Goes Without Saying - shadow work: ur in her dms, i’m in her therapy journal

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

(we're not the same). sephy & wing are back with more hot takes and niche references, and this week we're talking about 'shadow work'. from recovering from mental health struggles, to therapy and radical self-care, we're getting serious about choosing ourselves in this ep of Goes Without Saying. we're channeling our inner darkness and getting in touch with the parts of ourselves we don't always like... it's time to get ~uncomfy~. join the conversation every monday. speak your mind on the @sephyandwing instagram! you’re invited to our discord group chat: https://discord.gg/kZm8XYyM5t 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 that you're listening to Goes Without Saying, the podcast. Which has been weird. Nice. Horrible. This week we're talking about shadow work and we've whipped up a quick definition for you if you don't know what that is you've literally stolen it from google by the way but we've changed one word so we've whipped this up okay shadow work involves

getting in touch with the parts of yourself that you've repressed or what many might refer to as their shadow side beautiful we changed the word dark to shadow so in this episode we're talking about shadow work which is kind of as that said getting in touch with your dark side through like things like therapy healing you know um how to get yourself out like the pits of despair through kind of getting in touch with the bits of yourself that you don't really like and that are a bit ugly really. So I think in this episode we actually have a really nice chat. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Nice. So yeah we're about to show you ours so yeah enjoy. Don't be shy. Um I've got a little bit of a tickly throat actually. I know we're coughing today. Oh. I think it's just allergies.

oh i think it's just allergies um okay so how's it going fill us in oh god um i'm i'm okay today i'm like okay today lovely how about you that's all we needed tonight i do feel like these episodes are like time capsules of like where you were literally on tuesday the 12th 3 p.m for one hour you have one hour one one hour, one hour. One hour, one hour. It's also weird because I feel like moods just change so much throughout a day that it's like at 9am struggling, 12 noon thriving, at 1pm struggling again. Then the next hour, like laughing your head off. It's just sort of like, which hour are you going to catch me on?

We're going to be so different throughout the day. But how are you? Yeah, I'm okay. I had a bit of a, I don't even want to break down as like so extreme but i i had a like a nice cry yesterday that's nice and i was gonna say this to you earlier and i was like not that i cried i was gonna say this point that's coming up get ready um i was like oh actually i'll save it for the podcast which then i said makes it sound like whenever we say to each other oh i'm just gonna say it on the podcast it's like oh okay well i can't wait what is this but it's just a very empty point but it kind of fits in with the theme

of the episode and also that's what i like about these episodes is kind of you just watch us like go through life through the themes of shadow work you know what i mean shadow work for example so last night my kind of breakthrough was that i think really it sounds quite extreme but it's really not so we've been talking about recovery plans for a while i think it was literally just the last episode but for us it's been a while for us it's been feels like it's been a whole lifetime because we think about them and we're living these recovery plans like get up start the recovery plan go to bed do the recovery plan and the recovery plan is basically the acknowledgement of there is an issue here we are working with an issue and every day we'll be taking part in small activities very very consciously and intentionally to work through the issue which is kind of why shadow

work came up this week as a good episode yeah um i hope it's a good episode we'll see what you think my thought yesterday was that i kind of realized that i will like have a whole day where i like i i'm like you need to do this today or like if you like just you're gonna have a really nice day you're gonna do this you get to do this you're gonna do this and when i then can't do that i can't fulfill that or i get to the end of the day and i'm not feeling great basically i'm setting myself up for failure and i kind of came up with the or just kind of came to the conclusion that if there is a mental health issue here why am i not treating myself like somebody with a mental health issue

as in like i don't know the french language i never did french every day i look at myself i treat myself as if i should be fluent in fucking french and i'm not and then i get annoyed and frustrated why are you not keeping up why don't you understand what's going on like i have never been in the army but i treat myself i expect results like i'm a fucking drill sergeant. Sergeant. Yeah. Sergeant major. Some kind of military man. Literally, why are you treating yourself like you need to come tomorrow and be Oprah?

You're not, you're not, that's not it. Do you know what I mean? If you just treat yourself as somebody with X, Y and Z issue or something, do you know what I mean? Literally, yeah. Then the day becomes much more like free and manageable and like you're not treating yourself like shit it takes the pressure off because it's almost like okay so right get up come on we're working by like capitalism standards and like all these like the patriarchy standards of you that i'm gonna tell you right now they're

pretty fucking high yeah that you've got to be perfect at every moment but it's like actually if i just treat myself as what i am like i would treat anyone else yeah i've also been trying to treat myself like a baby i talk about style like you so often style like you they're a youtube channel i love them they're a mother-daughter duo and they have this series called the what's underneath series it's amazing if you don't know it that's such a jingle it's amazing it's a real like summary there's a video i don't know what her name is but she talks about it that she's recovering from an eating disorder and she decided that she was gonna feed herself as she would feed her daughter she doesn't have a daughter but she's saying i'm

imagining i'm gonna make the plates of food that i would make for my child and it's the most delicious like fruits and vegetables and like all this like amazing food and she's like if i cannot love myself as i would love like my daughter then fuck that like what am i doing i'm treating myself like shit i'm giving myself plates of shit it's like one cube of cheese for me but my daughter would have all of this it's like what are you doing yeah so i think even beyond food if i'm gonna treat myself like i would treat my child so if my child is sad and they say i want to watch cartoons you better believe they're gonna watch cartoons i'm not gonna be like no homework time for you no brisk walk get outside put your raincoat on no it's if i if i want to watch cartoons which spoiler i do i want to watch

scooby-doo all day i will watch that yeah i will watch that now yeah because i'm treating myself like i'm a child it's um okay from today onwards i'm taking care of myself yeah how do you treat yourself when you're taking care of yourself why does that sound crazy it's like why is it crazy to be like i'm actually gonna take care of myself now it's like jesus fucking intense it's so weird well also so much of life is set up so that you just treat yourself like a piece of fucking shit for whose benefit can i ask for whose benefit oh it's elon musk my hubby it's elon musk benefit hubby he's actually never gonna marry me after he hits all this fucking jeff basil i hope he doesn't keep his filthy paws off your

silky drawers no i as i've said i don't want to marry him but you do the look on that face no i don't i don't want to marry that man but i know when we meet something will happen i just know something will happen spark sparks will fly okay sparks will fly between me and elon and it was over for grimes i'm so sorry grimes but you're better you're working you're literally breaking your back to benefit an evil man she's gonna be eating her little yogurt and fucking couscous. Sludge. Whatever that was.

If anyone else watched that video. If you've seen that video, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what video that is, pretend I never said anything. Type or do and just type in what Grimes eats in a day. I think it's for Vogue or something. I think it's vanity there. The shit Grimes is eating, someone needs to help her she's eating sludge that's self-proclaimed by the way i think she calls it sludge not us she calls it sludge

and also if that's what she's feeding her child ash x xyz she needs to be watching star like you and say that much poor fucking xyz because jesus that's quite a lovely way to start so how what's on shadow work then okay well what were you gonna say i was gonna say so how are you taking care of yourself because i think that's part of shadow work if what if these recovery plans which to be honest we should i i want everyone to create them i'm kind of thinking it's the best thing on earth yeah so i always think what are some things you would put on your recovery plan or have put on your recovery plan like what if could you walk us through a day in the life grimes what i eat in a day video what i eat in a day okay well i i think a key part of it is that it's very unique to you and i think a part of it is kind of um sometimes i feel like

listening to what other people do that makes them feel good can do more harm yeah than good especially if like what makes them feel good feels very like far away or like not accessible to where you are right now yeah yeah i think for a lot of people if you struggle to like eat anything more than a bowl of cereal and like have a shower in a day then it would be really annoying to hear someone be like i phone a friend every single day i get outside of the house i go to the fucking farmer's market and i come back and i have my big salad and i yeah i go for a 10 mile walk and i do you know it's like isn't that's the opposite of a recovery plan literally it's like torture that's the depths of despair instantly yeah and i've done that too like

you try and what makes someone else feel good it might not be ready for you yet that's fine and this is the thing about almost resisting the temptation to romanticize your recovery plan yeah that's like okay so i'm gonna like meditate every morning and like yeah that fucking does help me but also i do my meditation like lying in bed like there's a temptation to be like i get on my little cushion i sit up like i do my little meditation it doesn't have to look like a meditation it can look like you're still essentially asleep but it's literally like you do it on your phone or it's we spoke about this in episode ages ago that one of the thing this is on my thing but i i think one of the things that makes me feel good is watching horror movies yeah if that doesn't make you feel good don't watch

horror movie that could make you feel incredibly bad yeah it's kind of not therapist recommends watching a horror movie but for me that makes me feel good because i love them so much i have a deep love for horror movies fulfilling so every week i watch a new horror movie but it's literally like it's kind of that doesn't go without saying like it's like yeah okay everyone put that on your recovery plan it's like then everyone will be absolutely shit scared for their life and also um some people need a different thing in the way of some for some people a recovery plan will be like i'm gonna allow myself to watch half an hour of tiktok every day yeah um which i personally wouldn't recommend for whatever it would fry my brain but just because i can't be trusted on a phone you'll be laughing for that

half an hour though but will i also be like hating myself i just can't be trusted on a phone you'll be laughing for that half an hour though but will i i'll also be like hating myself i just can't be trusted with a phone in hand i can't yeah you'll be laughing for that half an hour and paying the price for the next three hours so for the next choice for the next 23 and a half yeah exactly um but for like for some people it looks like okay i'm gonna make time to watch horror movie but for some people all they've been doing is watching like horror movies yeah and it's about like okay i'm gonna make time to like not watch a horror movie i just think it's so um what comes before the recovery plan is like taking stock is your phrase i use often i think it's just such a good because it makes it very tangible and like practical wing works in a warehouse taking stock

of everything so we've got three cans of that beer yeah we've got some crates over there but that's why like i remember saying in an episode before i get to the end of the day and i treat myself like a bit of an employee like too much navel gazing or like too much like habit tracking is a little bit destructive for me if i take it in the way of why are you not fucking fluent in french you can't but actually it's like well because i've never done fucking French. Duh. Like I don't expect myself to be the person that I'm not. Yeah. Perfect.

Perfect. You're perfect. Perfect. You're perfect. So do you think step one of like any kind of, I guess you can call it shadow work or like- Dedication to yourself. Yeah. Before you can make any commitment to like,

right, okay, I'm going to fix this. It's like, you actually need to work out what the issues at hand are. Because I think i lived a lot of my life like in the dark i'm just like oh my god i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine but i do have this feeling of like deep despair about myself but it's all good like i just think it's this i just need to like yeah watch a horror movie but it's like yeah but you can't watch the horror movie until you've worked out why you're watching the horror movie like why do you need to give yourself that like almost what are you working with here and why do you need to watch the horror movie just to make it clear for people well it's not even specifically

about horror movie if that's if that's all i've got god it's got bad if my issues that my i i say it never said i hate to be talking about body dysmorphia and then never talks about it that's what the plan is about my plan is to kill emma if you know who emma is who i mentioned in the last episode my plan is to kill emma bury her deep into the grave that is the plan yeah so that is what the plan is to get me out of so my recovery plan looks like kind of a lot of like not living with gil about like food and things like that wearing things i actually want to wear and not things that emma wants me to wear which is kind of like just wear a fucking sack over you and it's fine yeah yeah so i think that's what my plan looks like and then it's also like taking time to actually relax and not like beat yourself up and

like hold yourself to this like insane standard yeah so that's why it's things like watch a horror movie because it's like emma would be like no time for you it's time for you to work but emma doesn't rule the fucking she's not the captain of the ship anymore it's been overrun by me she's been overthrown she's been she's off deck we've made her walk the plank i love it okay somebody said that shadow work is about acknowledging interrogating and working through the things that i've trained my mind to suppress and i don't know about you guys but i think i speak for both sephi and i when i say that we are better at training our minds to suppress things than we thought yeah i agree with that definitely we're better at training our minds to suppress things than we thought i think you think no i don't suppress it i'm very free i know myself i know my issues

and then lo and behold they all come out oh god yeah yeah oh god it's worse than we thought but it kind of made me want to ask the question of i guess it's just shadow work in general but do you think that if you don't address things big insecurities if you don't do the shadow work if you don't do this will it come back to you in your life yes and you have to be forced to learn the lesson yes yes yes yes yes yes yes i remember watching does anyone know brené brown or brené brown how have you said her name oh we all do you've told us have we spoken about her i love her my someone my therapist told me that i would like kind of literally like two years ago and I do love her. Well, probably like four years ago,

actually, my therapist told me about her. Four years ago, yeah. Fucking ages ago. The other day you said you were 22. I don't know how old I am. Catch me on the right day, I think I'm 22, 42. Who knows how old I think I am.

12 even. 12. I said earlier to Sefi before recording that half an hour with Sefi makes you 10 years younger. She's running the show 10 years younger. So we're going to get some youth in here, guys. life why was that because i'm energetic just full of life full of beans full of beans full of beans baked beans yeah brenny brown said a thing that i really liked

i remember saying this to my dad i think the quote was it's like uncultivated creativity is not benign and my dad said uncultivated anything is not benign and I agree that it's like anything you do not cultivate within yourself they say you're insecure and you cannot like cultivate some kind of security and self-esteem it's not benign that's going to come up that's going to show up in other areas of your life it's going to keep coming up in different ways so you'll be at the shops and you'll it will come up then when you feel insecure then or you'll feel like this it's like if you don't deal with this if you don't kind of cultivate some self-esteem within yourself it doesn't disappear it's not benign yeah it's not just going to shrink on its own it's going to keep being dredged to dragged up to the surface

at any opportunity so good it's not benign it's not benign it's cancerous it's a cancerous cell cancer isn't it is not a benign tumor it is literally gonna keep coming up well that's the thing is that all insecurity and like all self-loathing and all emma for example it wants you fucking dead yeah it wants you still physically living i guess and going through the motions, but dead in your soul. It is trying to kill your spirit. I think crushes your spirit. See, I can't be on TikTok. Yeah, yeah, so true.

It changes my brain. It crushes your spirit. It really does. It's too much. It's like, level up. I love that one where it would be like, watch me grow out of my blah blah blah like hiding myself phase and then yeah blah blah i love that's a nice one but yeah it's not benign so it comes

back it loops it's gonna loop back but this is why i think it's like a process of unlearning that's how i'm like unlearning when i first heard that i was like oh my god and also i think my dad recommended a book to me this is honestly fucking years ago called undoing yourself i don't know what it is i'm not recommending the book he reads all kinds of weird shit it's probably a psychedelics book but i remember it was called undoing yourself or like something about undoing the things that you like learn and i just remember thinking that was so great before this was like a big discourse of like unlearning it's unlearning it actually is like you need to undo the shit that was done to you when you were a teenager and a child because it seeps in so early that it almost is so hard to distinguish between like that

like the fabric of your life and your insecurities it's like which one came first is that chicken or egg like which one came first you were insecure or you were living a life it's like oh no they're the same thing so now it's like how do you have a life where you're not insecure yeah who were you before you learned to hate yourself that's what we said before who were you before you learned to hate yourself i remember though i don't know i'll have to go back and do you remember because i remember myself before i understood like the influence of like the patriarchy and like all of that stuff of like how small I should want to be tell us about it I just was such I mean I'm a confident person now but I was a confident child almost I think it was before the like ideals of femininity got placed

onto me I remember it I specifically think like at stage school like like at stage school when I was younger I remember just being so confident like such like first to stand up like first like I'm gonna be the main part like kind of I'm the bossy bossy I was just such a bossy child I don't know I just very much feel like before the ideals of like how a woman should act how a lady should be in this in civilized society I remember being like feeling very unstoppable and I think that's the thing I'm trying to get back to yeah yeah how old do you think you were when it like kicked in literally the second I grew boobs literally the second I became like developed which the second I got my period which was so young I was in year five as soon as I developed a woman's body I just could feel the societal change and therefore the

change in myself what about you do you think you remember a time like that you're unlearning to get back to it's hard because i think it's so it can be so early on that it's it's almost i don't i just know like before i could even talk like i know like i look at babies now being walked down the street with their parents and I can see all of the ways that they are being molded and shaped totally well that's the thing it there is a certain level that's literally inescapable we don't live in a vacuum but it would be great if we did a vacuum cleaner Dyson vacuum cleaner let me live in there well also this is again what I was saying about what I love about Sefi I i feel like the confidence of sephie bombs us both like i need to be around someone who is so um kind of

you're quite extreme like extremely radical man yeah you're quite radically and i like everyone has insecurity it goes out saying everyone has insecurities but just yeah i don't know if it's my confidence that's bombing you it's the worst confidence to be behind it's like the least bad shield it's like oh god it's like made out of kind of marshmallows it's literally like the worst shield ever created it's like shielding us both it's like armor made out of spaghetti it's like it's not gonna help me no but there is something you just i always say sephi just like moves through the world you navigate the world with obviously really real insecurities but at the same time a strong self-belief and and like as there's some part of your self-belief that cannot be shaken like you're quite unrivaled in your outrageous sense of self which i guess sounds this sounds

like it's a fucking character and it's not a real person but yeah what the hell i love the sound of them no it's true it's true though i think you can see that i will i agree but i almost think that i've lost a certain amount of it. Like, because I think I, if I felt unrivaled in my sense of self, if I feel unrivaled in my sense of self now, Jesus, I felt confident back then. Like when I would be like, right, we need a boy to play Danny in Greece.

My hand is going, I will be playing Danny and Rizzo kind of thing. I will be Danny, Zuko, I will be Rizzo and also i want to be knicky she's not like other girls i was honestly knicky was a hottie i never liked knicky never did you know i only had eyes for danny only had eyes for danny zuko we've never laid eyes on you i wish i never laid eyes on you keep your piece of tin so good yeah it was kind of not like other girls but not in a knot like

i genuinely just genuinely weren't like the other girls no not even like that i genuinely felt confident enough yeah to be friends with everyone and that there would be no reason why i wouldn't be playing the main part or i would there be no reason why i wouldn't be having like if the choice it's not even about gender in terms of you can play danny or you can play sandy stage school all the people they're like jesus we didn't know that shit was impactful that's the thing is i remember stage school and i remember i'm like placing you you as your danny which is to be honest i never no i never played danny it was it was never that i got it it that in my mind, I felt like I can be anyone here. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I also think, it's just funny, isn't it? Because same. Yeah. Life will give you like shaking moments all the time. And boy does it. And boy does it. Yeah.

And it doesn't hold back. Life's not playing. Relentless. Life did not come to play. do you think i hope you can stop me if this is too personal or you don't feel like chatting about this but how do you think your sense of self and that confidence and all of these things we're talking about has changed since having like a public space i.e doing a podcast and being seffy from seffy and wing oh my god as if that would be too personal which i talk't know i feel like that's something we talk about all the time

and without i think part of us doing this so i'm itching my leg if you can hear that i'm scratching my leg part of us being able to do this is it goes without saying without trying to like give a certain part of the story or like make you listening understand it in a certain way you will just take whatever you take from it and i hope that it's like meaningful like a bit funny in some way just on in the background whilst whilst you do something else but yeah we we're never gonna tell we can't depict ourselves accurately we're never gonna feel like we've perfectly represented ourselves to you listening and that's a misfortune that we're still grappling with every single day but it's the only way this can carry on but so within that kind of limitation of like you've got kind of five minutes to talk about it

how do you think like what are some of the ways that has impacted it i think at first i got worse and now i'm getting better oh i love it like at first when it's like, okay, we're going to do a thing without even going into like what happened in our own personal lives. Our joint personal life. Our joint personal life. At the very beginning of us starting this, there was a lot of resistance from our like outer circles that felt very like, God, we had to very much trust ourselves that we wanted to do this.

And I think that's something that anyone that does is even trying a thing you're starting a um instagram page about you love basketball and everyone's like what the hell who do you think you are to speak about basketball lebron james michael jordan i don't think so mate so i think that there was the like to be expected like self-doubt that came from it was like internal self-doubt that was caused by or prompted by an external self-doubt an external doubt from people which I think that obviously just made it feel very like oh god like am I doing a crazy thing like oh fuck like okay there are like eyes on me now like but then as I learned to get over that then the external opinions kind of shifted

which was quite nice but I definitely think I feel that I had to accept the idea of people listening in a different way I don't think it will ever ever ever be comfortable to be placed on a pedestal I think it's pedestals turns out like for our whole lives we've been told oh yeah you should want to be on a pedestal that's what you should aim for as soon as you're on the pedestal it's literally like the most uncomfortable thing you've ever sat on like it's like fuck who built this chair it's fucked hurts my back it will never be comfortable so it's fucked how do you think shadow work has and like what is the conscious do you know i mean how is a conscious like practice come into you navigating a public space i don't know i'm feeling like a lot of the

heats on me here i want to throw that back at you i just i was gonna say earlier i just love speaking to you what a blessing this is i love speaking to you what is you what do you think about what all of that do you do but i want to first of all know like what how are you with the public space thing like do you think that you like like what self-doubt and stuff has come in there like do you think you're kind of on some road to like quote-unquote recovery from what we've done to ourselves i god i fucking hope that's the road i'm on yeah to be honest recovering from whatever this is the mess we created yeah it's funny because i was saying the other day like having the awareness of like having a few eyes on you and like a few

perceptions of you is like quite uncomfortable and quite startling and confronting and then what makes it even more uncomfortable is the fact that like from the outside you're just your everyday joe and like in reality there aren't really that many eyes on you so you shouldn't really be finding this hard to handle and even like i have an awareness of you now listening thinking oh you're not fucking kylie jenner is what we always say and we'll be the first to say we're not kylie jenner i don't know how she does it 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. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com I think it's weird. I was also saying earlier before we started recording that I just think like British culture, if there is one, shots fired.

But British culture is not, it doesn't scream cultivate self-love to me it more so screams like shut your fucking mouth be quiet and just like how dare you not mind yourself i just think it's very very confronting but i also think i wouldn't be i mean something comes out of confrontation so like i think i wouldn't know myself in the same way i definitely wouldn't know you in the same way like we might have a normal relationship if we didn't do this we might yeah this might be a parallel universe where we're normal might just be normal friends that meet up for like brunch and things like that who knows but still i would rather not be there yeah same i think it's made me go through a million different points of ariana grande

points of view i often see myself through imagined perspectives of everyone that i imagine could be listening your imagined audience and sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad i've said this before but i definitely think it makes you confront things in like the most head-on way just in in terms of this is whatever you do but like making a commitment to yourself in some way and i think this podcast is one of the forms or this space whatever um whatever you want to fucking call it i don't mind um call us a boy band like every boy band we're not a boy band you can call us a boy band we're not fast yeah i actually think we are a boy band i think that's quite fun actually i would love to be a boy band yeah that's cute same i'd love to be a boy band okay that's cute maybe we're all in a boy band together that simon cowell's curated us together oh i want to get him involved

okay yeah yeah okay fine simon's curated us together and we're all now just turns out we're best friends and we're gonna buy him out and end the contract immediately i want to renew though i want to renew and then we all fall out and it all goes to shit no yeah go on this makes i feel like this is one of our ways in which we're committing to ourselves like okay we're actually gonna do something and i have experienced like i okay so let me bring it up one more time body dysmorphia whatever she's actually getting bored of herself meanwhile we're all loving it sephie give us more and tell us more and she's like can't bring myself to speak about it literally so that i think if i didn't have this and i was like okay right okay so i've got to solve this or i'm not gonna be able to do a fucking good job

here i'm gonna just like be fucking weird not be able to be honest and all of this shit but i would have had that say i worked in my old job at a magazine when i worked there like my little wedding magazine that i worked on my gap year if i was still there now and that we i never met wing we're never doing this if i was still there jesus i would be depressed but if i was still there now i would still have all the same feelings of like oh i feel like i look like shit like i'm just i would still have all of that but it would probably just go unsolved because i hadn't made a commitment to myself in the same way that i think doing something that's a bit different or a little bit weird or whatever not even that this is at all it makes you be like okay then what else can i do like is there anything else that i need to look at

open up and be like fuck that's fucking hideous those thoughts are so ugly i need to fucking sweep the carpets out here like this needs to be cleaned out i can't come to an episode stung so i need to figure out what's stinging me here where are the wasps where's the wasps nest i need to figure it out whereas i think i could have and i did for a year sit at a desk yeah feeling the sting but it didn't matter because all i needed to do was do some tweets and that was fine yeah i definitely now feel that like right okay so you need to sort some fucking shit out here not bad hey so let's do it publicly um i actually can't find the point but i did see a point earlier that someone put that i

thought was quite interesting that someone said that they're scared of shadow work because because it's almost like going through your mind that you don't know what's going to be in there like you're unlocking things you don't need to i think i've got that go on someone says doesn't sound like something i'd want to do on my own because of potential triggers or trauma so that one that makes a lot of sense no the other one was saying that's like yeah okay got it but the other one was like oh i don't really like the idea of you know like going hunting for things because and it reminded me of something that i once got not in an argument but got in a heated discussion with my granny about where she i was talking this is ages ago about meditation and i think my dad had bought this like absurd like headset that

like monitored your brain waves when you meditate it's the most unnecessary unmeditative thing you could do featuring a lot in this episode your dad he does he really does should have got him on but then my granny was saying something like oh i don't like meditation because you don't know what you're gonna find in there and i thought like that's the most stupid thing i've ever fucking heard like you're also like what the hell if there are things you don't want to find it probably means you need to find them. But it was an interesting conversation because she was saying, like, I don't think some things need to be dug up. And I was saying everything needs to be dug.

Like, I'm a little grave digger over here. Like, dig it up. Me too. But don't you think we've been on a bit of a, I don't know, maybe this is just in my mind. But I feel like we, you and I, have been on a little bit of a journey in like thinking about, I remember before we used to be like, like distraction,

like, well, you need to be distracted from your own self-hatred, do you? You distract, like, and like. Turns out the answer is yes.

You should spend nine hours a day reflecting on who you are and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. We never said that, but you get what I mean.

I feel like my general gist on navel gazing is yeah like sometimes it is not the most helpful thing that you could do i think some things like if you can't be trusted to sit down to go digging and go digging yeah and like be committed to finding what you're gonna find because also i think some people confuse shadow work and like self-reflection with a deep discomfort with themselves and looking for problems and it's actually a bit self-sabotage yeah that's being concealed and like masked and presented as self-help and therapy but it's actually you sabotaging yourself definitely and almost how trusted are you with that information like i've definitely been in insecure places before where i found the

information of okay i found the wound but i've kind of mistaken the wound for a different wound and i actually think the answer is extreme productivity i've got to work my way out of this but actually the answer is lie down you know what it could look like every time i go to record an episode of goes out saying i feel a little bit like oh i feel a bit on edge i feel a bit on edge it must be because this isn't right for me the podcast needs to end dot oh fuck in my mind that is a self-sabotage that wasn't what you thought it was that wasn't you couldn't be trusted do you know what i mean yeah literally so let's hope that doesn't happen hey jesus unless you're absolutely hating this then i guess you

can start rooting for it to end but i think the podcast needs to end dot that will be the name of our final episode the podcast needs to end dot oh my god no but i completely agree that sometimes you trick yourself into thinking that things aren't right for you or people aren't right for you purely because you cannot work out what's actually going on there and some people aren't right for you and some things aren't right for you you're scared of success you're scared of happiness you're scared of true love you're scared of appreciation you're scared of like um order wow you're scared of routine and structure do you know what i mean yeah wow this is great if you've had things, yeah, like you're scared of being vulnerable. If you've had things that have been in the past withheld from you or have been uncomfortable

for you, then yeah, you're going to struggle to accept that for yourself. And it will be, you're on the pedestal and it's a really uncomfortable pedestal to be on. Because you'll think it doesn't feel right for you but it's actually just that there are some other issues about what you think you deserve and you you're on a pedestal but you think you deserve a bin so it's like okay so why does this pedestal feel a bit weird yeah a bit fucking smooth and shiny i don't really like the feel of this pedestal on my skin but it's like yeah it's because you want fucking rubbish you want

like garbage on you so yeah it would feel wrong wouldn't it yeah yeah yeah you think you're like at the what's in teen choice awards like you should be covered in slime like you think you're observing it's just like getting slimed yeah but it's like actually this throne feels a bit uncomfortable it's like maybe you fit the throne yeah it's true or maybe you fit somewhere in the middle you fit just like a wooden chair and is that not fine just sit on the wooden chair it's all good so true what do you think do you think where do you think you are with like dealing with problems finding problem like do you know i mean can you be trusted with shadow work i think i can be trusted with shadow work this is absurd sorry just hearing that sentence back i think i can be trusted with shadow work

the sincerity of us can you be trusted with shadow work i think i can be trusted i love when we act dumb we do an american accent it's the most offensive but no i hate that if you're from america just know that every other country does your accent when they pretend they're dumb. No, that's horrible. What I actually think it's changing. I think it's I think Love Island has turned the tides. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So true. And now people do this gimmicky like, all right, love. Like a regional British accent. Yeah, they do. Yeah, all right, love. Yeah, all right, bruv. Come on then. So true.

I think it's us now. That's fine. That's all right. We deserve it, honestly. Ourself seems not low. We can handle it. Is that the doorbell? true i think it's us now that's fine that's all right we deserve it honestly our self-esteem's not low we can handle it is that the doorbell oh i think that's my urban outfit disorder oh wow some dresses on the way i can't wait quick change singing montage from me when you edit

oh my gosh just stop this no i'm just gonna let it play hello so it wasn't the urban outposts oh what was it it was a local author trying to sell her book oh god that's sweet she said do you want to read a small paragraph of my book and i said i don't have time right now i said i'm in a meeting oh i love it i'm actually in a meeting right now she said i'll come back another time it's please please don't i can't read the small paragraph seemed really nice but i've never had that before no i've never oh hang on someone at my door okay my um jack was just like um you should do that say what go door to door to door please listen to my podcast i've got actually a podcast um you might like it let me play you a short excerpt

great marketing what were you saying what a real sore throat in here really this little throat of mine yeah oh that's horrible you sounded like filch then oh dear oh dear we're in trouble still hot still hot students out of bed oh my god you were saying can we be trusted with shadow work i don't know i don't know you're saying you can be trusted with shadow work i think i can as long as I'm doing all my things that make me okay. And that I can be trusted when I believe I'm trustworthy. Yeah. One of my big things actually in kind of my shadow work, which I don't actually really call it shadow work.

I would be like therapy, meditation, yoga, all of this stuff is getting in touch with myself. Someone said, is shadow work just a hip word for therapy? And someone else said something along the lines of like, it's therapy or something, but shadow is just a word we've clung to and exhausted, which I thought was funny. It kind of reminds me of us when it's like, and the girl had a shadow. Oh God. It's like, it kind of is that.

I'm scared. Which I do love. I love the idea of having a little shadow self as long as I'm not wearing a red jumpsuit with red scissors coming after my life. Oh my God. So you can be trusted with shadow work as long as you're maintaining what you're taking care of yourself basically but i also think one of the things that i've learned through my quote-unquote shadow work all my like fucking all my stuff is that i'm actually in certain ways not trustworthy and it has made me more trustworthy i'm reliable narrator

to know that i am untrustworthy i am not trustworthy nick carraway like i can't trust my own mind yeah nick carraway i cannot trust my own mind to you're like a rose what's going on sorry sorry just quoting caspy isn't he like a rose it's like shut up daisy and care for your child i hope she's a beautiful little fool yeah exactly i think it's kind of about the intention as well it's like if you go into shadow work if you go into journaling convinced that you absolutely loathe yourself then like don't be surprised if you come out of it feeling like god i've written some really horrible things about myself yeah and i still kind of believe them have we said that i think we've said this before but

this is one of our main why would i go looking for someone who's trying to kill me that's not what we hadn't said before the thing that we i was wondering if we actually said this on the podcast before i'm sure we have but we live by this you will find the evidence for what you choose to believe we said that a lot we say it was a fucking time yeah okay good it's a good one i lose track there's been so many of these abs so many conversations so many hours of them hours literally like 60 hours now i'm so sorry for everyone having to listen to that uh-huh an abundance what a waste of a royal waste of time a choice not ours definitely not ours i would not choose for anyone to listen to that but yeah it's like you if you sit down feeling shit yeah in your journal you will be served shitness because you will find

the evidence for what you choose to believe you will find oh my friend actually looked at me a bit like that and oh my skirt doesn't fucking fit right oh my god like i fuck up my a-level exam you'll find the evidence but if you're feeling good you'll actually feel like oh my hot chocolate is tasting quite delicious today um like quite nice it's like sunny you'll find the evidence but if you're feeling good you'll actually feel like oh my hot chocolate is tasting quite delicious today um like quite nice it looks like sunny you'll find the evidence for what you choose to believe and i think that is life-changing when we made that kind of um switch in our life together i think it's um you have to choose that every day though yeah there are days when i'm like confirmation advice nah i just actually am a piece of shit yeah like i have and that's kind of to draw back to the question about what's on my recovery plan the sacred text of my recovery plan literally came down on 10 stone tablets we've written these on yeah marked

in stone and i've said this before but part of it is about being really disciplined yeah because i'll be the first person to be like oh fuck that i'm not doing it like i'll just be a miserable piece of shit then like fuck it like i can't be bothered to try and make this any better like i actually just i have just the conclusion is i hate myself and i'm gonna stick with it but actually that only comes from me not being i have to hold myself accountable to it because also that's the thing it's not even just in the morning it's like breakfast lunch and dinner it's like yeah okay i need to remind myself i'm doing that every hour on the hour yeah like needs to be happy

hour when i wake up i need to be at lunch need to remind myself before i go to bed i need to remind that to remember that and also before i have like a big phone call at three i need to probably remind myself before and after that like it's just making this conscious commitment to like, I am not going to waste my life. I want to have a fun life. Getting the habit of reminding yourself because that's all your life is just a collection of habits. Oh, that's stunning. I will tell you, my habits are not looking good. They are not up to scratch with what I would like to offer on Steffi and Wink.

They're bad what what are some of your bad habits um um she picks her nose what's a bad habit a bad habit is like i wake i would wake up and be on my phone yeah absolutely sorry real cough smiggy over here one sec fuck bring it up god imagine if i just see you die on face time oh my god we joke about dying on face time so much that sometimes i actually think is that how we're gonna go i know i don't think it will be a death like that though i think it will be like murdered on face time like as in someone comes in and like murders. That's what we always say is like,

I see, I said, I'm like, wait, who's in the room with you? And she like turns around and then like someone grabs her. Like I can just see her being dragged off of the fucking camera. That's not. Just that's what we do when we FaceTime.

That's good. Anyway, bad habits. Yeah, habits is like just waking up. I was literally saying to my boyfriend yesterday i was like i need to because also i'm quite an early riser and that time like waking up in the morning is very i mean i know it's like a throughout the day thing but i'm very much setting the tone and if i wake up early and i wake up earlier than him or earlier than like the majority of fucking human beings yeah that's a lot of hours before the day has begun for me to run riot with my own mental health and drag myself down to the depths

of hell yeah and that happens a surefire way for me to do that is be on my phone and i never used to be like crazy on my phone i think a part of it is having this space and i also think maybe the pandemic kind of so much of the way that i was seeing the of it is having this space and i also think maybe the pandemic kind of so much of the way that i was seeing the world was just through this little device in my hand the digital realm is the only realm yeah yeah it's the domestic sphere and the digital sphere and that's it yeah that's it all you have and the supermarket sphere yeah yeah like it's like you have nothing else so i just need to really and i always am like talking about being intentional like everywhere my journal my notion my fucking everywhere i may

as well have it painted on the fucking wall i literally will put right are you going to be intentional today question mark like a bit rude to myself to be honest yeah because it is that deep it's like you're either going to be intentional and have a nice life enjoy yourself you're gonna be a piece of shit again so which one is it you silly little thing you'll live your silly little life without your silly little intentions it's like i need to come with intention i'm intentionally gonna try and not hate myself today what a what a vision what a vision because even being intentional it goes beyond like the big deep shadow work of like, oh my god, what is that? That sounds fucking terrifying. Do I have to go and do that like at midnight with a lit candle?

And walk three times in a circle? Like it sounds like kind of a witchcraft vibe. But it's like actually like just being intentional with like, I want a cup of tea. I'm going to make a cup of tea. Rather than in my shitty like stained mug, I'm gonna wash up the mug, get my favorite mug, wash it up and have my tea in there because that will increase, that will make me happy.

That will increase me by like 0.3%. It's not about these deep life lessons every day, huge life transformational things. It's habits. If I made my bed this morning, how would that improve my day? Oh, well, I'm not hanging around in a messy room then. Okay, because I always do this. I'm not intentional with my days in this way which i actually think is a

bit of a problem i think my habit every day is just to not get dressed i love being in pajamas i won't hang around in the clothes i like my pajama pajamas but i have i've got three stages of clothes i've either got pajamas indoor clothes and outdoor clothes which is weird it is weird and my indoor clothes is what like the step that's in between pajamas and like actual clothes like I would never hang out in like jeans and now I've got to the point where I don't even like leggings like I will be in like shorts or trackies and like a little top every day like there's indoor clothes and I wouldn't go I wouldn't really leave the house in them I never put on makeup I never really do my hair or anything and it's like actually I waste days like that and I do think

there's something very stunning about not getting dressed but I also think it's about not valuing the day almost like I just I'm almost just gonna waste that day and just be in my like um indoor clothes all day this sounds stupid but it's like just putting on eyeliner like I feel I've worn the same makeup look I haven't honestly changed my makeup routine since I was 12 and I probably should it's been winged eyeliner mascara nothing else since I was 12 maybe there was a phase where I wore dream matte mousse in the middle of that when I was like 13 but those days are long gone unspoken times and I just think now it's like one of my intentional things it's like would I like to get dressed today would I like to wear a dress today would I like to wear some dungarees today who knows but it's like actually making the

effort to not just assume oh it's like a shorts day you're in my little shorts it's a throwaway day just a throwaway i think i view a lot of my days as throwaway days and i tell myself that it's a throwaway day through my clothes i 100 agree i 100 000 billion percent agree also outdoor clothes make up like 10 of my wardrobe at this point like yeah which i think is a problem and i also think um again to talk about the pandemic which maybe is boring for people but i also think it's probably quite important to talk about it because otherwise you forget how big of an impact it's had maybe you could never forget how big the impact has been but i think it's just quite interesting because i think i've probably undermined what it has done to me or for me to spend a year like only seeing myself through my laptop camera yeah and like not being confronted

with people seeing me in real life for example it's just and also not seeing other people in real life i'm seeing people on their stories with a beautiful filter on just your whole perception on like what is real changes is very like warped yeah well i even thought that when we saw each other when we had our stunning reunion picnic that was on live and it's on our instagram now if you haven't seen that you can watch it back yeah you should watch it it's so cute yeah it's on our ig tv but i remember we met like we were met outside the shops and i saw you and it was like seeing someone that you have all the features of the person i've been speaking to for the past year kind of sounds like i had an online romance i've known wing for years but like we just didn't see each other for over a year yeah and it was like you had all the features but your mannerisms were different yeah you're a tall person

it made me remember that I'm a short person like we don't stand next to each other in the same way like it's it's just interesting yeah when you see you again it's like oh like you are exactly what I remember but you're also like you're kind of um impersonating Wing. Yeah. Like, it's like, oh, who is this? Kind of, I met your tethered. Yeah, well, that's weird. That's scary. Yeah, well, that's also, I think, I kind of think that's what it's been like

for me coming out of lockdown. I do kind of feel like I'm impersonating me because part of me is like, who is that? If I feel like a completely different person since like March, 2020, when like we first went into lockdown. Oh my God, yeah. Also, I was literally like a completely different person since like March 2020, when like we first went into lockdown. Oh my God. Yeah. Also, I was literally like a different age.

Like a lot of time has passed. Like I just, who am I now? Like I'm meeting that person again. You met me and I too feel like I was meeting me for the first time as well in a really weird way. I feel like I'm still figuring that out out getting adjusted to like being out and about i completely agree i completely agree i think it's a bigger deal than we're letting on because it is meeting a different version of yourself and letting the world meet a different version of yourself and you'll be doing it like this is harry this is to you that is like you will have

you have grown in so many ways that you won't have realized because i think that's one of the things that if you look at it now and it's like well i haven't really grown like or it's like quick back to the or like oh i've just been in my fucking bedroom for a year or um i have the same job i don't really look any different been in these joggers for a whole year i haven't got dread like and it doesn't matter if you had some huge hair transformation i went into this as a brunette and now i'm a blonde i've changed so much no i was 19 and now i'm 21 it doesn't have to be like that no it doesn't have to be like that at all well that is pretty crazy there'll be loads of things that you wanted that you didn't have then and there'll be loads of things that have happened that you wouldn't have expected to happen

that are now things in your life i saw a really nice tweet i'm gonna have to read it it was a sequence of tweets it's just you're perfectly like describing it so i just have to read it out which everyone's like boring don't do that but it's actually cute so someone put up a picture saying someone left a plant in the office for a year and a half and it's like this sprawling plant like this plant has like it's just a little like house plant or office plant but it's like grown all over the chair now it's like doing quite a nice little ivy how's one to know it's kind of swerving all over the room someone replied saying i wish i was thriving this much after being neglected for a year and a half funny that's quite sad yeah but i mean they got 7 000 likes so far

and counting hasn't even been 24 hours i wish i was thriving this much after being neglected for a year and a half and someone replied saying you've grown but maybe it hasn't been as noticeable do you have better root systems now yeah like that and they replied saying you've grown but maybe it hasn't been as noticeable do you have better root systems now yeah like that and they replied saying oh my god i just re-examined everything i thought i knew thank you blah blah that tweet came from at sql cheesecake it's like are we on club penguin the most profound corners of the internet i circle around but it's true don't you think like maybe you have grown maybe it isn't noticeable to you right now but perhaps you have

better root systems yeah it's like yeah your roots you can't see them they're in the dirt but there's stuff going on here yeah stuff that you can't see is changing oh i love that yeah you have a better foundation of who you are what you want or maybe your foundation has been more shaken and you feel like you're having a whole the whole side of your house is being renovated and now you're digging up the foundations of you could feel more confused and lost than ever and that's also fine same and in loads of ways i do in loads of ways i feel way more confused but then i do think there's the there's the the basis of knowing what happens when you're stripped from society in a certain way other than like your immediate friends and family and then like the digital sphere what happens to you and

it's like it's this weird thing where it's like okay well I guess I work on myself and like not in an active way I did like as much there have been like active periods of growth there's just been like this underlying growth that has happened and i think that will have happened to more people than they realize definitely it is a weird thing is it when you compare yourself to that march 2020 person wow that is crazy and how could something of this scale not be completely life-altering Like something in you will have shifted slightly. And maybe there's a parallel universe out there now where like, you never found goes without saying and this never happened and blah, blah, blah.

And we're probably thriving. Everybody still likes us. Are we? I hate to put it out there. Are we rapping? I think we're rapping. Step on anybody's toes. But yeah.

We're gif wrapping. Little bow on top. on anybody's toes but yeah we're gift wrapping a little bow on top and it's delivered right to apple podcast and spotify near you yeah i guess this is it i guess this is it we'll give you your space we'll be back for you in another week come and claim you again then if you don't hear from us assume the worst oh my god i love this sorry we have a podcast i actually love them i can't