The Blindboy Podcast - Creaking Ditch Pigeon

Episode Date: July 18, 2018

Do you feel like you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, and don't know why? Click here to find out why, you prick. (Transactional analysis) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh hello, you creaking ditch pigeons. Welcome to episode 41 of the Blind Boy Podcast. Can you believe it? My vape is acting the fucking prick. The heat filament is all bubbly. Listen. Hear that crackling sound? That means, yeah, the heat is gone. And it's bubbling the vape fluid as like hot rocks into my lips. It's quite unpleasant. But fuck it, that's no reason that that should interfere with your podcast hug, you delicious boys and girls. So we'll start this podcast, Podcast 41, With a poem. A poem that was sent in. By early 2000's heartthrob. Chad Michael Murray.

So I'm going to read out. The poem. That Chad has sent. Place the money in the punnet. You're going to sell me that dog. Crimson bin bags. Rinsed in a dismal hurry. I stare at myself in the mirror of a Texaco toilet and wash away my mistakes. He should have sold me that dog. He should have seen that I had this hammer. The security camera would have seen what happened Never again

Would I smell Declan's dew On a morning leaf Nor rollerblade through a bent car park No more glistening Pennsylvanian butts Tonight I'm going to the witch's prison So that was the witch's prison By Chad Michael Murray

I hope your career's Doing alright man You know I hope you're holding it down So that was The Witch's Prison by Chad Michael Murray. I hope your career's doing alright, man. You know, I hope you're holding it down, having a good time. Thanks for listening to the podcast and sending that in. So with Good Crack last week, I got a great response off you. Last week's podcast was about bizarre stories that my dad told me but what i said on twitter actually last week's podcast inadvertently followed the structure of a terrible edinburgh comedy show that is guaranteed to win an award and there's a trend in the Edinburgh Comedy Festival

that if you want to win an award at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival write a write a stand up that involves the death of a parent no no no you write a stand up that has funny stories

and then ends with the death of a parent and then you win an award in Edinburgh, apparently. And last week's podcast inadvertently followed that format. But I got a lot of mails off you from people who... People who were grieving for someone in their lives, whether it be a parent or a family member or even a pet. And a lot of people took

kind of solace from some of the shit I was saying around grief I dipped into grief psychology specifically around a thing known as rippling and I'm just really glad because I wasn't thinking I wasn't thinking there was people that could take something from it but a lot of you were like

fuck it that cleared up a lot of shit for me or helped me to explore feelings that i was having barriers with so fucking class if that did that for you i love it when that happens you know because you know like i said this isn't a mental health podcast i talk about mental health a lot because that's part of my ongoing process of living you know, like I said, this isn't a mental health podcast, I, I talk about mental health a lot, because that's part of my ongoing process of living, you know, in the same way that I might talk about going to the gym or jogging, so it's not a mental health podcast, but I will speak about my own, and I love it when ye find that relatable and can apply it to yourselves, ye find that relatable and can apply it to yourselves

that's that's just one of those things it helps me sleep at night it's a lovely feeling, it's a nice feeling this week's podcast is going to be about a particular school of psychology and again hopefully

what I'm going to speak about is this particular school of psychology kind of how I used it to help myself and then hopefully ye might take something from it too but before I continue I want to plug a live podcast that's coming up on the 29th

of July which is soon enough I think it's about two weeks away but I'm at the Vodafone fucking comedy festival and I'm going to be interviewing a gentleman by the name of Greg Tarkington who plays a character called Neil

Hamburger who's a bit of a legendary comedian's comedian and I get to interview him out of character and I'm fucking really looking forward to that and there's only about 20 or 30 tickets left so go online and come along to that the blind boy interviewing Greg Tarkington at the Vodafone comedy festival in the ivy gardens in Dublin all right and that's my only Dublin gig this summer there will be more but come along to that the class thing about the podcast gigs is you can come to as many as you like because they're all fucking different

you know they're all different and i think i've resolved as well what i'm going to do with putting out the live podcasts i think i'll put out one a month on a saturday in the middle of the month I think that's what I'm going to do from now on okay yart onto the topic of today's today's podcast I want to talk about a field of psychotherapy that has been of great help to me and continues to be of great help to me and it's called transactional analysis right I've mentioned it in passing before but it's one of the schools of psychotherapy that I would have learned you know religiously I would have studied it um in and out many years ago as a way of understanding understanding myself more deeply

understanding my thoughts understanding my emotions understanding my behaviours trying to identify we'll say problems in those thoughts, emotions and behaviours and addressing them to sort out my mental health shit

and I would have used transaction analysis alongside cognitive behavioral therapy freudian analysis and fucking emotional intelligence there's many many schools of psychotherapy that's the thing i like to talk about the ones that work for me personally you know they don't all work for everybody em when I speak about psychotherapy or a specific school of psychotherapy I'm not offering it as a fucking solution what I'm saying is that this worked for

me so I'm gonna talk about it you know what I'm saying might not work for you might do as well but sure what harm I'll speak about it from my personal experience and you can take it

take it as you want so transaction analysis is it's a psychoanalytic theory now when you hear psychoanalytic it means that the theory

is rooted in the earlier work of Sigmund Freud and I spoke a lot about Sigmund Freud is rooted in the earlier work of sigmund fried and i spoke a lot about sigmund fried's work on the earlier podcasts i described fried's model of the unconscious mind using yorty ahern the author but transaction analysis is a a much later incarnation of Freudian psychoanalysis from the 60s by a fellow called Eric Byrne. And what it is, it's a way of understanding how humans communicate with each other. Okay? Now it's a bit of a complex kind of theory.

So I'm going to try my best to simplify it as much as possible to make it relatable so here's a question to kind of ask yourself right do you ever like do you find yourself continually repeating the same negative mistakes over and over, right? Whether it's in relationships or with your friends or in social groups or whatever. Like some examples, if you enter like a new group of people, do you find that there's certain people that you just don't get on with and you don't know why? Or if you're in work or not even fucking work, I don't know, if you're on a soccer team and you go for training, that there's a person there, maybe a boss, someone who's above you, and no matter what you do, no matter how much you try and change,

you always walk away from an interaction with them feeling really small and feeling really shit, and it keeps repeating. Or maybe there's a person in your life and maybe you treat them like shit and then you feel guilty afterwards you feel guilty because you're treating a friend or a family member like shit you know you're doing it but you keep doing it and you don't know why it just popping up. Or maybe you have a friend or a partner, and your entire relationship with them is based on having massive fights and then making up and being best friends again.

And that's the cycle of your friendship. And it's just really draining. It's tiring and draining, all this shit. And those are just really draining. It's tiring and draining. All this shit. And those are just some examples. I'm just kind of guessing that you can relate to some of them. And you kind of write it off as, sure that's just the way I am. Or that's how they are. That's how that other person is.

This is just how my life is. That's how they are. That's how that other person is. This is just how my life is. Well transactional analysis. Would suggest that no. This isn't how they are. Or you are.

Or how life is. That there's a reason why. You are continually. Repeating behaviours. That are essentially essentially negative even though it doesn't make sense you know fighting with people walking away from interactions feeling like shit um not feeling like you're standing up for yourself with a particular person and always walking away feeling small and then that horrible frustration afterwards where you're going I can't explain what it is they do to me I can't explain it's a look they give me it's uh a way they speak to me whatever but as soon as they talk to me I walk away feeling like shit and the part

of me that had wanted to fucking put them in their place this one time the part of me that had rehearsed it. In front of the mirror last night. Just didn't come up. And I'm back in the same situation again. Feeling like a piece of shit. Or vice versa. You're the aggressor.

And you're treating. Your girlfriend. Your boyfriend. Your ma. Anyone. Like a piece of shit. And then feeling guilty over it. So what I'll try and do is use

transactional analysis to explain what psychology says why that shit kind of why we do that and what we can do about it and this is something I used massively in myself to become a happier

calmer more effective person because all this shit of course all that shit that's what feeds poor mental health you know repeating negative behavior over and over again that's not going to help anyone with depression or anxiety it'll feed towards it because it can confirms a negative view of yourself or a negative view about the world you know so transactional analysis analysis posits that the bulk of our personalities essentially are developed before five years of age right that's we now as grown-ass human beings no matter what fucking age you are are operating on an operating system that you received before the age of five so throughout our day-to-day life we have what's known as three different types of ego states, they're called, right? Three different shifts in our personalities that we're continually moving between, right?

And these are child, parent and adult. Your child ego state is ways that you learn to behave with other people and opinions about yourself and opinions about the world these ways of being that you learned as an actual child then you have your parent ego state these are ways of behaving understanding yourself and understanding the world that you you learned from watching. Your parents or parent figures. Then the adult state. Is.

The state that you didn't learn when you were a child. That's the here and now. State. That's the. A state of. It's not influenced by childhood. It's reacting to what's happening right now. In the here and now.

And obviously. With transaction analysis, the goal is for you as an adult to be spending the most amount of time living your life in the adult state as much as possible. Because we spend a fierce amount of our time in a child state or a parent state, and this actually isn't very effective for our day to day lives. And this is why we tend to have these repeated irrational behaviours in our relationships with people. I'll go further. So in a typical morning we'll say. This is how it would play out in your head. So you're in your car with your buddy and you're driving along nice and happy and someone cuts in front of you so you make a quick adjustment to

your car you avoid a bumping into that person you get along with your journey you've just made a rational here and now decision as an adult you you're in your adult state of mind a car ran in front of you you made a decision you effectively responded to it uh according to your safety that's the adult state of mind no surprise of course that it's easy to be an adult when you're driving a car because driving a car is not rooted in any childhood experience you learn how to drive cars when you're a fucking adult so it'd be very strange if you have a childhood experience rooted in it so after you so you're in the car you avoid the bump then you turn to the person who's in the car with you and you tut at the driver who was so foolish as to cut in front of you.

You tut at that driver to your buddy and you say, fucking eejits, that was very silly of them, they should not have done that. Who are these people, they don't know how to drive out here. Eejits. At that moment you've switched into your parent ego state. ego state okay you've left the here and now of the adult state and you've become critical judgmental and kind of giving out about the other driver you've switched into the parent ego state chances are when you switch into that parent ego state your physical manner, the way you word sentences, choices of words that you use, the tone of your voice, more than likely mirrors a parent figure. It could either be a parent or an older sibling or a teacher or whoever from early childhood. You watched how they behaved as a parent and you then mimic that in your parent ego state.

So we've started off on the car journey adult you responded to a potential accident now you're judging the other driver you've gone into parent the problem is this little potential fender bender has caused you to be a little bit late for work so you drive into work you're ready to go in the front door and you're shitting your pants because you are late for work and you're terrified work you're ready to go in the front door and you're shitting your pants because you are late for work and you're terrified and you're nervous and your palms are sweaty because you're afraid now of first of all the shame of having to go into your co-workers because you're late and worrying about what they'll think will they will they totter? And you're now especially afraid of meeting your boss. And, you know, your body language might change.

You know, your posture might get a bit smaller. Your feet might be a little bit close together. You're worried about getting in trouble. Do you know? You're thinking about, in your head, you might even be saying to yourself, Oh no, I'm late. I'm going to get in trouble

and you ready to approach the boss's office terrified worried about you know how am I going to tell him that I was late you know chances are you know if you go go in and meet the boss you won't be looking them straight into the eye you'll be looking down at the ground you'll be physically enacting childhood behaviors because psychologically you're back in school you're five years of age and you're you're late for fucking school and that initial memory of that experience has now challenged channeled itself into your grown body and you are unconsciously thinking physically behaving and getting ready to speak like an actual child but then your brain kicks in it says to you no fuck it my boss is a reasonable woman

like i'm gonna tell her that this fucking agent jumped out in front of the car and it caused me to be a little bit late and she's going to understand because what reason would I have to come in and lie it's ridiculous so I'm just going to walk in and tell her and it'll be grand immediately you've gone right back in there to adult so you've went adult parent child adult then you go back to your fucking desk you sit down beside the person beside you and they say to you Jesus you've been late three times this fucking week what's going on and you snap at them

you've gone back into child and that is how our personalities work throughout the day and like I said you spend being in parent or adult tends not to be very useful for us it tends to create tension and to create discomfort

so what's the point of talking about all of this you know well transaction analysis it's called transactional analysis because it analyzes human transactions right now a transaction is basically you go to the shop you give the person money and you receive a good

that's a transaction but in psychology a transaction is any any unit of communication that happens between two humans and this field of psychology seeks to analyse these transactions from a psychoanalytic perspective which means rooted in childhood experiences so what is we'll say the child ego state

what are the characteristics of a child ego state well the child ego how often in your day do you behave in in what would be considered a childish fashion a fashion that's that's immature children behave on a very ego driven basis that doesn't have consequences or much consideration for the boundaries or feelings of other people so how much throughout

your day like when you're criticized or threatened and i say this as well because these we enter these ego states of child and parent it tends to be when conflict arises you know it's not when something kind you know it's not when something kind of simple it's not when we're physically kind of threatened when something dangerous happens that's more fight or flight but in situations where

our sense of self-esteem or our identity or our face is threatened or challenged or simply when conflict is entered it could be the tiniest bit of conflict

we enter either the or the unhealthy child or parent ego state so how often in your day when you're confronted with conflict of some description how do you respond by sulking right is your response to that to sulk, or do you throw tantrums, do you know, do you cry, and I'm not demonising crying, because crying is healthy, but as an adult, in your interactions with other people, if it's your girlfriend, if it's your boyfriend, if it's, if it's your fucking ma, you you know you're 26 years of age you have a fight with your ma and tears come out but the tears are and this is the weird thing they're tears for attention

do you punish the other person could be your your girlfriend. If you have an argument with your girlfriend. Do you punish your girlfriend by going missing? Do you leave the door? Do you slam the door? Leave the house and go for a walk? But really what you're doing. Is. Punishing her with the anxiety.

Of not knowing where you are. Or what you might do. And you're using as punishment the fact that she has to deal with the uncertainty of whether you're safe or not do you turn your phone off so they can't contact you and in your own mind you rationalize it with i need space but really what you're doing is fuck you i know now that because you don't know where I am, and you don't know what I'm going to do, you can get two hours there now really worrying about me.

Do you do that? As a way of resolving conflict in your life? Are you capable of compromising in a situation of conflict? Can you see things from the other person's perspective? Or is it simply about winning? Whatever the interaction is, whatever the conflict is, the disagreement, is winning your primary concern?

Are you very easily hurt by another person's opinion of you? Is that very emotionally triggering for you? Will that set off tantrums or going missing or slamming doors or punching walls these are that's the behavior of a child that's a that's a childish ego state and the bizarre weird thing about these things is that when we behave this way in an argument unconsciously the unconscious psychic force that's driving us to do it it's it's not a way to win the argument what you actually are doing you're going right

back to childhood the other person and it could be your fucking girlfriend or your boyfriend unconsciously they have just become your actual parent and what you want is their love and affection not not your girlfriend or boyfriends they have simply become an actor do you know what i mean they're fucking they're brad pitt playing the role of your da or susan sarandon playing your ma that's what that is and you are using them as a puppet of your parent to gain unconscious unresolved issues of affection and acceptance from your fucking parent and you're doing it through the puppet of your other half or your co-worker or the lad in the petrol station that's how insane this shit is that's how irrational the human unconscious mind is but that's why we do it the other thing too while i was listing out those list of

child ego state behaviors right there and you're listening to him and i was asking you how often in your day do you do these things how often today did you sulk did you slam a door did you throw a tantrum did you go missing i would wager that for most of that you were not looking at your own behavior instead you had a little eureka moment and you were looking at someone in your life close to you and going they do that or they do that oh fuck it sure she does that he does that that's what's wrong with them i knew it at that moment you have now just entered the parent ego state you didn't take responsibility for the shit that i was saying there about yourself but chances are you went judgmental and thought about someone else in your life projected it all onto them and

said that's what they do and that's the parent ego state that you've just entered there i would wager some people might have looked at themselves in their own behavior or a bit of both. Now the parent ego state, how often in your day do you spend time as parent? And the thing is with these two, like your child state, that's actually how you were when you were three or 4 years of age even you're a grown ass 26, 27 year old adult you are recreating not only the words but actual physical mannerisms that you would have had

when you were that age certain ways you would clench your fist or put your hand up to your mouth you did that 25 fucking years ago and it comes back in the muscle memory when you enter one of these states that's what a psychotherapist looks out for when they have a client to if they're using transaction analysis to offer therapy to a client they will spot when a client enters a child or parent state

based on their body language through recurring themes so the parent state what you do when you enter the parent state you reenact speech body movements opinions and views of the parent figure that was around you when you were a child it doesn't have to be your actual ma or da 90% of the time it is but it could be a teacher it could be an older sibling so how often in your day would you maybe fold your arms and touch at somebody when you enter conflict or disagreement with someone do you raise your voice and speak down to him to another adult are you going to raise your voice to another adult as a way to win the argument because that's an important thing too children want to win arguments the child state wants to win arguments because it's an immature position they. Children want to win arguments. The child state wants to win arguments.

Because it's an immature position. They can't see anything. The child state doesn't see things from another person's point of view. The parent state also wants to win arguments. Because a parent has absolute authority. And it cannot allow the child to win. Because a parent has the authority. So how often in your day do you speak down or

raise your voice to other adults in your interactions with your significant others your partner your fucking family your co-workers are you patronizing do you know do you make snide remarks as a way to gain control are you forceful with him are you authoritarian so let's play it out in a little role play a fairly fucking toxic role play um but something that would be fairly fucking common um now the other thing too is there's within these ego states there's two sides to them and they're not all negative the child instance, you've got what's known as adaptive child, within the child ego state. Adaptive child is the needy child who needs to win and wants approval

and everything has to be their own way, and they will be forceful and throw tantrums in order to get it. That's adaptive child. There's also free child. Free child. Is. Something we should actually be striving for. Free child is.

That's the part of yourself that can achieve flow. Creative flow. That's the part of yourself that used to enjoy playing with crayons. That's the part of yourself. That didn't give a fuck about what other people thought about you. When you were four. Because you were four. And all you give a shit about.

Is. A piece of muck that you found on the floor. That's's free child and it is healthy for us to engage with that part of ourselves occasionally because sometimes free child can walk into a room and insult someone without knowing it i have an issue with that i spend an awful lot of time in my free child as an artist but you know i might not dress my bed or i could easily walk into duns with two different shoes on not a bother you know because i spend too much time in the free child trying to create parent has two types of parent there's controlling parent that's the authoritative parent who sets rules for other people and who chastises people and and who is authoritarian, and then there's nurturing parent, the part of yourself that really cares for other people, and nurtures them, and is kind to other people.

But that again is not necessarily healthy all the time, because you don't really have to be that nurturing, and caring, and taking responsibility for another adult. But if you spend a lot of your time in the nurturing parent ego state all of a sudden your boyfriend essentially becomes your child and you're washing his jocks do you get me so here's a role play um boyfriend and girlfriend in the kitchen i'm'm going to be, I'm going to be sexist with this, well not sexist, I'm going to use traditional, traditional fucking stereotypes,

because it's easier to understand, so, the girl cooks a big dinner, spends all evening cooking dinner, they're sitting down eating the dinner, she's in her head thinking, fuck me, this is a lovely dinner now, and it took a lot of fucking effort, and i bet that cunt doesn't appreciate it he's taking me for granted so she blurts out and

she says that took me ages now you better fucking clean the dishes afterwards he hears that and he's triggered in his head he's going i was gonna clean the fucking dishes anyway who's this bitch telling me i have to do it so he blurts out fuck you i clean the fucking dishes if i want to i'm not going to be told how to clean any dishes and she goes quiet and she says you never clean the dishes you never i do all the cooking around here and you never clean the dishes and then he goes i don't give a fuck about the fucking dishes fuck you and then she goes

you always turn we can't have one dinner without you turning it into an argument this is what's wrong with us and then his face

goes red and he gets up off the chair and he turns around and he punches the wall really hard and screams throws a tantrum

and then she sees that and then she goes oh your hand your hand and she goes over and gives him a hug and then they're okay and she's crying and they're having a big hug and that's that's a toxic relationship you know that's that's red flag shit obviously your man's hitting walls that's not great but it happens and what that is in transaction analysis an example of it's known as a complementary transaction okay here's the thing if someone parent and child ego states tend to complement each other if we go back to the co-worker a while ago the co-worker said you're late for work and then you throw a tantrum that's because the co-worker came at you from a controlling

parent point of view so that is an invitation for you to respond with child in the interaction in the kitchen between the boyfriend and the girlfriend she response she initiated the conversation from her controlling parent she said you better clean those dishes his unconscious hard controlling parent and it probably reminded him of his ma and that could be why they're going out with each other that's how fucked up this is that could be some toxic relationships that people get into are when two people unconsciously seek someone who reminds them of the part of their mother or father that has unresolved issues of love. That can happen. Also, people find themselves drawn towards other people that remind them of the parts of themselves that they don't fully accept and then they slowly grow to resent each other do you get me like you could find yourself attracted to someone

who has the same the same fears and insecurities and flaws as you do and initially you start off going out with each other and you go fuck me this person understands me so much i've never had so much in common but really what you have in common is a shared space of the things you don't like about yourself you feel okay about them when you're around this person who has them as well but over time that can toxically grow into you despising and hating the other person you're supposed to love because their everyday presence reminds you of everything you hate about yourself that you haven't taken ownership of but with this interaction in the kitchen so i'm fucking backtracking now hold on so your one says from her parent you better clean those dishes he hears that his parent unconsciously responds from child fuck you i'm not cleaning the dishes then she comes back with a controlling parent um you never clean the dishes you can't even have a dinner without starting a fight

he comes back he's fully in his child now and him as a child his way of responding to his mar or whatever was through tantrums so he he, as an adult man, throws a tantrum in the kitchen and he boxes the wall. Throws a child, a hugely irrational act driven by pure emotion, boxes the wall. She then switches from controlling parent to nurturing parent, sees him box on the wall and then gives him affection and nurturing because he's hurt his hand and the crazy bizarre thing about that entire transaction and interaction it had nothing to do with dishes it had nothing to do with making dinner it had to do with a triggering invitation to an ego state a childhood ego state where basically what he wanted was love and affection from his ma and he toxically used his girlfriend as a puppet for that and that's what that was and she responded to it with

nurturing parent and that can go on and on together forever. Now what's the solution? In transaction analysis, the solution to that is, if you don't want these complementary transactions, if you don't want these situations where it's your child state toxically talking to another person's parent state, then the solution is the adult state. The adult state is about the here and now it's not about winning or losing the adult solution to the conversation that those

two people could have had is purely about dinner and dishes nothing else no winning or losing dinner and dishes it would have started off with the lad going fucking hell thanks for this dinner it is lovely it's absolutely gorgeous that must have fucking taken ages fair play to you I appreciate this she quite friendly

turns fucking thanks I loved making it for you I love making food and having you appreciate it any chance you do the dishes because it was a load of work

and he goes don't even ask I was going to do it anyway it's grand problem over, don't even ask, I was going to do it anyway. It's grand. Problem over. There wasn't even a problem. That was an adult conversation between two people. So how do we get to that state?

By learning and understanding and truly analysing our own fucking behaviour. And noticing when we are behaving like a child. noticing when we are behaving like a child and when we are behaving like a parent and looking at aside from fucking therapy right now i'm not going to suggest to everybody here go and find the transactional analysis therapists in ireland there's probably only about 10 of them and it's expensive but how i don't because i didn't go to a transactional analysis therapist i went to a bit of cbt therapy that was it but the rest of it i kind of i taught myself through reading from books um if you want to read a good transaction that there's transaction analysis book games people play by eric barn that's the first book on it but jotting down and journaling journaling is a great if you don't have access to a therapist

journaling is a great way for self-therapy so what i started doing when i was 18 19 and i was looking at my own childish kind of how did mine mine would have i would have been very shy i most certainly would not have seen myself as an adult at all so i would consistently enter almost every social situation from the point of view of a toddler whether it be with friends whether it be trying to talk to girls whether it be trying to talk to college lect whether it be trying to talk to college lecturers, trying to go for job interviews, I would consistently interact with people from the point of view of a child. I wouldn't make eye contact, I'd be staring down at the ground, I had very little confidence in my own opinions, little confidence in myself.

I was consistently, non-stop searching for another person to tell me what to do and to be the adult and to usher me around the place like a mother or father should do but the problem was I was 19 so people meet a 19 year old and he's behaving like a two-year-old and what you're left with there is people have a choice when they were interacting with me to either be a nurturing parent or a controlling parent. So I was either having people kind of nurture me and look after me, which an adult should not have, or being bullied by people who saw my invitation as them as an opportunity to be controlling parent

so I was very unhappy my social experiences were not pleasant I was at the bottom of the pile in my social group getting slagged all the time because I'm the child and their parents are I was being nurtured and having pity laid upon me mainly by the girls in the group and not necessarily in a sexual way either they were just like oh poor old blind boy rub his head the lads are being mean to him do you know what i mean and that was a very toxic social environment to me which again doesn't help the other massive mental health issues i had it was all part of a huge system so transaction analysis was one of the things i used to improve my own confidence and self-esteem i was like i am not happy consistently being in a child state how do i get to being in an adult state

and here's the thing with you know what is the adult state what is the adult ego state and how do we get it well that's the internal locus of evaluation that i speak about a lot an adult is assertive right an adult an adult can admit when they are wrong and they genuinely understand when they're being wronged like that scenario in the kitchen that lad was believed himself to be in the right over the dishes but it's like you're not the dishes need to be cleaned you should appreciate that this person's after cooking for you uh the girl wasn't in the right either she's got no right to be pecking at him like that and being a parent both people are wrong but they think they're being right when they're actually not an adult actually knows no i'm being wrong here i'm gonna own up to it or no someone's actually

trying to wrong me i need to try and put a stop to it in an assertive fashion. That's what an adult does. An adult. Is able to say no. Without needing to explain themselves. That is a hallmark. Of adult ego state. The confidence to go. No. And not. No.

Followed by a but. Followed by an apology. But straight up. No I can't do that. That's what adults do do that's what gives you i won't say power but it gets your respect in other people's eyes and there's again there's a way to do it like a cunt that's not the good way to do it to genuinely compassionately say no not in a confrontational way not like not like the way

like bouncers like a bouncer would say no but they're not doing it in a confident way they're doing it in uh like here's the other thing as well with transaction analysis it's possible to be in two ego states at once and this is often how we do it not everyone goes around the place punching walls and throwing fucking tantrums. That's the extreme end of childish behaviour. That's the extreme end. If you do that, people who are highly antisocial, people who end up in prison,

people who, you know, would have had very dysfunctional childhoods or whatever, they will consistently behave in the child state and express aggressive fucking tantrums that will put them in jail or put people around them in physical harm most of us are socialized enough to not express our child ego state in that way so usually what happens is that the child can express itself through parent it's still bypassing adult now how does this happen passive aggression what is passive aggression passive aggression is you have an interaction with your friend you have a big argument so what you do is you decide no i'm not talking to him

no i'm not talking to him and the way you speak about it and rationalise it to yourself sounds very adult what you're saying to yourself is no that's all I can do with them now they said this to me I'm not speaking to them I'm not texting them

I'm blanking them I'm too good for them I'm not stooping to their level and these are the words you're using but actually what's happening there is because you understand it's socially unacceptable to go straight out child smash something on the ground or hit him a slap what you do instead is the child motivates parental behavior in you so your child is saying fuck them how dare they they've

hurt me now i must hurt them that's what your child is saying unconsciously this unconscious motivation is then informing your behavior through your parent ego state through such words and actions as no i'm being the mature one now i'm going to be the mature one and I'm not going to text them and if they try and ring me they can sing for it I'm done with them I'm washing my hands I've tried all my best but really what you're doing is you're just punishing the other person you're actually trying to get that person to feel hurt you're trying to get them to a fantasy in your head where you're trying to go they'll appreciate me now that i'm gone this type of stuff you might as well hit him a headbutt or you might as well jump up on the ground stamping your feet

but you've rationalized it in your own head that it's adult behavior it's not your child is just motivating your parent because it's more socially acceptable than slapping him into the face. And that's often how childish behavior presents itself. If that lad had more control over his toxicity and he's the type of lad who won't punch a wall instead what he'll do is he'll go fuck that and he'll go off for a lot of pints with the lads and allow his girlfriend to sit at home thinking that he might be out cheating on her

that's, that's passive aggression punching the wall or punching her that's the extreme toxicity, do you get me? there's another thing within transaction analysis called fuck it man i'm 50 minutes into this now that's a big old fucking rant and i wanted to do some more shit another thing within transaction analysis is what's known as life scripts and this is a really weird one so transaction analysis posits that we have deeply held beliefs about ourself and about life that we formed from a very, very young age.

And we don't question these beliefs. We take them as completely the truth. you know at the start of this podcast i said do you continually repeat negative patterns in your life and you can't seem to stop repeating them and they keep coming back in themselves in these negative situations that only bring you pain with other people and you just say to yourself i guess that's just the way i am well transaction analysis would say. No. That's. You may have a certain life script. Which.

You have simply chosen. Not to challenge. Because you take it. As normal. As granted. Do you know what I'm saying. Because you learnt it. So young.

Um. Like. How do I explain it. Like think of something like EastEnders. Right. A long running. Uh. Drama. Or of something like EastEnders right a long running drama or comedy so EastEnders that's been going since the 60s

you've characters in EastEnders that are they've been on screen for maybe 25 years okay now the actor doesn't write that fucking character a team of writers writes that character. But however, throughout that 25 years of that character being on EastEnders on television,

throughout that 25 years, elements of that character are consistent throughout. If they're an angry person, the fucking scriptwriters writers who may change every two years have a template for i know you're a new script writer but this is how this character behaves this character is an angry character this character had a troubled childhood this character likes flashy things do you know what i'm saying and there's all these different characters that's kind of how it's like in our own minds we've written a very simple script for ourself that our internal writer consistently follows in every situation and will unconsciously engineer situations in our life to suit this script that we have a core part of transaction analysis in therapy is through the adult state to find and understand what our life

script is our personal script is that we probably learned from our parents or from early experiences to find out what that script is and to challenge it against reality and ask ourselves is it accurate do we need it and how has it affected my life so again because this is a psychoanalytic theory transaction analysis would basically say that you've written your your own your own life story you've already written it and you began writing this as soon as you're born and you had the bones of it by the time you were about five then you got to seven or eight you started to flesh out the main kind of details of the story and you continued on into early adolescence but you have

whether you know it or not you have a story about life and there's loads of different characters in it and it's your life and different characters of how they are and how they should be and it has a start a beginning and an end and it isn't objective reality it a way, a rigid way of seeing the world and seeing yourself and how things should be and how other people's are. That is not actually based in objective reality. It is tarnished by the type of childhood you had. And let's just say you had a particularly critical parent how is your script going to turn out then you know

what is your script if you had a parent who told you to be perfect all the time chances are you have a view of yourself and the world that you must be perfect all the time and that your life has to be perfect and it is going to be perfect and there's other people getting in the way of it being perfect and if and if it's not perfect then you have this continual sense of

failing and being unhappy and not being good enough because the the actors in your play aren't reading their lines if you get me you know ask yourself later with a pen and paper like what's the title of your story and i don't mean everything that's happened so far your opinion on what life is what's your story who are you is it a happy story or a sad story is there triumph in it

is it tragic is it boring or is it interesting you know just try and write it down in a few sentences see what you fucking find like you have an

unconscious life plan. And it tends to creep up. In certain. When you're presented with challenges. You know whenever you kind of. Whenever you back away from something. You know some. Like.

Some people get job offers. And. they just don't turn up for the interview that's common a job offer comes along and they don't turn up for the interview and their conscious mind tells them i had a sick stomach that day or I couldn't face it or whatever but deep in your unconscious what what are the words that come up you know what words when you don't go for that job the answer is your script does that mean you have a script that says you you won't succeed you can't succeed and that if you were to go for this job and to get it the stress of that challenging this life script that you've written for yourself would be too much so you choose instead to follow the script into a self-fulfilling prophecy and don't turn up for the job some people you know depending

on their parents relationship if they you know if they grew up in a house where their parents didn't love each other or didn't talk to each other and they learned that human interaction is that way your script can be there's no such thing as actual love because you didn't see it when you were a kid you saw two parents who shouldn't have been together and should have broken up years ago but instead communicated it through silence or passive aggression or fighting and then any chance you have to meet somebody and truly love them you push them away because it challenges an unconscious script in your head that there is no such thing as love, I've never seen it

human couples are supposed to fight that's one possible script you know now these scripts as well they are entirely outside of conscious awareness, they are deep deep ingrained in the unconscious mind they

they are unconscious pangs that motivate our behaviour but we don't know why and the tragic thing about negative scripts is what transaction analysis says is that what our unconscious is continually looking for is the payoff if your script has a payoff such as I am unlovable or love does not exist, then like the character in EastEnders, you will unconsciously steer your life in the direction whereby that payoff takes supremacy. You will steer situations to confirm the payoff of I am not lovable. situations to confirm the payoff of i am not lovable or i i i script i am second best i will never be number one i'll always be second best you know or a script that says i mean jesus you could have grown up with a

a parent in the fucking 80s who your dad or your mom never had a job and continually tried to get a job and the discourse around the house was continually your parents freaking out about not having the right job or whatever. You picked up on that and you picked up, you wrote your script as, I cannot be successful because you didn't see success so when opportunities for success arise you can unconsciously steer yourself away from them

scripts tend to be reinforced by at an early age by parents and the beauty of this theory as well is that like you know a few podcasts back i spoke about the theories of carl rogers with psychotherapy you can mix and match different kind of therapies and they all complement each other this script business it echoes carl rogers is real and ideal self because i've listed out some quite negative scripts there. You know and not everybody would have a negative script. What if you grew up in a fucking house where your parents absolutely loved the bonds of each other. Do you know they really truly loved each other. So you have a script then that says I must find true love like my parents had. And then every relationship or partner you try and find.

It never lives up to it. so you keep pushing them away what if you had incredibly positive uh successful parents so your script becomes i am going to become successful i must be successful but then you don't reach it because it's an unrealistic goal so you're continually feeling disappointment and letting yourself down. So positive and negative scripts. It's not how positive and negative they are that's the issue. It's how realistic are they with actual lived reality. They're generally not because reality is arbitrary. Transaction analysis would also say that,

and this is the shitty thing, the more stress we are under, the more likely we are to respond to that stress by trying to live out our script, rather than responding as an adult in the here and now flexibly. The most basic life scripts in TA are broken down into as follows, right? One script could be, I'm not okay, you're okay. A person with that script is they push people away

they believe themselves to be fundamentally flawed but other people are grand so they push people away they're like no I'm the problem I'm fucked up get the fuck away from me in every single situation people with a script like this can suffer from

blaming themselves a lot placing a lot of shame on themselves looking at other people as being a lot better than them and continually seeing themselves as the issue in whatever goes wrong

so then another script is I'm okay you're not okay this is people who they push other people away for a different reason they push people away with anger they're suspicious of other people they believe other people to be fundamentally untrustworthy out to get them other people are consistently wrong or broken people who are i'm okay you're not okay they tend to struggle a lot with blame they blame other people a lot quite angry with the world and can have a kind of a lonely superiority, if you get me.

Another script is, I'm not okay, you're not okay. This one is particularly damaging. It's people who believe I'm not okay, you're not okay, can truly struggle with feelings of extreme hopelessness. When a stressful situation presents itself, or a situation in life presents itself there's no point they give up easily they don't see goodness in themselves or goodness in other people it's the rarest of the scripts but it's particularly destructive now here's the thing these life scripts we formed them at a young age because it's getting a bit fucking

it's getting dark now I'm talking some dark shit the human psyche is dark but here's the thing as fucking adults and this is the beauty of it through something like transaction analysis

when we can identify honestly and truly and it takes time and like I said journaling is a good way to do it when we can identify honestly and truly and it takes time and like i said journaling is a good way to do it when you can identify what your script is you can throw it in the fucking bin takes a lot of work but it is just a script up to this point it may have been you know truly driving unconsciously driving your motivations and interactions with other people but you can rewrite that script as an adult because it is not based in reality your script is bullshit even though emotionally it feels real it's not true so the adult script

the the rewrite of the toxic script is i'm okay you're okay that's the goal that's the script that we should all have that is the one that's based in reality I'm grand I'm an adult I'm going to deal with things in the here and now I have intrinsic value you're the exact same i'm no better than anybody else nobody else is better than me because we both have equal intrinsic value and that can't be taken away from us and everything else is simply our behavior and our aspects of our behavior no matter how good they are no matter how bad they are cannot define our worth as human beings. Or my worth or your worth. I'm okay, you're okay.

That's the goal. To truly switch your life script to that. Which means that you're interacting with the world in a fresh flexible here and now fashion when conflicts present themselves you deal with them in the here and now with the actual issues that's happening you don't bring childhood baggage to it you don't look at your life and say i'm the type of person who just doesn't succeed or i'm the type of person who just doesn't succeed. Or I'm the type of person who has to be strong in the face of resilience. It's like no.

You're not any type of fucking person. You're you. And you're allowed to change. And you're allowed to be flexible. And move within all of this. As part of the beautiful chaotic tapestry of life which you can respond to every day you respond to it nothing's predetermined

you respond to challenges do you get me? so that there was fucking transactional analysis I could have done two podcasts on that to be honest I haven't read into transaction analysis properly in a good few fucking years so a lot of that

like I'd done my basic notes but a lot of that was coming back to me as I was talking to you and yeah fuck it I must go back and read my books Games People Play by Eric Byrne is a classic one, and also there's a lovely book,

called, TA Today, by Ian Stewart and Van Jones, that's a good one, I hope you took something from that, transaction analysis was a very, powerful tool for me, to really confront, some some dark shit in myself that was causing me to live an unhappy life when i was a young fella and like i said i used

transaction analysis cognitive behavioral therapy freudian psychoanalysis uh emotional intelligence i delved into all the different psychotherapies to understand myself and take things from them to become, to go from being completely agoraphobic, suffering from very bad depression, very bad anxiety, almost suicidal, to being the best version of myself and being happy and these are the tools that I used they mightn't work for you and I'm not prescribing them as a solution because everybody's fucking different but it worked for me

that's the approach that worked for me and I'm lucky that way so great if you take something from it that'd be class wouldn't it but I'm not prescribing it as a an end all solution em and it's just part of your thinking too like because it's true like aspects you know i was saying there that you know if you behave

in the child ego state or the parent ego state these are unhelpful things for life and you could say to me what about someone like Trump or what about anyone in power like Trump is a giant aggressive child and it's true you know you can live your life in these ego states and really bully people 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 torontorRock.com 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 what's not real who said that the first omen only in theaters April 5th

and get what you want through force you can do this and it might bring you money it might bring you power but you I guarantee you you will not be content and happy and sure what's life if you don't have content and happiness it can only bring you pleasure you know like a load of money and power will bring you pleasure it'll bring you

cars food all the bures in the world that you want but that's pleasure and pleasure pleasure does not equate to happiness do you know if pleasure equated to happiness rich famous people wouldn't suffer from fucking mental health problems or addiction problems and it's quite clear that a lot of rich famous people have got mental health and addiction problems that's evident this is why it doesn't bring happiness happiness is not something like i said not something that can be attained it is a something that you experience by truly understanding yourself your own emotions and trying to live as much of your life as possible in the here and now present moment if you can. And internal locus of evaluation.

You know, getting your value comes from who you are on the inside. Not placing too much negative and positive value on aspects of your behaviour. Because that's a recipe for unhappiness. And what else? On aspects of your behaviour. Because that's a recipe for unhappiness. And what else? When it comes to.

Achievements. Trying to focus most of your energy on the process. Rather than the end result. Focusing on the end result. And expecting happiness at the end. Is a perpetual recipe for disappointment. But truly enjoying the process is what brings happiness in the here and now and life contains inevitable pain that you know nothing about you must accept

the pain but you do have choice and control over how you react to that pain i'm going to answer a few questions soon because i've been chatting for a long time there fuck me that's the longest rant i've ever done on this podcast um i don't even know if i'll have time to answer questions will i um a lot of people have been asking me to speak about jordan peterson this week because he just gave a giant talk in dublin i've had about 20 requests. What are your opinions on Jordan Peterson? That last hour that you listened to there do you know? All I did there was I spoke about the field of psychology and psychotherapy

do you know? In order to explain how I helped myself and how I can help other people. That's what Jordan Peterson does. He is an expert in the field of clinical psychology. But I managed to myself and how I can help other people that's what Jordan Peterson does he is you know an expert in the field of clinical psychology but I managed to speak

there for 60 minutes about self help and psychology without being transphobic or giving out about feminists and I would love it if Jordan Peterson was able to do the same because I do like listening to him when he's talking

about psychology because he's an expert in his field but the other shit his opinions on post-modernism you know fucking socialism I'd take that stuff with a pinch of salt do you know what I mean but at the same time I'm not I wouldn't write him off completely when he talks

about psychology he knows his shit. That's his, he's an expert in the field and he's a good storyteller. Okay, time for the Ocarina Pause. I had someone say to me this week, you don't have to keep explaining

what the Ocarina Pause is or you don't even have to keep doing it. We know it. I do have to keep doing the Ocarina Pause. The Ocarina Pause is when ACAST inserts a digital advert. So what I do is I play the ocarina pause the ocarina pause is when a cast in search of digital advert so what i do is i play my ocarina it acts as a buffer i don't want you listening to the podcast

and all of a sudden some big loud advert comes in advertising the british army if you do hear it i want to give you a bit of a warning to expect a loud advert may come in. So I use the Spanish clay whistle, the ocarina, to do this. Here we go. That was the ocarina. Support for this podcast comes from you you dirty cunts the listener I have very occasional sponsorship

but the main support for this podcast and what keeps it going out regular and for me to be able to treat it like an actual job is the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you enjoyed this podcast and liked it and was like i like that so much i buy blind by a pint or a cup of coffee once a month

if you feel that way please do you can do it because this podcast is free i put it out for free five hours of content a month completely for free and anyone can listen to it but if you're like i'll give him a few quid please do i really welcome that it makes a massive difference to my life so go to patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast and if you want to continue listening for free that's grand um also as well like the podcast subscribe to it and recommend it to a friend especially if you're not living in Ireland

so we can have it grow like a cunt okay well I answered a couple of questions it's pure late here because I was busy it's very very late it's four in the morning no fuck it

I'm not answering questions this week because that was too long a rant and I wouldn't mind going to bed but I'll tell you

what I will be doing I went on to Patreon today to ask for some questions so I've got a bunch of new questions but I also I said

to Patreon a lot of people have been requesting like an agony ant type thing where they can send me anonymous we'll say situations in their life that they'd like me to discuss they can send them to me and I will anonymously

discuss them on the podcast so there's two ways to do it you can direct message me on Twitter direct message me on Patreon. I will provide you anonymity if it's an agony ant thing. If you want proper, true anonymity, I just thought this evening, the best way is through Snapchat. Because most people on Snapchat are as good as anonymous anyway. They have city names, it's not like their profile photo or whatever.

So, we are on snapchat rubber bandits one right all lowercase and the digit one the numeral rubber bandits one so you can snapchat me a text of whatever agony and shit or problem you might have in your life or situation text it to me on Snapchat I won't know who you are and even if you tell me I won't say your name and I can discuss it if that's what you would like otherwise just DM me on Twitter or on Patreon or whatever yart, go in peace

I'm really looking forward to hearing what you thought of this week's podcast and I hope I did it justice because it's a very complicated transaction analysis is actually quite complicated and in order for that kind of rant to be fully effective i should have done it with like a powerpoint and diagrams that's the best way to describe the different ego states so i hope it translated and worked and that ye experienced it as helpful go in peace have a lovely lovely week and i'm going to be back to you the same time next week you absolute shout of

goals Thank you. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason

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