Why You're Not Broken: Jo Robinson-Howarth on Happiness, Trauma and Finding What Actually Works

So today on Mindcake, I'm joined by Jo from the Happiness Club. Now, Jo has a very interesting storey. She's been through her own lows, and mental detours, and somewhere along the way, decided to turn that lived experience into something genuinely supportive for other people. So we're here to talk about what happiness actually is, why it's so slippery, and what we get wrong about it. Joe, welcome to Mindcake.

>> Jo: Thank you so very much, Lee. I'm very happy to be here.

>> Lee: How are you?

>> Jo: I'm, good, thanks.

>> Lee: We met at the. I would say, infamous. Now, on the podcast Infamous Birmingham, Mind, Body and Spirit Festival.

>> Jo: We did. You were visiting, traipsing around the hall.

>> Lee: Yes.

>> Jo: Soaking it all up. And I was exhibiting. Yes.

>> Lee: Soaking is one word for it. Yes, it was an interesting experience, but we won't go. It does seem like a lifetime ago now.

>> Jo: It does.

Jo Dodge was the middle child of three children whose parents got divorced

>> Lee: Before we get anywhere near, the Happiness Club, can we dive into a little bit about who and where you were before Pre Happiness Club?

>> Jo: Pre Happiness Club. I was not a very happy person.

>> Lee: Okay.

>> Jo: I mean, I think quite a lot of us that do this kind of work come from that kind of a place. Yep. Because it's what inspires us to do this kind of a kind of work. Hey, so, yeah, I mean, how far back do you want me to go? All the way.

>> Lee: Well, how long have you got, Jo?

>> Jo: I mean, I've got lifetimes, Lee. I can stay for that.

>> Lee: Well, wherever you think is an, appropriate place to start.

>> Jo: I mean, I. I was thinking about this the other day, actually, because I was thinking about chatting to you and. And a couple of other talks and things I'm doing, and it occurred to me that I have probably. Am I allowed to swear on this podcast?

>> Lee: Oh, yeah, no. Go for your life.

>> Jo: Oh, super. Lovely. it occurred to me that I have probably experienced firsthand most of this type of. That any human being can possibly experience in their life.

>> Lee: Okay. And it may not competition, Joe.

>> Jo: No, no, I know. Well, I mean, it feels like it sometimes, but, it did make me smile because I was like, oh, yeah. So if someone's been through that, I could talk about that. And someone's been through that, I could talk a shit. Oh, my God. I could talk about pretty much anything, and have firsthand experience of it. So. I grew up in Somerset. I was the, middle child of three children whose parents got divorced when I was so young. I can't even remember my dad living at home. Okay. My stepdad, my dad remarried So I had a stepmom and I had a stepdad who wasn't married to my mum, but we called him my stepdad because he was there for years. So I had that horrible sort of dysfunctional family. And I grew up in the 70s because I'm really old. So back then, actually it wasn't a usual, it wasn't a normal thing for your parents to not be together. So I was kind of an odd one out at school because nobody else really had parents that were separated. My stepdad, bless his heart, was an alcoholic and quite emotionally mentally abusive, mostly to my mum, but also to the three of us because he lived with us, you know, pretty much full time and he had numerous and many affairs and came and went like a yo, yo. So there was just no stability in my childhood whatsoever. None at all. So I would have described myself at the time as in the head.

Lee: Okay.

Jo: I mean, I had no concept of what normality was.

Lee: No, I mean, here's the thing. So were you aware, that things were different for you or was that your benchmark of, well, well, this is just kind of normal?

Jo: Yes, and that's a really good question because it was completely normal to me because it was my reality. So it wasn't until I really hit my teens and started having those kind of conversations with the friends that I acquired in my teen years and realised that my family situation wasn't at all normal in the slightest. That was kind of the point at which I went, oh, okay, other people don't live like this. Righty ho. and then obviously then there was deep shame and I couldn't possibly tell my friends what my reality was at home because that, that was just too horrible to even contemplate.

Lee: And presumably this is still going on at this point.

Jo: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, and I mean, as with, I mean, I feel desperately sorry for him now. He's been dead many years now. and with the work that I've done, I feel massively sorry for the man because he just hated himself. He had his own demons and he hated himself and he took it out on the people around him. and I mean that for me, that's what abusers do. And with abuse, you know, to the outside world, he was this incredibly charming, lovely man that wasn't at all like that behind closed doors. And so then when I was 18, I was like, get the hell out of Dodge. so I moved from Somerset to Liverpool and I came to Liverpool to do my university years and I ended up staying Liverpool So I still live in the Northwest now. That's really when I sort of came into my own, if you like. I had the freedom to be whoever I wanted to be. And, and, and I met other people from a lot of different backgrounds who had divorced parents, who had had difficult upbringings. And so I felt more at home here than I'd felt anywhere. And then at the age of 21, I got a phone call from my mother, desperately upset. I lived, at the time, I lived in a house with eight other girls in the middle of Liverpool because I was in Studentville and the phone went and it was my mum. And she was devastated because my stepdad had had yet another affair, bless him. But this time he'd had an affair with the lodger that she'd taken in to stay in my bedroom while I was at university. Under his own roof.

Jo: Right, exactly that. Right, exactly that. But he was a prison officer at the time. He was an ex naval officer and he was, he was, he had come out of the navy and he was a prison officer at Brixton Prison. And I mean, he was 6 foot 4, he was built like a brick house. so he didn't argue with him. So I put the phone down to my mum and I called him in his digs in Brixton and I told him that if he ever went near my mother again, I would kill him. And I meant it. I meant it with every fibre of my being. Him being 6 foot 4 and built like a brick and a prison officer thought that was hysterically funny. Told me to go back to the playground, little girl. And put the phone down on me. Yeah. At which point I went upstairs to my bedroom and kicked a hole in my bedroom wall because I was so angry where one of friends found me doing it and reminded me that we had a deposit to pay, you know, for our rent. I was like, crap. Yeah. So stopped. But he, he, he, I obviously scared the.

When I was 25, my biological dad passed away unexpectedly

Out of him because he never went near my mother again. So that was. I take full credit for that. Absolutely, yeah. yeah, absolutely. I, you know, I was a size 8 and 21, 5 foot 7. I obviously scared him witless. And then my mum went on and met someone else who she's still with and is very happy with them. She's in her 80s now, so hooray for that. And then when I was 25, my biological dad passed away of a heart attack very suddenly. So he was Literally here one day and then gone the next. And that's what sent me to therapy for the first time. And because I just. I, mean, my whole world turned upside down. Anyone that's lost a parent, especially at a young age, it just. It's just the most. I can't even begin to describe it. Literally, my world turned upside down. I had not got a clue where, what I wanted to do, where I was going, how to get there, if I even could work out where to. I was just complete. I've never felt so lost in my whole entire life. It was like nothing matters. Nothing matters at all. All this stuff that you thought was important in life just dissolves into the background. It just doesn't matter. and that's how I ended up in therapy, because I didn't know how to get myself out of it. And I had a friend who was seeing a counsellor and I said to her, would it help me? And she was like, yes, absolutely. And it wasn't really till I started therapy that I realised how up my childhood had been. And so, I mean, the first couple of years I was in therapy, we didn't even talk about my dad passing away. We talked about everything else. Yeah, yeah, because there was so much. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, so, I had therapy on and off for years. And I still. I mean, I'm a therapist now and I still have therapy. When I. When something comes up. For me, that's my first port of call now, is get myself into therapy. I've had. I've tried every different modality you can possibly experience because for me, it's. You know, I was a total sceptic when I first heard about therapy. I thought it was something Americans did. Yeah. you know, it wasn't something that normal British people did. You didn't talk about your feelings, you didn't show them for her. And that was not a thing. you didn't say how difficult stuff was. You just. It just didn't happen. So to have this person once a week just for me, so I could say whatever I wanted and it never went any further. And then they helped me make sense of it. was just. I mean, it was just revelation. It was awesome.

>> Lee: Life changing.

>> Jo: Yeah, completely. And so I started to make changes. And, I mean, my. My romantic life, I was in my 20s, was just bonkers. I went out with a guy who, for about three years, who didn't even acknowledge that we were a couple to anybody else. He was, again, emotionally mentally abusive. Just, you, know, but again, outwardly the most charming guy that you could met. I went out with an alcoholic. I nearly married an alcoholic who was the loveliest man when he was sober, but just couldn't keep away from the alcohol. And I literally came within a hair's breadth of marrying him. And I think if I hadn't been in therapy, I would have married him. And thank God. I mean, by the time that happened, I'd been in therapy for about a year and I was like, oh, yeah, no, okay. Oh, no, I'm repeating the patterns of my childhood. Oh, yeah, okay, maybe we won't do that. Maybe that's not a great idea. Super. So thank God for therapy. And then I met my husband and got married and had my two beautiful children and thought I had everything that I could possibly want or need. And we were together for 21 years. And then we had, you know, we had our ups and downs, as couples do, and we had an argument and we had this argument and I looked at him and went, oh, my God, you're not at all who I thought you were.

>> Lee: Oh, really?

>> Jo: And, yeah, I realised I'd spent 21 years thinking he was someone else, convincing myself he was someone else. Yeah, he. He did and said something deeply personal, which I won't share. that was so utterly disrespectful. I was like, oh, my God. I've been completely wrong about this whole thing for 20 years. And, So that was four years ago. So that was Post Happiness Club stuff. But.

You were diagnosed with breast cancer last year but are now cancer free

>> Lee: So how did that make you feel?

>> Jo: Oh, stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I've never felt so stupid in my whole entire life. I was just. I am. I mean, I'm a therapist by this point. I was a therapist. I've been a therapist for years. I'd helped lots of other people through the same kind of thing that I was then experiencing. and never joined the dots myself, because you don't you convince yourself that everything's fine and it's all right and it's all good again. It just takes that thing, doesn't it? It's just having your eyes opened. It was like the scales fell from my eyes. And what I. Then I couldn't unsee. it was like. It got to a point where I couldn't put it back in the box. And so then I was like, oh, crap, now I have to divorce you. Oh, that's a. So that was four years ago. So, yeah. and then last year, I got diagnosed with breast cancer in July, the last six months of 2025 were spent going through the cancer journey. So I'm now cancer free, which is awesome. I was. I was pretty much cancer free when you and I met in November. I was, recovering from the surgery. So, yeah, I mean, that's in an absolute nutshell. That's it. The reason that I trained as a therapist is because when I had my two kids that sent me slightly do lally. I, just. It was. I mean, I'd always wanted children. Always, always, always.

>> Lee: And then they arrived and you realise, oh, hang on a minute, this is.

>> Jo: Oh, this is hard work. It's really. It is, right. It's a culture shock. You have this beautiful, idyllic idea in your head that you're just going to sit and play with little kids and it's going to be beautiful and they're going to say, mummy, I love you every five minutes and you're going to feel all cosy and warm and then you. Yeah, and then you actually have children. You go, holy. Oh, my God. This is what having kids is. I mean, it is all of that. It is the beautiful stuff. But, oh, my God, it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

>> Lee: What I don't understand is you need a licence to drive a car, you need a licence to even have a dog, I believe, but you can walk out of a hospital with a human being.

>> Jo: Exactly.

>> Lee: And just get on with it, really. There's no. No test, there's no exam, there's no.

>> Jo: Nothing at all, Right? Nothing. No one cheques you out, nothing. It's. And it. I mean, I've got friends that have gone down the fostering and adoption route and, I mean, they have to train, they have to pass all kinds of tests and train to have someone else's child that they were allowed to have without any tests or tr. Yeah, it does beg a belief, really, doesn't it? It does. I mean, part of.

One of the things that I teach as a therapist is how the mind works

One of the things that I teach as a therapist, where I start with a client, is to talk to them about how the mind works, right? How this beautiful thing inside your head actually works, how you've become the person you are, how you've picked up, the beliefs you've picked up. And all of that starts in childhood. And, you know, I. When I did my training to become a therapist, I learned all of this. I was like, how. How are we not taught this before we become parents? How is this not part of the antenatal pathway? It absolutely needs to be, because we don't know it, we don't realise the power of our words and our actions and they don't have to be overt. You know, in the work that I've done, some of the, the most deeply held beliefs aren't from a super traumatic event. They're from something that you would consider throwaway, trivial. But because of the way the age that you are and the emotions that are present at the time that the things said, it becomes traumatic. And I think that's the reason why a lot of people don't go for therapy because they're scared of what might come up. Well actually as a therapist I can tell you nine times out of ten what comes up isn't scary. It is something almost ridiculous that you know, when you talk to the client they go why do I believe that? And it goes back to when they were three, someone stole their toy, which, do you know what I mean? It's like, which is traumatic for a three year old. I'm not saying that isn't, but it's

>> Lee: not, not helpful when you're 43.

>> Jo: No, exactly. We carry all of that through our lives, right? And then that's how I ended up training because my kids were about 18 months and 3 and a half years old and I was putting my 18 month old down for her afternoon nap and my 3 and a half year old beautiful girl, who's an absolute chatterbox was then, still is now and she's 18 now, kept following me around the house trying to talk to me while I was trying to get my youngest off to sleep and I absolutely lost my, with her like big style, ended up sort of shovelling my 18 month old into her cot and just literally lost my, and looked down halfway through losing my, at this beautiful three and a half year old face that was in absolute terror and crying her eyes out because I'd lost it, realised why I was becoming the grown ups from my childhood, realised that was not at all what I wanted to do with my own children. Apologised, pass myself to her, got straight on the phone to my therapist and said I have to come back because I'm. So went back into therapy. Then at the end of those, six months later, at the end of those therapy sessions I said to my therapist because I wasn't working at the time because I was a stay at home mum. I said to him do you think I could do what you do? And he said to me I've been waiting 10 years for you to ask me that question. I said well you could have told me, right? And that's when I started my training. That's when I became. So I was sort of late 30s, around 40. I became, I did my training and became a hypnotherapist and a mindfulness practitioner. and then it was through my one to one work with other people that I started the Happiness Club. So the club is a membership. It came to me because I was working with one to one clients and they were saying things to me like, I, wish I could put you in my pocket and take you home with me because, you say all the right things and then I get home and I forget them all and I can't remember what you said and I don't know how to deal with this thing when it's actually happening. Yeah. And I could remember feeling exactly the same way when I first had therapy. And I was like, there's got to be a way, right? Because obviously I can't move in with all these people because I've got my own kids. There's got to be something I can do to give them that kind of lifeline in between their sessions. And so I started a Facebook group and my one to one clients went in the Facebook group and I posted a technique or a storey or a something every day in that group for them to use that day in between their sessions with me. And that grew into the Happiness Club. So.

>> Lee: So what now is the happy. We got there in the end.

>> Jo: We did like 16 years later. I told you I've experienced everything

>> Lee: it reminds me of. There was a session at work about. And I can't remember what it was. I think it was about trauma or I think it was how likely you were to be in therapy or depressed. And there was a, a list of. It's like two sides of a four. And every sort of life experience had a, a weight to it. So I can't remember what's. But say you'd had. You've been through a divorce in the last five years. You get like 10 points if you'd been diagnosed with whatever, then you get 20 points if you'd moved house. It was so many changed jobs and whatever, whatever, whatever. And then you totted up all your points and then depending on what category you were in, it kind of told you how many points you'd accumulated how likely you were to be depressed or severely depressed within the next 612 months. Everybody had reasonably low scores and they came on because we always go around and read out our scores and I had like, I don't know, like triple everybody else. But I think, like I say, it's not a competition, but I think if you'd have done that, Joe, you would have got bingo.

Jo: I mean, I'd have won. Yeah.

Lee: You needed more sheets of paper. I think you did tick all the boxes. But luckily preempted even a preemptive strike with, with therapy, which is now transposed into the Happiness Club.

The Happiness Club membership operates via an app

So tell us, you told us a little bit what is. So say I want to join the Happiness Club.

Jo: Yeah.

Lee: What do I get for joining the. What does that involve joining the Happiness Club?

Jo: So the Happiness Club membership operates via an app, because what doesn't these days, right, we have our own app and basically every. It works a bit like a Facebook feed, a social media feed. So every morning we release what we call our daily strategy. And that might be a straightforward technique. so today's was a relaxation technique from one of the Happiness Club trainer team, because I'm not doing it by myself anymore. We have a team. so it was a straightforward relaxation technique for people to use. Sometimes it's a breathing exercise, sometimes it's a storey about our lives. So I've shared, I share quite, I'm quite open, as you may have already gathered, I share quite personal storeys. So I've shared about how I moved through the cancer experience. Right. So the things that kept me going through that. So it's something every day for the members to read, to think about, journal on, use something. So it's a daily strategy. we then have a bit later in the day we have our daily do, which is like a mini mindfulness based task which might be something like, give out three compliments or give yourself a compliment or give someone you love a hug or just a little something for them to do that day. Yeah. And then in the evening we have our, daily gratitude exercise comes out. So some of the members join in on the app and some of them do it privately, but it's a nudge every nine o' clock every evening, you know, go do your gratitude for the day. And then we run a live webinar masterclass every month. So those are recorded and uploaded onto the app. We run a live meditation every month those are recorded and uploaded onto the app. So we get guest experts in, we run them ourselves, we go out to the members and say what will help you most this month? They give us topics, we create a masterclass for them and then we have online courses in. So do it yourself in your own, your own time, at your own pace. Courses on stress, anxiety, depression, confidence, that kind of thing. And we have a library of pre recorded hypnosis and meditation tracks as well.

>> Lee: Wow.

>> Jo: And again, members can. Members can contact us and say, I'm struggling with this. Can you create a hypno audio for it? And we'll create it and put it onto the app so everyone can use it. So it's very interactive. It's very. We do our best to engage the members to make sure that we're giving them what helps them. rather than us sitting, going well with therapists, we're all, yeah, we know, we know, yes, we know what people need. Right. We actually go out and ask them what they'd like us to teach them. and if I can't do it, we get a guest expert in. So it's. Yeah, that's the membership basically. And it, it's the most beautiful thing. It's grown really organically since I set that Facebook group up again, just through having conversations with people. We have a contingent of members who have been members literally for years because they, they joined because they experienced severe anxiety, which is where, where I came from. You know, when I went into therapy when I was 25, I realised that that, that feeling that I'd had for pretty much my entire life was called anxiety. I didn't realise before that. Right. I'd had it since my dad left when I was five and it just. For me, it was just that, feeling of treading on eggshells and never relaxing and being on hyper. I mean I absolutely. Hyper vigilant, hyper alert because you had to be, you know, what the. Was coming around the corner next. Right. So, so we had members who come from there who the, the club has helped them put that down, but they have fostered that understanding that it really is beneficial to do this stuff proactively. Right. To, to like you said to me before, preempting whatever might happen next by continually looking after yourself in that way. I mean, I absolutely. And I'm trying not to say this glibly, but I absolutely breezed through the cancer experience. Experience. Right. I was really lucky because the lump they found was super small and it was super treatable. And it reignited in me that feeling that I had when my dad passed away that, oh, hell, nothing else matters, but also what I was able to do. And I absolutely credit this with the therapy that I've had and the way that I live my life. What I was able to do was absolutely see. And I did a series of social media posts on this. see the gifts of the situation. Because for me, and I've said this to people, and they look at me like I'm bananas, which is not unusual. But for me, cancer was one of the best things that's ever happened to me. Which sounds.

>> Lee: I'm. I'm nodding. I'm nodding for all the wrong reasons, but I understand exactly what you're saying.

>> Jo: Yeah, it absolutely is. And, I think always will be.

>> Lee: It is the mother of all wake up calls.

>> Jo: Yeah. Yep. It deeply reminded me of everything that I learned when my dad passed away, Everything I've learned since of what actually matters in life. I'm. I'm staring off into the side because there's a photo of my two daughters on my desk here. It just is, like you say, the mother of all wake up calls. And it. It has given me the most beautiful experience. And I don't think at any point I felt scared. The only thing I was scared of was leaving my children potentially. But I didn't really believe that that would happen. And. And I absolutely credit. You know, the Happiness Club is kind of, a. What I teach in the Happiness Club is how I live.

>> Lee: It sounds to me like. Well, firstly,

The Happiness Club gives people accountability to improve their lives

Yeah, you and me differ in that. In. I was a mess. But it sounds to me like the Happiness Club gives people, obviously, a lot more than this. But I'm thinking from my own perspective, it would give me accountability. So you have that little nudge in the morning, middle of the day, end of the day, and you. And then that becomes a routine, it becomes habit, and it becomes, like you say, a way of life, rather than dipping in and out. Oh, well, I did breath work last Wednesday, but I don't feel any better. Well, I wonder why. Because you're not doing it as a continual.

>> Jo: Exactly.

>> Lee: Thing.

>> Jo: Exactly that. Exactly. That is. I mean, I've done so many. I've used so many different modalities and done all the stuff, and they're all brilliant and beautiful and they all help, but we're human beings and life gets in the way and we forget to use them. You know, even. Even me, I forget to use the stuff I've learned. Right. But I get my own nudge every morning from my own app that says, hello, if you remember to do this today. Have you thought about life like that today? Could you have a go at this today? Could you look after yourself for the day? Thanks very much. Right. That's the point of the Happiness Club. That is it in a nutshell. Yeah.

>> Lee: Okay.

What does happiness mean to you now? And has that definition changed

So that kind of rounds up the Happiness Club. How it started, what it is. What does happiness mean to you now? And has that definition changed?

>> Jo: Okay, so yes, it's changed a lot. So when I started the happiness club, I was very much of the opinion that negative emotions were bad things, that we didn't want to experience and that what we should all be doing is striving to feel happy the majority of the time using the sort of definition of happiness being like joy and a fleeting emotion kind of a thing. And that contentment and all of that came with happiness. What I've come to realise over many freaking years of working on myself and learning from people much cleverer than me, much m wiser than me, is that happiness is actually all of it. That true happiness is life. That we are here on this beautiful planet and this sometimes planet, we are here to experience all of it. There is no such thing. This is what's changed for me massively over the last probably six or seven years, is that there is no such thing as a negative emotion. There's just emotions. And emotions are just energy. And that, energy feels certain ways in our bodies. And we interpret that feeling of energy in a bad or negative way and we interpret that one in a good or positive way because of what we've learned when we were little because we started crying and we were told not to cry because that was, was bad. Or we started shouting and we were told not to get angry because that's bad. And so we've learned to label the different movements of energy, which is all emotion is in our body, as either good or bad. But the truth is they're all valid. They're all just emotions, they're all just energy. And there isn't one that's better than the other. And we're here to experience it all that. I wish I had written this analogy, and I hadn't. And, I'm very honest. I'm not going to steal someone else's analogy, but one of the, the sort of online teachers that I follow used an analogy of, a buffet at a party. Said if you went to a party and you turned up to the buffet and all there was on the buffet was chicken drumsticks. You like, if you like chicken drumsticks, you'd be quite, please pleased for the first two or three. But once you'd eaten three chicken drinks, they'd be bored out of your brain, right? It'd be like, come on with some variety. What we want when we go to a party and see the buffet is lots of different types of food colours and, you know, some. Some things we've tried and we know we like, and some things we've never tried that we can try and decide whether we like them or not. Right. That's the point of a buffet. And so it is with life. Right. We. We think that. That as human beings, we think that if we only ever felt joy and love and peace, we'd be blissfully happy all the time. And the actual truth is we'd be bored out of our brains.

>> Lee: Yes. Or looking for more happiness. So I'm now at this level of happiness.

>> Jo: Yes.

>> Lee: I would be happy. For example, I would be happy if I'd written a book and then I wrote a book and was I happy? No. Because I wanted it published, then I'd be happy and then it got published. Would it be happening? no. I want to see it in. On the shelf. So you're always. Although you think that. That if I could just get there, that would make me happy.

>> Jo: Exactly.

>> Lee: And ultimately you just readjust your goals onto something else.

>> Jo: Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. There's nothing wrong with going, oh, actually, I've reached this thing now. I'd like this thing. That's what drives us as human beings. That's what helps us grow. Right. But what we forget to do is appreciate the experience and of doing it. It's the doing. It's the experiencing of writing the book. That's where the actual joy is. I use that word because it's hard work. Right. And again, we don't normally go, oh, it's. It's hard work. How joyful. But do you mean. But actually that's what we're here for. We're here to challenge ourselves and grow and expand. I think that's what life is about, is our expansion.

>> Lee: Here's a question for you, Joe.

>> Jo: Go on.

>> Lee: Sorry. Go on, finish.

>> Jo: No, no, no. I was just gonna say, I think the way we expand is with the different experiences. So if we don't have those experiences, we can't expand.

Grief is a hugely difficult thing to experience and move through

>> Lee: So when your father passed away.

>> Jo: Yeah.

>> Lee: Would you wish for grief to be. For there to be no grief? For you not to have to experience grief?

>> Jo: No.

>> Lee: Well, that's part of the buffet, right?

>> Jo: Exactly. That's part of the buffet. Right. and again, before the cancer experience, I used to describe my dad's passing as the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to me. Because if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have ended up in therapy. I would have probably ended up marrying an alcoholic. I would have repeated the patterns of my childhood because I wouldn't have had that knowledge and that understanding, and that self awareness because I wouldn't have gone to therapy because I would have carried on thinking it was a crock of. Right. You learn from it. It's, There's a very famous. Which I'll totally misquote because I'm rubbish with quotes, but I can't remember which bloody guru said it, but something about, you know, the lotus flower grows in the mud. It grows in. It literally grows in. Right. And that's the same for us. And it doesn't mean that it's enjoyable to experience crap. It doesn't mean that it's not hard work and it's not difficult and it's not challenging. Of course there's. Those things are, Grief is, you know, a, hugely difficult thing to experience and move through. But, oh, my word, the learning that comes from it. Oh, my word, the opportunities that you are given to experience new stuff. I mean, I wouldn't have done half the things that I've done in my life if I hadn't had the learnings from the difficult stuff. Right. It's, it's. And it's a, It's a fine line because in today's personal development world, you know, there's a lot of talk about toxic positivity and it isn't that. It isn't, that's one of my bugbears is people that just plant smiles on their faces and pretend everything's fine and just think high vibes only and think positive.

Tim asks what makes your skin crawl about virtual grief apps

That, I think, was one of your questions for me, was what makes your skin crawl? That makes my skin crawl, right? Because. No, don't do high vibes only. What the are you doing that for? Because what you're doing in your high vibes only is pushing down all the inside you because you're not allowing yourself to feel it. So where it goes is inside you. So at some point that's going to explode. It's absolutely going to. And it might do, it might happen when you're 20, it might happen when you're 50, it might happen when you're 80, but at some point it's gonna, it's gonna show itself emotionally, it's going to show itself physically, it's going to show itself. It can't not. You can't contain all of that energy in your physical body ad infinitum. you just can't.

>> Lee: I, I agree that we shouldn't suppress these emotions such as Grief, however difficult they might be. And part of the reason I asked the question was because I saw a clip from a programme that I'm going to watch about AI It's. It's a programme of AI presented by the, redheaded woman who's like a. I don't know if she's a scientist or a doctor or whatever. Anyway, she's very clever. And the clip that I've seen is a guy in America who has this app when you talk to recognises. So basically you have to. You have to talk to the app and you have to fill out a questionnaire.

>> Jo: Ah. Of.

>> Lee: It's, not a very long questionnaire, I don't think. And it will basically regenerate you a, ah, virtual image or. Sorry, a virtual audio of you which you can then chat to. So the idea being. And it. And if you. If I would point yourself and anyone who's listening to this to try and find. I will put in the show notes what the clip is because it's. It's much better than I am explaining it as better or worse, depending on your definition of better. But basically he talks to his mum, his dead mum.

>> Jo: Oh, wow.

>> Lee: And the cadence is writing a. Hi, mum, I'm just, just checking in today. How are you? And she answers back, oh, hi Tim, or whatever his name is. Yep, hope you're doing okay. And blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's the com. It's the nuance in the voice because they. So they do it with the redheaded woman who answers the questionnaire.

>> Jo: Ah.

>> Lee: And she basically has a conversation with herself. And the way she says words and the cadence and like the vocabulary that she uses is spot on. And that's the argument that she has, that if I had the opportunity, just because her dad died earlier in the last six months, if I had the opportunity to do this, I could see why this would be so compelling. Because I could talk to my dad, even though it's not my dad, even though I know it's not my dad. But. But the. But the guy, from what we're saying that the guy who's invented it is basically doing it to sort of suppress. Why. Why would I want to go through grief? I don't want to go through grief. It's awful. So I'll just have this app where I can pretend that I talk to my mum.

>> Jo: And here's the thing. I mean, ultimately he knows that he's pretending, right? There isn't any getting away from that. I would bloody love to speak to my dad. I would pay top dollar if somebody could, could replicate my dad so that I could have a conversation with him. I would love that. And at the same time, I would absolutely hate it because he's dead. You know, it's like there. And I mean, it's, it's actually funny that we're doing the, the recording of this this week because it's the anniversary of his death. Know already that I will get increasingly emotional as I go through this week because I do it every year. He's been dead for 28 years. Yeah, right. 29 years actually this year. So, I will always miss him. I will always grieve him. That. And for me, that's beautiful. For me that that's exactly as it, you know, and I've said this increasingly, obviously since I went through the cancer thing. The only thing that is absolutely 100% guaranteed for every single one of us to experience death, physical death, what you believe about what happens afterwards is totally up to you. I have my own beliefs around that. But it's the only thing that we're all guaranteed to experience. And it scares the bejesus out of every single one of us. And for me, what, what experiencing the last six months has done for me is remove that fear. I'm going to, to pass away at some point and that might happen tomorrow if I step out in front of a bus by accident, I hasten to add. and it might happen in 50 years time, which is what I'm planning. Right. In fact, I'm planning to stay around till I'm 95. So, but that's, but, you know, best laid plans and all that. I can't guarantee that that's going to happen.

I totally agree with everything you say about AI. It is incredibly powerful

And it's the only thing that we're absolutely get. So, yeah, I, I'm with you. I, my, as you were talking, I was like, okay, so he's just suppressing his grief. Yeah, that's what he's doing.

>> Lee: But unless it's a conversation, having my wife, I get, I get that and I totally agree with everything. But if I had the chance to speak to my dad, even if it was, even if it was a quick five minute conversation and I knew deep, deep, deep down it wasn't him, but to hear his voice in a Conversation.

>> Jo: Yeah.

>> Lee: Not like, say he's not recording. that's very tempting.

>> Jo: It is incredibly.

>> Lee: Anyway, that's AI for you.

>> Jo: Yes. We'll see how that pans out. Right. Yes.

There are things that I have tried that have had no effect whatsoever

>> Lee: Well, I was going to mention that we met at the, the Mind, Body and Spirit festivals I've mentioned before in Birmingham.

>> Jo: Yeah.

>> Lee: Where there was a lot of woo woo and a lot of chanting and a lot of bongos.

>> Jo: Yes.

>> Lee: Is there a well being trend that makes you quietly roll your eyes or something that you've tried and thought, well, that was a lot of nonsense and I know from the conversation we've had and listeners will be able to tell that it sounds like you are going to shoot. If you have, you are going to shoot straight from the hip. I don't think you're going to hold back or give me a media answer.

>> Jo: No, I'm not going to give you a media answer. Yes. There are things that I have tried that have had no effect whatsoever. So there's, there's one modality called eft, Emotional Freedom Technique, which is tapping, which I don't know if you've heard of, which.

>> Lee: I've heard of this. Yes.