It Can't Just Be Me - The Road to Recovery with John Robins

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

In this episode of It Can’t Just Be Me, Anna Richardson sits down with award-winning comedian and broadcaster John Robins. They delve into John's journey of recovery from alcohol addiction, highlighting his experiences with alcohol abuse, gambling addictions and relationship challenges. John opens up on the valuable lessons he has learned, his coping strategies and how both comedy and therapy are playing crucial roles in helping him reclaim his physical and mental health.If you or someone you know is struggling with any of the topics discussed in this episode, you can find useful resources and support here: https://audioalways.lnk.to/ItcantjustbemeIG.In the upcoming weeks, Anna, alongside a panel of experts, will be addressing YOUR dilemmas! If you have an “It Can't Just Be Me” situation you'd like discussed, reach out to Anna by emailing [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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you can find some useful links in our show notes. Hello, I'm Anna Richardson and welcome to It Can't Just Be Me. 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. 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. Now today's guest is a man of many talents, stand-up comedian,

radio presenter and in his own words, a vibe magnet. There is so much to say about that, John, I have to say. He won the TV show Taskmaster earlier this year. He hosts a golfing podcast and has a golf YouTube channel. He also hosts the fantastic podcast Ellis & John with best mate and fellow comedian Ellis James. The show was launched back in

2014 on XFM before switching to BBC Radio 5 Live where it's since grown a huge audience. An audience that's fallen in love with the boy's ability to cover the rollercoaster of real life in an honest way. It also happens to be multi-award winning

having won a British Podcast Award and the Radio Times Moment of the Year Award at the Arias, which is basically the Radio Oscars. And as if that wasn't enough, he's also a huge Queen fan. Welcome to the show, John Robbins. That's the lot. That's the whole CV. That's your whole life. Now, you're in very familiar surroundings here.

This is effectively the Mecca, the Nazareth, really, of your podcast. Yeah, it's like sort of recording something in the living room next to my bedroom because I can see all of our stuff in the Ellis and John studio. And yet not in there. And the lights are off and the dust is gathering. How does it feel to have an interloper so close to your glory? Oh, no, it's great. I just have to make sure I don't get distracted

by pictures of Frank Zappa and... And Freddie Mercury and wanting to run over there and just sort of get the lights on and start recording. Before we chat any further, can you tell me what your it-can't-just-be-me dilemma is, please? It can't just be me. Is that it it can't just be me that finds the boy the fox the horse and the mole somewhat problematic why um i i don't know how deep i want to drill down into it

i had a i had a bit of stand-up i did about two years ago, which didn't make it into my show, about the boy, the fox, the horse and them all, which was pretty full-on, a little bit mean. I want to go meta. I'm happy to do this. And I have softened my approach. Are you familiar with the sort of the Bible of wellness, the boy, the fox, the horse and them all? No. Ah.

And so therefore, enlighten me it's sort of a uh i've definitely heard yeah you'll have seen it in a in a sort of gift shop window yeah it's um a picture book about a boy a fox a horse and a mole and they sort of learn life lessons together and they're sort of individual little pages with various sort of words of wisdom and sort of aphorisms so it's sort of like the hungry caterpillar but with meaning yes um and i a lot of what it says is very uh very true there's a line in there, the bravest thing I ever said was help. That's quite good, I like that. But I just, I think I'm slightly uncomfortable with it as an industry.

Do you know what I mean? Because the boy, the fox, the horse and the mole came out. Then there was the little dragon and the baby panda from a different author. And it's sort of- Are you only reading children's well this is the thing it's not it's it's sort of marketed to adults it's sort of comforting wellness literature okay which is sort of reassuring and um i don't want to but why is it problematic though i mean i

i suspect it isn't just you that feels this way I feel it felt like it was just me when a guy walked out of my work in progress show when I started slagging off the boy, the fox, the horse and the mole. Because it means a lot to people. Let's drill down to what is problematic about it. What's problematic about it is that life is hard. You know, life can be grisly. Life can be uncomfortable. Problems that people have can be really gross,

can be dirty, sort of mud under your fingernails of life. And I think you need to at some point engage with that acknowledge that that it can't just be glossed over yeah um that said if it's what gets you through brilliant but i think it sometimes can feel a bit like there's a phrase spiritual bypassing yeah if you've heard that. Yeah, absolutely. I only learned that recently.

And I think it's sort of adjacent to that. Yeah. You know, if I've got the little, the little story about the animals and whatever it is, then maybe I can, I'll have that instead of sort of looking into the abyss. Okay. Well, do you know what? I feel as though I was going to start at the very beginning of of your career actually sort of I wanted to talk to you about how you got onto the comedy

circuit where it all began but clearly having seen a lot of what you do you like to really go there with your feelings you like to go there with addiction you've talked about that so let's let's start there with because this is very much a focus for you and your recent podcast with ellis was about the silent retreat that you went on why i'm going to come to what's happened with addiction why and all of the work that you've done but are you a spiritual guy increasingly so i'm trying to sort of, I would guess the phrase is grow along spiritual lines. I'm trying to sort of nurture that part of me. Why do you want to nurture that part of you?

Because it's testing your brain and finding out what you feel about things and what you think about things, how you engage with your own thoughts and how you cope with your own feelings so the silent retreat which the first one i've been on was really useful because it put my brain and my emotions in an environment i can't replicate in my daily life and you know there's a an awful lot of them in it about you know phones social media kids having access to it you know the fact that we're sort of on 24 hours a day I could attempt to do that in my house by turning my phone off and maybe turning the internet off but someone might knock at the door whatever I'm to turn that phone on eventually because I've got work to do. So I was able to go to a place where the goal is to allow you the space

to observe how your brain works and how your feelings work and what you do when difficult thoughts or feelings come up. Because really what I realised is so much of what has got me into trouble over in the sort of past 30 odd years is trying to avoid difficult feelings and difficult thoughts and what I like about some elements of spirituality is almost too broad a phrase I guess it's closer

to Buddhism is it's so practical so what were you learning to do on the silent retreat was it based on buddhist practice yeah it was i think it i think it's vipassana but i tend not to get too down into all of the sort of various of what type of yeah because it's too confusing yeah no i i don't get it it's sort of adjacent to some therapy i've been doing. And the first thing is like noticing thoughts. So I'm someone who does a lot of, I live in my head a lot, do a lot of rehearsing, a lot of hypervigilant sort of thinking, a lot of worry and catastrophizing. So the first bit they're trying to teach you is to notice those things. So to notice it, acknowledge it, don't try and stop it yeah you just notice it yeah what the biggest thing i learned i guess is that everything passes

and it's quite amazing isn't it when you when you so i've suffered with anxiety and depression at various points throughout my life so i've done a lot of um therapy i've done a lot of mindfulness meditation so i'm very familiar with what you're talking about. And I also went on a silent retreat for 24 hours. But I'm really interested because a lot of the work that I've seen of yours and listened to, I never hear what it is that the root cause is of your unhappiness. And you talk about it so brilliantly and so openly but i want to know what is it you must know what it is that's caused your addictions your unhappiness your pursuit of wellness the anxiety that's in you and i so understand it john and i'm i'm interested in

you know what it is do you talk about it only in a very very safe environment with a professional yeah yeah people say to me like oh my god you talk about all this stuff you're so open and i'm like well yes and no you know i tell you what i want to tell you and it's same with stand-up you know people might come away from my show thinking christ that was a bit raw and they're like well it's not for me because i spent a year writing that i've been deciding what to say what to show and what not to show yeah that stand-up is safe space because they're prepared now this conversation is slightly less space because i'm sort of thinking on my feet i've not got a script here i've not prepared for what we're going to talk about you haven't told me what we're going to talk about which is why when i talk about when i mentioned the fox the horse whatever it is i'm a

bit uncomfortable because i don't piss anyone off who really likes that book or you know i don't quite know what my thinking is on that but you sort of have to you have to just risk that you'll you'll get your meaning across even when your your brain is a bit confused about things just listening to you talk part of your irritation with the boy the fox the horse blah blah i can't even get the title part of your irritation part of your analysis about it is you know it sort of skims across mental health issues and it's all just a bit too surface for me because clearly it's not really doing the work. And yet what's interesting is that you won't really reveal in your work,

do you know what I mean? You won't actually say, this is what's happened, this is why I'm doing this. So I wonder whether it's an irritation with yourself. No, because it's... What has happened to anyone I don't think is as impactful as what it causes. So for me, it caused a gambling problem. It caused alcoholism.

It's caused problems in relationships, problems with social confidence, self-criticism, self-harm. So those bits, what you do is you often, it's the cause that leads you back to the problem. And you can do all that sort of unpicking. But it doesn't really matter what... It doesn't matter what's happened. ...essentially, because I'm trying to get away from the idea

that somehow I am a problem to be solved. And I think the mindset I went into therapy, and I have done many times when it's not been successful, and what I'm changing this time, is not thinking, if I I just say the right stuff does my therapist then go into a room and bring out some potion and go right you've passed the test it's ready for you to be better and it's not the case it's like I just have to experience the reality of me I have to find ways of dealing with uncomfortable emotions and thoughts when they come can i build up a toolkit around me to dip into as i go through life can i live in a present

in the present and not go back into the past and think was it my you know dad leaving was it my stepdad was it this you know humiliation was it that rejection? Because it's all of those things. And I know people who've had very specific, you know, events, specific traumas. And there's no like hierarchy of, you know, who's more fucked up than anyone else. It's just, you know, I have to deal with what I've got at the minute.

just yeah you know i have to deal with what i wear with what i've got at the minute and um so i'm doing a lot of stuff with with breath you know soothing breath tell me about your toolkit because i use that phrase quite a lot again i've written about mental health i'm a qualified hypnotherapist i've you know done a lot around this space i'm very interested in it and i've done lots of interviews around my toolkit of what's helped me so i'm very interested in it and i've done lots of interviews around my toolkit of what's helped me so i'm really interested to hear your toolkit of what's helping you be you well a recent one is after the silent retreat is my phone's off until 8 a.m so it's physically switched off before i go to bed and that just gives me if i wake up i usually wake up at half six or seven and that just gives me an hour now I don't necessarily have to spend that hour being

super meditative and spiritual which just gives me an hour an hour and a half where I've got like a little bit of peace I can sort of center myself I some I do like today I meditated for 10 minutes in that time had a cup cup of tea, did a crossword. Then my phone goes on and all the stuff pings in and fine. I'm sort of ready to go for the working day. So just that separation. So it's turning the phone off. Yeah.

It's doing the meditation in the morning. So I did an online 12-step meeting, which I do most days. Great. I exercised today. I went to the gym I did some I'm doing this sort of online course in a type of meditation called uh iRest oh that sounds interesting used in used a lot in prisons and with veterans it It's sort of around PTSD and stuff, but that's around breath and welcoming in uncomfortable feelings, what we were talking about.

So there's that. I probably vaped a thousand times. That's part of my toolkit. Like I'm constantly being topped up with nicotine, which is not ideal. And recognising certain behaviours behaviors i have so i've got to have a conversation with someone soon this is just an example that's um that might be slightly intense or might be i my one of the things i do is i rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse

and rehearse now in the past that's almost i've felt i was going mad i've thought i was losing my mind because i couldn't stop rehearsing stuff i was going to say play out scenarios so but now i'm able to sort of in the shower this morning go all right johnny boy we're we're rehearsing quite a bit the minute and it's only quarter to eight and i can smile at it and i think oh right okay so that's where my brain is today but also recognizing that it comes from a good place I'm trying to it's an alarm bell sounding which is preparing me for something that could be that I want to get my words right and uh you know I don't want to cause someone else harm so it's perfectly normal to sort of

prepare for that it's interesting it sounds as It sounds as though you've got your life raft around you. You've got your toolkit of things that sound like they're really helping you be you. But even now I can tell I'm uncomfortable because I'm touching myself. I'm holding myself. Can you see? I just noticed that. I've got my legs crossed. I've got my arms wrapped around me.

In my head I'm going, can I talk about this? Is this too much? Am I sharing too much? No, no it's fine you can say that um so i'm self-soothing which apparently i do in my sleep as well as i stroke my arms in my sleep um but i'm also enormously mindful that i have a lot of time to do all this stuff most people with jobs and kids i don't have kids i do have a job of sorts but it's very flexible hours so i can fit stuff in um and i got the money to pay for it yeah which is a huge luxury which is a privilege isn't it absolutely when we look at the mental health services in the uk yeah yeah i can't sit here and go this is what you need to do you need to do therapy twice a week you need to go to the gym three times because it costs hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

That said, the most impactful thing I've ever done is 12 step stuff. It's free, free to everyone. Can I talk about that then? Because clearly you have been really open about your addictions and in particular drinking and in particular getting sober, which is fantastic. and in particular getting sober which is fantastic so when did you start drinking why or was it just that thing that we all do as teenagers that you start going to the pub with your mates and it's fun and then it starts to get out of control potentially I think I first tasted alcohol when I was about six wow really yeah how where were you uh i was a friend of my mum's house and i think i'd badgered them to give me a sip of wine or champagne or i don't know why they were drinking but

very sort of innocuous like i mean i've seen friends of mine with kids going where you can try a little bit of daddy's beer or whatever and they oh but looking back now I can sort of I sort of see it through a slightly different lens and I remember I mean it was literally probably two milliliters and I remember thinking what am I gonna see what's gonna happen will I get drunk oh my god so even then it sort of held quite a big space in my peripheral vision, this thing. And then when I was about seven or eight, again, someone was having some wine and I snuck off into the kitchen and poured myself some, drank it, then poured myself some more and poured some orange juice in to hide it

and got found out and my mum was really worried and made me drink all this water and stuff. Oh, well, that's interesting, I think. Well, that incident there is quite alcoholic, really, because I lied. I said I was going to the toilet and I didn't. OK. I concealed the drink. Yeah.

And I drank on my own. So those three things are quite sort of alcoholic traits. Yes, but are they? They're also quite just childish and childlike, because I used to drink my dad's communion wine when I was a kid with my brothers. So I can see that I think it's natural, it's normal for kids to want to sort of try, you know, what the adult's trying. so so you started that you you remember that that's clearly a really significant memory for you but if i mean it is child like a childish behavior but it's it's the reason i say it's alcoholic is because you know i

probably did the same with cakes and i probably did the same with maybe a pound coin or whatever so i didn't become addicted to those things. Yes. So then there's a secretive behavior as a child. But then for you, the trigger, the key was the alcohol. So when did you realize that it was starting to become a problem? I mean, that's such a difficult question. I know it is because it creeps up but well you're sort of looking at it retrospectively i mean when i was 14 the first time i ever had access to alcohol

without grown-ups around i gave myself alcohol poisoning so i can now go you alarm bells from the start yeah and what's nuts is kind of in the uk especially but the attitude we have towards alcohol is at the time that was very much oh yes what kids do is what you know i'm poisoning myself with a psychoactive drug that's is no one concerned you know because there were grown-ups around but it's just so much part of our culture and this was at the height of like um underage drinking, sort of core celebrity teenage pregnancy stuff. But no one's doing anything, still selling light hoochings.

But I'm not blaming anyone else. I'm just saying it's interesting that that kind of, that would be a red flag if it was heroin. You know, enormous red flag. But, you know, it's alcohol, whatever. And then the next few occasions when I had access to alcohol, it was, you know, drinking till I I was sick drinking till I got alcohol poisoning then then the gambling interrupted it so my relationship with it in my sort of 17 18 was perhaps a bit more sort of normal for want of

a better word and then when I went to university it sort of blew up and I stopped when I was 22 uh for about a year and a half just I remember walking into a um a private party at a bar where I'd made friends with the landlord and um I noticed it was just before midnight and it was lent and I thought what are you going to give up for lent and I thought I probably should give up drinking so I necked a pint of Guinness and a shot of whiskey and then I threw up into my mouth in what turned out to be someone's wedding reception and I didn't drink for about a year and a half. And then it sort of snuck back in because the disease didn't have its claws in me by then. So I was able to just stop.

And that's when I started doing comedy. But then it crept back up over the years. At what point was it at its worst? The final year was pretty bleak. In the sort of six years before that final year, I tried to sort of moderate and control the amount. And I thought that had worked for a time because I was drinking less and less.

But I was obsessing about it more and more. And then the relationship I was in broke down I think partly as a result of my not so much my drinking but as my behaviour to be more specific about that I don't mean like getting pissed and smashing things up and being violent or aggressive I mean just sort of being withdrawn

being quite focused on alcohol probably I mean, just sort of being withdrawn, being quite focused on alcohol. Probably being quite inflexible. I think alcoholics, one thing that is quite a common trait, they tend to be quite inflexible because they're so focused on getting to booze. Well, that's addiction, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that relationship broke down and then I just started and then it all sort of went out the window

and I was just drinking every day and... So there would have been a moment where you went, enough. Yeah, that was the last night I drank. The last night that you drank. I was like, I can't do this anymore. So what did you do afterwards? How did you get yourself sober?

I listened to a podcast about sobriety. I just typed into iTunes sobriety and listened to the first thing that came up and heard two people talking. A completely new world to me. I'd been very scornful of the idea of not drinking in the past and um they just sounded so calm and so kind and i thought oh this is the this is the place i need to be so i went to went to a 12-step meeting the next day and haven't had a drink since I think it's remarkable really when I

it's fantastic but that's the thing it works you know it's not me that's done that it's not through some enormous um effort of willpower or sort of courage or strength it if anything it's um it does take courage yeah change the thing i keep coming back to in my head is donkeys years ago when i was gambling i went to try and get i thought counseling would solve it so uh found this therapist and he said um he said really john i've seen hundreds of people over the years and they're all saying exactly the same thing they're all saying I will do anything to feel better just don't ask me to change and I think really that gets to the root of where a lot of people find themselves it's like this is unbearable but I ain't gonna do a thing to change it because it's hard and it's scary yeah and um the idea of

not drinking forever is still too terrifying for me but the idea of not drinking forever is still too terrifying for me. But the idea of not drinking today is doable. I can think that now. I still have to map it out sometimes. I think, right, I'm going to get the train home after this at four. I'm going to be walking past a few pubs before I get home. I'll deal with that because I've dealt with it lots of times. I'm probably going to eat a bit earlier than some people because it just helps interrupt those so

that sort of empty stomach 5 p.m feeling and then I might call a friend might go to a meeting might do a bit of writing then I'm going to go get in bed quite early because I don't associate being in bed with drinking this is automatic now I don't even consciously think of it but these are little tiny little tricks um but that's that's why when you walk into one of these meetings no one says right do you agree not to ever drink again because that would be inside go fuck no are you mad but what they say is hey come back tomorrow see how you get on tonight come back tomorrow yeah keep going keep going keep going how old are you 42 because i now look around my friendship circle and i certainly did actually when i was in my very early 40s as well like you and i could go addict addict addict so do you look

around you and can you see people around you that are still in denial and there's problematic behavior around it? Yeah, instantly almost. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that at our age that we use various things as a crutch, be it drinking, gambling, shopping addiction, sex addiction, drugs, whatever it happens to be. You know, when I grew up, there was no internet,

no social media, no on-demand channels. It was just magazines, newspapers, games, books, and four channels. And a wired phone. And a wired phone. And we'd gone from that to a supercomputer in your pocket.

I mean, I don't have to go over this because everyone knows but we sort of go oh yeah yeah but you know what wish i was on my phone a bit less it's fucking mad right and it if if i can't deal with it how you know imagine a 13 year old yeah which is nuts Yeah. But you sound like sort of such a dinosaur but I... Does it worry you John? Because it is too much. Yeah. I mean it really concerns me.

I mean if I was speaking candidly I'd say we were all fucked. Well I mean I kind of... We're fucked. That's me on my bad day. On my good day I think do you know what John

you've just got to get through today. Don't worry about yesterday. Don't worry about tomorrow. You've just got to process today. And then a voice goes in yeah i think we might all be completely screwed um and also we're constantly being told we're stressed we're constantly being stressed out by like social media we've been told that's bad for us we're told that the food we eat is bad you know if you listen to the huberman podcast for more than a minute it's like everything you're doing is inefficient and you should be having caffeine 90 minutes after you get up to maximize the caffeine efficiency and you shouldn't be having this at this time

of day and you should be sleeping this amount of hours and you think gee and i like that podcast by the way i think it's brilliant but i also like the phrase optimization fatigue which is this idea that there's just so many perfect ways to do stuff so many studies that have said well if you need to eat this sort of thing but don't have that and at the near the link crikey moses how can i just be me so even the stuff that's meant to make us better is stressful of course um so why wouldn't you get hammered? Like I still ask myself that, why wouldn't you? It's easier. I mean, maybe this is an inappropriate question

to ask an addict, but do you find ways of getting hammered? Have you found other substances that give you that hit that you want instead of alcohol? No, and I'd be, I remember a friend brought a type of it's like a synthetic alcohol to a party i think it's the one david nutt the professor of a great deal of respect for he's got this i don't know what it i can't get my head around it but he said you want to

try some and i was like oh no he says it's not alcoholic and i was like maybe i should and then i just in my head i was like i just have the whole bottle and i know it's like okay so that's the it's not the substance it's the need to consume and you wouldn't okay that's really interesting that's really interesting to me it's not what it is it's that i need to have it all yeah yeah i think the reason alcohol is so tricky is because it's doing lots of different things at the same time it can switch off emotions it can heighten emotions it can feel like a form of self-harm it can feel like a celebration a punishment it can feel like a fuck you it It can feel like, you know, making you part of less than, more than. It's just so, it's like the magic bullet for every possible emotion situation. It certainly was for me.

So when you remove it, you're left with all the reasons you drank. And that took a long time to get my head around because I stopped drinking. I thought, why are you feeling so awful all the time? Why are you crying in the car? Why are you shouting at yourself in your head? And it's like it took a while for people to explain to me that alcohol is not the problem. Yeah. You are.

The alcohol is the solution. It's not that you are. You know that. No, but the alcohol, I was using alcohol to fix me, right? Yeah. So take alcohol away. What I'm left with is all the stuff I was trying to fix. Now what I'm coming to understand now is I don't need fixing.

I just need to have tools. Just to move on a little bit, just to just to move on a little bit because your very successful stand-up show last year how um you were incredibly personal in that as well and i'm just interested to know how exhausting that must be for a performer and a writer i'm thinking again of Hannah Gadsby's Nanette thinking of um uh Baby Reindeer for example how why do you want to be so open and how exhausting is it as a performer to do that um to speak to the why is I like the challenge of making it funny it's so gratifying to be able to say something so dark and to know a cast-eyeing guarantee that in 10 seconds they are going to be pissing themselves to be able to to do that kind of it's almost like a boxing combination. To know that every time I make an audience think, Jesus Christ, is he all right?

Suddenly they're laughing. I love that. That's the best bit of my job. And I live for that. Why? I guess because it took a long time to learn how to do it. And it's hard. And it's nice to do stuff that's hard really well.

Absolutely. And I think all people have that, whether you play the guitar or you watch athletes do stuff. You think, how the hell did he hit that ball or whatever. Yeah, so I can see that you've got the skill, totally that you've got the skill. And mastering that is exciting. But then if you look at the why, once've you've got your skill why is it that I want to reveal my pain but I know that I can get a laugh out of this as well ultimately what's that about is that about approval is it about I know they're going to love me is it what is that is it that I can control this audience that I can get them to to to find humor in my pain I think it's probably about I want to do

something that has a bit of meaning you know I want to to talk about what interests me and what I think is important I'm in a sort of flow state when I'm on stage that I don't have off stage so I am not thinking when I go on stage and I'm in that moment I'm just John has is absent and he is absent because he is at his most present and it gives me what people say meditation gives them and alcohol for 20 years gave me what a sort of a bottled version of meditation. So it got me in my body, got me aware of my sensations. It quieted down my thoughts. It did all the things that people say spirituality or religion or meditation or yoga or whatever it is does.

And it did it in a cheap and tasty and convenient way but it had consequences that meditation doesn't have it has negative health effects negative mental health effects and all that sort of stuff so i guess to answer to your question have you found other substances or things that replaced alcohol stand-up has always been there but i i understand i can absolutely understand that uh when you're saying there's an alignment with meditation that when you go into that flow state that fantastic subconscious state of i'm just absolutely present and i'm doing this really well and it's giving me meaning and i'm enjoying this is pleasure so for you there's there's a pure pleasure with meaning that's that's interesting but like the most i've managed to do that through meditating i'm not kidding it's like five or six seconds in a in a 45 minute and it you

know comes and goes you might get another chunk um whereas you know some of my shows are an hour and a half. I could drink for five or six hours. So I'm a process in that sense. And I'm trying. Okay, let's take a quick break here. But thank you for being so open, John. I mean, I find this utterly fascinating. So I'm very grateful to you for being so... I find it terrifying. I will panic about everything I've said for the rest of the day.

And then I will email and ask to hear an edit of it before it goes out. And then I'll listen to it and think it's fine and then forget about it. So it's good to know that you're a bit of a panicker because I'm just a bit worried that this next bit might make you panic even more because I'm going to ask you to pick a question from my little box of truth which I can see your eyes darting down to it already the only rule is that you must answer honestly and I know that you will but in that promise you you I know that you will you won't be able to help yourself okay I can't but I can't promise to abide by that rule well in that case

there'll be disciplinary action required. We get it. Life gets busy. Luckily, with Peloton Tread, you can still get the challenging workouts you crave. Only have 10 minutes? Take a quick Peloton workout. Want to go all out? Chase down your goals with 20 to 45-minute tread workouts. No matter your goals or time, Peloton has everything you need to become everything you want. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit onepeloton.ca.

From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim

from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What comes to mind when you hear the word gratitude? Maybe it's a daily practice, or maybe it feels hard to be grateful right now. Don't forget to give yourself some thanks by investing in your well-being.

BetterHelp is the largest online therapy provider in the world, connecting you to qualified professionals via phone, video, or message chat. Let the gratitude flow. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.com. I'm sweating about the next bit. You've asked questions other people don't ask. Well, I mean, that's my downfall and my greatest strength at the same time. I hope people listening are aware that I'm just reacting in the best way I can. But I sort of find it easier to write the answers to your questions, but that would make for a very bad podcast.

Yeah, just silently writing with a sort of angry scowl. Yeah, just the sound of a sort of scratching pen. A furious pen. Well, it is time for one of my favourite bits of the show. It's the It Can't Just Be Me box of truth. Now, we've touched on this in the first part of the podcast, but I really worry that we are losing the art of authentic conversation. And we know this. We know this from art of authentic conversation. And we know this.

We know this from all of our screen obsession and the fact that kids are now terrified to pick up the phone to anybody or actually go and speak to a stranger. So my little box of truth there, you've got random cards with personal questions on. All you need to do is pick one at will, let us know what it is,

and answer. Okay, do that know what it is, and answer. Okay, do that now? Absolutely, yes, please. I'm just going to go for the one at the front. Really? Yeah. I mean, okay, I'm surprised by that. What does it say?

The card says, what have you argued about most in relationships well i'll preface by saying probably and i don't say this as a as a boast or a good thing i have had very very few arguments in relationships maybe none and that's why they failed well that's that's i'm sure it's symptomatic i'm very suspicious of anybody that says to me i don't argue in relationships because learning how to disagree and i'm not saying i know that i don't do it very well but learning how to disagree and work it out between you is really important in a healthy relationship yeah and expressing yourself if you're pissed off you've got to say you're pissed off but i have disagreed and we have dealt with it and i have been able to express that i was pissed off but that has never become an argument never

become an argument it only becomes an argument if when you express your feelings i see that as a judgment on me so then i fight back you see that as a judgment on you and we start playing this sort of ridiculous territory yeah i don't do the dance i just listen to what someone's saying and witness it and then either apologize for my part in it or try to ask subsidiary questions to gain more understanding and then reach some kind of compromise well that sounds like you're then the perfect partner ah this is a trap a lot of people fall into with me because i i'm a i i'm a conscious listener but i guess i've learned that you telling me how you feel about something or even how you feel about me it's not necessarily an attack on me it's you it's you it's you saying

how you feel so if i can so if somebody says to you if i was saying i'm really fucked off with you john because you yeah fucking hell again didn't feed the cat when i asked you to and it really upsets me it makes me really angry i mean that's quite trivial obviously what if it was that I was saying I'm really really upset because your mum said this to me and I'm so done with it what would you would just say I'm hearing you acknowledge it yeah and then you would just close the conversation off no no and the community i've had people in in you know in a discussion and it's really useful to learn say no i'm not finished yet i haven't because you're sometimes a flaw i have is i'll try and i'll chuck a solution i'm so i mean we should do this you should do that that's not necessarily always helpful

because somebody just wants to be heard yeah yeah yeah and they might be like no you haven't listened to what I'm saying you haven't finished listening so you go okay I apologize I'm sorry for that and you know in that example I might agree with them I might say yeah do you know what you're right um let's see if there's any is there anything i can do to support you better or would it help you sound perfect i'm not i'm far far from it do you express your anger with the other person hmm there we might be in less successful territory i have done um but done. But what my therapist says is use the clarity of the anger, not the tone.

I think that's such a good piece of advice. Anger is not something to be avoided at all costs, which I have done ever since I was a kid. Anger can tell you what you feel about something. It can tell you what you value in yourself, where your boundaries are if you're able to separate the the truth it's giving you from the sort of the red mist then it's really useful so i can say hey that um you know that conversation we had earlier um that thing you said i really felt you shut me down then and i just felt i wasn't heard

and i felt you were a bit flippant with something that's quite important to me that's a really useful way of expressing something without going you always do this to me are you said this and getting into that nonsense but in that moment it's very difficult isn't it to bypass that emotion in the moment of when you're like you never fucking listen to me you've done this again it's hard to bring that heat down in the moment because you're hijacked by your emotion well i but i try to avoid getting the heat in the first place if you're able to listen to someone but i'm talking about i'm talking about your anger and you know what i think i've cracked you this is it i've cracked you I now know what you're all about what am I all about I've got it I've got the whole

John Robbins thing there's a rage that you cannot speak and you're unable to do it within your relationships and that's why you go over and over and over is that what the point of this podcast is no not at all it's meant to be entertaining but actually this has been an amazing

really interesting session for me um but yeah thank you thank you for being what is that where it ends it doesn't have to telling me what my problem is and then i go home no not at all but i i love to be able to actually have an interesting conversation with somebody and hear what they're all about and what's going on and you've done that beautifully and i really thank you for it because very few people are prepared to say this is what i struggle with and you know and to be so open about that and the little box of truth is always a real trigger the little box of truth yes it's interesting thinking about it yeah but i don't think i need to have more arguments

i just think there's like So much energy and time and stress is wasted on sort of proxy wars in relationships. That's very true. Do you know what I mean? It's like this isn't about the thing. Yeah, this isn't about the cat. in a really compassionate way about what this is actually about and not see it as sort of shots fired that you then have to retaliate with and I'd like to think as well of course of my inability to express any of my burning rage part of the reasons I haven't had a great deal of arguments now let's not say I

haven't had disagreements I also must stress it's not say I haven't had a great deal of arguments, now that's not to say I haven't had disagreements, I also must stress it's not to say I haven't hurt people enormously and said the wrong thing and made people really upset. That happens frequently in all relationships, but in terms of getting into a sort of blazing row, that hasn't happened. hasn't happened but I do want to make clear I have caused an awful lot of people an awful lot of emotional pain and said dumb stuff and had to apologize for things and rethink about my behavior and my actions what I mean by no arguments is there's no kind of well you did this well you did that because that's pointless sort of yes but I'm also like physically averse to it because I'd sort of I guess I'd sort of freeze or crumple a bit in that scenario so maybe it's just that if it were

to ever get to that stage I would just sort of melt like the witch which again is fascinating to me because it's the fight, flight or freeze yes, big freeze fan here you're a freeze fan John, thank you so much for joining us today. But before you go, you've got so much life experience, clearly.

So much wisdom. So I'm going to ask you to share just one bit of advice that you swear by that could be helpful for other listeners. I guess something someone said to me that comes to mind a lot is that she said, nothing I've ever feared has actually existed. And I thought, what's that mean then? So she talked about it a bit and I was like, oh, that's true.

All my fears and anxieties are scenarios my brain has invented to sort of test me or to prepare me or whatever. And when, if the thing comes true and does happen, by its very nature, the experience of being in it is totally different to the fear. That doesn't mean it's necessarily nice or great or whatever. But when I started to think, oh, all your fears are invented. By definition, every single thing you've ever been afraid of does not exist. That was quite a big moment for me. That's not to say you shouldn't worry about things and it's not to say things in life aren't

terrible but once I'd understood that my brain was sounding an alarm that I could treat as a drill it took an awful lot of the power out of those fears and those anxieties. And what I'm working on a lot of the minute is recognizing the sort of the drills from the real alarms. And the real alarms are very rare. The drills constantly going on. Always there. Yeah. But you've got to have the practical stuff to do when it happens. Because I spent a long time thinking, I know all the stuff.

I've talked to enough people about the stuff. I can't talk. I can't tell all this stuff to do when it happens because i spent a long time thinking i know all the stuff i've talked to enough people about the stuff i can't talk i can't tell all this stuff to another person tell me what to do about it and then you find someone who does you're like breathe breathe out as if it's through a straw what oh suddenly that's soothing why did no one tell me breathing out like it's a straw was soothing so suddenly you think i've got all these ways I can deal with the stuff, because understanding it is sort of only really half the battle. 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, because very soon we'll be releasing extra episodes every week where I'll be joined by experts and answering your dilemmas 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 us

or send a voice note to hello at it can't just be me.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 isn't just you. Are you sure you parked over here? Do you see it anywhere? I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone.

Whether renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage, many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. From Searchlight Pictures comes A Real Pain, one of the most moving and funny films of the year. Written and directed by Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg and starring Eisenberg and Emmy Award winner Kieran Culkin,

A Real Pain is a comedy about mismatched cousins who reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. A Real Pain was one of the buzziest titles at Sundance Film Festival this year, garnering rave reviews and acclaim

from both critics and audiences alike. See A Real Pain only in theaters November 15th.