult, or exactly the same isn't helpful.  We like routine...

Send us Fan Mail October 10th is World Mental Health Day, and this years focus is on suicide prevention.  Suicide is twice as common as Homicide and is the second biggest cause of death in people under 30.  In todays episode I hope to provide some insight into how to spot suicidal ideation in friends and family, and hopefully open up some conversations so as to prevent the worst happening. Samarit...

Send us Fan Mail One question that I get asked quite often is "What's the difference between a fear and a phobia?"  In short, a fear of something is fairly rational, even if we might think that there's no need for us to fear it, the fear still makes some sense. If someone has a fear of public speaking that makes sense, although what there probably fearing is rejection from thei...

Send us Fan Mail Ever heard of The looking-glass self?  The looking-glass self is a concept created by sociologist Charles Horton Cooley back in 1902. It states that rather than a person's sense of self growing out of their own internal perceptions it instead grows out of the interactions with and the perceptions of other people.  In a nutshell it can be summed up with the following phrase “I...

Send us Fan Mail Nudging and avoiding a nudge is quite important. If you've never heard that phrase outside of a Monty Python sketch you will do now. Because to nudge, in psychology, means to subtly influence someones behaviour, often without them being aware of it, by altering the environment slightly and is surprisingly successful.  Become a patron of the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/ri...

Send us Fan Mail Introversion has been on my mind a lot lately as I've had quite a few clients who are introverts but don't fully understand it and think that there's something wrong with them.  So today I want to go into a bit of detail about introversion to help you understand yourself better if you are one, and help you to understand others better if you're not. Become a pat...

Send us Fan Mail This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and because of that I have an extra episode this month for you!  I met up with Bobby Temps today of The Mental Podcast to talk about what we can all do to begin the process of destigmatising mental health.  He's a great guy, have a listen. Bobby's Links Podcast https://www.mentalpodcast.co.uk/ Petition https://www.change.org/p/ma...

Send us Fan Mail I've been thinking about this topic for a long time and I've been a bit wary of talking about it because what I mean by "it's the thought that counts" is that it's our own thinking that counts towards whether an experience is a good one a bad one or simply just is.  And with some really quite extreme situations too. But I don't want it to come ac...

Send us Fan Mail Regularly clients will tell me that they've had frightening bizarre thoughts, sometimes about hurting, or even killing, someone that they care about.  Odd as it may seem this is something that everyone experiences, but it doesn't really get talked about for fear of other people thinking we're strange or even dangerous. So I want to put your mind at rest that if you...

Send us Fan Mail If you Google the words "how to be more productive" you get 187 million results. Interestingly that's the same number of results as "how to learn Romanian." And although everyone learns in different ways we all know the answer to both of those questions.  If you want to learn a new language, you need to read it, listen to it and absorb it until you underst...

Send us Fan Mail It's often said that optimism isn't all it's cracked up to be. That expecting the best only leads to disappointment, and I can understand why but I think it's important to see the difference between expectations and goals. Become a patron of the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/richardnicholls Subscribe to the newsletter for free extra episodes and hypnosis dow...

Send us Fan Mail It's a new year!  And for a hypnotherapist who specialises in helping people to make changes in their life people will often say to me things like "I bet you'll be busy at work in January then, all the New Years resolutions."  Yet, it's nothing like February, when all those that have tried to make some changes are a month in and can feel themselves giving...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever met someone with a wooden leg? Not a real wooden leg, but a metaphorical one?  In the 60’s, a psychiatrist called Eric Berne, turned some common problematic psychological processes into what he called “Games People Play” One of which he called the wooden leg game. Imagine a man with a wooden leg who has used it as an explanation for why his life is unfulfilled all of...

Send us Fan Mail Depression is a huge topic. It’s a big problem in the 21st Century and to try and understand it by listening to a single podcast episode probably isn’t going to be enough.  Even 4 years at medical school wouldn’t do that.  But I hope that with today’s episode I can help you to gain a bit of extra insight into it and I encourage you to read up on it if it’s something that you feel...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine you're invited to a friend’s house for a party and you find yourself chatting to a total stranger. If they were to say to you "So, what do you do?" What's the first thing that pops into your mind?  Go on, what do you do? Do you swim? do you play cricket? Do you party?  Of course, we all know that what they really mean is "What do you do for a livin...

Send us Fan Mail Many people feel a need to be unique, to be different from everyone else but that shouldn’t be at the expense of our sense of belonging. If we’re missing belongingness in our life then we can often feel as if we’re insignificant, unimportant and may as well crawl under a rock to die. Sure, be different, your life is your own, and any self esteem boost you get from your uniqueness...

Send us Fan Mail Is there something you want to achieve that you know is going to take a while? Maybe something that has many steps, such as getting fitter or writing a dissertation?  If so then you need to be aware that doing anything that brings you closer to the end result is better than doing nothing at all. That might seem obvious, but it’s not uncommon for people to be really hard on ourselv...

Send us Fan Mail Despite their setbacks and failures some people seem to have the ability to brush things off and bounce back almost stronger than before, they seem to have a grit and determination not to let bad experiences affect them. Is this something than can be learned? Nominate the podcast in the 13th Annual Podcast Awards https://www.podcastawards.com Social Media Links Twitter https://twi...

Send us Fan Mail If we’ve hurt someone then I think it’s probably healthy to feel bad about it, to wish that we’d behaved differently and to want to make amends.  But what isn’t healthy is continually beating yourself up over it or to think of yourself as a bad person because of what happened. Feeling bad because you hurt someone is guilt. But feeling as if you’re a bad person is shame, and they’r...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that if you're physically tired then you will estimate hills as steeper than they actually are? And that a place in the distance is further away? But did you also know that it's not just our physical resources that influence our perception of the world? Support the show Join the Patreon community https://www.patreon.com/richardnicholls Social Media Links Blu...

Send us Fan Mail There’s an annoying quirk to our psychology that means we can easily be drawn towards the exact thing that we’re trying to avoid, as the old saying goes 'be careful what you look for, because you just might find it.' Because the alternative means that you might have made yourself part of the problem, rather than the solution. Support the show Join the Patreon community h...