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BBC News
17-05-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Changing your brain - inside the therapy room
Nicole enters the therapist's room and clutches what she calls her hugging pillow. She admits to being nervous about sitting down with a stranger to discuss her mental is 31, lives in London and works as chiropractic assistant. She suffers from anxiety when she drives."There are so many things that so quickly go through my head," she says. "How far away is it? What is the route? I somehow forget how to drive."She suffers from panic attacks and her fear of driving means she is constantly cancelling over the course of six sessions with psychotherapist Owen O'Kane, it becomes clear her problems are much deeper than just a fear of driving. Digging around in the mind Every week, one in six of the UK population experience mental health problems such as depression and anxiety and every year more than 1.2 million people seek help from the NHS talking therapies service, with many more paying for support form of therapy is most commonly used for anxiety and depression, but can also help with a range of other problems, including body image dysmorphia, obsessive compulsive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder. It does not work for everyone: research suggests one-third of people do not BBC has followed 12 people, featured in the series Change Your Mind, Change Your Life, who each received six support sessions from therapists. The therapists have used a combination of different talking therapy approaches, including cognitive behavioural therapy which focuses on changing the way we think and behave, alongside other techniques to improve relationships and process it reveals is striking: How understanding and learning to manage the mind has the power to transform lives. "You're not stuck with the brain you've got," says Owen O'Kane, who has worked in the field for 25 years. He describes his job as like detective work: "People come with what seems to be a reasonable story, but the interesting thing is that very often the story and emotions don't match. I guess what we are doing is digging around a little bit." 'I completely hated myself' Over their sessions, Owen digs deeper into Nicole's anxiety. At one point she weeps. She admits in the past she has "completely hated" herself. She worries about what people think of her and is socially anxious: "I don't feel good enough to be there. I might say something wrong. I need people to like me."Owen questions why she feels like this: "As human beings we like the nice emotions. We like feeling happy, joy, being in love." but he says some people try to avoid or suppress emotions like fear, dread and sadness, and that can cause anxiety. Instead, he says it is healthier to accept them and accept them as safe. When people get to that point, he says, they start to feel empowered: "They realise they're not going to be overwhelmed."Speaking outside the therapy room, Nicole says: "I'm shocked. He got my number straight away. I would see vulnerability as a negative thing, but it's not."Asked to describe herself she uses words such as kind, thoughtful, determined and enthusiastic: "I am not a bad person," she tells says she has learned a lot: "Most importantly I found I wasn't being kind to myself. That was really eye-opening."Owen says this is typical of many people he treats: "When people get to these crossroads, when they wake up and realise what they are doing, that's a gold dust moment for me." 'I had stroke in my early 30s' James likewise learned to think about himself differently thanks to therapy.A 39-year-old father-of-one who works in finance, he struggles with anxiety and, in particular, worries about making mistakes at work. That fear is so debilitating he doesn't make it to work has been supported by Prof Steve Peters, a psychiatrist who explains perfectionism is at the root of his problems: "If we think it's the end of the world if we make a mistake, it paralyses you."James was once an athlete, playing semi-professional football and competing in athletics before specialising in the bobsleigh. He was training for trials for the Great Britain team when he had a stroke eight years ago: "With a flick of a switch, I lost everything," he says. "It made me feel a lesser man."Now he fears under-performing at work and losing his job. Over the course of the sessions, Prof Peters explains the key is James's belief he gives some seemingly simple advice: "Put your feet on the floor, stand up and walk," he says. Focusing on the basic task of moving, in James's case moving so he can get to work, enables someone caught up in catastrophic thinking to block out the negative thoughts that stop them doing later sessions, James and Prof Peters explore what could be behind his problems. James tells Prof Peters about his childhood and how his father would criticise him to push him to Peters explains how James believes that to please you cannot make errors and then the devastating stroke he suffered at a young age has triggered an absolute desire for things to never go wrong tells James he needs to make "peace with himself" by defining himself not by performance but by values and behaviours. He too asks James to describe himself and James replies he is hard-working, honest, engaging, friendly and as someone who would put others the course of his sessions, James's way of thinking changes: "I can look at myself in the mirror and feel my value and my worth," he explains. 'My mum died when I was 15' Anjalee's struggles are somewhat different. They relate to one traumatic event in childhood – her mother died suddenly when she was a mother herself, with three children under five, she has struggled has sleepless nights, a tight chest and feels emotionally disconnected. It is worse than any physical pain, says the 34-year-old: "Becoming a mother has reopening everything I've tried to suppress."Her first birth was particularly traumatic. She developed sepsis – the condition her mother died from: "I thought I was not going to survive," she says. Her psychotherapist, Julia Samuel, explains to Anjalee she has not been able to process what has happened and, as a result, the trauma has stayed with her. When her mother died, Anjalee was in the middle of exams and had two younger siblings, leaving her without time to grieve. Julia suggests eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy, which uses movement to help people process and recover from distressing asks Anjalee for her worst memory and she describes how her father tried to save her mother's life by performing chest compressions in their home until the paramedics arrived. Her mother was rushed out with Anjalee hoping she would return. She never says she has never talked about this within anyone. Julia asks Anjalee to cross her arms against her chest and start deep breathing and tapping, mimicking a butterfly's wings flapping. She talks through the memory and how the images in her head are changing to more positive says this type of treatment is particularly effective when dealing with one single traumatic event. One memory, she says, can act as a block on Anjalee speaks about how her symptoms have eased and the contentment she now feels. "My therapist helped me reconnect with the 15-year-old girl I'd silenced. I began to process the trauma that haunted me. I now understand grief as the other side of love."During May, the BBC is sharing stories and tips on how to support your mental health and to to find out more.
New Statesman
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The BBC's new therapy show left me with a full-body cringe
Photo by BBC/Twenty Twenty Productions Right now, the BBC is asking us licence-fee payers to tell the organisation what we want it to be, an exercise it is trialling on screen as a mock TV quiz show, except there are 'no wrong answers'. It probably goes without saying that I won't be participating in this nonsense myself. As if they're going to give in to my requests for a 12-part adaptation of George Gissing's novel New Grub Street and a 360-degree rethink of Newsnight's rubbish new incarnation! But if I was to respond this very moment, I would first demand that no one would ever again be allowed to commission a series as poor and as dubious as Change Your Mind, Change Your Life with Matt and Emma Willis. You may have seen the trailers for this too: a show that makes therapy seem vaguely like an interior-design makeover, all cushions and pot plants and easy remedies. I'll admit that I had to Google its presenters, not so much because I didn't know that Matt Willis was in the band Busted and his wife, Emma, used to present Celebrity Big Brother – though I guess I was a bit hazy – but because I couldn't for the life of me work out why they'd got this gig. Was it, perhaps, an elimination show, the last patient to sob broken-heartedly the first out of the door? But, no. It seems that Matt and Emma are merely big fans of therapy. The things it can do! 'You're not stuck with the brain you've got,' says Emma at one point, an announcement that will come as major news to the nation's transplant surgeons. It works like this: patients new to therapy are matched to various species of shrink and we watch their encounters over the course of three sessions – though not full ones. We get about five minutes of each, and they always come with some kind of magical breakthrough, causal dots having been joined as easily as ABC. In this take on therapy, you see, no one ever lies. They're neither avoidant nor repressed. Argument, even hesitation, is unknown to them, even in the face of the very worst kind of Hallmark-card truism. And guess what? So far – look, I watched as much as my full-body cringe would allow – there have been no failures. Magic wands all round! The patients, however, are not the problem with this show. Even if I can't understand why they want to talk of private feelings on television, I'm sympathetic to their feelings of failure, anxiety and loneliness. One of them suffers from a fear of driving, a phobia from which I suffered myself 20 years ago (I cured it by hiring a former copper, experienced in car-chase situations, to take me out on the road). No, the problem – and it's a grave one – lies on the other side. What kind of therapy do these shrinks practise, and what qualifications do they have? We're never told. I recognised one, the ubiquitous Julia Samuel, a psychotherapist best known for her work around bereavement and a godmother to Prince George, and wondered why on Earth she'd agreed to appear. I can only guess that the justification is, as ever, one of duty, that the uptight people of Britain really must learn that it's good to talk. As for the others, how dismaying they are; how embarrassingly inarticulate and cliché-bound. Even in the hands of a highly intelligent and skilled practitioner, the thinking behind therapy can sound specious, but here it's as if they're reading at random from Eckhart 'The Power of Now' Tolle (in case you don't know, Tolle is a German, Oprah Winfrey-endorsed bestselling author of guides to 'inner transformation'). Professor Steve Peters, a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in sport, tells his patient to be 'in the moment'. Dr Fatoumata Jatta, a clinical psychologist and transformational life coach, tells hers to try to have a 'better relationship with herself' (and also to take up roller-skating again, which she loved as a child). Owen O'Kane, a psychotherapist specialising in depression and anxiety, tells his poor poppet that he senses (based on no evidence that I could see) her 'residual sadness'. He also asks her – ugh – if she wants a hug. What's that? Ah, you want to know what Matt and Emma do. In the end, it comes down to a bit of minor encouragement from the sidelines. It's pitiable, but I guess they're some BBC bigwig's idea of relatable. Change Your Mind, Change Your Life BBC One [See also: Portrait of an 18th-century It girl] Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Related
Daily Mirror
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Emma Willis opens up on tough health battle after major heart surgery
Weeks after her heart surgery, Emma Willis fronts a new TV show with her husband Matt. But she admits she's been experiencing a new kind of turmoil as she reprises a normal life. Emma Willis returns to screens just weeks after undergoing heart surgery to fix a hole in her heart - and she admits feeling anxious in the aftermath of her operation. The presenter recently revealed on Instagram that she had unknowingly been living with a hole in her heart since birth. 'It's really weird to live with something in our body that we don't know about,' Emma Willis says. But she reassures her fans, adding: 'It's fixed so I'm good and there's no physical pain.' Still the emotional aftermath has been tougher to heal. 'I have a lot of health anxiety,' she says. 'So I'm always checking. Every time my heart flutters or feels strange, I panic.' At the same time, she credits her attentiveness to her body for eventually helping her spot the issue. 'I'm glad I eventually discovered it,' she says. While Emma and her hubby Matt Willis ' careers are thriving, they always prioritise their marriage, alongside raising their three children – Isabelle, 15, Ace, 13, and nine-year-old Trixie. 'We go on date nights all the time because we know how important it is for our marriage,' Matt says. And if they had to choose, they'd happily trade a fancy dinner for a therapy session. 'Nothing's been more important than going to therapy together,' Matt says. 'It's allowed us to really see each other. We never row – it's been 20 years.' Now the pair are sharing their therapy journey with the nation through their new BBC One show Change Your Mind, Change Your Life, where they team up with leading therapists – Owen O'Kane, Julia Samuel MBE, Professor Steve Peters and Dr Fatoumata Jatta – to follow Brits facing everyday challenges, from grief to anxiety, as they try to transform their lives with therapy. Emma, 49, and Matt, 42, leave each participant with an expert, checking in between sessions to offer support. 'The duty of care on the show is next level,' Emma says. 'Our job is to see them along the way, when they've had time to reflect and decompress. But there is a huge care team around the participants, not just the therapists.' In 2023, Matt opened up in a TV documentary about his battles with alcohol and drugs, which remain one of the reasons he's diligent about his mental health. Over the years, he's gathered a toolkit of strategies. 'He's a master of mental health and wellbeing,' says Emma. 'He's done and tried it all.' But therapy wasn't always easy for him to talk about. 'I've had a lot of therapy but, for a long time, I didn't really mention anything about it,' Matt says. 'Because I knew there was a stigma attached. But I've had such incredible experiences with it.' Even Emma once resisted the idea. 'I was that person saying, 'I don't need therapy.' I didn't feel like I needed it,' she says. 'I didn't realise I had anxiety until we went to therapy. When I mentioned Matt playfully calling me a control freak, the therapist said, 'No, that's anxiety.' So, with that, you need to be across everything because of an inner fear. That completely changed how I saw myself.'
Daily Mirror
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Emma and Matt Willis say they've been to therapy - 'it's been transformative'
Shining a light on the power of therapy in their new show, Emma and Matt Willis have first-hand experience - the pair have attended both couple's and individual therapy. They have one of the strongest marriages in showbiz, and now Matt and Emma Willis have revealed therapy is the secret to their relationship. The couple met in 2004 and married in 2008. Today, they credit therapy with helping them maintain their bond, which was often tested by obstacles. While they no longer attend couple's therapy, they're always open for another visit to their therapist's office, if the need ever returns. 'It's been transformative,' says Matt Willis. 'It's changed our relationship. The result was definitely worth it.' Emma Willis agrees. 'We learned how to communicate,' she says. 'When things happen – individually or as a couple – you can't always see each other's point of view. Friends will usually take your side but a therapist helps you see clearly. It's been phenomenal for us.' While the pair's careers are thriving, they always prioritise their marriage, alongside raising their three children – Isabelle, 15, Ace, 13, and nine-year-old Trixie. 'We go on date nights all the time because we know how important it is for our marriage,' Matt says. And if they had to choose, they'd happily trade a fancy dinner for a therapy session. 'Nothing's been more important than going to therapy together,' Matt says. 'It's allowed us to really see each other. We never row – it's been 20 years.' Now the pair are sharing their therapy journey with the nation through their new BBC One show Change Your Mind, Change Your Life. The couple team up with leading therapists – Owen O'Kane, Julia Samuel MBE, Professor Steve Peters and Dr Fatoumata Jatta – to follow Brits facing everyday challenges, from grief to anxiety, as they try to transform their lives with therapy. Emma, 49, and Matt, 42, leave each participant with an expert, checking in between sessions to offer support. 'The duty of care on the show is next level,' Emma says. 'Our job is to see them along the way, when they've had time to reflect and decompress. But there is a huge care team around the participants, not just the therapists.' In 2023, Matt opened up in a TV documentary about his battles with alcohol and drugs, which remain one of the reasons he's diligent about his mental health. Over the years, he's gathered a toolkit of strategies. 'He's a master of mental health and wellbeing,' says Emma. 'He's done and tried it all.' But therapy wasn't always easy for him to talk about. 'I've had a lot of therapy but, for a long time, I didn't really mention anything about it,' Matt says. 'Because I knew there was a stigma attached. But I've had such incredible experiences with it.' Even Emma once resisted the idea. 'I was that person saying, 'I don't need therapy.' I didn't feel like I needed it,' she says. 'I didn't realise I had anxiety until we went to therapy. When I mentioned Matt playfully calling me a control freak, the therapist said, 'No, that's anxiety.' So, with that, you need to be across everything because of an inner fear. That completely changed how I saw myself.' Over time, both Emma and Matt learned how life-changing therapy could be. 'Keeping things in can send you to a dark place,' Emma says. 'The minute you let it out, you start to feel lighter, both physically and emotionally.' Emma was particularly moved by one participant called James. 'He resonated with me. He's a perfectionist and a huge people pleaser,' she says. 'He never thinks he's good enough and that he's going to fail. I'm a lot like that.' Meanwhile, Matt felt an immediate bond with another, Ben. 'I really felt for him,' Matt says. 'He's really young and we chatted for hours, off camera as well. I saw a younger version of me.' Recently, it was Emma's physical health that needed attention. She revealed on Instagram that she had unknowingly been living with a hole in her heart since birth. 'It's really weird to live with something in our body that we don't know about,' she says. 'It's fixed so I'm good and there's no physical pain.' Still the emotional aftermath has been tougher to heal. 'I have a lot of health anxiety,' she says. 'So I'm always checking. Every time my heart flutters or feels strange, I panic.' At the same time, she credits her attentiveness to her body for eventually helping her spot the issue. 'I'm glad I eventually discovered it,' she says. While Emma and Matt are helping destigmatise mental health topics, they know the journey is far from over. 'We love this show and we want to do more with it,' Matt says. 'Raising awareness makes a real difference. Awareness has grown massively over the last decade, but it's still early days. There's so much more to do and we're always open to learning about these things.' With their vulnerability and commitment to others, Emma and Matt hope to show that healing is possible – and that nobody has to struggle alone.
Daily Mirror
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
‘I've been in therapy for years - here's 13 reasons why you need it'
Emma and Matt Willis have long reaped the benefits of the therapist's office. Now, they're bringing that same healing to the small screen in their new BBC One show. After wrapping Love Is Blind UK, the pair return in Change Your Mind, Change Your Life - a four-part series hosted by Emma Willis and her hubby, former Busted star Matt Willis, alongside four of Britain's top-rated therapists. It's packed with raw moments and real tools. The show's participants confront every demon - grief, anxiety, self-doubt - as they step into their healing journey. No dazzling lights, no filters, just the messy, brave work of getting better. The new series champions therapy as a tool for transformation. And as someone who's seen eight therapists in twenty years, I can confirm: therapy isn't just helpful - it's life-saving. Here's why. We check in with GPs when our bodies feel off - why not do the same for our minds? These days, I see my therapist after tough days or overstimulating city trips. It's routine care for my mental health and just as necessary. Talking helps, but therapy goes further. It gives you frameworks. Strategies. My current therapist had me create a trauma timeline and even assigned reading - because healing requires structure, not just venting. I was misdiagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) by a specialist who'd only seen me once. My current therapist, Jamie, worked with me consistently, challenging that label and eventually helping me get properly diagnosed with C-PTSD and high-functioning autism. BPD came with a mountain of stigma. People treated me like I was dangerous or manipulative. Therapy helped me unlearn the shame and advocate for a rediagnosis that finally made sense. I was abused in every way a child can be. That left deep wounds - and deeper confusion. Therapy helped me name what happened, and finally separate my identity from my trauma. As a teen, I was emotionally explosive. I lashed out at everyone - parents, teachers, friends. Therapy taught me how to regulate my emotions rather than drown in them. Before therapy, I couldn't hold down friendships or romantic connections. Intimacy was terrifying. Now, my relationships are grounded, honest and drama-free. (Well, mostly.) I used to think saying 'no' meant I was mean. Now, I know that boundaries are kindness in disguise - and therapy helped me find the language and courage to set them. I used to fall apart after every breakup. Therapy gave me coping strategies, self-soothing tools, and perspective. Now, I survive endings without losing myself. My trauma taught me I deserved pain. Therapy taught me I didn't. That I am not what happened to me. That I am allowed peace and softness. Even love. Under the wrong label, I was medicated into numbness - Xanax, escitalopram, even antipsychotics. Therapy helped me find what actually worked: a low dose of sertraline, some mediation and a lot less shame. You don't need to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. These days, I attend semi-regularly, even during the good times. It keeps me grounded and self-aware. Quite literally. I checked myself into a psych hospital at 19, desperate for help. Without therapy, I wouldn't be here - not as myself anyway. Therapy gave me back my life. And if it's made me 'crazy,' I'll take crazy over numb any day.
