Goes Without Saying - post-pandemic uneasiness: it's not just you

Episode Date: May 26, 2024

podmothers sephy & wing enter the chat: spiralling on body image, introspection and isolation, chaos, structure, social anxiety, self-loathing, healing and growth. ✷shop ✷ www.sephyandwing.co.ukhear more ✷ www.instagram.com/sephyandwingwatch more ✷ www.tiktok.com/@sephyandwing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay?

So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com It goes without saying you're listening to Goes Without Saying with Sefi and Wing. I'm Sefi. And I'm Wing. Throwback alert. We're talking about the pandemic. We're talking about all the ways that it definitely, definitely has affected us but we're just all completely in

denial about. Did it make you feel kind of comforted? Did it make you feel out of touch, unaligned, stressed, alone? I'm sure it made you feel everything all at once. It's weird to be talking about it again. Social anxiety, body image. We do a big talk about body image actually which has been really nice yeah i really think this is a good one don't be put off by the fact that we're talking about covid i promise it's worth it oh 100 is a great episode enjoy okay hello hello how are you i'm good how are you i'm good we've been seeing a lot of each other recently actually haven't we? It's actually quite insane I think because we got so used to doing this. I was gonna say quite nice. Yeah it's been so nice. Yeah it's been really nice. I think we got used to being long distance

being long distance in the sense that there was a point when you guys were here when the podcast was running we hadn't seen each other for a year yeah which was kind of over the pandemic but we kept it going for longer than necessary because we could have met up you know at points in the pandemic where like you could have met up sort of thing like we could have done it but it had to be just right it had to be perfect we got a cake like we did a whole thing it was quite weird though like really i'm glad we did looking back but me too but also why i don't know why yeah it was just quite we got quite in the habit of like not seeing each other and just having like a digital yeah uh relationship so it's quite funny to be like oh god we're seeing a lot of each other

we're in each other's pockets atm which i'm really liking because inherent in that means that we're doing fun things yeah um which is great yeah do you know what oh no go on no please take it away well i do have a kind of thought about i don't know like it's just my own anxiety but like i feel like it probably is from the pandemic as well which is perfect for this conversation yeah that is coming up so early but in the way that do you remember having a conversation it was with our manager Freya Queen again the other day and we were talking about with you everything you everything you say you truly mean like you really think before most of the time yeah every it's like you really really think and you're like do I want to say that yes I will say that yes what kind of gives me a bit of anxiety is the world

moves so fast like conversations move so fucking fast and yeah I throw out crazy things sometimes I'm like you do yeah I just say we all things and then I don't even think that like what the hell say things and then I don't even think that like what the hell literally what the hell so sometimes when I'm like I don't know it gives me stress to be like there's a safety in us not seeing each other do you know what I mean because there's so much on the line with you think you're gonna you think you're gonna say something to well I just think it's like conversations move fast I don't know it's just always like god I, it feels more threatening somehow to be in the real world with you. Okay.

That's an interesting one. We'll have to unpack that at a later date. Do you get that? Do you know what I mean? I guess just like the more time we're together, the more we do together, I guess it's just higher stakes. Yeah. I think I'm just always scared of losing the podcast.

Like that's always my fear so I feel like the more we spend time together which is absolutely nuts it is like the nicest thing ever I think it's also you're at a point where look maybe I'm putting words in your mouth but not even an anxious point but there's like a lot going on for you at the moment and there's a lot of stress on you and being put on you and there's a lot coming in from all angles yeah and so then i think we've spoke we've said this a hundred times like recently that then it trickles out into everything that you do yeah and it really does yeah because all the time more often than usual at the moment you're being

like i'm sorry that i blah blah blah or like is that okay if i blah blah you're second guessing yourself more often than you i'm an apologist at the moment i'm an apologist what do i mean an apologist apologist i guess for myself i yeah no i'm not a big apologizer really but you're second guessing yourself a lot more than you were like this time last year for example i think i'm scared of offending people i'm scared of doing the wrong thing things like that even though look i'm a nice girl in this world but you are you're the best girl as well yeah but it's just like i think the more time we spend together the better we were also kind of having this conversation yesterday about like um just having things to say on the pod like kind of all in one direction it's like look if you keep

pumping us out on tour after tour um album after album we're gonna have nothing to say not that they're writing their songs maybe who knows no i don't want to point any fingers but before we get carried away should we clear things off the top yeah youtube is coming you know that guys first of july coming first of j, I think, to be aware of. This may have been happening without you. You might know. You might be a part of the exclusive club already. But you might not know.

I don't know. You do. I've got no idea what you're about to say. I literally just said, let's make sure we say in this episode, cast your mind back. What could I possibly be about to say? YouTube. She's away. she's away in

the fairies guys sometimes i just don't know what to do with this girl you know what the fairies are the best this confusion we just said this we have an exclusive club going on instagram the crux club join it now yes yes we basically the first to be informed of like all of our goings on. And you might already be a part of it. You might know more about it than Sefi does. Well, at this point, I was very confused because just the setup of it confused me. I'm sorry. I don't know why that confused me.

Yeah, we did just speak about that. Just really like dazed and confused, girl. Well, yeah. No, please join because we're gonna do we we might do like voice notes and stuff on there yeah also be the first to know things that happen we can ask your opinions on stuff yeah i think it would be nice to do like vote on the new eps like would you rather hear this or this um so crux club on our instagram and also just quickly thanks for everyone saying nice things about us being active on Instagram and TikTok.

Like, you've really given us a pat on the back that we maybe don't deserve. So thank you so much. Like, it feels nice to be functioning girls on social media. Yeah, it feels great. 11.11, still rolling in. 11.11, let's talk about that. I'm loving it. We just did ours.

It's 11.34 now. And we did them together, which was cute. That was the first time just did ours it's 11 34 now and we did them together which was cute that was the first time oh no no no we did them the other day at the podcast show yeah but we went in each other's yeah yeah this is the first time we've been in each other's 11 11s so thank you to everyone basically showing us where you are what you're up to at 11 11 wherever yeah keep sending them in because that's the best bit of it i think it's the best putting ours up and then seeing where everyone else is it's so sweet it's so so sweet and wholesome and lovely also let us know like we might kind of just if you send your 11 11 be like you can share this or you or don't do you know i mean like let us know if you want us to or if you're okay with us sharing it because i would love to do that that it's like at the end of the week there's a dump of all of our 11 11s and then

at the end there's like sort of a collage or something of everyone else i just love that i did that to me is so goes without saying that it's like wherever you are whenever this is coming to you wherever you're at 11 11 we're thinking of each other we're there um and it's just so sweet together we're all holding hands in that moment 11 11 cute all right and everyone needs that post pandemic hey let's get in yeah oh god okay so anything you feel like getting off your chest yeah there is something oh go on then we were talking about it yesterday we went to a weird one of the weird things we've been doing together we went to this weird well it was really nice it was really nice it was great that Freya arranged for us thank you again queen love you thank you queen um and it

was really nice and we were talking and talking and talking all day as we do as we do yep yep yep and non-stop honestly non-stop and we started talking about the pandemic we were kind of talking about what this episode would be oh yeah and i remember saying to you yesterday um a thought that i've been having for a while about the pandemic i feel like it hit us in a weird point in our lives kind of it must have been sort of less weird for us than it would have been for the older generations and here's my theory it for us the pandemic hit the year after we graduated uni so from birth until age what like 23 24 if you go by conventional standards something changes every year it's like you're in nursery you're in school you're in sixth form you're in like you're moving up a year every year if that's your path then yeah if you're going sixth form, you're in, like, you're moving up a year every year. If that's your path, then yeah. If you're going by this conventional thing, you know. But I don't even think it's,

sorry, sorry, I just don't even think it's conventional. I think it's, like, a lot of people, most people don't go to uni. No, I'm talking about school. Most people, no, I know, but even sixth form, even. Okay, well, what I mean is you're going year seven, year eight, year nine. Conventional education, yeah. You're going through this stuff, okay. Yeah, yeah. And then, yeah, then if you're lucky, you stuff okay yeah yeah and then yeah then if you're lucky you go to sixth form two years then you go first year second year third year for weirdly the pandemic was just like the next thing that happened it was just like we've had event event event and then the next year the first year of out of that big change big change big

change big change big change it's this huge wild event and I was thinking like there was something that seemed sort of normal about that like even though it was the weirdest thing ever it didn't feel strange because it would feel more strange just to just have this huge expanse of time that's like you know there's nothing it's just like the same thing for 10 years yeah we were not used to that whereas I feel like it must have been so fucking weird for people that had been out of school out of uni and just like in a job for 10 15 years doing the same thing maybe with some progression but really just going back to the same thing and then out of nowhere at the 15 minute mark there's this like huge world event I feel like that must have hit them caught you off guard in a different way yeah I think also it's I think it doesn't even have to be because also if you think like year seven year eight year

nine whatever go to sixth form that plan is also kind of predictable in a way and I think it even more so could be the way that we in particular were at a very unpredictable chaotic time in our lives regardless of like doing something new or entering a new year every year or whatever like having changes i think it was for me personally i think it was more so about feeling like i was at such a point of i didn't know where i was going i was so confused i was so like lost in the ether truly i mean if i still feel lost now like that was like times a million like didn't know where i was what i was going where i was going didn't know what to expect like my life was very chaotic and unpredictable at that point i had no route i had no plan so the pandemic kind of fit right

into that and i also think it's a similar thing i feel like sometimes people who are like really anxious or get um yeah like have anxiety about a certain thing or can be functioning on a higher stress level than the norm um or just like people who feel kind of out of sorts or like on edge at all times you know those people then sometimes can really like handle a crisis really well because they're so used to like creating the chaos and like living in like a scared or like anxious state of mind that when they're actually faced yeah when they're actually faced with like an emergency or something devastating they kind of cope pretty chill and i feel like that is also like a big part of it is not even just like think new things are coming in at all times

when you're young and whatever but also just being in that state where you're so anxious and you're so stressed and you're so confused adding then a stressful and confusing and anxious situation onto it kind of allows you to settle into it and then you can it wasn't like i was living a really peaceful secure life and then that got disrupted and turned upside down not at all and i think that yeah is a different experience i was already stressed really that there had been um a global a pandemic question mark yeah also there was the first it was the first time that there had really been like the lack of narrative which we always talk about like the narrative of the label essentially of student the label even i did a gap year the label of i'm on my gap year yeah then

your first year second year third year then it's like okay and now what the fuck so in a weird way even though it was the most terrifying horrific weird time there was something slightly comforting about the label of we are now in pandemic yeah yeah this is pandemic times it's not just free floating even though i feel like we all kind of have the like we may be blacked out for a few months in there yeah i definitely feel like when you say lockdown or when you say pandemic people have very distinct like vivid images that they're called back to in their mind of like the garden they were sat in or the window they were looking out of or the friend they were facetiming or just really really specific moments like images of where they were at that time it's such a like consuming weird fucking thing and no wonder what

would you say yours was your image when i think of like beginning lockdown i think of um i think of how sunny it was and i think of like walking in the field by my boyfriend's like family like childhood home over and over again like we would lap that field like a hundred times over like we just walk around that field in circles ferrier if anyone knows it we walked around ferrier field in shells like a hundred times over every day maybe morning and evening um and it was so sunny and my shoes were like my trainers were all getting ruined by like the pollen in the like flowers that were in the field and i would have coffee all the time and i was with my dog it was just a really it felt like maybe the most spring spring i've ever felt and just so much

anxiety like i would call my nan every single day at maybe like four or five p.m every day and we would have like an hour and a half conversation and it was really like and then i would check in with everyone else it was like working in a call center like i was having this really grounded um in so many ways like the most wholesome living i've ever had but also such a heightened awareness of like morality and like just the finite truth of living as a human on planet earth what about you what's your like image there are definitely a few stages yeah beginning lockdown the beginning lockdown what i think of me and my sister worked at sainsbury's we did oh my god i forgot about that oh my god so my friend was like a manager at sainsbury's one of my best oh my god this is so fucking funny i forgot about

this honestly iconic times in our lives no you were out there on the front lines i don't want to hear any questions we did get this girl's integrity we kind of got fired in the end we didn't get fired but they didn't they really were like not happy with our work and that's fine like i was slow and i was they were definitely happier with my sisters because she is quite basically we're having to do the things we're doing night shifts we'd have to get up at midnight and my brother would yeah and my brother would be going to bed as we'd be going to work and he'd be like right see ya and we'd be like don't even this is horrific um what were you wearing what was the uniform you weren't in a polo top were you absolutely not so they tried to give me one and i i tried to fleece i was like

please please please can i have a fleece yeah and it was freezing in there because you'd be doing like the freezers and stuff yeah so like we sainsbury's supermarket by the way if you don't know yeah it's a supermarket one of the biggest in the uk i yeah i don't know definitely yeah top it's huge free surely and what i would be doing what's your big three sainsbury's tesco yeah what is the other one co-op co-op as the waitress i would say audi asda i think is bigger than asda's definitely bigger than audi i just have no asda's near me so i would never go to an asda asda is a family vibe i think as the only ones in my town are waitrose and sainsbury's really tesco is the big one the tesco's in the town like next door tesco is

actually where my mom started her affair if anyone really no information yeah how does that happen in tesco's oh it's a long it's a long story we don't have to touch hands reaching for an i don't even want to i'll be sick. Oh God. I mean, that's just a weird place for it to start. Anyway. Jesus. Romance isn't dead. No, anything happens at the supermarket.

Anything goes. Go on. You were there. Sainsbury's 2020. What we were doing is we were packing people's, because obviously no one could go to the shops. We were packing up people's like home delivery orders. I don't know what the word is. What's it called? Doing the Lord's work. It was, were packing up people's like home delivery orders i don't know what the word is what's it called the lord's work it was it's like grocery like online delivery and jesus christ like i i don't know maybe i just really was a bit i don't know i probably didn't

take it that seriously because i you didn't because what i would do i felt like i was a bit robin hood like people would that were ordering all like the cheapest cheapest stuff and some of them you'd basically about four in the morning and i'd be like quite delirious and i'd be making up stories about all of them i'm like they're they're getting baking stuff like kids baking stuff so this is a family but they clearly don't have that much money because they've ordered like really really cheap the like horrible stuff like sainsbury's basics sainsbury's basics yeah like the horrible stuff so what you could do in sainsbury's basics sainsbury's basics yeah like the horrible stuff so what you could do in sainsbury's basics but you know what i'm gonna buy my sainsbury's basics but

sainsbury's is an expensive supermarket by the way i think it's not it's not it's not it is it's more expensive than like uh lidl and stuff but it's not the like waitrose m&s it's not waitrose m&s but it's expensive it's it's definitely gone up in price for sure but even like when we were kids sainsbury's was like the inexpensive one compared to tesco and asda yeah see i only ever went to like lidl and asda and what's the other one aldi at uni there wasn't one near me at all oh i would only ever go to aldi at uni yeah definitely but there wasn't one near me so i've never really been to one but yeah so i would be you can do a thing on the little machine that they gave you where you could like sub in people's things and it wouldn't be charge them any extra yeah so i would be like putting in it was near

easter and i'd be like putting in like little cream eggs for the kids and stuff and i had all these weird like narratives going like i just really feel like this old man just like i'll just give him like some cream eggs and like some choccy i was trying to be like oh he's ordered like this shitty toothbrush like like a 5p toothbrush let's give him like a three pound we don't like we're sold out of those like i was just trying to like make people a bit happy oh their stock was definitely like haywire yeah i think i just was trying to sort of brighten people's pandemics a little bit but at the same time sure you did maybe not being the best employee and well you got fired so i just think of that and also i was very slow in ages yeah well yeah because you were umming and ahhing about what to give them yeah because you were supposed to do like a round of the shop so you get your orders

and you go around with these things that call they call them totes and it's like how many scans a minute sort of thing like how many like pics are you gonna get in your they were so quick the guy that showed us it was like but i obviously my mind doesn't really work in like numbers and stuff and it would be like look for number 5,499 and i couldn't i couldn't it's like just tell me marmite and i'll go to the marmite. Oh my God. But then doesn't that, it goes back to what we were saying in the beginning about that does just fit in so perfectly to like graduating, being thrown out into the void of earth and being like, where am I going?

What am I doing? Like everything is so up in the air. I've got a podcast by the way, random. But then also I'm doing that in the day. I'm now in the middle of the night. I had to wake up and it just kind of makes so much sense and i think the pandemic had that vibe of like whatever you're doing great whatever you're doing sure that that kind of works like that makes sense

whatever you need to do to get by or whatever you're doing to pass the hours yeah there was almost like because i'm not even going to use the phrase the new normal but because there was no normal because there was no triggering yeah because there was no precedent it was unprecedented some may say because there was no precedent for what we should have been doing it was everything just felt really like oh this is mental and mental is normal yeah crazy i forgot that you worked in sainsbury's. That's so freaking funny. I remember us having long debriefs about that on the phone. It was crazy.

Our phone calls were a big... Also because I would leave at like, I don't know, anyone that's ever worked nights. And I've worked sort of late shifts in like bars. Yeah. Many, many, many a time. But middle of the night in a supermarket, that's a different energy. It's ghostly. Yeah.

Also, it was so weird to be leaving in the dark and the shift would end at like 10 a.m so there'd be customers like it towards the end of the shift customers start coming in and it's like their morning and like with all the old people that got like priority to go to the supermarket or something in the morning and they'd all be queuing outside and we would be so delirious and we'd literally be leaving like what is our lives and we were so we were quite devastated as well by the like i mean i was living in london she was also living in london we'd come back and i was like why the fuck are we working nights at saying like we were so confused about what everything was going on so where was that sainsbury's then if it's not local to you it is in oxford it was the

one that jemma worked at yeah um it's just like a huge it was fucking massive huge superstore like has sort of clothes and stuff in there oh wow it's a huge store yeah um very overwhelming really sort of eerie environment just at the best of times in the middle of the day let alone that's sort of five in the morning that's such a distinct time and also having to have your lunch at four in the morning oh my god so true it was awful anyone doing nights might honestly i my heart goes out to you because they are so hard and um you're almost expected just to get on with it but they're so weird totally we were actually talking the other day about um sleep as well and that like seven days without sleep you'll be dead and kind of the psychosis that can kick in after a few days

well go on take it away no no continue your thing i was gonna end it right there so okay please pick it up kind of i've been thinking about the pandemic recently because when was this? Two, three days ago, I was sitting in the Costa in my town and. Everybody knows the Costa in your town. We've been there before. The Costa in my town. Look guys, the Costa in my fucking town is iconic. Yeah.

It really is. It has legend status by this point. They need to clean it up in there. It's the most disgusting one I've ever been in. It's like everything has, it's covered in dust and crumbs. It's actually crazy. It's the worst one I've, I've been in many a Costa. It's the worst one I've ever been in it's like everything has is covered in dust and crumbs it's actually crazy it's the worst one i've i've been in many a costa it's the worst one i've ever been in

just so happens to be my local one brilliant and you've seen it at you know the best of times the worst of times i've seen it at its worst for sure nothing interesting ever happens here in general i would say the town wide you're the most interesting thing about it and even that's rude like even that's like yeah jesus um but so nothing ever interesting happened so i was like right okay i'm gonna sit in the conservatory listen to this weird conversation here whilst i do my journaling nice just so happened to be the most interesting thing i've heard in a year i would say so good bearing in mind i've been speaking to this girl every day for the past year well i mean he has to top you you know he does this is a crazy like this tops everything movies everything yeah take it away this guy he was movies oh it was

crazy i'm surprised this isn't already a movie someone needs to write it but like this guy was just talking to this woman that he hadn't seen like an old school friend he actually went to the same school as me um the guy but he was in his 40s so i obviously never met him but he oh my god so he was catering for a hospital during the pandemic and he basically had like um sleep deprived psychosis um and he was talking about like the dead bodies going past the kitchen and all of this stuff that was like freaking him out meaning that he couldn't sleep he didn't sleep for four days straight and ended up like attacking his mom and i don't know what a deathly way it sounded like well the thing that shocked me is that he was saying like the bit that really got

me was when he said i tried to leave the house in the middle of night and that's when the attack happened and obviously my ears pricked up straight away i decided what the hell is this um and i listened to it for about an hour and he was talking talking about she had he said she's had god knows how many surgeries she was in hospital for six weeks he was screaming about he got arrested obviously and they he was screaming about like but get boris johnson on the phone like just all of this stuff it was completely insane and he the thing that was most sort of bloody johnson that's the last person you do not want him on the phone but the i was saying this to you the most harrowing bit about it yeah honestly chilling was the way he was talking about it was the most sane and rational guy that had had so much clarity on it and space on it and understood it and could talk about it with

like fully taking like the blame for it but also understanding what it was it was so crazy that it wasn't this mad man that has done this scary psychopathic thing yeah it was he was saying that he had 13 days of hallucinating and all of this stuff after the sleep deprivation and then he returned pretty much to normal like he was never had anything before never had anything after but the lack of sleep just made him do this thing absolutely awful and then throughout the trial and he obviously went to prison and um like a mental health facility but was completely sort of obviously had ptsd but was like sane in there and oh my god like i was absolutely captivated but it really was making me think and we've been speaking about it a lot about like the importance of sleep it's everything slave is everything.

ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay? So why don't more people know this?

I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson, and this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer, and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotifyify apple or wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com it's literally everything as an insomniac as well and also this is why i think even just the concept of i'll say what is specifically expected of like women when they become mothers and i remember one of my favorite favorite people on the planet one of my best friends she had a baby she's had two babies now she's actually pregnant congratulations um about time a third i believe yeah as we speak well not as a few months yeah

um yeah big congrats she i remember when she had a baby i was saying to her like you've just had what would be considered like a huge um kind of really invasive traumatic yeah operation like huge surgery and typically what would be expected after that is you have this big surgery i.e labor you have this big operation and then you spend like two to four to six weeks recovering in the hospital probably staying over in the hospital for a while then coming out you know getting a lot of rest drinking a lot of water taking it really slow look after yourself blah blah blah and in fact when you have a baby, it's quite the opposite. You go through literally the most traumatic, invasive operation of your life

that humans could ever experience. We'd rip a human from your insides. Congratulations to anyone who's pregnant, by the way. I hope you're well. Congratulations. Goodness me. You go through the most extreme huge demanding surgery operation and then instead of now you get some rest now you take some time in the hospital drink loads

of water get lots of sleep blah blah it's no no you're not sleeping tonight and you're not sleeping tomorrow either and you're not sleeping next week probably either that like it's like you've got something sucking your milk exactly you go through the most physically demanding thing you've probably statistically ever been through up until this point and instead of but tonight you're gonna get a good sleep it's no no no tonight is the beginning of the end yeah you will not get a wink of sleep for the next 18 years oh god it's really just such an intense expectation i think i think it's the assumption that a human being can and should handle that and be so honored and um just get on with it sort of thing that i think is hugely um patriarchal yeah patriarchal problematic but i'll

say intriguing it is intriguing and it's also disgusting i'll put that it's intriguing to say the least like there is no way we've heard this so many times but it's like there is no way that if men were the one that had to sort of essentially carry the burden i.e the child like they were the one that had to do that and actually have their insides ripped open oh yeah there is no way there is no way they would be the ones responsible for the immediate care of that child there is no way also it would be a collective thing they'd be well they'd be handing it straight over to a group of women to do it it would be a different world that we live in it's it would i can't it would be

unrecognizable i'm sure it just isn't a coincidence that no the all of the hard things so the actual hard like the body wear and tear obviously goes on the women there's nothing we can do about that but the societal support is not there in literally any way and the way that women are expected just to keep going and just do something harder and harder it's like the birth was hard okay yeah now you've got this other fucking huge thing is actually to be honest a disgrace yeah um and it kind of calls back as well to the beginning of the pandemic with that emphasis being on rest and i feel like that is something so um like unheard of i feel like that was really like a weird narrative that we were being fed for like the

first time in my living memory of being like a huge emphasis on like take it easy take it easy you know there's a lot going on so just stay home and bake your banana bread is always the one i go to but yeah it was really that i've never been told to bake banana bread so much in my life and never again since it was like all of a sudden this world begins and ends it's the be all and end all banana bread and animal crossing and animal crossing and just rest and loved ones and fresh air and tiger king tiger i mean that takes me back that was the beginning to me that was like right watch tiger king do your yoga bake your banana bread and check in with your loved ones that was the narrative it was like wow shall we um are we in a utopia all of a sudden should we take some messages yeah let's do it take

some i've never really used that oh we stopped we forgot we kind of aren't doing that thing anymore where are we where we do two episodes on the same like you know we haven't for a while because we've done a lot of off the records and stuff we've just been a little bit out of sorts recently we're still kind of i think we're still holding on to it i would love to do another one on this like i would love to hear but let's do some people's questions like stuff now but oh do you think monday we don't talk about any messages i don't know but i just suddenly as soon as you said that i thought oh we haven't been doing that no is that the first time you've thought that yeah i love that our minds are so different no they really are they are so crazy what did i think of earlier i thought of

something that we need to do and i thought she'll already know it she would have thought of it two days ago i would have thought of it a hundred times from yeah it's like that will be very much living like presently in your mind that was like tiny thing live quite close to me i think which is why i really trust you with yeah so much because before often before i have even it's even like before i remembered it i like that's one thing i'm jealous of with you is you can you get um a nice distance from things sometimes like i feel like something can be happening in your life but you're able to create distance and really focus on what you're doing at the moment you're very present yeah i think i am very present i think my whole family is very yeah present you're very like focused on what's

happening right now yeah i'm nowhere else no yeah whereas i live with a hundred things really close to me which you do too like not to undermine your um do you know what i mean the intricacies of your mind and your life no do you get what i mean no but i do think that's a real thing that i definitely noticed about myself that other people do seem to be able to be um three places at once like sort of your i'm with you now but i'm also in a conversation with someone else about that and then i'm also sort of planning out. It's like, no, I don't like that. And I don't. Yeah.

It's never been how I operate at all. Well, are you happy to take some of these? Yeah, I'd love to. Okay. Phone a friend. That's quite nice. Phone a friend. Yeah, I love that.

What's his name? Noel. No. Chris Tarrant. No. Deal or no deal. Phone a friend. Oh, no, that's not deal or no deal.

No, that's. What's that thing called who wants to be a millionaire who wants to be a million with chris tarrant famously i would never know his name chris tarrant chris tarrant i know it now chris tarrant used to be on the radio i think i'm pretty sure chris tarrant was on the radio like back when we were born like back in the 90s it's definitely a name from the past chris tarrant on the radio now chris tarrant with who wants to be a millionaire i used to have a board game of that really yeah but it wasn't a board game it was just like a weird was it a bit of a dvd game i feel like those are quite interesting like a dvd hybrid like board but also cd rom game a relic from the past

yeah really like guys you're on the cusp of something crazy like you're on the cusp of the smartphone just hang on a minute and these ideas might really tell you something you don't need a dvd don't worry about the board game and the cd-rom for now just hold it yeah just hold on for now okay there's something interesting about this so we put on the story how has your identity shifted since covid on the instagram story follow us everywhere um and i feel like this is one where the there's quite a divide here like i feel like normally it'll be i don't know if i put words in your mouth like i don't know if sephian wouldn't kind of tell you what to say when we ask you how you feel about like you can kind of you get the

gist of where we're going it's social desirability like you answer you respond in a certain way depending on what we say to you but i feel like in terms of the pandemic it's really i think a testament to how fucked up and intricate and like how broad the impact of that situation was that so many people have said so many different kind of things i feel like it's so nuanced that some people have said x y and z and some people have said a b and c and i feel like the people who said a b and z probably also feel x y and z and the x y and z also feel a b and c and there's just so much going on that we can pick and choose one thing to talk about but it's such a big mess that yeah you're going to kind of relate to every teeny aspect of it because it was everything everywhere all at once there's one that's immediately hooking me go on they said i feel like a dog that wasn't socialized enough as a puppy that hooked me too wow yeah wow wow we have a writer on our written on it a poet there's a poet here because that to me suggests

that you were quite young when the pandemic like almost um if you're if you missed the years of 21 22 23 for example 17 18 19 yeah yeah you're gonna feel that way for sure a pop to then be thrown into this world where it's like oh yeah like for example maybe you weren't allowed to drink before you went into the pandemic and now all of a sudden it's like right okay so now i'm going to be going to like parties and clubs and all of this like hugely like immensely fucking intense social stuff i would be personally very very very overwhelmed if i hadn't like slowly worked my way up to that yeah and that's kind of what i was thinking at the beginning when we were talking about like the age of you the age that you were when the pandemic hit what that then means for like how you respond to or like felt the impact or the weight of that like change or the demands of being in a pandemic and i do think being super

young in a pandemic in the start of a pandemic is a huge like upheaval to essentially a child or someone really really young who is like learning what it means to exist on the planet your idea or your awareness of humanity of life is still really unstable so then when something comes in and knocks it all up and and tears it and turns it into something new it really can shake up everything yeah everything completely everything but i and so a puppy that hasn't been socialized enough i wonder if they're finding socializing really fun and exciting and stimulating or if they're finding socializing now a bit scary or overwhelming or probably a mix of the two

i almost get the sense that it's like if i was a puppy that hadn't been socialized enough which in a way i completely relate to it's kind of aussie it's kind of my dog yeah yeah he thinks he's the only dog on the planet is that how you guys feel and i don't think he thinks he's a dog i think he thinks he's god he's kind of a human yeah he's like I think he thinks he's more than a human he thinks he's some sort of deity and I treat him as such and he deserves it he does he does but he's on my lap he's been on my lap the whole time cutie boy oh cutie boy yeah god he's been so quiet I know well that's what you think the microphone might say otherwise but we'll see yeah he is cute he is cute

yeah i'm gonna definitely i would definitely feel like quite a lot of anxiety fear of getting it wrong like when i think of a dog hasn't been socialized it's like yeah there's a sense of like aggression and like fear yeah yeah it's like they they're anxious they're scared of stuff like and i feel like that is so relatable in that the world re and even re-entering it's like yeah i was very socialized like i'm a i've lived an incredibly sort of social life with a lot of people yeah and then having this time that time to be internal sort of just my family and then coming back into it i definitely found myself like overwhelmed being in like concerts and like yeah you know, big crowds again.

It was really, really weird. But the idea of entering into that without ever having really done that is insane. All the doorbell. All the doorbell. Listen to this unsocialised dog. I have two things to reply to you. Okay, go on. It kind of, I have two things to say here.

So please bear with first thing it reminds me of what we're saying in the beginning of even like at the moment for example like living at home and things happening and whatever you've got a lot going on and that then is trickling into aspects of life making you feel more anxious in social settings second guessing yourself yeah like with me maybe like feeling more awareness or like more fear around doing the wrong thing because you're feeling the stress of like um if you cut to everything else being stressful yeah everything else being stressful or like um because i just got the door but for some reason i'm really powering through i don't know why i'm like i need to get this out second

thing i'm loving it secondly it's like oh this is hot off the press guys I need to get this out. Second thing. Well, I'm loving it. Secondly, it's like, this is hot off the press, guys. You need to hear this. Second thing I was going to say, we were also talking about yesterday, your queen, Jemima Kirk. Am I saying her name right? It kind of reminds me of that thing. I love the entire cast of girls, I will say.

Nice. I actually don't know too much about them. I love Lena Dunham. See, then you immediately start second guessing it. Well, I don't really know much about them. I love Lena Dun start second guessing it well live in action i love lena dunham live footage of saying something and then going back and being like uh maybe not it's not caught on camera um i'm really huffing and puffing guys sorry if you're out on a run or something we can maybe that's i'm matching the energy guys um second thing it reminds me of jemima kirk when we were saying

yesterday about you've probably seen if you haven't the hilarious screenshot of i'm pretty sure it was like an ask me anything like question box classically on instagram where someone said something like jemima like what do i do like i just don't know what i'm doing like i just i'm in my 20s i'm not good enough or something like that one of those classic things that we all have just been saying non-stop and jemima replied with an iconic beautiful selfie and just written over it i think you guys are thinking about yourselves way too much full stop period and it's like you know what you're so right and i think that was a huge thing in the pandemic and kind of the unsocialized puppy of like when you haven't had what would previously be considered the normal levels of like interaction socialization when you're and when you're you know add that

into the mix of having so much time to be internal and slow and essentially i mean literally in isolation like yeah those are the literal that's the title of where we were at we were isolating jesus that does breed someone to be so much more um introspective and there are levels to that and that can be a very very you guys know dangerous game the navel gazing i think is so i haven't heard that word in a while navel freaking gazing you will not catch me gazing in my navel anymore i don't need to know what's going on in there keep that navel out it's not my business honestly it's actually not my business as well like i just i think all the time i'm thinking too much i don't need to be thinking anymore we can just

leave it there like i'm literally doing the most and if i give myself any more time to start examining my behavior or my thoughts or why did i feel that or why blah blah blah i'm pretty confident and comfortable in my self-awareness as it is bless you sorry i'm really comfortable i'm secure in like my behaviors my thoughts who i am what i want i don't need to delve too much deeper i've been deep for too long i've been in the depths i've been in the pits i've been skimming the freaking surface and i'm over it and too much navel gazing you guys have been thinking too much about yourselves jemima kirk it's can be so unhealthy and i think it makes sense that a lot of people have come out of the pandemic feeling really a lot of self-loathing as well like a lot of yeah like real um really

harboring a lot of overwhelmingly negative beliefs about themselves yeah add to i'm sorry i'm introducing a new thought here go for it add to the reality of being in a pandemic and not seeing um other people up close i didn't see pause for a long time i was just looking i was just on instagram i was just watching tv like i wasn't confronted with what human beings actually look like for a while really in the same way and that allowed me i'm sure to really mull in the same way. And that allowed me, I'm sure, to really mull in the self-hatred, to really stew on it and feel really aware of all the things that I was perceiving to be wrong with me because I was perceiving humanity through such a distorted lens and such a really minute angle, such a really tiny, shallow way of viewing the world and other human beings like i was

convinced everybody else was pretty perfect i remember i actually look back at photos now like from the pandemic and i remember being so devastated like taking a photo and being so cut up or like so feeling so bad about it and now i look back at the photos and i'm like fuck you like you looked really good like it's annoying like you idiot like yeah it's i remember like it's quite scary i think i think at the time i didn't realize how bad i felt yeah i knew i felt like not great like kind of in the usual way like take a photo and be like yeah or like oh i just wake up oh i hate myself i hate my whatever blah blah blah all the kind of usual things but as i've had more and more distance from it i i think i actually felt like um i don't know if this is an offensive

word but i think i felt like a mutant i think i felt like i actually was an alien like that was really really had something extremely like wrong like not you should not a good pictures next week of you can draw a little alien yeah in my book yeah because i feel like that is the experience of body dysmorphia whatever you're going to call it whatever yeah this thing is that so many of us feel and also was completely enhanced by yeah you're right not seeing another human for not in that same way yeah it's completely different i feel like so many people what it breeds is that feeling of like how i look is like wrong in some way like there isn't it's not just like oh i would change this or change that it's not just not good enough

it's like this is wrong like it's faulty in some way yeah that is so sad really scary actually like really scary i'm really sad and i think one of those experiences of looking back and seeing the photo that made you cry even the next week has sometimes been one of those experiences that really gives me the reality check it kind of gives me the fuel like i feel like i've healed so much of all of this shit in the last few years but there have been like oh my god so many i remember ones where i was my friend came back from a really nice day she'd been like out in the sun all day and she came back she's like what have you been up to and i was lying in my bed obviously like i had like tears streaming down my face and she was

like fucking hell what's happened what have you been her this photo like she was just more of this really just a lot of crying i remember showing her the photo and i was like i actually this is gonna sound crazy but i was like i can see like it it looks like the photo looks like it's rippling with fat like i can literally see like ripples like moving in this photo like there is it's disgusting like I was really um being crazy yeah and she was like oh my god like give me your phone sort of thing like you're not having that for the rest of the day and we like went out and the rest of your life actually let's have that um yeah confiscated she she was like let's go out sort of thing and we went we went out for the day and then the next week or whatever I was like let's go out sort of thing and we went we went out for the day and then the next

week or whatever I was like let me see that photo again and I saw it and it was just the most stunning girl just me just like in an outfit I loved it was we were going to see James Acaster we would it was a James Acaster day so it was an iconic day I had so much fun and this photo in the mindset that I viewed it as i could literally everything i could see movement in a photo like i thought it was in harry potter or something yeah it's a freak like it's like that shows the level of like um distortion that our minds like cause and i knew it was mad at the time but it was like okay that is what I'm seeing here I'm seeing like something inhuman and wrong with this yeah which I can rationalize because I understand about body dysmorphia and stuff but then to see it a week later and be like oh my god it's stunning like

it's such a nice photo like I look divine queen yeah and just the difference of that perception that stuff always gives me the fuel like whenever i look back on a photo of me at 18 that i remember crying about that outfit or whatever or feeling not good enough on that day when i see those photos it gives me so much fuel to be like enjoy your life totally enjoy your life because you are stunning like and it's the perspective that's the problem it's not the reality of what you look like is the least important thing we have on the agenda today is your perspective and something i feel like we do this in an unspoken way obviously we take photos and stuff like together and things like that and i will often be like we're not looking at those anymore like i'll be like let's move on like

change the thing like we'll kind of maybe have a couple of minutes of like we'll kind of go through and be like you favorite the ones you like you favorite the ones you like or whatever but when i feel the energy dip i'm like let's move into something else because definitely this can spiral out of confre control out of reality out of reality i just have a few sort of maybe helpful tips with things like that because i feel like i have so much clarity more clarity on it now and like i just feel like i've got such i've come a long way with it and a great advice for photos i feel like never look at the photo that you've just taken until you're

out of that outfit like or until you've like showered the next day like until you're out of that phase and you've got distance at that photo because it will ruin or your day has the potential to ruin the day you're in and that i just think is so dangerous because that feeling just take a photo don't look at it until that phase is over otherwise i need to go home i need to get this is it like no one can see me like this now and then it's this game over yeah it's only an issue when it's controlling your behavior i think that's the thing it's like you can feel any kind of way but as long as you still get in the pool as long as you still get um go to the party as long as you still actually do the stuff and talk to the guy you fancy or whatever the stuff is when it starts limiting you but that

is when it's like a real fucking issue i think it is so limiting though i think most people are limited every single day by it um and it's so normalized they almost like we have no awareness that what we're doing isn't normal because it's probably what we've always done done yeah i think when it gets to the point that you start realizing you're really missing out i'm behaving in a way as if i am this monster like not good enough freak person and it's like okay but so when it's stopping you from yeah going to the picnic or uh taking the photo you want to take or whatever the thing these lovely events have got planned my picnics and pools and parties and photos lovely I think that's what it was stopping me from like that is kind of how I felt it's like well I can't I'm at

the beach and I can't go in like things like that and i feel like that is when it starts becoming i mean i remember being like i can't go to school and i wouldn't go to school for weeks i mean that's there we go it ruined my life and also like it's kind of what we're saying at the beginning and what i've said like a hundred times literally in just this one episode of when you've got one thing going on it will trickle into every area of your life and if you are going through something stressful it probably isn't a coincidence then that you're like why do i have nothing to wear at the moment and it's not necessarily about how you feel in your clothes or your or how you look or you know what you're wearing it's probably

about the fact that your relationship is breaking down or you need to get out of this job or you're feeling like you're not performing well enough um at school for example like things like that like there's so much that feeds into the way that we perceive ourselves that i think what is what we always say why don't we just give you a little break i think what this person is is just a little break just a little kind of why don't we just sit down with a little old sephian wing and um get some fresh air here's a drink drink it here's some banana bread here's animal crossing welcome to the island delicious i think basically the crux is if you've come out of the last few years

feeling a bit mental yeah what do you think you're special or something we all feel nuts so at least we're really together yeah yeah so but much of it is like yeah i don't even it's hard to even identify the ways that it has we don't have enough space from it and and it's everything ever all at once yeah it's also it's everything it's good and bad and scary you're happy free confused and lonely at the same time you're you're everything ever at all at once and however you feel and however you're coping i trust you guys i'm sure you're doing literally okay i'm sure you're doing just fine well i i'm not done with this topic like i feel like the next one i i'm i want to bring back the

like thursdays now we talk about it like no no i think we should talk about it again i think there's a lot in there as well that we could stretch out for hours so much like looking through everyone's things it's like god we haven't scratched the surface and we never do we never do no it's impossible but this is a long one i'm happy about this let us know like i know we're at the end of the episode now so maybe we'll catch you like have you got a second just fill in that little box on spotify can you let us know if you prefer the longer reps i think you do but i think people do they do don't know more more more our amazing sort of i don't know what she is kind of somewhat of sort of liaison let's call her a asked queen like what is she she's like our person she's podcast extraordinaire she is and she told us once that

you guys she was looking at all our data she was like your listeners are creatures of habit she said they listen to 45 to 50 minutes you didn't even know but emmy called you out that day hard creatures of habit she called you you're creatures of habit you're creatures of habit guys you can't even argue with it i've got the stats we've got the is that correct tell us if she's correct five minutes okay cool bullock love you guys nice thanks for being here with us in the pandemic we met a lot of you guys in the pandemic yeah also emotionally i mean not face to face but i think what's also really crazy is since coming back home like i had years in london since the pandemic and then being

back in this town yeah and i when i moved back to my room i set back up my old desk in here which was like my great great grandma's desk which is iconic and it's got scratches on from when my dad was like an archaeologist and stuff using this tape as well so cool i literally love it and this was the table that i recorded when i was working at sainsbury's all of that whilst you were walking around that field we recorded so many episodes of me sitting at this desk and it's so nice to be back here when so much has happened and we've been through so many different waves yeah yeah oh stunning look at us go all right cool still if you don't hear from us assume the worst