The Blindboy Podcast - A Mental Health plan for Christmas

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

A diatribe on the emotion of shame as it presents during the festive period Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fart at the edge of heaven, you temporary Brendan's. Welcome to the Blind Boy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. It's wonderfully freezing and icy here in Limerick City. One of my favourite things about this time of year

is that I can... I can put food outside the window instead of putting it in the fridge. I have a tiny little fridge here in my office. It'll hold one pint of milk and a sandwich, but the fridge generates a humming noise, which means on podcast recording days. I can't turn my fridge on because it's too noisy, but then I have to put my sandwich in my milk, like on my desk.

But then I can't turn the heat up because the sandwich will get too warm and the milk you don't want milk getting warm milk will go sour in a matter of hours if it's fucking warm and sometimes on podcast recording days I have to navigate the

the violence of milk cardling in a cup of tea when it goes all fluffy all fluffy like snowflakes in the tea and the thing is it's just recently cardles

so you know that if you drink it it's not going to taste sour but the texture is off and then you raise it to your lips and you go this isn't too bad this isn't too bad

I can deal with this and then you just notice that fluffy fluffy milk and you go fuck this and it puts you off your next six cups of tea but not today it's freezing in Limerick City

the sky looks like a toddler drew it with a fucking crayon this perfect bright blue and a wimpy little yellow horizon and you can see ice crystals and I'm sitting here in my office the heat is up at 23 degrees wonderfully toasty and my sandwich and my milk

are outside the window staying perfectly cold I don't need to have my fridge on I love that about this weather I'm several floors up my sandwich is secure so it's not going to fall on anybody below so there's no fear of that

unless a fucking unless a seagull comes along but that's highly unlikely and even if my sandwich did fall it would startle or inconvenience a person rather than cause injury now the milk is a different story

you don't want you don't want a pint of milk falling on someone from several floors but luckily I hang the milk in the end of a shoestring that's how I keep milk outside my window I hang it on the end of a shoestring

and I've been doing this for several years I've been doing that for nearly 20 years I've been asked to leave hotels because of it because in my job I stay in a lot of hotels and in the early days milk you'll know this if you stay in hotels

as part of your job milk places you in a bit of a no man's land when it comes to hotels so having a nice cup of tea like an actual cup of tea from my own mug with my own tea bags but fresh milk

is hugely important to me if I'm working in hotels so that I can have something to ground me but you'll know this if your job involved travel. Milk specifically places you in a bit of a no man's land in hotels. When you go to the cupboard to open up the kettle business, also there's a separate podcast about fucking hotel kettles. There's a rumour that air hostesses boil their knickers in hotel kettles. I don't

know how true that is, but it sounds plausible enough for me to, I always wash my hotel kettle before I use it. The only milk that you get in a hotel room is you have. H-T milk, which is disgraceful. But then if you want fresh milk, you're in no man's land. It's not available on the room service menu. You can't purchase it. So the only way to get fresh milk in a hotel room is at the discretion of the bar. So you have to ring up the bar and say,

Can you send me up a jug of fresh milk? And they'll always say yes. But the thing is, you're effectively asking for. a favor. You're asking that barman, can I have free milk? And can you take the time to leave the bar and bring me milk? And they'll always do it. But because it's a favor, you can only do it once. What I've learned actually is the cartiest way to do that. Don't ring up and ask for the milk. Walk down to the bar in the hotel yourself and ask for the milk there. And that's the least amount of inconvenience for the bar staff.

And it's too much hassle, so early on in my days of gigging, I just stopped doing that and I said, I bring my own fresh milk to the hotel room, that's what I do. But then you get to the hotel room, not every hotel room has a fridge. So I used to start hanging the milk out the window on the edge of a shoestring. And if I was staying there for a couple of days, I might have a two-liter bottle of milk hanging out the window on a shoestring. A bottle of milk at room temperature, eight hours maximum.

Botton of milk in a warm room, three hours, that's it. So you have to hang it out the window. And I've been asked to leave hotels because of that practice. And I've tried to explain to the hotel manager about the milk limbo, the no man's land,

that hotels place you in with fresh milk. A lot of them have listened, but they've just said, please, please, we can't have two-liter bottles of milk hanging out the window. Okay? I've spoken to the barren

he'll bring you up as much milk as you want and I did that for I'd say eight years until eventually I figured out if when you book a hotel

and you can never guarantee that there's going to be a fridge in your room you can't guarantee it unless you say in advance I have medicine that has to go in the fridge and if you say that they have to give you a fridge

so that's what I do now and now I'm guaranteed a fridge and I keep my fresh milk in the fridge and I don't need to hang it out the window sometimes you'll be hit with a wild card and the wild card is well this is rare

but they'll say we can't provide you with a fridge in the hotel room but there's a fridge at reception and you're more than welcome to bring your medicine down there I got caught with that this summer stayed in a hotel

place called Bex Hill one of the strangest places I've ever been I stayed in this incredibly hot beach hotel and it was just me and everyone else was in their 80s and I used to have to go down to reception

with my black tea to get some to put the milk into my fucking tea there was a beach outside the hotel and nearly died on it the beach it was the same beach that William the Conqueror landed in and 1066 and it was one of those stony English beaches and I went for an evening walk and the tide started coming in around me in the middle of my walk and I nearly got like landlocked

is that what you'd call it pex hill was a very strange place it feels like pargatory it's so strange I stayed there for about three nights I think it's just such an honest place. I couldn't get a taxi there to walk everywhere. It feels a bit, it's kind of quiet and slow. It feels like it's stuck several years in the past. It's a seaside town. It feels like you could be dead. It's like that. It's like you could actually be dead, but you think you're alive, but you're not quite sure. You could be in this, this space that's half, between life and death, like a waiting room. It was just a weird vibe.

I got followed by a dog. I couldn't get a taxi there. There was no fucking taxis, so I had to walk everywhere. And this dog, the dog was a cross between a bull terrier and a Labrador. Lanky with those little bull terrier eyes. And it was one of these stray dogs that's not. socialised to humans at all

I tried everything I tried the goodbye good bye nothing nothing and wagging the tail but not in the friendly way in the anxious way and I kept walking

and the dog kept fucking following me and then I started the oh I'm being hunted I think I'm being hunted I think this dog is trying to hunt me the way that the dog was wagging its tail felt like it had

a curiosity about my pain. I was all excited and I kept looking back and imagining his parents fucking imagining a bull terrier having sex with a Labrador and then I just ran and when I started fucking running then the dog started running after me. Then I nearly died on the beach and then back to the weird hotel full of all people

and then the indignity of this boiling hot hotel marching up the reception and the receptionist going Oh here's the man This is the man who lies Here's the paddy The paddy who lies about Needing a fridge for his medicine

When it was about milk all along Here he is with his pint of black tea Asking me to be the milk custodian Now she was actually very nice And she didn't say any of those things But this was me projecting those thoughts into her head That's how I felt The dishonest milk paddy

who drowns on beaches and gets hunted by labribles and I had to do that and the woman the receptionist taking my milk out of her little fridge and put her into my tea

very pargatory-like experience in Bexhill my memories of Bexill are way closer to a strange dream than an actual physical place and then during the middle of my life podcast there was a giant storm with four lightning. Fucking mad experience.

And then the last day, the last day in Bexhill, I was telling my tour manager, Darren, I was saying to him, look, I have to go up to reception and have my milk in the fridge and it's the only way I can get a cup of tea. And then Darren is like there has to be a solution to this. So he goes off and he gets me a cooler. So it's like, we'll have this cooler in your own now. But we got to, we put ice into it, put bag.

of ice into it and that's like having a fridge. So I did, but it was so hot. This was, like the start of July, it was roasting. It was so hot that the ice was melting after four hours. So then I'm like, I need, I need new ice. I need to get new ice or the milk is going to get sour. But like I said, there was no taxis in Bex Hill. So I had to walk to Aldi. It's about a 35,000. minute, 40 minute walk, I walked to Aldi and then purchased two like large bags of ice in Aldi. But then, no taxis, I'd to walk back to the hotel in a t-shirt. So I'm cradling these two large bags of ice walking back to the hotel. It was very painful. The ice was like burning my wrists and then it was so hot that by the time I'd gotten back to the hotel the ice

had practically melted a very sycifist-like experience you ran from Greek mythology who had to push the border up the hill and it kept coming down I went through quite a lot of like dream like archetypal trials

while I was in well I was in Beck's Hill like real fucking youngy in archetypal shit getting chased by that weird dog the tide coming around me on the beach and then having to walk in the hot sun with the ice and it melting

they were all like weird bad things that would happen in a dream like recurring dream shit and then the irrationality of the old person nothing against the old people there was only really really old people in me only really, really, really old people and me

and the irrationality and pointlessness of that march back and forth with the black tea and the milk, I don't think I'm going to go back to Bex Hill. If I'm ever doing a gig down that part of England again I'll go for Hastings instead. I promise myself this week that I wasn't going to do any stream of consciousness deviation because I really do want to

I'd like to do a straightforward mental health podcast this week For a number of reasons, I haven't done a mental health podcast, maybe in a year, possibly. Also, I'm currently, I'm involved in active mental health recovery, I suppose you'd say, at the moment. The word recovery there might sound a bit harsh. But I'm actively using tools to... to return to a place where I'm experiencing calm throughout my day. And when emotions pop up, there are experiences that I can observe and respond to rather than experiences that I immediately react to.

So that's an active journey I'm on at the moment. And when I say active, deliberate daily, practice. Just like, you know, I'm going to the gym so that I can get my arm stronger or my legs stronger. I'm deliberately engaging with the daily mental health practice that I want to share with you. And the third reason I'd like to do a mental health podcast is because of the time of year, Christmas is coming up. Christmas can present us with carve balls which require emotional literacy and awareness. I'll give an example. Now this, this might be more relevant to my listeners who are in their 20s, but this can happen to anybody, any adult. It's Christmas time.

So chances are you don't live at, now here's the thing if you're fucking in your 20s, this is when I'm not taking on board. If you're in your 20s, you probably already live at home. Let's say you've emigrated. You've been living in England, maybe Australia. You return home at Christmas to what's called your family of origin. Now you've been living away from home. You've got friends, you have a job, you have an apartment, you're paying rent, you're living as an autonomous adult with responsibilities and you have a new identity, a new adult identity

and a feeling of self-worth based around being an autonomous adult and then you return home to your family at Christmas and suddenly your ma or your dad makes a comment or snaps at you or tells you what to do speaks to you like, you know, your fucking parent and then suddenly you regress, you wither back into feelings of being a kid.

Old insecurities pop up. Or one of your parents compliments your sibling but they don't compliment you or they ask you when are you going to get married or they ask you are you going to have children or a comment has passed about your job because it's your family or your parents in particular your ma or your dad

it really hurts you're suddenly evaluating your entire worth as a person and you get this this feeling which it's a it's a sudden contraction of the self one of the worst feelings in the world

to be honest it's the feeling you get when if you accidentally if you've ever accidentally overheard two people talking about you and they're not talking about you in a very nice way and you hear how people

are speaking about you when you're not there like everyone that has experienced that and you get this feeling this sudden contraction of the self and that shame That's what that feeling is Oh I felt awful Felt small

Felt worthless That feeling there is actually shame The sudden contraction of the self It's what you feel if someone makes a comment About your appearance If you're in a group And you feel as if you're the butt of a joke If someone you care about

Is giving you the silent treatment The weaponisation of silence To punish and emotionally manipulate you or if you're back at Christmas and you see your ex and your ex pretends you don't exist and you get that wave over your body that ends in the pit of your belly the sudden contraction of the self

that's the feeling of shame that shame that little moment when you're you evaluate yourself and you really don't like the results it's not pleasant and I'd argue it's it's one of the most difficult emotions

and we do a lot to try and avoid it the thing that makes shame quite unique now maybe this is just me speaking from my experience maybe it's different for other people as negative emotions go shame feels very convincing if anger pops up even if you're really hot-headed

there's still a little voice that goes hold on let's evaluate this same with anxiety even when it's all consuming there's a sense that you're evaluating it but when shame comes in that sudden contraction of self

it feels very convincing it feels true and shame is it's when you globally evaluate your entire worth it's when you come home for Christmas and your parent or sibling

makes a comment about your career or your appearance and then you shrink in that moment you're globally evaluating your entire worth romantic rejection some people experience shame if someone they fancy turns them down even if they're on a fucking night out and they're trying to chat up a stranger

and a stranger isn't attracted to them some people experience that contraction of self that feeling a shame Like, you hear me speak a lot about fear of failure. Like in my job as an artist, I have to try to fail frequently so that it's not something I'm afraid of and to understand that failure is part of the process. What is it for me that's so terrifying about failure?

It's not the failing. It's the shame that I feel when I do fail. I mentioned a particularly bad review I got once for one of my books. Very harsh review. But that review, how I reacted to that review, put me in a position where I had writers' block for nearly a year. What did I feel when I read the review? Shame.

This reviewer, this critic, has found me out. I'm talentless. I'm worthless. Any success I've ever had before, That was a complete accident. It was a fluke. And this person has found out the truth that I'm absolutely pathetic, useless, stupid, talentless, worthless, an entire contraction of self. That's shame. That is shame. That's my shame. Shame that I learned as a little autistic child in school. Trying my best to fit in and be normal like all the other kids and I can't and then feeling the pain. of the judgment from the teachers and internalizing that as shame and I work on failure

because I can't allow the price of failure to be the feeling of shame. I need to fail so that when I do fail it just means ah I fucked up this piece of work today excellent I learned something let's try again that's the healthy way to do it

not I've failed I'm a worthless pathetic talentless piece of shit and now this critic is found out If we live our lives as humans, if we allow our worth to be defined by other people's approval of us, then the price you're going to pay is shame, the sudden contraction of self, the sudden sense that you're evaluating yourself globally, your entire worth. But here's the thing about shame. It's never accurate. Shame is actually bullshit. It's completely. inaccurate. It's an unhealthy emotion. You're sitting down at Christmas dinner. Your mother or your father makes a comment and it's negative about your job or where you're at in life and you feel

that sudden contraction of self and you globally, you feel worthless. You evaluate your entire worth in that moment because your ma doesn't approve of your career and it feels so convincing and it's objectively wrong. It's simply incorrect. It's not correct. What it tells you, and it's very common, is you've placed a hell of a lot of value on your mother's approval. When you were a little kid,

your parents gave you love and approval. If you got good results in school, or if the teacher said that you were good, you internalized that and now as an adult, your self-worth is dependent on those same external conditions of approval and now internal

conditions of approval too and now you feel worthless you feel shame the reality is another adult

your mother is speaking or return being a little bit rude and they don't approve of where your fucking career

is at sometimes with a fucking parent if a parent is carrying their own shame nothing you do is good enough

nothing you do can be good enough to keep certain parents happy because their own shame means that nothing that comes from them could be worth anything anyway and they're projecting their shame on you so nothing you do is good enough but really

your ma's not too happy with where your job is at so now therefore you're a useless, worthless person who deserves to feel that your sense of self is contracting into nothingness that's harsh shit, that's bullshit just feels convincing it doesn't mean it's real shame is deeply unhealthy and because it's so convincing

it's one of those unhealthy emotions that we react to rather than respond to and by react what I mean is the feeling of shame comes on you wither you feel the contraction of self and it spirals into

oh my God oh my God this feels awful I'm worthless I'm terrible oh God no no truer words have been spoken I feel exposed the truth is out there I'm worthless, and you want to hide yourself away, and that's a reaction. And what I'm trying to work on at the moment, not just with shame, but several other unhealthy

emotions, is to be calm enough to observe them. So when something like shame comes up, that contraction of self, I go, oh, there's shame. Oh, I know that one. A piece of information has just threatened my sense of identity, and now I'm globally evaluating myself as worthless. I wonder, is this accurate? And then, when you observe shame, when you respond to the triggering event rather than react,

you can flip shame into regret. Now, what's the difference between shame and regret? Because a regret isn't particularly pleasant either. With shame, it's a complete global evaluation, negative evaluation of your entire sense of worth who you are with regret it's a flexible disappointment about a thing you've done or an aspect of your behaviour so let's just say your mad does make a shitty a shitty comment about your job or your career or wherever the fuck you're at sometimes when you feel that intense shame it's because

the triggering event the thing that was said it strikes a bit of a nerve there might be a grain of truth in there and that's what hurts so much. So your ma hits you with, it's just you spent all those years in college, I'd have hoped you wouldn't still be working in an office. With shame, it's I'm worthless, pathetic, useless. With regret, it's, you know what, part of me agrees with her. I know I'm working in the office because it's easy and it pays the rent, but I'd prefer to be pursuing what I studied in that degree. constructively used this feeling of regret to motivate myself. You see, you can do something with regret. You can't do much with shame and to draw back to my own experience. When I got

that negative review for my second book and I got writer's block, I was experiencing deep shame. A shame so painful I couldn't access my creativity and that put me into a loop. it took me a year to move from intense shame to the healthy emotion of regret first off the person who wrote the review they were being unnecessarily cruel for clicks but also some of their critiques about my writing they had a point

these were areas that I could improve on and when I accepted that the feeling of regret there I fucking studied and I got better and honed my craft and none of those issues appeared in my third book and haven't done that I now realise looking back in that review

which was like 2019 so that's nearly seven years ago the things that that review picked at in my writing it's just basic shit that you learn if you have the privilege of studying writing at third level if you study creative writing in college there's things around story structurally how to develop your character.

There's all these standard things that you can actually learn. Not rules, but guidelines. Now you can't learn talent, but with any art, you can learn technique. With my first two books, I was just coming from the gut and an innate understanding of how to write stories, just being able to do it.

But I was also very clearly someone who hadn't studied writing. and to be the best version of yourself as an artist. You want both. You want your own innate, inimitable, creative voice, but you also want to be fully conversant with the established rules and techniques so that you can discard them and do something original. The thing is, in my first book, I was breaking rules,

which is a good thing. You want to be breaking rules, but I didn't understand the rules that I was breaking. A skilled piece of art isn't necessarily about breaking rules. It's about understanding the rules so intimately that you can bend them in the right places. And now several years after that review that crushed me that I felt deep, deep shame over. I now go fucking hell. I was getting critiqued over shit that I can just read out of a book.

I can't believe I was so foolish. to call myself worthless over this, to think that this was confirmation that I had no value or talent, or that my work, to think that my work was absolute shit and if I'd done anything good before that it was an accident, a complete fluke. I'm speaking about this because that's a lived experience example that I have of how I turned shame into regret and then made regret into something quite consistent. instructive. It was a wonderful learning experience and I'm really glad that I got that really harsh, cruel review of my work. I came out the other end of that. I nearly gave up. It was so bad.

The writer's block I got was so bad. The feeling of shame and worthlessness and having no talent and no worth was so extreme that I very nearly just said. Podcast is over. That's it, lads. I'm quitting this. I'm going to go back to college and maybe train to be a psychotherapist again. I need to give up on art. I nearly got there. Only for having the, I have the emotional literacy to know that if I'm feeling that way, that's self-destructive, that it needs to be interrogated and investigated. I'm speaking about shame because during the Christmas period, period, you might be thrown into a number of situations that threaten your sense of identity. You've been living in Manchester for the past two years. Now you're going back home to Kark for Christmas. You see school friends that you haven't seen in fucking years, and then one of them shocks you because they arrive in a Mercedes or they have a brilliant job or someone you went to college

and you did the exact same course and now they have a fantastic job that you'd love and you don't have it and you both went to the same college course and then the first thing that you feel is that sudden overwhelming contraction of self

suddenly and another human being's possession has you globally evaluating your entire worth as a human being and being disgusted with the results and usually what happens there Like, because that's a deeply pain, like, shame is very painful.

So what happens? You feel that contraction of self. Uh-oh, too painful. In comes the secondary emotion of jealousy to protect you from that feeling of shame. Fucking prick with his Mercedes. His dad probably bought it from anyway. And now you're being rude. Because the secondary emotion of jealousy has come in to protect your sense of identity from the intense feeling of shame.

I'm speaking about this because. half the battle is at least now having a name for that. We speak about anxiety, we speak about depression, we speak about anger. You rarely hear people talking about shame, the sudden contraction of self. If you're listening to this podcast and going, oh, is that what that is? Is that what that is? That fucking awful, terrible feeling. When I receive information about myself that makes me look at how I am in life and I feel like fucking shit,

Is that what that's called? Is that called shame? Like having emotional literacy. The capacity to attach words to certain feelings, that's half the battle because then you see when it pops up, now you have a word to go, I notice shame. I'm feeling shame now. Oh, this isn't very nice at all. I'm noticing that I'm, I'm, I'm noticing that I feel like a worthless piece of shit. And I'm actually saying this to myself.

I'm noticing all this. I wonder, is this accurate? Am I actually a worthless pathetic piece of shit because a fella from college has a Mercedes? I wonder, let's see if we can try regret instead. You know, if there is a little part to me, I'm a bit disappointed, bit disappointed that I didn't pursue the thing that my degree is in, but there was a number of reasons

that I didn't do that. But what a lovely opportunity now, it's after telling me something about myself and my motivations. maybe there's goals I can work towards and earlier there when I felt like a tiny useless pathetic piece of shit because I didn't pursue my college degree

not at all that just tells me that I've placed I've inaccurately placed myself worth in external achievements no aspect of my behaviour or anyone else's behaviour can define my worth because I have intrinsic worth which is the exact same as everyone else's

correctly recognising and labelling the emotion of shame the thing we feel when something causes us to evaluate our worth another one just when I'm speaking about shame misogynists

and incels and these what you'd broadly define as toxic masculinity a lot of what I notice is shame now there's many contributing factors, right? There's

a culture of misogyny, patriarchy, male entitlement, but on the individual level a lot of these young lads, they're not all fucking young lads grown adult men of all ages who

hate women, who fucking hate women and who are deeply toxic online. People who enjoy Andrew Tate and agree with his views those lads entire sense of self-worth depends upon the approval of women and the women aren't doing this those men have made that choice

I mean you're in a nightclub there's a girl you fancy you go up and try and make a move or whatever she's not interested are you a worthless pathetic unlovable piece of shit now no oh fuck that's disableness That's disappointing. Fuck it, I'll get a cabab.

Try again tomorrow. Now that's a very, I'm an elderly man, so that's quite a mid-2000s romantic encounter that isn't taking Tinder into consideration. So these misogynistic men, their sense of self-worth depends upon

whether women approve of them or attracted to them. And if they get, if their advances are rejected, they experience shame, that deep contraction of self and some of them too, because I remember

I remember from nightclubs years ago they would hate girls, girls who haven't even rejected them. They would hate a girl because in their mind she's going to reject them.

It's like you over there, girl over there. You can see how utterly small and pathetic and weak I feel about myself and the fact that you're not attracted to me confirms that

and I hate you for that there was lads who used to bump into girls they'd be walking around the nightclub and you'd see they'd bump into girls and say what the fuck is that he's fantasised in his head that this girl he's never even spoken to has already rejected him and thinks that he's worthless and pathetic and small and now he's furious and they used that

the hatred there, the shame, the contraction of self, this inhibitory, this feeling of smallness, of weakness of powerlessness, the hatred that control the misogyny steps in to restore the sense of power, to protect him from the feeling of shame. And none of this is, I'm not trying to say this is women's fault that a woman rejecting a man is creating that feeling of shame. shame. Rejection is part of being alive. Someone you fancy is not going to fancy you back and that's part of life. We've all had our hearts broken. We've all been rejected by someone at some point. When you're really young, it's hard not to experience that as a global evaluation of

yourself as a human being. That if the person that you fancy doesn't fancy you back, then no one can fancy you. You're unlovable. But as you emotionally mature, you realise all that people are attracted to different people for whatever reasons. Everybody is different. Your best friend could be head over heels over somebody and you mightn't even rate them at all. But the misogynistic men, the lads filled with hate towards women,

they've globally placed their entire self-worth in whether a woman rejects them or not or in a woman's approval these men's feelings of worth is quite law and any hint of rejection or disapproval or disinterest from a woman

is proof of this and then the anger and hatred restores the feeling of power and there's an entire societal structure built around this I'm not getting emotional here I just have a quivering voice from the remnants of my

a sore throat a couple of weeks back. Let's have an ocarina pause. So I don't have my ocarina, but what I do have, so speaking of sore throats. So I had just like a regular fucking flu, just the bullshit flu or cold that's going around.

I had it about three weeks ago, four weeks ago. Wasn't even that bad. But I've got post-viral. It's post-viral. It's post-viral. So every morning my throat is sore and I've got a chesty cough and I'm not actively sick

it's just my body is producing mucus from the inflammation of when I was sick it's very annoying I'd love to get rid of it and one thing I have which I've been told is good at getting rid of it and this is what I'm going to do instead of an ocarina pause because I have a bottle of it here

it's a supplement it's a bodybuilding supplement called NAC This isn't an advertisement This is generic You can fucking buy it anywhere It's not an advertisement It's a thing called NAC

It's an amino acid But apparently This thing is very very good At loosening up Anniying post-viral mucus So let's I'm going to shake this fucking NAC This bottle of NAC

And you're going to hear an advert For some bullshit all right Oh nice shake actually I thought it would be harder than that I don't want to shake it so much that I fuck the tablets up gentle shake that was the ocarina pause

support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast this podcast is my full-time job This is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills.

Something which brought me a feeling of shame actually last week. I was on the phone to my mother. And my mother was at a funeral and she met another woman, another elderly woman. And the elderly woman said, what does your son do? And my ma says, oh, he has a podcast. And then the other elderly woman said, but what does he do to earn a living? And that briefly made me feel a contraction of self, a feeling of shame. and then I stopped and I said,

oh, there's that feeling of shame. Have I placed myself worth in the opinions of an elderly woman I've never met? Do I deserve to feel small and tiny and worthless because there's an elderly woman at a funeral who thinks that I don't earn a living from podcasting? Am I this foolish? Does that seem rational?

So I challenged it and said, this actually isn't worth thinking about it all. This actually, I don't even have to. move to regret on this. It's perfectly rational. I'm not even sure if this woman knows what a podcast is. No disrespect to her, right?

But I do earn a living from this podcast. Ma. This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. And it's only possible because of you glorious cunts. Because ye patrons out there.

So if you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck. Please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You listen for free. Listen for free because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free.

Everybody gets the exact same podcast. I get to earn a living. wonderful model based on kindness and soundness, patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you're a new patron, don't sign up on the Apple podcast app because Apple will take 30% do it on a browser. And if you enjoy this podcast,

please try and recommend it to a friend. If you have a friend who you think of being to this podcast, just tell him about it and say, give this a listen, you might like that. And I say that because social media is collapsing there's no more social media anymore and the algorithm is disappearing

the algorithm is now run by AI so for anyone who's creating content out there you can't even game the algorithm anymore it's completely AI and this is why Instagram which is the only fucking social media left really it's why your feed feels nuts there's no more algorithm it's AI

trying to predict what it, what it thinks you want to see. So if you like this podcast or any other fucking creator that you enjoy, just recommend it to a friend, recommend it to a person. Upcoming gigs in 2026. So a lot of my gigs are setting out quick because people are buying them for Christmas. Thank you very much. But I'm in Waterford in January on the 23rd, the theatre Royal. Then I'm in Nays at the spirit of Kildare Festival.

glamorous stuff then in February we move on to Vicker Street Wednesday which is the 4th of February in Vicker Street

that gig that's very nearly sold out very few tickets left for that to the point that I'm putting on a second night

but it's not to like April okay so because that gig is setting out so quickly we're doing a second night in like April or whatever but if you want to come to that Vicker Street gig

or if you're thinking of getting it as a Christmas present for someone we're down to like 50 tickets alright Belfast on the 12th setting out very quickly too and then Galway Leisureland Those are my February gigs

Oh Kilkenny in the eye neck where my dressing room is in a broom closet Yum yum yum I'm gonna be going to Kilkenny I fucking not Kilkenny Killarney bollocks how did they get the two of them mixed up well they sound similar

What can I say about I love Calarney I like that venue. My dressing room is legitimately a tiny dark broom closet and then at the back door by the swimming pool there's a big bush and I always take a piss in there because the toilet is too far away and sometimes I might smoke a rollie even though I don't smoke cigarettes but whatever it is about that venue it's one of the security guards. Always rolls me a rollie because he feels sorry for me that I'm in the broom closet

and then I smoke the roly while I'm pissing into that bush near the swimming pool at the back of the hotel. Glamorous rock and roll stuff lads so come along to that gig March, Carlo, get in Carlo, oh yes

very few tickets for that, that's a small gig. Cork down in the opera house, she will love Cork Limerick's older brother and then where am I? Loads of all the fucking Limerick Limerick, right? Limerick City, my hometown, University of Limerick Concert Hall there in the, what is that, the 9th of April. Come along to that there for the crack.

I can't, so this isn't on sale yet, but I will be in Germany this year. Then October, even though it's a year away, this is actually selling quite quickly. Tour of England, Scotland and Wales. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London. Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham, and no fucking, no Bex Hill, all right? Can you hear that? It's raining, it's raining. It's raining. It's raining really heavily outside. I didn't expect to speak about shame, exclusively about shame. I didn't realise that Christmas, that shame is the big Christmas emotion.

Well, there's other ones. I mean, we can't assume that Christmas is nice for everybody For years and years Christmas was offered for me Because my dad was dead So if you've lost a family member Christmas instantly becomes shit If you have a family where there's a high level of conflict Or dysfunction

Then Christmas can become scary Instead of an enjoyable thing it becomes are my brother's going to kick the head off each other similarly addiction you could have a family member who's on the dry all year and then Christmas is the trigger

and now this person that's not drinking is drinking again and then the whole family's in chaos if you come from a family that doesn't have a good time at Christmas you can feel you can be reminded and feel

I don't know it's jealousy or envy it can feel quite unfair that other families are having enjoyable Christmases you can feel pressure some people are alone at Christmas and that's absolutely

fucking grand I've done many Christmases by myself because of being artistic a choice the choice to go fuck it

the thought of having to go to this person's house for Christmas or I'm going to go to this place and it's mostly going to be there's going to be strangers there so it's going to be a fuck lot of small talk there's been a few Christmases where I've just simply made the choice

to go I'm going to go alone this year or maybe I've been struggling with burnout and I know that an entire day of speaking to people and masking isn't going to be the best result and even though I'm making that choice I'm choosing to be by myself you still get the little glimmers

of loneliness even when being by yourself on Christmas Day is a hundred percent an adult choice that you're making a dark loneliness can set in when you start feeling sorry for yourself and

half the battle is emotional literacy I wanted to go through some thinking errors they're called this week but I suppose the big one I want to chat about and this is why emotional literacy is important to mindfully be able to notice and label emotions as they pop up

especially the negative ones or the unhealthy ones is let's just go with shame again because like I said shame when it pops up is very convincing emotional reasoning is what happens when an intense feeling comes over you

and then you treat that feeling as a fact so shame comes up and shame is that the sudden contraction of self and you feel worthless and small and then because you feel that way your thoughts then scan for the reasons to confirm that feeling Yeah, I am worthless. I am fucking small. What about that thing and that thing? I'm pathetic. What about that person who's so much better than me? And now all of your thoughts, you're thinking and confirming to yourself to find reasons to confirm and prove as fact this intense emotion that you're feeling. And then that goes into a loop and you feel the emotion. And this can be your mindset all day long.

And when emotional reasoning kicks in, it stops you from finding contradictory information. Let's just, as I mentioned there, there's been years where I've made the adult choice to go, I'm going to do Christmas by myself this year. And that's a rational choice based on my sensory needs. It's like, no, I'm not able for it. If I go to that person's house for Christmas, there'll be. like six people I've never met. That puts

a lot of pressure on me to do small talk. That's difficult. I'm going to have to rehearse what to say. I'm going to have to predict the chance that are going to happen. All of this eye contact looking at body language. Making sure that I don't drink to

compensate for the stress of it. Fuck it. I'll actually be so much happier if I just stay by myself. It'll be much more suited to my needs to stay by myself and I'll make a rational decision like that and then I'm there by myself on Christmas

day having a great time eating a lovely dinner that I cook for myself playing PlayStation and I'll get the wave of loneliness I'll hear the neighbours having crack and I'll start to wallow in self-pity and say look at you

on your own worthless pathetic Nobody wants you. Nobody wants you at Christmas time. You're a burden. You're a burden on other people. Big weird, strange, autistic freak.

And then I have to go, hold on a minute. This sounds like self-pity and a bit of shame. What's that about? Ah, I noticed the feeling of loneliness. That was powerful. Then I felt a bit of shame. And then my mind took these feelings as absolute fact and tried to confirm them using words.

But actually all that shit I just said to myself is bullshit. I was invited to someone's gaff for Christmas. They wanted me there, they asked me, I'm not there because I myself chose not to. There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that nobody wants me. But what I described there is emotional reasoning when negative emotions pop up and they can be overwhelming. If we don't catch them,

if we don't have the emotional literacy to name them our thoughts we'll try and confirm in for try and find information in our environment to fit that emotion feelings aren't facts

shame is the biggest example of that there's no such thing as being worthless and small and pathetic there's no such thing as that that doesn't exist you can do things that you regret you can behave in ways that aren't very nice

but those are behaviours behaviours don't define worth human beings have worth simply because we're human beings we all have intrinsic worth we all have the exact same worth I've got no more worth than anybody else no one else is worth more than me

because we're human beings and human beings are really complex and we're so complex that you can't evaluate one human being against another. Behavior is different but behavior doesn't define worth. So shame, the sudden contraction of self, the feeling of having zero worth. It's always bullshit. Whether you're looking at another person

and looking at what they have or who they are and then you're looking at them and then evaluating yourself as being worthless because of what someone else has it's completely inaccurate and if you can name it and spot it then you can challenge it and go

I know this doesn't feel nice but maybe it's regret instead what am I regretful about and the point is you can do something with regret you can't do much with shame other than get into a shame spiral but regret you can go yeah I do feel bad about this

let's set some goals let's have some ambition let's try and change this what can we do here so Christmas is the season of shame the season where you have to watch out for fucking shame alright dog bless wink at a swan fart at a kestrel

genuflect to a wren I'll hopefully have a podcast for you next week my voice is conti you can hear it It's on the quivering end, it's quivering. Next week is Christmas week. But I've never missed a Christmas before, so I'll see what I can pull out of my hope. I'm half considering a walk and talk podcast

that I could do in one take. I've got a lovely new Lavalier microphone that I can walk around with. And there's an 18th century canon by a bridge that I have some strong opinions about that I might visit and talk about. We'll see. Dog bless.

We're going to be the I'm going to be the I'm going to I'm going to I'm going Oh I'm I don't know.

We're going to be able to be. The ...and... ...they... ...that... ...and... ...and... ...and...

...the... ...and... We're going to be able to be able to be. I don't know Oh Oh Oh I'm

I'm Oh ...and... ...that... ...that... ...that... ...that... ...the...

I don't know. I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to …

Nothing, I am. ... ... ... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... You know, I'm going to be able to be. So, you know,

and you know You know, I'm going to I'm going to I'm I don't know.