YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Williams

lines on the record: 62
first: 2025-12-22
most recent: 2025-12-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Scrap of humanity and the whole of the Christmas story then, but the whole of the story that Christians believe is about love being shown in vulnerability. That's the meaning of the crucifixion and so on. It's about a sort of sense of vulnerability rather than love being shown or the answers are being found in power, autonomy, might, violence and so on.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A sort of making a move in my philosophy, my philosophy I read recently about William James and William Clifford, these Victorian philosophers who had this debate about the pursuit of truth and the avoidance of error. And William James was all for the pursuit of truth. And William Clifford was all for the avoidance of error. And William James said, no, it's not all about avoidance. That might be true in maths. But in life, William James said, if you want to understand the truth, especially in relationships or in faith, you've got to commit in some way. And unless you commit, you won't ever discover. So if you want to, does she really love me or not or does he love me or not? You can't just sit back with your arms folded and wait for the evidence that somebody loves you. You've got to do something and test the water and see. So Christmas is about testing the water, I think. It's about the preposterous idea that this love at the heart of the universe should be manifest in this little tiny...”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is shown in the most vulnerable form possible in the form of a baby, and the stories at Christmas all about people on the move, right? People who have to make a commitment to witness this, so, you know, wise men from the East or”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what was it she discovered in Buddhism? What is it we discover in Christianity? What is it that Christmas is all about? And how could it appeal to people who haven't got the faith at all? Well, I think it's about its love at the heart of the universe. I mean, many people believe, whether they call it God or not, that there's a presence or power in the universe, that in some way might influence them, that they can access sometimes they say it's something in me, the immortal diamond or whatever, that the mystics talk about, or not just in Christian traditions, but in Sufi traditions, in Jewish traditions, the sense of there being a path that you can take either within, where you get closer and closer to a universal truth, a universal consciousness, a universal love, and in the Christian tradition, there is this belief that this love”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then as I was driving down to her flat, my phone pinged and I pulled in, looked at it, said, oh, sorry I didn't get messages saying you were coming. Just been listening to Jack Cornfield on Dharmased, which was a meditation teacher, listening to his talk on impermanence. This was a girl who just about two weeks before got a diagnosis that was incurable cancer. So she found these meditation and this understanding of the world in Buddhism really, really helpful. But it means that for me, for family, for many others who have been in a situation Christmas is a difficult time because, you know, they say Christmas is a time for families. And so it is. And it's great that the family be around me, but there'll be that missing.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And not knowing is one of the most difficult things, just allowing yourself not to know how this will go, not giving advice, you know, not beating yourself up, just not knowing. And I remember once when I was staying fairly close before we got a place to stay close at hand in Bristol, so I was staying with a family member on the outskirts of Bristol. And usually every night she would send a message saying, no, dad, and every morning she would say, hey, I'm up now. You know, come, the door's unlocked. And one morning this was when she was early on when she was back home from hospital before she went into the hospice. Wonderful, St. Peter's hospice in Bristol. Nothing came from her eight o'clock. Nothing came eight thirty. Nothing came at nine. I thought, I'm going. I'm just not going to hang around and wait for a message. What's happened to her?”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the time I'd asked my colleague, write, recommend me one book. Joan Halifax's being with dying. She'd already got it, so by the time I arrived on the scene and said, Oh, somebody's she or he had bought it, and was working through that Joan Halifax, a Zen teacher and hospice accompanier of people and wonderful emphasizing three things about being with dying, whether you're the dying person or whether you're accompanying them, not knowing. Bearing witness and compassion.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So my own life circumstances, which isn't secret, but I lost my daughter last year to cancer. She was a very, very lively woman. Many, many friends lived in Bristol, which is a fantastic place for her to live, really found her place there in Bristol. She was a software engineer, and she had discovered, actually, meditation through, she called herself when she went into the hospice and they asked her, what's your religion? She said secular Buddhist. And when she had her diagnosis, which came at Christmas time two years ago, 2023, she died on Monday Thursday, twenty twenty four, so she didn't. Didn't survive till Easter. But because she discovered all these things mindfulness, meditation, not through her dad, I think, but through independently, because she was independent girl. She asked What books will be helpful?”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you could do is bring raise in mind, that sense of studying it to, say, eating and drinking over Christmas. So instead of just thinking, ah, here's a glass of wine. I'm going to neck the first and second and see if I enjoy the third, that you treat the very first sip of the drink as if that was the raisin. and you really, really taste it. And if you think, ah, this is going to quench my thirst, then have a drink of water first and then take the drink for its own sake, because it's taken a lot of effort to produce that drink. So really value it and the piece of cake or whatever so that instead of just eating, drinking, whatever, you've got a sense of paying attention much more gently.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you learn is that paying attention makes a difference. The quality of attention that you bring to something makes a difference. Now, if you can bring that quality of attention even to things that disturb us, because often we want to push away the nasty stuff, what mindfulness, by the time you get into a mindfulness class, eventually in session five or six, you get to look at some of the dark things. But to allow them just to stay a little bit longer than you might usually without trying to push them away or sort them out or problem solve them. And by looking closely, you realize that some of these things actually are a complex bundle of thought, feelings, body sensations that because we've sort of repressed them, pushed them away, we've never really looked at the heart of them. So we bring rays in mind, if you will, even to some difficult things. Now that takes practice, and I'm not suggesting you do that just straight. That would be like taking your cold swim, which you do.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I've never actually studied it. I've never actually attended to it. I've never actually brought it into my field of consciousness. I just usually eat them automatically 20 at a time. This is really helpful at teaching something. I mean, you know,”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So as we do the raisin practice in a mindfulness class, you get to look at it, yes, you get to smell it, yes, but eventually you get, if you wish, if you choose to put it in your mouth, but without chewing it. You discover that actually doesn't have much taste, but that eventually when you chew it, it's like the taste explodes in your mouth. And you think, oh, why have I never tasted raisins before like this”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Getting back to your raised is not a bad idea in this respect, what Alistair's describing is eating one raisin but taking quite a long time. Look at it, you smell it. I didn't eat it, yeah.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are either online or in person. They can go to a dinner party and say I've been referred to a mindfulness course and everybody will say, or half of the people around the table say, oh, I've done mindfulness. So there's no stigma attached. And I think the cost of keeping it sort of very precious is that it remains something which only a few people ever get round to doing who can seek it out. The cost of spreading it thinly is that it is no longer authentic, but somewhere there's a middle view where you can continue to click. You can have a taste of it. If you want to go further, you're only ever a couple of clicks away from the books that will really help that are informed by the best of the history and the foundational traditions as well as the best of psychology.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an evidence-based practice, so it's known to be about as effective in dealing with depression as cognotherapy and preventing depression as well. But if it's going to be as the Dalai Lama once said, people aren't going to learn ethics by becoming Buddhists. So that's why he was supporting secular ethics, as he called it. And when I asked him, well, what did he think about secular mindfulness? He said, that's what people need. People are not going to come to become a Tibetan monk like me, he said. It needs to be taken to them. Now, are we concerned that people can click on an app and get three minutes? No, I'm not. Why not? Because everybody needs to start somewhere and for some people it might be a life saver. And also, there's virtually nowhere you can go now where mindfulness has not touched it. And for those who really do need clinical mindfulness over eight weeks taught by a good teacher.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Retreat center, even though there are many retreat centers around, how can we make it available where people need it, hence in a hospital or where I used to work in the Warmford Hospital and Mental Health Unit? Bring it into the heart of the hospitals so now NBCD is available on the National Health Service. It's available in the talking therapies service in England. You can ask, you can self-refer to it, just ask for MBCT mindfulness-based cognotherapy. Not a lot of people know that.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it comes and goes, so when mindfulness started people were very excited about it, when I say it started, but it sort of became very mainstream. People were interested to think of the clinical trials. And when people do a clinical trial, well, John Cabot-Zinn started this in UMass Medical School in the 1970s, he did it in the heart of a hospital where people were referred to him that the doctors gave up chronic pain, people who couldn't have surgery on their backs anymore, and they learned what became known as mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR. We learnt our mindfulness from him and from what's called the insight meditation, the Westernized insight meditation tradition. And you're right that the intention of John Cabotzin was to make it mainstream. That is to deliberately, as it were, not make something that people would have to go to a monastery in Asia to find out or to a retreat center. He said people aren't going to get it by going to Asia. They're not going to get it by going to Asia.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To what was being taught there. One was how to focus and gather your attention when it's scattered and dispersed, a sort of gathering of focus. Some people call it concentration, but that can sound a bit frowny, like it's got to really work hard. It's a gathering. The second thing is insight. And the third thing is doing all this with kindness. And each of those three pillars, the stability, the insight and the kindness, work together so you begin to treat your thoughts and your feelings and other people with a sense of gatheredness and insight and kindness.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mindfulness as we use the word now is a translation of a Pali word. Pali is the language in which the early Buddhist writing is written, related to Sanskrit. The word is Sati and Sati means awareness or non forgetfulness. And it's not just a cold, attentive sort of focus. It's a sort of kindly awareness which is, well, you might say lucid awareness, clear seeing. And it comes from this Buddhist tradition. But the Buddha himself was the best way to think of it as like a master and his disciples rather like Pythagoras school or the Athenian school in Greek philosophy where a master would gather disciples around them and teach them and they would have a school and so the Buddha in India had about the same time actually as Pythagoras was teaching this thing and part of that teaching was this awareness, this clear seeing and there seemed to be three aspects”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At least my ears are working well. So he'd sort of turned it into, ah, I have good ears, I can hear. But I think even if you don't go that far, that a sense of saying this sound what is this sound really moving into the sound, and seeing if you can hear the sound behind the sound, the rhythm, the pitch, the loudness, and then making that your anchor, then if it goes quiet, you might find yourself, oh, where's my anchor gone? Oh, I better use the breath then. So I think it's possible, but it can take some work.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Charity and the chaplains do what they can in prisons, they do a wonderful job, and they are increasingly learning to do mindfulness. Including Jonathan Aiken and He's the chaplain in there. You said the thing about prisons being very, very noisy. When you practice mindfulness every day, really forgive me if this is a really stupid question, but can you do that in a very noisy place? I think you can, but it's a bit difficult. But I think the strategy is to treat the noise as your breath, as your anchor, so that you start the mindfulness, not by saying, right, I'm going to focus on my feet, I'm going to get in a comfortable posture, focus on my breath, close my eyes. Then the noise is just an interruption. And then all you end up is, can't they shut off the noise and so on? There was a famous monk in the Thai forest tradition, which is one of the progenitors to mindfulness called Ajan Char, who went in”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is in Taiwan? They have a business when going in to say how to set up little T-bars when they come out, so they got something where they don't need much investment. But yes, I guess the reason why the Treasury find it so difficult to give money is because it's a long-term gain. I mean, Richard Layard is always going on about if you spend this now, you will save money later. But I'm not sure that's because he's an economist, I think he's got more sort of right to say that than the rest of us. But yes, it does save money later, but also There's not a lot of popular support, I think, for doing something which appears to be being too kind to people that people put their hands on the hips and say they have to be paying their due without people thinking about future victims, for example. So it's difficult, but that's where we are. But we'll carry on. I mean, lots of charities go in. The prison Phoenix Trust goes in. There's a mindfulness prisons network. So people...”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing these sort of things like the well being unit at the Remand prison in London, doing things there was really giving hope. I mean, mindfulness was part of it, but there are lots of other things they were doing as well, like the music that Alistair was talking about. And there are some projects, there's called Liberty Kitchens, I think, which is a Pentonville-based thing. Great food. They do street markets in London. And I was at an event a couple of weeks ago in London where they provided the food. And they have to bring the ingredients through all these gates to get into Pentonville and then make the stuff, then all these gates to get out. And then ex-prisoners are serving it and so on. And that sort of project is great at making links. And mindfulness in Taiwan, which is given to...”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think part of the problem is that yeah, it is frustrating. I mean, when you hear as well that, you know, when people are inside, they might lose their benefits and so on. So when they get out, what have they got to go back to if they've lost their housing or lost their family? They tend to get back into the same networks. And the probation service has been was under great strain, as well as the prison service. I remember when Judge Stephen Tumin, I think he was prisons inspector for a while and he would say People are in prison as punishment, not for punishment. The deprivation of liberty is what is the punishment. And when they're there, why should we give them environment that is itself further punishment and not rehabilitated at all?”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Top bunk saying, I could eat that or not. Because if you don't want it, I'll have it. And he said, he explained what he was doing. So next time it spread in this way. One of the things about being in prison is it's noisy. I mean, people bang things and they shout, you know, not just during the day, but all night as well. So getting used to just the noise. And so teaching people to gather their attention. And we used to teach them a sort of a feet on floor, bum on chair, breath. So feet, seat, and breath. Feet, seat and breath. And they could get that. And the other thing we noticed was that sometimes they would sit there looking like they were completely zoned out, like they didn't want to be there. But after a short meditation, maybe two minutes, three minutes, if we ask, well, how is that? Does anybody want to share their experience? One of the guys from having laying back, looking like he wasn't even taking anything in, he would say really insightful things about what it”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example where they would give them bits of chocolate wrapped up these little green and blacks. And interestingly, the people in the group would say, oh, you're going to take them away. You're not going to allow us to eat this, are you? But they would unwrap it very slowly and look at it and then taste it. And then we would teach them that way how to focus their attention and the consequences of focused attention by gathering the intention on just one thing at a time. I've done that. Yeah. I've done it with raisins. Raisins are very good for that. Interestingly, later on, one of the men said that he'd been doing that. He'd spent some of his precious money on a gingerbread cake. And he took it back to his cell. He was there and he cut it up and broke it into pieces and he took one little bit of a time and he was just taking the second bit, just taking the third bit. And his cellmate appeared from his”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you think Donald Trump practices mindfulness? Well, you'd have to ask him that I know what the answer would be. So that's Parliament where you, and I didn't realise that, I didn't even know that happened. But that's really interesting. But Rory first came across you when he was prisons minister and you were working in prisons. So what do you take from doing mindfulness in parliament and taking to prisons? Do you do the same thing or do you kind of adapt for different challenges and different audiences? Yeah, you adapt. So in the prison, in the Roman prison in London where Andy Fee and I were working and Debbie Murphy in the well-being unit there, we found that groups of prisoners, there's a male Roman prison who are coming to the well-being unit either in the morning or the afternoon to do music or to do cooking or to do Anger management or whatever were offered at mindfulness course. And it was based on the same thing we'd done with MPs, but made so that it was very adaptable to their situation. So we did a chocolate meditation.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“more agreeably helps exactly that it helps do that and that shows that the democrat and republicans shift and they shift by the same amount to the center okay”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, and then when the same researcher has looked at whether mindfulness changes affective polarization and he's done work on Brexiters and Remainers and on Democrats and Republicans in the States, then the affected polarization shrinks as a result of mindfulness or as a result of particular meditations. We do a sort of a kindness meditation where you kind to yourself and then kind to neutral people, then kind to people you don't get on with.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People in the UK practice mindfulness, alert mindfulness and so on. It turns out that 25% of the population, if you take these poll seriously, have done some sort of mindfulness through a book or an app or a course. And who's carried on practicing? Well, half don't. The other half do. And people, if you divide them to Brexiteers and Remainers, Remainers are more likely to have heard of mindfulness, but Brexiteers are slightly more likely to have carried on practicing mindfulness if they have.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there are some people who had said, well, I was actually clinically depressed and it helped me. Other people said I was completely stressed and exhausted. One person who became considered MP who became a minister said that she would then, when giving a speech in the commons, she would take her shoes off so she could feel the ground at her feet until she became a minister and then it would advise, no, please keep your shoes on when you give a speech in the House of Commons. This was, I think for them, for many of them very transformative. First, it was mostly, I think, Labour and Lib Dems and then Carolyn Lucas, who's on record as having been through the course. Then gradually more conservative came. And there were times when half the place was full of people who would vote for Brexit. And then, okay, so everybody's welcome. Everybody's welcome. It actually turns out that when you look at people in the country, there's been a poll of how many...”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, there, and so we did, and that was in 2013, and now I think 350 parliamentarians have gone through over 1,200 of the staff have gone through the course, and then there was a review of it a few years ago saying giving interviews with the MPs and the lords and talking about how they had found it and what affected it had.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we did a mindfulness course. Well, we started out explaining what mindfulness was about and giving some of the brain science and some of the clinical trials information. So we started, I think, with probably a taster session and then asked people if anybody wants to know more, then we'll be running a group. So myself and Chris Cullen set it up. It was Chris Ruen, MP. Who instigated it together with Lord Layard, Lord Richard Layard? Richard Layard, yeah, it was yesterday. Yeah. And so Richard and Chris said, would we come and teach?”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a few years ago, there was a, I mean, they need to refurbish the whole thing and there was a move to move them out. I think if Parliament had been moved out to another location, they'd have never moved back. A location which is more like the Welsh Need or the Scottish Parliament or the Australian Parliament and MPs going to visit these places and coming back to the Palace of Westminster must think what on earth are we doing still here and not only the adversarial way it's structured but also the dark oil painted but we met in a committee room which at least had some light large windows or was that a group?”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is very high, so at any time in general population, five or six percent of people are depressed and over a lifetime about 20%, 25% become depressed. So for 75% to be very anxious, stressed and so on is enormous. And all the pressures that you talk about, Rory, were very manifest, I think. So the mindfulness sessions that we had were in a committee room where at least there was some light because there's not a lot of light in the palace of Westminster. It's a fatty dark place”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what you say is true that, and indeed there was a servit and wasn't there that by one of the Conservative MPs a few years ago showing that 74% of MPs had stress, depression, major thing, and 50% of their staff as well”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if you can use that energy, then it's a really positive thing. And if you know as well, if it helps you get through the depression, knowing that this will end, and when it does end, I will get a burst of energy. I think that's different from a sort of boom and bust cycle in which you realize you've got energy, but then you're sort of trying to do everything. Right, everything's got to be done today.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's not helpful. Damping is a bad thing. So it can feel like a regulation strategy. But actually, it means that Often you don't savor at the moment, so you're afraid of getting attached to positive things because they're going to go, but your reaction to non-attachment is to say, well, they don't really exist. I can't trust these good feelings. So in our latest work, we've been teaching people to say, It's okay to like this, just like when negative things happen, it's okay not to like it, and this can let people off the hook and allow them to feel, to save a positive thing, whether it's a food or a relationship or without getting attached to it. Just enjoy the moment rather than just squander it or dampen it.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tears by that, getting over excited is not good. And so there's a tendency, I think, in many of us, especially if we have had history depression or are just a little bit hurt. To respond to people who are happy, excited by going. Or watch out, don't go there. It won't last. And so we try to get our disappointment in first before the child gets disappointed. So if a child says, oh, I've been picked for the team, I've been picked for the team. A parent often thinks themselves, oh, well, I hope it goes well. And I hope they don't get picked next week. So we can often say, well, don't get your hopes up. And don't get your hopes up can mar the moment with a little bit of dampening. And we know that people.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be about faith, but actually it may just be that when we feel down or vulnerable, other people enjoying themselves can be quite difficult. It may be about the faith, but there's something which psychologists have started to explore called dampening, which is how, I mean, people are known for years that rumination is a problem for people who are vulnerable to depression. When you feel sad, what happens? Oh, I start to think about what this. I think about that, try and work out. We know that's not good for you. But now dampening is how people react to when you feel happy or excited or whatever. And many people, if they start to feel happy or excited, probably if they feel other people happy or excited, they have this pressure to say this won't last, you know, your luck won't last. How can you dampen it? Don't get too excited. Or as my mother used to say, there'll be tears by bedtime. And, you know, and she was probably right, actually.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Suicidal fault, but they don't coalesce so much. But suicidal feelings and thoughts like that are just an extreme form of the negative sort of story that we tell ourselves about there's no point in hanging on people would be better off if I wasn't here. And people say that without ever sort of checking out with their loved ones if that were true.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, once again, we know that if you've been suicidal in the past when you've been depressed, then another depression, it's one of the most regular features if you've been suicide in the past, that when you get depressed again, the suicidal feelings tend to come back. Depression is a constellation of all sorts of symptoms, eight or nine symptoms. And to get four or five of them, you can get a diagnosis of depression if they hang around for a long time. But sometimes you can get depressed a second or a third time and they'll be a slightly different constellation of symptoms. But suicidal ideas we know from our research is one of the most regular things that come back. Following mindfulness, you can get suicidal feelings again, but they tend not to be so closely linked with the sad mood. So you doesn't come back as a big black blob anymore, that they can't, the sad mood can come.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit of sad mood, just get through the sad mood. But if you've been depressed many times in the past, that ordinary sad noodle, that ordinary sluggish, immediately spreads into all the things that have become associated with it before you know it, the weight of depression is on you. I don't know whether that's what it feels like, but it sounds like it's very rapid for you”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does make sense. I mean, memory is very contextual, right? It's like memory is like diving into a water where when you dive into the water, you remember all the things that you last remembered when you were in that particular state, but when you come out, you can't remember it anymore. And one of the things we know about waking up is that is a very, very vulnerable time. Part of what we understand now is that ordinary mood like sad mood or that feeling that you get up when you're very sluggish in the morning, for people who have been depressed in the past, is part of a configuration which can easily spread so they become associated with previous depressions. For many people who experience these sluggish in the morning but have never been depressed, they just get through those five or ten minutes.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that means that for many people it might be things like banging doors, getting irritable, having arguments with people. And then they realize, okay, I realize I'm feeling a bit vulnerable here. How can I just take a moment, maybe take a breath, feel my feet on the floor? And that can give a sense of choice about how to best treat yourself with kindness.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the things that Manfred teaches you to look at the warning signs of that so you can see yourself sliding into it. Now the warning signs are different for everybody and sometimes they can come very fast and then it's a question of what's the way of best looking after yourself. What's the way of best being kind to yourself? And some people actually, as part of mindfulness for depression, they make a sort of antidepressant kit, which they put under the bed and which might be their favourite novel, it might be their favorite text, or it might be a list of things they can do, which will start with, I know you won't feel like doing this, but do something from this list and do it now. But often people learn the warning signs and they can learn to steer out of the skid of the black depression.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“would change the critical thing that had changed was people were learning to treat their thoughts as thoughts, not to take them so personally, not to take them as just gospel because I've happened to have thought it, and it coincides with my sad mood. When you do that, it turns out that you begin to see the warning signs of thoughts coming up, you begin to what we call decenter, that's to stand back a little, in order to move in close to the processes that are maintaining depression. Right. So if that's true, how do you actually do that for people who are vulnerable to depression? The answer is mindfulness because mindfulness teaches you to treat all thoughts as thoughts. So you can practice on anything, not just negative thoughts, but, oh, I meant to see that send that email thought or I'm supposed to buy bread on the way home sort of thoughts. When you meditate, it's not more than a few.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up and look at them and test them, and it was thought that the critical mediator of change and why cognotherapy worked was because you change your degree of belief. No longer did you think 100% my friends are sick of me, but you only believed it 20% and that allowed you then to get back to some sort of life. So that's how it thought to work. In fact, it turned out not to be that. Because if you look at degree of belief, antidepressants actually reduced degree of belief as well, just the same amount. What it turned out to be was the process of cognitive therapy, that is let's treat your thoughts like my friend a sick of me amophilia as a hypothesis to be tested, how would you test that thought and let's set up an experiment between now and next time we meet to test the thought How on earth would you test it if you were a scientist? How would you test that thought? And then you collaborate with the person to try to work out how they could test it. It turned out that although the belief”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and we knew that cognotherapy when used for depression was about as powerful as antidepressants for most depressed people, mild, moderate depression, for the most severe depression, well, the jury's out on that. Some cognotherapists say it can work there too. Others say, no, that's where you need your meds. But if you want to understand how to prevent recurrence, one of the critical things is to understand when cognitive therapy worked and reduced the risk of future depression, how did it do that? Cognotherapy, people used to think that it works by changing your degree of belief. So when you're depressed, you think I'm useless, I'm stupid, I'm a failure, I'm my friends have left me in if they've come back, it's only because they need me for something. So you have this lot streams of negative thought. Cognitheraprapy was good at getting you to treat these thoughts and hold them.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, actually there are very good sort of good reasons, for scientific reasons, for making the switch into mindfulness. So myself and my colleagues, John Teesdale from Cambridge and Zindel Siegel in Toronto, we were asked to produce, we were all cognitive therapists, all academic cognitive therapists studying how cognitive therapy worked, how much it worked, how effective it was, and what the processes, what the mechanisms were. But we knew that the problem with depression was not just when people get depressed how can you best help them. Cognotherapy was good at that, antidepressants are also good at that. But the problem with depression is that for many people it keeps coming back again and again. Antidepressants can be, of course, taken continuously, but most people don't do that. They take them for a while and then stop them, whether they've been told or not, they tend to keep them for a rainy day. And that makes people vulnerable to relapse because they're no longer on their mess.”
2025-12-22 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 167. Faith, Depression, and Finding Calm in the Chaos (Professor Mark Williams) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source