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Episode 17: Busting other people’s opinions
How important are other people’s opinions to you? Seeking advice and support is one thing, but sometimes placing too much value on someone else’s opinion can have the opposite effect and limit us instead. It’s easy to become sensitive to or obsessed with what other people think, and worrying about it is something that can be hard to stop once that train has left the station. Keeping ourselves mentally durable or tough helps bring the stability we need to meet our goals, so taking a lead from people who have tapped into this mindset seems like a great place to start. In this episode, Andy and Louise deconstruct some old beliefs they once held, busting the impact of other people’s opinions as the draw from the perspective of guests who have overcome extreme events, and others who have used this mindset to their advantage in other, more common contexts. Why is Louise not fond of straws, and how accomplished did Andy become at playing saxophone? The mental health journey isn’t always traumatic, but if there’s trauma to be unpacked, you know they’ll go there.
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Episode 16: Who is Teisha Rose?
Has anyone ever told you to ‘just think positive’? That’s toxic positivity talking, and it invalidates another person’s emotions and their lived reality. Especially if they live with a chronic illness. Teisha Rose was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age 22 and has been living with chronic illness for decades. Podcast hosts, Louise & Andy have been discussing the concept of reframing our experiences to help get through difficult situations in recent episodes of Reframe of Mind, but no amount of reframing will cure Teisha’s MS. So how does a change in perspective play a part when dealing with chronic illness? And how do you look after your mental health when you live with an illness like MS?
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Episode 15: Breaking Our Habits and Addictions
Have you ever felt motivated to Google “Am I addicted to alcohol?” or “Am I Addicted to sugar?” Addictions come in all shapes and forms, and it’s generally the things like nicotine or hard drugs we think of that need to be kicked for good health, but what about if through peer pressure when you were younger, or through some other coping mechanism, you’ve developed a habit over time that you need to change or break? Professor Maree Teesson AC from the Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, has developed a range of resources to help with addiction and depression and had a long chat with Louise and Andy in the previous episode about mental health and substance use. In this episode, Andy and Louise unpack some of the points Maree highlighted, sharing some of their own experiences with addiction on their mental health journey as they navigated all the regular social norms younger people face.
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Episode 14: Mental Health and Addiction; featuring Professor Maree Teesson AC
It's a pretty common situation - Have a stressful day at work, reach for a glass of wine at night - but when does that 'solution' contribute to an even bigger problem, and are there techniques to treat the cause underneath it all, instead of using alcohol to self-soothe the symptoms? Alcohol consumption is very deeply entrenched in Australian culture, and for some, exposure starts at an early age. Having a drink is normalised behaviour associated with everyday social events, but substances like alcohol, drugs and even sugar can have greater negative impacts on our lives. Stepping away from these habits takes a different, focused approach, in which one size doesn’t necessarily fit all. In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy’s mental health journey includes a conversation with Professor Maree Teesson AC, Director of the Matilda Centre, to explore the nature of addiction, the research that is leading to techniques that help teenagers form a healthy relationship to alcohol consumption, and how some of these techniques might help us in combating other issues that challenge us on a mental level.
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Episode 13: How to let go of expectations from others
What would happen if we chose to let go of playing by the expectations set by someone (or something) else and stopped measuring our value by their perception of what we can offer them? In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy share their personal experiences with letting go of other people’s expectations and learning to make decisions in accordance with their own personal values; and discuss the concept of reframing our thoughts to better support our self-worth. They also look at the ‘human durability’ model with more from Derrick McManus, founder of the Australian Centre for Human Durability; Chat to motivational speaker Chris Helder, about his ‘Useful Belief’ philosophy, and how he was able to apply the technique to reframing his own loss of gigs at the start of the pandemic; and to mindfulness coach and ‘Still Effect’ author Annie Harvey to get her practical tips on how to reframe our thoughts around situations that are out of our practical control.
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Episode 12: Who is Derrick McManus?
Derrick McManus had a really bad day at work once. He was shot 14 times in 5 seconds and almost died. Derrick was a South Australian Police officer operating in the elite Special Tasks And Rescue (STAR) Group. He held specialist skills as a sniper, diver and was trained by the military elite Special Air Services Regiment (SAS) in counter-terrorist tactics. His recovery and re-entry to the same team is only a part of Derrick's story, which is one of durability and action well past the platitudes of "she'll be right". In this episode, Derrick shares his story and experiences to shift our perspective on the value of resilience and durability. So what happens when the stress becomes so unmanageable that we start to burn out? How accountable are workplaces for providing an environment that promotes good mental health? And where is the a boundary between workplace stressors and those that can too easily spill in from everyday life? In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy explore their own experiences with stress and burnout in the workplace with some food for thought from their previous guests Sally Goldner AM, Suzanne Mercier and Hugh Kearns while introducing new guests Jane Madden, Board Director at Black Dog Institute and Workplace Pattern Interruptor, Annie Harvey.
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Episode 11: Mental health and workplace culture; Is there a better way?
We've all either been through sustained high stress in the workplace or known someone who has, and when we're encouraged to bring "all of ourselves to work" it usually contains an unspoken parenthesis with the words "except that bit". So what happens when the stress becomes so unmanageable that we start to burn out? How accountable are workplaces for providing an environment that promotes good mental health? And where is the a boundary between workplace stressors and those that can too easily spill in from everyday life? In this episode of Reframe of Mind, Louise and Andy explore their own experiences with stress and burnout in the workplace with some food for thought from their previous guests Sally Goldner AM, Suzanne Mercier and Hugh Kearns while introducing new guests Jane Madden, Board Director at Black Dog Institute and Workplace Pattern Interruptor, Annie Harvey.