The Blindboy Podcast - An Intro to cognitive psychology Pt 3

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

Due to many requests, here's a third installment. Also, I chat about why podcasts are class and TV is for crybabies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, you fond Oliver's. How are you getting on? How has your week been? Welcome to episode 51 of the Blind Boy Podcast. Now I know you think because it's 51 that means that 52 will be next week, which it will. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's the one year anniversary of the podcast. The one year anniversary of the podcast is on the 17th of October, I believe. Because even though there's been 51 podcasts, there's been a couple of extra episodes

which are putting the final figure off kilter. Before we continue i've got some i've got some live dates i want to tell you about and tell you what guests i'm going to be interviewing um i was doing one night in vicar street and this now has turned into four nights in fucking Vicar Street, in Dublin, so, first night is on the, fourth, I'm fucking shit with dates now, hold on, is it definitely the fourth,

two seconds, I have to check my DMs, is it the fucking fourth, yes it is the fourth, yes, yes, on theth. Yes, yes. On the 4th of October, I am gigging in Vicar Street. I think that's sold out. I'm not sure.

My guest on that night is going to be Roddy Doyle. Roddy Doyle was initially my guest on the 7th of October in Vicar Street, but he switched around. So, on the 4th of October in Vicar Street. But he switched around. So on the 4th of October in Vicar Street. Live podcast. Roddy Doyle. On the 7th of October in Vicar Street.

One of them is completely sold out. I don't know which. The other one is almost sold out. 7th of October Vicar Street. My guest will be. David McWilliams. The Economist. Roddy Doyle is an author.

David McWilliams is an economistdy Doyle is an author David McWilliams is an economist and now both of them guests I'm really looking forward to interviewing because Roddy Doyle is like he's an Irish institution you know he's a writer like an author and he's also a screenwriter and Roddy's got a new film out called Rosie which I got to see and it's a scathing piece of social realism. Online, we'll say, Ken Loach. You know, it's darker than anything I've seen Raddy do before. But it's about the Irish... It's about the housing crisis, the homelessness crisis,

and it's about a woman called Rosie and her family sleeping in emergency accommodation. And it's almost like a documentary. That's how sleeping in emergency accommodation and it's almost like a documentary, that's how real it is and it's powerful and then David McWilliams he's an economist, he is an absolute

expert on economics so that would be great, and he's good crack and he's got a book out too so I'm looking forward to the two of them and then the next Vicar Street after that is going to be the 8th of November, and I will be interviewing

Emma De Beery, because she's going to have a new book out called Don't Touch My Hair, and I'm really looking forward to this one, because Emma is like a sociologist and historian and a TV presenter presenter and she's she's a research a researcher in goldsmiths and she's a teacher or a lecturer i think in the the african department

in the university of london um but that's going to be good crack that'll be very interesting and then the 9th of November in Vicar Street. I haven't confirmed a guest yet. So basically. 4th of October. 7th of October. 8th of November. 9th of November.

They're my four Vicar Street gigs. And there's tickets left for some of them. Then of course I've got Ulster Hall. In Belfast. And is it the fucking 6th of October? 6th of October. And I'm going to be interviewing Bernadette Devlin-Neklaski who is a fucking political legend

so that's going to be serious crack too em again I think that one's no there might be a few tickets left for that not sure check it out but yeah I'm just really I'm thrilled I'm really thrilled and excited to be doing i never in my life thought i'd be doing four nights in vicar street i never

like even like we'll say with the rubber bandits the our most popular obviously would have been horse outside around 2011 and even then like what did we do the Olympia which is about the same size as Vicar Street and we only did one night now I'm doing like four nights in Vicar Street which I never thought I'd be doing and even more important than that is I speak an awful lot about you know how I didn't like the horse outside days because we were very mainstream and popular but I've realized now popularity isn't really the issue the issue was that I had the wrong audience but now I've got the right audience in that you know if you listen to this podcast chances are like if I met you in a pub we'd probably have a grand chat you

know if you're listening to this podcast we're into the same type of shit so a live performance of any description whether it's a gig or a live podcast or whatever a good show is um there's a sense of communication between myself and the audience. Do you know? There's a rapport. It's very important. You know, if I... You need to have a sense of empathy. And a commonality. And I didn't have that in the Horse Outside days.

I had an audience full of people who I wouldn't really want to... I wouldn't drink a pint with. You know, I wouldn't have a hell of a lot in common with. But with the live podcasts and recent bandits gigs it's much more ah fuck it yeah

we'd have a bit of crack we'd have a bit of crack in the same room you know what I mean so I'm really really grateful and thankful to be doing like

just class gigs and the live podcasts are good fun I fucking love doing them great crack you know it's great to be able to say that it's great to be able to say i'm looking forward to doing a gig because back in the horse outside this i'd look at my calendar and i'd see there's a gig in two weeks time and i'd have um i'd have a pain in my stomach. Do you know, I'd have anxiety and I'd be unhappy about doing this gig.

Because, do you know what it was? It was a bandwagon audience. It's no one's fault. It's just, you try it, you know, you go do a gig, you have to do an hour. And audiences were showing up that were bandwagon and they would literally the front row would scream do the one about the horse do the one about the horse and you're trying to go i have to do all these other songs as well though do you know or else i like we can't get paid we can't just turn up and do horse outside and leave you're after paying paying for a ticket, man. I have to give you a full show.

But we don't give a fuck about the other songs. Just do the one about the horse. And it was hell. Because you're playing to an audience who... They'd just... A lot... They'd get too drunk. They'd have their...

The venues as well we were playing, like, they'd put us on at two in the morning. Audience are pissed drunk. They'd be in nightclubs. The audience would turn their back to us, even though they've paid for a ticket. And then just throw things up on stage. So you'd end up kind of battling through the set as quickly as possible.

And then finally getting the horse outside. Everyone's happy. And you leave. And it's not nice. It's not nice getting on stage to a bunch of people who essentially, they'll not nice getting on stage to a bunch of people who essentially, not hate you, but just have no, it's like, what the fuck are you doing here? Did someone else buy the ticket for you? Do you know what I mean? Like that. But there's, you know, there's other factors too.

And this is one thing I've noticed about just being in the entertainment industry as long as I have, which is fucking 18 years, since 2000. Well, I suppose the first 10 don't count, but I've been gigging, we'll say, for 10 years. There's two types of people. There's people who receive their cultural artifacts via the mainstream media, as in they're spoon fed them, right? People who, they find the music that they like or the creativity that they like, they usually get this from mainstream sources, okay? Now there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Like, not everybody is passionate about music or passionate about comedy some people just they have other interests they don't give a shit and they have a passive interest in cultural artifacts these people are spoon-fed it but

what i kind of prefer because i suppose i'd be that type of person, is the other type of people are people who find either music or comedy for themselves. That's why podcasts are so much crack. Do you know? Like, the joy of this podcast is everyone who listens to it, they kind of went, you went and found it for yourself or a friend recommended it but it's not really being spoon fed to you like i don't i don't have any fucking advertising on mainstream radio or advertising on television if you listen to this podcast you're making a choice for yourself to go i'm actually going to listen to this and give it time and enjoy it when your song is being

played on the radio on rotation or if you're on a prime time rte program you're accessing people who who don't um value or respect cultural artifacts and there's nothing wrong with that i'm not everyone's different people have different personalities you know, like I said like I'm one of these people when it comes to sports like I haven't a fucking clue about sports I'm the prick

who'll turn up if the World Cup final is on and not know what offside means, you know I've no respect for sports because I don't have the gift of understanding it but that's what i that's what i fucking love about the this podcast i think to sound like an absolute hipster wanker what a podcast is i think it's it's craft media right in the way that we'll say with mainstream media it's like fast food okay a mainstream like what's the difference between a radio show and a podcast we'll say

well a radio show you've got a team of people making it these people are just on on wages they're doing a job they're following, so you've got all these people making this thing, not from, not for love, or for passion, or for interest, but because they're doing a job, so you've got producer, sound engineer, all of this stuff coming together to make this thing, and then you have a presenter, and there's no guarantee the presenter actually gives a shit about what they're talking about. This could even be a fucking nature documentary. You know, if RTE or TV3 or BBC make a nature documentary, unless they're going for an expert,

there's no guarantee the presenter actually gives a fuck about what they're talking about. And I think that's the fast food attitude to media. Whereas with a podcast, and not just mine any podcast what you're genuinely getting is one person or maybe two people doing this thing for the love of doing it genuine passion genuine um caring about what they're talking about and what that is is it's artisanal it's bespoke it's it's what hipsters try and do you know um it's the difference between fucking budweiser and a nice craft ipa that genuinely has someone who gives a shit about what they're making and wants to give you a good experience. And that's what a podcast is.

And that's why, it's why podcasts are doing so well. It's why podcasts are outperforming radio. Because we as, I don't know, a media literate society can tell the difference between genuine passion and someone who's just being paid to do a job, and that's what podcasts are, genuine fucking passion, it's why, like, I, I, I tell you what, I bought a fucking, now, I haven't really watched TV in about 10 years since the internet came, came into play, you know, but recently, I got, uh, TV, I tv i got um when i bought my new internet uh subscription recently it was like an extra tenner to get all the tv channels

so i said fuck it i'll have a lash at tv again because uh i do remember fondly remember being being a kid and sitting down and just watching tv whatever's on you just watch it so I've had a television in my gaff for about two months with a load of channels I fucking haven't watched it I've tried to I haven't it's fucking awful it is truly terrible it is nothing but very quick rapid editing and adverts and it's it's very rare that you come across something that's actually watchable or enjoyable or engaging even with like try and watch political discussions like that's not there's no discussion it's three or five people screaming at each other and then that's not there's no discussion it's three or five people screaming at each other and then an advert and there's no engagement there's no

passion anymore and yeah i say anymore because like tv used to have engagement and passion about it like just look at a documentary from we'll say the 70s or 80s if you okay if you want if you want a really good documentary and this documentary was actually a huge influence on this podcast because i speak in the earlier episodes of this about trying to achieve what i call a podcast hug and the podcast hug for me is a relaxing meditative kind of space for you the listener to have where you're truly engaged in whatever i'm talking about and i think what the key is is that i actually care what i'm talking about if i'm speaking about a subject i'm truly interested in it and that's contagious tv used to be like that

look at a show called the ascent of man you'll get it on youtube if you look for it if not you could get it on dvd you'll find it somewhere a lad called jay bronowski i think presented it but the ascent of man and it's it's just like a 12 part documentary from 1974 and it's like it's just an essay on humanity it mixes in history and philosophy and whatever

but if you look at the pacing of it it's so slow and has long monologues and it's not screaming into your face it doesn't demand your attention and television used to be like your face it doesn't demand your attention and television used to be like that because it didn't have competition you know in those days there was maybe three or four channels it's when satellite television came about and you have 180 channels

now that television started to go shit that's when it started to start screaming in your face and vying for your attention because now there's a hell of a lot more competition now what television is competing with is not only other fucking channels but it's competing with several other screens in the room in particular your mobile phone so now your tv is competing with other channels and your fucking mobile phone so the content is gone insane and unwatchable and shrill you know even on what was i watching jersey shore right which is a real trashy reality tv show but jersey shore now if they have backing music on the show,

you know, like music that they play underneath a scene, they display the name of the song on the screen. And I was going, what's the point of that? This is actually, this is taking my eye away from what's happening in the show. Now you've got the name of the song on the screen. I was going, what's the point? The point is, they don't want you taking out your fucking phone and shazamming it because you do that then you're on twitter then you've left the room then you're changing channels so tv is now an anxious medium so what i do with my television now is i've got youtube on it and i

will watch fucking hell man I watched a video the other night for an hour I sat down and watched it because I've got I've got little surround sound speakers as well there was a video of just someone

he puts a camera on his head a 4K camera and he walks around the back alleys of Tokyo in the rain and I spent an hour watching. No dialogue, nothing.

Just Tokyo in the rain and the alleyways. Walking through it at night time. With the beautiful sound of the rain. You know, in the speakers. And afterwards I went, why the fuck have I just given an hour of my time silently watching someone walk around the back alleyways of Tokyo when I've got 60 fucking channels of TV that had writers that had producers that had all of this shit why am I choosing instead this one man with a 4k camera walking around the back alleyways of tokyo and why is this far more engaging for me than a piece of television that could have cost

100 grand to make and the fact of the matter is is that that person walking around tokyo with the camera on their head, they actually care. They are doing it because this is what they want to do. And whatever it was about it, that feeling of passion communicated to me and engaged me. What the fuck was I talking about? Did I start it off talking about how I didn't like horse outside audiences yeah

two different types of fucking people so basically I you know and then I went I found I found a fella

who was who was making these videos and I tried to see did he have a Patreon did he have anything like that can I support him in any way and it's like I cared so much

about that because it's that was craft media it had been made by someone who actually fucking cares and somebody who they're doing it for themselves and if someone else wants to watch that's great there's another person i watch who fucking they eat tins of old food they'll open up a tin of beans from 1940 open it up and eat it for 10 minutes and yeah i'm there i'm there i'm watching it i'm hitting that like button because that is passion right there you know our travel vloggers that's what i watch on my television not actual tv which

no longer speaks to me or any of my sensibilities and I don't believe it seems kind of dishonest but yeah two types of people people who go and find what they like and people who have it spoon fed to them and with the live podcasts I have an audience full of

fucking people who are there at the live podcast because they want to be there and listening to it because you want to listen to it and you like it as opposed to if i had a show on fucking rte i doubt even i doubt any of the rte presenters or radio hosts could even do a live show and get anyone to show up because no one really cares it's just intrusive intrusiveness is another thing too radio and television are intrusive

you don't have agency whereas with a podcast you have agency you're seeking it out you're choosing when it goes on you're choosing how you listen to it and you can choose when to turn it off so

there's I don't know there's a politeness to that that isn't like if you get irritated by a podcast it really and truly is your own fault but if you're in traffic and you turn on the radio and some cunt has been a prick it's you know it's hard not to get angry at that because you change the station and they have the same cunt with a different haircut being just as much of a prick so your agency

is being removed some cunt in RTU now is probably listening to this and taking notes having said all of this I am currently working with the BBC I did a little pilot last year about the housing crisis in the UK, it's after getting

commissioned, so I'm going to spend the rest of the year working on more episodes of that, and I know what you're thinking, jeez that's a bit hypocritical there Blind Boy, isn't it, you're after ripping television's clothes off and pointing out all its mauls. Well, here's the thing. I'm going to be writing this BBC thing. I'm specifically looking for an internet aesthetic. Do you know?

When I talk about television being shit, I really mean TV. There's still class stuff out there like not everything on netflix but stuff that's meant for streaming services streaming television is it's for an internet savvy audience it's for people who are again choosing what they want to see in their own time there's class stuff out there like my the juice what's the juice d-e-u-c-e it's tv show written by david simon who wrote the wire and it's about new york in the 70s it's fucking incredible but yeah i'm working with bbc on this on this thing and i'm consciously going for an internet aesthetic something that has even though it's being made

within a television format it still has the love and passion and my creative hand on the bits and not just someone writing a script for me and me presenting and speaking about something that i don't give a shit about so if i didn't have that i wouldn't do it what's the fucking point what is the point i don't need it i've got this podcast so 25 minutes of a rant about television there which uh see again i didn't intend doing that at all do you know in my head I was going to go. I'm going to talk about a couple of live shows. And then I'm going to get that out of the way. And I'm going to move on to what the podcast is actually about.

But. Here we are. I've just you know. Given my hot takes on the format of television for 20 minutes. But. Again. I've got self compassion around that because that again is part of the podcast

20 minutes of me freestyling about television that's my walking down an alleyway in Tokyo as opposed to if it was a radio show someone would go blind by man you're after going off topic. What? Yeah, yeah, man, you spoke about you were supposed to advertise your show.

You're after talking about you're after deconstructing television for 20 minutes, man. We're going to have to go back and redo it. No, no, that that doesn't that doesn't have to exist in this space. It's just me in a room in Limerick talking into a sock. You know? So it's okay that I just did that. So anyway, what is this week's podcast going to be about? Right, so the last two podcasts were about cognitive psychology.

Cognitive behavioral psychology psychology they were mental health podcasts they were podcasts about tools that i use to maintain and improve my own mental health and the hope was that anyone listening could take something from it and holy moly have you been taking something from it because my inbox is on fire with just messages from you saying that you're you are taking a lot from it and it's improving your life i had one person there just half an hour ago saying that they'd been you know they'd been putting off a driving test for five years they'd been you know they'd been putting off a driving test for five years five years of procrastinating a driving test and by using the abc model of cbt they compartmentalized their anxiety and fear about this driving test put it down onto a piece of

paper tested their fears against reality and now they're going ahead with their fucking driving test because of a bit of cbt something that should have been taught to us in school so i promised you at the end of last week's episode i said to you that's two weeks of psychology now lads gonna give it a rest and i'll do something silly this week but to be honest judging from the fucking mails I don't think anyone bloody wants that and one of the the tenets of this podcast is like I spoke about earlier the conversational element like you as an audience as well get to kind of decide where this goes because i listen to your feedback and i take it on board so it becomes this this conversation and just too many

people said no fucking way the past two weeks um especially because it's been september the past two weeks of those podcasts have been really helping. And I need to know a bit more. So that's what I'm going to do this week at your request. I could have spoken about dogs. Sure, we can do that anytime. So this is going to be part three of the cognitive behavioral therapy introduction. What I'll try and cover this week i'll have a look i'll see if there's any more negative automatic thoughts that we can look at and and i also want to move

on to a huge tenet of cbt which will be pretty eye-opening emotions all right so first off let's see if there's any um negative automatic thoughts that we haven't covered and obviously it goes without saying if you're just dipping into this number three about cognitive behavioral therapy please go two podcasts back start from the start first off what is the general premise of cognitive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy the general premise is the discomfort and pain that we as human beings feel on a day-to-day basis that a hell of a lot of it is quite unnecessary and avoidable. Basically. We feel the way we think. So if.

Throughout your day. You're feeling a. Unnecessary level of anxiety. An unnecessary level of sadness. That this emotional expression. Exists. Because. Your thoughts. How you think. what it's it's not it's not what happens to you it's how you think about what happens to you that process of thinking is what

determines how you will eventually feel so if you can change how you think about activating events in your life then you can ultimately change you can avoid feeling unnecessarily sad or anxious or shameful or whatever it is for you you know and quite importantly it's not about positive thinking because positive thinking is bullshit life contains pain inevitable pain and disappointment and rejection. It's not about positive thinking, it's about rational thinking. And chances are, if your life is excessively unhappy and excessively stressful, you're not rationally responding to the triggers at hand. One little thing too that i never mentioned last week and i should have humor is a very important tool in self-healing right

these are rational thoughts that we can have about about something you know the classic example uh you at home, your partner is supposed to come home at 5 o'clock they don't, they're half an hour late so now all of a sudden you're fantasising about how they're dead on the road or you're ringing up their ma to see if they're dead these are highly irrational things now in the moment when they happen they're real to you but when your partner comes home safe

you get to look back at the past half hour and go fucking hell that was nuts i was actually jesus i thought they were dead that was that was very extreme of me wasn't it it's it's important in hindsight don't be afraid to laugh at your own irrational behavior because that's a huge part of the healing process you know like when i had severe anxiety right when i was in the throes of it one thing that that i used to one thing that would set me off into a panic attack a full-on anxiety attack was my own shadow i one irrational fear i had is i was terribly afraid of developing psychosis right i had a i had a relative i had a relative with schizophrenia when i was growing up as a kid i would hear about this relative and they were in psychiatric treatment and it didn't sound very pleasant.

And that was a source of anxiety for me as a little kid and I didn't know it. And I was hearing the adults talking about this relative and all of this. But that left me with an irrational fear of, fuck it, what if I got schizophrenia? What if I got psychotic? What if I lost control? A huge fear, a huge fantasy, negative fantasy that I would have during an anxiety attack. It was the fear of losing control, specifically in a public place. What if I just went crazy and puked on everybody? Or what if I couldn't control the urge to kick a dog or what

if I couldn't control the urge to run up and scream into someone's face what if that happened and I couldn't control it the fear of not being able to control it would actually spiral me into anxiety because then I'd start to ask myself how you know how do i actually control it and i used to be literally afraid of my own shadow okay literally i used to when you get into the like deep deep throes of anxiety you can and depression after a while you can suffer what's known as depersonalization and depersonalization is when your mental health is so bad that you start to no longer kind of feel in your own body do you know what i mean you don't feel grounded your hands and your limbs cannot they can start to feel like they're not your own and this is it's kind of a symptom of like just the extreme stress like having fucking anxiety non-stop that is fucking draining lads if you've experienced anxiety you'll know that that is incredibly physically demanding on your body on top of that

an anxious person or a person with an anxiety disorder your body is continually releasing chemicals like adrenaline and uh cortisol i think is the other chemical but these are stress hormones this is why when you have anxiety for a prolonged period of time you can end up with stomach problems and shit like that because an anxious person your stomach doesn't want to digest anything it wants you to you know fight or flight so you're releasing all these stress hormones into your stomach it's draining and stress can result of it and one of the symptoms of this is depersonalization so because i had a fear an irrational fear of psychosis or going mad as i called it in inverted commas when i would see my shadow on the wall i would i'd get terrified of it because I would, I would see my shadow and I wouldn't, in my head,

I would do this loop the loop of irrational thoughts where I would say to myself, how do I know the difference between who I am and my shadow on the wall? Or I would see my hand and I'd focus intensely on my hand and I'd go how do I know that this is my hand I know it's my hand but how do I truly know and something as simple as my shadow on the wall or my hand would genuinely send me into a a tearful suicidal spiral

of intense fear where I felt like I was dying. The worst I've ever felt in my life. Because of my fucking shadow. And in that moment. It couldn't have been any more real. If someone else was to walk into the room. And say.

Blind boy. Why are you on the ground with a white face. Shaking and pulling your hair. And I would say to them I can't tell the difference between me and my shadow. Someone might just laugh at that. Because it's kind of gas. It wasn't at the time. It was fucking terrifying.

Now I can look back and I can go that's fucking absurd man. It's kind of funny. And I'm not saying take the piss out of people with anxiety. But for me, a huge part of my healing and taking ownership of my own anxiety was when the time had passed. Looking back at the irrational trigger for that anxiety and my irrational response looking back to it and going that's fucking that's kind of hilarious and what would happen is like i think i spoke before about um you know i started off creatively with the rubber bandits making prank phone calls

and i've got a prank phone call and I would have made it when I was very young I was maybe 19 and the prank phone call is called the bank and I ring up a bank and I tell them that I went into the bank and they burst a balloon in my ear and this bursting of the balloon caused me to have a panic attack and because I got this panic attack I forgot about an arrow that was in my pocket and the arrow melted and now my pants are ruined I was processing anxious episodes when I was doing that my mental health would have been very bad but I was using creativity because to be honest the idea that I would hear a balloon bursting and get a panic attack that could very

well it might have actually happened to me and I can't remember but I was processing my anxiety through creativity and through humor and Jesus I'll never forget how good I felt after doing that prank phone call because at the end of the day what it is that was writing do you know i wrote out that narrative before i made the prank phone call i just didn't know it was writing and i was using the person on the other end of the phone as the straight character to my absurd character but it was cathartic it was and catharsis is catharsis is when you truly process an emotion and take ownership of it and it stops being terrifying or bad that's why a huge part of cognitive behavioral therapy is you know when i was saying last week your abc form write down your activating event the triggering event and

then write down your beliefs about that event and then write down the emotions you feel when you get it out of your mind and onto a page that is an act of catharsis it's an act of relief it relieves you of the stress of having the emotion in your head humor is also an incredibly natural human way to catharsize negative emotion inside yourself. Humour toward yourself is an act of compassion. Humour is an essential... You know, I say it all the fucking time, like, you know, I mean... My detractors will say to me,

how can you speak about something as serious as suicide or mental health with a plastic bag in your head looking like a clown and I'll say of course I fucking can because humor is a necessary and inseparable facet of the human condition it's as simple as that we the enemy of the human condition is solemnity to be solemn is to take a human and remove humor from it make it dead serious you can't have a mental health conversation while being exclusively serious there needs to be room for humor because humor is where healing happens in particular humor towards yourself so if you have been analyzing your irrational behaviors recently or irrational thoughts don't be afraid to fucking laugh at it because what i would be cautious

around especially if one of your if one of your go-to negative automatic thoughts centers around shame like i'm lucky in that i i'm i don't do a hell of a lot of shame i'm i'm okay with uh self-compassion and self-forgiveness i'm just lucky in that way i i obviously was handed those tools in my childhood so i can do six months of you know when I was afraid of my shadow and come out of that and go that's fucking hilarious that's utterly absurd you know I hope to write that into a story someday do you know what I mean um I was afraid of fucking yeah I I got afraid once that I was going to turn into a unit of time. And I don't know how that one got into my head.

But I was afraid that I was going to, I'd been reading Einsteinian physics. That was it. I was very young. I must have been fucking 17, 18. I was reading about the Einsteinian notion of time for the first time this somehow got wrapped up into an anxiety attack and i thought to myself what if i turn into a half an hour because time and physical space according to einstein are inseparable and what if i turned into a half an hour how would anyone see me how would anyone know what i was if you were looking in all the places of where to find me if i went disappearing the last place that someone is going to look

is to look for me in a unit of time and i gave myself absolute anxiety over that but i ended up formulating that into a fucking an idea i haven't used it yet but i i think i'm going to write a short like it's about 10 years old as an idea but i wanted to write um yeah that was it i have an idea for a story about a fellow who gets addicted to wearing tweed and his tweed fabric is so abrasive that it rips the fabric of time and he turns into a half an hour and he has to be buried in a coffin that's the shape of a year and that powerful irrationality I managed to challenge channel it through creativity as an act of self-compassion and self-healing to look at what was previously terrifying and had me thinking I was psychotic and going no

it's grand you just have an imagination and mixing imagination and an anxious personality they're not great bedfellows do you know like if you've read my book and you're going holy fuck some of this shit is mad

well imagine having imagine that and then mixing it with anxiety and that's what I would have been like 10 years ago luckily now I have the tools to separate myself from it you know so yeah self compassion as an important tool

self compassion and laughing at yourself not laughing at other people laughing at yourself and maybe laughing along with a friend if they're comfortable disclosing how we'll say absurd their kind of stuff is so i'm going to take a look now at two new negative automatic thoughts and how we can how we can get around them negative automatic thought is it's just kind of a belief that we each have they're all kind of common um if a triggering event happens it's an an immediate negative

thought that we have about that triggering event which then leads to negative emotions and when these are unchallenged we think that this is just how we are and how the way the world is but with cbt it's like no that's not the case at all so here's one it's called personalizing and it's basically removing yourself from the center of the universe the personalizing as a negative automatic thought it's if if depression is your thing then chances are um personalizing is a negative automatic thought that you hold so here's an example you turn on the news and there's some bad shit happening and you just can't shake a feeling of guilt you there's a plane crash

or a flood and you see all that human suffering and you're sitting down at the TV and before you know it you're in a fucking downer and for some reason you're blaming yourself em what else I don't know

a pal of yours you've got a pal and they're feeling fucking low or a family member and they're just really fucking upset and you kind of come away

from that experience going Jesus I must be a really shit friend if they're that upset you kind of come away from that experience going, Jesus, I must be a really shit friend if they're that upset and I can't do anything about it. This is, you know, I'm so powerless to help them. It must be my fault. And all of a sudden now your friend's sadness has become your sadness. Or, sadness has become your sadness or I don't know again the classic you see someone that you know and they don't give you a correct hello or that you know that they're short with you

and you then think well obviously they're trying to communicate to me that I'm a piece of shit and I've done something to hurt them, it's, it's basically, it's, it's framing the world, and finding a way to blame yourself, you know, and whatever the activating event is, you just, you gotta look at that activating event, and go know what what beliefs do i have what you know if my belief is if my friend is upset like what's the fucking evidence that i am the reason for them being upset i know i feel upset that's not evidence you're like as we said last week your emotions are not evidence of truth if your friend is upset and you come away from that thinking that you're to blame that feeling of shame and blame that is not evidence for the truth so what you do

is you look at the activating event my friend Niall is upset where is the evidence that Niall is upset because of me, what can I do for Niall, and what can't I do for Niall, do you know, if you're trying to help him, could be something as simple as make him a cup of tea, but, you have to as well,

back away, and go, do you know what, Niall's got his own shit going on, Niall is a separate human being, and I, I, as, another human being being I cannot accept responsibility for another person's emotions, I can be compassionate to him, I can listen to him,

I can try my best to focus on having empathy but ultimately I can't accept responsibility for Niall's sadness especially when I'm not the cause of it you know and even if you were the cause of it there's still many options to I can atone for whatever I did to Niall I can offer to I don't know reimburse whatever that pain is I can do whatever but if Niall is still sad at the end of it and you feel you've truly done your best I'm sorry but Niall has to accept responsibility for his sadness you know he needs to

do a bit of CBT around maybe blame do you get me ultimately at the core of personalisation it's an inverse type of egotism you know it personalization it's it's an inverse type of egotism you know it is uh it's a i don't want to say selfish but it's it's a self-centered negative automatic

thought where you kind of have to go i'm a i'm a part of a system here and the universe does not revolve around me and no matter how sad Niall is or how many people died in that flood all I can ultimately do is accept and take responsibility for myself but if there's no evidence that an aspect of my behavior has impacted this situation negatively then I shouldn't be feeling this guilt here this guilt isn't my own it's something deeper and again you go psychodynamic on that you might have just had a fucking parent

you know you might have been very young and you had the type of parent who when they were upset had a poor me kind of attitude I mean that's the thing you know when parents kind of uh hand down these negative things to us it's not that they're being assholes it's just them it's them being them if if you have a parent who is poor me then a young young child will learn that as well my parents sadness must be my fault and a lot of people can have poor me

parents you know because a lot of people their way of dealing with grief is to go poor me and but a child doesn't know that a young child doesn't know that so they internalize it as reality and that young child grows up to be an adult and now all external pain that they see whether it be a flood on the television or their friend Niall who's just broken up with their girlfriend and is upset the child views that through the lens of the parent who said poor me well guess what and this is the beauty of cognitive psychotherapy and cognitive psychology no matter what kind of happens to us in childhood and what we learn once you become an adult you have full agency and power to rewrite your script do you know what i mean

so what other let's look at one more negative automatic thought here's one uh low frustration tolerance and yeah this is this is an important if you want to become if you want to become more successful at whatever it is you do then if low frustration tolerance is an issue that you have it's something you want to definitely want to conquer to become the best version of you low frustration tolerance basically is an activating event occurs. This activating event is usually a source of stress, a demand on you of some description. It could be, I don't know, like, you know, at the start of this I mentioned a person on Twitter said to me that they had been putting off a driving test for five years and then they finally did it by looking at it rationally. It's low frustration tolerance is when you assume that the triggering event, right, is going to be

absolutely unbearable. It's just going to be too hard. Now it can be fucking anything. it's just going to be too hard. Now it can be fucking anything. It could be an exam that you have to do. It could be a wedding that you have to go to. It can be fucking anything. If it's a slight source of stress for you, it could be cooking the dinner.

If you're negative automatic thought, if you automatically think, this is going to be terrible, it's going to be unbearable i won't be able to do it and then as a result of that your behavior is to completely avoid it then that's a low frustration tolerance your ability to tolerate the frustration of a source of stress is quite low so as a result you put it off leading to procrastination now you know procrastination who gives a shit but here's the thing procrastination can be fucking incredibly toxic to your life procrastination can result in years and years of lost potential years it can end up with you having regret do you know and there's a whole separate thing with that now with fear of failure and things like that but yeah if low frustration tolerance is something that's making sense to you

that's one to look at and again what do you do ABC what is the activating event the activating event is I have to go to a wedding at the weekend okay what are my fears it's going to be a load of hassle I'm going to be in a room full of people I won't I haven't

I'm feeling overweight I won't look good ah fuck it what if the cameras are there, ah shit, it's going to be terrible, and all these minor stresses turn into one big ball, well what do you do, you write them all down as honestly as possible, and you look at the evidence, and you say, what is the evidence, that if I won't be able to talk to all these people, none, you look at all the previous examples of weddings and gatherings you've gone to,

and you say, do you know what? I actually got on grand. It was a bit stressful, but I got on okay. And then the other stuff, such as, I feel overweight, and I won't look very good in photographs. For something like that, you might just have to go, so what it'd be nice

if I looked better in the photographs but to be honest so fucking what I'm just going to have to put up with it that is now a source of stress and a source of potential disappointment and I'm just going to have to live with it because not getting into the photograph

might insult the person whose wedding it is or something like that, you know. Like I said, not all of your fears are completely irrational. They can be based in reality. If you're body conscious and looking into a mirror or taking a photograph is something you don't like doing, like, do you know what i mean it's it's a just your attitude around it it's like yes this is unpleasant however it's not the

end of the world the idea that it's the end of the world is is quite irrational and you're also entitled to not do it as well depending on on the consequences. If you're just like. Nah. Not getting into a fucking photograph. You're entitled to that. And you're entitled to say it to the. Person whose wedding it is or whatever. Going.

Just feeling like shit right now. Don't want to be looking at my photographs. Is that alright? And that's up to them then you know. But. You're not avoiding the entire wedding. Basically. And.

Turning it into this big catastrophe so those are two new negative automatic thoughts now what I'm going to try and look at is hold on while I have a little break where's the fucking ocarina alright we'll have an ocarina pause because it's 50 minutes in

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pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at Torontoontorock.com or what happened last week i was roaring and ranting about the housing crisis and then airbnb did an advert the cunts um so yeah also as well something I keep fucking forgetting to ask you, please like the podcast, subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. And if you're feeling very generous, this podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. forward slash the blind boy podcast if you're listening to the podcast and you're like fucking hell i enjoyed this um if i met blind boy in a pub i would buy him a pint or i would buy him a cup of coffee if you'd feel that way there's a way to do it subscribe to the patreon

and give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month and that keeps me going that pays my bills keeps me in a wage and if you don't want to do it that's fine you can listen for free so that's the patreon i wanted to do as well i haven't there's a there's a segment on this fucking podcast that i haven't done in about 16 weeks i'd say where i used to read out don Donald Trump's tweets as my drunk limerick aunt and I've been getting so good at ranting that I haven't done it in ages so

maybe next week I'll do it right now I want to look at some how would I say it I want to look at emotions, I want to look at the role of emotions in cognitive psychology and how you can have healthy and unhealthy emotions. Before I continue with that, the overall goal, like what's the end kind of goal of CBT? Like what do you,

what do you want from it? Well, what it do you what do you want from it well what it is what you really want from it is these negative automatic thoughts that i've been mentioning okay the key word in that is automatic and negative they're automatic in that they are our brains, unchallenged, automatic response to triggering events based on what we learn from our childhood. We don't challenge them or think that they need to be different because why would we? It's quote unquote how we are or how we believe we are. The goal of CBT is to change the negative automatic thoughts to rational automatic thoughts and this is done through not a lengthy process but like it takes time it's called moving things from your head to your heart so i keep mentioning your your abc form so you get a you know a triggering event happens

so I say to you the beginner's guide is you write the triggering event on the piece of paper and then you write down your beliefs about that event and then you write down the emotional consequences of that event and then you challenge all of that against reality, outside of yourself. You know, that's a lot of effort. You know, if you were to do that every day with every trigger, that's a lot of effort. That's what CBT is. It is initially a lot of effort. It starts off on pen and paper.

Then you move on from pen and paper you know when you get get a bit more familiar with your own triggers uh with your own negative automatic thoughts all of a sudden now after a couple of weeks you stop using pen and paper and it goes into your head and you get to learn when a triggering event happens or when when your negative emotions pop up and you stop them in the moment in your head and in your head you go hold on a second now what's happening here i'm predicting the future or i'm engaging in black and white thinking and you're doing this in your head like a mathematical problem and you're going what's the evidence here why am i being so black and white so now it's in your head but eventually after enough of that right and it's called um i think it's called neuroplasticity i could be

wrong about that but this you stop needing to do it in your head and it moves into your heart now all of a sudden you'll find yourself naturally eradicating your own negative responses instead it's naturally becoming replaced with an automatic rational response so now you're not even having to do an abc form in your head anymore you're not even having to cognitively think about this. You've repatterned and relearned new ways of thinking about stressful events. And now it's automatic. Now you're changing as a fucking human being. Now if you fall back into an old trap, just like I said, I keep bringing this back to the analogy of health.

Do you know? Like, you still need to go to the gym all the time and eat properly if you want to be fit, and if you fall off that wagon, stay away from the gym, and decide to have a lot of takeaways, then you're going to end up back at square one, it's the same with CBT, but it just becomes a hell of a lot easier, and I'm very fortunate and lucky in that I sorted this shit out 10 years ago and as a result of that like I went from like I said the throes of anxiety depression and at times suicidal to where I am now and now where I am is I can genuinely look back at the past 10 years of my life and say that I've achieved so many fucking goals. And beyond what I thought I'd even achieve. Now there's tons of fucking disappointment and failure too. But it doesn't matter because my attitude to failure is fucking rational. I don't, failure doesn't faze me because I rationally understand that failure is a necessary

part of success and any success I have is as a result of 10 failures like at the start of the podcast I was talking about how grateful I am that I'm doing 4 nights in Vicar Street that are gonna sell out

but you know there's also another fucking 20 gigs where 10 people showed up do you know what i mean and they're part of that narrative they're a necessary part of it what cbt essentially does to you and i'm going to use a horrible sports metaphor and you know i know nothing about fucking sports if if you look at look at two people fighting on the internet, right? Or not even, just go to your local fucking Supermax at two in the morning on a Saturday and watch two lads having a fight

and neither of them... neither of them are fighters. They're just two drunk, angry men fighting. Those two people fighting, they're just using pure emotion and rage to try and hurt the other person and it's not a fight it's just an explosion of irrational physicality where both people end up injured and even the person who's trying to injure the other person can injure themselves in the process how silly is that that's how we naturally live our lives without something like cbt or emotional intelligence or this awareness

now look at conor mcgregor and another professional fighter fighting they're still in the ring they're still scrapping but look at the control that they have and the calmness they have over their own bodies and actions. Slaps are still being thrown, but they're not emotionally reacting to the slap. They're bobbing their head and weaving and ducking and they're looking at the other opponent's move, trying to go where are they going to go to next, but at all times it's done in a very calm fashion, you will never see Conor McGregor get angry in the ring, you'll see him act like a dickhead at a press conference and do all of this and get emotional then, but once that man is in the fucking ring, there is no emotion, he's in the zone, he's in flow, that's what CB cbt is the opponent is life the opponent is

slaps are going to be thrown lads you you can't get into a boxing ring and not expect the other person to want to throw you a couple of digs but if you are trained and have tools like CBT you can minimise you know you're not going to get fucking knocked out in the first round you'll throw a few slaps back a few of the other person's slaps are going to land but you will calmly navigate the inevitable

fight that you are in and life is a fight but it doesn't have to be absolutely terrible I hope that made sense as a fucking metaphor Life is a fight. But it doesn't have to be. Absolutely terrible. I hope that was. As it made sense. As a fucking metaphor. So.

65 fucking minutes. I'm gonna. This is gonna end up being. A bit of a long podcast. I reckon. Cause I wanna talk about. Negative. And. Healthy and unhealthy emotions.

So again. There's tons of these. I'm not going to get through all of them in this one podcast. So even that sentence, healthy and unhealthy emotions, that's one of those things that if I'm arguing with someone online or I'm making the case for CBT online which I never do I've stopped doing it because it just doesn't make sense saying even saying the term healthy and unhealthy emotion can be triggering for somebody because they go what the fuck does that mean how can you have a healthy and unhealthy emotions emotions are something we can't control but the fact of the matter is yes every emotion has a healthy variant and an unhealthy variant

and somebody who's suffering from mental health issues chances are they're spending a fierce amount of time in the unhealthy version of the emotion quite frequently and that is part of being mentally unhealthy um how do i kind of fucking explain it like put it of cbt is becoming what's known as emotionally literate all right it's truly understanding and labeling what your various emotions are when you're in the throes of a mental health issue like depression or anxiety this is incredibly difficult it's incredibly difficult to understand what you're feeling at any one point but part of the journey of cbt and emotional intelligence this is where emotional intelligence which is a separate um psychological field this is where it intersects with cbt emotional literacy is labeling and

understanding your emotions cbt does a great job of it so anxiety when so you get a triggering event anxiety is triggered and like anxiety is necessary right obviously it exists for a reason but like 90 of the time you're feeling it like it's like you don't need it at all it's it's it's a completely irrational response to the trigger anxiety is when the flight or when the fight or flight response is triggered in the body the uh a very primitive part of your brain called the amygdala or the amygdala triggers your adrenal gland i believe and it releases a lot of adrenaline around your body and then you experience anxiety in nature this is so that you can it's it's it's basically it's going back to your caveman self or even

further it's if you're being attacked by a bear or another human and you actually need to run as fast as you can or you need to fight that person to the death. You know, it's the classic, I've said it before on a podcast, when we get frightened, our stomachs feel like we need to take a shit or do a fart. That's a vestigial response that goes back millions and millions of years to when we used to be lizards. Like, far beyond in our evolution millions of years ago, we were little lizards. So when this little lizard had a part of the brain called the amygdala, when the lizard

got attacked the lizard would actually shit itself because it's body was so small it meant that taking a shit would relieve it of weight and make it run faster and that still exists in us as adults and like shitting yourself isn't going to do much for you now

because we're big, taking a shit isn't going to do much for you now because we're big taking a shit isn't going to remove enough of your body weight that you can run faster but yet it still exists vestigially as a response so anxiety is useful for actual life-threatening situations okay now how often if you experience frequently, how often are you actually in a life-threatening situation? Fucking very rarely I would guess. You could be in the library and you get an intense anxiety attack over whatever, a thought in your head and all of a sudden your body is responding as if you need to murder somebody or jump out the window so anxiety is an unhealthy emotion anxiety as a response to a minor trigger is an unhealthy response so therefore anxiety is is in 99 of the is an unhealthy emotion what isn't unhealthy what's healthy concern

okay you can have you here here's the thing right so anxiety unhealthy concern healthy they both have the same trigger the trigger is that or the theme of the trigger is that at some threat or some danger presents itself okay your thoughts when this trigger presents itself are what determines whether you go into anxiety or whether you're going to concern the healthy version so this is how you identify whether you're experiencing anxiety your thoughts will tend to be your thoughts about the triggering event will be rigid and extreme you most definitely will overestimate the degree of the threat and you're going to underestimate your ability to cope with the threat and your thoughts about the threat increase and get bigger

and bigger and bigger so all the negative automatic thoughts all the anxious negative automatic thoughts are triggered around the threat or danger that presents itself you focus 100% on it and now all of a sudden your behavior you're withdrawing from the physical threat you're going into yourself you're withdrawing from the physical threat you're going into yourself you're having an anxiety attack you might try and numb that anxiety with external substances like alcohol or drugs you're seeking reassurance through safety behaviors and a safety behavior could be like not leaving your bedroom or carrying a water bottle around with yourselves because you believe that if you know true in a water bottle around with yourself because you believe

that if you know true in a maladaptive fashion that if you have a water bottle you won't get an anxiety attack these are all the themes and behaviors of anxiety now let's just say let's look at concern the healthy response to a threat or danger well what are the thoughts you would have if concern presents itself that's still something that's threatening you in some way but your thoughts the concerned person's thoughts are flexible and preferential whatever this threat is you're going yeah fuck it this is a big threat could be an exam you know an exam that's happening in two weeks so your thoughts now are

fuck it this exam is a bit of a threat might have to deal with that might have to stick my head down and do a bit of work uh you realistically view the threat right you're not overestimating it you're going yeah this is definitely a threat it's it's a bad thing it's fuck it if i if i don't keep this under wraps and keep an eye on it, there could be negative results. But still, you're looking at it realistically. You're realistically assessing your own ability to cope with that threat. Okay? And your thoughts are on the threat.

They don't... The negativity doesn't... And anxiousness doesn't increase. As a result of that, what are your behaviours? You don't withdraw from the threat you actually face up to it and you go yeah fuck it i'm gonna have to accept responsibility now and put a plan in action so i can deal with this threat to minimize the potential fallout from it you're not seeking unneeded reassurance you're not avoiding the library because you might get a panic attack you're not carrying around a fucking water bottle.

And you don't feel the need to have a load of cans or smoke a fag or do heroin. Do you know what I mean? You don't need an external stimulus to resolve an internal situation. So that right there is the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy emotion. Unhealthy emotion. Anxiety. Healthy emotion. Concern. a healthy and an unhealthy emotion unhealthy emotion anxiety healthy emotion concern the goal

of cbt is for you to be experiencing healthy emotions as responses to triggers most of the time if that is the most rational response um responding with concern with when someone has a knife to your neck might not be the best thing you might actually need a bit of anxiety there so you can kick him into the face and run away, do you know what I mean so we've looked there at anxiety and sadness

what about depression unhealthy sadness healthy, okay now with anxiety you're like unhealthy sadness healthy okay now with anxiety you're like

as I mentioned it seemed to have like an evolutionary purpose to fight or flight but with depression evolutionary psychology is like

they don't really know what was the point of depression why is it something that humans have some people reckon that again go back 10 000 years humans are living in caves a very hostile world where you know

just stepping outside your cave you could be eaten they reckon that depression was a response to a loss of some description it is it exists to keep the person at home that if a person is sad and upset about some type of loss that they would experience depression because it would stick them to the to the cave and they'd stay and be looked after by the people around them and they wouldn't be leaving the cave where their wits aren't fully about them and getting eaten so that's what some evolutionary psychologists say is that the true purpose of depression but again like anxiety it's it's not very functional or necessary for us as modern humans in an essentially safe society why do we experience the unhealthy emotion of depression instead of the healthy version, which is sadness?

So if you look at both depression, unhealthy, and sadness, healthy, they both have the same, the theme of the triggering event is the same. Loss or failure, okay? The trigger is, it tends to be, be like it can be any type of loss it could be you could lose a close friend they could die you could go through a breakup with somebody that's a loss you could lose a pet you could lose a dream you could you know uh you think you're going to fucking college and you fuck up your leaving cert so now you're not going to college or you could blow a chance at something a loss or a failure and this causes you to kind of to mull and to feel incredibly upset and when this loss

or failure when the thoughts are excessively negative, it'll manifest itself as the unhealthy emotion known as depression. So, a depressed person, how do you recognise depression? The thoughts that a depressed person will have about the triggering event, about the loss or the failure. A depressed person, the thoughts are rigid and extreme. You know, you'll only focus on the negative aspects of the loss or the failure. You'll neglect yourself and your environment. You'll feel helpless and most importantly you will think that the future is bleak and helpless and hopeless, that there is no chance of ever becoming happy again. The focus of the attention is to dwell on that loss or the failure. You

focus on your own personal flaws and failings and you focus on the negative world events. If you're going through depression and you turn on the news and there's some bad shit happening in Syria, that will amplify your depression. You'll focus on that negative shit. A sad person, however, same triggering event of loss or failure, could be, like I said, someone close to you could die. You could lose your boyfriend or girlfriend. You could lose a pet.

You could really fuck something up and fail at something. So these are bad things. Like I said, this is the unavoidable pain in the great tapestry of human existence. These are bad things. So no one's asking you to be happy about it. But responding with extreme depression, it doesn't really help you. It doesn't help anyone around you.

So the goal is that you respond with the healthy emotion, which is sadness it's okay to be sad if you lose someone you love or if your partner leaves you or if you find out that they were cheating on you or if your dog gets hit by a car or you don't get into college or you lose your job these are bad things and it is rational to be sad and unhappy about these bad things but a sad person thinks about the triggering event

in a way that is they're flexible and they've got preferential attitudes my girlfriend broke up with me I'm fucking heartbroken I miss her so much I wish I could be with her she you know

she's not coming back it's definite there's I don't know is there anything I can do to get her back and to be honest I genuinely she just doesn't fucking love me anymore

and you'd have to say to yourself this is shit I'd like to not feel this way but I'm going to have to ride it out, I'm going to have to put up with it you know the person

who is sad will see both the negative and positive aspects of the loss or the failure you know take it back to your girlfriend breaks up with you Who is sad. Will see both the negative. And positive aspects. Of the loss or the failure. You know. Take it back to. Your girlfriend breaks up with you. The depressed person. They're just going to focus.

On the negative. And you know. I'll never meet someone. Like her again. I'm such a piece of shit. I don't deserve. Anyone like her. I. I'm unlovable. That's what the depressed person. That's their thoughts. I don't deserve anyone like her. I am unlovable.

That's what the depressed person. That's their thoughts around the issue. The sad person goes. Fucking hell I'm heartbroken. This is really sad. However. Realistically now. I can't make someone fucking love me.

If they don't love me. I can't force that on someone. This is just the card that I've been fucking dealt and it's shit and I'm just gonna have to fucking, this is the deal and to be honest, you know, why would I want to be like, you know, I think I want her more than anything but the fact of the matter is, if she actually doesn't want to be fucking with me what type of relationship is that is that really what i want a girlfriend who doesn't actually fucking like me and she's just around to accommodate my neediness what good is that that's not a relationship i have to take responsibility for this you know these are that's a sad person's thoughts um a person with depression they've been they've been neglecting themselves

and their environment a sad person will not do that a sad person will go i'm fucking i'm i'm really fucking sad now and i don't want to clean that jacks or i don't want to cook my dinner i'll just get a takeaway but a sad person goes no i'm gonna fucking i'm gonna go to the shop and there'll be tears in my eyes and i hope i don't meet anyone but i'm gonna buy my dinner and i'm gonna go home and i'm gonna cook it because you know why it'll be a distraction it'll be a fucking distraction it's not gonna i don't think it'll improve me greatly but at least it's something the depressed person doesn't do that the depressed person wallows and doesn't leave the bed and focuses instead on on the negative toxic thoughts the depressed person

truly believes that the future is hopeless and bleak okay i will never find another fucking girlfriend again i don't want to find another girlfriend again, because I won't be able to love anybody like I loved her, impossible, the sad person says, it's going to take a long time, before I can meet someone else, I'm very fucking raw,

I don't think I'm ready to go, out looking for new girls all of a sudden now, but, do you know, fuck it, the day will come, when, I don't think I'm ready to go out looking for new girls all of a sudden now but do you know fuck it the day will come when I'm gonna get over her it's gonna be tough and right now I don't even want to get over her because I'm still in love with her

but I will I know I will because I've been through this shit before and do you know what else realistically the heartbreak the good thing about this heartbreak as as as horrible as it is it's a great way to learn about what i do and don't like in another person whatever went wrong with this relationship it's a way for me to assess maybe my own fucking maturity, maybe I'm not ready for that type of relationship, maybe me and her,

you know, as much as I'm mad about her and don't want to lose her, maybe me and her are not really that suited and I need to learn a hell of a lot more about myself before I can truly know what type of girlfriend I want these are the thoughts of a sad person they're not nice but they're flexible and they're rational okay and it to be honest it's the shit that you're going to be saying to your friend when they are depressed after breaking up with a relationship this when your friend is in the throes of fucking heartbreak because they've broken up with somebody or whatever or they didn't get into college the rational shit that you can say to your friend you need to be able to call upon that

in yourself to say to yourself when you're going through this shit that's what cbt is the advice that you can truly genuinely give to another person when you're when you're when you care about them now the thing is like i've i've i've done depression i understand depression i've had it and one of the it's it's sometimes it can be fucking impossible to you know when you've gone deep down that rabbit hole of depression, to even feel anything to motivate yourself can be very difficult. One thing that I used to find that would help me get out of that deep, dark hole of hopelessness would be empathy, right? Trying to have some type of empathy for another creature is fucking fantastic for that

it can give you little glimpses of emotion and this can be it it takes you out of yourself if there's someone around you a family member a friend just trying to do the smallest nicest thing for them making them a cup of tea going to the shop and getting them a cake that they like just something that will result in you seeing your impact in another person it can be going out for a walk and truly going over to a like if there's a homeless person and giving them money or buying them soup or and i know that sounds fucking selfish because ultimately you're doing it for yourself but what it is is it's a true act of human compassionate uh emotional communication a selfless act of i'm gonna give a part of my energy to meet another person's needs and if you don't want like rubbing a fucking

cat or a dog animals are amazing for this shit just getting a little cat no matter how depressed you are or a dog and i don't mean like getting them as in going and getting one now like if there's one around if there's one around, if there's one handy, rubbing their fucking neck and rubbing their head or giving them a bit of food and watching their body language change, watching a cat go from looking out the window to being all furry and purry and cuddly because your actions are bringing happiness in this little cat. That's empathy. bringing happiness in this little cat that's empathy that's the bizarre unspoken human communication of emotions that two people two people or an animal and a human can do

that's a great little um a key to finding emotions in yourself that's what i find find in the throes of depression if you can do something like that for another person for another creature online doesn't count um you know texting your friend something nice i think it really does have to be in the physical space of another being with with body language and unspoken communication that's essential for true empathy so let's's just look at the behaviour of a depressed person. A depressed person will withdraw from other people. And at the far end of the spectrum, a depressed person will attempt to end the feelings of depression in self-destructive fashions, which can be self-harm, thoughts of suicide, addiction, whatever.

The sad person will behave in a way they won't withdraw from other people they will try and seek out others to either talk or simply just to be around another person or like i said those acts of kindness that result in empathy where you see your just seeing your worth reflected in another person if it's something as simple as giving them a satisfying cup of tea um a depressed person they won't care for themselves they won't wash themselves they won't their self-esteem will be so low that they can't see the rationality of even hopping into the shower a sad person will make that effort will still continue to care for themselves will avoid self-destructive behaviors will stay away from substances

and like the anxiety stuff that's easier to kind of talk about when you get into depression what you have to be careful about with cognitive therapy is that someone who has someone listening to this who understands depression it can be hard to hear me talk about it that way and so without it sounding kind of judgment judgmental there's elements to cbt that can sound a little bit get off your hole and cop on it's not that's not the way it is it's it's about depression is often an unhealthy and unnecessary response and we must take responsibility if we are to survive that's it it's not about kicking yourself up the arse it's about accepting and taking responsibility and having enough focusing on enough self-love that you will try to help yourself essentially so the other main thing and i said it in the last two podcasts and i'm gonna say it in this i'm speaking here about

mental health issues not mental illness all right it's very much rooted in my experience. My experience of depression and anxiety, I'm fortunate enough to say, had a cognitive basis. My mental health issues existed because I had faulty and unhealthy beliefs about myself, about other people and about the world. And I readjusted and changed them to become a mentally healthy person. the world and I readjusted and changed them to become a mentally healthy person. This is not applicable to someone with a mental illness. CBT can be used to assist something like bipolar disorder or clinical depression. It can be used to assist it but it's not going to completely solve it. Or know or somebody is suffering from trauma cbt is used in post-traumatic stress but it's not necessarily a solution it's just one one therapy you know people with mental illnesses will need various therapies they might also need drugs

do you get what i'm saying so all of this shit that i'm talking about i'm only speaking from we'll say my experience and hoping that you can kind of take something from it but i am not at all being facetious offering fucking solutions that are catch-all every person is different everyone has different needs and ultimately at the end of the fucking day um this is why we need professional fucking help do you know and i shit on the hse quite a lot because our health our mental health system in the country is quite poor our system there are many fucking doctors psychiatrists psychotherapists working for the hse who themselves are compassionate people working their fucking

holes off trying their best but unfortunately they're trying their best within a system that is underfunded and improperly managed And these people are trying their best. So I just want to say. Whenever I've shat upon our public mental health system. I'm not shitting upon the individuals. Trying their best within it. It's a governmental systematic thing. That I have an issue with.

My chair is going to go from underneath me. Alright. God bless. That was a long one. 90 minutes. Have a gorgeous week. Take this shit shit on board final word on this shit okay um do you know uh do you know if you want to fucking get like to take the analogy back to physical fitness let's just say you want to get fit so you decide to pick up a magazine about lifting weights or you read an article online about changing your diet. Do you know the way when you do that,

the act of reading and learning about it, you automatically feel a bit better and then you leave it and you don't do anything. Self-help and psychology is the exact same. So if you're listening to this podcast and you're taking something from it, be cautious that it's not just giving you a momentary relief where you're listening

going holy fuck i never thought about it that way i wish we were taught this in school this shit that he's talking about wow that's the solution to my issue be cautious that you're not engaging with it in that passive dilettante fashion if you actually want cbt to work for you you have to fucking start applying it and actually doing it like you no one's going to pick up a copy of a weightlifting magazine and expect to grow muscles okay it's the same with psychology so if you want this stuff to have a genuine impact in your life and for it to possibly work for you do out your abc forms do it once a week one thing you don't have to be intensive about it

just say to yourself I'm going to try and identify this week when my mental health goes astray and I'm going to have a go at doing the ABC farm

thing that Blind Boy was talking about and see how it works use your agency to actually do it listening to it reading about it it's as effective as learning how to bench press from

a magazine and then never doing it you know all right god bless go fuck yourselves uh have a tremendous week i'll talk to you next week 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.