The Blindboy Podcast - Bulbous Generous Terrence

Episode Date: March 13, 2019

Reaction to the Michael Jackson documentary and How I cope with anxiety attacks Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sig Sheeus, you clockwork gardens. Wipe the sweat from your shins. How are you getting on? What is the crack? Welcome to the Blind Buy Podcast, you gentle bastards. I'm having a good time. Before we get into this week's podcast, I'll just very quickly list out some upcoming live podcasts that I would like you to come to. Right, what have we got? Saturday the 23rd of March, I am in the Theatre Royal in Waterford. I'm going to be interviewing the people behind Waterford Whispers Nose.

That'll be good crack. Not sure if there's tickets left. Saturday the 30th of March, I am in Castle Blaney in Monaghan. Friday the 5th of April, I'm in Nace in the Mote Theatre, I believe, in Nace. Saturday the 6th and 7th, I'm in Dublin in Vicar Street. That's going to be crack. 12th of April, Whitley Hall, Belfast. Bring it on. And then Saturday the 27th of April, I'm in Cork.

Yart. There you go, promoters. Are you listening? That's me advertising my gigs in a professional fashion. Fucking Jerry Ryan. What? I did it. Okay, moving on.

So, welcome to the new listeners of the podcast. The podcast is growing fairly healthily internationally. I looked at my figures there recently. There's a million listeners a month, just either under or above. It can change around. 300,000 people listening in England. How are you getting on Winston Churchill was a bastard

several thousand in Australia we've got Yanks we've got Canadians thank you very much to all the new international listeners please suggest me to your friends and if you're a new listener you don't have to but I would recommend

going back to the start or if not the start just revisiting the the earlier podcasts because there's some fun stuff that will that uh that you'll enjoy so last week last week was a questions podcast you know i i hadn't answered your questions in a good while so last week I took a good dose of questions and answered them for you and got some good feedback off you and thank you very much for the feedback

there's one question that I have been asked consistently all this week I'm talking I had a look by the way, if I don't, I get a lot of direct messages on Twitter and Instagram, Facebook, I try and, I try and respond to as many as I can, but I get, um, between 60 and 100 fucking direct messages a day, so I only respond to what I can see, so if you've ever sent me a message, and I haven't seen it or responded to it um i'm very sorry but it would actually be a fucking

full-time job just to respond to the messages that i get but i appreciate every one of them and thank you for sending me messages but one overwhelmingly ubiquitous question that I'm being asked this week in the wake of the documentary about Michael Jackson leaving Neverland and I suppose R. Kelly people coming to me saying blind by I'm a huge Michael Jackson fan I don't know what to do I don't know whether to listen to his music can we separate the art from the artist that is the huge big debate that's happening can we separate the art from the artist because um no actually before i continue just to be respectful of you know your emotions and your own boundaries and where you're at i'm going to be talking about michael jackson i'm going to be talking about abuse and the allegations for the

next 20 minutes so you you have a choice to continue listening or not. All right. Just a heads up. If you haven't seen the documentary Leaving Neverland, it's shocking. You know, it's shocking. It's two grown men going into great detail about the scale of abuse that they suffered at the hands of Michael Jackson. And it's a very, very difficult and tough thing to watch. And most people, when they finish watching the documentary, they're very much confronted with a strong feeling

towards Michael Jackson which you know and it's strange like because like I've been listening to Michael Jackson a long time and I've known about those allegations we've all known about those allegations the first allegations came forward

in 1993 so we've all known these things it's just for some reason i'm not fully sure why like i i didn't really just don't want to think about him do you know but this documentary and not only the documentary but But this documentary, and not only the documentary, but this documentary coming out in the context of the past, we'll say two years with the Me Too movement,

and how there's a strong push in culture to actually listen to people who are victims of abuse and who are making allegations to believe the victim. So it's shocking a lot of people. And the big question is, can you separate the art from the artist? And there's people online fighting like dogs over this particular question. What I would say is, this particular question what i would say is there's there's no one answer there's if if you put a gun to my head and said give me an answer what i would say is can you separate the art from the artist it depends on the person and it's as simple as that it depends on the type of person that you are some people can some people can't and am I gonna stop listening to the

music of Michael Jackson no I'm not I'm gonna continue listening to Michael Jackson's music now there's two different things around this for me. There's a number of artists that I listen to that have either, you know, have done horrible things. The most important thing that I try and do, let's just say R. Kelly, who's a living artist, right? Now, I'm not a huge R. Kelly fan, but he's quite important to the genre of New Jack Swing and I'm a producer so every so often I want to listen to R. Kelly's music so I just I illegally download it I make sure that if I am listening to R. Kelly's music he himself is not financially benefiting from me listening to it so morally then i'm comfortable with it okay so now it's just me listening to music on my own and that's victimless for me if i'm

financially supporting him through youtube plays through spotify listens different story now i'm financially supporting someone's abuse, I'm not okay with that, me personally, I'm not into that, but to engage and listen to his music, I mean, I'm a producer, so when I listen to R. Kelly and Michael Jackson, like, I don't give a fuck about either of their lyrics lyrics to be honest, you know, I don't rate, R. Kelly's lyrics don't have any depth to them, they're just pop lyrics, similarly I'd say the same for Michael Jackson, when I listen to Michael Jackson's music, as a producer again what I'm listening to is, it's Quincy Jones's production, or if I'm listening

to the stuff in the early 90s I'm listening to Teddy Riley's production I'm listening to the songwriting I as a Michael Jackson fan I'm not really into the cult of Michael Jackson I never bought into the lyrics I never bought into the man himself

it's just here are these songs which are aspects of his behaviour, which are very good. And we need to be adults. Bad people make good art. Okay, that's a fact. Alright, we're going to have to sit with that

and view that as a simple reality. Very evil people are capable of making uh very good art and we see this across history okay um caravaggio who i mentioned in an earlier podcast caravaggio murdered people like bad people make good art. And good people don't necessarily make good art. There's no correlation. When someone makes art, like smart people don't even make... You know, I know people who are incredible musicians who, to be honest, aren't too smart or even interesting to talk to, but when they pick up a guitar and sing,

they can transcend into a magical place of song. And music is just symmetrical vibrations of air. So for me and Michael Jackson's music, I will be listening to Michael Jackson in private. Now, we'll say RTE made a decision there that they won't be playing Michael Jackson's songs on the radio. I respect that. And I tell you why.

Because in the context, especially now with the Leaving Neverland documentary, with the Leaving Neverland documentary, Michael Jackson's music now is synonymous with child abuse. When we hear it right now this week, you can't think of anything else. So I think it's responsible for RTE to actually go, Do you know what? I don't want to play this music and put it into people's households when this music just reminds people of this thing. So separating the art from the artist, it's down to you individually.

And I'm ethically okay with privately listening to an artist if I don't think that me listening to them is financially supporting them what I also won't be doing is you know I won't be fucking sharing Michael Jackson songs on my Twitter

I won't be how I listen to the music that he made now is now a very private thing On my Twitter. I won't be. How I listen to. The music that he made now. Is now a very private thing. And. Like. The documentary doesn't change.

How I hear the tunes. Because like I said. I listen. I'm listening to it for. The drum sounds. For the production. For all these things. A lot of it that isn drum sounds for the production for all these things a lot of it that isn't even him

so for me personally it doesn't make a difference now other people if your relationship with Michael Jackson's music or R. Kelly's music was deeper if

you bought into the if you're a stan we'll say if you stan Michael Jackson if you buy into the, if you're a Stan, we'll say, if you Stan Michael Jackson, if you buy into the King of Pop thing, if it's not more than just sounds, if it's, you identify with him, if you're, like, there's a lot of people,

simply, like, and I'm talking people I know, like people in Ireland right now, straight up, angririly refusing to believe that the allegations might be true even though if you look at that documentary as with empathy it's like no I believe those lads I believe them this is fucking horrendous but there's some people who elements of their identity or their childhood or growing up that they have they can't extract jackson from their life or they can't reshape their view of michael jackson who he was and what he represented to take that away represents a deep threat to that person's sense of identity i'm seeing an awful lot of that and for those people um i i think those people

should sit back and have a real think you know have a real think about their relationship i mean part of this issue too is i don't know what the fuck it is about our culture but we need to stop elevating musicians and artists to godlike statuses i don't know why that's a thing like i i view no matter how talented someone is and the talent that jackson had was you know because i i said it three podcasts ago he had the x factor he had an ability to capture when he was exhibiting the behavior of performing and singing singing that aspect of his behavior when he was exhibiting that he had a bit an ability to transcend and create really beautiful art and i have to sit with myself and go he did that while also being behaving like

a fucking monster and what i find useful for this thing with me is I replace the word but with and, so I don't say to myself, Michael Jackson was a child abuser, but his songs were class, I say to myself, Michael Jackson was a child abuser, and his songs were class, they're two aspects,

two separate aspects of behaviour, but, like I said I won't be I won't be sharing this fucking music I won't be playing it around people it now just becomes

a private thing with me on my own if I feel I need to listen to that music because I don't think there's any victims in that if it's private there's no harm actually being caused and I'm not financially and he's dead anyway so I don't know who gets the money for living artists who have been accused of abuse

or you know really dodgy shit that i strongly disagree with i absolutely will not be financially supporting them in any way and if they've made a few songs that are brilliant i'm gonna go grand okay how can i get that illegally how can i how can i still listen to that piece of music which is separate to the person and enjoy it as a producer and as a songwriter but without financially supporting that person or without enabling him because what you have to realize as well with Jackson he it was his riches are what enabled him to abuse the way he did. It was his riches that allowed him. To. And not only his riches.

But the fact that he'd been elevated to a deity like status. Whereby he couldn't possibly do anything wrong. These are the things that enabled him to do what he did. So. I won't be financially supporting. Or. Singing the praises of any artist who's like that at all. But if the songs are class, I will be listening to them privately and I don't see a problem with that.

And, you know, you're free to disagree with that, but ultimately, you'd be disagreeing with the... You're just saying, here, Blind Boy, stop listening to dangerous, on your own, stop listening to, dangerous, on your own, in your room, and illegal downloads, stop doing that, and I don't see the point in that, you know,

because, my relationship with Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson's music, and why should I deny myself, you know, the fantastic artistic expression of, Quincy Jones, or Teddy Riley, who gave their heart and souls to produce and create the music of michael jackson why should i deny myself their

music because of jackson's actions as such you know and you know it's okay to call out people and go you're financially supporting a person you're enabling what they're doing by your support of their music by buying tickets to their gigs by streaming them that's all fine but when it comes to stop privately listening to this on your own um and you're not financially supporting them that's just that's not really our business you know it's about songwriting it's about production they're very technical things I never got any deep meaning from the music I never gave a fuck about his lyrics for me the lyrics are kind of silly pop and not something I'd really take on board. Now, however, if it wasn't Michael Jackson, it was Bob Dylan, we'll say.

Bob Dylan is somebody now where I extract great meaning from the lyrics. And, you know, Bob Dylan's music would have been emotionally quite important to me. That would be a much tougher thing for me to do because now I have to completely reappraise my relationship with the music do you get me so for the people who had an emotional connection with Jackson's music who listened to the lyrics and felt that these these lyrics spoke to them I I can I get the sense of betrayal that those people have and i i can understand why those people have to now walk away from those tunes but for me i just don't same with r kelly and we have to be adults and just go bad people make good art but that still doesn't mean that we have to support it financially,

that we have to continue to enable them, do you know? The ability to have multiple viewpoints at the same time that actually contradict, that's life. I mean, I know on the internet things are very black and white and very binary, but that's not the case. I mean, another thing I see too, which i feel is kind of quite harmful i see a lot i see r kelly and michael jackson being described as monsters and i i think that's that's harmful when I look at anything around abuse okay because I come from a background of like I was training to be a psychotherapist for a while for a couple of years so I approach things from a victim point of view so when it comes to anything to do with

so when it comes to anything to do with abuse i always go what is the approach that minimizes future victims right that stops any abuse that's happening now and most importantly minimizes future victims and it's it's a tough one because it can make you so fucking angry that you want to say R Kelly is a monster Michael Jackson is a monster and I also see people on on Twitter calling for saying we need to stop humanizing abusers they are monsters that's not realistic and it's important that we don't label abusers as monsters and here's why yes they've behaved in a monstrous fashion they have behaved like monsters right but when you turn r kelly or michael jackson into a monster you strip their humanity and what this does like they used their humanity as a way to exploit and abuse people so it's Michael Jackson wasn't a monster that's the point Michael Jackson presented himself as an incredibly nice friendly

harmless wouldn't hurt to fly type of person so that's not a monster that's someone who is actually using their humanity and tricking people and not only grooming his victims but actually grooming us as a culture we were we were all lied to by how he behaved by presenting this really childlike harmless uh i'm here to help the children I love all the children those are very human things so when you get it into your head that people who behave

in monstrous fashions must be monsters then that doesn't help future victims because future victims need to be able to say hold on a second no people who abuse come in all shapes and sizes and they don't have to be these horrible cartoonish monsters they can be the person at the end of the road they can be that nice person that i know who's absolutely very nice to me all the time and it's important for us as a culture to recognize that to recognize that monsters don't exist everyone is a human and humans

can behave in a monstrous fashion but monsters aren't real so please don't like interpret that as some type of defense of abusers. It's not. It's, the rational facts are that people who abuse are, they use humanity and trust as a way to groom. So, those things need to be spoken about candidly so that, to prevent future victims, so that future victims don't say to themselves oh but they're so nice they're so sound it's like no his victims are

straight up saying that it was the exact opposite of monstrosity that was used as a grooming technique so we all as a as a cautious and caring society who is interested in safety, need to have a realistic discourse around it, you know. We see it over and over again in America when there's a school shooting, you know, or any type of mass shooting. Someone, a person goes on a shooting spree, you know, behaves in a monstrous fashion and the discourse around it is, oh, he was so normal, I was only talking to him last week he was a shy person this is so shocking this is unlike them

i can't understand why this happened and it's like yeah because the school shooter has been dehumanized it's a monster so when monsters don't exist so the school shooter is a fucking human a human being who has a normal life and then one day they behave like a monster um to kind of illustrate that with another example it harks back to a theme that i had in a podcast about 15 podcasts ago, where I was speaking about the Ulster Rugby rape trial that happened in Ireland over the summer. And one thing that I noticed, okay, just one facet, I don't want to make any fucking hot takes around something as important as this, and I wouldn't, don't want to make any fucking hot takes around something as important as this and i wouldn't but one facet that i noticed is there was a large uh segment of mostly lads who straight up

do not believe uh victims who come forward with allegations you know this is why the hashtag i believe her needed to be made because there was like I said mostly lads going I don't believe her no it's bullshit one thing I've noticed right one facet not not the whole picture but one little thing I've noticed amongst lads we're raised from kids to believe that people who rape or sexually assault right that the people who do this are dirty old men in trench coats who hide down alleyways and they jump out from the darkness that's how we're conditioned as young men to believe when that happens then young men are able to go oh yeah that's what sexual assault looks like so we're conditioned to believe that

a rapist or an abuser is this boogeyman a monster a dirty old man greasy dirty smelly long coat all these cliches and that's what that's what we're raised with this very narrow definition that's unrealistic and no mention of of consent culture has told us to hold in our heads okay then when we're presented with an allegation around something that happens in a hotel room an allegation that is whereby the woman making the allegation might be in a relationship with the abuser or the rapist or might even be married and then not all but certain lads then don't believe the allegations because it doesn't fit the narrow definition and one facet not the whole picture but one reason i think that is because we are told that no no no no

abusers are these boogeyman monsters. So it must only fit that definition. And if it doesn't fit that definition, then she's probably a liar. So that's one reason why I think it's important for us to absolutely humanize these people. And when I say humanize, it doesn't mean like compassion, forgiveness, understanding. It's not that it's like no no they need fucking justice and most importantly they need to be removed from society so that they can't harm but calling them monsters I can understand the anger that would cause us to feel that way but it's not helpful from a victim point of view i don't think and the utter deification of

celebrities needs to fucking stop do you know that's the that's the other end of dehumanization you can call someone a monster you can also call someone a god and michael jackson was viewed as some type of fucking god and all our rock stars and celebrities are viewed in the same way and it's like they're not they're fucking fallible human beings who will on the far end of the scale disappoint us massively through criminal actions like abuse and then on the lesser end of the scale, we'll hold very problematic beliefs or say bad things. And we need to really stop. We need to actually just go, hold on a second. Why are we pedestalling this human being so far above us into godhood?

It's just, you know, it's the spectacle of celebrity. It's fucking bullshit and and when we do it it enables the person to start enjoying the smell of their own farts it enables the celebrity to believe that i fucking am a god therefore i am not accountable to the basic rules of compassion respect that you and i are do you know put someone on a fucking pedestal and they start acting like a cunt do you know um that needs to fucking stop celebrities from the start from the beginning need to be fully accountable for their words and their actions and not treated like gods talent like just because someone is an amazing singer or actor or writer talent is just one aspect of personality you know can that person fry an egg what if they're shitted cooking you

know we need to humanize these people it's just one aspect of behavior and it doesn't no matter how talented someone is it does not place their value above you or i or anyone and all the mails and messages i get of people going you know should i listen to michael jackson anymore um should i like liam neeson anymore the only thing I can say is that it has to be an individual choice because cancel culture is hugely irrational. There's no rules. It doesn't make any sense. I'm not trying to, what I'm trying to do is ask questions around it rather than make statements about it because I don't understand

all I can do is I'm going to make my own individual decisions but this is how we know that the system around this is is flawed and broken right so can anybody tell me right and I don't know the answer to this

so Liam Neeson uh about a month ago said some deeply fucking problematic things around racial violence right i don't agree with him he shouldn't have said him very wrong of him so liam neeson said that the entire internet exploded uh wanting liam neeson to be deplatformed. I don't think he turned up to. He didn't turn up to the premiere of his film. All this stuff. The internet was going apeshit.

So why did the internet go apeshit for Liam Neeson over that? But Mark Wahlberg has two actual convictions for racial violence. Twice. Now he was a teenager but still Mark Wahlberg has two convictions separately of violently kicking the shit out of someone with racial motivations behind it. So why is Liam neeson being cancelled but mark walberg isn't even spoken about and we can't answer the question there's that we can't answer it because it's because the system of it is so insane the reason this problem exists is very serious things very serious issues are being spoken about

through the highly irrational lens and spectacle of celebrity and unfortunately it's quite it's quite the reality is quite cynical it appears to be not so much it doesn't appear to be operating on pure social justice it appears to be operating on which deeply problematic behavior words or action is hot or not which is which is the hottest racist thing that someone's done and this is hot and this is not so these really really important things are now operating on like a popularity contest that's the only explanation I can think of do you know and that's fucked up that's really fucked up and now we're left with an utterly batshit system where you you can't you can't answer it i can't understand it dr dre in 1993 uh publicly in front of a load of people threw a woman off a wall it isn't spoken about

there's no one really you'll find a few people but the internet at large is not calling for the cancellation of Dr. Dre and I can't understand it I don't know the rules to it

it's utterly irrational Michael Jackson we've known these things about Michael Jackson since 1993 it's utterly irrational. Michael Jackson, we've known these things about Michael Jackson since 1993. It's only now. R. Kelly, the allegations against R. Kelly first came out in 2003. He went to court over it. There's no rules. It doesn't make sense. So I can't process it. I can't understand it.

But the one thing that I can take from it is i think it has to be on an individual basis i think we all have to make individual choices my individual choice is i'm i absolutely i i won't fucking financially support so if someone does something that i strongly strongly disagree with i'm not going to financially support so if someone does something that i strongly strongly disagree with i'm not going to financially support that person whether i don't engage with their art or not it depends on the art it depends on the art i'm i'm not gonna if i was to say to you now i'm not going to listen to michael jackson's music i'd be lying to you I'd actually be talking out of my fucking arse and I think too a lot of the people who are saying that they're going to stop with any artist I think they're also talking out of their fucking arse I think it's a very

performative thing one of the most controversial figures last year was an artist called xxx tentacion and he uh you know he abused abused his girlfriend he's now dead he was shot and there was massive calls for xxx tentacion to be deplatformed and all of this and like he had a song called sad which i fucking loved it was i fucking loved it when it came out and then i found out about what he actually did that then completely changed the meaning of the song for me and i didn't really enjoy it as much anymore and i made a decision that right the song is still fucking catchy how do i illegally download it so when i listen to it i'm not financially supporting him so now I'm morally comfortable with it but if the song's in my fucking head and it's really catchy and I love music the

way I do I'm going to listen to it in fucking private I'm not going to suggest it to anyone I'm not going to financially support the person so I'm cool with that but there were so many people saying loads and loads and loads fuck him I'm not listening to his music, I'm not doing this. And his song was the most played song in Spotify in the world for 2018. So I think a lot of people are talking out of their arses. They're performatively on social media going, fuck him, I'm not going to listen to his stuff, but then secretly going away and listening to it anyway.

It's disingenuous, so I'm just trying to be genuine about it. I won't financially support an artist who does something I gravely disagree with, but if the art is good enough, that's an expression of their behaviour, I'll do it privately, in a way that doesn't fucking financially support them, and I'm not going to be platforming

them to a wider audience and i think that's okay that's my choice but if you want to go fuck them i don't want nothing to do with them even in private that's your choice and i think that's the only way we can deal with it um or else you just completely strip apart and restructure the entirety of fucking art throughout history because a lot of people who've done very, very bad things have made very important and good pieces of work

and we all have to sit with that anxiety of those things that's the reality there's no binary or black or white in this so like yeah that's an awful lot for me to to take in hold on is my mic being a prick it's a it's a tough conversation to have it's a tough conversation to have because it's there's so many what abouts about it you know it's why do you take this stance

with one artist and then you go well here's a list of another 10 people why aren't you taking a stance with that artist it's so fucking tough but a good start from here on in is stop pedestalling

celebrities just like fuck it like But a good start from here on in is stop pedestalling celebrities. Just like, fuck it. Like, it doesn't make them better than us. It just doesn't. So this week, we're going to have the banjo pause. All right. I had the ocarina last week. A very deep ocarina that, to be honest, presented me with a slight bit of anxiety.

It was too deep an Ocarina. The first omen I believe girl is to be the mother Mother of what? is the most terrifying 666 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 Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge

to raise funds for CAMH the Center for Addiction and Mental Health to support life-saving progress in mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca that's sunrisechallenge.ca so I'm happy to be back

playing the banjo this week so let's do the banjo pause maybe I won't fuck up any notes this week, let's see see Not one note gone wrong. A few little dodgy plucks, but all the notes were on point there. It only took me three fucking weeks of it.

Fuck's sake. Hold on, I put the banjo over yonder. fuck's sake hold on I put a banjo over yonder the banjo pause by the way was eh in case you heard

an advert from Acast em this podcast is supported by you the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy boat the blind, oh come on, am I getting it wrong?

am I getting it wrong after this many podcasts? patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast you can be a patron of this podcast what that means is you know, you can buy me the equivalent of a cup of coffee or a pint once a

month by becoming a patron going to the patreon um please do if it's something you've been thinking about please do if you can afford it if you can't afford it you don't have to um a huge thing for me with the patreon yeah i just want to make sure because i've had a lot of people suggesting to me as well it's like why don't you do exclusive content just for patreon people and i don't really i don't really want that to be honest i'd like everyone to get the exact same podcast and for the patrons for just to be a donation model. Based upon soundness. Really.

Rather than. Kind of charging people for. Exclusive content. On the Patreon. Even though that's what most people on Patreon do. I just want to go with the. Experimental model of soundness. Which has been working great so far.

So patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast. You become a patron or you can't become a patron you still get the same podcast um what i wanted to speak about a small bit this week um is anxiety right i don't want to go into it in in massive depth i could do that in a separate podcast but I want to touch on uh anxiety anxiety attacks the reason I'm just conscious that it's it's it's March right and of so many of ye listening I just know from looking at the metrics and from messages that I get, there's a lot of you in college, and there's a lot of you doing your leave inserts, you know, 16, 17-year-olds who are in school. And one thing that can be very kind of triggering for anxiety is exams and study and stuff like that.

And not only exams and study study but the thing as well with college and school it brings with it the massive fear of change and uncertainty so it's it's not just you know if like if you're in sixth year or if you're in third or fourth year of college and you're experiencing anxiety it's it's it's not as it sometimes it can be all right the exams are around the corner um you know if you're procrastinating a bit or if you feel you're not you know working as hard as you should be of course that can bring on anxiety but there's also existential anxiety that can go with it because change massive change when you're in 60 or doing your leave insert like the level of change that is going to be confronting you is massive it's you're effectively leaving childhood leaving the system of school

which is school is just like a it's it's like um a cultural nappy do you know you go start going to school when you're three or four years of age and you get up every day and you go to this place and everything is perfectly routine and you do this the whole time until you're fucking 17 18 and then you're now suddenly faced with the freedom and that's what it is it's the anxiety freedom the freedom of oh fuck next year when i'm finished the leave insert or next year when I'm finished fourth year of college

I am now in the wild I am and these are unconscious processes but freedom can present us can really trigger fucking anxiety the freedom of infinite choice

the freedom of not knowing where your life is going to be next year and all these things bubble under the surface as a hum of stress which can be

kind of an underlying trigger for anxiety and panic attacks and anxiety attacks so I'm going to speak very briefly about what an anxiety attack is and what it feels like and the reason I'm going to do it is... Because when I was... I first started getting panic attacks and anxiety attacks when I was 17, 18. And for about a year, I didn't know what the fuck they were. And that can be the worst part. And I was just getting these things. And when you don't have language for it

you know and you just get this wave of sudden fucking fear the first few times it happens you nearly deny that it's just happened it's so strange and new and terrifying that you just move on with your day and then it happens more and more and for me I didn't know what they were I didn't know what they were and it was so fucking scary

and terrifying and I'd never experienced it and it would cause me periods of depression and low self-esteem afterwards they were so scary I wouldn't speak to anyone because the other thing too is I didn't know I didn't know what to say to anyone I couldn't I couldn't describe it I couldn't say to someone this thing happened yesterday for I just felt really scared I don't think I even had that language at the time it's hard for me to kind of travel back to a time before I had an understanding of my own mental health and to try and kind of empathize with what an anxiety attack was like before I knew what it was I can tell you one thing, 50% of how bad, not bad, 50% of how shit they made my life, was the fact that I didn't know what they were, and I didn't know that they were

okay, or normal, do you know what I mean, so briefly, like, what, what is a fucking what is an anxiety attack an anxiety attack is the simplest way of putting it is it's a fire alarm going off in your body and there's no fire that's it you know if you're in a building

and the fire alarm goes off imagine everyone in the building didn't know that it was an alarm or didn't know that it was maybe just a drill and thought it was a real fire sure everyone would be going nuts they'd be running out the building there'd be no you know if there was no plan in place if there was no fire exits you could have real chaos real harm could be caused that's what happens when you get a panic attack the fire alarm goes off but our brains don't really the brain doesn't go ah it's just a panic attack you'll be grand no we accept it as as

utter truth and some of the anxiety attacks that i used to get i genuinely 100% believe that i was dying and that's a common theme with with anxiety attacks is it hits you and you truly believe that i was dying and that's a common theme with with anxiety attacks is it hits you and you truly believe that i am dying what's happening right now is this is what the body experiences when you suddenly die for no reason that's what i thought it was because it was that fucking terrifying and the problem that can arise around that and something that happened to me is you know if it's a fucking tuesday afternoon and all of a sudden you find yourself in a toilet cubicle believing yourself to be dying and then you come out of it and you snap back into kind of reality and feeling okay again you're left shook you're left with a mild trauma. Because even though you're physically safe,

your mind and body feels like you just got narrowly missed getting hit by a truck. Your mind doesn't rationally say to yourself, ah, that was just a panic attack. It's like, no, your mind remembers the sensation of feeling like you're going to die and that stays as a residual discomfort that can last, you know? So if you're a long-time listener of this podcast,

I've spoken about anxiety before so some some of the stuff i'm about to say i might be i might be repeating things i said a year ago or whatever but i'm saying this one for new listeners and specifically with the young people in mind just my approach with mental health in this podcast is to try and speak as candidly as possible from my own personal experience in what what my mental health issues were and how I overcame them and to speak about it from my point of view only and if you can listen to my experience and take something from it then brilliant but I'm not here kind of telling people what to do, because all I can really speak about is my experience, to be honest, so, you know, why do we get anxiety attacks, what's the point,

you know, what is the fucking point of, you know, sitting down in class or on a bus, and all of a sudden you have a uninvited wave of terror, what's the point in that, do you know? Well, it does have, it exists for a reason, an evolutionary reason, it's called the fight or flight response of the body, okay? of the body okay so our bodies are like we're homo sapiens we've we've been around for i i what's the fucking it's about 50 000 years or more i'm not sure probably way longer but anyway our bodies still think that we live in prehistoric times our bodies still think, and our brains still think that, you know, early humans were genuinely under serious threat all the time of actually dying. Do you know? Early humans, bears wanted to eat. You were someone's prey, okay?

someone's prey okay an early human who doesn't live in civilization a hunter-gatherer would have to venture out to feed themselves and might end up being killed by a large animal so this response exists in our body as a reaction to genuine um if something was to genuinely threaten your fucking life okay so if it's 30 000 years ago and a giant bear comes up and wants to actually eat you then your adrenal gland now your amygdala in your brain will tell your adrenal gland to release fuck loads of adrenaline all over your body okay and this triggers what is known as the fight or flight response so what it does is it gives your entire body your lungs your heart your muscles an injection of intense adrenaline which prepares you to either fight for your life or to run for your life two very extreme things that you need to do in a life threatening situation okay so in the unlikely event of you being in a life-threatening situation, you will experience in that moment the feeling of a panic attack

and you can use all that adrenaline that's been pumped around your body to kick the animal's head in or run away as fast as you've ever ran. So that's why it exists. It has a useful purpose. But we now exist in the 21st century and there aren't any bears anymore. And it's unlikely, you know, it does happen, but it's unlikely in your day to day that you're going to find yourself in a life threatening situation. So what happens now? Our brains, what now threatens us are its existential threat the unconscious fear of

change the fear of uncertainty the when something threatens our identity or our sense of self threatens our identity or our sense of self how we feel about ourselves if if our self-esteem is somehow sharply threatened by from existential reasons if you feel that you're underperforming if you feel you could be doing better if you have issues around your appearance your body all these things that exist now in our society when one of these things becomes threatened silently unconsciously by existential anxiety these things can trigger the flight or fight or flight response it's now uh what you'd call a vestigial response we still have appendixes you know an appendix is a fucking useless organ in our body that existed you know it was it was useful fucking i think it was about a million years ago

it was so we could digest like grass and shit now we don't need it anymore but it still exists in our body and flares up and people need to get their appendixes removed anxiety attacks they're not too far off it they're vestigial they're they're parts of our anatomy or our physiology that still exists but they're not really relevant to where humans are at right now so we now end up getting anxiety attacks in libraries and in toilets and on buses or sitting at home in your room in in spaces that you think are actually safe and now you're overcome with it with a wave of intense dread so just to go through some of the what a panic attack kind of feels like for me i'd notice first like a kind of an intense wave of heat coming over my my face

you know i kind of a just a strange feeling then when i'd kind of acknowledge that feeling my heart would start pounding really hard and i'd have this inability to stay still i'd need to get up off my seat i'd need to walk around off my seat, I'd need to walk around or pace, or for me, I used to rub my hands together, to the point that I still have on my hand, I've calluses, hard skin on the side of my hands, from being so anxious anxious that I developed this kind of way to rub my hands together when I was anxious and it left permanent like hard skin calluses on my hand because I was getting so much anxiety so I would start to rub my hands together that that what that is is basically the adrenaline is is your adrenal gland has released all this adrenaline around your body. And now I'm sitting down.

And my muscles need to move. They need to fight. Or they need to flee. So for me this nervous energy expressed itself as hand rubbing and pacing. So I'd start pacing and rubbing my hands. And then. That's when the wave of intense deep fear would come over my body

these waves of really really fucking unpleasant dread and the feeling of dying and the terror of feeling so fucking anxious and so scared and so afraid but not having one object of fear and not having a reason and the irrationality of that i'd get butterflies in my stomach i'd get tingles and then

what would what would happen after successive panic attacks and this is the shit I hated the most my surroundings would no longer feel real the sense of being present in reality and having consciousness and being alive those things would leave me in a sense and I wouldn't feel it didn't feel normal anymore I didn't feel like I'm present in this room or I would my

thoughts would be racing all over the gaff and I wouldn't feel alive or something I wouldn't feel present I'd depersonalize that was particularly distressing for me but the reason I'm reading that shit out. And telling it to you is. What I would have loved for someone to be able to say to me. For the first year of me going through that was. This is fucking normal. When I first.

Like I think I read it. I think I read it in a book. About anxiety. But I'd had a year of these fucking things. And when I actually read, you know, what I just described to you there, those terrifying symptoms. When I was able to read them in a book, that took 50% of it away. It made me go, holy fuck, I'm not not going mad this terror is not completely unique to me everything i'm reading here is exactly what i'm experiencing this must be normal and it is

fucking normal there's a million people listening to this podcast and i guarantee you every single person who's listening to this can relate exactly to what I just described there because that experience of an anxiety attack everyone's going to get one of them in their life now some people are going to get a lot of them other people might get it once or twice I was someone who used to get a lot of them but hearing just hearing what they were and what the symptoms were it removed a hell of a huge amount of the shame because i used to experience shame around the anxiety i used to feel like a freak because this was happening and when i was able to hear oh shit other people are getting that too it for me it made it more like um like if you get a sore throat or a cold and you read the

symptoms in a book or online and it's like runny nose yeah sore throat yeah fevers and chills yeah and then you go okay this is normal so it's important for i think as part of just discourse and discussion for people to actually know what a panic attack is, know what an anxiety attack is, know what the symptoms are when it's happening, and go, this is fucking normal, this is an anxiety attack, this is what this is. Everyone gets this.

It doesn't make it any less pleasant, but you can put a name on it now. You can visualise it. any less pleasant but you can put a name on it now you can visualize it and the best kind of like how i would deal with them when they were happening like once it kicks off i mean you are talking about like your body's chemicals flowing through your body so the best thing to do when it happens is to kind of sit with it to let it pass don't kind of maybe don't fight it as such like if if you think of it as um if you cut your finger or if you you know if you you know if you stub your fucking toe on the side of the bed

and it's agonizing for about two minutes or if you burn your hand on the stove when we do that like it's awful and it's very unpleasant but when it's a physical injury

we tend to have an ability to go this is awful it feels like shit but i know it's gonna it's gonna pass you know that rotten feeling of stubbing your toe or stepping on a plug you know it's gonna pass and you kind of just wait and you go oh for fuck's sake and you wait you know with a burn you might rub it under the tap a little bit but essentially you just go ah for fuck's sake i'm gonna i'm gonna have a sore hand now for about an hour and you cope with it and you deal with it and you accept it when the panic attack hits try and accept it just go okay it's an anxiety attack it's happening i'm 100 safe most importantly

no matter how your brain will act like a real bully in that moment not only a bully but a bully who has your deepest secrets and your brain will really try and beat you down and what you have to be able to say to yourself is my body's fire alarm is now is now going off you know another example you know you're sitting at home and one of the neighbors fucking house alarms goes off and it's really annoying and it's unpleasant and it's fucking with your day a little bit, but what do we do, like you rarely kind of call out to the neighbor's house, you might stick the head out, just stick your head out the window to make sure there's no robber there, but most of the time in the middle of the day when the neighbor's house alarm goes off, you just go, there's the neighbor's house

alarm again, I'm gonna let that pass, and we very calmly kind of go, that's an unpleasant noise. It's really annoying. But I have confident faith in the fact that it's going to pass. And that's what you say to yourself with an anxiety attack. My house alarm is going off. There's no one trying to rob me. I'm not on fire. I'm totally safe, even though I don't feel that way and i'm gonna let

this pass and i'm gonna sit i'm going to sit and experience how unpleasant this is and kind of mindfully notice your your breathing notice your heart pumping notice these things what you want to try and avoid is when your mind is fucking racing and when your thoughts can turn into a very a very panicked type of self-talk whereby you're saying to yourself this is unbearable this is unbearable this is awful this is terrible i can't deal with this i can't deal with this this is awful this is terrible that's how your mind will go you have to fight that it's not unbearable you can bear it and you will bear it it's completely bearable it's deeply unpleasant it's it's not at all nice but you can cope in the way that you will cope if you

burn your hand on the stove or if you cut your hand with a knife you don't need to call the fucking ambulance because you're looking at it going i don't need any stitches so i'm just going to sit with this unpleasantness in the confidence that it's going to pass and when you take that attitude about an anxiety attack it lessens the trauma of it and by the trauma of it what I mean is

like I spoke about earlier there it's like you don't want to be shook for the rest of the day, a panic attack, sometimes, well the panic attack itself is awful, what can be worse, and more harmful, is the feeling of being shook for the rest of the day,

and it can be very fucking draining as well, like, man I used to get fucking panic attacks that would leave me feeling really really tired for the rest of the day really drained because my body has given so much energy into this intense expression of irrational fear Irrational fear. But also it would leave me with. A sense of shame. And a sense of weakness. And a sense of.

Fear. Of it happening again. And that fear of it happening again. That's the trauma. That's your mind. Remembering how unpleasant it was. And naturally going. Well how do we not have another one of them.

For me I developed unhealthy coping mechanisms. My unhealthy coping mechanism was. Well it happened when I was. It happened when I was in Dunn's. Buying a tin of beans. So I can't go to Dunn's anymore. And if I don't go to Dunn's. Then I won't get anxiety attacks.

And that developed slowly for me. into an agoraphobia. I was staying away from the areas where the panic attacks happened. Because I didn't understand them. The area has nothing to do with it. External factors. That's what's known as a safety behaviour. And when we experience anxiety we can develop these safety behaviours. They're irrational ways of coping with the anxiety so for me it was avoiding places where they happened

and all it really does is it enforces the anxiety it actually makes it worse some people will start to carry like water bottles around with them and they think if they have a water bottle with them they won't get anxiety or for me I started to carry my asthma inhaler around with me a lot even though to be honest I didn't really need it but I felt that if I had this asthma inhaler that it would make me better because also when you get an anxiety attack your breathing becomes mad shallow which is again i think that has something to do with running or panting or you can run faster and your breath becomes shallow um another thing you can do when the anxiety attack hits to cope with it and minimise how intense it can be.

There's a visualisation exercise. Try and imagine a white sheet of paper. Slowly filling with black paint from the centre. The complexity of that image is enough to occupy your brain and let the anxiety pass through. As opposed to really frantic fucking anxious thoughts about how you can't cope with it and about how it's unbearable and about how you're going to die. They don't help at all. That's in your control. If anxiety is manifesting itself in specific circumstances right so

it's not just general anxiety that can come upon you at any point if we'll say you can experience anxiety if you get into a lift or if you're going to a crowded place like for me i started to become very very scared of crowds okay my anxiety started off as coming out of fucking nowhere with no explanation until it eventually became avoiding places avoiding crowds there's an acronym for coping called fear and it's face everything and recover and it operates on the it's it comes from cognitive behavioral therapy but it operates on the principle of if getting into a lift can trigger anxiety attacks in you or going to a bar can trigger anxiety attacks in you, or going to a bar can trigger anxiety attacks in you, it's, you must not avoid them,

when you start to avoid them, that's a safety behaviour, and that safety behaviour can make the situation worse, right, the lift isn't the cause of the anxiety, it's your attitude, it's your beliefs about the lift. Crowds as well.

It's your belief about crowds. For me. My irrational. When I would go to a bar. When I was 19 or whatever. 18. What would bring on the anxiety. It manifested as a fear of crowds but deeply underneath what it was was a

fear of of being an adult and being normal it was like going to a bar and being an autonomous person who isn't tied down by the you know the routine of. It's like now you're a fucking adult, you're on your own, and what's more adult than being allowed into the bar? Now you're 18, you're allowed into the bar. That was very triggering for me because what it meant was I didn't feel normal, I didn't feel like a proper adult, I didn't feel mature, I didn't feel capable, my self-esteem was very low.

adult I didn't feel mature I didn't feel capable my self-esteem was very low so being in a bar with my peers was actually quite threatening to my self-esteem because I would look at them and judge how adult they are and that and and compare myself to it all kind of unconscious processes but I was unaware of how low my self-esteem was, so that would then manifest itself as extreme anxiety in crowds, so fear, face everything and recover, if you're noticing that a crowded bar or a lift or a shopping centre or whatever the fuck is, or a lecture theater is a trigger for your anxiety you have to actually go in there you have to face it and recover so you have to go to the bar and maybe give yourself 10 minutes and even if it triggers anxiety in you. Even if it's deeply unpleasant.

You face it. And then you recover from it. And it's a gradual exposure thing. You gradually expose yourself to this thing. This area that's quite triggering. And as you gradually do it. It minimizes the anxiety around it. And that's the exact opposite of a safety behavior.

A safety behavior a safety behavior is saying to yourself i must not go to bars because bars cause anxiety it's bullshit bars don't cause anxiety your belief about the bar causes anxiety and by facing it and recovering you challenge your faulty beliefs about the bar and all this type of stuff and this is a this is a core tenet within cbt which is used to treat anxiety and a healthy way to recover so you know face everything and recover fear if you face the bar or the lift and you do it for your 10 minutes a good way to process recovery is when you're at home later that evening take out a sheet of paper and

write down honestly exactly how you felt and you can throw that piece of paper into the bin you can flush it down the toilet you can set it on fire you don't have to keep it but the process of because it can be quite intense um i spoke about this before, but at the utter, utter height of my fucking anxiety, the absolute height of it, I went to a Bob Dylan concert, because I had to, because I was staying in my room all the time, not leaving really, to be honest, and what I was was doing that's when I was learning about music that's when I was you know playing guitar learning how to produce but I was living and breathing the music of Bob Dylan all day long and his lyrics and music would help me through

what I was going through so he played in Galway and I had go. I just fucking had to do it. I was just like. I have to be in the same. I have to breathe the same air as Bob Dylan. His music meant so much to me. That it actually trumped my anxiety. So I went to a giant fucking Bob Dylan concert. Thousands of people.

And it was awful. It was fucking terrible. It an hour-long panic attack i didn't enjoy it one bit it was really deeply fucking terrifying and it took a lot of energy out of me but i did it i faced it and i recovered from it and it was one of the most important things i could do because not only did it minimize my fear of public spaces it massively built my self-esteem it made me the shame that I would feel because that's the thing with anxiety too is is you can feel shame around it because it can stop you doing normal things if if you're the person who can't go into a bar or can't go into a lift, you start to feel, start to label yourself things like a freak.

You start to notice that other people have no problem going into lifts or have no problem going into bars. And then we judge ourselves against these other people and naturally start to beat ourselves up and that lowers our self-esteem. So when you face one of these situations, your self-esteem grows with it. So write down and record exactly what you felt and what it was like and it's up to you what you do do with that piece of paper you can throw that away if you want it's just for you and be as honest as possible know that nobody else has to read it so you'll be as honest as as possible

with yourself and eventually what will hopefully happen is you know with the confidence and self-esteem that you know gradually comes from facing we'll say a triggering situation you then you that's when you really start to view your anxiety as as a bully as a bully that exists inside you and the little bit of confidence comes up and you kind of go you look at your anxiety and you're going you're fucking my life up who the fuck are you i don't i don't want this life anymore i don't want this life where i feel controlled and abused by a part of myself so you start to get the confidence to stand up to your anxiety so the second time that you you know

go into a triggering situation you go into it with a little bit more confidence and for me i used to make it a game after the first and second time of going into public spaces i'd start to get kind of slightly cheeky and bold about it and I know it sounds mad but there was a kind of a like a daredevil part of me came in like how most people would try and I don't know

go on a roller coaster to freak themselves out I got a kind of a similar enough buzz by deliberately walking into crowded spaces and feeling the fear and feeling the anxiety but this time with a little bit more confidence with the knowledge of the fears that I had the things that I was afraid I was afraid that I'd faint I was afraid that I'd get sick I was afraid that I'd get sick, I was afraid that I'd do something that would cause me to be an object of everyone's attention, you know, like if I puked all over the ground or fainted or something, that was a big fear that all the attention would come upon me and I'd be a spectacle of like public disgust or embarrassment or something. Of like public disgust or embarrassment or something. So I'd gradually walk into these spaces.

And feel the kind of. The good adrenaline. Of standing up to the anxiety. And then. And then it just stops. Then it stops. And I became a functioning normal person. So it's 80 minutes now.

So I'm going to fuck off. I hope that last bit was helpful to anyone who is experiencing anxiety at the moment and i hope you enjoyed my thoughts on michael jackson please don't direct message me and say i know you saw the michael jackson documentary but i don't believe it and here's a link to some facts I've had a lot of people in my dms going here's a link to some facts about why Michael Jackson is innocent and this is all a big load of bullshit I don't I don't want to hear it I don't want to hear it and if you are that person you just you need to face up to the fact that the fucking your childhood hero behaved like a prick face up to the fact that the fucking your childhood hero behaved

like a prick behaved like an abuser and that's life that's that's the nuance that you're now going to have to deal with alright god bless have a lovely week I'm going to be back to you next week

I'm busy as fuck for the rest of this week I'm off to London tomorrow so I don't even know what the podcast is going to be about next week but I'll be back 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 toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center 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.