Julia Samuel: So we need a narrative to we need all the pieces of the jigsaw that can allow us to make sense of how we're feeling, so that the story we tell ourselves fits with the knowledge that we have. And the story we tell ourselves is the person we become.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: Why do families drive us mad? And can we ever aspire to create a family environment that is functional or ideal? To help explore these questions on today's podcast, I've got Julia Samuel MBE to help explain why there is no such thing as the perfect family. And actually, it's through pain and even productive fighting that we can have rich, joyful and fulfilling family experiences that emotionally develop us. Julia Samuel MBE is a leading British psychotherapist and author of the Sunday Times bestsellers, This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works. And during the last 30 years, she's worked first for the NHS and then in private practice. She's founder and patron of Child Bereavement UK and a vice president of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. She features regularly in the national media and has presented the podcasts A Living Loss and Grief Works and also the app Grief Works as well. It's fantastic. Today we discuss the concept of love as medicine and why food is particularly hardwired in our memories. We discuss a lovely analogy of us sitting around, well not really an analogy, it's a very common memory of people sitting around a kitchen table and why that's so ingrained in our memories. We also talk about the importance of emotional connection as a basic human need and the importance of self-compassion, a skill I personally need to practice more of every day, as I'm sure a lot of people do listening as well. You can find the links to Julia's socials as well as the links to her wonderful book, Every Family Has a Story, and the other bestsellers, all on the doctorskitchen.com where you can also sign up to the free newsletter that I send every single week. Something to eat, read, listen to or watch is contained in that newsletter. It is a personally written one from myself and I also pose lots of questions as well as giving you the opportunity to feedback and even feature on the podcast. Actually, we're going to be doing something very soon which is going to enable people to give their own opinions, tips and tricks on the podcast. I'm super excited about that. So make sure you check that out. The links to all that are in the podcast caption. And without further ado, this is my conversation with Julia Samuel. I really hope you enjoy it. Oh, and I should also mention that today's episode does contain some salty language. So if you do have any young children around, you just might want to be aware.
Dr Rupy: Okay, Julia, we're going to get right into it. I've got so many questions.
Julia Samuel: Good.
Dr Rupy: I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Because on the pod, we, it's called, obviously, it's called The Doctor's Kitchen. My sort of bias is towards nutritional medicine, exercise medicine, and I don't think we talk enough about emotional medicine and therapy in general. We've had some lovely guests in the past talk about connection, and I personally have experience of therapy from the perspective of my relationships, my family, and I definitely see the value in talking about it more. And you've done it very eloquently in your, in your books and the latest book that I want to get into. But perhaps we could start by
Julia Samuel: Can I, can I pop in there and say that love is strong medicine. I mean, it is the most powerful medicine. If you meet someone who is feeling lovable and loving, they look so healthy and well. And the way they embrace themselves and the world is entirely different to someone who kind of doesn't feel that they're lovable and loved.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: Where they kind of feel narrow and brittle and limited. And so it love is an amazingly powerful medicine. And well, that's it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. And you, you know, there's literal physical evidence of this as well. I mean, the one that pops to mind immediately is Elizabeth Blackburn and I forget her co-author now of the book and her co-winner for the Nobel Prize in science when they looked at telomere length in identical twins and looking at the markers of stress in their life and actually how that manifests in yes, physical appearances in terms of wrinkles, but also their inflammatory levels and their propensity towards lifestyle related illnesses. So we know that stress and love as an antidote to what we experience on a day-to-day basis is something that has a very, very powerful impact on on our physical wellbeing.
Julia Samuel: Every thought that you have has a physiological component and every feeling that you have has a psychological kind of thinking component. So the two are two networks that completely interrelated and dance and influence and shape each other. And so it is, you know, I love the work that you're doing. It's so important and all of them are connected.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Julia, let's talk a bit about a bit about your background. I want to introduce you to the audience. I'm sure they already know a lot about your work. You know, you've done a few books now, you've been working in the industry for a few decades. But tell us a bit of three. Tell us a bit about your background if you if you wouldn't mind. Like, you know, where did you grow up?
Julia Samuel: So I grew up in London. I was one of five children, two sets of twins. So I have a twin brother and twin sisters. So my mom had five children under the age of four.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Julia Samuel: And my father always said, you know, she always did overdo it, your mom. So, and I was brought up, which led me to be a therapist in the sense that I was brought up from by parents who my father had fought in the First World War, a Second World War. They were both children of survivors of the First World War. And they were very much of the kind of generation, and they had no choice of forget and move on, keep pushing forward, you know, everything's fine, put on a good show. And yet my mother had her sister, her brother, her mother and her father had all died by the time she was 25. And my father similarly, his father and his brother had died. And they never talked about them. So there were these black and white photographs around the house that I didn't really know anything about these people who were my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. And it made me be more interested in what was going on below the surface than what people were saying, because that seemed to be the most powerful influence, you know, in our household. And it fermented me as a therapist.
Dr Rupy: Wow. So that so you wanted to go into therapy on the basis of your own experiences with your family and how they were repressed, I guess, the feelings?
Julia Samuel: It was the it was the repression and also connection. I mean, I love being in relationship. I feel like I know you already because I've listened to your podcast and I'm a big fan, but it's such a powerful, rich kind of connection. And so, I mean, I'm incredibly lucky. I do a job that I absolutely love learning and getting to know people really very intimately. And being a twin, I think influences that. You know, if you look at twins in the womb, they kind of suck each other's thumbs and their toes are kind of pressed against each other. So I think I'm always looking to move forward rather than back.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. That's so lovely. One of my really good friends, she's just delivered twins and we're getting lots of images. We went to see them at six weeks as well, six weeks old, and they're still in this cot and they're still like hugging onto each other as if they're still in the womb. It's magical. Like I'm fascinated with twins.
Julia Samuel: It is fascinating. Really fascinating. I mean, because I had a twin brother and my parents were old-fashioned, I was separated from him straight away. He had one bedroom, I had another with my sister. And we were educated completely separately because that was the kind of traditional way of doing things. And so that I think that is also a loss, you know, that I wasn't really with him that much.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And do you what are your like your earliest childhood memories? I'm not trying to turn this into a therapy session for you, but I'm just I'm curious as to your opinions on your on your own childhood.
Julia Samuel: So my memories are that we were a gang, the five of us. And so when we went anywhere, we were kind of an energy and a force, as you can imagine, five children under four and two sets of twins, people looked and nobody had twins then. And so I felt like I was part of something that was powerful. But I also remember, you know, I hid a lot. So I hid in cupboards and went off and kind of did things on my own a lot. So there was this, I think two ends of a spectrum. One when where I was, I think I was a bit kind of quiet and a little bit scared maybe. And other times I was like part of a gang. But I was the little one always running to catch up.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Julia Samuel: I think I still am. I actually think I'm still I'm still running to catch up.
Dr Rupy: It sounds so nice. It sounds like, you know, being part of a gang, almost like, you know, Enid Blyton novel of like Famous Five. Yeah. That's literally what conjured up in my mind when you mentioned that.
Julia Samuel: There was wonderful, there were some wonderful aspects to it. Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, awesome. And you mentioned this sort of um this culture of uh stiff upper lip and and put a good show on. I think now we're we're we're recognizing um the disadvantages of that perspective in that it can hide trauma that needs to be um needs to be breathed, needs to be discussed, needs to be uh sort of explored. Do you see any benefits of of that sort of that mentality at all, you know, in in in the correct dose?
Julia Samuel: I mean, the thing that I think is really important is that in our closest, most intimate relationships that we feel free and able to talk about all of our worries, our concerns, our suffering, our, you know, our traumas and so that we have particularly in our family that those are the place where we feel safe to be fully who we are with all our vulnerabilities, our furies, you know, that we can um don't need to to defend ourselves against. I think we do need defenses for going out in the world, getting up and going to work every day. I think promiscuous honesty where you kind of overshare with people who don't know you can really do you harm. So I think it's choosing the right people in the right place to be fully open. And I think sometimes so there's lots of different type of trauma. So there's event trauma, which is like what's happening in Ukraine or the Paddington rail crash or the Grenfell Tower. And then there are a lot of what I call little T traumas that where you, you know, I I spoke with someone the other day who had a moment of being bullied at school and that where she felt excluded, totally excluded and kind of laughed at. And that shaped her relationship with making friendships from when she was eight years old. So if you looked at it on the outside, that isn't a massive event trauma, but actually it was a little T trauma that influenced she doesn't have big close friends because she always felt she was unworthy. And so and she hadn't talked about that for 40 years. If she could have talked earlier, you know, with her mom, with her with her family and even in a teenager, she would have addressed that false self-belief and changed her outcome. So I I I think being able to talk about the things that happen to us that shape us is vital.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that definitely resonates with me because I think there is an expectation that you need to have a massive event in your history to explain some of your characteristics or how you react to things in your adult life. And it can be as um seemingly small, quote unquote, uh that that can have a massive impact. I mean, certainly when I explore some of the things that I had going on when I was a child, I was very lucky to be in a loving household of my parents, you know, on the surface of it, I don't think I can identify anything particularly grand that would have happened, but dive a little bit deeper and you can see some of the signatures of of what has shaped my personality.
Julia Samuel: And you one always will be able to.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I mean, exactly. Yeah.
Julia Samuel: You know, as I say very loudly in the book, the most loving families, there are no perfect families. And all families have their ways of coping with difficulty and they move us on the spectrum of functional and dysfunctional depending on what's happening and your internal pressures and your external pressures. But if you are in a secure loving family like yours, you at least have the kind of core sense of being good enough that you can find ways of navigating them.
Dr Rupy: And you can kind of see it in your face.
Julia Samuel: You see what I'm saying? There's an openness, there's a basic trust that it looks like you have.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: Doesn't mean you don't suffer or have, you know, things, fault lines and things that you think are wrong, but it feels like you have a kind of basic sense of, I'm okay, I'm good enough.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. It's taken, it's taken a bit of work, I think for me and I think it's um a skill I'm always trying to like push further and you know what, like long conversation podcasting, sort of forgetting that there's a mic in between us or a computer screen in our case. Um, you know, I I found it absolutely therapeutic. Like I I've loved the journey I've been on over the last four or five years doing podcasting for fun and now it's become part of almost like a weekly therapy that I do. It's it's wonderful.
Julia Samuel: Because it's really intimate.
Dr Rupy: And that's why people enjoy listening in, like hearing you and I speak like we were in the room, like we've met each other and known each other, but being very open. And also I do think, you know, in my in my last book, this two shall pass, it was about our capacity to change and adapt. And so as you said, it's taken a lot of work and it will if you're going to grow and thrive, there will all be always be new things that come and get you and kind of go, oh, ah. And it's your capacity to face that, allow it to shake you up, feel the discomfort or the distress of it, and then allow it to kind of be integrated into you and how you're going to respond to it, how you're going to manage it, that then in the end is growth. If you kind of block it and go, no, I'm not going to do that because that's pushing too many buttons, you become kind of brittle and and limited.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. You mentioned earlier about um families and how we're all along this sort of spectrum, I guess, of of dysfunction and there's nothing, there's no such thing as a as a perfect family. What why do families in particular drive us mad? Like what what is it about the family? Because there are things that like my my family members, I'm not going to name names, but my immediate family members will do that just drive me up the wall, but if it was someone else in my life who who is important as well, I probably wouldn't react in the same brash way, but because it's my family, my immediate family, it just, yeah, it it it triggers me in a in a way I can't control.
Julia Samuel: I think there's lots of reasons. I think where we love most, we hate most, we're most invested in, we make our deepest mistakes. And also the body remembers, the body holds the score. So if a sibling or a parent does something, it ignites the five-year-old you that is responding that you have no actual conscious memory of and you revert back to the five-year-old Rupy who felt, you know, bullied or, I don't know, annoyed or whatever it was. And he comes rearing up. And it takes quite a lot of adult you to go, hang on. What, what is going on? To kind of slow down, take a breath and not have a tantrum like a five-year-old.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I'm going to remember that. That's a really good point because you're right, the reaction can be of that of a child having a tantrum. And you kind of reckon you're like, where is this coming from? Like I this is not how I am. I'm a 37-year-old man in a position of responsibility, you know, and and I can react quite uncharacteristically. It's uh
Julia Samuel: But also it's the power, it's sight, sound, touch and smell. So it's it may be that they say something, but it's the tone of their voice, the you know, if your mom could look at you in a particular way, like my my mom's died, but she could, you know, I was 58 and a grandmother and she could look at me with a particular kind of scorn or and I would literally shrivel and also want to kill her. Both. And so you have to I have to do this sort of thing, like I'm pressing my hand up to make it to you, time out. Okay, take a breath. No, I'm 58. You know, and also your parents can be children. My mom was a child in so many ways. You know, and so then you can get sibling rivalry between parent and child or you as a parent can be rivalrous with your children. So all of those dynamics that are kind of wired in us play out. You know, it's incredibly um and they it works faster than our brain, than our prefrontal cortex can control.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's it's that reflex action. We we've dived into some of the family dynamics here, but I just wanted to to to take a step back and talk about um your your experiences as a therapist and in your training because am I right in thinking you used to work at St Mary's? Was that where you you started?
Julia Samuel: 25 years I was at St Mary's.
Dr Rupy: Wow.
Julia Samuel: So I set up their um post that they'd never had before of supporting families when a baby or a child died. Um so I worked in maternity and paediatrics and supported the doctors, trained the doctors and set up the whole kind of service for bereaved parents and a memorial service and how we supported them and what happened to them um during um you know when the the baby or child had died so that they were better supported. And it was, you know, I I'm I'm now on the Imperial Ethic Committee. I will never leave St Mary's. You know, it's a it was the mother and father and everything kind of to me as a professional. And just that building. I love belonging. I love my lanyard. You know, I I've still kept it, my NHS lanyard that I could beep it and it would open doors.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: But but and go to go to a shop and get 10% off Costa coffee. But it's that, I mean, I'm making it small, but it was that it's that sense of belonging to something that is bigger and better than me. And the doctors that would pass me in the corridor, the nurses, I mean, I was the walking dead person. So if anyone saw me, they'd want to tell me about somebody who died or something that was bad. But you know, I I I had real connections with them and I still see them all. I still have supper with some of the paediatricians and I still ring them when my grandchildren are ill in a panic. So it's a massively important part of me. And and from there within a few years of working there, I um helped to establish and launch Child Bereavement UK, which is the charity that supports families when a child dies and when children are grieving.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, there's so much I want to unpick there. Um that really resonates with me being part of something bigger and the lanyard as well and like keeping my lanyard. So I I went to Imperial, that was um my med school and so I know St Mary's well. Uh we had lectures there and there was
Julia Samuel: I taught there in that lecture, that Robert Fleming
Dr Rupy: Roger Bannister.
Julia Samuel: Roger Bannister.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, with his he's got like a there's like a mural of him on one side of the wall. It's incredible.
Julia Samuel: And all these medical students who sort of eating their breakfast or their heads down. I'd make them come to the front. The last thing in the world they wanted to talk about was babies and children dying. And then I would make them do a role play. Um and that actually woke them up and then they were really brilliant, obviously.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. No, I've got really fun memories there. I actually did a paediatrics rotation there as well. Um I forget the uh the lead consultant now, but uh he'd been there for a few years. I'm sure you probably know him. Um but uh yeah, no, and and part of uh something that I'm going through at the moment, I'm uh starting my sabbatical um from from clinical medicine because I want to focus on on my app and the nutritional medicine side of things and a few other projects that I've got. And it's it's wanting to still be part of that something that's bigger than me. So going to my my local hospital, Chelsea Westminster, being part of the team, interacting with the nurses, admin, other doctors, other professionals, you know, that sort of day-to-day, I'm I'm kind of craving. And so every now and then I'll I'll pop in. I'll just go for lunch with some of my old colleagues and stuff. And it's it's you're right, it's it's wanting to be part of that that um that unit. It's it's it's like a
Julia Samuel: And that it's it's not just that it's bigger than you, it's better than you. Like, you know, it's this system with incredible people saving people's lives. You know, every single day they're going above and beyond to save people's lives. And I know there are errors and things, you know, that are wrong with the system. But in comparison, my life is literally just nothing. You know, it is completely meaningless. So it's connected to that. And these, you know, I the doctors and the nurses and all the sort of team I work with are incredible people. Just incredible um human beings.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: And funny with such dark humour.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, no, we we definitely do have dark humour. I think that's a coping mechanism. And uh I think you're being hard on yourself. You've done a you're doing a lot through the books and all the educational stuff that you've done, all the things you've done.
Julia Samuel: And I can talk to you about my app, my grief works app.
Dr Rupy: Oh, do it. Please. I wasn't aware.
Julia Samuel: It's an amazing app. It's it was App Store of the day. It's had unbelievable reviews. It's a 28-day course of how to support yourself through grief where I've done films. So you can it's sort of 15 minutes every day the course and then there are like 60 tools, breathing, meditation, exercise, so there's a journal, there's prompts. So, you know, grief is 24/7. Therapists, if you can get them, are once a week. And so if you wake up at 3:00 in the morning with a pounding heart and kind of completely overwhelmed or whatever it is, you can go to my app and there's a tool that can calm you down. And then there's also the course that takes you through the process of grief. Um so it's very holding and supportive. Um and I've had unbelievable reviews. People, you know, somebody said yesterday I saw one, he said, I've been struggling with my grief for three years and after seven days on your app, I feel completely different.
Dr Rupy: Isn't that, isn't that amazing?
Julia Samuel: It honestly makes me cry.
Dr Rupy: It's incredible that, isn't it? Because there are, I guess there are comparisons with when you put something out on Instagram or a video or a podcast and someone listens to it and you might have recorded that a year ago and it has so much of that incredible impact and resonance with that individual that you've had no interaction with whatsoever. Isn't that amazing?
Julia Samuel: That, I mean, I completely agree. And I, you know, there's so many schools of thought about kind of arguments against the virtual world. And in the same way as I think for ourselves, we need holistic medicine of what we eat, how much we move, what we put our attention to, who we spend our time with, what we're doing has an effect on our physical and mental health completely interconnectedly. I think there is an absolutely vital place of um the virtual world that can reach people in a way that we cannot reach them. You know, the knowledge that I've gained over 30 years, now has been downloaded, I don't know, 25,000 times by people who can use it. I could never have seen those people. And it's helping them and changing them and supporting them and they're using it with their families. So that has unbelievable value. And, you know, you and I talking now, this the thing about podcast and different to kind of newspapers or kind of little clips on the radio is like you say, people listen to them two years later. Um so it really has a massive um impact, which I'm very grateful for.
Dr Rupy: I'm really excited to dive into grief works actually after this because um I I I me creating my own app that launched only a couple of months ago.
Julia Samuel: I saw it. It's very good.
Dr Rupy: Oh, thank you. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Well, it's very sort of um it's it's very stripped back at the moment. So we've got like a huge number of recipes and we've got lots of plans to add new features so we can help people eat consistently well every day and educate them in in the in the process. Um but I imagine the amount of love, care and attention that you would have put into your app in terms of creating that course and all the other tools as well to help people because one of the things that I think is quite limiting working in the NHS is that we're never going to have enough doctors, we're never going to have enough nurses, we're never going to have enough allied health professionals.
Julia Samuel: Time and attention.
Dr Rupy: Time and attention is always going down. And actually, if you track the growth of the population versus the per capita nurses and per capita doctors, we're actually increasing a lot higher than the growth of the population, yet we're always in this perpetual sort of um position where
Julia Samuel: On the back foot.
Dr Rupy: Exactly, where we're always needing more and more and more. And so digital device, digital solutions, I think are something that we need to embrace more. And I can imagine your app being certainly part of that part of that.
Julia Samuel: And because like with yours, you know, it feels weird my face on it and my voice and and all of that. So in some ways that feels like me being a massive narcissist and egotist. But for actually for which feels weird and horrible, but for the app, it means people feel like it's me and they have a relation with me and my voice. And so they feel supported personally and intimately and in an interconnected way. And then they trust it. And the minute they can trust it, they can use it for their benefit to help them bear the pain of grief. And um, you know, pain is the agent of change, allowing ourselves for this new reality of the person that's died to for us to face it and come to terms with it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I I love that that term you use, pain as the agent of change. Um I I wonder as someone who's had to listen to and enjoy, I'm sure you get this question a lot. How do you cope with that level of exposure to other people's grief, pain, bereavement, you know, all all these things that thankfully, I mean, we all have to experience it at some point, but it's not as part of our vocation. And I guess your perception on on how you deal with it is going to be vastly different to to anyone else who's listening that who who isn't in in therapy. Um I wonder if you could talk us through your your process of how you deal with with creating some separation, yet being so intimate as you are with with your clients.
Julia Samuel: So I mean, it it changes me all the time. And I don't think I can defend myself against my clients because I can only really work when I fully attune and I'm open with them. And it has had, you know, profound effect on the preciousness of life and kind of living knowing that I could die and other people could die, means that I don't always, I do sometimes, take life for granted and I feel enormously grateful. And, you know, every night I say thank you to God, but it's not really a religious God. And I name all my children, that my in-laws, my children's partners and my grandchildren's name and my husband for being alive. And I just feel like that's part of my response of dealing with death every day. Like every day I say thank God for Natasha, Emily, Sophie. And um, Benjamin, in case he's listening, which he won't be. And um, and that I'm healthy. So I think there's that side of it where I really appreciate life. The other side of it is that I spend so much time hearing terrible stories that I can't not know that terrible things can happen in very simple ways. So, you know, with my grandchildren with grapes or crossing the road or being in the bath or carrying them downstairs or being on a bicycle, all of those things I've worked with people whose children have died doing simple life things. And so I annoy my children because I'm always like, So it's in me because I just see the bad thing and that's wired. You know, I've got the amygdala going, I literally chop grapes into tiny little kind of centimetres. So there's that side of it, which is more negative. Um and then I do masses of physical stuff. So I kickbox, I cycle, I run, I do Pilates, I do yoga, I do meditation. And I do stuff that that makes me laugh. I see friends, I hug a lot. I only watch fun things on telly. My husband always wants to watch all these frightening things and I kind of go out. Or people send me these films about death and dying. It's like, no, no, please. I want to watch Mamma Mia, happy endings, Ted Lasso, like stuff that is, you know, warming and has happy endings.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: To balance. So I do stuff to try and recalibrate the balance in me to keep me regulated so that I can be up and at them and available for my family and for my clients. I think sometimes, I don't know if it's true for you, that sometimes I think my work gets the best of me and I kind of bring the dregs home.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: And I really want to try and not do that.
Dr Rupy: There there's so many things in that because um so what what I worked in paediatrics for for a quite a while in accident emergency and I we obviously see quite a few things from uh things that are near misses to unfortunate accidents that are a lot more severe. And so whenever I see like my friend's kids uh like standing on a table and you know, they're three or four years old, I'm like, please just please. Or or you know, there's something on the floor and they're crawling around and you know, they can put something in their mouth. I'm like, yeah, like small little things that please just like, you know, for
Julia Samuel: And swimming. The sea.
Dr Rupy: And oh, yeah. It just all the time. So I totally resonate with that. I'm I'm kind of like on high alert. And and it's so funny you say that about TV programs because my partner is obsessed with all those sort of murder documentaries and missing people and that kind of stuff. And I I can't I can't watch that stuff. I need to watch like something uplifting. Like put a cookery program on, put a sunny kitchen on. It's like one of my favourite programs. They're always having fun and laughing. That's what I need to surround myself with.
Julia Samuel: Completely. And that's where food comes in. I mean, one of the things I, you know, I was so excited today is that I see food and sitting around the kitchen table and being a family as one of the most significant touchstones to family life and to memory. So that our sense of smell is 10 times stronger than any other sense that we have. And in and with with grief, um you can smell your grandmother's chicken curry and she may have been dead 15 years and you are literally zapped back in time to your grandmother's kitchen table, sitting there with her and feel the warmth of her love as she made the chicken curry, the memory of her laughing and what she said to you in that moment. And so it has this unbelievable power for memory, for love, safety and security within us. And having that sense of safety in yourself is the only way you're then available to connect and love others. And as we know that love and connection is the most important thing in our lives, that when we feel loved and connected to others, that is equals the quality of our lives and our outcome and actually our health, our longevity, um our wellbeing and our success. So, I mean, it's a incredibly vital part of our um mental and family health.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. I I think that that's really going to resonate well with the audience, um because it's so innate, it's so natural to think about those experiences and imbue those memories with the richness of the smells and and everyone thinks like, you know, their mom's or their grandmother's dish is like the best dish ever. And it's because it's tied to some of the of those different memories with the hard wiring of our brains. So, yeah, I mean, as you were describing that, I was thinking of all the all the memories that I have of my like kitchen table and and all the different foods that we would experience and and stuff like that. So that's, yeah, it's that that really does uh that really does get me.
Julia Samuel: And it and so one of the things I talk about with grief, and I know I should be promoting my other book, Every Family Has a Story, but it's totally connected. Because it's how we inherit love and loss is that it isn't by forgetting the people that's died, it's by remembering them. And that food and particular dishes are touchstones to memory. And so that we we want to kind of be um active to make dishes that remind us of particularly important people in our lives at particular significant times or on at ordinary times. And that it keeps them alive and available in us to support us even though they've died.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr Rupy: Before we move on to families, I know we're we're we're we're we're spending a bit of time on on grief here, but I think it's very important. We we don't really talk about it uh as much as we should. Um when uh the first wave hit and I was working in A&E, we we got redeployed to different various areas of of the hospital. So I'm fully trained as a GP, but I also have experience in acute medicine and ITU from my uh time in Australia, um about six years ago now. And um we uh in our hospital put together a family relations team, FRT team. And it was of senior doctors, anaesthetists, cardiologists, uh even some dermatologists, I think, actually consultant dermatologists that came and uh we would sit in this room and we would do uh phone calls updating the families of people who are in ITU, the families of of the the patients and stuff because if everyone remembers, you know, even
Julia Samuel: Couldn't go in.
Dr Rupy: and we had no way of updating them. You know, technology in the NHS is pretty sparse as it as it stands. Um and we had some unfortunate incidents where they would call up to the ITU and then they would be given erroneous information from one of the junior doctors. So it was all a thing. So every day was preparing families for pretty bad news, you know? It was reminding them of the of the likelihood of of uh bereavement, of death and everything. That weighed really, really heavily on the whole team. And we actually had our own therapist that would come in once a week and actually, yeah, sort of
Julia Samuel: I did it. I did it twice a week for St Mary's. Lunchtimes.
Dr Rupy: Brilliant. Fantastic. Tell us a bit about your experience of that because you know how how much of a of a burden that was for not just the family, but also the the staff themselves.
Julia Samuel: So I don't want to break confidentiality. So I can I'll just tell you kind of generalized things. So, um a paediatric team was converted to an intensive care unit team, like like you were. And I um would do virtual Zoom lunchtime calls twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, one till two. And everybody in the team could come and they'd bring their lunch and um and just check in. So I'd get people to check in. I'd say what they were having difficulty with. And I would give them basic kind of tools of how to destress themselves. I call it um how you can um I can't even think of the word I even use now. Um stress busters, basically. And giving them breathing exercises, mechanisms of supporting themselves, ways of communicating to their families. So the the pressures were immense because it their families, the transition between work and home was really difficult. Um and then the work was incredibly difficult when people were dying and having to communicate to the families as as you've said. And so it was finding ways of helping them regulate their systems. And I think one of the big things often with medical staff is not to conflate the feeling of failing with the fact of failing. So that when somebody dies, you kind of feel as a doctor that you have failed, that you haven't done what you were set on this earth to do and trained to do. And you need to kind of recognize that with despite all the the technology and medicine that we have, there are things that you have no power over and that this isn't in your gift. There's limits of what you have agency to change. Um and so to support yourself to know that you did the best you could and the person died and to separate the feeling and the fact um very clearly. And but but also that there has to be a I gave them a kind of 10-minute set of tools that they could do when they left the hospital so that they could um sort of destress and calm themselves down as they as they went home and and the same coming back. Um and there were some beautiful acts of love from staff for people bringing in instruments and playing music. You know, they were unbelievably loving and went above and beyond um what anyone would expect a member of staff to do. And and they a lot of them felt, and I think you probably did too, that they were kind of grateful that they were able to make a difference and do something uh concrete while the rest of the world felt completely out of control and powerless. And so there was this real energy of like, we can do this. We, you know, as a team, we are going to do this. And it was the the power of the team helping and supporting each other that kept them together. And some of that is humour, some of that is kindness, some of that and all of it is based on trust and goodwill.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: And it was an amazing thing to be part of. I did it for the three lockdowns. Um and it was terrible. It was, you know, I have never seen more suffering in my life than I have in the last two years. And I have seen a lot of suffering.
Dr Rupy: Wow. Yeah. I I mean, it's strange, isn't it? Because um we were talking about this within the team uh during the first lockdown and whilst everyone was sheltering and uh staying indoors as they as they were told to do so, we were going out and there was definitely that sense of camaraderie, there was definitely a sense of belonging. But sometimes that caused a bit of conflict at home because it's almost as if the people going to hospitals and doing the key working roles had a a greater sort of uh sense of purpose.
Julia Samuel: Purpose.
Dr Rupy: Exactly. Then our our partners at home and and actually, I mean, that that was a source of conflict in my household actually with my partner for a little while. I mean, we've since moved through that, but it it took a while for me actually to recognize that that was an issue. I mean, you know, there was us being clapped for every Thursday. Uh whereas, you know, people at home, okay, well, where's their clapping? What, you know, are they
Julia Samuel: And everyone was doing their best. Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely.
Julia Samuel: I think there is a and I think that whole um kind of energy of going out, A, putting yourself in the way of danger because you were in the pandemic and in the infection so that those left at home were worried about that and frightened for you. And if people are frightened for you, you're not they don't necessarily love you more. They like want to punch your lights out for making them scared. But also, although you were working incredibly hard and it was exhausting, there is a kind of sense of of the greater good, doing the dishes, keeping the children homeschooling, doing the washing, all of that kind of invisible labour that gets absolutely no acknowledgement is also unbelievably hard work, but it is boring as well. And so, yeah, you know, it's that there can be a real clash of that. You think you're a bloody god, you know, and let me do all the kind of debris, thanks.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: And for successful relationships, you want equal relationships. It really matters that they're equal, that you feel equal as human beings, equal how you are kind of professionally and personally. And if you feel like you're married to someone who's like this super god that everyone's clapping for, you literally hate them. You don't love them more.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, that's a very good, a really good point and definitely resonates with my experience. I I I love some of the tips that you gave earlier, um in terms of uh practicing thanks and gratitude. That's definitely something that I was doing uh and I still do and I've done for a little while actually. Um the physical sort of uh unblocking of those emotional stresses. So the idea of you kickboxing is brilliant. I I I love the fact that you kickbox. That's awesome. I do like hit training and various different types of movement to sort of
Julia Samuel: So do I. It's circuit breakers. Because the cortisol sends your system into fight, flight or freeze, which is the kind of fire alarm in your brain. And if you've flown by kickboxing or 12-minute app or whatever it is, HRT, you drop your levels of cortisol and you increase your levels of dopamine and oxytocin. So then you're available to connect. And what's so difficult about not having a circuit breaker is that when you don't do that, you increase your levels of stress. And so then you are really frightened or really furious or probably both, but you're completely disconnected from yourself and the people that you need most.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: And so it just feeds on itself. And so using these mini circuit breakers is vital to keep you regulated.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, on that note, let's um let's talk about families. I I love books that are uh narrated through the lens of stories. Uh and your book is a collection of stories, all anonymized, obviously, for confidentiality. But I think within all those different stories, even the ones that didn't uh I I didn't immediately relate to, within the stories that I read, I was like, ah, there's something there uh that I that that just clicks with me. Uh and it was the way it's written, the way, you know, the the story unfolds. So I wanted to ask about um if there was a common thread through all those stories that you that you can identify, um that we can all learn from.
Julia Samuel: I think it I think it's two things. I think one is that um love is the underpinning foundation of ourselves as human beings and as the core of our relationships in our families. But loving is not a soft skill. Loving is hard. So loving in action, loving by stepping back, loving by staying quiet, loving by moving forwards, loving by letting go, loving by holding on, all of that is unbelievably complicated and requires a lot of skills and self-awareness and capacity to endure the things when you want to punch and you step back and take a breath. And so that is the kind of key of secure families. And that it's the quality of the intention of that loving and the quality of the communication between the family members through the generations that will, I think, give us the kind of resource of a family as the bedrock of our lives. And one of the key elements I really wanted to show in the book is the importance of multi-generations and the influence of multi-generations. So that in some senses, I think grandparents, maybe in Asian cultures, grandparents have more of a recognition, but certainly in this Western culture, they're kind of like the old bods who are a bit of a pain or can be a babysitter. Whereas I think what I kind of saw from these families that I worked with, and they were all real families, a few of them were composites, but most of them were people who I anonymized who were actually the the people I worked with. The power to influence your adult children as a grandparent and to be the resource of safety or fun or a kind of freedom for grandchildren because it isn't the same. You know, parenting is much harder work and much more tricky. Grandparent, you're liberated in many ways. But also the the the other big part of my message is that so much gets passed down through the generations. And I'm wanting to say to people listening, kind of when you're thinking about, am I normal or am I okay? What's wrong with me? It probably didn't start with you. Like look up and find out and discover the untold stories, the untold secrets, the shame, the trauma that has been passed down psychologically, epigenetically and behaviorally, but you don't have a narrative to begin to make sense of it. And when we don't have a story, our emotions go to kind of frightening, limitless places of fear.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: So we need a narrative to we need all the pieces of the jigsaw that can allow us to make sense of it. And we don't have a story, our emotions go to kind of frightening, limitless places of fear.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: So we need a narrative to we need all the pieces of the jigsaw that can allow us to make sense of how we're feeling, so that the story we tell ourselves fits with the knowledge that we have. And the story we tell ourselves is the person we become.
Dr Rupy: Let's double click on that for a second because I think if anyone's listening to this and perhaps they have an open family or maybe a more closed family, what are some tips that you have to open up that discussion, to dive into that narrative of why a parent or a person feels the way they do? Like how do they actually start having those conversations with those different generations within their family if they're able to?
Julia Samuel: So I think, you know, everybody listening, they know their family best. So with that in mind about who they are and what they're like, one of the ways that I think is really helpful to communicate within a family is by being outside and walking and talking. So being alongside each other, being in nature, having the space of nature where you can have silences while you're looking at the ground. The rhythm of your movement together is very kind of calming. And actually, as you're outside, you it generates thoughts and feelings that are freeing. And I would suggest that the person starts with themselves because the minute I'm asked a kind of, how are you feeling question, it's like, fuck off. No, I'm not going to give you my most kind of hidden, hurting self. Fuck off. And I'm a therapist. So I think you have to start with, I've been thinking, I've been wondering, I've been looking at, I've been listening, and what I know is this, and what I'm curious about is that, what I'd love to know more of is this. So start in a very kind of open, generalized way. Mom, I'd love to know about your childhood. Dad, tell me about your dad. Like, what was his experience in the war? What do you know? What don't you know? But in a kind of very unthreatening environment where you're just curious and you want to know stories and that you can talk to aunts and uncles and best friends and look at, so one of the things that I did for the book was that I did a genogram for every family so that you could see the dates of birth and see who had died and then kind of work out, well, my goodness, he was only nine when his dad died. But also you can do a genogram where you look at patterns where you see who got divorced, who was an alcoholic, who had mental illness, and you can begin to chart from both sides of your family what is going on. And then look with curiosity, like, what do I know about that? You know, what do I know about this? I mean, I doing the book, you know, both my parents have died. And there were so many questions that came up that I never, ever, ever asked them. Um because they had put on a kind of uh steel girder around them, don't ask me. But actually, you know, even as a therapist, I could have been, I could have easily done it in a way that would have gone behind the steel girder.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Does that lead to do you think about that with regret sometimes or like you
Julia Samuel: So I do. I have regret. And and so people who are younger than me whose parents are still alive, what I suggest is, you know, don't have regrets. And record some of the conversations. I mean, I did record my mom's voice, um which I've still got on my phone. I listen to it now and again. She was slightly bonkers some of the time, but anyway, it was it's wonderful to have it. But I spoke to my godmother who's her best friend. I spoke to a number of people who really know them. Um and didn't get much truth be told. But at least I did ask.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that
Julia Samuel: None of them talked about things that matter. They all talked about stuff that doesn't matter. They literally never told each other what was really going on.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Julia Samuel: They talked about what they were doing, what their children are doing, who's got married. They talked about all the nothingness of life and none of the substance of it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Well, I I I love that tip about demonstrating vulnerability yourself before prying and asking questions about their childhood and their relationships and how they grew themselves. I think that's a really effective uh tool for uh communication. And you you also talk about this concept of um uh fighting productively uh as as almost like, you know, expression of of love. I mean, like I said right at the start of this conversation, my family are probably the the ones that rub me up the most the wrong way. Uh and I think finding a method for fighting productively would be very useful for not just me, but a lot of other people. How how do you create an environment where you can actually have productive heated discussions?
Julia Samuel: I mean, you've said it in that where you love most, you fight most because you care most and also you see each other most and you push each other's buttons because you know each other so well. Um so I think the first thing is to acknowledge you will always have fights. It's not like a good relationship doesn't have fights. It's that you will have rupture, you will have these fights and it might be on the surface about the bins, but normally it's about other stuff. It's often about love and attention and it can be played out in all sorts of ways or power. So I did these 12 touchstones for the wellbeing of family and so the the one about fighting productively is that it's how you fight, rupture and that you have to repair afterwards. And it's that connection of repair. So how you fight is not using words as weapons of mass destruction and bringing up all yesterday's and last year's and 15 years ago fights and not saying things like you always and you, you know, horrible words, but again, starting with yourself. I felt when you didn't put the bins out that I was da da da. So that you own your feeling, you say what the thing is that's wrong and you're kind of open to what they say. And it may get out of control and you may have a kind of child fight because you can do your best and you can still lose it. But then once the heat, your body, you know, once your body's in fight or flight, you can't do anything about that. You're in your brain is on attack or you feel hurt. So you can't be your kind of third eye more responsive, kinder self at that point. So then you have to kind of let the heat calm. And then have a kind of uh uh a method in your family that you come back and you talk about what was really going on. What were we really fighting about? What was it that you were really telling me? What was it that I really needed to tell you? What can we learn from this? How are you feeling now? Is there still stuff that I said that's hurting you that will come up again the next time we have a fight? Let's look at how we can feel closer and learn more about each other given that this fight told us that there's something between us that is that went wrong or not went wrong, but is is a is a clash. And use the clash as a place of learning and knowing each other, knowing yourself. And often you feel closer. I mean, I hate fights. I'm really scared of anger, but really the only person I can fight with is my husband. Um because he's taught me that he doesn't diminish me and scare me and frighten me. And so we have quite good fights. And so that's where I got this from basically.
Dr Rupy: Oh, wow. Oh, that's that's really helpful. I mean, I I yeah, no, a lot of that definitely um I can relate to in terms of those productive fights because we, well, I mean, me and my my partner, Michelle, we uh we try and do a weekly check-in where we actually bring these things to the surface before they bubble over because I'm I'm like you, I'm not very confrontational and I'll hold on to things.
Julia Samuel: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Because I will feel to myself and I'll say to myself, it's not worth it. And I've learned to change that vernacular and say, I'm not, am I saying to myself, I'm not worth it?
Julia Samuel: That's so good. Yeah.
Dr Rupy: And then in that case, you know, it's it's the wrong way to talk to yourself about it. So we we start having those sort of uh conversations. And you refer to this, I've heard you say the shitty committee uh in your brain that constantly talks to you. And I I I remember reading a book and thinking, oh my god, I do have my own shitty committee. Uh I I do have the sort of this collection of critical voices.
Julia Samuel: Critical voice.
Dr Rupy: Very critical voices. Yeah. How do you, how do you communicate with that shitty committee yourself? Like how how do you dampen down what that they're saying or what you're saying to yourself such that it doesn't ingrain in your personality and how you react on the surface to other people?
Julia Samuel: I mean, the first point is when you've got, oh my, when you said to yourself, oh my god, I've got a shitty committee. So it's the awareness because often this voice is grinding you down and you have no, you're so used to it, it's so familiar and toxic and cruel that you actually, it's just who I am. So kind of maybe the first step is taking, you know, 10 seconds out and being aware of what is it that is circulating in your mind? What are the words that you're saying to yourself and write them down. And as you write them down, you you'll realize with kind of shock, oh my goodness, I would never speak to anybody like that, not someone I didn't even like. That it's often, you know, at such a level and of course there's a spectrum and all of these things, it could be just mild, but often it's quite harsh. And you can't, you know, so I think one of the the powers of therapy is we can't change the past, we can't change what happened to us. We can change what we do with what happened to us. We can change our relationship with what happened to us. And that we are wired to change. We have this incredible neuroplasticity, which is like our superpower. So when we give ourselves the time, the attention, the worth and the love to know that we are of value and we allow ourselves to focus on something, we can really change it. Um and so the awareness, the writing it down, and then it's like the familiarity. So it's a bit like with mindfulness, like you log, oh, there I am. There I am saying to myself, you idiot, or I mean, the thing I often think with men, when you're talking about not wanting a fight, this is a bit mean and very biased as a woman. But I think a lot of men are addicted to Sky Sports and they have tattooed on their forehead, all I want is a quiet life. And I think the Sky Sports could be taken to court for many divorces. But that thing of all I want is a quiet life, beneath that is also saying, I can't be fucked. Like, no, don't bring me your complaints and your misery and what you're pissed off about. Sort yourself out, leave me alone. But that isn't how relationships work.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, no, I I I can definitely see that. I'm not going to say anything about my personal life, but yeah, no, definitely. I uh yeah. Um I uh I wanted to give you this uh this thought experiment um as we close here talking about um families and in particular with the the the concept in your in your book. If you were health czar for a day and you had the power to instill practices in families up and down the UK, what things would you encourage people to do today in a preventative manner to prevent fractures, prevent fighting? I mean, it's it's inevitable that we are going to fight. It's inevitable that, you know, there's no such thing as a perfect, ideal family. We're all dysfunctional in some way or another. But if there are things and practices that you could say to every single family in the UK today, what what would some of those be?
Julia Samuel: I mean, obviously that's a massive question. I could tell you 300 things. I think at the core maybe it is compassion. Self-compassion and compassion for others that, you know, what we care and mind most about, we also hurt most and we're at our most vulnerable. And so self-compassion by being turning to ourselves with warmth and kindness and turning to others with warmth and kindness enables us to kind of show up and take responsibility and deal with what's going on. And I think it does mean that we, if we have self-compassion, then we the the next steps to that mean that we look after ourselves. You know, we do some meditation, we may take some exercise, we may make sure as a family we sit around the kitchen table and eat together and listen and talk to each other. But I think if you don't have that as the foundation, it's very, very hard for the other steps that are very important to follow.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I love that. I mean, as you eloquently state in your book, emotion is emotional connection is a basic human need. And um like we started this conversation, love is medicine. And I think if we can lean into that, um we can all have healthier relationships with ourselves as well as with the people who are closest uh to us. Um I really appreciate you taking the time and the book is wonderful. Honestly, Julia, I've I've learned so much from it. Um and I love your vulnerability in the book as well. I mean, you talked about the story with the same sex uh couple, for example, about how it wasn't your forte, you hadn't had as much experience with it. And I'm I'm really glad to see that you you actually wrote about your experiences there from a position of um inquisition uh as well. It was, yeah, it was that was that was one that's definitely stood out to me.
Julia Samuel: Well, thank you. I mean, I I've loved this conversation and I hope people listening, even if they only take one thing that they'll take something for themselves and that that will support them in their lives and in their families. And I and I, you know, with the book, I wanted it to be about families, but it's relational. So I wanted to show what I don't know and my biases, you know, we all have biases. And where I felt, you know, this awful excoriating shame, like, ah, I've got something wrong. And because that happens in our relationships and it happens in therapy.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's something I I, you know, being a general practitioner and someone who comes in with uh a condition that you're you're not that fully aware of, sometimes you can have that uh that feeling of of self-doubt and that you've almost let yourself down by not having all the perfect answers at your fingertips. And I think it's just part of being human. Um so yeah, absolutely. I I totally agree with that.
Julia Samuel: But also your patients and mine will trust us because they'll read it in our face that we don't know. And they smell a bullshit in a nanosecond. So that how to keep the relationship alive and connected and kind of functional or, you know, attuned online is by saying, do you know, I really don't know about that. Or I need to go and talk to somebody about that. I need to go and find out more. I want to give you a proper answer and I don't have it right now.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, absolutely. Julia, thank you so much. It's been wonderful chatting. You're you're so open, you're so lovely. I can't wait to do this again at some point in the future.
Julia Samuel: I hope we do.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, in person. I'll have to definitely cook for you.
Julia Samuel: Will you cook for me?
Dr Rupy: If I was to cook for you, what would I, what would you want?
Julia Samuel: Oh, I I I want you to cook what you love cooking because I think I'd love it then.
Dr Rupy: Okay, great. Great. That's a deal. Thank you so much. I really loved it. Thank you.
