The Blindboy Podcast - A post lockdown mental health plan

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

It's been more than six months since the lockdown ended. I explore and discuss feelings of hypervigilance and loss of self identity. Also, the plan and techniques I'm using to heal and strengthen   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Defile the cross you swan song Cossacks. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I spent a good portion of the last week dismantling a shrub with my hands. It was definitely a shrub even though it looked like a tree and what I learned is if you're ever looking at something and you're going is that a tree or a shrub? The trick is a tree always has a central trunk whereas a shrub even though it looks like a tree has multiple trunks there's this incredibly imposing

large wild shrub out my back garden it obscures sunlight it smells like fox's piss it attracts wasps and the shrub itself is slowly being choked by these incredibly terrifying and dangerous briars. Snake-like vines with razor-sharp talons or thorns, whatever you'd call them.

And I have a little table and a chair that I like to use for writing. And I can't because of this fucking shrub. Now I'm talking 20 foot high now. I don't mean like a little bush. This large 20 foot high shrub. I'd sat down because I'd intended to write. I'd wanted to write a thousand words because I'm writing my next collection of short stories. But as I sat down, I was there for about an hour or so. Nothing was coming. I was getting writer's block and that was very frustrating. So I started to blame the shrub. Of course I can't write. Everything smells like fox's piss because of that giant shrub that's over me. Of course I can't write. The shrub is obscure in the sunlight. I've been attacked by wasps eight times. A manky leaf fell into my coffee. So I made a decision.

Step away from the writing and let's deal with this giant shrub. But it was so big and so confusing and so shrubby that like I didn't know how to get rid of it I didn't know where to begin I didn't know how to start so I just reached forward with my hand and I snapped off one twig and I realised that that one twig snapped off quite easily then I did another and another until I realised

fuck it I could take this shrub apart with my hands so I put on a pair of really strong gardening gloves, ones that the briars couldn't penetrate. And I started picking apart this 20 foot gigantic shrub piece by piece using my hands. And if someone was watching me, it probably would have looked a bit insane. Because there's more practical ways to take down a shrub. Could have used the hedge clippers. Or could have used a saw on the larger

branches. But I didn't. I went at it piece by piece with my hands. Because slowly what I started to realise as I was picking apart these twigs very slowly it stopped being a boat, taking down a shrub

and it became quite therapeutic and calming. I felt purpose, I felt a sense of control, I felt a calming sense of concentration and I felt a sense of achievement and more than anything I felt a great sense of quiet in my mind, a silence in my mind as I focused on this one thing. I experienced everything I want to get from writing a short story, feelings I don't get when I have writer's block and when my mind is stressed. And it was hard work, it wasn't necessarily pleasant, but at all points I felt a sense of control just by breaking these twigs, by getting my big leathery gloved hands and reaching to a briar, breaking it in half, breaking a branch in half and just tearing slowly and calmly this gigantic bush apart. And I must have done it for, I'd say four fucking hours, maybe five hours until eventually the shrub was just a stub and when I'd finished what I'd realised was holy fuck

for the first time since I can remember since before the pandemic my mind was still it made me realise that I haven't really known a stillness of mind in quite a long time. It was like when I was finished, it was like, fuck, remember that feeling? Remember that feeling of calmness? You haven't felt that in a long time, have you? I'll tell you what it made me think of. The writer, Ernest Hemingway. He's an American writer.

Very famous American writer. He's got this short story. It's, some people don't like Hemingway. He's an American writer. Very famous American writer. He's got this short story. It's, some people don't like Hemingway. I do enjoy Hemingway. I love his, I love the simplicity of his writing. But Hemingway's got this short story called Big Two-Hearted River. And it's one of these short stories where nothing really happens. It's written in the third person. Very beautiful, descriptive, simple writing. And it's just about a fella called Nick who goes off into the wilderness on his own. He observes nature. He finds a nice spot in the river. He fishes for some trout. He catches a trout. He puts the trout back, then he sits down and he lights a

fire and he cooks his dinner and that's it. And it's a very calming story because Hemingway has a way of writing where you experience and feel the sense of calm that the fisherman is trying to achieve by simply being still alone alone in nature, without society. The thing is with Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway pioneered a type of writing called the iceberg method, where the themes of his writing are kind of hinted at. The writing on the page is just the tip of the iceberg, but the story is underneath the water,

and that doesn't occur in the form of words that has to occur in the mind of the reader but how they engage with the story and that was Hemingway's iceberg method. So in that story Big Two-Hearted River what's the tip of the iceberg and what's the body of the iceberg underneath the water. Well, the main character in that story, Nick Adams, I think his name was, has appeared in other Hemingway stories, and he's a World War I veteran. He's someone with quite intense trauma from being in World War I. So the story isn't about the calmness of fishing. It's about the central character trying to experience the calmness of fishing. It's about the central character trying to experience the calmness of fishing

to comfortably process their trauma. The character's trying to get comfortable with a feeling of safety. They're trying to get comfortable with letting their guard down and living with confidence in the present moment. And when I dismantled that bush with the gloves and afterwards was going,

what the fuck did I do that for? Why did I spend four hours dismantling a shrub with my gloves? Why did I not get distracted? Why did I not check my phone? Why did I not want to make a cup of tea? Why did I not want to put on music while I was doing it? Why did I stick with this make a cup of tea? Why did I not want to put on music while I was doing it?

Why did I stick with this task until it was finished? Because it unexpectedly gave me a feeling of stillness and calmness that I've really been looking for. And I haven't been able to find that feeling through my usual channels. I don't get it from sleeping. I don't get it from writing. I don't get it from sleeping. I don't get it from writing. I don't get it from listening to music. I don't really get it from exercise anymore. I don't get it from having a couple of cans.

I haven't known genuine 100% relaxation since before the pandemic. Genuine stillness. I've had glimpses of it. But dismantling that fucking shrub did. And it made me realize, wow, you're kind of a little bit on edge all the time. Even when you think you're enjoying yourself, you're continually scanning for some threat. and there's a name for this way of being it's called hyper vigilance and my experience with taking down that shrub made me realize that I've been operating in quite a hyper vigilant way since about 2021 and I'd quite like to address it and see what I can

do about it so that's what I'm going to speak about this week. Now I don't think I'm alone with this because the general consensus amongst mental health experts around the world is that quite a large amount of people are presenting with and are going to start presenting with certain symptoms of trauma and hypervigilance is one of those symptoms. In a nutshell hypervigilance is when if you get if you go through something which is particularly upsetting or frightening or shocking or something that places you in danger. When that happens. You experience anxiety. Or terror. Or anger. Your fight or flight response.

Or freeze. Fight, flight or freeze response. And your brain is triggered. Like let's just say you're walking down the road. And you go past a gate. And when you go past this gate. There's a big giant aggressive dog. And the dog starts roaring and screaming and barking. Well in that moment, appropriate to the situation, you get very very

frightened and you experience anxiety. But then you move on up the road, you forget about the dog and your nervous system calms down again and you forget about the dog and you're back to your base level of calmness. Hypervigilance is when you don't fully return to that level of calmness. It's like a broken smoke alarm. If you're in the kitchen and you burn some toast and the smoke alarm goes off, you turn off the toaster, you open the windows, you waft out the smoke. The smoke disappears from the room and then the smoke alarm turns off. That's what usually happens. Being hypervigilant is when the smoke alarm doesn't go off. The smoke is gone, the toaster's turned off, but the smoke alarm is still going. And that's how I've felt really for the past year, I'd say.

And if the mental health experts are right, it's how a lot of people are feeling. So if we're being honest about the pandemic, every one of us in 2020, 2021, had absolutely terrifying moments. That's a universal experience. Now, I don't want to be weighing up people's individual responses to the pandemic because everyone had different situations. But it's fair to say all of us had something pretty fucking terrifying happen to us. Our entire world changed.

Everything that was normal and reliable changed. Change by itself is terrifying. The way you work, the way you move, the way you socialise, everything changed. At the start of the fucking pandemic, when people were hoarding toilet paper and panicking, all of us legitimately entertained the idea of death. We confronted ourselves with legitimate mortality because at the start of the pandemic, we didn't know what was going to happen. So all of us had to go, oh fuck, is someone I love going to die? Am I going to die? And you can't look around and say,

nah, I'm overthinking it. It's like, no, at the start of the pandemic, all of us were confronted with our own mortality and the mortality of people we love. Like I remember one of the first outbreaks of coronavirus in the country actually happened at my gig in Ennis. It ended up making the papers. And I'll never forget the person who ran the theatre at the gig where the coronavirus broke out. I'll never forget them ringing me and saying there was a case of coronavirus at your gig. And this is when we didn't know how severe this thing was. That person had a cold, chilling terror in their voice that I've never heard before. And that was terrifying for me and it's going to stick with me for the rest of my life. Every one of us had those moments where your fear response is up at about a 10. That shit sticks and then all of us

collectively had to live with social anxiety. Lockdown. I've had agoraphobia. Like I've had severe anxiety and agoraphobia in the past. Lockdown was that. In order to not spread a virus, all of us had to behave like we had social anxiety. Continually and consistently scanning other people's behaviour. Making sure everyone was two metres away from you. Feeding a sense of terror when someone broke your two metre space. Caring about whether people are coughing or not. Queuing up to get into supermarkets.

Not being allowed more than two kilometers from your home. We all had to collectively experience what it's like to have agoraphobia. And there was no escape from it because that was the rational, sensible thing to do. For me, that did the most damage. That was the rational, sensible thing to do. For me, that did the most damage. I had to relive toxic, socially anxious behaviours that I had spent years working on and eradicating. So it brought it all back and told me to be afraid of people again,

to be afraid of society, that people in society are dangerous. Because for a while there, people in society actually were dangerous. That's a fact. There was a disease and nobody was vaccinated. Then some of us lost our livelihoods. In my industry, the entertainment industry, we couldn't work in live gigs for two years. So we had to wonder whether our careers were over, whether they were going to end. Other people were forced to go to work. People who worked in supermarkets, frontline workers, people being made to show up to work when they knew it was physically unsafe to do so. I lost two years of my life with my mother. My mother's elderly. I couldn't visit her. I think I've hugged her once in two years.

Most of our communication has been over the phone. The natural human act of loving my mother, of going to my mother, giving her hugs, visiting her, being a good son, being a good friend, that became dangerous and wrong. Other people lost people who they loved. Other people... I'm thankful I didn't go through this, but other people lost their fucking parents,

their brothers, their sisters. They died and they didn't get to grieve properly or attend the funeral. And even if hardly any of that shit happened to you and you actually had a fairly okay pandemic, you were still watching all of this. And then of course, collectively, all of us lost sense of time. All of us lost two years of our lives.

And because of the repetition and lack of spontaneity and the staying at home, we've all lost two years of time and none of it feels like two years of time. So we have this strange little gap in our lives. Some people lost family members to fucking conspiracy theories. That's, I get mailed a lot about that. The extreme stress of the pandemic sent certain people in a direction where they fell 100% into conspiracy theory territory. And then they started to argue with their families and relationships close relationships were damaged damaged badly and people are grieving for those relationships

also all of that shit as individuals we haven't been able to process it we couldn't process it at the time because you simply had to do it my thing during the pandemic and you know if you're listening to this podcast over the pandemic day by day I was like today I'm going to cope today I'm going to cope I'm not gonna think about how awful all of this is because if I do I'll go under so today I'm going to cope I'm gonna lower my expectations and all I'm gonna do today is make my dinner and live that got very stressful. Very, very stressful. Because I needed to suppress what I was actually feeling, to be honest.

And then for all of us, and this is where I'd use the grief analogy, if you've ever had someone in your family die, one of the most difficult things about having a person in your family die is you can't fully express it you can't fully express how it affects you and you alone because everybody around you is also grieving so if your dad dies or if your mother dies you can't really go to your brother or sister and say I feel terrible because my dad died because they're going I also feel terrible because my dad died because they're going. I also feel terrible because my dad died too. So nobody gets to be selfish with their grief

because you have to support everybody around you. Now, sometimes you kind of need to be selfish with your grief. All of us, each individual on the planet, needs to actually scream and shout and say, I need to explain how this pandemic affected me, me and me alone. I lost two years of my life. I've been miserable for two years. We can't as individuals do that

because everybody has gone through the same shit. So there's no space for that. Even though selfish grief has its place. Shut the fuck up and listen to how all of this affects me and me alone is a valid response, especially in an individualistic society. And we can't express that. There's no space to express that. Even if you're with your fucking therapist your therapist also lived through a

pandemic so we all kind of hold back a bit when we need to vent about how shit it's all been I could go on all day with a list of awful shit that happened over the fucking pandemic but let's just say it was sustained and it was frightening and it happened for quite a long time. And me personally, I haven't switched off. I haven't turned off. Even though my lived experience now is pretty normal. I'm able to go to restaurants. I can do gigs.

There's not really any restrictions. People aren't talking about coronavirus anymore. The pandemic is still there, but it doesn't feel like it is. So technically the threat is gone. So why haven't I switched off? Why am I continually scanning my environment for danger? Why do I feel as if danger is upon me at any moment? Because I'm going through hypervigilance. I'm on edge all the time and I can't switch it off. And I didn't really realise this until I experienced that genuine stillness of taking apart that shrub with my hands. But now that I am aware of it, that actually feels like progress. Now I have a goal. Now I understand.

Ah, that's what that is. I've been living with it for so much that I wasn't really aware of it, but that's what that is. And that's why I am this way. And even that much, now I have a goal for healing. And that's why I'm mentioning it this week because by me speaking about it I reckon a lot of ye will go fuck I've been like that too is that what that is and then you also can begin to draw out a map for healing so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to read out a few questions from a hypervigilance self-report. So this is like, I don't like using the word symptoms. This is a questionnaire that you would ask yourself and if you strongly agree yes as an answer to some of these questions then chances are you're experiencing hypervigilance. And for me, when I was doing these questions,

I was answering them in the here and now, but also reflecting back to, we'll say, how I would have been before the pandemic, back in 2019. Because in 2019, 2018, huge amount of these questions, I'd be answering no for loads of them. And I answered yes for quite a lot.

So one question is, I spend a lot of time worrying about what other people think of me. You're scanning. When you have interactions with other people, you tend to be focused on what do they think of me. And this doesn't have to just be in your day to day physical life. This can also be online. Because let's not forget online is also a social space. Another one is when other people are moody. I believe that it involves me.

So if you're at home. Your fucking partner, family member, whatever. They're in a bad mood. And instead of you going, they're in a bad mood, you immediately assume they're in a bad mood because of me. They are angry with me. They're upset with me. What did I do to make them upset? You've no evidence. This is just your first reaction.

I put a lot of energy into not upsetting people. You're walking on eggshells. But for no reason. This is just your way of being now. I criticise myself. I notice other people having stronger relationships. If you're going out for pints with your fucking friends and there's a group of you together. And you see two of your other friends getting on well,

instead of like not even fucking noticing it, do you say to yourself, Jesus, they're getting on really well. Why don't I get along with them as well as they're getting on with each other? What's that about? I think that people are untrustworthy. So you don't take people at face value anymore. You assume that the person is out to get you. Now what's important with all of these is that there's zero evidence. You don't

have evidence for any of this. This is your gut reaction from the start. It's a consistent threat analysis way of being, way of thinking. And then I spend time thinking about how things don't work out so those are that's just like five questions I think there's 20 questions in total but that's an example of a questionnaire around hyper vigilance and it's something you could do for yourself or it's something that a psychologist might ask a client but I'm scoring high on all of those that's my way of being and the inside of my head over the past year is quite a busy place my internal dialogue inside my head is quite negative and I spend a lot of my day worrying about the past, worrying about the future and not really enjoying the present moment. Now I'm not in the throes of a fucking mental health crisis. I'm exercising, I'm meditating, I'm working, I'm functioning

consistently and using all my tools, but I'm just finding this time it's taking so much more effort because I'm wounded by the stress of the pandemic and I'm finding myself having to use mindfulness quite a bit. Like here's something proactive that I've started doing the past week in particular that's been helpful. I've started doing the past week in particular that's been helpful. I've started waking mindfully. So my hypervigilance kicks in the moment I wake up in the morning. Now it's gotten better. One year ago I used to wake up every single morning gasping with terror for no reason. I would wake up with my heart racing as if someone was coming to kill me or as if I'd done something really bad and that's how I'd wake up every single

morning without fail. That was just it and my job was to basically try not to let that be my state throughout the entire day. I used to feed my two cats and that act of compassion of feeding my two cats used to bring my anxiety down and I just I wouldn't be in terror for the rest of the day. Now I don't wake up gasping with terror anymore. I just wake up with a low hum of dread. Dread that shouldn't exist because there's no actual reason for it. Here's the thing, there's no reason for me to feel dread at all. I'm physically healthy, nobody's trying to kill me so I have no business waking up feeling dread but I do. Now I do have things I need to be worried about but worry is okay. Worry is a normal part of suffering. Being alive is inevitable suffering and worrying about things is okay. That's part of being alive.

It's okay to worry. But I don't need to feel dread. I don't have any reason to feel dread. Dread means there is an existential threat to me or someone I love and it's immediate that's just simply not true so I don't need to feel dread in the morning now usually what happens there is I wake up I feel terrible okay something threatening is happening I feel frightened so often what my brain will do is go oh you feel terrified let's figure out a reason why because there must be a reason why and often a very toxic behavior I'll engage in is first thing I will do when I wake up is oh I feel terrified better check the news so then I go and check Sky News or BBC News or whatever and I see some bad news and then I go

excellent I've now found the reason why I should be feeling dread or I'll open up Twitter and search for someone criticising me so I can confirm my feeling of dread so those are toxic terrible behaviours right which I'm trying to stop so what I've started doing the past week is I wake up mindfully I don't open my so what I've started doing the past week is I wake up mindfully I don't open my fucking phone

I open my eyes I still feel dread and I mindfully notice the feeling of dread and immediately the first thing I do is I start breathing properly the moment I wake up I breathe in deep breaths through my nose

and I feel my stomach expanding and I don't even think about anything. I don't think about the dread I just notice that it's there and then I do a quick body scan and I stretch and I wriggle my toes and I notice myself in bed and I feel thankful for the beautiful morning and I think about the breakfast I'm about to eat and I begin my day with thankfulness and physically noticing my body in the bed and checking in with all of it and stretching and breathing properly and leaving a lot of lovely oxygen into my brain and body. And then what happens? The feeling of dread is gone. And now I've began the morning with something close to a base level of calm. And when I begin that way, that kind of sets me up a little bit more for the day to have a calm day. I've been doing that for the past week and it's really been working.

So here's the thing with hyper vigilance that kind of sets it aside from regular bouts of anxiety i need to change my brain i need to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of my brain and i need to actually work on changing that. I need to change my brain the way that I exercise for my body. Like I go to the gym and I lift weights to become stronger and healthier. I now have to engage in similar behavioral activities so that I can change the neural pathways of my brain. Now I've spoken to experts about this at Neuroscientists. I've done a podcast with Dr. Sabina Brennan who's a neuroscientist. And I did a podcast with Dr. Ian Richardson, I believe his name was. Who's also a neuroscientist. So here's what happened to my brain over the pandemic.

And I'm trying to keep this about me, even if you relate to it. When I got a big fright, right, several times throughout the pandemic, I got a big fright, lots. What that does is that gives me what's known as an amygdala hijack. I get an emotional hijack. I would experience intense anxiety because something frightening just happened and then my body would kick in an anxiety response. My breathing would get shallow, my heart would beat fast, I'd start sweating. My palms would tremble. I'm experiencing anxiety because a frightening thing is happening. I couldn't really talk myself back down off that.

Because there was good reason to feel anxious. Back in the days when I used to get panic attacks. Because I had social anxiety. I would talk myself down out of social anxiety by going, there's actually no reason to be afraid here. I'd be back in college being like, oh no, I'm getting a panic attack in the library in college. And I would talk myself out of it using CBT by saying, you're getting a panic attack in the library, but there's no actual reason. Nothing is going to happen well during the pandemic I was getting anxiety responses

and there was a good reason I feel terrified why? there's a fucking pandemic okay there's no talking yourself down from that I just had to live with it and I had to live with it so much

that it changed my neural pathways. So now my brain and my hormones are responding with an excessive amount of emotion as a natural reflex. I'm not going through anxiety. I don't have any phobias. I'm not even afraid of coronavirus. I'm not afraid of being in public. I've no reason to feel dread. But my brain's neural pathways don't know this. It's like I've been doing weights wrong and gave myself an injury. And now I have to heal from that injury. So I need to change my brain's neural pathways.

And this is going to take a good bit of work. But I know I can do it. And as both Sabina Brennan and Ian Richardson, who are neuroscientists, said on the podcast, the human brain avails of neuroplasticity. Just as your brain can make neural connections which are unhelpful and trigger unpleasant emotions that aren't helpful to me through changing my behavior and consistent effort and exercise I can learn to calm my nervous system because the problem I'm having quite frequently is my because my brain is in a consistent

state of threat analysis it's impacting my capacity to enjoy life and to enjoy things that I used to really enjoy before the pandemic. I don't really like listening to music anymore. I haven't really liked listening to music in two years. Now for me that's fucking heartbreaking because I'm autistic and music for me is very very important to my happiness but I can't really connect with music I can't bring my brain to that lovely peaceful place where I get lots of pleasant endorphins and the sheer joy of listening to music and the presentness of doing it. I can't really do that anymore because the limbic system of my brain is too excited. So when we experience intense anger, intense fear, fight, flight or freeze, when we experience these things, our limbic system, which is at the front of our brain

this area is excited but when our limbic system becomes excited it kind of does one thing and one thing only it tells us that we're not safe and that we must search for whatever is threatening us so that we can run away fight it or play dead And if you're struggling with hypervigilance. Your limbic system is excited a lot. You can't really relax and enjoy things. Think of it this way. You know when you're on an airplane. And you experience turbulence.

What happens? Everybody focuses on the pilot. The pilot is now controlling the plane. And trying to control the plane while we're experiencing turbulence. The pilot then tells the rest of the plane, we're going through some turbulence right now. We can't serve drinks anymore

and the flight attendants are going to have to sit down. Can you please put your seatbelts on? Nobody in the back of the plane, none of the passengers are enjoying the flight, no one's talking to each other, no one's able to concentrate on the film they're looking at, no one's ordering tea or coffee. Now everyone is just focusing on the turbulence and thinking about death. But that's what your brain is like when you get an amygdala hijack and your limbic system is engaged.

You're just focused on threat and something lovely and enjoyable like listening to music isn't fun. It's not enjoyable because in order to enjoy music or to enjoy the company of a friend or to enjoy a beautiful day and to feel the wonderful chemicals of happiness, your nervous system needs to be calm and your limbic system can't be excited. So I can listen to music, but I don't get that beautiful, spiritual, wonderful feeling

of loving music that I used to get before the pandemic. I haven't really had that. And as a result now, I'm not searching for you. It's quite painful for me. Similarly I experience writer's block. So I adore and love writing short stories. That's probably my favourite thing in the whole world. The experience of creative flow that I get when I'm writing is the reason I exist. Again I'm artistic so I get deep intense joy from things I'm interested in rather than other people will say it doesn't mean I don't like people I love people but for me, deep, intense, life-affirming joy tends to come from me being on my own, creating things. That's the purpose of my existence.

That's what I adore doing more than anything else. And when I'm stressed all the time and my limbic system is engaged, I can't access that joy. I can't access that joy I can't access that joy and when I can't access that joy it's a toxic cycle so I get writer's block and then when I get writer's block it's hard for me to be happy but the reason I'm speaking about this is that's another thing for you to to think about to maybe bring into your awareness what's your experience of joy like all of us have things that we love doing now it could be listening to music or it could simply be socializing with other people if you're an extroverted person and your

sense of joy comes from being with friends are you still able to enjoy things as well as you were before the pandemic and if you find yourself not enjoying things anymore ask yourself if you might be struggling with hyper vigilance because these things exist outside of our awareness you might just be instead scanning your environment consistently looking for reasons why you're unhappy when it might be an automated stress response as a result of the past two years and what we've all been through so I'm going to have the ocarina pause now but when the ocarina pause is finished, I'm going to come back with solid, constructive techniques that I'm going to use to literally change my brain.

Like I'm going to the gym, but for my brain. To change my brain and get me to a place of emotional regulation. So here's the ocarina pause. I have the Puerto Rican Guero this week and I'm playing it with em a tube of eye gel

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It's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play.

Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. That was the Puerto Rican Guero pause. You would have heard an advert there for something. A digitally inserted advert by Acast. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. This podcast is my full-time job. Being an artist is my full-time job. Being an artist is my full-time job.

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or have any say whatsoever in the content of this podcast. And if they try, they can fuck off, because I have patrons. Independent podcasts are disappearing and being destroyed in this new corporate landscape of podcasts. So it is very important if there's an independent podcast that you enjoy, fund it directly or it will cease existing. And that's any independent podcast that you enjoy.

So before the break, I spoke about hypervigilance. Hypervigilance being the consistent hum of anxiety, feeling on edge, consistently scanning your environment for a threat, overreacting emotionally, maybe being quick to anger, being quick to anxiety and generally not having an off switch. Never truly feeling. Base level calm. Always being a little bit vigilant. So I've identified. That's where I'm at. I know why I'm in this place. As a result of two years of the pandemic.

And what that meant for me individually. You might be grand. But for me. I need to do a little bit of extra work. So what am I going to do a little bit of extra work so what am I gonna do so I need to literally change my fucking brain I need to change neural pathways in my brain I need to stop my brain telling my body to produce cortisol which is a stress hormone I effectively have to engage in physiotherapy for my fucking brain and I'm going to do this I'm going to use

CBT which is a therapy that works for me specifically and which has worked in the past and I'm very confident that this is going to work for me because I've done it before I was once a person with severe agoraphobia and then I wasn't. And I wasn't that way for a long, long time. So because I've done it before, I'm confident that I'm going to do it again. And I'm looking forward to that journey. This time around it's a little bit different. With traditional CBT, when I would experience anxiety or depression, it's because of faulty ways of thinking.

Your thoughts influence your emotions which influences your behavior. This time around it's kind of my emotions that are influencing my thoughts. So what I have to do radically on a daily basis I now have to adjust and change my behavior. On the most basic level this begins with what I'm already doing and that means looking after my body I'm going to consistently exercise regularly

I'm doing that already exercising regularly eating properly and being mindful among my relationship with external substances such as alcohol I kind of don't even enjoy drink anymore, which is shit because I miss that. I've spoken about this a number of times over the pandemic.

I really only drink once a month now, even if I do. I can't get that lovely calm and buzz that you get off the first couple of pints. That's gone. I don't get that anymore because I'm hypervigilant. My limbic system is still too excited all the time. I still feel a sense of threat. So even when I have a couple of cans, that doesn't calm that part of me so when I drink alcohol now I don't get that nice buzz that you get from the first couple of cans I don't get that at all alcohol just makes me sleepy bored and sluggish so I don't really enjoy it anymore but I would love to go back to a place where I like a couple of cans and it's a lovely relaxing experience because I have a healthy relationship with alcohol I don't have any addiction behaviors with alcohol

but having said that because I'm aware of all that I'm not going to be drinking much I'm really not going to be drinking much right now alcohol is unhelpful to me so exercising regularly minding my alcohol intake making sure that my diet is healthy and contains sufficient nutrition and then trying my best to get good sleep and then when it comes to what psychological tools am i going to use in order to change my fucking brain and get back to a place of calmness? Mindfulness meditation, obviously. Even when I mindfully meditate these days, I still can't get to that place of pure calm. But I'm going to stick with it.

I'm also going to engage in more mindless activities. So what caused me to reflect this week, as I mentioned at the start of the podcast, it's when I started dismantling that bush. That was a mindless activity. Quietly and gradually taking that bush apart with my gloves didn't demand anything of my intellect. I didn't have to think about a thing. It wasn't challenging. It was simple physical labor with a very clear end goal. So I'm going to try and do more shit like that. Maybe a jigsaw puzzle. I've got a barbecue that

needs building. I've got bookshelves that need rearranging. What I've learned this week is that when I engage in activities that require very, very simple problem solving and don't require me to think or use the creative or conceptual part of my brain, when I just do simple tasks, I can achieve a kind of a very simple base level calmness where my limbic system isn't being triggered and I'm giving everything a nice little break those four or five hours dismantling that bush leads I haven't known stillness like that in a while at no point in that process did I while. At no point in that process did I start worrying. At no point in that process did I start fantasizing about terrible things that are going to happen. I didn't worry about what other people were thinking about me.

I didn't need to take out my phone to doom scroll on Twitter to see some bad news to confirm how bad I feel. on Twitter to see some bad news to confirm how bad I feel. I didn't need to check a news website to read some terrible news to confirm how bad I feel. All I did was slowly dismantle a shrub. I broke twigs.

It was, felt very tactile. And then I put them into a pile and that was it. And I really learned something about myself. I need to switch my fucking brain off for a couple of hours a day by doing repetitive physical tasks. Now the psychological work I need to do and this is the most important part. I need to address a way of thinking and behaving which is known as emotional reasoning because that's what's creating

a huge amount of problems in my life at the moment. Emotional reasoning. I need to remind myself feelings are not facts. My limbic system is overexcited. I'm experiencing stress. I have sudden feelings of dread, danger, fear and threat. These are emotions that pop up in me frequently out of nowhere. These are feelings and the feelings come up unannounced consistently. When a feeling such as dread or fear suddenly pops up in me, this doesn't feel nice, This is unpleasant. This is stressful. This is horrible. Then my brain goes and when I say my brain I mean my internal voice says oh fuck I feel terrible. I wonder why that is. I need to search for why I feel terrible.

I need to search for why I feel terrible. I must, if I'm feeling terrible, it must be because a terrible thing is happening or I have done something terrible. Otherwise, why would I be feeling terrible? Let's spend a lot of time now thinking about the reason why I feel terrible so that I can confirm it. And this can take many forms.

So when I wake up in the morning and I feel dread the second I wake up I'm not going to crack open my phone and look through BBC news or Sky News to look for the appropriately terrible news story to confirm why I'm feeling dread and why I should be feeling dread instead I'm going to change that behavior when I feel dread in the Instead, I'm going to change that behaviour. When I feel dread in the morning now, I'm going to notice it and I'm going to mindfully meditate and check in with my body

and make sure that my breathing is that I'm breathing in through my nose and feeling my stomach rise and bringing oxygen into my brain until the feeling of dread passes. And I'm going to do that every fucking single morning I wake up with a feeling of dread I'm not gonna search I'm not gonna I won't treat that feeling as a fact it's not a fact I have fucking no reason to feel dread I have some things to worry about but worry and dread are different like I

said so I'm going to change my behaviour. Another thing I'll do is, so social media is part of my job, it's a shit part of my job but because I have a large amount of followers that means on a daily basis just because it's social media people say horrible hurtful things to me every single day. social media. People say horrible, hurtful things to me every single day. Now I've been dealing with this for nearly 20 fucking years at this point. It's part of the job. It's an occupational hazard. Before the pandemic, I didn't really give a fuck. If someone said something mean to me on the internet, I didn't really give that much of a fuck. Now, if someone says something even remotely hurtful to me online, I'll think about it all day long. I'll focus on the mean thing that was said to me and I'll truly, truly believe it. And I'll tell myself I need to quit my job.

My career is over. I'm shit at what I do. I have no talent. I'm useless. Any success I ever had was a complete fluke. It's an accident. Now everyone has found out that I'm completely useless. And this one shitty comment that I saw, that's the absolute truth. And I'll spend a day doing that.

Really, really hurting myself. And this person who made the comment, they might just be a prick. Or they might just have a bad day. or they might be going through their own shit and who gives a fuck what someone called Noel from Tullamore says about me. But the reason I'm taking that comment on board is because I'm treating my feelings as facts. I feel a sense of dread. I feel that something bad is going to happen. I'm scanning my environment for threats. So when Noel from Cthulhu Mawr calls me a fucking idiot with a bag on my head, who doesn't have any talent,

my brain goes, Excellent. Thanks for that, Noel. You have just confirmed the horrible feeling of dread I've had all day. I'm going to concentrate on your words and treat them as if they're 100% true. Thanks for that, Noel. I have to actively stop doing that. I have to radically and aggressively change my behavior around that. I have to catch myself in the moment. I have to block Noel. And then I have to be self-compassionate. And I have to be compassionate toward Noel as well, even though I've blocked him. I have to just go, Noel's well even though I've blocked him I have to just go Noel's going through his own shit

I'm going through my shit I'm going to go out my back garden and slow blink at my cats and I'm going to feed my cats their dinner and I'm going to watch how happy they are eating I'm going to notice my feeling of dread or fear and I'm going to let it pass but I won't be engaging in any behaviours

that try and confirm it for myself. My feelings are not facts. Why am I feeling dread? Why am I feeling fear? Because I've been through a very stressful fucking pandemic. And my brain has learned to do this as an autonomous reaction. And I have the capacity and ability to change that. And then when I sit down to write,

because that's when this shit gets deeply unhelpful. I sit down to write every day for a couple of hours, or try and get a thousand words each day. A lot of that is deeply painful, because when I sit down to write, instead of having fun and exploring my imagination, I get the feeling of dread imagination I get the feeling of dread I get the feeling of fear

and then because I'm writing my brain steps in and goes ah your creativity is gone ah you're not talented at all you're shit at writing everything you've done before was a fluke and then what happens is all the fucking trauma that I have from school

growing up autistic teachers telling me that I'm disruptive, that I'm stupid, that I'm useless, that all comes back and now I'm saying it to myself. You fucking tick little shit. You're good for nothing. Who the fuck do you think you are that you can write a book? You're useless. And that's the inside of my brain when I try to write. And I literally got to catch those thoughts and stop them and not entertain it. And remind myself, my brain feels anxious. And now my thoughts are trying to fill that space in because it's treating my feelings as facts.

I've written two books before that I'm very happy with. There's no evidence to suggest I can't do it again. Stick with it. Now your hypervigilance might present in different ways. What happens if you come home from work and your partner is there in the kitchen and they've had a tough day because they've just been through a pandemic as well and they just look pissed off. They look annoyed and stressed and pissed off. But you're also stressed. So what you tell yourself is they are pissed off because of me. They want to leave me. They hate me. They're secretly plotting about how much they hate me and

they want to leave me. I can tell because their face is all stressed out and angry and it's 100% about me. You're treating your feelings as facts and searching for the reason why you feel terrible and convincing yourself that your partner hates you. So what behavioural change do you make there? Express some vulnerability. Go to your partner and say to him you look really stressed out but you know what I'm also stressed out and I feel like you hate me and I don't have evidence for it

but can we speak about that how are you feeling can I speak about how I'm feeling and now you're having a conversation about something which is terrifying in your own mind and something that you are keeping to yourself and now you're in dialogue with your partner about your mutual feelings of shittiness and through that compassion and fucking dialogue you begin a healing journey that will eventually result in emotional regulation. Because that's what we're looking for here.

Emotional regulation. When our limbic system is triggered, when we're experiencing hypervigilance, we're not emotionally regulated. Emotional regulation is when your nervous system can return to base level. Base level is calmness. If post-pandemic hypervigilance is an issue, getting to base level emotional regulation is going to take time and effort. You have to have

the self-awareness to catch yourself in the moment when you're treating your feelings as facts. And then you have to have the emotional awareness to change your behaviour in the moment as if you're lifting weights for your fucking brain and if that sounds difficult always remember breathing is key

that's the first thing you do when your limbic system is fucking triggered you start to breathe in a shallow way and you're not bringing oxygen into your brain so you breathe in a shallow way and you're not bringing oxygen into your brain so you breathe in through your nose and you and then as you breathe out you feel your diaphragm

your stomach expanding and you when you bring in those big big breaths into your body on a chemical level your limbic system calms down and now you can think critically. Now the idea that your boyfriend or girlfriend being looking a bit pissed off is 100% to do with you. Now the idea of that seems ridiculous. When you're in threat analysis mode, it doesn't seem ridiculous. You're looking to confirm it. But when you calm down, you go, why would I possibly think that I have no evidence whatsoever

to suggest that they're pissed off at me why would I think that at all that's ridiculous but you can only think with that level of criticality and emotional awareness when you're emotionally regulated and breathing is the first step to that the other classic example is maybe your partner gets into their car and says I'm going to the supermarket but while they go to the supermarket they meet their friend and they're taking a lot longer than usual so then you give them a text but because they're chatting with their friend having crack in the vegetable aisle they're not responding to your text immediately. So now you're at home and instead of rationally thinking, my partner's gone to Dunn's and they're taking a long time, maybe they met someone. No, no, no, no. You feel a sense of dread. You're treating your feelings

as facts and then you go, they're after getting into a car crash. They're dead. I can see their body on the ground. I can see their body on the road. Fuck, should I ring 999? This is what happens when we get a limbic system hijack. We feel the emotion of discomfort and we look for terrible reasons to confirm it. The more we catch it in the moment, the more we breathe, the more we bring ourselves down to a level of emotional regulation where we can engage criticality the more we begin changing our neural pathways and one last thing I want to speak about is

on top of this sense of hypervigilance that some people might be feeling that I'm feeling there's also the sense of a loss of identity around the pandemic a loss of sense of a loss of identity around the pandemic, a loss of sense of self. Not

knowing who you are, feeling as if before the pandemic I was a person and now the pandemic is effectively over and I feel like I'm a different person but I don't know who that person is and I feel as if I should continually be trying to get back to the person I was before the pandemic. Now I wasn't sure is that just me that's feeling that now or is it more common? So during the week I went on to Twitter and I tweeted that out. I said, is anyone else struggling with feelings of identity since the pandemic? I sensed that you were a different person before lockdown. To see what the response would be on Twitter. And the response was fucking huge.

The tweet got 5,000 likes. It got hundreds of retweets. Not only retweets, but hundreds and hundreds of people responding to me with their stories of yeah I don't really know who the fuck I am after this pandemic I'm very confused about my sense of identity now I have opinions around that we've all lost two years and that feels very strange and we don't have anything to relate that to like younger people in particular fuck me

there's people who entered this pandemic at 18 and now they're fucking 21 that's insane that's two very important years of a person's life that they never got to live but another thing is our sense of self

and our sense of identity and our sense of who we are and our confidence and solidity in who we are a lot of that often depends upon how much we can rely upon our internal voice so being right, by yourself is basically, it's a non-stop internal dialogue. We have a voice inside our head and we're continually speaking with this voice. When that voice is trustworthy, then you have a solid sense of self. You have a sense of self-esteem. You hold yourself in high regard. a sense of self-esteem, you hold yourself in high regard. If privately by yourself you can ask yourself a question such as, what do I think of me? And the little voice in

your head says, yeah you're alright, you're a good person. When genuinely that's the inside of your head then you have high self-esteem. But if the voice inside your head is consistently negative, consistently searching for threats, if that private voice in your head is afraid all day, after a while you lose sense of self. That's what I've been struggling with. If I go onto Twitter and some fella called Noel from Tullamore says you're shit at what you do you should quit

and then I believe it I literally go yeah he's right then that means my self esteem is quite low that means my internal voice doesn't know who the fuck I am if I scan my environment voice doesn't know who the fuck I am.

If I scan my environment and someone I know, a family member, whatever, is pissed off, and then I look at their face and say, they're pissed off with me, then I don't trust my internal voice. I don't have confidence in my internal voice because my emotions, my limbic system in its heightened state is consistently driving me towards misinterpreting my environment and my sense of self. So now at all times I have a negative opinion of myself, I have a negative opinion of other people and I have a negative opinion about the world and the future. The cognitive triad of depression that's known as. So now when I want to sit by myself and ask myself a simple question such as, how do you feel about yourself? Even though I can say I'm a good person, I think I'm a good person, I

find I have difficulty believing that voice inside myself. It's hard for me now to say nice things about myself with confidence because I don't fucking believe my internal voice because I've been stressed for so long. So as a result of that, I'm losing a sense of self. I'm losing self-esteem and I'm losing a solid sense of who the fuck I am. And if I don't have a solid sense of self, then I don't have confidence. Confidence is the outward result of high self-esteem.

And remember with high self-esteem, that doesn't mean thinking that you're king shit. High self-esteem is, I'm better that you're king shit. High self-esteem is I'm better than nobody else. Nobody else is better than me because humans are too complex to evaluate against each other. That's an internal locus of evaluation. High self-esteem is when your self-worth comes from within. Low self-esteem is when you're consistently trying to find self-worth by scanning your environment. How I feel about myself today depends on what that other person thinks of me. If they approve of me, then I'm a good person.

If they disapprove of me, then I'm a bad person. That's a recipe for discontent and low self-esteem. So what I'm getting at is, if a lot of people are like, I don't know who the fuck I am since this pandemic. I don't have a solid sense of self. Then ask yourself, what is the tone of your internal voice? The little you that you speak to when you're on your own inside your own head. What is that voice's tone?

What is that voice's opinion about yourself, other people and the future? If it's consistently negative and consistently searching for threats, then a sense of post-pandemic hypervigilance might have your self-esteem so fucking low that you're like, who the fuck am I I don't know I don't trust my inner voice your inner voice is like a mirror think of it that way your little inner voice

is like a mirror that you can hold up to yourself and go how am I getting on and if that voice is consistently looking for threats your reflection is going to be distorted and terrifying all right that's all i have for this week i hope that wasn't um i hope that wasn't too fucking depressing a podcast now for july but i really needed to get it out of myself and when i do mental health podcasts like that like I'm not

an expert in psychology or mental health but I am an expert in myself so when I do a podcast like that it's me engaging almost in an act of self-therapy and if I can do that with emotional congruence which means I'm not bullshitting I'm being truly authentic and honest and vulnerable with how I feel, if I can do that, then that results in something that may be helpful for someone who's listening. So that's why I do do that. What I can't do is pretend I'm not struggling with certain issues and then put out a hot take. I have to keep this podcast emotionally congruent and authentic to how I'm feeling each week if I'm to do my job correctly. And even though that seemed like a bit of a gloomy podcast, I don't think it was because I'm actually after discovering something about myself this week

when I was fucking around with that shrub. And what I discovered was a stillness of mind. And I noticed that it felt like a novelty. And the novelty of that stillness concerned me. Because I used to feel that stillness a lot. And now I don't anymore. So I'm going to fucking work on it until I do. Because I've done it before and I know I can.

Alright dog bless. I'll catch you next week. Hopefully with a hot take. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the

same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com.