 Welcome to Pukipondas, the podcast where I explore big questions with brilliant people. I'm Pukie Nightsmith and I'm your host. Today's question is, how do you go from elective mutism to public speaking? And I'm in conversation with Caroline Harrow. My name's Caroline Harrow. I'm the CEO of Commerce and Tomorrow Project. I'm a number five and I have battled with my own experience of mental health and distress over the years. And I worked with them. Brilliant. Thank you so much for making time to talk with me today. And the reason that we decided to have a chat, I mean, I've obviously kept up with your work over many years. And there's loads of different things I'd like to talk to you about. But in particular today, I was looking for someone who could talk to me about elective or selective mutism. And you said that you'd be prepared to talk about that because it was something you knew a thing or two about. So I'm not very good at even knowing how I should be referring to it. So maybe we can start there with which words feel okay. And then maybe if you wouldn't mind telling us just a little bit about your kind of thoughts on it and we'll see where we go. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's kind of that way enough of elective mutism to elective mutism. And I think people relate to it in different ways. So for me, I always use the term elective mutism. But I don't know if that's particularly thought through on my part, to be honest. But yeah, I know it's sometimes, isn't it? You think, okay, I'll question that terminology. But no, for me, I've always used the term elective mutism. And my background in relation to verbalising, I guess, is quite different in many ways. I was raised in a household with a younger sibling that cannot speak. And so it had a massive bearing on my development. Just this relationship to speaking and not speaking and signing and not signing and just communication in general, really, and how important that communication was, but in different ways. So that's kind of, you know, a personal relationship to this particular area, which is then as I've trained as a therapist and I've done lots of work with lots of people over the years. Then just been something I've probably been more mindful of in my work. So talk to me a little bit about how things were for you when you were younger then. So there were times when you did verbalise and times when you didn't and you used other means. Could you just explain a little bit about what that kind of was like sort of day to day? Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, my periods of silence were much when I was my childhood. So I wouldn't call the, so I refer to it as periods of quiet and silence in my childhood because it didn't feel like it wasn't speaking. It was just being in a different environment. So my sister, it's a couple of years younger than me and she is autistic and she has cerebral palsy, mild cerebral palsy, but that was undiagnosed for, you know, the largest part of her life really. And she just couldn't, she couldn't speak. So she didn't hit those normal milestones as she was developing. And we were a kind of typical 2.4 family and I grew up as the elder sibling, very much doting on my sister and her care needs were quite high. But it's easy to say that with retrospect at the time, I think we were just a family that didn't really know what we were inheriting in terms of this little girl who, yeah, so the older she got, the more of the pain that she was not going to kind of hit those milestones and she needed a different level of care. And by the time she was about eight, a placement had been sought at a specialist speech and language facility where she went residential, which was an absolute tragedy for me as a doting sibling, but it meant that she got the specialist care. So that's the kind of backdrop really. And so what that, what that taught me at a very early age was A, how to care for somebody who needed those that help in navigating the world and B, that communication didn't always look like the rest of the world thought it looked. So not always needing to speak to communicate as very developed, very sophisticated nonverbals, I guess, because I needed them. And then I became this natural translator. So I very easily slipped into this role of somewhat self-subjugating to help my sister navigate the world. So my role to her was very much of when she was communicating and the world didn't receive her, I would translate what she was trying to communicate. So I was constantly in this like triangle, this triad of being her communicator. And yeah, so my relationship with communication, verbals, nonverbals, was different as a very young child, I suppose, and had a bearing on my relationship to speech because I hadn't, you know, I love words like I write, I write poetry, I love language and that's very different to needing to speak. And I think that's something that I think with this particular area is really important to understand the need to speak, the want to speak, the inability to speak, the control of speaking is also very different to communication. There's still communication. So yeah, that's the kind of backdrop I probably waffled there for a little while. No, not at all. It's really interesting. I've got about a million different questions and trying to work out which way to go next. So what happened after your sister left then? Did your communication and how you chose to communicate with the world or how you did communicate with the world fall back into a slightly more normal pattern? Or did it become, did you become more quiet? I think, I think one, I was psychologically bereft that she was away at a residential school on Monday, Friday, and I felt with hindsight, I can reflect on this even from a very young age. I felt like I was rolled different, like when she went away because I was still used to being that communicator for her. I was very good at communicating. It was just a quiet household, really, because when she was there, her behavior was either very challenging or we had periods of quiet because she couldn't speak. So we didn't always need to speak. And I just remember the times when she wasn't there, quiet. Now, I went about my life as a regular child at that time, going to school, doing the same routines, our friends. So I obviously communicated well enough to sustain all of those things. But the way I remember it is quiet. I don't remember this need for dialogue. So my relationship to dialogue and communication, I think, was already buried and challenged by that time. And did those around you understand what you had to say? Because it sounds like you did a lot of translating for your sister. But then you'd also learned different ways of understanding her and perhaps communicating with her and perhaps at home. Did that translate at school as well? Did people, were you always able to get your point across? No, I not often felt quiet. Like I said, I don't know how else to describe it. It's not quite as in, I felt like the command of words to other people was used well for my sister, but not for myself. So my relationship to communicating was very much about should and rather than could. So I guess because my use of verbalising was very much as a young child used to translate for my sister, I lost command of it for myself. Yeah, that makes sense. That's quite complicated for quite a young child. You were what, 10 or 11 at that point in time? Yeah, yeah. Did the adults around you try and encourage you to, you know, kind of verbalise more or anything like that? Because I don't know very much about elective mutism and I'm trying to learn. But one of the things I'm hearing a lot from people who are quiet is this idea that they feel that everyone else wants them to talk and perhaps they don't always want to, need to, you know, it feels that there's conflict there perhaps. Yeah, I think and still to this day, so I'm 41 now and, you know, speaking as a natural part of my role, I don't feel the need to speak a lot of the time. So I'm very happy to sit with rhetoric without, you know, needing to respond. I just don't need to and sometimes that needs to explain to people because they can think, OK, Caroline's unresponsive. I don't think I'm unresponsive. I'm just naturally comfortable with quiet. Like I'm naturally comfortable listening to other people and not needing to speak myself. And that's still a very strong trait. So I think that I can definitely identify with the fact that the greater the pressure, the harder it is. But that pressure isn't necessarily. So say if I was to do some public speaking, I would feel very anxious about that. But the pressure isn't the same as if I was in a one-to-one conversation and somebody was expecting something differently from me. That kind of pressure, that interpersonal pressure is far greater and more likely to yield, I don't know, me to be quiet or at best in articulate. Wow. And so you said you kind of get anxious, kind of worried about standing up on stage, but your role naturally as a CEO and you do stand up and speak in front of people. And do you ever find that that is challenging or is it just a different kind of communication and you treat it differently? I guess I see it as having different facets. So can I do it from an articulate, comprehensive, clear set of communication? Yes, I can do it. And like I say, I think my relationship to language is quite a sophisticated one and verbalising. I like to be clear, I like to be authentic and I can do it. Do I like to do it? No, I don't. So it is a very accepted part of my role. It's something that people tell me I'm reasonably good at, but I do find it extremely challenging. So the fact that I can do it, I guess, is awesome progress in so many ways. Given that I could go periods of my life without uttering a word. But yeah, I would still say it's an act of courage, not something I find. Sorry, I'm not sure if you can hear me, but my... Oh, there we go. Sorry, you paused. It's something ironic or something about that. Sorry, so you were saying that for you, public speaking is quite an act of courage. Are you proud that you are able to do that? Or is it just one of those things you just sort of get done in the way that we sometimes do? Yeah, I guess with a lot of what I do, I don't really stop to think about the progress. Maybe I should. It'd be much more healthy for me. But I just kind of, I do, I kind of need to be done really. And I think about, so when I speak, even like this or publicly or, you know, I'm presenting at a conference or I'm attending a meeting, the thing that enables me to do it is the same thing that enabled me to do it for my sister. Because I'm thinking about my position and how my position can be used well to communicate on behalf of those people who are voiceless, of whom I used to be one. So that's how I approach it. I approach it like I'm also almost a vehicle for communication for people who have lost their voice through whatever, whether that's disadvantage or circumstances or distress. And so that's how I approach it and that's what enables me to do it, I think. So you have a kind of a purpose and a clear sort of function almost. There's a reason for the words to leave you. So does that mean that you still wouldn't engage in sort of small talk and idle chat from choice? No, no, I'm fine with that, I guess. So if you think about different situations, there's kind of one-to-one situations, there's group situations and we all form different roles in those different circumstances, don't we? And I think that my communication style now lends itself very well to that one-to-one. I'd like to think I'm quite attentive in that because I don't feel the need to speak. So for some people that can feel a bit intense that I'm like a sponge that's ready to absorb but other people have got to say because they don't necessarily feel the need to always talk. But now I'm fine with kind of chit chat. I think I'm more likely to get lost in a group situation because I listen and I don't fight to get my voice heard. And I get that kind of wave of adrenaline through your body when I'm going to go and speak. So it's still something that I experience that sway the anxiety just before I kind of speak if there's been a pause or I'm in a group situation. Yeah, I can, for completely different reasons, I can quite empathize with that actually. You mentioned before that you had sort of, you know, you now do public speak confidently and well, I've seen you speak and you do, you really command an audience. But you said that you had, you know, come from periods of quiet in your life. Were there times when you just didn't speak at all? Because the picture you painted so far is almost of that you would not speak much or without clear purpose, but were there times when you just were mute for a long time? Absolutely. So by the time, so some of my difficulties with, I don't know, I guess my mental health began around my early teens and I developed tenorexia at 13 and, you know, those kind of things rumbled on for a while with little intervention, although, you know, we were in the 90s then. So, you know, there wasn't always a quick response to certain things and I was high, I was a high achiever. So in many ways, a lot of my difficulties remained convenient and unseen because of my quiet, I wasn't causing a fuss. So what that meant is, you know, I went to school. I got ten GCSEs, I got six A levels. So my, because I was doing those things and I went home to my family who were together and united and there wasn't really a reason to try and intervene because on the outside I was doing okay. But what that meant is that all of these things that I've just been talking about, the internalizing the relationship to what I saw as my value and purpose, that self-subjugation, that quiet, they became more and more pronounced as I entered my adult years. And by the time I was in my 20s, I was quite unwell and had a number of psychiatric admissions. I self-harmed a lot with multiple attempts on my life. My distress was just profound. And I became somebody that services didn't know how to engage with. You know, the kind of, I was labeled an expected suicide. I faced a lot of painful discrimination and misunderstanding really, a lot of misunderstanding. So I ended up in a mental health system that before I'd even started had given up on me. And my inability to communicate was often misinterpreted as not engaging, manipulative because when I was put in situations with mental health professionals, I fell silent. So it was seen as an act of avoidance or an act of defiance. That's the bit that really, I think we really need to improve our understanding of. It was seen as an act of defiance and that was seen really negatively. And actually it wasn't an act of defiance. It was me being immobilised. It was a conveyance of complete immobility in my own life and a symptom of absolute distress. So kind of freeze response rather than one effect. Yeah, in those moments, in those kind of, I don't know, interaction with mental health professionals. And then it became more pronounced. So the more unhappy I became for once of a better word, the more pronounced my silence and there were periods of time where I wouldn't speak at all. You know, for a couple of months at a time. A therapist had kind of stuck a neck on the line and said, I'm going to work with this girl. And I just sat there for eight weeks solid and never said a word. And that wasn't just to her. That was in my life. I didn't speak at all. So she sat there in this island with me. Did that help? Well, what it did was it opened up an opportunity. So instead of seeing the silence as a cage in which I was bound, it was seen as an opportunity to open up a different form of communication. And I think that's something that was really, really important. And something I try and do in my work is that the only method we've got the communication is not just verbal communication. We've got lots of other methods. And whilst I wrote, you know, whatever, however we want to make sense of that was withholding speech, sometimes because I was so overwhelmed by my own thoughts, I couldn't command speech and then it became this thing. I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. And I felt in control and out of control at the same time of whether or not I could speak. So it was kind of this vicious cycle. So the less the pressure was on to speak, the more able I was to sometimes utter an agreeance or a muttering, I suppose. And then eventually I kind of spoke in a whisper sometimes. Because I just couldn't commit to my own voice because if you've not heard your own voice for a very long time, it's very alien and it can be quite frightening. So yeah, so taking the pressure off was really important, but not assuming that if we can't talk, we can't communicate. And that that was really important to me, but that was led by me. So I think there's something about that being autonomous and trying to establish with the person that is quiet. You know, are they communicating? Let's have a look at how they're interacting with me. Are they showing up for a start? So, you know, that can be quite difficult with children because they're often kind of made to show appointments, but are they engaging with their eyes? And can we build rapport and relationship without the reliance on speech? And if we can do that, then that's really important because when you're in a very silent world, you can feel very cut off, different, alienated, unable to say or communicate your basic needs. So feeling connected in other ways can then help re-engage that connection verbally if that's necessary. So for me, that was really key, really key. So you were communicating through things like your body language and your physical presence in the room. I think that's a really important point that if you show up, that actually sends a really strong message, doesn't it? Did you also at that time communicate through any other means? So you said that writing and drawing, for example, are really important for you. Did you use any of those methods for communication or were you quiet in those ways too at that time? Well, I would often use basic sign, which if you don't have any sign language, you wouldn't know. And I still do it, I still sign sorry when I'm sorry, I'll sign promise. There's some basic words that I would naturally sign. And so I guess that was the kind of almost invisible method of communication because sign language requires two people to communicate. And I would sometimes sign and I didn't have a recipient because they didn't speak sign. And they wouldn't necessarily recognise that I was signing. So I guess there were some attempts at communication that weren't verbal. So that was something that we kind of learnt together over time. And I read a lot, I was looking for a lot of meaning in my life and I would write. But I guess it would require the kind of another to recognise that there are methods of communication that might be suited to this person in front of them, whoever that might be. And so for me, that was kind of a long journey of trying to figure that out without the aid of speech. So over time I would, you know, I would be complimentary or, you know, so I could communicate and I would communicate and just not use speech. And then we had this kind of moment of breakthrough really, so it's really interesting. I've written a paper, I'm not to be honest, was that the therapist that I was seeing kind of had got to know me through periods of speech and then periods of not speaking at all. And a new me and one day on a handwritten piece of paper handed me a poem. And this is going to sound super cliche and really profound, but she handed me this poem and she she'd kind of just felt that it captured something about where I was. And even though I'd been in this long period of mutism at that time. I felt like somebody had heard me and and that poem on that piece of paper on that day showed me that there was another human that was willing to understand the way I communicated or made sense of the world. And that it didn't rely on speech. We had a moment of connection and understanding that was demonstrated and received. That didn't rely on me speaking. And after that point I started to write, and I wrote to communicate so it didn't rely on my voice. And over time, I naturally started to learn to use my voice again. But it was, I needed to feel met, I needed to feel that the pressure was off speech, I needed to feel that somebody understood why I wasn't speaking and, you know, all of those facets were really necessary for me. So yeah, I still got that poem on that piece of paper. Do you think that your therapist knew how important that moment would be, or do you think it was one of many things they tried? I don't think they knew at the time. I think they know now. And so we've written a collaborative paper actually about this, about like how, you know, how we seek metaphor to translate our experiences or understand our experiences. So I don't think, I think at the time they were a bit like, I have this silent person that I want to know when that this is, this is how it feels. I'm giving you this, this something that is to me how I make sense of what you're going through. And it did precisely that. So I don't think at the time they realized how pivotal it would be. I think it was an intervention that wouldn't have been delivered outside of the silence. I think it was something that was learnt because of the silence. And I think that some things between us, when you, when you realize that there are other opportunities presented by mutism that aren't reliant on speech, then it gives you the freedom to explore them. But we must each kind of like challenge ourselves with that because we naturally want to talk and, you know, get some feedback about things from people. So it kind of means that you need to kind of not abandon speech at all, but, you know, explore the opportunities that are there without it. And if you do that, I think you can find ways to communicate if that is the ultimate aim. Wow. And was that so after that, then you began to communicate using the written word more. Is that something that you had personally kind of engaged with prior to this relationship? Or was that new for you using using your written words in that kind of way? No, I think I'd always written from being quite young. So a lot of my quiet was filled with words. It just wasn't filled with verbal words, if that makes sense. So I think I'd always written and I'd always drawn. And I think they became just more, more utilized methods for communication. It's always been very much for myself before whereas I started to use those tools to communicate to one another. And I think that sometimes there's a lot of emphasis based on words, obviously, because we use them to communicate, but sometimes they just don't feel enough. Sometimes, sometimes our human experience, we try and reduce it to the spoken language, but actually it's very difficult sometimes to translate the human experience into words. And I recognize that some of my periods of mutism were probably dominated by those kind of themes when actually language felt, I don't know, inadequate. A lot of my experiences were sensory or visceral and it's like when we say we're anxious. It's a physiological response, isn't it? Anxiety, all of our emotions are actual physiological states and we just translate them into a word which we then use to communicate. And I sometimes find that word inadequate for the actual experience. I think that a lot of my autism was about not being able to find adequate language for my experiences and therefore feeling that it was redundant. And there was no point speaking in many ways, but actually I didn't know how to anymore. I kind of lost the command of it because I consistently felt so immobilized. Wow. I'm intrigued that you went on to work alongside your therapist to kind of pick this apart and think about what you could learn from it. I love that and I think that's an incredible thing to do. Was it a long time later and how did you go about looking at that and did you find so many questions? Did your therapist feel on it the same or different? I think at first, I mean I'm sure she'd have a lot to say about this, but I think at first you just had no idea. I think it was like fighting blind. Like, here was this girl in front of her that had kind of given up on life and wouldn't speak and wouldn't communicate. And there was all these facets of her life that nobody knew anything about, but then knew there was something, but they couldn't get to that something because nobody would, like I wouldn't speak. So I think the shared view was one that I was suffering and that communication would be important, but understanding both my background, because it's not just because of my sister that doesn't speak, but really embracing that and exploring that enabled me to develop an identity that could be communicated and I could communicate. I just didn't speak and the willingness to do that and not see it as something that needed to be battled with, addressed maybe, but not battled with, not something that needed to be taken away or resolved or fixed. It was actually a part of where I was at that time in my life and it was happening for a reason. I think that was the shared bit. I think how to do that was probably a bit like, not really sure. But once the communication channels outside of verbal language were opened up, it meant that the pressure was off and actually I naturally did start to, like I said, whisper at first, and I would shake my head, you know, behave in contradictory manners and communicate in other ways. Often kind of through eye contact or, yeah, I wanted to engage, I communicated, I wanted to engage, I just couldn't speak. And what did you, when you worked together on that paper, what did you kind of conclude if you like, what was it that you offered out to other people in terms of learning from that experience? I guess that fundamentally relationships are absolutely key and that they can be communicated and developed in a variety of ways. And we began to develop that relationship through shared understanding, which is the kind of purpose of therapeutic engagement, isn't it? It's to be met, to be understood, to develop a shared understanding of someone's presentation needs difficulties, however you would phrase it, to move forwards together on something. And that foundation was born out of the sharing of metaphor, because it couldn't happen through direct communication. And that in that instance, poetry, metaphor, the sharing of the written word was fundamental to the building of a relationship, a therapeutic relationship, and that that could happen in the absence of verbal communication. The verbal communication did come, but the relationship, the therapeutic relationship was born out of something else. And I think that's, I don't know, a message of hope really, that we can build connections. We can build connections if we are open to the idea that it's not always going to happen the way that we traditionally think it might, you know. And then in my case, that was fundamental for my survival really, I don't think I'd be here otherwise. And do you think that your experience is sort of typical, or are there ways in which your quiet, your mute periods differ from other people when you've spoken to others who've gone through, you know, what maybe looks from the outside similar. I think I imagine a bit like we always teach people about self-harm. You might see similar-looking injuries, but what underlie them might be very, very different kind of forms of distress. And I wonder if quiet and mutism is similar or different from that. Yeah, I think I've spoken to a variety of people, often younger people that have had periods during childhood. So when I reflect on my childhood, I describe it as quiet, but I think that they, had I had a better understanding, I probably might have been able to label periods of mutism then as well. So I can describe to you a day when I'd just gone into, I don't know, what would be the first year of primary school, and something had distressed me. And I was unable to communicate that at all. And the teacher had me on her knee trying to communicate, and I just couldn't, I couldn't speak, I didn't speak, I didn't speak the whole day. And I remember it really, really visually, I remember everything about it, and I was very small. So I think that, you know, had I had a better language to describe my experiences of mutism, I probably would have identified them earlier. And I think, so I'm going to answer this in two parts, if that's all right. I'm sorry I'm talking so much. It's wonderful that you're talking, thank you. Ironic, really. So I think there are periods of quiet and mutism in my own life that vary. So it's not one thing all the time. So I think that's important to understand as well, just as we say again with self harm, what self harm is one day, it might not be the next day. And it's really important to check out the meaning related to that experience on a day to day moments moment basis. And I think that we should do the same with mutism, because there are times when I felt that withholding my voice is my control. You can't make me say something. I have control. It's the only thing I have control over in my life. I am not going to speak and you cannot make me. And then there are times where I am completely immobilized by shame, anticipation, that the anxiety keeps the mutism and then I'm stuck. So there are two polar points and there's probably every shade of grey in between, between the taking of control and the losing control. So, yeah, for me, if there's that much variety in my own experiences, I can then assume the same of other people, which means that any one period of mutism might not be what it's been before. And I think that's really important that somehow we make sense of the mutism in that current set of circumstances at that time and point in life and to not assume that it is the same as it was before. It may be because we fall into patterns as humans, but it may not be. And for me, as an adult experiencing periods of mutism, it was almost like I was expected to not have that because something you were only doing when you were a child. But it didn't feel like I was doing it. It felt like it was all I had. And once there, it was very difficult to get out. So I think there's something about, you know, just being mindful that it's varied and it might be different things from one day to the next. And, you know, to understand both those facets that actually it can be a taking of control and a losing of control, you know, and anybody may be at various points on that spectrum to then enable us to pitch our intervention or our relationship or communication. Because if you start with somebody who wants to communicate and can't, how we might facilitate is very different to that with someone who absolutely does not want to use their voice. Yeah. So can't and won't being very different. It's fascinating hearing you talking about it as it being a taking of control or losing of control because for me, and I'm sure you'll have drawn this parallel and your own experience as well, perhaps. It sounds a lot like my experience with food and periods of anorexia where sometimes absolutely that was like you spoke about speaking. It was the one thing that I could control. But other times where it was nothing at all to do with a conscious choice whatsoever, this was something that was entirely controlling me. And so again, it's that outward playing of something that might look the same to the outside but completely different genesis from within depending on whether I'm six or 16 or 26 or what's going on in my life. Totally. And also that idea that something that at the start helps you to take control but quickly becomes something else. So I think that the same period of time might transition from one to the other within that instance as well. So again, using that analogy of anorexia, the starting to take control, consume become out of control very quickly in the matter of days, weeks. So I think there's that as well. And I think it's really interesting because I think about how I use my voice and how I talk and how I don't talk all the time. You know, and you've been, you've been to bed at night and you slept and you get up but you don't actually have anybody to interact with. So you don't use your voice. You don't necessarily speak. And then the phone rings and you answer the phone and you command your voice and you realise that you might sound a bit croaky because you've not spoken. It can feel a bit jolting sometimes. And I think that when you've not used your voice for a long time, there's more to it than just speaking. There's actually, you know, a lot of anxiety, a lot of kind of voice command stuff. How does it sound? How does it feel to speak? And I think that aren't really related to just the communication, just an inverse comment that actually the physicality of speaking can, I don't know, feel like it's something to overcome really. And did expectations of other people ever influence on whether you might speak or not? So again, I'm thinking about experiences with food, but wondering if you would experience a similar thing where almost if you'd got into a pattern of not speaking, that it would make it harder to speak because you knew that that was what happened then and what people were expecting or was that not your experience? Yeah, I think so. I think that's why it's important to recognise that communication and relationships develop outside of just the verbal communication because otherwise you can be a bit railroaded and to not being able to change. It feels too big. So for me, once speaking had been taken off the agenda, I almost found it easier to then start to work towards, I mean it wasn't like an overnight switch or anything like that. It just, yeah, I think it was. It came a possibility though. Yeah, because I was seen as a whole person and speaking was one part of me. It wasn't the only thing I needed to be able to be in that room with that person. So I could be in that room with that person or in those relationships without speech, which then meant that if I had it or I didn't have it, I was still me. So there wasn't a losing of a different identity by speaking, I guess. But yeah, it's fascinating nowadays because I've received people doing my role, people see me in a particular way. You know, we all construct our versions of ourselves for the public arena, but because speaking is such an important part of my role, whether that's a board meeting or poetry reading or a conference presentation, people find it really surprising that I had such significant periods of mutuals in my life. And do you, I found it surprising when you told me when you, when you, you know, were so kind to say that you'd be happy to talk about it, I was, yeah. Yeah, very surprised, but then I guess what, how, how, how would I know the times when I see you are by the very nature of the relationship that we've had professionally and the times when you would be speaking. And do you have to work hard to make sure that you can kind of continue to speak almost like do you, do you. Yeah, is it something you have to practice. Don't know if I've explained my. Yes. So I think that I don't feel, I don't feel under threat of returning to bold big periods of mutism. I don't. I don't feel that my, I have a natural propensity to silence. And sometimes what that can feel like is that I feel like I have communicated something that I haven't. So I can often feel like my thoughts are so strong that even though I haven't verbalized them, I've communicated them. And, and that can play out in a variety of different ways. So I have to be very, I have to work very hard to make sure that I have actually spoken what I need to speak. And, and also it can be difficult in some relationships because people have different expectations on speech and verbalizing and, you know, just verbal cues and things. And I naturally don't always offer them. I can say it very quietly. And sometimes it can be important to check out that the other person is all right with that. So it doesn't feel the same as mutism, but it does feel like it's an extension of it. Because I've had such long periods of time where all I've had is the strength of my own thoughts. And I haven't verbalized that I'm reasonably comfortable with that place. But I can also feel quite immobilized by silence sometimes. So especially if there are issues of humiliation or shame, I can be, I can feel paralyzed and not speak the way that I would like to speak. So I recognize those are similar traits and were probably, you know, a propensity towards the mutism that I had before, but I don't feel the risk of slipping into more than momentary silence, if I may say. So that was a round the house explanation. Yeah. Yeah. And just kind of taking it out sort of broader for a moment and thinking about, you know, if there's anyone listening to this who is perhaps still porting someone who can't always verbalize what would you advise like it sounds and you know from what you've said that the relationship's the most important thing and being kind of unconditionally there, whether someone is speaking or not feels very important here, that being very, very open to other cues that might not be verbal feels important and then maybe exploring other perhaps slightly more creative ways of communicating might matter. But does that sound fair? And would you add to that? Yeah, I think what's really important is that a person feels accepted and they feel safe because this is happening for a reason. So if somebody isn't speaking, it's happening for a reason. And whilst it's important to meet the person where they are. So, you know, if it's a child that's absolutely stunned into their own silence, we need to help them with that. But how we help them with that might not start off by looking at speaking. So I think, you know, I speak to a lot of parents who can feel very out of control and the way that they try and take control, the way that they try and help is say, come on, come to me, I want to hear what you've got to say. And actually, that person can communicate what they want to say without saying, without actually speaking. And so for me, I would very much say that a person needs to feel safe, they need to feel understood, and they need to find their own ways of communicating. And we have to be very aware to not reinforce the idea of perpetuating safety behaviors. Silence is one of them, but to enable the person to make the changes that they want to make. And, you know, a good question to start with might be, like, do you want to? What do you want to talk about right now? Is that something you want to work towards? And establishing where that person is in that relationship. So you're on the same page at the same time. And you can do that in a number of different ways, you know, flashcards or writing or, you know, eye movement and all those kinds of things. I think safety and relationship is really, really important. But I think everybody's different. And I think it's about, you know, taking the time to understand that in that given moment and seeing it as an opportunity. Because some of the most deepest connections we can develop between other humans can happen in those moments of silence, so not to be afraid of them, really. Because if we're supporting someone, you know, especially kind of parents or teachers, we can perpetuate the fear by being scared ourselves, whereas actually we can embrace that person and all that they are and help them. We just have to see the opportunities as they're presented to us. And is it helpful to talk to someone who might not respond? Like did you find it helpful when people spoke to you or do you rather they met you in whichever way you were trying to communicate at the time? Yeah, very different times, I think. I like people, so for me, naturally appreciate people just keeping talking, but also people being being okay with the quiet. There's something that you can communicate very clearly that you're uncomfortable with silence. You can just keep filling the silence all the time. So I think there's a balanced approach really. But it would, like I said, it was very, very much from time to time in my life, you know, there'd be times when I just, I was tired of trying to communicate and, you know, didn't want that pressure and other times when actually, you know, it was cool to listen to other people just talk to me and I was all right with that, that could be quite happy. It didn't, I didn't feel like I was missing out. But I think that, you know, those times are very different and very varied and there's just so many different kind of internal experiences in relation to that mutism that being met in that time and space, it can be a challenge, but I think it's really cute. And finally, are there any ways in which your periods of quiet have influenced how you lead? Because I'm just, I can't get away from how intrigued I am from this idea that you go from these periods of silence to this very, you know, it's a loud role being a CEO, isn't it? Whether that's physically loud or you know, it's a big, it's a big, big role. So how was your experience influenced how you lead? Well, when people come to work for me or the organisation, it's interesting because it is a different place, you know, we start off by saying this is not for everybody. You know, what you see is what you get with me. I am no different as a mother as a CEO. I'm like kind of authenticity is a bit of an affliction. So I think we, you know, we recruit for humility and human qualities that are higher up my list than they might be in other organisations. I'm not really interested in the huge work experience people have got when they apply to work in my team. What I want to do is be met by compassionate individuals with a propensity for humility who see themselves as willing to learn. And I think that's probably my leadership style as well. I, yes, I, you know, I have to, I have to lead, but I know all of my team. I feel like that's important. I don't want to steep hierarchy. I want interpersonal relationships. So for me, that's what leadership is. It's about being like kind of paving the way for people to feel safe and secure in being vulnerable humans and muddling through this all together. And so I kind of wear my heart on my sleeve because of those interactions because they're the things that have been effective for me. You know, being approachable, being honest, being flawed, being fallible, you know, and being hopeful. And all of those experiences are absolutely inherently bound in the life that I've led. So I can't lead any differently. But people are often surprised when they join my team or my organisation. They're like, you're here all the time. Like, we're not used to working where the CEO's around or involved or talks to us or, you know, it's important to me, like, without those relationships. Wow. Are you proud of what you've done? I feel very proud of my organisation. I feel very proud of my team. I feel sometimes it's a bit like, how has this happened? How have I come from that to having this growing team doing amazing work, inspired work? So I feel very, very proud of those things, but I'm guilty of not stopping long enough to celebrate because I feel that there's plenty of people that still need us to fight, though I'm constantly fighting for them. But yeah, I guess it's a long distance travel, so much so that when I talk about it, people are a bit like, oh, I don't actually believe that that happened. It seems so far from my understanding of your Caroline that, yeah, so it does feel a million miles away, but still a massive part of who I am that just doesn't get air, really, I guess. It's nice to be able to talk about it because most people wouldn't know it's about me. They might know more broad strokes about some of the experiences I've had, but my relationship to speaking and silence and mutism and that history of that is a really big part of me. Well, thank you so much for taking time to talk to me about it today. It's been fascinating and I've learned a lot listening to you, although one of the key things I'll take away is never to assume that because I've heard one story that I've heard them all, but every story will be different and that we need to find a way to hear what people have to share. What thought would you like to leave people listening with? I guess for me, ever the optimist, to see everything as an opportunity. So however difficult things can be, it presents an opportunity and whether that's to see somebody at them is wonderful and for that to be okay or, you know, to create an opportunity for connection that's outside the traditional means and that's okay. I think, yeah, I think that seeing every potential challenge as an opportunity was indifferent or an opportunity for human connection. That would be my key message really. And to just say that it'll be alright, not in an invalidating way, it will be like slow things down, figure it out together and create opportunities for human connection and, you know, if we do that, people get there, they find their way.