It Can't Just Be Me - Coming Back from Self Destruction with Jordan Stephens

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Join Anna Richardson and the multi-talented musician, actor, and author Jordan Stephens for part two of their chat as they delve into his journey navigating ADHD, overnight fame and profound personal challenges. In this very candid conversation, Anna and Jordan openly discuss his struggles with anger and grief and how his self-soothing techniques ultimately led to a breakdown. Discover how hitting rock bottom became a catalyst for his incredible transformation towards sobriety, and finding his way back.In this episode, we have conversations around addiction and drug use which could be upsetting. If you’re looking for help and advice you can find some useful links here: https://audioalways.lnk.to/ItcantjustbemeIGIf you have an It can't Just Be Me you would like discussed then get in touch with Anna by emailing [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Anna Richardson and welcome to It Can't Just Be Me. We're back. If you've listened before, hello. And if you're joining me for the very first time, it's great to have you here. This is the podcast that helps you realise you're not the only one. It's a safe space where nothing is off limits as we try to help you understand that whatever you might be going through, it's really not just you. So each week I'm joined by a different celebrity guest who will talk through the challenges and hurdles they faced in their own lives in order to help you with yours. I want to know about it all, the weird, the wonderful, the crazy, because these conversations are nothing if not open and honest.

So let's get started. This week's guest is back for part two, known to many as one half of the hip-hop group Rizzle Kicks. He's way more than just a brilliant musician. He's also a podcaster, an actor, and now, of course, an author. It is, of course, Jordan Stevens. Look at you sitting there going, yes, I am. It's cool to hear the author part, especially. Hello and welcome. Hi. That's a huge amount of talent. We chatted in part one about the violence in writing happening across the UK at the moment, but this time we are focusing on you, Jordan.

So before we chat any further, and I'm slightly scared about what you're going to say here, but what is your it-can't-just-be-me dilemma? My it-can't-just-be-me dilemma is that I, as a child, was convinced that, well, I thought the world was in black and white in the 50s and that colour was invented well not in the 50s I mean up until colour was invented

which was I guess the 60s but how do we know mid Wizard of Oz it just arrived but how do we know the world wasn't just in black and white in the 50s we don't

well exactly so in a way you're right you're right so you thought as a kid but are you telling me that people would inherently know that it was always in colour well how do we even know there is colour so in a way you're right you're right so you thought as a kid but are you telling me that people would inherently know that it was always in color well how do we even know there is color because it's only our brains that perceive color well but we're talking about the absence of color

and the existence of it i don't know if we see the same colors but how do we know there is color if you spoke to your nan right now and you were like nan was the world black and white in the 50s the answer is probably yes right so you agree with me yeah it's not just it's not just me exactly it isn't just you i think in the 50s the world was solely monochromatic the thing that aided my belief was that also most of the information i was getting fed about that time was pretty miserable. So I assumed that people were just sad because colour hadn't been invented yet. It hasn't been invented.

Like, before I understood the political and socio-political implications of war, I just assumed people were fighting because there wasn't any colour. I mean, in fairness, that's a good reason to fight. I, too, would be in the trenches if I existed in just shades of black. If it was just shades of grey. Congratulations on your new book, which is out now. Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs. I mean, incredible title.

So look, writing a book is hard. So why did you decide to write one now? It was circumstantial, basically. I find that in my life, I write often as a means of escape or survival, kind of. If I'm feeling a particular way and I feel overwhelmed with a particular feeling, then I'll write it down as an attempt to process it. That makes sense. So you will journal it?

No, I don't journal. I was going to say, I only recently would, I i guess now consciously do that but in hindsight i've always even unconsciously done that i've been driven to write because of you know a wave of emotion be that you know joy or sadness frustration anger um well frustration well, frustration's not an emotion, but anger, these kind of things, grief. And so I originally wrote an article for The Guardian about, it'll probably be seven years ago now,

I can't do the math, but I mention it in the book. And that was because I was experiencing, relative to me, the biggest heartbreak of my life. Not necessarily a singular heartbreak, it was more like a singular heartbreak was the, I don't know what the phrase would be,

the straw that broke the camel's back. It was, I refer to it as a dam, a dam breaking, where loads of griefs that I hadn't acknowledged hit me at once and I was really down. So I was kind of reading these stories and I felt like whoa you know how who am I a man like how have I matured as a as a boy into a man have I matured from being a boy into a man I was I was literally I was interrogating all these aspects of my identity

in the middle of like a big kind of gender you know poor social boom kind of movement. And I wrote an article and it really resonated with a bunch of people. And from then I'd just been offered things approached, you know, like, you know, I'd been offered a book agent and like a film, you know, production companies, nearly any kind of creative output like media space offered me an opportunity to write about masculinity but at the time I didn't feel like I knew really anything other than I was confused about my own growing up experience yeah so for literally three years I would have these meetings

or I would have these and I would go oh yeah okay cool let me write this and then it would never come to anything actually one hilariously one idea I once had was like I was going to write a like a book of recipes but it wasn't recipes it was like the contributing factors to like how to create certain types of men and and boys that's a good idea I'll take that as and when you've written that but anyway i got to basically i got to the point where i'd been telling whenever someone asked me about my journey i would always talk about this one heartbreak i'd always refer to it and eventually i had a conversation with a friend of mine who's a playwright and he was like well why don't you

write about that and i thought well yeah i guess i could because it's not prescriptive I'm not trying to tell anybody how to be I just want to be honest about my own journey and hope that I can connect people through that well I mean I've got a whole bunch of questions for you but I did wonder whether I just wondered whether maybe it might be more interesting in a way just to take the four words in the title of your book cool and to talk about what they mean to you so we're saying avoidance drugs heartbreak dogs okay so let's start with avoidance okay what does avoidance mean to you so avoidance i guess encapsulates my commitment issues and my uh intimacy the intimacy issues that I had growing up or developed growing up okay so well let's focus on that so you're saying the avoidance

issues the intimacy issues that I had when I was growing up so how old are we talking well it was up until really I started working on all these issues after this heartbreak, so that would be up until 27. So you were avoiding intimacy up until the age of sort of 27. And what did that look like, Jordan? So, well, if people are familiar with attachment theory as well, if I was to try and categorize myself within that attachment theory, with the core options being avoidant um anxious attachment i guess secure attachment and and then avoidant attachment i would definitely be an avoidant attachment so for those people listening who maybe don't know about the whole attachment

theory thing just just explain what that is uh so well there's two the version i actually prefer is by a guy called stan tatkin he He wrote a book called Your Brain on Love where he changes the avoidant, he changes it to being called avoidant attachment and all that to like island, anchor for secure and then wave for anxious. But basically it describes people's patterns in within relationships based roughly off their upbringing so the argument that

the generalized suggestion would be if you've had two emotionally present parents you've got a strong possibility of being a secure attachment an anchor yeah so you can actually move between all states you can be avoidant you can be anxious but ultimately you're okay in your own company you know you because you know you're secure you know you've been loved yeah an anxious attachment generally refers to somebody who's had one emotionally present parent so they have an understanding of what love and security can feel like but they've also had it removed elsewhere so that so they you know they look for it they become people call them clingy there's often people who anxious attachments.

And then you have the island or the avoidant attachment, which again, this is a generalized because there are other factors aside of like, there are many reasons why parents struggle, but this would largely be somebody who has two emotionally distant parents. So that doesn't mean they're not good. That doesn't mean they're not good that doesn't mean they're not good or they're not nice often it means they're busy they're working that means they've got

shit to deal with themselves or they've had their own trauma yeah so and emotionally unavailable is different like you know you can have looking you literally have both parents there and still be an avoidant attachment you know which is a case for a lot of people. So anyway, so I fall into that category where you, as a young age, you end up figuring out how to self-soothe. So you fall into an almost like impenetrable desire to be independent and any type of relationship feels like a loss of self.

Oh, that's really interesting. So for you then, dating and getting involved with people was like whoa whoa i'm not gonna get enmeshed with this person because i'm gonna lose me past a certain point yeah but in my experience the honeymoon phase the beginning part of the relationship i'd often find somebody with an opposing attachment style contrasting we'd kind of form this union based off of this seemingly obvious ability to fulfill each other's you know like um the areas we want to to be to be better in we're balancing each other out we feel in those

moments but then once the honeymoon phase ends and that and that literal chemical high that i experience ends then i'm presented with the reality of that person and i would freak out really okay so again it's kind of like I cannot do this and you're just going back into that pattern of being avoidant attachment so avoidant yeah I think for me when I look back the thing that kind of just feels sad the things that the thing that feels saddest is that communicate my communication with partners is bad um I didn't understand the benefit in constantly being in communication from being clear and open about what i'm doing and and timings and feeling like excited to know what my

my partner's doing and i was just really on my own island literally you know why do i need to talk to you like why i don't understand why that's needed you know and then even in you know in more intimate situations like i would struggle to understand you know cuddling for long periods of time sometimes i struggled holding hands so what's changed then now because you are in a successful relationship you're 32 years old now you're saying up until the age of 27 i really struggled with this avoidant attachment style yeah so what's changed well the book is about is I, not only was I avoiding attachment, I was also very destructive. And so if I was faced with a challenge

within a relationship, be that romantic or actually even friendship, career, I would destroy myself. And unfortunately with relationships, there's somebody who is that directly affects. So I was in a relationship, I was disloyal and i was left and that is the catalyst for the book i've written and i was just there faced with the reality that like i was perpetually falling into these cycles of having somebody close to me and

then creating an environment in which that relationship would end and do you now know because it sounds as though you've had a lot of therapy, you understand your own mental health very, very well. Do you now know why you were repeating those patterns? Yeah. And so why did you blow everything up? Why did you self-sabotage? My personal journey has been with anger. So there are cultural beliefs, especially in the UK around or British culture around anger or the expression of it and was also that I guess that so that made it acceptable that as a child and

as a young adult I was unable to express feelings of anger in a healthy way do you know I am I'm really glad that you've said that I am really interested in anger and we've covered it before on it can't just be me um we've talked about rage and anger and the expression of it and anger is a natural emotion yeah it's core emotion it's a core emotion and we are absolutely told certainly within this culture aren't we that you should not express it And certainly if you're a woman, let me tell you, you should not express it. And so then I think we're taught to become passive aggressive, which I think is even more destructive than just outwardly expressing your anger.

It is more destructive. It's toxic. But we're told that if you are an outward anger expressor, then you are bad and you are wrong. So does that resonate with you? 100%. I think what was, well a lot of the one of the people i've been following um his work is a guy called gabo mate there's a lot of work

on adhd yeah um he talks about this um basically as a young boy i decided that i didn't want to express my anger to my parents because i've maybe, I maybe thought they weren't equipped to deal with it, which is obviously, I don't know. It's an irrational choice. Then you're protecting your mom and dad. Yeah. So that idea,

which I shouldn't need to. Yeah. And, and you know, a child should express all emotions freely as possible within reason. You know what I mean? And actually a child, for example,

telling you that they hate you, your child is actually a good thing. Alan de botton is somebody who says that and he's right because it means that you respect that adult you know they can handle that and i'm not saying i didn't respect my i adored you know both my parents of course as any child does but that's why so i was like i don't want to take this out on them so i'm gonna i'm gonna find a way to deal with it myself i gabble matty would argue that would contribute to an ADHD diagnosis. I would self-soothe. I'd go into daydream land to deal with how I felt.

But then as I get older, as I got older, I would then be in environments and situations where somebody would make me angry. So that'd be a friend or a partner or a career situation. And I would fear the repercussions of me accessing that anger. So instead i would take it out on myself because that's the safest way to do it but then ironically it would damage people anyway absolutely so a lot of my work in therapy was tapping into my anger and realizing that it's

my belief that a true expression of healthy anger core anger is simply laying a boundary it's not what we think anger is is rage toxic anger actually you know um donna lancaster who i mentioned in the book she's an incredible facilitator and she talks about the fact that you know if you step on a dog's paw it will go like straight away they'll yelp just instantly let's go of that feeling you know and then are you does that dog judge you does that jog does that dog think i can't believe that person stepped on my paw wait till i you know i mean obviously again dogs have their boundaries but but the thing is they just go yelp or they'll shake if they're anxious they just shake it off most animals actually shake when they experience anxiety human beings we swallow these yelps like i've i used that i

say that in my book one of the first sentences in the second chapter i think i say i've been swallowing bombs since i could first spell my name or something and i just wanted to create that image of what happens to a body when you when the feelings are constantly you know we don't do that we don't shake we don't just yelp in a moment and so it becomes toxic passive aggressiveness is one of the easiest ways to destroy a relationship oh my god i'm i'm literally obsessed with it so it's it's it's a real um passion area of mine this is how we express our rage because the boundary is literally just no yeah or i don't want to do that disrespect your boundaries all the time you can lay your boundary

down but it's quite interesting how people will keep traversing them and disrespect that boundary. And then of course, what's your natural reaction? Your natural reaction is to get upset, fearful, or angry. All the same thing, really. But yeah, passive aggression I find deeply, deeply toxic, and so many people in this culture do that. Whereas if you look at something like,

I was talking to somebody about this the other day, might have been my therapist actually about if you look at say for example the italian culture well they're they're shouters they shout right and it's not it's not a problem you know they they understand each other that you know i'm going to shout at you because i'm either passionate about something i'm happy about something i'm angry about something and you're not getting judged for that. Whereas here, we are hugely judged for just expressing that yelp, as you say, of you're hurting me or you're upsetting me. It's a very interesting thing. Okay, let's move on to the second word within your title, drugs. Okay, so you talk about the fact that you've used, I know, you've used drugs.

I mean, look, I have lived every single one of these words. You've used, you've abused. Talk to me about when you started using them and why. So I moved from Neasden in northwest London to Brighton at maybe 10 or 11. And at the time, and maybe still, Brighton was one of the drug capitals of the country and i mean i don't know i sometimes when i talk to friends from london who went to secondary school in london it seems different to my experience but we were pretty we had access to drugs and started experimenting with drugs pretty early like definitely started drinking about 12 really yeah like if you can get hands

on it of course you know i mean like brighton was incredibly horny and incredibly high yeah we're doing pills at 15 for sure yeah um smoking weed from 13 14 for sure didn't know so would you say it's just that that natural sort of teenage stage of curiosity and sort of wanting to alter your state and just having a good time yeah maybe brighton was more liberal maybe it was that you know like it's not quite like the city city so it's a bit like woo um but i don't remember you know my mom um was a liberal parent she would never shame me for wanting to experiment she would just want to ensure that i was being safe yeah yeah um so so you're doing that natural thing of a teenager going do you know what i'm up for this i'm gonna drink i'm gonna smoke some weed i'm gonna take some pills

yeah this is what teenagers and young people do yeah we've all done it yeah so at what point for you were drugs then becoming a problem i'm assuming yeah yeah so the actual last drug i experimented with within that kind of regular class because how i see it is you have like the hardcore like heroin and the more like recreational class mdma ecstasy weed uh cocaine cocaine was actually the last one i tried i remember i was 17 and i i've tried it i described this in the book i had it first when i was on holiday with my mate's family in barbados and you know i was like whoa that's crazy like you know alcohol taste was like water sobered me up in a bizarre way like and then i was super drunk and i would pass out a lot and

me up in a bizarre way like and then i was super drunk and i would pass out a lot and um but still like but still honestly nothing like grabbed me like when i talk about struggling with addiction i don't ever think it was a specific thing it was just these were vehicles in which i could drive my way into hedonism you know and so the problem occurred i remember rizzle kicks had popped off you know we were doing well and suddenly there was all this attention and and um going out became a different experience you know it wasn't like it used to be where you kind of had this anonymity and this trashy cover you know it was like you know people would recognize you and people would talk to you and what was even more daunting for me was I was being introduced to people

I had seen for so long on television. The thing about Rizzle Kicks, which I'm sure we'll explore more once because we're back now, we're coming back, is that like, it was overnight. Not overnight in that we didn't work hard. We were actually, Rizzle Kicks we did for two or three years, but to like no one this is what this is why

people think some people think we are an industry partner we were manufactured we were performing to like 20 people in brighton with the same music by the way this is our why so if anyone's concerned about their music it's really to do with timing and and who hears it and you know we made a video and that video started to gain traction in 2011 in one month we entered into the charts of trumpets at 144 which was mind-blowing that me and harley could even see our name on itunes chart by the end of that month we were number eight and we were number eight for like two months so in that one month suddenly our anonymity gone like life life turned on its head and people i was you

know i'd literally be playing fifa with my friends in our in our front room and a flat share we were in in islington and then i'd be going to an event and i'd be seeing the footballers that i was playing do you know i mean and that that became such a terrifying experience that once someone gave me a line and i went back into that experience and I wasn't as scared I Became but then began to take coke more often Okay So this is an interesting thing that again you throw fame into the mix here that sort of what seems to be in inverted commas Overnight fame I know it wasn't but you know to the rest of the world it's for fame for fame

It was people didn't see us doing you know with our little 1,000 followers on WordPress blogs and stuff like you know, they didn't see us doing, you know, with our little 1000 followers on WordPress blogs and stuff like, you know, they didn't see that. They see trumpets. It got put as song of the week on radio one and flew. And we were just as shocked as everyone else. And then we just had to ride this wave. So then you've got this wave of fame

and to cope with that, you're then going, do you know what? Yeah, I'm gonna take more drugs. Cause what hedonism or just to cope with it? Yeah, just like cope. I mean, it's it's a funny drug cocaine i mean nearly everybody in london has done or is doing it especially central london i find it so funny when i hear reports about stopping searches and like you know boys in the suburbs getting stopped for a bit of weed like boss if you were serious about stopping search you go down fucking soho and arrest half

of these suits mate because i'm telling you yeah they got minimum two g's on them yeah um not to put anyone out but we know it's a common thing it's part of the culture and it's a it's an interesting kind of together loneliness you know where people are all kind of trying to cope with the fact that they're not sure who anyone else is yeah and so i was in i was in that and i loved it and and you know it means you get to be alone with people you barely know but then you kind of build this instant relationship based on the fact you both want to get high and there were loads of parts to it and then of course you know when i if you know if i was attracted to somebody and they also wanted to do drugs it added to this complete hedonistic approach it's a weird bonding thing it's bizarre

as you say but then at what point did you realize that it's a problem this is a problem so the problem actually wasn't to do with me going out and doing cocaine the reason moment it became a problem was when i started doing it at home alone so with me what i realized was that well to give an example i used to have like a party crew and there was a point after some you know a reasonable amount of usage of this drug that one of this party crew was like Jordan you're not allowed to take it anymore at night not because he was being responsible but because I became boring so when I was drunk I was like being a fool acting like the second i did coke i would i would gain this razor sharp focus it was just on unfortunately like menial things but if i was then coming home or if i did it at

home i realized that if i could channel that focus into writing or making music i would create loads so i ended up falling into a problematic use of cocaine, not because I was going out and getting partying all the time, because I was saying no to parties, buying the coke and doing it at home. And then if I was wanting to use it in order to create with other people, sometimes I'd be booked for a studio session

in a family home at like 11 in the morning, and I would do coke before I went. So is that to do with your ADHD? Yes. With how cocaine interacts with somebody with ADHD? Yeah, it was medicating me. like 11 in the morning and i would do coke before i went so is that to do with your adhd yes with how cocaine interacts with somebody with adhd yeah it was medicating me yeah that's interesting and did you know that at the time well i didn't realize that most cocaine in london is probably cut with speed no so yeah yeah interesting because a mate of mine that's got adhd that that that use it well did use coke was saying it didn't really do a great deal for me other than make

me really focused so i wasn't getting off my tits and having fun i was just like really focused on nothing at all yeah so that is really interesting so for you you're like hang on there's an addiction element coming in here not because i'm having a great time but just because it's really helping me focus so at what point did you think i've got to get clean the there was one moment which i describe in the book where i did it at like 10 in the morning or 10 30 and i had this overwhelming like um my whole body like just sweat in like an instant it was like this i was overcome with sweat like every pore of my body was just sweating and then i vomited into my sink and I was like that's not good and so it's like probably I laugh but I'm actually laughing because it's quite sad to think about yeah my therapist would say that I love you I mean I'm looking at you thinking yeah that this is interesting that

you're saying that I woke up and had this reaction and I vomited everywhere and I know it's it's sometimes I think actually in that time I still did more and went to the session as well. But I think I put a pin in that and was like, that's not, it's not sustainable. And then what happened was I was on a trip, someone gave me some Adderall in America and I was like, whoa, this is wild.

I didn't know I could think like this. Wild in what way? Well, it was a stimulant that had allowed me to consider my own thoughts and my actions, which I'd never been able to do before. And that made me think, I'd already been diagnosed with ADHD, but I didn't care. When I was 15, I thought it was a joke.

And then from that point onwards, I thought maybe what's happening is I'm medicating my adhd with with coke so i ended up self-medicating which took me off the coke but then i had to take myself off the self-medication which is another story so you were you were given adderall yes and for you it made you laser focused again that it just managed to calm the thoughts and focus the thoughts i think my belief was that if somebody wasn't talking they weren't thinking anything i wasn't aware because of my

impulsivity that i could think about what i wanted to say i would say what i was thinking and then reflect on it afterwards which would obviously get me in trouble sometimes so i took adderall and suddenly a thought would appear come to the forefront of my mind and then there'd be a new thought that would say do you want to say this and i'd be like no and then i'd be like wow is this the freedom that everybody everybody else experiences yeah and then i genuinely asked a friend on this trip i went when you think something do you do you decide whether or not you want to say it and they were like yes obviously and i was like well okay i've really not this is so that's presumably then jordan you you then went and got prescription

medication for adhd no why because again i was a wild child i guess it was my early 20s and instead i took the advice of a hacker friend of mine who just gave me some like dodgy drugs off the internet really yeah and how did that go for you so i ended up taking this thing called modafinil um which is a recognized adhd medication i was doing a tv show i got booked on a tv show that required a psychiatric examination and um during this psych assessment the practitioner said you know have you got adhd and i went i do but i got diagnosed when i was like 15 and they were like do you have any of the stuff and i was like no and they were like okay well we're gonna have to re-diagnose you and i'm like okay cool

and they're like you clearly do have adhd so i'm gonna diagnose you now and then we can put you on medication are you taking anything at the moment and i went yes i take modafinil um and he went great that's a recognized medication how much do you take i went two tablets a day sometimes like between one and two a day and he went okay how many milligrams are the tablets and i went 200 milligrams and he stopped and went okay we're gonna put you on this thing called concerto and uh we'll take it from there and i was like okay cool and he said make sure you read the instructions aren't sweet so i got took the concerto with 16 milligrams so i'm thinking 16 milligrams like that's okay and i opened a booklet and i was looking through what it said and then it described an overdose

what to what you would experience if you're overdosing on medication. And it described what I thought was the sign that the modafinil was kicking in. Was overdose? Yeah. Really? So I'd kind of been overdosing on this modafinil for like nearly like 18 months.

Oh my God, Jordan. What were that realizing? I was getting so much work done i was getting you were hyper focused i was high when i say but now in hindsight when i say hyper focus it was on a whole other level but surely other people around you must have been going mate yeah you know this isn't right uh i made incredibly impulsive decisions but some of them worked so it wasn't like we have to stop him. I was writing scripts, making beats. Like I was offering so many things that nobody's,

I wasn't being horrible to anyone. I was just like, oh, Jordan, do you wanna come to my birthday? No, I'd rather write this script. It was that vibe. So then I suppose the question is, why did you stop? If you're saying to me, this is amazing, I was so creative, I was really hyper-focused.

No, but I couldn't maintain any intimate relationships. Okay. And also, when I ran out of modafinil, that feeling was worse than when I ran out of Coke. Addiction. It was like I would scramble through bags and coats looking for a loose tablet that I'd missed. Yeah, so classic addiction.

It was like the feeling of not having modafinil was fucking panicky. But the new medication that was given to me which is obviously much more responsible i was able to just transition onto that without too much stress so um i might have got this wrong but i believe that you took your you're now completely clean of all meds is that right i know recently i like reintroduced a quite low dose because i've just been quite busy yeah um but what i've got a much healthier relationship with it and how did you feel being clean of all of all um recreational drugs and also pharmaceutical drugs i wrote the entire book with no medication which now i have that

as like quantitative proof in my own mind so even if i did fall into a cycle of you know a codependent cycle where my ego is trying to tell me that I needed something in order to write or be a person I know I have proof that obviously I don't that's why I might have formerly struggled with medication because I tell myself I need it in order to be a certain way and that's you know that's what that was my struggle with coke that's my struggle with smoking cigarettes you know I my mind paints a picture that i'm trying to live through you know oh if i smoke this i'll feel like this if i take this i'll feel like this i can't do

this without this these are the there's a lies my mind tells me let's move on to heartbreak yeah because you alluded to it right at the very beginning yeah talk to me about heartbreak uh heartbreak essential to anybody who wants to grow up. What was your heartbreak? The book is centered around a heartbreak, which was a very nuanced and complex experience because it was self, it was instigated by my own wrongdoing

in a reasonably short relationship, but one that would seem to be pretty intense what's complex about it is in society in our current society there's a big taboo around fidelity and um the morality around it what so what do you mean so betrayal cheating on someone yeah um i from my understanding is oh actually no from my experience of having been the the cheat i've experienced both sides but this was me i i had been disloyal and told the truth i was honest about it i mean arguably a little later than i should have been but I was honest about it and I was left and

you know in in attempting to cope with the guilt and shame I felt I realized that in my it's my belief that the conversation is pretty binary in current society about like what that means if you're a good person there's one term to to encapsulate like all forms of cheating which I think is kind of wild you know some person might have a one singular night one person might conspire to hook up with their ex partner like there's but there seemed to be no real differentiation it was like you know get things like once a cheat always a cheat you have these so there's the moral judgment that that if you have cheated on your partner therefore you are morally bankrupt and

you're a bad person and you deserve but i want to but yeah right but the clarity can i say that one of the the moments of clarity i had in this whole process of develop of heartbreak was that i'm not a good person i don't think i'm a good person i don't no no because i really don't agree with with our concepts about what is good and bad like i think i'm a human being who's capable of making good choices and bad choices and and i do my best every day i make choices i make the choice i try to be kind and and move with with grace but that i find that really interesting that that you say no i don't agree with the idea that you're a good person or a bad person i don't think i'm a good person no really well no because i i just i mean people can think

that if they want but like i don't i'm not aspiring to be a good person i'm just aspiring to i'm aspiring to not be a prick you know which which i'm surely that is surely that's i'm a good person i just yeah sure i mean i'm really interested i'm really interested i have a shot look i i have my my thing is that i have a shadow side to myself every every person has a shadow yin and yang and my problem was that i hadn't integrated my shadow i hadn't accepted that part of myself and so it was coming out in mutated ways and it was damaging my life and other people's lives um what happened in this scenario was damaging my life and other people's lives. What happened in this scenario was,

and the reason why I say it's nuanced is because there's so many things at play. I told the truth about doing something bad, right? I was abandoned, which was fair. But for me specifically, abandonment appeared to be a massive fucking wound. So I was in this position where I felt hard done by, in spite of creating the situation myself, and was dealing with the repercussions of that.

And so I was dealing with an abandonment wound that opened up other griefs and heartbreaks I'd run away from. Okay. Let's talk about dogs. Please. It's the final the final word in your title dogs yeah i love a dog tell me about dogs uh i just like love dogs so much i think they're you know i just always watch these videos on tiktok of just explaining you

know they did like ironically it's called a cat scan isn't it but you know they did like a they scanned the dog dog's brains and and identified the reality that if they smell their owner or they know whether they just it just emits this pure form of like love-based dopamine like when they look at you they just are in love with you and and you know you treat a dog with respect and you've got a living, breathing thing that will just, every day, it's just buzzing. Buzzing to walk, buzzing to eat, buzzing to see you. But for me, the reason why I include dogs in the title and in the book is because when I rescued my first dog, Spike,

it was really a big shift again in me in terms of understanding love because it's a really it's it pulls love back to its most simple little transactional space yeah like you know you feed me and don't you know treat me like shit and get joy together, we get love with each other. And that's my responsibility is to love another thing outside of myself, and they need me. And so I wanted to literally start from scratch and rebuild my understanding of love initially through a dog.

There is something extraordinary, isn't there, about animals, and in particular dogs. I've always had rescue animals. Oh, cool. Always. Yeah, Spike is also a bizarre dog. isn't there about um animals and in particular dogs i've always had rescue animals oh cool always yeah spike is is also a bizarre dog very doesn't he doesn't require much attention my second rescue mimi is the complete opposite she's mimi by name and nature like mimi living out the attachment theory both of them yeah yeah the opposing side so spike is he's his own dog he chills he loves running he loves other dogs

but then every now and again when you're just sat there he'll just come over slowly and just sit by your feet and it almost means more because you know or like when i'm away he only gets on the bed with my girlfriend when i'm away i know he never gets on the bed he never gets on the bed when it's just me he never gets on the bed where it's when it's us but but now when I'm away he's on the bed and he's like guarding is that's it it's a transcendent thing it's a transcendent so basically dogs they're just like you know it's it's it it's I think it's important for anybody to be around nature to understand that we are we play a part and are connected to the world around us and and you know they pick up on energy and and yeah okay let's take a quick break here but

when we come back i'm gonna ask you to pick a question jordan from um a little box that's just down here uh it's a box of questions all right right? Just personal questions. The only rule there is, is that you must answer and it must be honest. I promise you're getting an honesty whether or not it will benefit me in the long run, I don't know. Welcome back to It Can't Just Be me and i'm here with the extraordinary and the extraordinary honest which i appreciate jordan stevens um we've already spoken in depth about your upcoming book avoidance drugs heartbreak and dogs yeah amazing title uh but now there's a slight change of

direction because my forever it can't just be me sort of bugbear, is I think that we are losing the art of connection and also conversation. 100%. Totally. And so to try and sort of combat that, I've got a pack of cards here, which have got some conversation starters on. Great. starters on great um all you need to do is just okay take that just random pick a card read it out what's it say oh my god what aspects of yourself do you worry might put off a prospective partner i'm i'm really good at arguing so you know like because i'm like quite good with mental jousting, I'm able to retain like, like the memory of previous moments and I can use them like that in a back and forth. And sometimes it can overwhelm the person I'm with

and then they can just feel as though they've lost the discussion regardless whether or not they're right. Which, by the way, I've been told this. I'm not trying to do it. I love like, take me down. Do you know what I mean? Take me down.

Like I'm down for that. That is really interesting. Well, like me and my mum and my dad, like we engaged in mental warfare, like quite often in my teens, you know, just like who can rinse who, who can da da da da. Still? My dad, a hundred percent.

Oh my God. That's quite interesting as a family dynamic, isn't it? It's kind of like, come on then. That's all he wants. Yeah, it's just intellectual warfare. Wow. and isn't it interesting that that's all you want it's like i'm up for it well this okay here's the other thing that that i that one of my parents does which i can feel myself doing which i really hate that i've picked up on it is that is being like critical i hate that sometimes i impulsively am quite critical

about things that don't concern me you know so judgmental judgmental i've been told i'm judgmental yeah which i hate because because i don't experience it as judgment myself because i'm used to it yeah i'm used to being criticized yeah yeah yeah that it spins me when somebody says because in my mind i'm trying to help somebody you know like i'm trying i'm like why are you doing that but they think like why are you judging me when i'm like i'm not judging you i'm asking a question because i'm helping you well judging i'm actually helping you because because sometimes like i don't realize i'm doing something so somebody came along and was like jordan why are you eating that or why are you doing that i'll be like well actually i'd

fucking hate that i really have got better at least you're aware of it and you're and you're self-editing going maybe i shouldn't it's non-verbal shit man like you know i mean like back in the day i think you know if my mom for example wouldn't like something i was doing if she didn't say explicitly she would make it known and i think that has had an effect on me and unfortunately sometimes i mimic it which i don't like and i haven't got my mom about it now if she does it there's boundaries there now also my mom that would definitely almost certainly be a result of her own childhood we're all a product literally just cycles absolutely and we cycle it you are so right um Jordan, thank you for joining us today. It's been an absolute pleasure. It's been such an insight for me and just fascinating to hear you talk honestly about stuff. So I really do appreciate that. Before you go, what is the one piece of advice or wisdom that you would like to share with the audience? that you would like to share with the audience?

The piece of advice that really shifted me was a friend just saying that no one's going to save you. It's like hurt at the time, but boosted me. It was like I felt like, yeah, you're right. You know, this is, I have to get myself out of this. Also, the other one is do it for the feeling after that's another good one so that I think that always applies to many of the healthy habits that we struggle with because obviously as a society we have unhealthy shit forced into our minds and souls constantly but if you think about food um exercise sleep all of these things we struggle with because we can't contemplate the

concept of a delayed gratification yeah you know if i go to sleep early and i don't watch this tv show yeah you're gonna feel better tomorrow not now that's it for today but i'll be back next week with a brand new episode of it can't Just Be Me but in the meantime I also want to hear from you so please if there's something you want to talk about whether it's big or small funny or serious get in touch with us you can email or send us a voice note to hello at itcan'tjustbeme.co.uk and if you want to see more of the show remember you can find us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook just search for it can't just be me because whatever you're dealing with it really really isn't just you