Transcript

#90: Dealing with Difficult People with Dr Rebecca Ray 

[00:00:00] Welcome back to episode of the Hormone Hub Podcast, where we talk all things perimenopause, menopause, and have the conversations no one else is having. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode. 

Kylie: Hello. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Hormone Hub. Today we have a very special guest. We have Dr. Rebecca Ray. Now, Beck and I actually go back six or seven years and we were in clinic together. When I very first moved to the Sunshine Coast up at Prydian Beach. So Beck is a clinical psychologist.

She’s an author and speaker who helps big picture thinking people master their psychology. And, Beck has, her expertise, she’s a professional zigzagger. And I think this sort of gives her, it sets her apart from a lot of other [00:01:00] professionals, a lot of authors, because she’s, got lived experience in so many different, different ways.

And she really encourages, people to make an impact on the world and live a life that’s fulfilling, unapologetic and free. I love it. Welcome Beck. It’s great to have you here. 

Rebecca: Thanks, Kylie. It’s so nice to see you again. I know. In this new iteration of our lives that doesn’t. Yeah, absolutely. 

Kylie: So back when we were both, seeing clients one on one in clinic.

And we would sort of say six or seven or eight a day, and that’s as many as you can, but now we’re both in a very fortunate position that we can reach, so many more people, which is, which is amazing in such a, relatively short amount of time that we’ve, we’ve both turned things completely around.

Yep. Now, Beck is also the author of six books. Now her books, I do highly encourage everyone to go looking for these and you’ll understand why after we, we sort of talk about it, but I think all of Beck’s books are particularly relevant to [00:02:00] our audience, what we’re currently experiencing, what we’ve experienced in the past.

So yeah, but first up, welcome Beck. And yeah to just give us a little sort of journey of, of how you got to just where you are, because you’ve got quite an interesting backstory as well. 

Rebecca: Yeah. It’s an interesting path because it was never expected. So I decided to be a psychologist when I was 15 and studied straight out of school.

And in that first year at uni, I also had a conversation with my grandfather, Ronnie. He’s no longer with us. One of the great loves of my life. He was a private pilot and he had his own plane. And he said to me, flying’s no harder than driving a car. And so I being a very anxious 18 year old who wanted to do something to prove myself, I guess, thought that, well, surely if I could fly a plane, I would [00:03:00] no longer be anxi I would no longer experience anxiety.

I’d be confident. And I would. I would feel like I’d proved myself. And so I started learning to fly in that first year and first year at uni. And I got my private pilot’s license and then realized that the anxiety did not go away at all. And so I thought, well, the answer to whatever you fear is to do more of the thing that you fear to make the fear go away now.

That might be the answer, Psych 101, but it’s a, it’s far more complex than that. So I got a commercial pilot’s license and a multi engine rating and a night flying rating and an instructor’s rating so that I could teach other people to fly. And I finally got to the point where I won a scholarship from Ansett, I think when Ansett was still around. to do more flying. And I had to face facts that actually wanted to vomit every time I drove to the airport. The anxiety was so bad. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t fly. I could. I never [00:04:00] failed a flight test. I failed a couple of theory tests, but I never failed flight tests. I really had to stop and realise that Ronnie was talking from his own, his own way of operating in the world.

This man could do anything with his hands. He could drive anything, fly anything, sail anything, build anything. I write essays. So yeah, despite the fact that we were best friends across the generations, I’m made very differently. So. Flying was hard for me. It, and, and flying a small piece of tin through the sky was, it was amazing, but it didn’t fix my internal worthiness issues.

And so I ended up going back to psychology and I did my postgraduate and did a professional doctorate and went into private practice. And for the next 15 years. The last couple of years of which I met you, I was in a state of managing, so I loved it, and then I [00:05:00] got really burnt out. I just did too much of it.

And again, I think that came from the same place. This feeling not good enough, and therefore not feeling like I could say no. I didn’t want to say no to patients that needed me. I didn’t want to say no to referring doctors that relied on me. And so everywhere I went, I very easily built up a referral base and therefore people wanting appointments.

And I, I got to a point where I had to respect that it just wasn’t working. I just reached my emotional bandwidth. And right before I met you, I’d actually had a break from clinical practice and the reason I went back to it was because we needed the money. And at that time I was like, what do I, how do I pay my bills if I don’t do psychology?

And I was also in a grief process thinking I studied for eight damn years to do this. And not only that, I’m really good at it. So it just felt like [00:06:00] such a horrible thing to throw away when I loved it so much. And so I thought if I go back part time, then maybe I’ll be okay. Hence, I arrived in a new town, in a new clinic to work part time and it didn’t work.

So I still did less hours, fewer days thinking that would be enough to treat the burnout, but I still had the same symptoms of dreading work the night before. Even though once I got in the room with a client, I was absolutely fine. Like I could do my job. It’s almost like that unconscious competence, you just do what needs to be done.

It wasn’t working. And so, as you know, I fell pregnant. And the last client I saw was the day before I gave birth to Bennett. I had a scheduled C section, so that’s how I knew it was going to happen. And the last client I saw was the day before. And despite telling clients and referrers that I didn’t know how long my maternity leave would be, [00:07:00] internally, I knew I would never go back.

And so I was left with… How on earth do you pay your bills in a capitalist society if you walk away from a very comfortable six figure income? How do you do 

that?

Kylie: And I think too, as practitioners, we’re never taught anything else other than a one on one model. You sit in your consulting room, you see client after client after client after client, and then you go home.

 (Rebecca) That’s right. Where that’s, we’re not taught any other model 

Rebecca: other than that. No, and you know how you hear people that talk about their goals and dreams and sometimes the, the way to set that up, someone will say, look to someone that’s doing what you want to do and follow the path that they’ve done.

There was no one, there was no one for me to look to. There was no, no one psychologist in. The Australian landscape that did something that I wanted to emulate. (Kylie) Yeah. And [00:08:00] so I decided to explore the online space, which was really weird for someone that had never had a Facebook profile before. Like, I just never touched it.

I was, I was visibility averse, I think, and so it took me a while to get comfortable with that. And once I did get comfortable with it, I randomly got approached by a publisher in New York, and she had a really unusual name. Her name was Rage, and she DM’d me on Instagram. I know, and I was like, This is spam.

This is b*llsh*t. Like, surely not. And so I said to her, I looked her up on LinkedIn. She looked like she was legit. And I was like, you’re going to have to call me. And so she

Kylie: Her parents don’t love her.

Rebecca: I know. Like, maybe it’s cultural.

Kylie: Surely you wouldn’t name your child Sunshine or you’d modify or, but right.

Rebecca: I was pronounced rage too. I was thinking maybe I’m mispronouncing it, but she rang me from New York and she was like, do you want to write a book? And I’d always wanted to write since I was little. And I was like, well, yeah, I [00:09:00] want to write a book, but how do you even know that I can write a book? And so essentially she got me to write my first book, which was be happy 35 powerful methods for personal growth and wellbeing, which is actually just a gift book full of all my favorite psychological techniques.

It’s a really useful little book. And she published that. And then I used that contract to get a literary agent in Australia and, I’ve been with Pan Macmillan in Australia ever since, and that brought the birth of my books. The universe listens to brave, the art of self kindness, setting boundaries, small habits for a big life, and finally this year, difficult people.

And what’s happened in that time is I’ve explored selling courses online. I’ve explored mentoring. I’ve explored obviously book writing and audio. I do some work for Audible as well. I have three, three releases on Audible. (Kylie) Yeah, great. And another one to come out next year. Yeah. They’re really cool.

And I’ve kind of landed in a place where the media are [00:10:00] asking more and more of me now. So I’m the regular psychologist for Today Extra on channel nine. I’m a regular I was a guest on Radio National for the ABC, and I was on SBS’s Insight in August. And so I’ve essentially just followed what the universe keeps presenting me with, which seems to be ways to get my work and my way of, Reframing things out to a large group of people far, far more than I could do one on one.

And it feels incredibly fulfilling now. It actually feels almost dreamlike to say this is what my job is because I was so upset that I had to walk away from what I love. Like, I honestly thought that I would be a psychologist until I was 75 and then when I had to stop doing it. I was like, 

Kylie: hang on a sec, you are still a psychologist.

Rebecca: No, no, that’s where I’m going. At the time when I stopped, I was like, is this it? Like, do I just have to go and work at Woolies now? [00:11:00] Not that there’s anything wrong with working at Woolies, but I just didn’t know what to do with my life. And the fact that I’ve kind of cobbled together some kind of, career with my skills feels like both a miracle and a dream at the same time.

Kylie: Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s amazing. And it’s been so good for you to, to do that. And I think, be the, be the pioneer for a lot of other practitioners to sort of say, Hey, it doesn’t have to be one on one in the clinic. If you’re feeling burnt out and there are other pathways as well.

So. 

Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. You have a voice and you can use it. And I think, I think many health professionals often don’t realise that what they have to offer can be broadened in that way. It doesn’t necessarily have to just be what they say in the room with one person. 

Kylie: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that goes, for, for any sort of woman listening, if you sort of love the [00:12:00] industry you’re in, but you are feeling burnt out by your job.

You’re feeling like you’ve, you’ve hit a wall, all of that. It doesn’t mean we have to lose all of that knowledge, that experience, that wisdom we have. It’s just like, how can we channel that somewhere else? Absolutely. And I think that’s the exciting thing about the online space is, yeah.

You can forge your own path. You can sort of see what someone that, you look up to does and you kind of go, Oh, actually that looks pretty cool. Yeah. What could that look like for me? 

Rebecca: Yep. Caveat being, it doesn’t happen overnight. One of the things I got seduced by when I first started is, Oh, so you just like create a course and then people buy it.

Right. (Kylie) Yeah, I fell into that too. Yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work like that. I’m online now. Yeah. So everyone will want me, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It doesn’t work like that. It does. It still requires legwork and it still requires consistency and presence and, and showing up, but I think if you, [00:13:00] if you don’t, if you just be mindful of who you listen to and who you watch, just please recognize that everything that you see online is not necessarily everything that’s happening behind the scenes.

And I think it’s really important to be honest about that because I don’t, I don’t hear a whole lot of online business owners be honest about that. It’s expensive. It’s expensive to set up. It’s expensive to keep going. And cashflow can be up and down. So it’s important to know that, none of it’s perfect, but I think for me, it’s always about trying to come into more and more alignment with what, what my needs have evolved to be.

And right now. I’m working from home. I don’t have a bra on as we speak. I’ve just come from personal training to do this interview. And my dog’s beside me. Like it’s, it’s literally perfect. 

Kylie: It’s so good. And for all of our listeners who, one of our sort of inside things when I invite guests.

It’s on the show. I do say that we use the audio. We’re not using the [00:14:00] video. You don’t need makeup. You don’t need your hair done and you don’t need a bra. So your bras are optional. Shoes are optional. Pants. I can’t see what you’re wearing underneath that anyway. 

Rebecca: So I actually do have pants on. It’s unusual though.

It’s unusual, but it’s like the perfect setup, I think. And this is. This is all about authentic connection, right? We show up as we are without trying to make it anything other than what it is. 

Kylie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Well, tell us about, and like I said earlier, I think any of your books would be relevant to, our audience.

So why don’t we sort of talk about one of the books, Setting Boundaries, because I think this is something as women, we’re, we’re natural people pleasers. We want to keep everyone happy. We sort of, very accommodating, but it can definitely back and bite us on the bum as well.

Rebecca: Setting boundaries was born into the world in 2021 when we were smack bang in the middle of COVID and it landed. [00:15:00] At a time where I think everyone was rethinking their boundaries, not only because there was so much socio political uproar and division, but also people were reimagining their lives After homeschooling and working from home and all those types of things, which I think really raised questions in many people’s minds about, am I living a life that’s consistent with the life that I actually want to live?

It gave people space to stop and ask those bigger questions. And so I wrote Setting Boundaries to really address for people. What’s happening internally for them and the fact that I think sometimes boundaries get a really bad rap, especially for women and femme identifying folk who have been conditioned to believe that boundaries are rude or selfish or mean or unkind.

And therefore they fear that they’ll be judged negatively for setting [00:16:00] boundaries. Whereas I think boundaries are actually, the most important gift we can give each other in relationships. (Kylie) Yeah. You. Even setting up this interview, the fact that you told me that we weren’t using visual is you taking away the guesswork for me, it’s setting expectations and that kind of boundary setting is so incredibly valuable because what it does is it means that we’re not expecting each other to be mind readers sometimes, especially for people pleases because they’re so sensitive.

And I’ll talk about placing people placing more in a minute. But because people pleasers are so sensitive, they’re very, very good at reading other people’s needs. And so sometimes they think, well. If I was in that situation, I would react this way because I would just know that that person would be feeling uncomfortable or that’s how I would be feeling.

So I would want to make sure that everyone else was okay. And so they kind of make [00:17:00] assumptions that everyone else should have the same sensitivity to others that they do, but not everyone does. And so I think it’s really important to recognize that boundaries are circles of empowerment and self preservation, but only when you set them.

And obviously we’re talking about emotional boundaries here. We’re not talking about physical or sexual boundaries that should be unspoken. They should just be assumed. Emotional boundaries, though, are far more intangible, far more subtle. And so and they can be different for every single person.

 (Kylie) Yes. That means that, A, it’s important that you identify your boundaries and your boundaries might evolve as you evolve. So. Your boundaries when you’ve got a newborn might be very different to your boundaries when you’ve got a 16 year old and what your needs are in whatever phase of life that you’re in.

You know, if you’ve got toddlers versus if you’ve got kids that are about to leave home, that’s a very, yes, it’s a very different phase. And also there’s [00:18:00] very different things being needed from you, you’re more taxi, less kind of hands on parenting. And I think it’s really important to recognize though, that if you don’t then recognize what your needs are and communicate them, then you’re, you’re leaving other people with access to your personal resources in an unfiltered way.

And that’s, that’s a dangerous place to be because we all only have so many resources in our giving tanks. And when I say resources, I’m, I’m talking about things like time. Energy, all the different types of energy, mental, physical, emotional, psychological care, attention, love, money, all of those things are resources that we only have a finite amount of at any given time.

And so as adults, it’s our responsibility to be able to dole out our resources in a way that’s applicable to what our needs are today. And the first thing that [00:19:00] we have to learn to do is. Before I say yes or no to that, I need to check in with myself and make sure I have enough resources to be able to then give to that person, but have enough left over for me.

And oftentimes we work in the reverse to that. So we say yes to everything else and then realize that we’re actually incredibly burnt out at the end. Yes. My burnout in clinical practice was a mismanagement of my own internal boundaries. 

Kylie: Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And, and that’s the thing.

And it’s, like I know, yeah, we’ve just with my business, I need to have boundaries with my clients because I’m not available 24 seven, and I, I, again, I make it very clear right from the get go that I have a family and I have just because I’m online, I will have normal working hours as well.

The same with the boundaries with my team, like I have brilliant ideas at all hours of the day and night and just because I, and I, and I tell them just because I send you a [00:20:00] message does not mean you need to respond to me. This is me brain dumping on an app. This is not asking you for a response.

So I, I. Let them know in advance and always in the beginning with a new team member, they’re very quick to reply I’m like, no, no do not reply to me. You are ignoring this until Monday. I am brain dumping right now 

Rebecca: Yeah, yeah 

Kylie: Yeah, because, like if they responded if I expected a response from them, And I’m giving them permission to have boundaries against me.

Yes. Because if I, expected a response every time I sent them a message, like that is entirely unrealistic. Yeah. But the most effective way for me to communicate sometimes is, I need to, while I’m thinking about it, I’ll just. Put it out there, but I don’t need that to be action straight away.

Rebecca: So yeah, absolutely. But people pleases will often feel the need to respond. It’s that drive to be available. And I think sometimes it’s important to understand that [00:21:00] people pleasing is a relational strength. It’s actually an amazing quality to have in a relationship, because it means that you’re very emotionally intelligent, oftentimes very good at reading other people’s needs, oftentimes before they even know what those needs are, and very good at being able to negotiate, mediate peace, keep, make sure that the situation is transformed into something that’s comfortable for each person involved, however, okay.

Thanks. If that’s done, if those qualities and skills are used in such a way that you forget to make sure that your needs are met first, that’s when people pleasing becomes dangerous. That, that, and oftentimes people pleasing is a coping strategy for interpersonal conflict or interpersonal discomfort. Something’s going wrong in the relationship.

So you revert. To just not rocking the boat and making sure that you’re the easy one to work with. And that’s okay to do every now and again. [00:22:00] But if you do that habitually without accounting for your own needs, eventually you’re going to end up in a little place that I call resentment ville and you can visit resentment ville, because that’s the way that you actually discover what your, what your boundaries are sometimes, especially boundaries that you didn’t know that you had until they were crossed.

But I don’t want you to buy real estate and like live in resentment, feel that’s a, that’s where you’ll end up burnt out. That’s where you’ll end up very angry and frustrated with the world. And so if you’re starting to experience resentment and irritation and frustration, that’s a sign that your boundaries need.

Attention. They need strengthening. They need communicating. They need you to come back to you and make sure that you’re speaking up for yourself. Because look, the reality is that we live in a Western culture. Kylie and I coming to you from Queensland, a first world country, first world state in [00:23:00] Australia, where we operate on, I can a community basis that’s kind of led by every man for themselves. It’s very different. I’ve visited cultures in places like Africa where it’s very community based and resources go to the community first before they go to the self. The way we operate is. Is kind of person first. And so I think, or self first.

And I think you need to understand that when you’re in that culture, I’m not saying it’s good or bad. I’m just saying that this is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Then you also need to understand that. Nobody else is coming, like nobody else, not your partner, not your parent, not your best friend.

They’re not going to sit around and go, have you got enough sleep? Are you eating well? Are you making time for self care? No one else is going to do that except for you. And so in the book, I talk a lot about the difference between internal boundaries and external boundaries. Internal [00:24:00] boundaries are the boundaries between you and you.

And that, that might be what time you go to bed or how much time you spend on a device or how often you exercise or what you eat or how much water you drink in a day. Nobody else is going to dictate that except for you and the external boundaries between you and I. What time are we going to meet? How long are we going to meet for?

What do we need out of each other for that meeting to take place, et cetera, et cetera. So boundaries aren’t always just about saying no to the person that’s asked something from you, although that’s what they’re marketed as. They’re often about your relationship with yourself. And I think. That’s the most important relationship we’ll ever have, honestly.

And if you get your relationship with yourself right, you’re so far towards getting the alignment in your entire life right. 

Kylie: Yeah, absolutely. And I often talk to my clients about them being non negotiables. Mm hmm. So you make it a non negotiable, that you brush your teeth. Yes. We just do it, you make fit, you [00:25:00] wear clean knickers, you, there are all these things that we don’t, we do without thinking, but yeah, do we move our bodies?

Are we drinking enough water? Are we, so that basic level of self care, that we all should be giving ourselves. 

Rebecca: Yep. Absolutely. The life non negotiables and the personal non negotiables, I think are really important to be addressed because they can so often slip depending on which phase of life you’re in, what kind of chapter you’re in and what’s being demanded of you.

And there might be times where you’re okay with it slipping because you’re literally at your bandwidth and bandwidth, and there’s not much more that you can do. We saw a lot of that during the pandemic where everyone was in such a state of fear and uncertainty that We really didn’t have a lot left it wasn’t about thriving.

It was literally about surviving. And so I think it’s important for people to be able to match what’s in their giving tanks to the life phase that they’re in, [00:26:00] but also understand that you need to come first because. Getting resentful and operating from rusty giving tanks is only going to put you in a position where you’ll end up frustrated with the rest of the people around you because you’re just exhausted.

Kylie: Yeah, yeah. And then you layer your, your perimenopausal hormonal stuff on top of that. And yeah, you end up losing your shit. Absolutely. Those closest to you. And I talked to a lot of women who, it’s the husband or the partner or the kids or the colleague at work or, and I’ve had women lose it at clients as well.

Yeah. So and they, and they sort of say to me, it’s not who I am. Yeah. And it’s sort of like, well, you’ve gone, gone, gone. You’ve hit that wall and you’ve just exploded. So, 

Rebecca: And you know, it’s not who you are. Like there’s one bad day. Doesn’t define your entire personality, but, oh.

Kylie: They can step back from that [00:27:00] behavior and go, that’s not me. 

Rebecca: And that’s not who I want to be either. I think that’s a real sign. If you end up behaving in a way that’s so out of character you’re in a position where we need to work backwards from that. So what are the, what are the seeds that were planted to lead up to that point?

And we can’t deny that hormones have a huge impact on our lives. Otherwise, businesses like yours, Kylie, would not exist. We need them. We need to acknowledge and validate that hormones can wreak havoc on us as an IVF survivor. I can definitely speak to that. And I still have changes to my hormonal profile that exist today, six years later.

And so we’re in a position where I think. It’s important to talk about this in the holistic context. And that’s why I keep coming back to, but hold on a second. Remember your life chapter, because what you expect of yourself when you’re in a state of perimenopause might be very different to what [00:28:00] you expected of yourself in your late twenties, when you just started climbing the career ladder or whatever it was,

Kylie: you no kids, your parents were healthy.

Your family was healthy. By the time a lot of women sort of hit. Their 40s, 50s, their parents are getting older and so things are changing, like that dynamic in the relationship there is changing. kids, Beck and I were talking earlier before we hit record about the different needs of our, or the different hormonal needs of our boys.

It’s like a five and a half year old versus a 19 year old. 

Rebecca: Believe it or not, my five and a half year old does have testosterone spikes that lead to big tantrums. It’s very interesting. 

Kylie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And but it’s, but it’s funny, but, it’s. It is, it’s just, it’s constantly shifting. And I think, to, to keep up with the changes as well, because trying to stay one step ahead of what’s happening with your kids is, is a whole other thing.

And [00:29:00] then if, when you’re in a relationship and, trying to nourish that relationship, which I think is really important and that falls, falls apart for a lot of people as well. 

Rebecca: Yeah, it does. And this all comes back to expectations as well. I think, yeah. I think we sometimes forget that we need to check in with each other.

Where are you at? Where am I at? Are we sure we’re in this together, but are we actually connected while we’re in it together? Or are we slowly becoming disconnected to the point where we don’t really recognise each other or honour each other’s needs as we change and evolve? 

Kylie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, amazing.

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 (Kylie) All right. And then Beck’s latest book is Difficult People. So that was released earlier this year, which is super exciting. Yeah. Have you got a couple of minutes just to sort of talk us through Difficult People? 

Rebecca: Yeah. Yeah. So Difficult People was an interesting one. I didn’t want to write it. So my actually I didn’t want to write Setting Boundaries either.

I wanted to, I wanted to write a book on self worth and my publisher was like, yeah, no. [00:31:00] No. You want to write a book on boundaries? And I was like, no, she was like, well, do you want a contract? I was like, yes. So I guess I’m running a book on boundaries. Great. Let’s get it. Yeah. What I, what I actually realized with setting boundaries was.

That I could, it is a book on self worth because I realized that boundaries are actually the language of self worth. You can’t express your boundaries if you’re not feeling worthy in the first place. So there’s so much about worthiness in setting boundaries. But what happened was I had such a great reception to that book and I kept getting asked the same question, which was, okay.

Love the book. Changed my life. I’m so confident in my boundaries now, but they’re just not working with this one person. What do I do about that person? And my publisher came to me and said, do you want to write a book about narcissists? And I was like, no. She was like. Do you want a contract? And so I was in this position, I was like, Oh, I don’t want to write a book just [00:32:00] on narcissists because I think there’s, when we’re talking about difficult people, there are so many different flavors of difficult people.

Narcissism is just one small flavor. And so, um, we compromised and I wrote the book that I wanted to write to answer the people that had read Setting Boundaries, where they were getting stuck with this person that made their life difficult. So. I then walked a tightrope in writing the book about not talking about dangerous people.

So we’re not talking about people that violate your physical or sexual boundaries because they’re dangerous. They’re not just difficult, they’re criminally dangerous. So I had to talk to the subtlety of, well, what about just someone that makes you feel emotionally unsafe? And what about the person that.

Doesn’t manage their emotional regulation and actually ends up becoming quite dysregulated and projects that all over you. What do we do about that person? So [00:33:00] in the book, what I’ve tried to do is guide people through. The different types of difficult people, where they’ve come from, so what makes a different, difficult person, it’s actually very likely that these people have had horrible backgrounds and horrible upbringings and they land in adulthood with very poor social skills.

I’m not, I’m not excusing them. I’m just saying that sometimes understanding where someone’s come from can really help you with empathy and compassion, which can. Mean that you no longer personalize their behavior by thinking, Oh my God, I’m doing something. I’m causing this. Yes. My fault. Yeah, it’s, it’s very likely it’s a them problem.

And I’m also don’t excuse the reader and difficult people because I’m not that type of author. I’m not just going to pander to the reader because we also need to look at when you end up in a cycle with this person, you know. This and then you do that and around and around the cycle goes, you 

Kylie: sort of enable 

Rebecca: the behavior.

Exactly. Exactly. Because you [00:34:00] can predict it because difficult people are usually very predictable. But what I’ve tried to do is include all this background as to how difficult people become difficult. And then a stack of information in the medical, in the middle of the book as to how to manage the different types of difficult people so that.

Readers can actually identify where the difficult people in their own lives falls and then look at their behaviors, what those behaviors look like, and what to do about it. So I’ve got a stack of scripts, I’ve got a stack of strategies for being able to manage each difficult person, and then In the final third of the book, I do a little bit of revision on boundaries, but also help readers understand their own coping mechanisms, especially when those coping mechanisms become unsustainable or unworkable in some way.

Because sometimes, we… a bit like when you’re going through perimenopause, sometimes you just do what you’re only able to do in the [00:35:00] moment and that’s not be your best self. Sometimes you lash out, sometimes you shut down, sometimes you’re the version of you that you don’t really want to see again.

Thank you very much. A version of you that you don’t recognize. And so I help readers to manage. That aspect of themselves, looking from a perspective of self compassion, but also again, strengthening that relationship with yourself so that you can accept and validate when you’re going through a super hard time, but also then know how to find a way through because forward momentum is everything.

Kylie: Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Oh, wow. All right. So Bec, where can people find the books? 

Rebecca: All my books are available in all good bookstores and online retailers in Australia and New Zealand. Difficult people. Is only available in print in Australia and New Zealand at this point in [00:36:00] time, but you can find all of them in Kindle and audio everywhere around the world, setting boundaries and the universalists and survive in the art of self kindness and be happy are also available in print in other territories as well.

But basically go online, type the title, you’ll find it somewhere. 

Kylie: Yeah, and what we’ll do is we’ll list all of the titles of Beck’s books in our show notes. So over at Kylie pinwill. com, are they on your website, Beck? 

Rebecca: Yes. Yeah. I don’t sell them directly, but it links to it. Yeah. And we’ll 

Kylie: also put a link to DrRebeccaRay, sorry, RebeccaRay.

com. au, we’ll put that in our show notes as well if you want to find out more about Beck. Well, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation and it has been wonderful to reconnect with you. It’s been too long. It 

Rebecca: has been too long. Thanks so much for having me, Kylie. I’ve really enjoyed it. 

Kylie: Yeah, my absolute pleasure Beck.

So we will talk to you very soon and thank you everyone for listening. [00:37:00] Thank you Beck for being here and we’ll see you in the next episode of The Hormone Hub.

Thank you for taking the time to listen today. You can head on over to the show notes at kyliepinwill.com/podcast where you’ll find all the links. Now, before we go, it would mean the world to me if you’d head on over to your favorite podcast channel, subscribe and leave a review. Don’t forget to share it with your friends.

Then stay tuned for next week’s episode and I can’t wait to see you then.