LISTEN: Irish doctor Harry Barry opens up about healing, hope and the power of self-acceptance

After four decades in medicine, Dr. Harry Barry has learned that true healing begins with compassion for oneself. Speaking candidly on the "Natter" podcast with Michelle McDonagh and Kate Durrant, he reflects on his journey through illness, loss, and discovery, and how understanding emotional distress can change lives.

Depression is the only illness in all of medicine that makes you believe that you’re the problem, when in fact, this is not the case at all.

So says best-selling author Dr Harry Barry, one of Ireland’s most influential doctors, who retired from full-time practice in 2013 after four decades to focus on his long-standing interest in mental health.

“No other illness that you could think of makes you believe that you are the reason that you feel like this. It’s a fascinating insight. I was giving a talk to the Samaritans one time, and there was one line that so many of them came back afterwards and said was the line they could really understand. And it was that it (the depression) is the problem, you are not the problem... And that is very, very powerful.”

Dr. Barry was talking to writers Kate Durrant and Michelle McDonagh on the Irish books podcast "Natter" with Kate and Michelle, produced in association with Bookstation, Ireland’s fastest-growing and best-value bookseller, and Irish Central.

In his new memoir, "Beneath The Surface, An Irish Doctor’s Journey of Resilience, Empathy and Self-Discovery", Dr. Barry looks back over a life and career shaped by defining events. A solitary childhood with chronic illness, a traumatic experience in school, and family tragedies that set him on a course of dedicating his life to medicine and healing. His thought-provoking and inspiring memoir shows us how, by embracing compassion and love, we can transform not only our own lives but the world around us. 

In addition to his clinical work, Dr Barry has published 11 best-selling books on various topics in mental health. He was one of the first professionals to talk about emotional distress, rather than pure mental illness, as a contributory factor to someone taking their own life.

“Emotional distress is something that almost every single person will experience at some stage in their lives. If they haven't, I wish them well because it's coming…The group of people in most trouble, in my opinion, is not those who are mentally ill, say with severe bipolar disorder or psychosis or a serious eating disorder or serious OCD. It’s the people who are struggling with anxiety, for example… which is not a major mental illness.

"It's actually a very simple group of conditions which causes a huge amount of emotional distress. And if we just had better techniques and better understanding of it, like for example, people with panic attacks, people with phobias, people with social anxiety, you can clear those quickly in a space of around three or four visits ….by helping people to understand what’s happening to them and giving them the techniques to quickly deal with it.”

The real secret to mental health, according to Dr Barry, is unconditional self-acceptance where "we accept ourselves as the wonderful, special, unique human beings that we are."

The concept developed by Albert Ellis holds that your worth as a human being is inherent and not dependent on your actions or achievements, or on the opinions of others. It involves accepting your imperfections and separating your behaviour from your self-worth.

“If all of our young people accepted themselves unconditionally and stopped rating themselves, but took responsibility for their behaviour, if all of us did, what a different world we’d live in. So my battle my whole life is trying to achieve unconditional self-acceptance. And all the people I've worked with, I try to get them to develop this as best they can in their lives because it is the most wonderful bulwark against all of the things that happen to us in life. And we learn to become much more realistic, to realise that all of us mess up all the time. So this idea that we have to be perfect, that we can't make mistakes or we have to be brilliant at everything. Not at all…. I mess up all the time. But that doesn't define me.”

Having struggled with emotional distress in many different forms, including loss and grief in his own life, Dr Barry’s message is very much rooted in his own experience, which is why he feels so many people resonate with his story.

“There’s this idea out there that if you're in the public eye and if you seem to be successful in whatever area you happen to be in, that somehow life is easier for you and you don’t experience the same problems or difficulties and that’s just not true. There's no point in me talking about emotion distress and emotional resilience unless I am open and vulnerable to exposing myself.”

It’s this honesty, compassion and generosity of spirit that has helped so many people connect with Harry Barry’s words, whether through his books or articles or on radio, TV and podcasts over the years. 

“If we all just picked out one person each day and spent a couple of minutes with that person who is in trouble or who needs those few words, the world would be such a better place….And I think the message of this book is that people are struggling at the moment ….. we’re all struggling. And yet, if we could learn these skills and be kinder to ourselves and just say, look, all I can do is the best I can in this particular situation. And if we all try to help each other and be there for each other, what a different world it would be.”

You can purchase Dr Harry Barry’s new book Beneath The Surface at bookstation.ie here http://bit.ly/48UozIH

Listen to Harry’s interview on Natter with Kate and Michelle now at https://shows.acast.com/natter or on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to follow us on instagram @natterwithkateandmichelle or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/p/Natter-the-pod-61560758079707/ 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U2RSAmRGOdaXhOVfQzJ2XS0Y9ePs2grz/edit

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