The Blindboy Podcast - Exploding Kings and Gestalt Psychology

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

I speak about how I use Gestalt Psychology to maintain my mental health and I address exploding English kings Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 God bless you dystopian queevas. What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I have a nice long podcast for you this week. As promised, this podcast is about psychology and mental health. I'm going to speak about Gestalt Psychology, which is an interesting school of psychology that you'll enjoy. of psychology that you'll enjoy um but before that i have some some hot takey stuffy that i use to to get into the gestalt psychology so sit back and enjoy it i've been having an enjoyable week i found out that i'm on a second government watch list list um let me explain a few weeks back i mentioned that the irish government in specific the department of justice were collecting tweets from anyone who had been critical of the system of direct provision in ireland if you're a listener from outside of ireland direct provision is a very cruel system in Ireland whereby
Starting point is 00:01:05 people who seek asylum so asylum seekers and refugees when they come to Ireland while they're being processed they're essentially put into a low security prison for an indefinite amount of time some people are there for decades and it removes their autonomy it's quite cruel and it's also a system that's it's for profit so it's paid for by people's taxes but there's loads of private companies that run direct provision centers for a profit earn loads of money off it so you have this self-perpetuating cruel industry where people's misery has been turned into a commodity and i'm quite critical of this as i should be as anyone should be i'm critical of it a lot now if you want to hear more about direct provision listen to my
Starting point is 00:01:50 podcast with ellie kiziambe um and michelle uh darmody ellie kiziambe is someone who she's an activist who has been living in direct provision so if you want to hear about it from someone's lived experience listen to that so I'm critical of direct provision. I compare it to this generation's Magdalene laundries, really, is what I consider it to be. So because of this, any time I was tweeting about direct provision, specifically critical of it, any time I was tweeting, comparing it to Magdalene laundries, my tweets were being recorded by the Department of Justice the government and being placed into a file to show to government ministers as an example of people critiquing direct provision not just me Hosier's tweets were in there and Marion Keyes
Starting point is 00:02:41 basically the government is watching people online who criticise direct provision and then recording these tweets and putting them into files and I had to find out about it in the newspaper. And now this week I found out again the government is still monitoring my tweets and basically any time I'm critical of the government, any time I'm critical of the Irish government in a tweet and if that tweet gets lots of retweets the government is hiring people to take these tweets put them into a report and then submit this report to the government for review and it's not just me it's journalists people working in the arts anyone who has an online presence who is vocally critical of the
Starting point is 00:03:24 government the irish government and its policies and i'm kind of i'm angry about it i'm angry and annoyed now first of all there it's probably harmless at this moment in time it's probably harmless what the government is doing is they're getting public tweets things that i tweet out publicly or say on this podcast i put this out to the public but then they take this and they record it and put it into reports and some people online are saying oh you should be thankful you should be thankful that the government are listening to what you're saying and they might change policy firstly no that's not the case because a journalist Aoife Moore had to find this stuff out so in order to find out that I was being monitored by the government and that other people are being
Starting point is 00:04:15 monitored by the government a journalist had to apply for a freedom of information act which means the government are doing it in secret now they're not really doing it in secret because it means it's kind of like we're not going to tell anyone but if you want to go through the laborious process of asking if we're doing anything then we will provide it so that's secret if if in our that's secret put it this way lads, when I tweet something, if a fourth year fucking student, if a student in fourth year of college is doing a thesis and something I tweet is relevant to the topic of their thesis, that person often tweets at me or gives me a DM and says, blind boy, can I use your tweet in my thesis because it's relevant to something I'm speaking
Starting point is 00:05:03 about? Or can I use something you said on your podcast in my thesis? And's relevant to something i'm speaking about or can i use something you said on your podcast in my thesis and i say yeah no problem now if a fucking college student does that why can't the government but they don't they're doing it in a way that it's it obfuscates the truth the government are taking tweets not not telling anyone, and putting them in internal reports. And then you have to, a journalist has to ask for it, has to access it through a Freedom of Information Act. So that's obfuscation, but you can't fully call it secret because it's there if you look for it. So that says two things for me. Number one, if someone says, look, your tweets are are public there's nothing wrong with this
Starting point is 00:05:46 there is because they did it in secret um put it this way if you if you're if you notice that your cornflakes are slowly disappearing in your house you go for breakfast every morning and you're noticing that you have less and less cornflakes so then you say to your housemate have you been taking my corn flakes and then the housemate says oh yes i have i have yeah i was waiting for you to ask before i told you i was doing it you'd kind of go ah come on just ask me for the fucking corn flakes like i know they're only corn flakes they're only corn flakes i can buy loads more corn flakes no hassle but just ask me it's that you know you'd be pissed off with your house
Starting point is 00:06:26 mate if they did that with your fucking cornflakes well i'm pissed off with the government for doing that with my data secondly the fact that they're doing it in such an obfuscatory if that's the way it's pronounced an obfuscatory way hidden way the fact that they're doing it in such a hidden way suggests to me no they're not listening to my my critiques and other people's critiques in order to change policy they're not they're doing this in in secret so what they're doing is they're trying to find out how they're being critiqued so they can avoid further critique it's a pr exercise if it was we're fucking taking all your critical tweets on board and we're listening to you and we're going to do this to democratically change policy then they'd be out in the open about it they'd be getting pr off that they'd be going
Starting point is 00:07:25 look at us we're so we listen to people's voices they're not what they're doing is they want private reports of people criticizing them a critique that's the the tweets that are ending up in the reports are ones that are getting lots of retweets and lots of engagement so they're using this as an example of what criticisms of the government are popular what popular critiques so they're not using it to change what they're doing what they want to do is how can we continue what we're doing how can we continue the bad shit that we're doing but but in such a way that we don't get caught so how can we take the critiques on board to change the narrative so it doesn't look like we're doing anything bad that's what they're doing and that's why they're doing it in secret
Starting point is 00:08:15 then blind bite they're your public tweets man you're tweeting this shit out publicly all right if it's a public tweet they're just people they can put it into a report not necessarily i tell you why when i tweet when i put something on twitter i i consent to tweeting it you can delete fucking tweets i i'm consenting to here is what i'm saying here in the context of twitter when you then take my tweet and put it into a government report that drastically changes the context that changes the context of my tweet you've removed it from the initial context of twitter and now it's in a new list in a fucking government report of critical tweets about the government you've just changed the context and in a free society i should be asked if i agree to my tweet being taken and
Starting point is 00:09:16 put into a different context i'd say no i'd say no thanks lads i actually don't i'm okay with my tweet being out there in twitter or being in a news article but i don't think i want my tweet in a government report about people critical of the government because right now that's harmless right now it's fucking harmless right now but in in in a society globally where data privacy is a huge issue data privacy you know our our understanding about our data and our rights to our own data in the context of that okay you've you've just changed the context of how my data is being used secondly the fucking fascism is rising all around the world so what if there's a fascist government in 10 fucking years in Ireland in 10 years and then they go great let's open up that report
Starting point is 00:10:14 that Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael were quite happy to do 10 years ago of all the people critical of the government do you know what I mean I didn't i don't agree to my tweets being in a fucking government document you've changed the context fuck you and finally it's it's creepy and strange the message that it sends is you you're free to criticize the government if you like criticize us all you want please do publicly criticize us all you want we're just gonna write it down and store it away in a document with loads of other people that are criticizing us but you keep talking we're just gonna write it down here and but the covert message of that what that sends me and other people who are ending up in these documents the covert messaging of that
Starting point is 00:11:02 is shut the fuck up that's the covert message and it's uniquely irish i remember being a fucking teenager right and when i was a teenager and i was you know rebelling and acting the bollocks you know fucking smoking hash or vandalizing phone boxes or whatever the fuck i was doing when i was 14 or my friends were doing it rebelling what would happen is the guard the irish fucking police there was different levels right so if i was hanging around we'll say let's just say there was vandalism in an area or people were reporting oh those lads are selling hash or those lads are smoking hash or they're drinking that group the group that I'm in what would happen is you're a
Starting point is 00:11:52 teenager you've got nowhere to go so you're hanging around corners and when I was hanging around corners I wouldn't be doing anything illegal I wouldn't have anything illegal on me the guards would show up and what they'd do is they'd say what's your name and I'd say why do I have to give you my name I'm not doing anything wrong and they'd go we just want your name and I'd say to him if I give you my name like am I fucking am I on the system now are you going to tell my parents what does this mean and the guard would say no no no this is just for my notebook I just want your name for my notebook so we're sure don't worry about this this isn't going to go on your record nothing like that i just want it for your notebook
Starting point is 00:12:32 and that's what the guards used to do and there was different tiers so if the lowest tier is the guard puts your name in the notebook and the next tier then is they're calling to your fucking parents house to give you an official warning and then after that that's proceedings but the lowest one was your name is in my notebook now i have your name in my notebook and it's inconsequential nothing legally would happen of it the notebook was probably going to get thrown away, but it sends the fucking message to me going, oh fuck, the guard's got my name in a notebook and now I'm behaving myself. You know what I mean? And it reminds me of this. When I was in fucking school, if I was acting the bollocks in school, before suspension, before expulsion, both are things
Starting point is 00:13:23 that happened to me because I was suspended three times and I was kicked out in sixth year but before any of that what the teachers would say was you're being talked about in the staff room and it meant nothing it meant nothing it's like so what I'm being talked about in the staff room but the message was your name is coming up a lot in the staff room other teachers are mentioning your name in the staff room and they're not going to ring up your parents and go they're talking about him in the staff room it sends the message of there's nothing wrong here your name's just been mentioned in the staff room but it's it's a signal change your fucking behavior toe the line now when it's when i'm 14 and the problem is i'm fucking throwing
Starting point is 00:14:10 bottles off a phone box or throwing eggs at a bus or in school i'm disrupting other people from learning i thought at the time i was messing but i'm just disrupting other people from learning right fair enough fair enough i need i actually needed a little bit of discipline but no no no now i'm a fucking adult in a democracy and i'm critiquing government policies i'm critiquing direct provision so fuck you i'm entitled to do that this isn't right if if you want to take my tweet and put it in a government report of people criticizing the government then send me a fucking dm whoever you are working for the government send me a dm and say blind boy i'm preparing a report for the department of justice about people criticizing direct provision we'd
Starting point is 00:14:56 like to use your tweet in this report is that okay with you and then i'll answer because we're drastically changing the context and we just want to know if it's okay with you that we do that that's the correct thing to do not fucking do it secretly and a journalist has to access it through a freedom of information act that's not acceptable I also now have the issue of who do they share this information with I work in America sometimes if I'm doing a gig in America I've done podcasts on this before about the utter hell that is American immigration I uh I almost applied for a work visa this year but I didn't because of coronavirus but I'm probably going to be applying for an American work visa
Starting point is 00:15:39 so that I can work in the fucking states and do gigs and in order for them to do that they do a pretty fucking thorough background check and are you telling me that the US government when I apply for one of these work visas to go there that they're not going to fucking ring up the Department of Justice and go this blind boy fella what have you got on him and then the Department of Justice go well we actually have a load of reports of him being critical of the Irish government. The US, that's fucking telling me that's not going to get me flagged at US immigration. And then you're going, so what?
Starting point is 00:16:16 They can drag you into a room for as long as they want and go through your fucking phone. That's what it means. So is my name on this list of people critical of the government now going to be shared with other countries if i want to visit there or get a visa there i'd like to know that and then last of all what this practice does and the secrecy of it it it creates what's called a panopticon i've done a podcast on this before a panopticon is it's based on a prison that was designed by this mad bastard called jeremy bentham right he
Starting point is 00:16:52 was this fella jeremy bentham he fucking he designed a type of prison but he also before he died he said he'd leave all his money to a hospital if they preserved his body if they mummified his body and and kept it sitting at the head of the board of directors forever and it's his body is still there but anyway he invented a type of prison called a panopticon and basically it was a way of keeping prisoners in a prison whereby they could they could never tell if they were being watched or not so the guard is in a central kind of a central tower and the prisoners don't know if they're being watched or not so because they can't tell if they're being watched or not they just behave anyway and the signaling now i don't know are the irish government clever enough to do this shit probably not but the signaling is you i don't know if i if i if i want to as a citizen critique
Starting point is 00:17:53 direct provision or critique emergency accommodation or critique the government's covid response i now don't know which one of those tweets is going to end up in a government report I now don't know which one of those tweets is going to end up in a government report. And it's making me hold my tongue before I speak. And I shouldn't have to do that in a democracy. I'm entitled to critique fucking government. I'm entitled to critique the government because I pay for their fucking wages. I live in the country. I'm a citizen.
Starting point is 00:18:22 Do you know what I mean it's there I don't like that my fucking taxes are used to perpetuate and feed the cruel system of direct provision because now I'm implicit I don't fucking like that and I'm entitled to critique that but now I have to watch myself I have to fight myself from holding my tongue because the government are putting my tweets in these reports that are secret and I don't know what's happening with them and then on top of it all and this is the most beautifully Irish finish to the fucking lot on top of it all um so I know about this because an article came out during the week like I said a journalist had to
Starting point is 00:19:05 look into this and said look the government are using your taxes to watch your tweets and I was in there some journalists were in there some artists were in there few of us were in there so this fucking article comes out everyone's talking about on twitter and then I say I'm on a government watch list and then some people on Twitter say watch list the fucking notions I got accused of having notions which is a specific Irish accusation of look at them it's it's telling someone they're above their post it's saying notions you think you're fucking great with your watch list, so I got called notions for saying that I'm on a watch list, when what I should have said,
Starting point is 00:19:52 I should have said, no, no, no, no, I'm not on a watch list, I'd never consider that, that I'd be on a watch list, oh no, I'm not that important, no, no, no, no, instead, I'm, I'm not on a government watch list, I'm on a list of people that's being watched by the government. So that's the non-notion way to say it. So if anyone accuses me of having notions, I'm not on a government watch list. I'm on a list of people that's being watched by the government. Okay, just to clear that up.
Starting point is 00:20:18 Just very important for anyone out there who's jealous that I'm on a list of people being watched by the government. Don't worry. I haven't. I don't have notions about myself okay but it's a bad thing it's a bad thing that all of us shouldn't like it's not a good thing that the government secretly is recording opinions that are critical of its policies that's a bad thing in 2020 okay like we've seen in the last decade we've seen it in america with the nsa spying on on american citizens you know it's it's just in light of gdpr it's a bad thing um but in all honesty do i think this is some grand conspiracy to record people critical of the government and fucking silence us no i wouldn't give the irish government that credit to do that what i'd say is that it's it's really sneaky and irresponsible it's sneaky and irresponsible and underhanded
Starting point is 00:21:21 all right doing it on the sly needing a freedom of information fucking act to to access it and then the irresponsibility of taking someone's tweets and recontextualizing them into a report of people who are criticizing the government it's irresponsible with our fucking data it's irresponsible with our own consent about how our data is used i i consent to a tweet that's what i consent to a fucking tweet on twitter that i'm free to delete if i change my opinion i don't consent to being in a fucking government report. No. Ask my permission. Just like students in fourth year doing their dissertations and theses can ask me.
Starting point is 00:22:12 They can do it. Blind boy, can I use your tweet in my thesis? If they can do it, you can do it. The government are paying a lot of money for companies to watch our tweets and probably listen to this podcast right now so government worker you fucking silly girl if you're listening to this podcast just contact me and ask for permission the next time you want to take my tweet and recontextualize it into a government report you silly billy so that's the second most exciting thing that's happened to me this week ending up on a list of people that's being watched by the government is the second most exciting thing that's happened to me this week. Ending up on a list of people that's being watched by the government is the second most exciting thing.
Starting point is 00:22:49 The most exciting thing that's happened to me this week is I've started watching The Crown on Netflix. Because everyone's talking about it online and I was feeling left out. Now everybody's on season four. So I asked. Look is it worth. Is it worth watching from the start. And people said. Look you gotta watch it from the start.
Starting point is 00:23:10 You gotta see how the characters develop. So I'm on season one. I'm up to about episode four. The Crown if you don't know. Look it's. Everyone knows The Crown. It's Netflix's series. About.
Starting point is 00:23:23 The royal. The English royal family. And. Am I enjoying it? Yeah, I'm on episode four. I'm on episode four. The storytelling is good. The storytelling is good. The character development is good.
Starting point is 00:23:36 I want to see what happens next. I'm engaged by it. It's certainly not shit. But it's a difficult fucking watch if you're an Irish person. It's a difficult watch if you're an Irish person and you understand history. Because. So wait now. So before I get into the crown.
Starting point is 00:23:54 This week's episode is not about the crown. This week's episode is. It's about. This week's is. It's about mental health. But I need to do it. Via dissecting the crown. But before we do that. Let's get the ocarina pause out of the way.
Starting point is 00:24:09 I'm going to play you my beautiful ocarina flute. And while I'm doing this, you may or may not hear an advert that is digitally inserted by Acast. On April 5th You must be very careful, Margaret It's a girl Witness the birth Bad things will start to happen Evil things Of evil
Starting point is 00:24:36 It's all for you No, no, don't The first omen I believe The girl is to be the mother Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six.
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Starting point is 00:24:56 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 so you heard an advert there don't know what it was for because the adverts are dependent upon your algorithm and what you're searching for but um yeah that was an advert. And also to remind you, this is an independent podcast. And it is funded by you, the listener, via the Patreon page.
Starting point is 00:25:51 Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Being listener funded means that I can speak about whatever I want. I've got full editorial control. No one tells me what to speak about. I must be doing all right job if the government are keeping fucking tabs on me but advertisers don't tell me what to speak about they have no say whatsoever over any of the content in the podcast they would do if they were 100% funding it but they're not um also this is my full-time job this is my full-time job and it's how i earn a living i'm an artist i love what i do i fucking love it and the patreon means that i get to be a professional fucking artist and create loads of art not just this podcast so thank you to everyone who is a
Starting point is 00:26:38 patron all i'm looking for is a price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it if you're listening to this podcast if i'm giving you a bit of entertainment or escape and you're enjoying it just consider paying me for the work that i'm doing um if you can't afford it don't worry if you can't afford it you're grand you're fine maybe you can pay me at a point when you can't afford it if you can't afford it and you are a patron what you're doing is paying for the person who can't afford it. It's a model that's based on kindness and soundness. Everybody gets a podcast. Everyone gets to listen.
Starting point is 00:27:15 I get to earn a living. What more could you fucking ask for? So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. Price of a pint once a month for several hours content. One little thing. This week I had to spend time on... Someone's been uploading my podcast. Someone has been downloading my podcast from the internet.
Starting point is 00:27:36 And then uploading them themselves on YouTube. Pretending to be me. I don't know. I think the person thinks they're doing a good thing. By doing it. But it goes without saying please don't be don't upload my podcast yourself because that's taking it's taking money out of my pocket it's it's fucking it's taking money out of my pocket it's directing traffic to a channel that i don't control and i'm not involved with it's taking my intellectual it's just bad please don't control and i'm not involved with it's taking my intellectual it's just bad please don't do that if it's someone who's a listener to this
Starting point is 00:28:09 podcast who's like i'm gonna take all his podcasts and put them all up on youtube on one channel and blind boy isn't gonna benefit from any of those clicks and it's not gonna direct to his website or anything like that um i had to spend a whole fucking day because i'm independent issuing takedown notices to get a load of podcasts deleted which took hours and then took time away from this week's podcast so please don't do that if you're someone who's doing it it it really doesn't help me in any way if i wanted my podcasts on youtube i'd put them up there myself follow me on twitch lads twitch.tv forward slash the blind by podcast you can come chat to me live wednesday thursday friday nights great fucking crack and i make live music on it too like the podcast share the podcast
Starting point is 00:28:58 leave some reviews these are all ways that can positively help me thank you very much now back to the podcast where i'm going to speak about the crown i mean you know does it glorify the royal family not particularly but it wants you to root for him it wants it wants you to care about the characters it wants me to really care about the character of fucking queen elizabeth is you know uses this incredibly heroic dramatic music to try and get me to give a fuck about winston churchill is um there's too many scenes where the royal family like they all they simply do is treat a servant as a human being they're surrounded by servants who are just these anonymous props. And every so often they'll speak to them with basic human respect. And this is placed in the show as a way to get me to warm to the fucking character. To warm to King whatever the fuck.
Starting point is 00:29:59 Or Prince fucking Philip, whoever the fuck they are. I don't give a fuck about the royal family. I don't give a shit about them. They. I don't give a shit about them. They mean nothing to me. They're fucking celebrities. That's all they are to Irish people, celebrities. I don't give two fucks about them. They're just inbred Love Island contestants to me.
Starting point is 00:30:16 But it's an entertaining show which completely ignores history and I'm someone who has an anti-colonial view of history i don't look at english and british history from the point of view of the fucking royal family i look at it from the point of view of the countries that were conquered and brutalized and had their resources extracted to provide the ostentatious wealth that you see the royals enjoying i come from a country that was brutalized and had its resources extracted to create that wealth
Starting point is 00:30:53 so on episode two when it's got young lizzie and philip visiting kenya in the 1950s and you know it shows prince philip being racist but shows her not being racist, and all of a sudden we have to like her because she wasn't racist to the Kenyan tribesmen, and then I'm going, oh, this was happening in the middle of the Mau Mau rebellion, when Kenya wanted independence from Britain, and she's actually on a tour of Kenya. Ah yeah, she's down touring Kenya to try and convince the Kenyan people that no, no, no, you shouldn't rebel and look for independence. You love us.
Starting point is 00:31:33 You love the fact that you have a queen. And the Mao, I did a podcast on the Mao Mao rebellion. That's the one where they interned 70,000 Kenyan people. Barack Obama's grandfather was one of them. They fucking sexually tortured him in a camp for seven years. Elizabeth's tour, which is depicted in that show in episode two, Elizabeth's tour was part of the friendly face of the ideological state apparatus as part of that brutality of that internment by the British and the Kenyan people.
Starting point is 00:32:06 But I'm watching it. I'm supposed to watch it going. Oh fucking Lizzie man. I'm rooting for her. I'm rooting for Lizzie. I'm not. So when you're watching it as someone who understands. English colonial brutality. It's quite difficult.
Starting point is 00:32:22 But. It is well written. It is entertaining. I'm going to stick with it it i can't wait to watch episode five tomorrow i'll be honest but one thing i am enjoying about watching it when i'm watching it with a critical lens when i'm watching this basically i'm watching it and i'm enjoying it and i'm enjoying the storytelling. But the writer's goal of getting me to care about the characters. To care about Princess Margaret. To care about Elizabeth. To care about Philip.
Starting point is 00:32:54 I think they want me to not like Philip. But the writers are trying to get me to care about these characters. I can't go there. I just can't. Because I know the history. So it's not happening. What that does. That sense of detachment that I have allows me to view the utter pomposity and silliness of the power structure when when you're not being sold the concept of royalty and when you're not emotionally invested in the characters
Starting point is 00:33:26 the absurdity of royalty is kind of laid bare the little rituals that they that they have the propriety that they have to the propriety that they have to pretend in order to solidify their statuses in in the power structure everyone has to be quiet around them um there's a scene when when elizabeth finally becomes queen because her dad dies and her two sisters come up to her and literally the moment that she's declared queen they have to change their physical behavior around their fucking sister she they can't walk ahead of her margaret is reminded in the moment don't walk ahead of your sister she's the queen now and it's very fucked up it's very strange but it's that the writers try and sell it to you as normal
Starting point is 00:34:18 but what it is is it's the performance of solemnity when you have a power structure that's utterly absurd and ridiculous the power structure keeps itself in place by performances of seriousness everybody it's fundamentally fucking ridiculous is what i'm trying to get at who the fuck are the royal family who the fuck are you who's decided that you're number one? How do you arrive at that? And the fact of the matter is, the British royal family, they are in that position with all that wealth
Starting point is 00:34:55 because they can say, well, a thousand years ago, a fella called William the Conqueror, who was a Norman, came to Britain and he took over the Anglo-Saxons and we're the royals and all royal families
Starting point is 00:35:09 can trace themselves to William the Conqueror doing that a thousand years ago and that's why we're here now and that's why we're important which is fucking ridiculous inherited power across a thousand years it's ridiculous
Starting point is 00:35:24 but it stays in place through ritualistic performed solemnity larp essentially everybody is involved in this game where there's no humor and everything must be really serious and quiet and solemn and you have to perform seriousness all the time and if you do that enough you convince people well jesus if everyone's behaving this seriously this must be serious when in fact it's not your fucking a fucking ancestor a thousand years ago was a an absolute prick from france who cracked a few heads in and now you're the queen fuck off so i said this week's episode was going to be mental health related and it is it is mental health related because i'm i'm enjoying watching the crown i'm not gonna lie to you i'm enjoying it it's obviously good because if the crown wasn't good my i wouldn't
Starting point is 00:36:27 be talking about it and i'd be expressing it as disinterest i'd have tried to watch it and i'd have just quit and gone back to watching malcolm in the middle but the fact of the matter is i'm four episodes in and i'm sticking with it and it's good but i'm walking away from the television every night feeling fucking really angry. Feeling angry. But entertained. But angry as well. And it's also.
Starting point is 00:36:53 It's making me look at history. To. I'm looking at history to alleviate my anger. So after that episode. I was like. These fucking pricks man. All they are is descendants of William the Conqueror that's all they are so then I went looking at William the Conqueror afterwards reading to try and satiate some anger inside me and and I kind of got it I kind of got this this sense of justice
Starting point is 00:37:21 and tell you how so William the Conqueror or william the bastard he was known as william the bastard because he was he was he was illegitimate who gives a fuck what does that mean that only that only means something under those stupid ridiculous royal rules but he was called william the bastard and he was the illegitimate child of a Norman king. The Normans were, and I've spoken about them before on previous podcasts, the Normans were essentially Vikings that settled in France in an area called Normandy and in 1066 these Normans, William the Conqueror, who was a French Viking, William the Conqueror went to England england was populated by the anglo-saxons who were just this god help us shower of fucking egypts the poor old anglo-saxons god help us lads
Starting point is 00:38:14 just like their people the roman empire collapsed in england fucking anglo-saxons wandered in from the forests of germany found themselves in england and then saw roman runes and assumed that the romans were giants so the poor old anglo-saxons were conquered very easily by the extreme brutality of this william the conqueror fella and william the conqueror then said i run england this is my gaffe now he did it via extreme violence he had the hardest fucking cunts with him they brutalized all of england and then they established power by doing this thing called the doomsday book william the conqueror established lasting power in england through brutality and bureaucracy so bureaucracy was the doomsday book he said i'm king i ruled the place and then sent his dukes all up and down the country of england basically recording everything how many pigs do
Starting point is 00:39:15 you own how much land do you have this is mine this is keeping records establishing soft power and the English writers today can trace themselves to William the Conqueror this violent thug of a human being who everyone just says he was an absolute bollocks and I was getting more angry going you know reading about the injustice of William the Conqueror until I found out about how he died and then when I started reading about how William the Conqueror died I started feeling good again I started feeling a sense of justice so William the Conqueror like he kind of he he so when he became king of England he started started getting kind of lazy. And he was going back and forth between France and England. And he was eating loads and loads of food. And he became overweight.
Starting point is 00:40:11 So then one day, I don't even think he was that old. I think he was in his 50s. One day he hops on his horse. But he's after getting too fat for his horse. And when he hops on, probably like not listening to people too. Probably still trying to wear armor and stuff that fit him. for his horse and when he hops on and probably like not listening to people too probably still trying to wear armor and stuff that fit him but no one's gonna say shit to him because he's a bollocks no one's gonna say it to him do you know what william you might want to might want to have
Starting point is 00:40:36 a larger saddle on the horse there might want to have a larger horse you have to put on a few pounds probably no one said it to him so he hops up on his fucking horse and on the saddle there was metal bits protruding on the saddle and his belly hung over the saddle and he managed to disembowel himself on his horse so he ripped open his belly on the saddle of his horse so his kind of guts fell out and he died right but he died with this gaping wound in his stomach so then they took his body to a church with this gaping wound and tried to have like this emergency funeral but the thing was is they didn't have embalming processes and stuff in those days so whatever way the wound was in his stomach his body started to decompose rapidly and filled with gases so in the middle of william the conqueror's funeral his body started making all
Starting point is 00:41:42 these noises and they're trying to have the fucking funeral and they can't because his body started making all these noises and they're trying to have the fucking funeral and they can't because his body's making all these noises, now this is a thousand years ago lads, so they don't have modern medicine, so when the body starts making noises, someone goes, oh fuck is he alive, is he, what's going on here, we better check it out, we better check that he's in the coffin, all right, maybe he's not dead, even though we saw him being disavowed there a week ago. And then someone goes over to try and fit him. The coffin was too small for him. So someone tries to fit him into the coffin.
Starting point is 00:42:12 And his fucking. His dead body explodes like a whale. At his own funeral. And the smell was so bad. That everyone in the church. Had to just get the fuck out. So now the great William the Conqueror, who the royals all descend from, this person that everyone fucking hated, the King of England,
Starting point is 00:42:37 now everyone's after fucking out of his funeral because his body's after exploding like a whale. No one's going back in. The place stinks. And then the poor people of England, the people with no money the disenfranchised start going into the church and looting his exploded whale corpse and taking all his jewelry and money and when i read that it just made me feel a bit better it made me feel a bit better because it i felt a sense of justice it's like the narrative was complete it's like he should die like that this man was an absolute bollocks he was a conqueror he was a brutal murderer yeah he shouldn't have people revering him at his funeral.
Starting point is 00:43:26 His corpse should be exploding and people should be robbing jewellery of it. That's a good ending to his life. That makes me feel better. And it did. So when I'm watching The Crown now, if I find myself getting angry at the solemnity and pomposity of royalty, I just say to myself you've going to fuck off go away you silly fools with your with your fucking claim to the throne your man your man
Starting point is 00:43:57 fucking exploded at his own funeral and people looted looted his guts you silly fools so i say that to myself and then that makes it easier for me to watch the crown because i know that it's just it's based on lies and exploding guts from a dope called william the conqueror you know but the feeling of completion that i get from that that feeling of satiation the feeling of completion that I get from that, that feeling of satiation, the feeling of, ah, things are okay now. I feel a sense of justice now.
Starting point is 00:44:33 I got a similar thing a week ago with Donald Trump. Donald Trump's after losing the election. Fucking great. Fantastic. Gonna have to see how it pans out i don't know how i'm gonna feel about january 20th is he gonna concede peacefully i don't know but trump is is a william
Starting point is 00:44:53 the conqueror like figure he's uh a brute he's rude he's an asshole he's someone who rules with an iron fist and even the people around him don't like him and you can tell the like william the conqueror's funeral that's a shambles that's a shambles right to you know for for someone to not say you're going to injure yourself in that horse or for someone like it means that people were the people closest to him were frightened of him and probably didn't like him the way his funeral happened with the the corpse exploding and then it being robbed and looted and you know the the corpse exploding and then everyone exiting the church the people who are supposed to be his nobles and friends exiting the church that's disrespect they don't give a shit about him the people around him uh in the end failed him because he was so rude and trump
Starting point is 00:45:58 reminds me of that and trump had his william the conqueror moment last week in the fucking press conference, man. The Four Seasons press conference. Now, Trump didn't die and his body didn't explode, but metaphorically, metaphorically, it happened. So, when Trump lost the election, Rudy Giuliani, his lawyer, former mayor of New York calls this fucking press conference and the Trump campaign tried to book the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia
Starting point is 00:46:34 because Trump treats everyone around him like shit they accidentally they didn't book the Four Seasons Hotel this is the president of the United States they didn't book the Four Seasons Hotel. This is the President of the United States. They didn't book the fucking Four Seasons Hotel. They accidentally booked a garden centre called the Four fucking Seasons.
Starting point is 00:46:55 Alright, and went ahead with it. The President of the United fucking States. A press conference was held in the car park of a fucking garden center the president of america a garden center lads and on it was a garden center in the mid between a pornography shop and a crematorium that's how the trump presidency ended all all right, and it felt amazing, it felt great, now, him losing, obviously felt, it felt good, but him ending his fucking presidency, like an episode of Carburetor Enthusiasm, in, beside a fucking, a porn shot, man, beside a fucking a porn shop man it was beautiful it was beautiful and i felt such a sense of release it felt like the exploding corpse of william the conqueror i felt a sense of completion
Starting point is 00:47:55 i felt it's not like it's not real justice that's not real real justice is trump going to fucking jail for being for being a criminal but in a narrative sense in the same way that like william the conqueror's corpse exploding does it mean anything no not really because his dynasty still stayed in power and that became the british empire but from a narrative perspective that felt good and the trump the trump presidency accidentally booking a garden center and doing a going ahead with the press conference anyway beside a fucking porno shop it's just beautiful it's beautiful and it tells you nobody around you gives a flying fuck you've insulted everybody you've insulted everybody anyone of any quality has left and you're left with people who will book a garden center by accident for the fucking president of america and what i want to speak about this week is is that feeling that feeling of completion that feeling of I interpret it as
Starting point is 00:49:07 as justice but really what it felt like was closing a book it I was reading a very complicated story that was conflicting I was confused and then finally you close the book and you go it's done it's done I enjoyed that now i want to speak about that feeling i want to speak about the importance of that feeling to human beings for our mental health our well-being our happiness now i know you might be thinking jesus blind boy william the conqueror is exploding corpse donald trump in a car park what the fuck does this have to do with mental health the feeling of completion that i got from that and then the peace of mind that i got afterwards that's known as completing a gestalt there's a school of psychology called gestalt psychology
Starting point is 00:50:00 and i want to speak a little bit about that this week and speak about how I how I use it to understand my emotions to understand my feelings to have a sense of self-awareness and to bring meaning and happiness to my life the Trump garden center shit genuinely reduced my stress that day it wasn't like me feeling haha fuck you trump ha ha ha you've got what you deserved it wasn't that it wasn't like a contempt i felt like a story had been completed in a right way. And I could move on. The Trump presidency for me. Has made me feel. Frightened and confused. I've been frightened and confused for four years.
Starting point is 00:50:52 And I couldn't make sense. Of a lot of it. I couldn't make sense of a lot of Trump. Because we'd never seen it before. But when he goes out. Like an incompetent clown. It might. It mightn't even mean anything. We don't know what's going to happen, but the narrative of it made sense.
Starting point is 00:51:13 And I was able to breathe. I was able to go. His political career exploded at its own funeral and the corpse was looted. Metaphorically. Finally, something makes sense he's an asshole and an eejit and everyone around him is too and there's the confirmation because they fucking booked a press conference in a garden center and that happened that's real and that felt good and it restored a sense of balance in how i see the world does that mean that
Starting point is 00:51:48 fucking joe biden's going to be brilliant no this isn't about reality this isn't about actual reality it's about narrative and meaning and how i see reality and a sense of balance that allows me to at least cope that allows me to cope going out like a clown allows me to cope and understand better so the word that i've been using there gestalt what what the fuck is that it's it's a german word it means whole w-h-o-l-e and gestalt psychology it's it's a way it's a school of psychology that tries to understand like all different there's all different schools of psychology that have different theories about how humans are and why humans are the way we are and gestalt psychology takes the position that humans are holistic beings that we
Starting point is 00:52:40 are a whole that we're not just mental health isn't just your mind that it's it's not even your general well-being consists of of different constituents your mind your body your spiritual self how you eat your relationship with the world around you and gestalt psychology kind of posits that you know unless you have a you you have holistic health then you're not going to have full well-being so if i'm looking after my mental health if i'm eating properly if i'm exercising regularly if my relationships are in check if everything all those things are fine but then one thing such as my my relationship with the world if that's out of kilter then it's going to be it's going to's hard for me to feel I don't I don't fully have a suss on the world when someone like Trump is in power it's like the pandemic the
Starting point is 00:53:57 coronavirus pandemic as well right now we're kind of right now we're used to it but at the fucking start lads when we didn't know what this thing was and it was frightening it doesn't matter how much you run a day it doesn't matter how much you mind your own mental health how well you eat your relationship your understanding of reality and the events of the world is now unpredictable so you can't have this holistic health. One facet of your being is off kilter. So that puts the rest off kilter. When my understanding of politics or the world feels chaotic, then it throws myself into a sense of disequilibrium. I don't have equilibrium or balance.
Starting point is 00:54:44 That little thing is there in the back of your head that affects my happiness and the gestalt the whole that donald trump news for me it's like something slotted back into place something slotted back into place. I felt better. I stopped worrying. Over something as stupid as them booking a garden centre. It just slotted something into place for me. A gestalt was completed. And I knew it when I felt it. I knew it. I'm like, yeah, this makes sense.
Starting point is 00:55:19 I've got a better handle of things now. Things are a bit more predictable. Things make more sense to me also what gestalt is it's a way of it describes how human beings experience being alive how we how we organize our experience of reality to create meaning that in our day these little gestalts pop up and are throughout our gestalt is is i i feel i know i i feel an itch on my arm i then notice the itch on my arm I then decide to scratch the itch scratching the itch feels good now the itch is no more and I've moved on to something else
Starting point is 00:56:14 that's a gestalt that's known as the gestalt cycle and throughout I've organized the experience. I've just had an itch. Noticed, felt it, noticed it. Scratched the itch. Completed the cycle. A little narrative journey. A tiny little narrative journey. That's gone. Now what's the next one?
Starting point is 00:56:40 Or have I multiple happening at the same time? Gestalt psychology tries to explain how we organize our experience of being alive like that okay and we have thousands of gestalts throughout our day it's basically a need arises and then how do we meet that need to complete the gestalt scratching the itch is the most basic physiological one i mean that's not even confined to humans i remember i remember being in london once i think i was meditating in london i was sitting down trying to meditate in a chaotic environment and when i come out of meditation i always have deeper empathy for about five minutes and i just looked at a pigeon and i
Starting point is 00:57:24 don't was i feeling contempt for the pigeon no I was just looking at a fucking I was observing a pigeon and I didn't have any strong feelings for the pigeon I was just looking at the pigeon going oh there's a pigeon but then because I was had a heightened sense of awareness from meditation I just noticed the little pigeon lift up his leg and scratch his ear and he scratched his ear and his eyes squinted and I felt great love and empathy for the pigeon in that moment because I was empathizing with he he just completed a gestalt this little pigeon felt an itch scratched it and then sorted it out so when I use the itch as an example of a gestalt completion that's the most basic physiological one but humans have much greater gestalts not only in our day but throughout our
Starting point is 00:58:15 entire life imagine a gestalt as a little circle of completion because that's what it is it's a cycle you have a need you meet the and then you try and meet the need and then that cycle is complete but what about larger ones with our entire life goals things from childhood multiple circles like a venn diagram imagine a venn diagram of all these gestalts in our life of i want to eat or I want to find a partner or I want to be successful, all these multiple overlapping circles and what happens if some of these circles can't be completed for whatever reason. So you've heard me talk about cognitive behavioral therapy, transaction analysis, humanistic psychology, all these different ways of understanding
Starting point is 00:59:05 why we are the way we are none of them are right they're all theories that posit that suggest why we are the way we are so with gestalt so what i described there a big thing with gestalt psychology is the present moment right trying to trying to striving to understand your emotions in the present moment and trying to understand the steps of the state the cycle of your gestalts okay let's again go physiological let's keep it really simple hunger and i'm going to take you through all the different cycles of hunger and eating in order to experience hunger and to feed yourself you have to do what's known as you have to make contact and this is a phrase that's used within gestalt psychology you have to make contact with your emotions and your environment in order to complete this gestalt so the first stage is awareness you become aware that you're hungry you make contact
Starting point is 01:00:19 you make emotional contact with the feeling of hunger and because you've made that contact you now move into the next stage which is mobilization mobilization is the building up of energy you're starting to think about i'm hungry what can i eat what do i have you're making contact with all these thoughts about yourself about your environment which then brings in the next stage which is action action is the energy that you've built up through awareness and mobilization you're now releasing the energy through action you've decided that you're going to eat noodles you go and get the noodles now you start you're cooking the fucking noodles and then after action comes final contact you're now eating the food you're you're meeting the needs of hunger you've made contact with each stage up to this step now you're eating the noodles you've making contact with the eating of the food and then finally you've got satisfaction
Starting point is 01:01:20 the circle has been completed you've gotten your payoff you've met your need that's the the feeling when you scratch that itch the feeling of satiation the food is in your belly you've met the need and now that little gestalt of hunger is completed and it feels good and you move on and something else comes it comes into your day it feels right it feels good why am i talking about fucking food how is this relevant to anything well now let's think of that process and we've all been in this situation where you're starved of the fucking hunger and and for whatever reason, you can't eat. Let's imagine, I don't know, if you're in the fucking office, and a meeting is going too fucking long, and you are starved of the hunger.
Starting point is 01:02:16 And what's happening now is you're at the first stage of this gestalt, you're at awareness. And you have this, you're making contact with awareness but there's a blockage your environment isn't letting you move on to the next stage of the gestalt you want to move from you're trying to go to mobilization and you're thinking i've got a fucking sandwich in the fridge but the boss won't stop talking man i'm thinking about that sandwich. And after a while, it becomes very, very frustrating. Not only are you, you know, feeling hungry, but think of all the new emotions that are coming in now. Think of the frustration. Think of the anger. Think of the unfairness. Think of the stress that's coming upon you because you now can't eat because your boss is after deciding this meeting needs to go 20
Starting point is 01:03:07 minutes into fucking lunchtime and you're sitting there starving all the extra stress all the extra pressure and so much of it it's so much of it doesn't even have to do with how hungry you are a lot of that stress and pressure it's because you're not being allowed to complete a gestalt okay the unit of organizing human experience the perfect circle of a need arising and then the process of how you meet that need to feel a sense of completion to complete a gestalt that's now not happening imagine now think of all the stress that's happening in your life over a sandwich in a fridge then the meeting ends you get to eat the fucking sandwich that gestalt is completed now let's talk about a more complicated gestalt. Not something as simple as I am hungry I must get food.
Starting point is 01:04:07 Which is very easy to understand and something we deal with every day. Now let's look at the multitude of gestalts that we have in our life that are much larger and that can last years that we're not really aware of. aware of what we're talking about here is a need and making sufficient emotional contact with ourself and our environment to meet that need how many needs do we have in our lives that aren't getting met so let's just say you're you're you're a child and children have children have the need for love and approval from their parents from your mother we'll say so you're a child and you have a need for love and approval from your mother but your ma's going through some shit your ma's stressed out your ma might have difficulty expressing love maybe she didn't receive love when she's younger and for whatever reason your need for love and approval for your man
Starting point is 01:05:12 isn't being met your mother isn't meeting those needs when you're a little toddler now you have a gestalt right there that needs completion and just like you're hungry in the office and the boss is talking for ages and you have this desire to eat the sandwich it's not a sandwich anymore it's love from your ma and your ma for whatever reason isn't giving it and you have the stress and anxiety of not receiving this love now you're an adult now you're an adult and the opportunity for that love that you should could have received when you're a toddler is long gone because now you're a fucking adult and you have this feeling within you that you're not aware of but you were never felt loved as a child so you have an incomplete gestalt about your sense of self-worth and your
Starting point is 01:06:07 worthiness of the love of other people but this is outside of your awareness this incomplete gestalt how does it manifest as an adult gestalt well your ma's not around so now you're trying to complete your your your need to be loved and to complete this gestalt you now begin this cycle with a girlfriend but your need your needs have never been met you've never you've never completed the stage of intimacy and love and love from another person now now you've got a girlfriend and you're on a date and you're having a good night and everything's going well so far and then you fuck it up then you fuck it up for no reason out of nowhere you say something mean to her and you don't know why you said it or you make comments about other women in the room you talk about oh man she's a ride over there
Starting point is 01:07:08 or you try and make the girl you're with jealous and you're playing these games and you don't know why the fuck you're playing them and this new girlfriend you have it's like things go really really well on a date and then when it gets to the end of the date, every time you fuck it up. You say something stupid, you do something to try and make her jealous, you try and hurt her feelings and each time it ends in her rejecting you or her disapproving of you. So what you have there is what's known in Gestalt as unfinished business. is what's known in gestalt as unfinished business as a child your needs for love from your ma you didn't get to make contact with these needs and you because that gestalt was never completed life moved on beyond it but this this huge gestalt inside you was never completed.
Starting point is 01:08:05 This hunger was never satiated. And now you're a grown adult man with adult women. But the needs that you have are not the needs of an adult. The needs of an adult are to achieve an equal intimacy with another adult. Equal adult intimacy based on understanding and sharing but this is you can't achieve this because your childhood needs for intimacy with a parent weren't met so you're an adult trying to complete the gestalt of a child with another adult and it's not possible so it manifests as games self-fulfilling prophecies and a general feeling of not achieving intimacy with another adult and intimacy doesn't doesn't
Starting point is 01:08:55 mean it doesn't have to mean sex intimacy means a calm caring equal sense of love, a completion of a gestalt, association with another person. Your needs aren't being met. You can't meet those needs because you have, because you have unfinished business from an incomplete gestalt from a different time in your fucking life.
Starting point is 01:09:23 Now, a lot of this is going to sound it'll sound like transaction analysis because it does sound like i said these are all different theories about human beings now what would a gestalt therapist do with that person and some of this is fucking outdated i'm just this this is stuff that i learned a gestalt therapist would probably do what's known as an empty chair therapy session whereby if you the adult man is having intimacy issues with girlfriends because you've uncovered that you don't feel loved by your ma the therapist would would try and get you to
Starting point is 01:10:06 experience the childhood emotions in the here and now in the present moment and the empty chair the therapist would say your mother's not physically here but she's in that chair across from you right now speak to your mother in that chair and tell her what your needs are what does it feel like to be rejected what does it feel like to want to be loved by your ma and gestalt psychology would kind of ask the ask the person who's in therapy what are you saying to your mother what what what do you need from your mother? What do you want from her? What does it feel like right now to be rejected by her? And to experience these childhood moments in the here and now, in the present moment.
Starting point is 01:10:54 Now, Gestalt therapy is still used today. It's still used today. Most therapists today are integrative, so they use many different schools. But Gestalt would have been very big in the 60s and 70s. John Lennon, like, I don't even have to know that John Lennon went to Gestalt therapy. John Lennon's got a song called Mother, right? It's from the late 60s. And, no, it's from the early 70s.
Starting point is 01:11:22 John Lennon's got a song called Mother. And the lyrics of Mother, I guarantee you, are literally from a Gestalt therapy session. The lyrics of John Lennon's song Mother are, Mother, you had me, but I never had you. I wanted you, you didn't want me. So I just got to tell you goodbye, goodbye. Father, you left me, but I never left you. I needed you, you didn't need me.
Starting point is 01:11:44 So I just got to tell you goodbye goodbye and then it ends with him just screaming mama don't go daddy come home mama don't go daddy come home and John that's John Lennon's song which I guarantee you came from Gestalt Therapy I know that John Lennon was into what's known as primal screaming. Primal screaming was an offshoot of gestalt. And it's kind of been rubbish now. Where people would try and revisit almost childhood being two years of age and getting out the tears and anger and roaring and shouting and screaming that needed to be done as a child but wasn't for whatever reasons because of whatever
Starting point is 01:12:32 relationship with a parent but that there is an example of of an incomplete gestalt i'm talking about i i spoke about scratching an itch and eating food because it's so simple to understand that's a simple physiological gestalt but we have much bigger ones in our lives at all times and to find the gestalt you kind of go what what are my needs and am i me am i making enough contact with these needs to meet them so if all adults have a need to be loved and to love and if you find a pattern in your life where you're trying to meet your need to be loved or to love and this isn't happening for you then gestalt psychology would say well what can you find in your childhood what earlier gestalt wasn't met in your life that's now giving you unfinished business and kind of the gestalt therapist's
Starting point is 01:13:42 role is to direct a person through these things, to direct a person through experiencing childhood needs and Gestalts in the present moment, but the therapist has to guide the person through it in a very safe environment, in a safe, non-judgmental environment. Gestalt isn't really one of these ones that's done via self-help but it's it's one that i would have i certainly use gestalt as one tool in my toolbox when i'm trying to be self-aware around my needs mainly for me it's things around although i'm all right at it now but procrastination used to be an issue for me procrastination used to be an issue so I would say to myself like
Starting point is 01:14:28 if I'm being given a project and my my need is to be an artist and to create art and to complete the gestalt of a project and feel that a project is a success, then why then, if I was given this project, do I stop at a certain point, and not do it, or turn down work, or self-sabotage, what's going on there with unfinished business, why would you be, and this is a common one, you're given an opportunity, you decide to apply for a course, and then you get a place on the course and you turn it down and you don't understand why you did it. Where's the unfinished business?
Starting point is 01:15:11 Another example is are you somebody who do you use humour an awful lot in your interactions with people? Do you use humour as a defense mechanism are you are you incapable of having serious conversations with another person without feeling the need to nervously introduce jokes you know does this create does that create problems for you does the thought of a serious conversation about your emotions about a problem you're having does the thought of a serious conversation fucking terrify you to the point that you find yourself making these awkward jokes at every
Starting point is 01:16:00 point of conversation with another person does it create create problems for you, and what the fuck is that about? Because some people are like that, and it's a failure to make, the person who's like that, isn't making emotional contact with the other human being. What if, what if that person, what if you grew up in a house,
Starting point is 01:16:27 where conflict was a really sometimes we have a need conflict is a necessary part of being alive conflict doesn't necessarily have to mean a fight conflict can mean pulling someone up on something or conflict can mean disagreeing with somebody conflict means two people disagree and need to get through the gestalt of conflict in order to feel a sense of whole i don't like what you did there i don't like what you said we need to speak about it so that we can have a sense of resolution and walk away from it that's a lovely feeling it's a lovely feeling to have a disagreement with someone to do it in a calm respectful fashion uh what you said hurt me i hear i hear your heart and then to complete the circle of genuine forgiveness and walk away from
Starting point is 01:17:20 it that's a fantastic feeling a lot of people can't do it a lot of people are fucking terrified of it and when they're put in situations like that will distract from the situation make a ton of awkward jokes do anything in the world except actually have the conflict well what if that person grew up in a house where conflict either either meant passive aggression or it meant explosion if you had a particularly angry parent and conflict meant them flying off the fucking handle so any conflict meant your dad screaming or roaring or your ma screaming and roaring then you're going to grow up as a child whose needs are not met around conflict and then as an adult you're talking to your co-workers and you want to go to your co-worker and you want to or your co-worker comes to you and a serious conversation needs to be had that involves you disagreeing and you just deflect everything away from this disagreement happening this disagreement you're going to make jokes you're going to do everything and anything
Starting point is 01:18:38 but this disagreement is not happening or you'll fucking freeze contact your your needs are not being met around having an adult disagreement and resolving contact in a gestalt because as a kid it wasn't allowed to happen in your house but now you're an adult with this your childhood needs aren't being met around conflict and now you're dragging this into the workplace in your 30s so that's another example of a gestalt not being completed a little narrative what are your needs how do you meet them how do they arise what's the process of how it happens and they're all they're all quite similar the need to disagree with someone have the conversation and then leave it shaking hands that cycle is identical to feeling hungry eating a sandwich and then feeling satiated it's the same as having an itchy nose touching the nose
Starting point is 01:19:46 and then the itch going away but imagine your hand is tied down and you've got this itchy nose and imagine everything else that comes around it if you if you can't meet the simple physiological need of scratching your nose it stops being about an itchy nose and very soon you get all these new emotions anger unfairness and it's easy to understand when it's a physiological gestalt that needs to be completed that's pure easy to understand but what about all these other fucking gestalts that aren't getting met in your life that are outside your awareness what's that doing to your levels of anxiety and anger these huge big narratives around your life if not being able to scratch your nose or not being able to eat the sandwich is so viscerally frustrating then what's the bigger
Starting point is 01:20:41 one like that you don't even know exists in your life so i've never have i been to gestalt therapy i so i you know that i trained when i was training in psychotherapy i trained for a year in a group a weekly group work and that was gestalt group work where we had to we had to check in with our emotions we had to check in with the here and now we had to make i statements we had to check in with our emotions we had to check in with the here and now we had to make i statements we had to be very careful about how we use language we had to make sure that we're making genuine contact with other people so that's my direct experience of gestalt but i do use it in my everyday life i mainly use cognitive behavioral therapy transaction analysis you'll find these on earlier podcasts but sometimes if something in my life if i'm self-sabotaging if i'm not meeting my needs
Starting point is 01:21:34 if i can clearly identify the beginning of a gestalt cycle and and that first identification is i am aware of a need. And if I'm not meeting that need and it doesn't make sense, then I introspectively search into my own emotions and I say, what's going on here? Where's my unfinished business? If I'm procrastinating, if I'm doing this task and I'm spending too much time on the internet instead and I'm now really upset. I'm now really upset about it. Where's the unfinished business?
Starting point is 01:22:11 What do I need to look at from a previous part of my life to complete that gestalt so I can now complete this one right now? Because I'm bringing shit from a previous gestalt to this one. Okay, I hope that made fucking sense. I hope that made fucking sense I hope that made sense Gestalt is quite abstract it's hard to describe I hope the word Gestalt didn't put you off it just means hole
Starting point is 01:22:36 w-h-o-l-e alright I'll be back next week don't know what I'll be back with that was a fucking mad podcast, wasn't it? The fuck was that? From fucking King William's exploding corpse to that. Alright, God bless. Go fuck yourself. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation
Starting point is 01:23:16 night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first ontario center in hamilton at 7 30 p.. 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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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