The Richard Nicholls Mental Health Podcast

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If you’ve ever wondered “What if…?” about your health, this one’s for you.
I'm digging into the often misunderstood world of health anxiety today, what many still call hypochondria. Which is not about drama or attention-seeking. Hypochondria is about fear. Real, convincing fear that something’s wrong, even when every check-up says otherwise.
I’ll be exploring where that fear comes from, how it shows up in our day-to-day lives, and what we can do to break the cycle. From panic spirals and over-Googling to learning how to sit with uncertainty and trust our bodies again, this one’s for anyone who’s ever felt stuck in that loop.
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In this episode, I’m talking about something called zoochosis. A term used to describe distress in captive animals, and how something very similar might be happening to us as humans in the modern world.
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Because we're not born knowing how to do anything that comes naturally to us as adults, we're literally born to fail along the way.
Whether that's learning to walk, talk or how to be calm in difficult situations. We have to learn. We have to practice. And the only way to do that is to get it wrong.
Time to embrace our failures!
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Today I'm looking at conformity and how it affects everything from our smallest decisions to our deepest sense of self. We’ll explore how group pressure shapes our thoughts and behaviours, and why pretending to fit in can damage our mental health over time.
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This week, I’m looking at the quieter side of victim blaming, the unintentional kind. The sort that sneaks into everyday conversations when we try to help someone through something, but accidentally end up making them feel worse.
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