The Blindboy Podcast - Bog Savage Dynamite Skunk

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Mental Health episode. I discuss how to tackle core beliefs, which we learn in childhood and carry into adulthood. They can negatively influence how we view ourselves, other people and the world. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

God bless you all, you abrasive kestrels, tear strips through the sky with your harsh wings. Fuck off. Welcome to this week's Blind Boy Podcast. Have you been having a charming week? I've been having a charming week. have you been having a charming week? I've been having a charming week. I am pleased to announce that finally my BBC series is online and you're able to watch it.

And I've been getting really, really positive feedback from it, which I'm quite, I'm happy with that, you know. Because, like, I wasn't expecting I wasn't expecting it like I'm not saying that I'm not happy with the BBC series but anyone who's listened to this podcast over the past year will know that I have been stupidly busy all right I'm a foolish foolish man who decided that it would be a good idea to write a fucking book, write a television series, do a weekly podcast

and consistently be on tour. So, it's been quite a hectic year and I was just concerned that I couldn't dole out my, my effort and attention to each, each project as much as I'd like, you know, but, um, I think I was just being a bit fucking harsh on myself, I was just being a bit harsh on myself, I'm a bit of a, a perfectionist, so,ist so yeah fuck it people are enjoying the new bbc series uh mainly these people are living in the uk because if you want to see my series it's called blind by undestroyed undestroyed isn't a word it's a new word that was made just for the

tv series it means it means i don't know what the fuck it means but it's a new word that was made just for the tv series it means it means i don't know what the fuck it means but it's called blind by understries nice clickbaity title but they're on the bbc player okay so go to the bbc player and look for blind by understries and there's five episodes lads for you to watch over christmas with your families and if you live within you know england scotland wales or the occupied six counties in the north of ireland then you can see it with ease but if you live in the free state of southern ireland then it or if you live if you're a yankee live in america or if you live somewhere in Europe then it's not that easy to see it

because it's geo-blocked you can only see the BBC player if you live within the realm of the English Queen and pay her taxes but if you don't pay taxes to the English Queen then you can't see my series and if you're in Ireland going well fuck you

blind boy why did you go over to England and fucking suck the Queen's tits and make a program with the BBC why'd you do that you traitor because fucking RTE weren't interested you useless cunts so yeah you can you can see it here look if you live in Ireland, get a VPN, right? Or if you use Google Chrome, which is a wonderful browser that will steal all of your data and secrets. But if you do use, and it's quite efficient though, if you use Google Chrome and you'd like to see my BBC series, Blind by Understrice, then there's a Chrome extension called beebs b-e-e-b-s and if you install this extension you should be able to see the bbc player in ireland or in france or in america all right so get a squint at it hopefully those view they count as views as well. Because it's a risky enough programme.

It's fairly risky. It's quite kind of risky in terms of what BBC would put out on BBC Three. So as a result of that, now it's going to be online for like a year. So you can see it over the next 12 months. But BBC aren't necessarily roaring and shouting about it they're not like

plugging it very heavily or advertising it because I think they're just a little bit scared of it which is no harm no harm and

give it a look I am fucking happy with it it's my intention with it was for it to be a mixture of this podcast and then also a mixture of Brass Eye

and the work of Adam Curtis right now I'm not comparing it to them I'm just saying this was kind of the road map in my head at the start. So give it a squint if you get a chance. I want to do. A mental health slash self help podcast this week.

Because I haven't done one of those. In. A good few months. And. Because it's. A week before Christmas I just think it's a good time to do one because Christmas is very challenging for all of us because we're adults and when you're an adult you usually go home to your family at Christmas and this can be quite triggering for your mental

health because you're all of a sudden, you're in your family of origin and old habits and old patterns of thinking and old kind of, the old you can come out and this can be stressful and can make us unhappy and we don't know why and all of a sudden you're, all of a sudden you want brandy. Do you know what I mean? know why and all of a sudden you're all of a sudden you want brandy do you know what i mean so before i get into this i just want to see if i any fucking contractually obligated gigs to plug i better do it as well because it's the week before christmas and i know cunts are looking for um wanting to buy tickets for christmas i have an Australia and New Zealand tour.

Alright. Just type it into the internet. Blind Buy. 2020. Australia and New Zealand tour. Right. I have a UK tour. Same thing.

Type it into the internet. Lads. I have a lot of listeners in Thailand. Bizarrely. So. I'm coming to chiang mai in thailand for a live podcast in i i think i think it's in february don't know if those tickets are on sale yet but if you're living in chiang mai um i'm coming over and doing a live podcast for you all right so keep an eye out for those i my first gig in galway i announced it and it sold out in like a few hours and people were very annoyed so i'm announcing a second date in galway in the town hall theater that should be on sale

hopefully when you listen to this podcast similarly dublin i announced three dates in the sugar club for january they sold out very quickly and a lot of dublin people are saying blind buy i want to buy tickets for my fella for one of your shows and the sugar club is sold out well fear not because i've announced three dates in April 2020 in Vicar Street. Okay. I think that's it. I think that's all of it. Yart.

Okay. This week. What I want to focus on. It's something I would have tipped on before. But I want to give it a proper explanation this week. It kind of falls within the realm of cognitive behavioral therapy, but it's kind of... One thing you'll notice, like I speak about many different types of psychological approaches to the human mind and the human condition. They all kind of overlap.

You know what I mean. And. Most people now today. Who study to become psychotherapists. Or counsellors. They'd refer to themselves as. Integrative counsellors. Which means that they.

They cherry pick. From. All different. The theories of human personality and they pick what works for them or what works specifically for the client that they're speaking to. So I'm going to speak about core beliefs which is officially in the territory of cognitive behavioral therapy but it's also quite similar to what are called life scripts in transaction and analysis which i did a full podcast on but they're slightly different but kind of the same thing but it's do you know what it is it's it's a different way of looking at the same thing and what i enjoy about core beliefs before i explain what they are is

you don't you wouldn't really the thing with cognitive behavioral therapy which i've spoken about before if you haven't listened to my cognitive behavioral therapy podcasts go back and listen to them right there's four of them i believe where i go through the basics of cognitive behavioral therapy cognitive behavioral therapy in a nutshell is how you feel is influenced by how you think your cognition okay so if you experience anxious emotions angry emotions depressive emotions right if you feel this way then chances are your cognitive thoughts your beliefs about yourself other people or the world are also negative so cbt not to be confused with cock and ball torture which is something that can happen man don't ever use cbt as a hashtag on twitter

you'll get away with it on on facebook you'll get away with it on instagram but if you use cbt as a hashtag on twitter because twitter doesn't have any rules against pornography the CBT hashtag it's half like really helpful stuff about mental health and the other half is like lads having their cocks stepped on with stiletto heels or a very amusing piece of equipment called a cock and ball torture parachute which is like a fucking strange leather thing with chains on it and lads hang it off their balls and cock and get someone to pull it

because they enjoy intense pain in their genitals it's a fetish so let's not confuse CBT cognitive cognitive behavioral therapy with cock and ball torture so cbt is your thoughts influence your emotions therefore if you investigate and change your thoughts you can change your emotions which then changes your behavior right it's i have no i've no it the philosophy of it is i have no control over what happens to me in in life but i have control full control over how i react to what happens to me and when that becomes your belief system it's it's incredibly liberating for any challenge that uh faces you in in your everyday existence in life

so the thing with cbt is you'd kind of call it a a band hold on my fucking ma's ringing me i'm gonna pause this for two seconds okay just pause that i'm back now yeah that was my elderly mother uh like it's nearly 12 o'clock at night here my mother ringing me on whatsapp right and then i answer it put it to my ear it sounds like she's playing a kazoo but what she was doing was uh mashing two phones off each other for whatever reason and one of them was vibrating i then interpreted that as her playing a kazoo at 12 at night and then she apologized for accidentally ringing me so there you go um i just need i need to start using airplane mode don't i no fuck that What if something important happens in the middle?

I keep it on silent, but I don't need airplane mode. Fuck was I talking about? Yeah, so cognitive behavioral therapy is, it's like a bandage therapy. It's like a band, as in, it's the type of therapy that deals with the here and now. CBT isn't particularly concerned with exploring your childhood, we'll say. It's much more concerned with how are you feeling today?

What's going on for you? And how can we help your problems right now in the here and now? Okay, so it's a very effective bandage treatment but full integrative counseling you know outside of cbt will probably bring in learning about your childhood as well but there's one aspect of cbt which does explore childhood and that's what i want to speak about today it's core beliefs and it's i suppose you'd call you'd call it psychodynamic right psychodynamic is it's an any element of psychology that is based on sigmund fried now fried is fucking 120 years ago and he's not spoken

about that much but fried's contributions were very important so when you hear psychodynamic today what people are referring to is Freud and it just basically means it's exploring the underlying forces of human personality that are often rooted in childhood experience so this is what core beliefs are it's the psychodynamic aspect of of cognitive behavioral therapy so firstly a core belief is not something you're going to really be aware of right it's it's not going gonna pop into your head as readily as something like a negative thought a core belief is more like it's a core belief is is so and you can have many core beliefs they're so deeply rooted in your childhood that you're just not aware of them whatsoever they operate almost as

instinctual responses and what they are are dysfunctional negative or harmful views about yourself views about other people about yourself, views about other people, views about the world, how things should be, okay, and we're just, we're just not aware of them, they're, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's almost like if, if they're automatic, they're completely automatic philosophies or ideologies that you have learned from childhood that are most likely faulty that are pervasive in literally every aspect of your life and they have been present for as long as you remember and because of that they're not challenged the only possible way you

could challenge them is if you had the opportunity to spend an hour in someone else's brain and then you go holy fuck this person sees themselves and sees the world and sees other people way differently to how i do and they might have their own negative core beliefs and you're going wow this is fucked up so I'm conscious that it's a it's a very abstract thing I'm talking about so let's try and get a few details firstly you know how does a core belief form they form in very early childhood and they form as a result of the relationship you had in your home environment with either your parents or with your siblings okay so different childhood scenarios will result in different core beliefs and everyone everyone has different core beliefs some core beliefs that you have

can be helpful they can be rational but the ones I want to talk about are the unhelpful ones and not only am I going to talk about it I'm going to discuss how can you identify your negative core beliefs

and start changing them because you can this is the beauty of psychology lads this is the beauty of it you're an adult and you are not defined by your childhood once you become an adult you have the choice to completely not be defined by what you learned or what you went through and it's a beautiful liberating thing i'm not saying it's easy but it's one of the beauties of psychology it's so liberating and freeing you know um so let's just i'll give you a couple of scenarios childhood scenarios let's just say your pet you you in the house that you grew up in

you had parents who fought an awful lot parents who were non-stop bickering with each other or roaring at each other or tension passive aggression being clearly aware from a very young age. That the two people who are your caregivers.

Don't seem to like each other. Or don't seem to get along an awful lot. And there's tension. And they're either explicit about it. By which I mean they're openly fighting. Right. Or. They're trying not to fight in front of the children

so as a result it's silence and tension but kids pick that shit up children in particular are sponges for emotion what can happen there is that the child who's in that environment with fighting parents or passive-aggressive parents that child can begin to withdraw a little bit and start keeping to themselves to try and control their environment to be quiet so that the anger that the parents have for each other is not directed at you and the child tries to just be like like something in the background

because the child will start to believe that anything they do would cause the parents to fight Anything they do would cause the parents to fight. Here's an unfortunate thing about being a little child. Children don't have the capacity for abstract and critical thinking. A child's world is very centred around themselves and their parents. So when a young child witnesses parental tension or parental fighting the child will figure out a way to blame itself because it doesn't know any different the little boy or the little girl doesn't know any different if the parents are fighting the child will go well this tension exists because of me and something i'm doing and something i'm not

doing and that can result in an adult who has some pretty strong core beliefs but the adult isn't living with their parents anymore so now like the child if they're like okay i'm gonna just shut the fuck up and then they won't fight and i'm gonna withdraw because then they won't fight that adult then the parents are gone and what becomes the parent the parental object is teachers bosses colleagues partners the world so you have this adult who has a a negative core belief that this this is one of the core beliefs that can result in depression so a child who grows up around conflict like that and tries to moderate conflict and can be fearful of conflict and can internalize and blame themselves for parental conflict that child can develop a very simple core belief that states i am bad i am a bad person because when i was a

child my very presence caused my two parents who were supposed to love me to fight each other so therefore i am bad so you now have an adult with a negative core belief that says i am bad and this core belief will inform all aspects of self all aspects of interactions with other human beings and all aspects of interactions with the world which is a fairly toxic recipe for emotional unease another childhood scenario that could result in in a negative core is, let's just say you had a dad who was an incredibly angry person and they were physically or verbally abusive to you or to your siblings or to your ma. Or you had a mother who was verbally or physically abusive to you um now i define abusive parental behavior for me i i i would define that as as when when a parent's anger isn't appropriate to the child's behavior like it's like there's nothing wrong with getting angry

with a child if the anger is appropriate there's nothing wrong with that anger is an appropriate response if a child is misbehaving or needs needs to be uh taking the task know, but it's an appropriate level of anger. It's not rage. Do you get me? Abusive parental anger is when the parent essentially becomes a fucking child. When the parent is now coming down on that child and it's not conducive or congruent with the child's behavior. It's the parent's own personal frustration. It's the parent's own anger. It's the parent feeling frustrated at a situation. And it's a form of punishment.

It's an internal anger that's now being exported outwards towards a child. Okay? And often in that situation what happens is, for parent it's a cycle of guilt so it's one moment your dad's slapping you or slapping your brother or screaming at you and then a half an hour later they're the nicest person in the world because they're guilt about having lost the rag about having thrown a tantrum about having lost control of their emotions, and now they're directing this lack of control at a small child, causes the parent to be guilty,

and they switch, they go the opposite, and are now incredibly friendly. And that can leave, if you grew up around that, you know, that can give, again, an intense core belief of I am bad. And a real sense of confusion about people. And a real sense of, like, the problem with that one is the polar opposites of a parent flying into a rage and then followed a half an hour later with intense niceness that's incredibly complex we as adults can understand that we understand and read that as here's someone who

doesn't have their anger under control and now they're guilty we as adults can interpret that child doesn't fucking interpret it that way at all a child looks at it from a very self-centered point of view and in a binary fashion which is basically five minutes ago their face was red and they were hitting me now they're showering me with love I don't really know what happened so it must be me and I don't know what I can do to make the love happen and I don't know what I can do to make the the hate happen because they're arbitrary so it must just be me i must be bad so that child develops into an adult who has a core belief of i am bad bad things are supposed to happen to me i am deserving of bad things happening to me and also an intense fear of conflict of any description which can result in quite low self-esteem because

if you have if you're an adult and you have a huge fear of conflict now conflict doesn't mean a fight conflict simply means a disagreement. Conflict can mean saying no to somebody. Conflict can mean being afraid of disappointing someone. If a child grows up in an environment where there's intense anger coupled with love and they're binary. And then this sense of I'm bad or anything I can do will make my dad kick off or my ma kick off. It means that as an adult. Like if you don't have this issue.

If you're someone who doesn't have a problem saying no to somebody. Or doesn't have a problem going to someone and saying I don't like what you said to me you know addressing situations where there might be conflict if you have a healthy view of conflict you're able to gauge appropriate levels of conflict so you know that if someone if you're really busy and a person comes to you and work and says to you um can you do this thing for me if you have a fear of conflict because there's a core belief i am bad or all conflict is bad and someone comes and asks you to do something you're too busy you're gonna say yes okay because the fear is because of the childhood experience is that any conflict means explosive conflict.

Now this isn't something that happens, like I said, this is a core belief, so it's not a rational thing that's going to happen in your brain. But it goes right back to childhood. If I say no to my co-worker wanting me to do these emails, your little child inside you says, it triggers this feeling that says fuck it I better say yes because if I say no all hell is going to kick off whereas if you don't have an issue with conflict because you didn't grow up in that type of household you're quite able to say no I'm too

fucking busy and you're able to know that the person will probably respond at most with disappointment and disappointment is okay because you don't have a fear of conflict but if you have a fear of conflict you can't empathically and correctly gauge and measure the other person's is this making sense so essentially a core belief is a way of viewing reality that you develop from childhood experiences that acts as like a lens or a filter that colours how you interpret everything in the world and all the other people in it. Okay?

It's like wearing a pair of fucking shades that only lets you see things in one colour and you never question it. And other people have different colour shades and you don't know what it's like to put on their shades and see the things through their eyes. Right?

But, they're just fucking glasses. You can take them off. But it's like the glasses are glued to your head and you don't know that they're there. Do you get me? Before I continue on to some more core beliefs and how to deal with them, we'll do a very quick ocarina pause so you can be sold some bullshit mother mother of what is the most terrifying six six six is the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only in theaters april 5th 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 Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. I don't like that one. That was the ocarina pause. That's where adverts go. Also, if you're enjoying the podcast, lads podcast is supported by you the listener via the patreon page if you can afford to give me the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month because this podcast i put it out for free and if you can afford to do it and become a patron

please do because it it changes my life massively it gives me the freedom to create uh the art that i want to create without having to worry about it being received or not like i was talking about my bbc series at the start there like i was able to make a really risky program and obviously if people like it that's nice but i don't give a fuck if no one watches it it's not that i don't give a fuck it doesn't matter if that bbc thing flops it doesn't matter because i have the patreon that gives me my wage that's where my money comes from so it doesn't matter you know it'd be nice if it succeeded, but had I gone to make that series, and I had an attitude of, this must succeed, then I can't create in that environment, nobody can,

then I've got pressure, do you know, so the Patreon allows me to, to fucking enjoy myself, to know where my fucking next, where my paycheck is coming from and to be as creative as possible with all of my art because i can fail and take risks if you can't if you're trying to be an artist and trying to be creative in whatever you do you have to be able to fail and take risks because that's where creativity lives creativity does not live in in an environment where failure is not allowed because then you're using that logical rigid part of your brain you can't do that you got to be having fun do you get me so please um contribute to the patreon if you can and you know why do i say it every week? Because people come and go. Some people join, some people leave.

So I got to keep plugging it. And the Patreon is what keeps this podcast free. And it's what keeps me doing it every single week. And it's an absolute pleasure. And thank you to anyone who's contributing to it. Just thank you so much. It makes a massive difference to my life. God bless you.

Right. On to more of these core beliefs so many childhood scenarios can result in negative core beliefs if you grew up if you experienced your parents getting divorced, if when you were a child you were around a death, if someone close to you died and you had to deal with the trauma of death and being too young to fully understand it, the death of a pet, if you were bullied, if you felt that you were abandoned by a parent,

and that could be... I mean, abandonment doesn't have to here's the thing it doesn't have to mean literal fucking abandonment it can mean that a fucking recession hit and your dad had to fuck off to London for a year to get work and send it back the unfortunate thing there with a young child is not always but like I said when a child doesn't have the critical capacity and awareness of self to understand parents behavior if a dad goes off to london for a year the child may interpret that as abandonment even though it's anything but the child will experience it as stress and experience it as

I have been abandoned or I have been rejected and I like I don't want to be freaking people out I mean the thing is

there's no such thing as a perfect childhood there's no such thing as a perfect childhood and even's no such thing as a perfect childhood. And even over-parenting and being over-compassionate can have its problems too. All I can say to you lads is, suffering and pain are inevitable parts of the human condition. So I'd be very surprised if anyone listening to this podcast doesn't have some degree

of a negative core belief that colours how they exist and how they perceive the world there's no such thing as a perfect childhood it doesn't exist you can have absolutely terrible childhoods

which are the exception and you can have very nice childhoods but we pick shit up we filter things as children through our own little child lens and these come on board as emotional baggage

that isn't going to be helpful for us and this is part of being alive this is part of human existence so even if you're listening to this as a parent and you're worrying about your own kid I mean obviously don't be fucking flying off the handle

and engaging in rage around your child shit like that that's stuff you have to take responsibility for and you have to take ownership of but when it comes to you have to fucking leave for and you have to take ownership of, but when it comes to, you have to fucking leave for six months to do a job, don't, you can't control that, you're doing the best you can to provide for your family,

so don't be worrying about that, try your best to explain to the child, I'll be back, don't do it like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But you know what I mean. Don't be freaking out too much. Pain, disappointment, baggage. This is all part of the tapestry of being alive. And we all have the capacity. It's part of the journey of finding meaning in life. To identify these things within ourselves and conquer them.

Do you know? That's part of the tapestry of human existence. It's finding meaning. It's finding yourself so let's just say so the core belief i spoke about before the ocarina pause with someone who grew up around a lot of conflict or around a lot of aggression and how that person would grow up to be an adult that has a core belief of i am bad i am bad and bad things are supposed to happen to me that person is at risk of uh depression we'll say that person is at risk of because see core beliefs this is what cause negative automatic thoughts and negative automatic thoughts are what cause negative emotions, which cause negative behaviours.

So the person whose core belief is I am bad, they will interpret and focus on their world through the lens of their own perceived badness. They'll start to blame themselves for things, they'll start to believe they're deserving of rejection, all of this, this is what will lead to somebody experiencing what we call depression. Okay? What about someone who is anxious?

What about someone who suffers from anxiety or panic attacks? What core beliefs might that person have and maybe what type of childhood experiences had they that would inform these core beliefs well like let's just say someone who has uh social anxiety okay someone who an adult who suffers social anxiety they could have been raised in an environment where uh they experienced social humiliation bullying is a classic example there the child leaves the house they go to the playground and all of a sudden someone's been a prick to them. You know, that child who's been a prick could come from a house whereby, you know, they could be the child who's coming from the house where they're witnessing physical abuse

and their way of relating to other people is to make them feel pain. But let's just say a child experiences bullying, humiliation, being laughed at, something very embarrassing at a young age where they're the center of a spectacle or attention or shame or humiliation and that can happen in childhood that child then can start to develop a core belief, which is a fear of rejection, a belief that they're not good enough, that they don't belong, and a belief that they don't feel safe. and they'd believe that they'd behave in an embarrassing manner in all social situations that when that child grows up to be an adult that their memory their internalized memory of bullying or humiliation or being embarrassed in front of a lot of people that they'll grow up to be an adult where their big big fear is put me in a social situation and I'm gonna fuck up I'm gonna fuck up I'm gonna embarrass myself I'm going to become the center of attention and humiliation because my core belief is I'm not good enough I'm an embarrassment

and the world is not a safe place social situations are not safe so in order to protect themselves this adult starts to avoid social situations they become withdrawn you know and this is one for me you know that rings true a lot for me um as you know like i suffered with fairly bad anxiety so as someone who suffered anxiety i had the core beliefs of a person who would suffer from anxiety the other thing as well is you know if you experience a lot of panic attacks you can have a core belief whereby you know you you feel you need to be in control all the time. You might feel that you're a failure or you can feel that you're not deserving of love. For me, I would have had a core belief of, I'm weak and I'm not good enough.

That would have been a real core belief of mine I'm weak I'm not good enough and other people are better than me and I kind of would have developed that because I think I was born with pretty bad asthma I was born with very very bad asthma and my parents were elderly and they come from a generation whereby if a doctor or a priest or a teacher says something then these people are pillars of the community and they're to be believed so when I presented with asthma at a young age a doctor like my dad was an anxious person anyway, a doctor would have said, now this asthma is fairly serious, so professionally I have to tell you that there might be a risk of death. That doesn't mean I was going to fucking die, but it meant that my parents were very, very cautious that I didn't have an asthma attack and die. And what this meant is that when I was at a very, very young age,

the doctor would have said such things as, you know, my dad would have said to the doctor, well, what's going to cause him to have an asthma attack? And one of the things was, if he exerts himself if i was to run too fast or run too long and then get out of breath that this could trigger an asthma attack and this asthma attack could kill me now that's pure worst case scenario because it never really happened i i never had any severe asthma attacks but it's a risk when you have chronic asthma as a child that's a risk and a doctor has a responsibility to say that to a parent. So what happened was my dad and my ma became incredibly fearful that I would over-exert

myself, have an asthma attack and die. So when it came to me wanting to test my boundaries with my peers. When it came to me being four or five and all my friends are out on the road playing soccer. I was told by my parents don't run as fast as they're running. Don't stay out as long as they're running. don't run as fast as they're running don't stay out as long as they're running you know it gets to the the winter evenings and you can smell the chimneys in the air you know like this is limerick city like so there's a lot of chimneys a lot of people burning coal so in the cold winter evenings the the cold smog hangs in the air and when i was like five or six that cold chimney air would it'd flare up my asthma a little bit I'd start to get shorter breath and cough a little bit and I was able to deal with it I didn't give

too much of a fuck about it I'd start wheezing a little bit maybe I needed my inhaler but when my parents saw it my dad in particular he'd just be like you have to get in the cold air is going to kill you and he'd use those words get in the cold air is going to kill you don't run if you run too fast you're going to die it's going if you overexert yourself, it's going to kill you. And I was told from a very young age that to do these things meant death. Now my dad was exaggerating. He was using hyperbole and he wasn't using the best amount of emotional intelligence

to understand that if you tell a fucking three-year-old that the smell of smoke in the air is going to kill him, the three-year-old or the four-year-old is going to believe that to be the absolute truth. So I internalised that. But what I internalised was, it wasn't that cold air is going to kill me, it wasn't that fucking playing soccer with my friends was going to kill me.

What I internalised it as was, I'm not the same as everybody else because I'm weak. I can't participate in what's normal because I'm weak. And I'm less than everybody else. And everybody else is better than me. And if I attempt to participate, if I attempt to rise to their level, to the base level of normal, I'm going to die. to rise to their level to the base level of normal I'm going to die and the other fucking children too would would notice because my dad was highly a very eccentric man they'd notice that my dad's like roaring out into the field at me going you're gonna die you're gonna die and then I get

slagged over it so I'm now getting picked on and bullied because ah if he fucking runs he's gonna die and then what happens too is when you're a young lad especially in in like limerick you have to kind of get into fights with people you kind of have to just have the odd little scuffle and if someone comes up and throws a slap at you you have to throw a slap back and that's it's not necessarily healthy but that's the way things are with groups of of young lads certainly the group that i i grew up with and i couldn't because they were all told either because my because my dad went to their dad's or something, but if I got into a fight,

or if someone put me in a headlock, then I would die. So I wasn't allowed to get a slap into the face. And if someone hit me, it was like, you'll kill him if you hit him. So all of this, I started to absorb this identity of being this incredibly sick weak human who was not

as good as everybody else and who can't participate in normal activities that whatever everyone else is doing I can't do it I have to be one step back. I have to be, when they're playing soccer, I have to be sitting down with my book. And I'm reading my book or I'm drawing and watching them play. Because I'll die if I play. So then, as an adult then, 18, 19, what happens? I'm fucking getting severe panic attacks when I go to the pub. When my friends in college are going to the pub. severe panic attacks when I go to the pub, when my friends in college are going to the pub,

I'm getting severe panic attacks at the idea of being an adult who stands on their own two feet, I'm getting panic attacks at the concept of being an autonomous adult who lives their life normally, because internally it meant death, my core belief was you are weak you are incapable and you're going to fucking die and my panic attacks would manifest themselves as either the utter fear of public humiliation like puking in a shopping center or going mad or when i'd get a panic attack i just my brain would be saying oh you're dying now dying now. This is what death is. It's happening right now. This panic attack is killing you. You're dying.

And I just withdrew from all social situations and just stayed in my fucking room. So, because I had a core belief of you are weak, you are deserving of humiliation and you're not as good as everybody else. You can't participate normally you you must be one step behind and observe and that was incredibly unhelpful but that's not how I am now because through years and years of of cognitive behavioral therapy of self-help, of work, of working on my self-esteem, like that makes shittier fucking self-esteem, I'd know self-esteem, none, but it's not an issue now because I've worked on it, in fact to be honest, what I now have to be mindful of, and this is, again this is the fucking beauty of psychology ladsads. This is the beauty of it.

I do not have the core belief that I am weak or less than anybody at all. Gone. Because I've identified it, eradicated it, tested it against reality, exposed it for being an absolute, unhelp untruthful lie and now i actively work against it and what i have to be mindful of now and what i have to exert caution around is i've beaten my core belief into such fucking submission that if ever i see it poking its head up I like slap the fuck out of it and rise up to it and that's

when I start this podcast by saying you know last year I'd managed to overwork myself I'd managed to take on fucking writing a book, writing a BBC series and all of this the part of me that takes on all this work is is is a reaction to my core belief sticking its head up so if i get a phone call that says to me we want you to write a 90 000 word book

in a year if that little core belief comes up and says no you're not good enough no no no you're weak no you won't be able able to do that write a book that's what other people do you're weak you're not one of them so when that pops its head up i box it into the fucking face and say yeah i'm gonna write a fucking book or if the a series comes towards me i'm gonna go yeah i'm gonna do it because i'm angry with the part of myself that considered myself weak or considered that this this is for other people and not me and i now have to be mindful around that because i have to ask myself hold on a second here am i taking this work on as a personal crusade against a former part of myself. Or do I actually need it. And do I have time to execute it.

And do it properly. So that's the new. Thing I have to be aware of. Which isn't entirely healthy. If I'm taking a piece. If I'm taking a challenge on. From a position of spite or anger. Towards an earlier version of myself.

That's not the healthiest thing in the world either, you know. So that's the core belief that can lead to social anxiety, an issue around panic, things like that. So how do we address core beliefs? How do we identify our negative core beliefs and how do we address them and change them so one way of doing this is you use what's known as the downward arrow now if you've listened to my other previous cognitive behavioral therapy podcasts you'll know that a crucial thing with cognitiveal therapy is writing down your thoughts.

You have to kind of at the start have a pen and paper to really honestly write down the thoughts that enter your head. To put them down on fucking paper and to be real honest with yourself. And if you want to throw that paper in the bin or throw it into the fire afterwards you can. No one has to see it. This is yours. Don't lie to yourself on the page. So let's just say you grew up in a house where you had parents who expected an awful amount out of you. If you had parents who maybe they were high achievers

or maybe everything they spoke about was achievement based. Maybe they really expected you to do brilliantly at school or they expected you to be brilliant at sports. And any time you did these things you received a huge amount of love and praise. And then when you failed at these things or didn't do them you didn't receive love and praise. okay that can result in an adult who places their fucking self-worth in pleasing their parents based on what their parents valued so let's just say it was academia let's just say you grew up in a house where fucking i don't know your ma's a university lecturer and your dad's a doctor. This is one of those kind of ones that would happen to someone who grew up with a bit of economic privilege.

So you're in college and with these negative core beliefs, like I said, they're filters that you can't see. or with these negative core beliefs like i said they're filters that you can't see they just exist as a home of around your whole being that filters how you view yourself how you view other people and how you view the world but they they bubble up as negative automatic thoughts and a negative automatic thought is an autonomously negative response to a situation so like i just said for me um someone offers me a fucking book or someone offers me a gig and a little voice comes up and says you're weak you're not able that's a negative automatic thought pops up out of nowhere as a reaction you're weak you're not able which is informed by my core belief and it's my responsibility to catch the negative automatic thought and go fuck you you're not the truth there's another way of looking at this but so

you grew up in a house where your parents valued academia very heavily where if you did well in school you received a massive amount of love and praise and if you didn't you didn't receive love and praise so now you're 20 and you're in college and there's an exam coming up at the end of the year and your negative automatic thought is i'm not gonna fucking pass this exam i I'm just not going to pass this fucking exam. It's too hard. I'm not going to do it. I'm terrified of this exam. Fucking terrified. So when that negative automatic thought comes up, the downward arrow method, you write the fucking thing down, you write it down, and then you say underneath it what does this negative

automatic thought mean to me what does it say about me and if you're really honest the answer will probably be i've disappointed my parents again and i'm going to disappoint my parents what's the fear that comes into your head do you know what I mean I'm gonna disappoint my parents my dad's gonna kill me my dad's gonna be my dad's gonna be so disappointed in me they won't love me and then you say to yourself what does disappointing my parents mean about me and the answer could be every time I try to do something well, I fail. And then you keep going down. Well, what does failure say about me?

What does failure mean to me? And the answer could be, I'm a failure. And that right there is your core belief. You quiz the negative automatic thought negative automatic thought comes in your quick negative reaction i'm weak i can't do this what does this mean to me like if it was me and it's like I'm weak well what does

that mean to me to me that would mean I'm not as good as everybody else well what does not being as good as everybody else what does that tell me

about me well it means that like i'm i have asthma and if i try things i'm gonna die all right well what does that mean about me and then you go further and further and then i'm thinking oh fuck yeah that's what was said to me when i was three or four you follow it down you keep asking these questions until you get right down to like your early childhood experience and how you were raised or what your relationship was like in the house and when you do it really honestly on the page, you'd be surprised at how you can go back and you have that eureka moment and if you're kind of, if you're asking

like, you know, what's the fucking point? How does this change anything? What it does is, these core beliefs and these negative automatic thoughts, right? They only have power when they're operating behind the scenes. And this is where we bring the psychodynamics into it you know i said at the start the psychodynamic aspect the freudian aspect core beliefs negative automatic thoughts they operate in your unconscious mind the the part of your mind that you don't really access on a day-to-day basis and the closest you get to it is in your dreams right we as humans operate on the conscious mind

which is the part of you right now that might be hungry or the part of you that's aware that you're listening to my podcast the subconscious mind which are the pre-conscious which is the part of you that can remember what you did last t Tuesday but then you've got the fucking unconscious mind which is this deep deep well the huge all the data of your brain and everything that ever happened to you as a child is in the unconscious mind and this operates unseen and it pulls the strings of the pre-conscious and the conscious mind but when something from the unconscious is brought to consciousness and you can see it it loses power because now you can identify it so this downward arrow method of trying to find your your core beliefs or your negative automatic thoughts by referencing to your childhood you're dragging it out of the depths and getting a look at it and going fucking hell is that is that what you are

do you know it's it's like do you know what it is lads it's and this is just coming to me now do you know when you have a like a tiny bit of glass in your foot something or a little stone or a tiny twig one of those pains some something that's pricking your foot right whereby the pain is so tiny that you don't really register it and you can be going around your whole day and you've actually got a sore fucking foot but the pain is so small that other shit distracts you so you're not saying to yourself oh fuck it my foot is sore you're just kind of this tiny prick pain in your foot it's slightly influencing how you walk it's slightly making you a little bit annoyed it's bringing your mood down and it's this tiny thing in your foot but it's so small you don't really consciously

know it's there and then and it can it could be like the end of the day or it could go on for two fucking days or it could be a stone in your sock and then you finally clicks with your gun fucking hell is there something in my foot and you take your shoe off and you and you see it and you go you little fucking prick you little thorn you little stone you've been pissing me off all day and I knew you were there but I didn't know you were there like I did and I didn't now that I can see you I'm really aware of how much you've bothered my day now that I have you in my fucking hand but when I didn't really know you were there and you were just causing this this low humming pain in my foot that was causing me to be have a bad day then you had power but now you don't have fucking power because now

you're in my hand and i can see that you're just a tiny little stone that's core beliefs that's negative automatic thoughts when you can identify them name them and and the part of the brain so like that visual metaphor i used just there where i'm like you know you're physically taking this little stone out of your sock the part of the brain that does does that in in an abstract sense right because that's a physical act that's using your fucking hands and we're talking about a stone when it comes to negative automatic thoughts and core beliefs these are wildly abstract concepts. You can't see them, you can't smell them, they're abstractions.

Well, what stops something becoming a pure abstraction is language. So your hand that's picking the stone out of your foot, that's words. So when you write it down and you get to the bottom of it and you go, I am weak, I am weak because i had this experience you've now placed words on a on a fucking abstract feeling and when you place words on an abstract feeling it leaves the unconscious mind and becomes something very understandable and digestible that exists in the in the conscious and pre-conscious fucking mind. Do you get me? And then you can fucking manage it.

And then what do you do when you have it? You have your negative core belief, you have your negative automatic thoughts, and again, go back to the other CBT podcast for this shit, you start to challenge these beliefs about yourself against reality where is the evidence that I am a bad person

where is that evidence how do I know I'm a bad person what am I basing this on because my fucking parents got married too young and used to scrap in front of me and I think I'm a bad person if you're that person who suffers from from that particular negative automatic thought you're able to go you're able to forgive your parents then

you're able to see them as as human beings who are fallible you know because you have to bring compassion into it and then you're no longer that fucking three year old who is blaming themselves because conflict existed in your household because that's the thing that little three year old

that negative automatic thought that will stay with you like the fucking stone in your foot well into your fucking, you could be 70 and still going around with that shit and you think you're a bad person and you think you're deserving of being treated like shit and you're meek

and you're terrified of failure and you never get what you want because you're so scared of conflict and you feel deserving of being treated like shit that little three year old won't ever leave you but once you can name it and once you can place yourself back into that three year old's shoes

and place yourself back into the kitchen where your parents were arguing and view them as fallible adults who aren't perfect that's the other thing And view them as fallible adults who aren't perfect. That's the other thing. The child looks at the parent as this perfect being who's infallible. And then you become an adult and you go, no, they weren't infallible at all. They were just regular human beings winging it every single day, just winging it. Trying their best at being parents.

And all that reflection and compassion and empathy that's what eradicates these things that's what get that's what stops them being a fucking problem and then what do you do you go okay my negative core belief is that i'm weak how do i what's a better one a better core belief and this is the one that I try and have right now, I don't call it the exact opposite, I don't tell myself I'm strong, because I'm not strong, and strength, because strength is rigid, and rigidity is, you never want to go to, you never want to be in a position of rigidity, because life isn't rigid, life contains pain, life contains rejection, and disappointment disappointment so you have to be

flexible so what's the flexible version of i am weak the flexible version is i'm as good as everybody else no one else is better than me and whatever the fuck challenge i'm given i have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that I'm not as good as anyone else to participate maybe when it comes to things like fucking soccer like I'm never going to be good at soccer all right I'm never going to be good at maths but when it comes to something that's within my realm something that has to do with creativity or intellectual skill then I can say to myself skill then i can say to myself not i am weak i can't i say i'm i'm i'm able to cope and the worst that can happen is that i fail and so what if i fail sure isn't that part of fucking creativity so that's where i try and move it towards a rational flexible. If your core belief is, I am bad,

you don't try and go, what's the opposite? I am good. Because what does that even mean? Instead of something which is as rigid as I am good, you go for, I'm deserving of love. Because that's better than I'm bad.

I'm deserving of love. There's more flexibility within that. Because everyone's deserving of love. Every fucking single person who has intrinsic human value is deserving of love. We're social animals. There you go. Humans can't exist in isolation. We deserve love.

So you go, identify the core belief and then challenge it with words and find a new rational flexible core belief that can respond to the challenges of human existence and if you just practice it and do it all the time and you start off with writing doing it on the page after a while the you know neuroplasticity in the brain it starts to become the new core belief and the old one is forgotten and and now you're in the position of no matter what the fuck happened to me when I was a child it does not define me as an adult there you go was there anything else? there's quite a bit more in my notes but I don't want to

I might revisit it at another podcast if you want because that's just over an hour there alright thank you so much look i hope you fucking enjoyed it again again with any podcast like that i love doing those podcasts because that's a form of therapy for me as well um mental health is always a consistent and continual fucking journey, there's no such thing as being cured, all you can ever do is cope and manage and flexibly deal with whatever life throws at you,

but there's no cure, that's bullshit, there's no cure, what there is is tools, so when I'm fucking sitting down talking to you ye I'm going over shit that I've had to go over many many times and I'm sharpening my tools that's what I'm doing I'm sharpening those tools making sure they're in the right place

and making sure I still know how to use them so there's an element of therapy for myself as well and it's just I think it's a good one to put out before Christmas because here's the thing you might be doing alright now and you're living

away from home and you've got your own life when you go back to that fucking Christmas dinner table next week and it's you and your parents and your fucking siblings and the whole shebang that can bring those core beliefs back up And your parents. And your fucking siblings. And the whole shebang. That can bring those core beliefs back up.

Because you're back at your family of origin. Maybe in the house you grew up in. And without you knowing it. And this isn't a guarantee. But without you fucking knowing it. You're just like. I need to get the fuck out of this house. And I don't know why.

I'm not happy. Or you start behaving in ways. That are no longer conducive with who you are right now. And you start disappointing yourself. It's a threatening situation for the human psyche. To return to your family of origin. Unless you're aware of it. Unless you walk into Christmas.

With an awareness of. if my sister says that i'm gonna fucking fly off the handle if my brother says that if my dad says that i'm gonna go mad if my mother says this i'm gonna be very hurt if you're aware of all these things stepping into the situation then you can view your family as as compassionate adults that exist in the universe rather than them being who they were to you when you were three do you get me alright go fuck yourselves I'll leave you go I'll talk to you next week I'm going to be back next week on fucking Christmas day

um forgive me if I don't have a full podcast and I pull something out of my arse on Christmas day I definitely don't want to leave a week without a podcast, there will be something on Christmas day next week, but don't fucking shit into my cornflakes if it's not up to scratch, alright? Yart. 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 the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks

at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30 p.m. 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.