Goes Without Saying - self-love & self-loathing: podmas #6

Episode Date: December 18, 2022

on the 6th day of podmas sephy and wing gave to me... learning self-love and vulnerability. join the conversation every monday.shop our merch: sephyandwing.co.ukcome and chat in our book club.speak your mind on the @sephyandwing instagram. 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 On the sixth day of Christmas, Saffian Wing gave to me Consistency still, and we're absolutely killing it relatability is this gonna be relatable do you think i think self-love and self-loathing come on i mean could i relate to anything more there's a daily battle between the two yes who's winning today oh love love wins love always wins love always wins the things i do for love push a little kid out the window um i hope that you've seen games yeah

push the kid out the window we're killing it bye ban um yeah what wins for you what's winning today um at the moment self-love is winning but like overall statistically across my life self-loathing has has won yeah time and time again i'm the underdog i'm the unlikely hero love the bad story yeah yeah do you feel like it do you feel like that that it's like like almost every almost not even every day every hour it's like am i gonna be nice or am i gonna be a dick like what to myself like what do you feel like that that it's like an active choice because i almost feel like it and naturally i go into naturally i'm more in a loathing category and i'm having to use that

kind of tools to bring myself into like a loving energy every minute 100 i think my unconscious my subconscious is the habit of the hater is the self-loathing and it's only when i have like a fucking fleeting moment of like consciousness and i'm like oh god stop being a dick to yourself yes remember the remember these yeah remember what you don't forget don't let them get in your heart anakin this man that's serious yeah no that is serious but the bus so funny to say anakin just couldn't have been worse across the board um but yeah i think i am always i've just very much learned the habit yeah as i've said time and time again life is about self-loathing life is about i think i just yeah i've just built the habit over a long over my whole life

of like it just it goes unquestioned i think a lot and I think thankfully we're starting to have the conversation a bit more and more about how we can challenge the habits that we've got ourselves into that are actually just honestly quite sad and just horrible yeah I really agree with that almost I think the way I was kind of brought up and like almost the messaging I get from the world is that like almost being quite like cynical and pessimistic is like the more intelligent thing to be so like almost what is a natural state as a natural intelligent person that's interesting the natural state is to be in kind of this self-loathing and like critical and yeah like pessimistic jaded yeah like a sound and then i almost think that i have internalized the idea

that like a self-love is like a bit more dumb and like a bit more fake. Yeah, it's almost like, oh, you fucking idiot. That's so interesting. Skipping through a field, idiot. Like, welcome to the real world. Oh, Theresa May. Literally through a field of wheat. I think I have definitely internalized the idea that like you're deluded if you're filled with self-love which i'm 100%

trying to flip and have been trying to flip for the last like fucking 10 years of my life as soon as i kind of identified i definitely think there's a culture of like um people are just addicted to misery and i don't really want that for my life i don't want that for your life either do you want it for your life absolutely not it sounds horrible sounds horrible i don't think i i think i um it's very internal for me like i i think it doesn't make me cynical towards the world i think it makes me angry at myself like i think it actually makes me view the world like almost um that's where all the good stuff is and just in me i'm like yeah yeah like i do get a bit doe-eyed of like everyone else is so amazing and like the world is so good and like what am i

like vibe killer like what am i i definitely think that's a huge part of it isn't it the isolation of like i'm letting myself down and like yeah almost if only i could be different my whole thing with my biggest thing i think with this podcast is that i am like mortified that i am letting myself down i'm letting you down i let everyone down who listens like i'm like this is bad like you need to sort it out because you're you're fucking everything up and it's really unfair that you're dragging sephie through that as well but this is what we spoke about the other day we spoke about this the other day because that's just a projection of how you feel yeah about myself you feel like you're letting yourself down you don't feel like you're letting

me down at all because or like that if you do that's bollocks because do you remember the other day i did not to bring it up again i was ill oh fucking hell i was i was at the limit now no no that's the limit that's the last i'll give you three more to cash in over the course of podmas okay that no that doesn't count as one that's like all right from now you've got three left use them wisely it just says hopefully i won't use them yes use it well who's that from that's an invisibility cloak that is who's that from i thought you said you didn't have any family um i was ill and i was saying i feel like there's a real culture at the moment with the with the

podcast that we're really inconsistent at the moment i feel like everyone kind of hates us and like i just feel like oh we're not showing up and like we're really letting everyone down and you like you feel like you're not consistent and you feel like you're like you're projecting you're not showing up yeah and it's the same thing when you feel like shit you feel this thing of like i'm letting everyone down and blah blah it's just you feel it's just totally internal no one else feels it like it just whoever's feeling shitter at that moment will think that they're letting the team down oh my god 100 but like it's just absurd i do think i let the team down though in well it's the most flopping team of all time we're already bottom of the ranks i mean there's not much further in terms of is a group of the weakest links yeah who are you gonna let down

like there's it's just not even a thing of let down we're not up you're gonna let down a deflated balloon obviously down like a lead balloon when do you think you first had that awareness then going back to the like cynicism and the um of the self-loathing like do you remember like the first few times that you were like hang on this isn't like this isn't great of me do you know, like, the first few times that you were like, hang on, this isn't, like, this isn't great of me. Do you know what I mean? Or like, hang on, why am I doubting myself like this? I think going to uni. I think being surrounded by other people.

Like, I definitely think because my family are quite, like, academic. I think, and there's, I think there's a real cynicism. Is my housemate moving out? Saying there's some bits at the top. Yeah, she said. Of the house that she's got to move. On her own not me i'm not helping and what did you say what was your excuse oh i said i'm working well i said that to her parents she knows i'm recording i would love to help i would but i couldn't say to her parents sorry i've got a podcast sorry I've just been crying I'm gonna podcast yeah I think because my family like there's an idea of like I think academia is a

thing in my family in like the most subtle way like they're hardly fucking geniuses but I think there's an idea that like um of intelligence and then that that must come with like oh well we don't really like happiness isn't a priority really i think when i went to uni and i was also around like yeah people that were in an academic environment yeah and also i'm not saying i'm a fucking genius like i'm not why do you assume you're the smartest in the room one of the the smartest. I wouldn't say top spot. Not if I'm in the room with you. You would. We're tied for top.

We're tied for top. I take it. We're tied for top. If Ozzy's in the room, he's winning. He's coming out on top. If Otto's in the room, he's winning. Who? Otto.

Smart as Ozzy. Oh, big time. His whole look is that he's a genius. He looks like a professor. This is my dog, by the way yeah i think he yeah if my cats were in the room they're both dead but if quentin and kirby were in the room bottom of the ranks really thick as a gumbo that's quite a hard one like something on their grave right go on but um yeah i think when i was around people that like were also in like they would they were learning there was like an academic fucking world it's like oh just because you're smart doesn't mean you need to be miserable i think like i really yeah i definitely think

there was like that maybe like a bitterness that was implied about the world and i think i mean there's so much fucking wrong with the world it goes without saying i pretty much walk through this world um this kind of graveyard like yeah there are reasons to be angry yeah it's like it's not looking good um but i think yeah when i was around people that were like having fun and all of this stuff it's like oh actually um misery isn't very fun but kind of um your instruction to adulthood yeah you just made you made the conscious decision yeah i think it's just like actually you're happier when it's so ridiculous it's like you're happier when you're happy like duh it's like you can actually just do good things and be happy like you don't have to feel like shit to be a valid person oh my god do you think that was a point for you when you

realized like right okay i don't want to be miserable um i think i've really struggled mentally for a long time that it becomes a bit hard to like place i definitely think i spent the majority of like my teenage years to be honest i spent probably like statistically the majority of my days in bed crying yeah which is really in your teenage years in my teenage years i spent the majority of my time alone i wouldn't go to school i like wouldn't go out i still had friends in a life and i did okay and like i actually did really well in school all things considered um smartest in the room or what we were just saying but yeah 100 smartest in the room but i don't know if there was like a conscious turn for me because i think it requires i think i was so this

is really like sad but i was so hopeless like there was no hope in me there was no sight of the future like i really didn't think i was gonna get to like 18 like i really there was no sight i know i'm touching how quickly do we fucking write our lives off like the fact that there are kids that think they won't make it to 8 18 and also the sad fucking truth is there are loads of kids that don't make it to fucking 18 it's like yeah how can you be skipping around this room like it is actually pretty fucking bad in here yeah i think i went without feeling a sense of hope like there was just no point there was just purposelessness purpose purposelessness god that would be the word that i would wake up wouldn't it purposelessness that's a word purposelessness is a word yeah do you think

definitely all right cool well yeah that was what i had anyway and i think realizing like having the awareness that you're in and i do think it is essentially a habit of self-loathing and and sometimes it can require things that are way beyond your means to even challenge the habit yeah but to for me to understand that it was a habit of self-loathing and that it was actually abnormal was not something I had the sight for because I was just convinced that that was what my life was like it was almost so I just it just went unquestioned acas 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 apple or wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com which is also why i look back and i'm like there were people in my life who surely could see that something wasn't right so it does get a bit frustrating because i think maybe it wasn't my job as like a 15 year old to pull myself out of that no or to even identify this as a habit yeah i feel bad because of like these reasons but now it's just become a behavior that i'm not happy with yeah like yeah it's not

your job at all at that age really sad so a lot of time wasted really although lessons learned lessons learned but also i feel like at that oh sorry just at that time there i don't know if i was aware of any like resources to help at those times other than like fucking child line and like a school counseling thing i don't think't normalised, that's for fucking sure, but I don't know if I was even aware of any like resources that were available to people at that time. Yeah. The people that were struggling at school would have school counselling,

that would be fucking it. Yeah. I was on medication, like even as a teenager. Really? Yeah, I didn't finish. I don't think that would have been a conversation that I would have been even aware of at that age, like almost because there was no conversation of mental health but i had to there there were the questions were being asked it was like why are you not turning up for

school it's like you're getting everyone in trouble like the teachers were so angry like my my mum was getting in trouble it's like why are you not sending your kid to school like it was really it was like questions were being asked and i had no answers apart from what i'm just i just feel like fucking shit yeah and i don't even think i would say that what would you say i think i would just say i don't know even in therapy now if someone was to say like ask me a certain thing i have a habit of saying i don't know well it's what you just said to me you just cried about your granddad your dead granddad on a podcast yeah i don't know why i'm crying it's like don't be fucking thick well sometimes i think it's it's just deflect it's just easier to be like i don't really know maybe it's true you don't know but we could take a

minute to try and investigate and like talk about it obvious yeah like it but that i think that's the habit it's like almost like a bit of language etiquette it's like how are you good you yeah it's like shit you like we're lacking like real support communication skills yeah it's weird biggest thing for self no go on there you go the best of the questions no you you take it away you go no actually it wasn't a very good question sure i was just gonna say like do you think other than like medication and therapy which to me seem like the pretty much only resources i can identify like and like if for example if i was feeling shit it's like right okay what do i turn to there's a thing called medication there's a thing called therapy and those are what people recommend

other than that do you think there's any like resources for like for people other than that really I think they are really good resources top two but they require a lot of the time they require you being an advocate for yourself and I think unfortunately when people are feeling like that or when people are really young and just in life we don't really make people feel like they can back themselves like that like they even can like I don't think I could have really imagined being like I think I need to book a doctor's appointment it's like what even is that what is that yeah I don't think that was really I think the resources are all amazing but they require the first step of knowing that you need to ask for help and that you deserve help and that there is help yeah it's a lot it's really a lot there was actually a thing um it was a diary of a ceo

episode of course it was steven doing what he does best asking good king steven on the feast of steven um my uncle is called stephen because he was born on boxing day which apparently is the feast of stephen oh that's lovely happy birthday to him uncle stay before my birthday um that's the real party oh god that's that's the day of weakness no it's the day for celebration i've actually got sick stars oh good i'm seeing my neighbor totoro um the production stunning i fucking can't wait booked the tickets six months ago oh my god iconic amazing everything i've ever wanted in life perfect um it reminds me of what stephen bartlett was saying um well actually was queen maisie williams saying it on his podcast and she if you haven't watched

her or listened to her episode of diary of a ceo oh my fucking god it's the best one like it's the best fucking two hours you'll ever fucking spend she is so articulate and vulnerable and inspiring and just fucking beautiful um you will fall in love with her 100 she's so great um and she's talking about like a really traumatic thing that happened in her childhood and and steven's saying like why did this come out at this point in your childhood and she said because the teachers asked the right questions the right thing yeah sometimes it really needs to be forced out of you yeah and it's like the teachers ask the right questions for once not how are you good they ask the right things and it's like the teachers ask the right questions for once not how are you good they ask the right things and it all came out sometimes you have to push people to speak especially children especially

children and i think like even like the other week god right i'm using a point here when you were ill i hate to say it but it's like i i was saying like look let's not record today i would rather be the one that goes in and says, I'm cutting your plans off because I don't want you to be sitting there kind of thinking, oh, maybe I can, or maybe I can push myself. I don't want you to have to do that to yourself. Like, I think it's hard to be the person who says, no, look, I think I'm going to go home. Or I think it's just really hard. I find it really, really hard to advocate for myself. I think it was so nice when you did that and it really showed me that I should do that more for you oh because but I think you do

that for me I do do it for you but like almost when there are sometimes times when like if you're not we need to get things done when it's like okay let's leave it till 2 p.m and then we'll decide at that point it's like actually I think it's much kinder what you did where you were just like no we're not fucking doing it today and actually it's just way kinder than being like because I almost felt like oh people people you might want the choice of like you want to be the one to decide if you don't want to do it or not but actually to have someone else come in almost as like a parental godly figure and say I've decided your day you're not doing it today yeah it's the classic permission thing of like oh yeah no you're right and i find that really helpful because i agree i try as i

might and i'm getting so much better at like being able to back myself but sometimes i think it's really just nice to give that to the people around you i couldn't agree more obviously we can't all be like oh look we're not going to work today let's just i'm telling you you're gonna stay in bed obviously not but like just in life but in the weird world that we have what we have a fucking podcast it's like well yeah maybe do stay in bed definitely stay in bed if you can i mean couldn't be better couldn't be better i mean you said you can't get out of bed these days and i think that's fucking stunning i've really i just i stroke i'm a real insomniac actually i always refer to you with as having someone with insomnia yeah i think i am

you do have you do i do don't i yeah it's not good yeah but at the moment i'm so tired i don't know what it is but anyway most of it yeah but it's like not fun tired it's like i'm really really like my eyes i can't i like i'm i'm actually ill i think i think there's something wrong with me oh god anyway let me tell you it's bad being right that's one that's straight one right you've only got two left now use it well i'm thinking i'm so on the recovery path now or like you're just gonna forget about it yeah who's gonna fucking yeah am i really gonna want to talk about this in two days no i won't be surprised okay i was gonna ask you one thing you do for self-love that really worked that you didn't used to do as well not like like for example i could be like oh i um i go swimming i go swimming maybe or like yeah but it's like well you used to swim as

a kid like what's something that you introduced something new that you just decided for yourself wearing fun outfits oh that's a fun one we've discussed before in the podcast polydysmorphia it's a whole fucking thing yeah um it's the main character in the story of our lives oh god it's the fucking villain i hate it yeah um and when i say i hate it i that's loathing i loathe loathe yeah and it makes and it loads you myself yeah let's be sure um i think it has been a real turning point in the last like literally four months to be like you might you're gonna fucking choose your outfit you might think you look fucking shit in it you might look in the mirror and think what the fuck are you doing but you know objectively when this isn't on your body and attached to all this fucking shit you think that's a sick outfit you think that looks good that you have to do it

like that will improve your life because guaranteed when you walk out the door you don't think about it again just don't like don't like there's a load of fucking tools i've learned of shit that i need to do to be able to put on an outfit i wouldn't have been able to wear six months ago and I think that has been a real step in terms of um and I and I really haven't managed it recently like there's been so many points where I've gone to like um as we call them in the in the community of polydiscriminate a safety outfit like this is a safety behavior there's so many times where I've gone to the safe options um which are like so specific things that i have to wear um and i have to have my hair and all of this stuff there's so many times when i've done that but like every time i step outside of that and wear something that feels like it isn't safe and that like my body dysmorphia could jump to the surface again

i think it does feel so loving to do that it's like this is a step away from as we as i call it emma this is a step away from emma this is a step towards like a more loving yourself so that's been fucking huge for me i think like i love that wearing things that i couldn't have worn before well done how amazing is that oh no it's every it's absolutely everything that's like real tangible but i'm still like i'm literally like two percent on the journey like sort of the majority of outfits and i like still say so i feel like i'm so excited to like you know actually have more fun with it i'm excited for you as well what about you i think this isn't necessarily that fun it's not necessarily that fun but it's something that i when i do it i'm trying to like really go for it

and be a bit shameless about it i'm trying to channel my inner sephie and i try and talk to my not talk to myself i don't try and talk to myself i just do talk to myself in life um i am really making an effort at the moment to talk about myself in a much nicer more normal way like i think it's actually nice the way that i talk about myself even with others and like refer to myself in life and just like how i treat myself publicly is really not good and i think it does as well give people the green light to treat you like that as well not that anyone does but i almost think definitely if you show people other people talk about you like that yeah and i think if you show people that you actually love who you are i think it's really i said this the other day i'm sure in

another episode but i think it's quite jarring people are like the fuck could i always wrong with that girl but then i think it also it's just quite confronting it's like it makes them it's immediately kind of disarms them of like it shines a light on how they talk about themselves as well exactly it makes them think about how they see themselves it kind of it can at least give them an opportunity to be like oh hang on maybe i could one day say something like that about myself do you know what i mean like why do i talk to my talk about myself like that initially unlikable it's something that if someone talks about themselves with sort of pride love yeah love i think it is

seen as like taboo and unlikable and then when you actually start to interrogate why did that fucking jar me when that person called themselves clever or pretty or i look good i feel good in myself i'm having a good time whatever it's like because i feel fucking shit in myself you know what like the way that i'm like it's more so like um i i feel like as well over the past year i feel like i'm really i have some new clarity on my life and i and who i am and i feel like it's not even about like oh I'm clever or I'm pretty or um it's really like a deep love and compassion of like I really commend saying this yeah just it feels really like deep um like appreciation for everything that I've been through and I think as well maybe

that comes from distance of like I'm not that teenager anymore and i haven't been for long enough that she does feel distant distant to me in some way and i can kind of see her like when i see teenagers on the street i'm like you're a child you're a teenager when you see the year sevens with their big rucksacks it's like god i felt like an adult then your children yeah and i think you couldn't be more even if you're like 18 yeah even if you're like 18 it's like you were 15 like three years ago like i think only now as it gets further and further away i can kind of just appreciate myself and i just feel proud of her and i'm just like thank god she made it to 18 and she made it to 25 and she's still here fuck she did yeah yeah what a bummer that would have been what's just like the biggest tragedy of all time of all time and the world fucking hell little message for anyone

listening who's feeling self-loathing what would you say well i almost thought you just gave it really nicely just then like make it to 18 if you can like there's the fucking like i don't know there's just motivation for me there i've never been suicidal so i don't fucking know but i think it's like imagine if you hadn't made it to 18 like yeah there's looking at you now and looking at how like you clearly felt back then it's like to me that's just a slight i don't know it's like it's the classic fucking shit of like quote unquote it gets better but it's like but it fucking truly does though yeah give yourself a chance to see feeling shit at 15 like feeling sincerely deeply shit at 15 is the pits when you're 15 but it's like it doesn't mean you're gonna feel sincerely deeply shit at 25 it just doesn't mean that yeah

it's so temporary and i think that's one of the huge everyone talks about the huge tragedy of suicide is that it's a temporary thing you cut off everything that is then you've made this there's a fucking huge permanent like catastrophic decision from this temporary feeling and i think kids especially obviously don't really know the fluidity of like emotions and all of this shit that things do go away or things become more manageable and all of this stuff i mean do go away or things become more manageable and all of this stuff i mean the message is just like you're not alone yeah it will pass all of the stuff and it's actually true oh my god i think as well when you're feeling shit at a young age

your brain is really still forming and this is what i mean by like habits is your brain really is learning some really unhealthy and scary ways of being and i kind of now i mean i wouldn't take anything away like i am i am who i am because of everyone with the shit and i do think this sounds really vapid and like maybe it's a problematic to say but i think it makes you cool to be able to get through a load of shit and still be here and like fight through it gives you depth in the most um meaningful way i guess it just yeah it gives some sort of fucking shit i just think it's amazing it's like you've gone through something that hopefully lots of people never go through you must be pretty fucking cool well do

you know what it is it's i mean people use the word survivor for a reason it's like you survived something yeah you fucking actually did survive something pretty cool it is cool yeah i don't mean like to us being suicidal i think that goes without saying yeah i think that goes without fucking saying anyway well i hope you're feeling good me too i hope you're enjoying podmas thanks for being here every day thank you so much for being here that would have been a huge loss if i never got to podmas come on oh my goodness lost to the community it really i'd be out of a job for one right hell well congrats on the podcast and congr for to making it not only to 18 but to fucking congratulations on the podmas too couldn't do it without you it goes without saying

could not go with that i'm actually are you i'm missing goes without saying are you no i could do promise forever let's keep this rolling i kind of missed the lingo i miss it goes without saying. It's got a real role to it, hasn't it? Yeah, it does. It feels just like, God, I miss her. I'm missing assume the worst. Yeah, goes without saying.

I'm wearing the hoodie right now, the assume the worst hoodie. Well, what is it again? Congratulations on the Podmas. Well done. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. No, John.