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Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Leading Psychologist: How To Finally Overcome Stress & Anxiety - Dr Julie Smith

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Dr. Julie SmithguestAli Abdaalhost

Oct 19, 20231h 54mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Life After the Bestseller and Why Impact Matters
Ali welcomes Dr. Julie Smith back two years after their first episode. She describes how life has changed and stayed the same, and says the most satisfying part of the book's success is hearing from readers whose lives it helped. They also discuss what a book can and cannot do compared with therapy.
- •Her daily life is still family and school runs, with content work squeezed in at night
- •Chart success is fleeting, while conversations with readers stay with her
- •Readers often share painful stories and limited access to therapy
- •A book can't replace therapy but can teach skills people practise themselves
The Feelings Wheel and Holding Feelings Lightly
Ali asks about the feelings wheel, and Julie explains how building emotional vocabulary helps people tell thoughts, sensations and emotions apart. They then work through the tension between feelings not being facts and feelings still carrying useful information. She describes holding emotions lightly and allowing them to wash over you.
- •Some people notice thoughts first and others notice body sensations, but these are woven into one experience
- •A wider emotional vocabulary gives the brain finer detail to predict and understand situations
- •Social expectations can lead people to relabel fear or anger
- •Feelings are best-guess messages to be heard but held lightly
- •Mindfulness means neither grasping at emotions nor pushing them away
Raincoat Skills and the Physiological Sigh
Using a rain analogy and her own live TV experience, Julie explains how to act on your values while carrying coping skills with you. Ali asks about the physiological sigh, and she explains the breathing technique and why the aim is to lower anxiety rather than eliminate it.
- •You can go out in the rain with an umbrella instead of avoiding it
- •She says yes to live TV because declining would be driven by fear
- •Reframing and values such as courage help her through the anxious moments
- •The physiological sigh is a large in-breath, a small extra in-breath and a long out-breath
- •The goal is to bring anxiety down enough to perform well, not to eradicate it
Other People's Emotions and Arguing in Relationships
Ali describes feeling responsible for managing a partner's upset, and Julie explains why this makes relationships feel uncontrollable. She says validating and sitting with someone's distress matters more than trying to fix it. They then cover whether to go to bed angry, a friend's 10 PM rule, and the role of humour in her marriage.
- •Discomfort with someone's distress is a sign of caring, but it need not be acted on
- •People who are crying often need validation rather than a fix
- •Moving from judgment to curiosity about emotions is a common therapy theme
- •Julie leans toward not resolving arguments when emotions are high, since sleep can calm the system
- •A friend's rule of no arguments after 10 PM improved his marriage
What Overthinking Really Is: Worry and Rumination
Responding to a listener question, Julie describes overthinking as worry, the thought washing machine. Rumination about the past is linked to depression, and worry about the future feeds anxiety through catastrophizing. She explains how mindfulness helps you notice which thoughts are useful and tells the story of her mindful run.
- •Overthinking is mostly what clinicians call worry
- •Rumination about the past maintains depression, and future-focused worry drives anxiety
- •Mindfulness means noticing which thoughts are useful and choosing where to place attention
- •Her run, using the sound of her feet on gravel, taught her mindfulness is a gym for the mind
- •Mindfulness is not an indulgent rest or deep relaxation
Using Mindfulness When You Can't Sleep
Ali shares how he used breath focus during a jet-lagged, sleepless night to step back from unproductive business worries. He mentions that a Tony Robbins event had stressed being in the right state for decisions. Julie adds that she uses the sensations of being in bed to tell her worries it's not the time.
- •Ali recognised that the middle of the night, while sleep-deprived, was a poor time to think about big decisions
- •Returning to the breath repeatedly led to a moment of serenity
- •If something is actionable, he notes it as an action point instead of ruminating
- •Julie focuses on the texture of the sheets and the room temperature to quiet her mind
Distancing Language and Thought Diffusion
Julie explains thought diffusion from acceptance and commitment therapy, using the Jim Carrey film The Mask. She describes simple techniques such as starting a sentence with "I'm having the thought that" and naming thoughts. Ali links this to the benefits of journaling.
- •Holding a thought at arm's length, like the mask, lets you see it as one possible perspective
- •Starting sentences with "I'm noticing the thought that" primes the mind to treat it as a thought
- •Giving anxious thoughts a name creates distance
- •Writing thoughts down can show how absurd they are, and reluctance to write one may mean you're buying into it too much
Challenging Thoughts: Byron Katie, Court Evidence and Labeling
Ali describes Byron Katie's four questions, and Julie places them in the CBT thought-challenging tradition, including weighing evidence as if in court. She explains that arguing with thoughts can backfire for some people, who may do better with diffusion. They also discuss belief as certainty and labeling thoughts as judgments, opinions or predictions.
- •Byron Katie's questions begin with whether a thought is true and really true, followed by a turnaround
- •Thought challenging weighs evidence for and against, but can set up an internal argument
- •Diffusion lets you hold a thought lightly whether or not it is true
- •Ali's cousin's belief that she was lazy loosened after they went over the evidence
- •Labeling thoughts as judgments, opinions, memories or predictions helps them carry less weight
Challenging Thoughts in Depression and Positive Thinking
Ali asks whether the court approach works for severe depression, and Julie explains that it is a slow process of loosening beliefs by degrees rather than reversing them. They then turn to positive thinking, where Julie criticises the idea of banning negative thoughts.
- •In depression, thoughts and low mood occur together and feed a downward spiral
- •Rating belief in a thought before and after exercises shows progress even if it falls only partly
- •Therapy chips away at layers rather than offering one turning point
- •Positive vibes only requires denying a human brain built to notice threats
- •Criticising yourself for negative thoughts adds a further spiral, so it's better to ask which thoughts are worth spending time on
Personalizing and Mental Filters
Julie explains cognitive biases as normal brain shortcuts, using personalizing, such as assuming a friend who didn't wave hates you. She then describes the mental filter, where positive information is screened out and attention goes to the negative, with examples from reading comments. Labeling the bias helps interrupt the spiral.
- •These biases are normal brain shortcuts aimed at survival, not pathology
- •Personalizing turns a neutral event into a story about you
- •Rejection by a group was historically a threat to survival
- •A mental filter ignores hundreds of kind comments in favour of one critical one
- •Naming the bias in the moment helps you choose whether to follow it
Stress vs. Anxiety and Our Love-Hate Relationship with Stress
Julie says stress and anxiety share one survival response but are labelled differently depending on how we interpret the situation, illustrated with a post office queue. Ali shares how he handles stress about waiting for his girlfriend. Julie recommends curiosity over judgment and notes we seek out stress in horror films and rollercoasters.
- •There is one threat response, and the labels stress and anxiety reflect how we conceptualise it
- •Anxiety tends to be more threat-based, such as fear of humiliation
- •Getting curious about why lateness bothers you can reveal where the feeling comes from
- •People choose stress responses through horror movies and rollercoasters
- •Meaningful achievements involve discomfort, so refusing it closes doors
Content Creation, Burnout and Not Basing Self-Worth on Numbers
Ali raises the content creator hamster wheel and burnout, and Julie describes working unsustainably at first. They discuss never feeling you've won the game, why she ignores analytics, and how having children and a prior career help. Ali and Julie also reflect on self-worth tied to identity, exams and resilience.
- •Julie describes content creation as a bottomless pit that takes whatever you give it
- •She says winning is in playing, and getting to work on what she'd read for fun is the win
- •She doesn't base her success on numbers and says her husband handles the analytics
- •Attaching self-worth to the highs means losing out when the lows come
- •Past hard work and setbacks serve as evidence that you can get through the next challenge
Self-Soothing and Distress Tolerance Skills
When Julie mentions soothing your way through difficulty, she explains dialectical behavior therapy's split between emotion regulation and distress tolerance skills. She describes self-soothing boxes that use the senses to bring a sense of safety during painful moments.
- •Emotion regulation skills keep emotions balanced, while distress tolerance skills help in overwhelming moments
- •Self-soothing means looking after yourself through discomfort rather than squashing the feeling
- •DBT self-soothing boxes hold items for different senses
- •Music, a familiar perfume or a favourite taste can create safeness
Three Types of Burnout and Values Check-Ins
Ali outlines the three types of burnout from his book: overexertion, depletion and misalignment. Julie says misalignment resonates strongly and describes the values check-in, in which you rate how important each life area is and how closely you are living by it. She describes balance as constant rebalancing, and she and Ali discuss ideal weeks.
- •Ali's three burnout types are overexertion, depletion and misalignment
- •The values check-in compares importance of each life area with how aligned you currently are
- •A big gap highlights where to direct attention without self-loathing
- •Balance is like a balancing beam, with constant shifting rather than a perfect sweet spot
- •Ali's Ideal Week Calendar gives a target to rebalance toward without needing to achieve it fully
Sustainable Work: Basics, Marathons and Rules That Force Balance
Answering a listener's question about long study or work stretches, Julie recommends treating work as a marathon and prioritising social contact, food, movement and sleep. Ali describes setting rules and delegating the calendar to enforce balance, and Julie notes tiredness isn't pathological.
- •The basics are social contact, good food, movement and sleep, and they are the first things we let slide
- •Sleep has a near-immediate effect, and therapists often restore these basics first
- •Ali uses rules like a regular date night and no early meetings, and has his assistant protect gym sessions
- •The 15th hour of work is unlikely to be productive
- •Listening to your body is about sustainability, not opting out of hustle
Supporting Someone Struggling With Their Mental Health
Ali asks how to approach someone who seems to be struggling without overstepping. Julie says well-meaning people often say nothing or stay away, when people mostly need connection rather than a solution. She suggests simply being present, doing normal activities together, and asking how to support them.
- •Fear of saying the wrong thing often leads to silence or avoidance
- •What matters is how you make the person feel, not what you say
- •Support can be a weekly dog walk and a distraction from the pain, especially for someone grieving
- •You can name your own uncertainty and ask them to steer you
- •You don't have to be the therapist

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