Jeepers, we’re odd little creatures. We’re happy to give others compliments, but wouldn’t dream of telling ourselves we’re pretty awesome. We can’t stand bullies, but boy, can we be mean to ourselves sometimes. And while all our friends might reckon we’re cheerful and good fun, inside we’re a quivering wreck, feeling the world is just one great big ball of misery.

In frankie feel-good volume 2, we had a chinwag with clinical psychologist Jo Lamble to talk about some of the most common crappy thoughts we have, and find out how to deal with them. Our nan has them, our boss has them, the nice person in the café has them, she says. Everyone has them – we just have to learn not to listen to them so much.

“NOBODY LIKES ME” This is a super common one, says Jo, and the best way to deal with it is to really focus on what you like about yourself. “That’s often a struggle, but if you sit there with it long enough, people can normally come up with something. But they often say things like, ‘People tell me I’m thoughtful or a good friend’, but that’s still seeing yourself from the outside in. I try to steer it back towards them, and ask them if they feel they’re thoughtful or a good friend – and they usually agree.”

It can be really weird and uncomfortable to think about what a great person you are, but stick with it. The next step is to work out whether those positive things match your values. Is it important to you to be a good friend, or kind and honest, or a good listener? Yep, probably. How about if people say nice things about your hair – does that match your values? Maybe not so much. The basic plan, then, if you’re down in the dumps, feeling that nobody likes you, is to think about the really strong values you have. Are you living a life that matches those values? If you are, then concentrate your mind in that direction – it should gradually help shift your thinking.

What’s not so helpful, says Jo, is to think, ‘Ah well, never mind, I don’t like everyone myself.’ “We know for a fact that we don’t like everyone, so we presume there are a lot of people who don’t like us. But if you’re in a situation where someone doesn’t like you, and you wish they did, it doesn’t really calm you down to think about not liking everyone yourself.”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY PURPOSE” Another one a lot of us beat ourselves up with, says Jo. When we think, ‘I don’t have any purpose, I don’t know what I’m doing’, what we’re really asking ourselves is, ‘Am I achieving enough? Am I on some sort of path that I thought I’d be on?’ “Such a big question,” she says. “It can really affect your confidence.” A lot of it’s about expectations – what expectations were there on you from others, or what expectations do you have on yourself? If perfectionism is your issue, she says, that’s something that needs to be worked on.

It’s so common among women, though, she says, that a lot of their sense of purpose comes from being in a relationship or, at a later stage, from having kids. “And if they don’t, they think, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ It’s really big – and it’s devastating to tie your purpose in life to that.”

The first thing to do is to work out what you’re tying your self- worth to. “It might be to your looks, or your work, or being in a relationship, or being good at sport. The trouble with that is, if it doesn’t all go to plan, you can fall apart. No wonder you feel negative about yourself.”

What Jo keeps coming back to is ‘What are your values?’ “It’s a bit of a theme – what sort of human being do you want to be? As long as you’re being true to your values, you can hold your head high. That sense of purpose might be just helping bring the bins in for the elderly neighbour. The other thing with all these negative thoughts – when you have one, it feels massive, and you think the solution has to match that. You think you have to make a massive change in your life – instead, you probably just need to reframe it, look elsewhere and zoom in a bit.”

“THE WORLD’S IN A TOTAL MESS – WHAT’S THE POINT?” It was bad enough before, but after a couple of years of the pandemic, floods, fires, wars and really shitty politics, it’s enough to make you give up and stay in bed all day. “If you just sit with it, it’s very depressing – you can just feel hopeless and angry,” says Jo. “When you’re like that, it’s also easy to get angry at others who don’t share your despair.” The thing to do, she says, is work out what you can do, what you can control.

That could be joining an interest group, working out who to vote for, where to move to, what to study, what small environmental changes you can make or who you can donate time or money to. If you’re in a job that doesn’t seem very meaningful, you could think about using those exact same skills in a field that seems more worthwhile to you. Or make a more drastic move.

“In that true stoic way, see the problem, feel the emotion, but then focus on what you can do,” she says. It’s being part of a bigger world – often the shift doesn’t have to be major, but if we all do our bit, good things can happen.

“I’M AN IDIOT. I’M HOPELESS.” There’s something about Australians, says Jo, that seems to celebrate and wear as a badge of honour the whole idea of being useless. “If you say, ‘I’m an idiot’, everyone laughs and is quite happy to agree with you.” It’s hard to imagine people anywhere else acting like this, she reckons – “I’m not saying they’re better than us; I’m just saying it’s interesting.” Pretty well every day she hears someone say, “I’m not trying to be arrogant, but...” and they’re just saying something simple like they did something well. They’re really nervous to talk about that, but if they stuffed up, there’s no stopping them.

Not that we always say it out loud – it’s usually just that little voice in our brain. “I think we need to be aware of how often we celebrate little wins compared to how much we beat ourselves up over mistakes.” The balance tips massively towards the screw-ups. Again, she says, it’s just a shift of thinking – it’s not helpful just to think you’re an idiot, but better to think, ‘I’ve made a mistake, how did it happen, what can I do? I’m glad I made the mistake, because if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have learnt such and such a thing.’

In her work, she worries about the kids who look great, are popular, do really well at school and can hit a ball. “You think, ‘That’s a worry, because that young person is thinking life’s pretty easy, and this is going to be a breeze. It’s not always going to be like that.

You have to flip your thinking – every hurdle, every stumble, every stuff-up I’ve made has helped me.” Talk to anyone who’s doing OK in their life, and they’ll probably tell you that falling flat on their face every now and then is the best thing that can happen to them.

“THAT THING ON MY CHEEK MUST BE CANCER – I’M GOING TO DIE.” OK, with this one we’re not saying to ignore any health problem. Definitely go to the doctor if you’re worried – just don’t turn every spot into a major disaster. One of the side effects of greater awareness about our health is that we think – and worry – about it more, Jo reckons. The pandemic hasn’t helped either, she says. If you’re worried about yourself, you’re terrified about your nan or your mum and dad. It’s not just health that scares us stiff – it’s all sorts of other things we can turn into total catastrophes. It could be the thought of getting a big fat F in the exams, which means you’ll be kicked out of school or uni, won’t be able to get a job and will end up living on the street. Or you’ve posted something a bit dodgy on social media – yeah, you can totally imagine how that’s going to ruin the rest of your life. We all have those thoughts – they’re awful, they make you want to poke your eyes out with a stick, and they just get worse the more you think about them.

You need to deal with this kind of thinking for what it is, says Jo. Catastrophising. And it often happens in the middle of the night, when everything seems far worse. “This sounds far too simple, but you have to give this thinking a label. It’s so important to just say, ‘I am catastrophising, full stop.’ What that does is activate the prefrontal cortex of the brain.” This is where it gets really nifty – the prefrontal cortex can’t be activated at the same time as the amygdala, which is the fear centre – the bit that kicks off the fight-flight-freeze response. When you tell yourself you’re catastrophising, anxious and stressed, she says, the prefrontal cortex starts slowly lighting up, and the amygdala, which has been firing away like mad with tales of disaster, begins to cool right down and start shrinking. Amazing what a bit of thinking will do.

This helpful chat comes straight from the pages of frankie feel-good volume 2. Pop over to the frankie shop or visit one of our lovely stockists to pick up a copy.