Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00) I like the fancy chair that looks really nice for video.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (00:02) Just a rocking chair, but yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:04) Rocking chairs look very fancy and big.

Emily, welcome to the show. You are talking from Queensland in Australia and you are a therapist who has done a lot in academic spaces with families, with people who were bullied in work. You've talked with media, you've done all sorts of things.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (00:27) Thank you for having me. Yes, yes, yeah. All different, like private practice, community clinics, at the moment, I'm just on maternity leave after the birth of our second daughter, but I'll be getting back into some private practice with some of my existing clients later on in the year.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:45) Amazing! What made you get into psychology to begin with?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (00:51) Great question. So I think it's twofold for me. I think having some of my own childhood adverse events, I think kind of when I was in adolescence, I then started to think about why do people tick the way that they tick? What makes people tick the way that they do? What makes people behave in certain ways? Why are people like that? And so that was one thing going on in my head. And then I just sort of became interested in psychology. But then also, when I speak with other fellow psychologists, they also report this as well, a lot of the time, that as we were growing up, we were often seen in our friendship groups, as that person that someone would come to for help, it just naturally happened. Quite an empathetic person. So if someone had a problem, they would come to me. But I then had to learn appropriate boundaries and things like that as well. So it wasn't too much for me.

But yeah, it was just, I guess, a shoulder to cry on.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:48) That's so sweet. So you learned at a pretty early age something that a lot of people learn a lot later on, which is to help people, help people without giving everything and giving your whole self and setting a limit because you can't constantly help everybody.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (02:06) Yeah, you're exactly right. And I think boundaries is something that is really important as a therapist, and actually just as a human as well. Just sometimes we feel like we've got to, you know, not as a therapist, me speaking now, but just in everyday life, we feel like we've got to, you know, it would be good to help X, Y, Z and do this. Especially if you're a very empathetic person, that can be very draining on the physical body if you don't have those, and mentally as well, if you don't have those boundaries and stuff in place.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:39) I think we'll explore that a little bit because I know that for me, even recording heavy conversations, amazing conversations that can have a lot of emotional weight, there needs to be a way to contain that in some way. But you mentioned that this was after something happened in childhood. Can you share anything, any hint about what was going on?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (03:01) Yeah, yeah, just, I'll touch on it briefly — one day, maybe I'll write a book or whatever on it. But in my experience of growing up, I — and look, it is quite unfortunately common to experience what we call an adverse childhood event. And that includes like witnessing violence or experiencing violence. So for me, I observed domestic violence within the household that I grew up in, and then experienced like abandonment, rejection sort of things from both parents. But I sit from a place of not blaming either one of my parents. And that's a really difficult spot to get to eventually. And other people will say this, that it is difficult to get to a place where you don't look back on your caregivers and blame them for things that you've experienced in your life.

Because often it is a generational thing. Often, they grew up with some adversities in their life as well. And so they just never learnt how to stop that pattern from going on and on and on. Which is why I'm really passionate about generational trauma and working in that space — to work on, okay, if some of these behaviours, if this anxiety, if this perfectionism, if this people pleasing, if this feeling of so much guilt — is that actually mine or did it come from somewhere else in the past? And like, my parents, my grandparents and so on. Often, we see it many generations back. And then, is that mine? What I'm feeling, or is it theirs? And then how can I cut that cycle and stop that cycle, so it doesn't kind of pass on? So for me, that's kind of been an unfolding journey, having experienced and witnessed parts of this abuse and violence and things like that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (04:46) Some questions about what could typically happen. I'm so curious. Firstly, when people are growing up at a young age around angry feelings or seeing people having angry feelings, then I'm curious, do people typically or often end up growing up anticipating the worst from people, or what's the response that people end up applying to everybody else as the sort of safeguard default?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (05:21) Great question.

What you're really talking about there is the nervous system. So the nervous system — obviously, we all have our own nervous systems. But from the moment we are born, our nervous system is starting to understand whether the world is a safe place, whether my caregivers are a safe place, whether I'm safe as a person in my own body, and then the people around me. And so if you are growing up in an environment where someone, for example, is angry all the time, yelling, abusive, violent, things like that — that can get imprinted in the nervous system. So then your body can start to — now, this is not the same for everyone — but your body can start to feel unsafe. And the way that you respond might be different.

So, for example, some people might model that behaviour. And so when they feel threats, for example — and we see this follow through into adulthood — often a lot of people aren't aware of what's going on, why they're angry all the time. But some people may respond to a threat the same way as they were modelled to them. So they may also yell, also be abusive, maybe physically or maybe not physically, just verbally. Like they don't understand perhaps why sometimes they just get so angry that they just snap, and they might yell at the kids and say something they didn't mean to, or get stuck at the traffic lights and all of a sudden they're putting a rude finger up or yelling verbal abuse at someone else in traffic. Not being able to regulate the emotions.

So it can be that way — maybe you're modelling that — or it can be really internalised, which is that anxiety that you're speaking about. And we speak in the nervous system about fight or flight and freeze as well. A fight is where there's a threat, and we just want to attack it. And so that might be that more anger, yelling, that sort of response. Whereas the flight is like avoidance, running away. I don't feel safe, I want to get out of the situation, I want to escape. And that can be that anxiety, that avoidance of doing things. Potentially for some people, if they are around people who yell — they've grown up around this yelling environment — that might actually trigger them internally. And when they hear different people yell, they might have some sort of physiological reaction as an adult and go, okay, I don't really know why, but I'm starting to feel a bit anxious around what's happening.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:53) I'm wondering if sometimes people confuse the feelings — perhaps sometimes an inner feeling of fear could look externally like anger or something else. And a behavioural specialist who was on the show a while ago quoted Yoda. I'm wondering if you agree with Yoda — where fear leads to anger that leads to hate and to the dark side. We'll start with that. Do you think that's true?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (08:19) Yeah, I do. For a great degree. Absolutely. So often, anger is like a surface-level emotion. But underneath anger, most of the time, is fear, is anxiety. And a really good example of that that I say to parents all the time is that if you think about a child who has school refusal, for example, you might often see tantrums, kicking, screaming, and automatically it's labelled as a behaviour problem, noncompliance, defiance, without actually considering what might be going on in that situation. Often it's not a behavioural problem. Often, underneath it is actually huge amounts of anxiety about school. And our job is to find out why that anxiety exists. So it may be difficulties with friendships, academics, teachers and so on.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:13) And something could be really going on at school. I'm wondering if sometimes the grownups find it easier to blame the child and blame how they think the child is built instead of looking at themselves.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (09:29) Yeah, Melanie, you're absolutely right. Yeah, often it's a really difficult conversation for me to have with parents — that often healing starts with ourselves a lot of the time. As much as we'd love to think that we're perfect, there's always things that we can do to work on ourselves, which then flow onto our children as well. And I like to remind parents that children model everything from us, good and bad. So they learn how to ride a bike because we're showing them, we're teaching them, we're explaining stuff to them. Same with many other things in life. But we can also inadvertently model things that perhaps we don't like, like smacking, hitting. That, unfortunately —

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:14) — anything. Yeah. It could be beyond the parents. I know some kids are bullied at school. Some — who hasn't got a story, even to use a light version — who hasn't got a story where, sometime during childhood, a teacher said something, and it stuck with us our whole lives.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (10:31) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. And if it still is there, if it is still stuck, I do challenge people to — we want to unwind that a little bit. We don't want that to trigger us anymore. And in psychology, we speak about trauma reminders. And while that is not necessarily classified as trauma in the definition of trauma — a teacher saying something that might have hurt our feelings — it has a huge, profound impact. I can remember things that teachers have said to me that impacted me. Because as a child, as an adolescent, our brain is really malleable. So we are very vulnerable, and picking up on mixed messages from people in authority can have a really big impact on us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:17) It really can. We look up to those people, and sometimes things are said in front of a class. So essentially, we're trying to feel okay within a group and tribe, that sort of thing. So that can sort of happen anywhere. I'm wondering if people have had similar feelings, then in the workplace, to go back to the workplace bullying that you mentioned. Seriously, there are workplaces where a boss can have that authority energy of pointing a finger or judging people when really something else was the cause of something. Okay, what do you think is going on in workplaces that people need to learn from?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (12:04) Yeah, yeah, it is really tricky. And look, in some situations, you've got to get out of there. To be frank, sometimes for your own mental health and your nervous system, it's okay, this environment does not serve me in my highest and best good anymore. And I need to go somewhere else that is going to be in alignment with my values. However, before you jump to conclusions, of course, there are other things that we want to try and implement in that environment.

Some people — I actually spoke about this a little while ago on my Instagram, I did a post on this — some people can have a real difficulty standing up to authority figures, standing up to like a boss or a parent or a leader in some description. Some people can; other people it's much easier for them. And so, unfortunately, sometimes with some of those people, they can then be taken advantage of. And that's like a fast track to burnout. Of course.

So we want to get into a space where we can confidently say what our needs are, or at least have that conversation. Even if it's like — I feel really uncomfortable with putting boundaries in place, maybe I need to send a little email or something like that to start with. And then you're kind of building up from there.

But we want to understand also, okay, why do I have such challenges in standing up to authority? And often that can be work for therapy. But if you pull that apart a little bit, it can be — potentially, there's been rejection in the past. There's been experiences in the past where you have stood up, and then you've been rejected, you've been abandoned, you've lost a job because you have spoken up before, or you've lost a relationship and so on. So somewhere in your mind, you're going, it's not safe to say what I want to say — that this is too much, I can't handle it, I'm burning out and so on. But if we don't do that, when we get to burnout, it can literally get to the stage where you just can't get out of bed, you can't leave the house, you're having so many sick days and so on.

So there's a lot to evaluate within that, and everyone's circumstances are obviously individual.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:14) And it would probably be amplified and extended because a full-time job could be 8am to 5pm. It could be longer than a 9 to 5. It's the bulk of the waking hours sometimes — or the bulk of the day. It's quite a chunk of someone's life and someone is choosing to, for that much of their time, be in that sort of situation.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (14:40) Yeah. And that then can start to have impacts on the physical body as well, which people are not often aware of. They're not often aware that these migraines they keep having, this IBS, these headaches, this muscle tension, this shortness of breath — they've been to the doctor, they've said nothing is wrong, but often they're not aligning that with maybe it's the stress that they're going through or the burnout that they're experiencing. My nervous system is screaming at me to slow down, to maybe reevaluate my environment.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:13) Yes. A couple of other things I'm wondering might be going on.

I do want to ask — firstly, before the one about overcommitting — I'm curious if sometimes people do the opposite of not standing up to authority, and if they are trying to comfort themselves by making sure they are in the centre of what's happening and making sure they're always climbing the ladder, elevating — that sort of thing. Have you seen that as a trauma response?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (15:45) Totally. Yeah, absolutely. Nail on the head. Yes. So people pleasing, perfectionism — feeling like you just have to, you know, if I don't do everything that my boss asked me to do, then something bad's going to happen. I'm going to lose my job. I'm not going to get that promotion and so on and so on. Also a fast track to burnout. Even if you're not aware of it. All of a sudden, you're working — like you said — well beyond the nine-to-five. You're working till 11 o'clock at night, four days a week, and then you're having to do weekend work as well, just to try and do all this extra work to impress your boss and so on.

Again, for a lot of people, this people pleasing, perfectionism, and stuff like that tends to start in childhood. It can be in environments where maybe you grew up, and you felt like you weren't good enough, and then you had to start to prove your worth to other people. So deep down, a lot of these people may feel like they're not worthy and may feel that love is conditional and so on. That might have been what they've been taught.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (16:45) I'm curious if you've seen those feelings in people who are in management or leadership. So, not trying to please a boss, but trying to always feel like they are above everybody.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (17:00) Yeah, yeah. And that can be a self-worth thing as well. It can also be an internal battle within themselves — I'm constantly striving to be X, Y, and Z just to tell myself that I am good enough. And that can be that inner child part of people — that inner child part of someone that needs to be fulfilled because you were never fulfilled perhaps when you were growing up and when you were a child. And so we call it parts work or schema therapy — we talk about that inner child part of us, and those parts of us that maybe were abandoned and so on. And that can be — it's an evidence-based therapy that can be so helpful and effective at looking at those parts.

But also being in a leadership role — often a lot of those people can be, not always, but can be highly anxious. Because you're in control of that situation. And anxiety loves control. Because it means that it's an illusion of control — you're trying to control an environment that's often unpredictable. So you're trying to make it predictable, which should, in theory, reduce the anxiety. So I do see that as well.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:12) The predictability, the feeling of control. Okay, so part of being in leadership is knowing that we can't control everything in the world.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (18:24) Exactly. Yeah. Unfortunately, I do see the flip side as well. We do see CEOs and other high-level executives that do have things like narcissism. And that is a different sort of control — that control is maybe more so about, again, a lot of people who have narcissism have very low, poor self-esteem and self-worth, but they don't realise that they do. They're often self-loathing. They often think very poorly of themselves. They overcompensate by having this grandiose sense of self. And that's what can cause often toxicity in the workplaces and burnout, especially when people feel like they're not being listened to and not being heard.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:12) It's a lot, handling the identity in any level, because all sorts of people might start off or continue — I'm so keen to get my brightness up a little bit, I just feel like it needs a bit more brightness. So so many people work for someone else, either alongside working for themselves or because they are wanting to work in a larger space — and they need to make sure they are feeling supported. But then, when people are doing leadership roles, it sounds like it's a balance of not putting ourselves down too much, but not overcompensating with our egos, or however you might put it.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (19:55) Yeah, great. You've put it really nicely there. Yeah, it's a nice balance — we don't want to be — I often say this with children when I'm working on assertiveness — we don't want to be a doormat where someone's walking all over us, right? Just doing all these things just to potentially get a promotion that may never come, and just burning ourselves out. And therefore that's then overflowing into our family life, or we're never spending time with our friends and family, or never working out and eating properly and so on.

But then we also don't want to come across as really aggressive either in our approach. So it's that sort of balanced approach of, okay, how can I communicate what my needs are? They may or may not be met, but at least I can communicate that.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (20:44) Communicate them. If anyone can learn that in childhood, I think they are a step ahead of a lot of grown-ups.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (20:49) Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, it's pretty rare that you'll find parents who are pretty attuned to that — because we just don't get taught. It's no one's fault. We just don't get taught this very well in school.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:02) At least there are conversations like this now. I know that years and decades ago, people weren't even talking about these things. At least it's a conversation. Did you find that growing up, people weren't talking about all of this as much?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (21:17) Yeah, yeah. So exactly. These days we're seeing psychology as an elective in high schools — yes, we are seeing that, which is amazing. We're also seeing schools starting at prep or kindergarten — I think it is in New South Wales, we call it prep in Queensland, or primary school, elementary school — we're seeing mindfulness and meditation taught from a really young age, from like five or six, and just having mindful breaks. And I'm also seeing children learning how to regulate their emotions better. So in classrooms, there's a fantastic resource called the Zones of Regulation. And that shows — red is stop, I'm angry, I need space, I need time out and so on. There's blue, I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling worried. Green, I'm feeling good, I'm happy. And yellow, I'm feeling maybe excited, I've got a little bit too much energy, I need a little bit more space to regulate. Those things we're starting to see come into classrooms, which is huge.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (22:22) Interesting, interesting — colour code, of course, that would translate to young ones. And you did something with media. What have you been focusing on when you were talking to media?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (22:37) Yeah, a few different things. So in the past, when I was working in academia, I enjoy writing. In academia, I was writing some tips and things for newspapers around how to support children during COVID. So that was quite good at that time, of course, because anytime a child experiences — you know, cyclones that we had in Queensland last year, just natural disasters, or like a pandemic — anything like that — it's new and different for all of us, but for children it's really difficult for them to understand what on earth is happening. So I've written some articles around how we can explain things like COVID in a friendly, childlike way.

I also enjoy going on podcasts. Recently I wrote another article for — it hasn't been released yet, but it's coming — for a national travel magazine, around why we leave things in hotel rooms?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:33) Oh, I love this one! I left my MacBook charger in a hotel once or twice, and I felt so guilty — and people were so kind because I was thinking it was my fault, but they knew that those MacBook chargers are not cheap, and they left it aside. They tried so hard. But I feel like — why? I never do that. Is there something — okay, what's going on with our weird brains when we're travelling and we leave something that we normally never leave? What's going on?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (24:04) Yeah, so there are a few things. Number one — ideally, when we're on holidays, our nervous system hopefully should shift into more of a parasympathetic state — rest and digest, relax, chill, drink piña coladas or whatever suits you, or just go on a yoga retreat or whatever. So we're relaxed. But then usually when we're packing, ready to get to the airport, and so on, it can be — exactly — this sympathetic activation, this drive of like, I've only got a certain amount of time, I've got to get to the airport. Sudden rush. And then that quick switch into a sympathetic nervous system activation can potentially mean that we forget things and so on. But also, we're in a different environment. We're out of routine. So then you've got — we're out of routine, different environment, different place, I've got time pressures, and I've just been relaxing for so long. We've got all of this going on.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:37) I'm wondering about the solution to that. I'm guessing part of the answer is to allocate some time well before that shift to where we are going next. Are there any little hacks to stay organised when our brains are ultra zen?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (25:19) Yes, yeah — of course, extra time, but often for most people that probably doesn't happen, especially if you've got kids. But checklists are really good. So, especially checklists of important things. So a good idea is to have maybe notes on your phone, for example, of the most important things — so MacBook charger, rings, my passport that I put in the safe, or whatever, my watch or whatever that's in the safe, or this is on the bedside table, or what have you. So having a list of that that you can then check off at the end is really important.

If you're travelling with someone, a two-person check is also really important. As well as allocating extra time.

If you have a really poor memory like some people do, but you really want to remember something that's really important — like something you've left in the safe, for example; the safe is often where people will leave things or forget things — out of sight, out of mind — you can do things like — now this might sound funny but there's a stack of research behind it — in neuroscience, coming up with your own little song or rhyme. I think they call it — don't quote me — I think they call it mnemonics or something like that. And that's where you might literally come up with a little tune that you sing to yourself — okay, watch is in the safe, rings on the bedside table, and so on. And then you've got this kind of stuck in your head that you can use from hotel room to hotel room. Sounds funny, but there's a stack of research behind it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:54) Turn it into a song!

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (26:56) Yeah, exactly.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:58) I like that. Okay, would you pick a cheesy song? I don't know why, but my brain has been gravitating towards those really — I don't know if we're the same age or not — but you know those 90s school disco songs? Do you think something really catchy is going to help, or are we going for the really steady — just make it a rhyme — or does it not really matter what someone picks?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (27:28) Look, I think if it resonates with you, that's what's going to work for you. So catchy is great, if it rhymes, also great. And look, some people don't love that idea, and that's fine. There's a lot of research behind that. But if it works for you, it works for you. Maybe for other people it's the list — it's doing the checklist — and getting into what we call habitual learning. Every time I go away on holidays, every time I stay in a hotel room, this is just what I do. I just, as I'm packing my bag, I write my list of those important things. And before I leave, I check off that list of important things. And that's habitual learning.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:08) It's awesome hearing a therapist say, " Do what works for you. Things are not one size fits all.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (28:14) Exactly, exactly.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:17) That helps a lot. Okay, deviating from travel because that's awesome. Oh, that reminds me of what else I was so keen to ask about — because you're talking about memory — have you seen that if people have had a very stressful time, or maybe a workaholic moment, or something that's clearly traumatic — death, any of those things — that the brain just can't — I use this silly phrase of the brain can't brain. It's like it's just not doing the things that it normally always does, be it remembering or planning. Is there a name for that?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (28:54) Yeah, a few things. So an informal name is what people now refer to as brain fog, right? So some people might not realise, but actually a symptom of anxiety is attention and concentration problems, also in depression. So that can mean working memory issues. So yes, when we're talking about PTSD, complex PTSD and very traumatic experiences, we can do what's called dissociation.

And regions of the brain or memories can literally switch off. I also see that in young children who have significant meltdowns and trouble regulating their emotions. The amygdala is in the centre of our brain and that is mainly responsible for emotional processing. And that is right next to the hippocampus, which is highly associated with memories as well.

So when you have all these — if you think about trauma, anger, really extreme emotional responses — all these neurons firing and that part of your brain region is lighting up, it can really overwhelm the brain. And sometimes those memories can then — you can dissociate from the situation. Or those memories can kind of lock in. It's actually not uncommon to hear a child who has significant emotion regulation problems say that they actually just can't remember what had happened. And you're going — but Henry, you just hit your sister across the head. And sometimes people think that they're lying, but in actual fact, they actually don't remember.

It's just like — the same things can happen with extreme trauma as well. People will often describe that maybe they remember bits and pieces, but they have a lot of gaps in their memory. Sometimes there's some emerging research that's showing that over time, when the body and the brain starts to feel safe, some of these memories — without sounding cliché — actually unlock, and they remember some things that maybe happened in childhood all of a sudden, which is really fascinating.

It's very fascinating neuroscience and research. Yes, stress — huge impact on the memory.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (31:07) So then, once we calm down and remember things, is there the risk to then feel perhaps triggered, or alternatively, just reliving things, and then it's like going through a whole new trauma, suddenly remembering things out of the blue. Does that happen?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (31:28) Yeah, so yes — what you're describing is being re-traumatised. So yes, perhaps — I'd like to think that the brain is only showing us that because it thinks we can handle it in that moment. So, which, you know, you may have brought down your sympathetic activation enough for your body to then say, I don't need to avoid this anymore. Maybe it's time for me to start processing some of this stuff potentially.

However, I don't recommend doing it alone. Some people never get there. Some people have been traumatised so much that — and they haven't done any therapy, or it's just too full on, just too scary to look internally and look within. And there is no judgment with that. Because some people have been through some awful things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:14) From the intensity of — those sorts of trauma — I'd love to look forward because I think there's a lot of change going on. It's worth asking someone like you about some of the trends.

I mean, I think people are looking at a lot of change. It's been a year or two where a lot of workplaces wanted people to go back to the office, and that's a shift after working from home a lot. People are seeing that AI is finally really coming into the workplace — in a lot of jobs that probably didn't involve that a few years ago, there are definitely a few shifts. Are you seeing that professionals are needing to navigate a lot of changes at the moment?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (32:59) Yeah, definitely. I think everyone's nervous system is probably still recovering from COVID. I think if we think back to those times in 2020, 2021 — I can even remember myself — everyone, you know, we're tuning into the news at 10 o'clock to see how many cases there were that day. Okay, so that's going to be — if we reflect on that — that is actually hugely triggering to the nervous system. And you're exposed to that for a good couple of years, where we're seeing, you know, there's 855 cases today or whatever it might be. And we're not realising that at the time, but we're starting to live in this perpetual fight or flight state. So then we obviously had a lot of changes. For people with children — homeschooling, changes, juggling, working from home, managing children — and then people initially were fearful about how working from home was going to work and so on.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:57) COVID — if you don't mind me diving in. Look, I haven't seen official stats, but have you seen that so many people had breakups after and during COVID?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (34:07) Yeah, yeah, yeah — relationship breakdowns — it really impacted people in so many ways. And it's changed us forever. Yeah, we just — you're right. So many people are expecting people to work back in the workplace. But we're also seeing a lot more people working hybrid, which has brought about a lot of good change for people seeking a better work-life balance. Yeah, in some industries that are allowing that. But I think we're still seeing our nervous systems being a little bit on guard still.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:40) Okay, I feel like you're confirming something that a lot of people don't admit. Because I felt like when I was interacting with, especially some bureaucratic spaces, people think they're just being formal and precise, but I kind of — my gut sensed this ultra alertness. This — it felt like people are still heightened in some way, and I couldn't quite pick it. But it feels like you're acknowledging something that people don't want to say. Because we're not meant to comment on that era too much socially or culturally anymore — but I think you're saying that unspoken feeling we're all having, where we're all still recovering from the world.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (35:27) Yeah, it's like a big long hangover, you know. One way to put it. But yes, people may be fearful to say it, but I think there's a lot of people that are unaware — to be honest — that maybe it's not — I don't want to say normal — but you don't have to live in a perpetual state where you're feeling absolutely exhausted, drained, still tired after sleeping all night, and just really despising work and struggling, having Mondayitis and Sundayitis, and being irritable and yelling at the children and stuff all the time. It doesn't have to be that way. And so COVID and that era definitely put people into what we call hypervigilance a lot more, where we're really on edge.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:11) Okay, do you see some people blaming individuals for that hypervigilance when really they might be responding to an environment that sort of caught up and brewed that collective feeling for a while?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (36:27) Yeah, yeah, great point. Great point. So sometimes, in psychology, we talk about something called an internal and external locus of control. So an internal locus of control is where you really take responsibility for your own feelings, thoughts, behaviours and actions. That's not being ignorant to the fact that we are always influenced — we are influenced by politics, the media, people around us and so on, of course. But then there are some people that identify more with an external locus of control. And those are the people that say that nothing is my fault, everyone else is to blame, and I can't control anything. All this stuff is happening to me — poor me, victim mentality. And so you do get those sort of people that are more like that and feel like they have less control in the world and blame other people.

But we want to acknowledge that, yes, there may be some really awful things happening in the world and some things that are absolutely totally out of our control — politics and natural disasters and war and the weather and whether it's raining or not. Right, we have all of these things. But I can control how I respond internally to that and how I think about that. And I can help my nervous system feel safe right here, right now.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:48) I see. I see.

Okay, I think a great concluding chapter — because I feel like we could talk all day, especially visiting every hot topic, and I'd love to talk about every single one of these for an hour each — but you mentioned spirituality. Is that one of the keys? I'm wondering if you can let people know about how spiritually and emotionally they can level themselves out with everything that's going on.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (38:18) Yeah, great question. What I will say about spirituality and belief systems in general is that the research shows that people who have some sort of belief — whether they're spiritual, whether they're religious, regardless of what their religion is, whether they just have some sort of belief in what the meaning of life is — those people have what we call a protective factor against mental illness, or against additional anxiety, depression, trauma, and so on. And what the research is showing is that having some sort of faith or belief in something outside of themselves can just help reduce that anxiety and so on. So it can certainly be very helpful.

But some people are atheist and that's okay as well. But when I look at people who've gone through trauma and adverse life events, our evidence-based therapies — like Trauma-Focused CBT, cognitive processing therapy, and even EMDR — help us not only to process it, but then to find meaning. Maybe why it happened — but not necessarily like, why did this have to happen — but what did I learn about myself in that situation? And what does this mean for me moving forward in terms of — does it change who I am or how I want to live my life? Does it change the values that I want to live my life by?

So you don't have to necessarily be spiritual or religious or what have you, but certainly finding meaning can be hugely beneficial.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:47) It sounds like part of the meaning is saying — you don't have to like what happened, especially if it's a trauma, a disaster, or anything like that. But even if you don't like what happened, how can you grow afterwards in a meaningful way?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (40:01) Exactly. That's exactly it. Thanks for summarising for me.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:05) Is there anything else that you think everybody — I apologise, or rephrase — is there anything else that you know that everybody needs to learn as we grow and deal with this wild world?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (40:18) Yeah, yeah. I think just circling back to the nervous system again — for centuries, we've gone through war, and we've experienced adversities, but they look very different now. And we're in many cultures much more individualised, with less support than many centuries and decades ago. Like we don't have, you know, necessarily in many cultures, that village to call upon around us, which is —

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:50) Sorry to dive in — do you think that's one of the solutions that we need to sort out? Do you think we need that village?

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (40:57) Well, again, it's certainly a protective factor. I was just reading the other day — someone speaking about, you know, if we had our village again, how — in many ways, I'm not going to say better, but in many ways more supportive — that perhaps would be of our mental health. And it would be. But with today's society, it is so challenging when both parties in a household are expected to work, or it's difficult to not work even if you're a single person. I mean, work has a lot of protective factors. But I guess what I'm saying is — people are hugely time poor, and that's a function of today's society. And living intergenerationally with families all the time is challenging in today's society.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:47) It really is. So maybe we need to figure out how to be less time-poor — to have more space and time and mental clarity to connect with potential tribes or villages.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (42:02) Yeah, yeah, and that's circling back to boundaries as we were discussing earlier — looking at a good work-life balance.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:10) Boundaries. Okay. So nervous system, boundaries — back to those essentials. Emily, you really have brought everything together. Thank you so much for sharing a glimpse of your reality and so much expertise.

Dr Emma-Leigh Senyard (42:28) Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this chat.