The Blindboy Podcast - Fanta Hammer

Episode Date: November 25, 2020

Mental Health episode. Depression and anger. How to identify and healthily process anger so that it doesn't become all consuming rage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Past the Bostic, you caustic brosnans, welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast, what's the crack? If you're a brand new listener, be sure and listen to some earlier episodes, so that you can become acquainted with the lore and mythology and universe of this podcast. To the regular listeners, hello, I'm still watching The Crown. I'm on season two of The Crown now. And. I love it. I fucking love it.

I'm very happy to have found The Crown. Alright. And it's very challenging. And I have to at all times keep an anti-colonial criticality. Alright. When I'm watching it. I have to remind myself that i'm not enjoying prince philip i'm enjoying the charming portrayal of prince philip

by matt smith i don't actually want to go on the lash and paint the town red with princess margaret i'm merely endeared by the fantastic portrayal of her, by the actress Vanessa Kirby. So I have to, remind myself of all these things. Look, I look at the fucking Sopranos, I don't approve of the Mafia.

Do you know what I mean? So, fuck it. I'm enjoying the crown, okay? It's, it's making my days. I'm doing nothing.

I'm at home. I'm at home in fucking quarantine. And I washed the crown okay it's it's making my days i'm doing nothing i'm at home i'm at home in fucking quarantine and i watched the crown at my dinner and it's the one bit of relaxation i have it's my one escape other than that i'm just working so that's my escape to sit down and fucking enjoy the crown and try not to binge watch it one episode a day all right maybe two maybe two but that's it all right fuck the royal family thank you for the the kind messages i got a lot of kind messages for last week's podcast um which was it was around the theme mental health about gestalt psychology which was a school of psychology that i found quite difficult to explain and democratize so we did it via the metaphor of the exploding corpse of a king but thank you for all the kind messages for it and i'm just not there's a big hunger there's a

big hunger out there for podcasts where I'm speaking about emotion issues around emotional regulation and mental health and coping and management um I'm just getting a big vibe off you that that's it's you're appreciating it it's what you're looking for and of course like it's tough right now it's tough right now there's not only are we in lockdown in a pandemic but like it's fucking november and the thing is with november in in western countries like christmas is a construct and before it was christmas and christ there's always been celebrations around this time of year because it's tough like jesus christ today was just dark the entire day was literally dark i had the lights on in the house all day it was just dark all day and it's it's the thing is it's not that that's necessarily sad

it's that when when i get up and it's 10 o'clock in the morning and it's fucking dark outside then i know i now have to there's emotional labor involved in staying happy. That's the thing with winter. It's not so much that winter is very sad. It's that it requires quite a bit of emotional labor to cope with it. You know what I mean? And that can be draining. And the whole purpose of christmas

christmas is this spectacular pageant that lasts a month which tries to help with that emotional labor going into town and everybody's out and there's lights everywhere and you've got your freezing cold christmas pints these are all well-established rituals that help us to cope with the emotional labour of fucking winter. And now it's gone. Like, fucking, I was in town in Limerick. There's no one there. Like, Limerick's empty anyway,

but it's especially empty during fucking lockdown. I don't even know if they've put the Christmas lights up, and there's no one having Christmas pints. So so all our trinkets have been taken away so i'm really feeling the the hunger out there from ye sending me messages uh to speak about ways of coping let's just call it that ways of fucking coping um and and emotional regulation and dealing with mental health and just speaking about it and i like doing it as well i love doing last last week's podcast i loved it i like i thoroughly enjoy doing mental health podcasts because it acts as therapy for me it's it's it's it's cathartic i'm exploring my own my own emotional landscape i'm getting feelings and making those feelings into ideas and words and concepts and

then they're released they're no longer in my in my being as frustrations that influence my behavior there i'm naming them i'm taking ownership of them i'm naming them you know so i'm going to speak a little bit more this week in a mental health emotional regulation capacity for you to enjoy but before i do that um just to give you a little heads up, a warning, for about the next 10 minutes I want to address some issues around sexual abuse and I'd like to just give a warning whenever I do that because not everybody is in the headspace to be hearing that or to be listening to it. So if you'd rather not, you can skip forward by about 10 minutes and you don't have to hear it. yeah this week in Ireland or last week

um one of the biggest stories in the news was there was this massive I don't know his leak the word for this a lot of fucking Irish lads I believe the number is 500 lads were uploading sexual images of irish women without any consent onto an online forum and like 500 lads were basically trading and sharing sexual images of irish women without their consent some of them were children some some of the images were of children and the guards are involved and it's opened up a national dialogue around what's called quote-unquote revenge porn and i say quote-un unquote revenge porn because revenge porn is a word that's that's the word that's used by the media people who are activists in this area they don't like the word revenge porn it's inaccurate

in the same way that the word child porn is inaccurate instead the appropriate word is image-based sexual abuse because it's more accurate that's what it is it's image-based sexual abuse it's it's not pornography porn suggests enjoyment and there's no such thing as porn when consent isn't present that's not pornography that's abuse do you know what i mean and i want to mention it because it's one of these issues men will listen to another man speaking about it but men won't listen to a woman speaking about it which that in itself is shit and is part of the culture that needs to be deconstructed to to, to tackle and to fight this type of shit.

Sharing sexual images of a person without their consent isn't a crime in Ireland at the moment. As far as I know it's going to be made a crime. The specific legislation that's being put forward, there's a lot of people angry that it's not being put forward soon enough and there's a lot of people angry that the legislation itself isn't good enough that it's not specific enough in its definitions it's again in the media it's being referred to as revenge porn image-based sexual abuse is the correct term i don't have any sweeping hot take i don't have any deep analysis of it if someone sends you a sexual photo then the contract of consent right there and then is that that's for you and if you then take that

photograph and upload it on the internet for a lot of people to look at it there's no longer consent or consent and that's that's wrong it's deeply deeply wrong it's image-based sexual abuse i reckon the lads who were the 500 lads on that server knew well it was wrong and did it anyway i i really don't think i don't think they were anyone was ignorant they're going oh this is oh really oh really i thought it was for everyone no i think they knew it was fucking wrong and did it anyway and these are dangerous lads engaging in image-based sexual assault and they're emboldened and thrilled by the lack of consent and it needs to be viewed that way and if your gut reaction to that is, well, if you don't want your, if you don't want someone leaking your photos all over the internet, then don't take

or send the photos to somebody in the first place, no, fuck that, that is, that's just a modern digital version of the old story of shaming and policing women for enjoying sex. That's quote-unquote slut-shaming. No, no, no, no. Alright? Sexting between consensual adults is a healthy expression of human sexuality. If you personally don't want to do it, if you're not into it, there you go, you've just defined boundaries of your own consent,

and you're entitled to it. There you go. You've just defined boundaries of your own consent. And you're entitled to that. Alright. But other people doing it. Adults consenting. That's a healthy expression of human sexuality. And it's their business. So don't go shaming that. But if someone sends you an image.

And it's for you. Don't text it to your friend. Don't upload it to the internet. Very very simple um the consequences for it are the real life consequences for the women who are affected are massive and those women that had their images put on the internet a lot of them were doxxed a lot of them were harassed um it created massive amounts of stress humiliation there's mental health issues that can arise there's risk of suicide

just don't participate in it understand why it's wrong it's I mean there's a much bigger systematic issue I just hope that the education system

from the earliest age is is the sex education is overhauled to include more about consent and that it's modernized to speak about this stuff to kids at the earliest possible age in in a in a manner that's appropriate to whatever age they are, you know. I want to recommend a podcast around this stuff, right? Dr. Caroline West is a doctor of sexuality studies. She's Irish. We actually had a conversation a few years back

in front of a college audience, but it wasn't recorded. But Caroline West has got a podcast called glow west which is all about it's about sex it's about consent it's about porn and she's a doctor of this really interesting in particular episode 24 which i want you to i want to recommend to you as well it'll send some traffic towards her podcast and she's got an episode called Revenge Porn, a.k.a. Image-Based Sexual Abuse, where she speaks with two activists, two Irish activists around this,

and I'm going to recommend you take a listen to that. And listen to her whole, all the episodes of her podcast, because she's on the ball, and she's an expert in this area. And I'm recommending that, not only because it's a brilliant podcast and Caroline's an expert in her field. But because.

For lads in particular. To start listening to more women. Listening to the voices and opinions. Of more women around these issues. Because it gets brought to my attention. Quite a bit. That there's lads. Who.

Listen to things. When I say it. And the women around them. Are saying this shit and and you only listen to it when blind boy says it and that's mortifying for me and it's also it's it's it's like it's like pissing against the fucking wind i'm just repeating what i have heard women saying that's all i'm doing and then the bar is so low that I end up getting

pats on the back for simply saying anything so just start listening to more women around these things

and don't rely on me to translate those things into a man's voice that's fucking ridiculous so this week I'm going to speak a little bit more about some mental health things because that's fucking ridiculous so this week i'm going to speak a little bit more about

some mental health things because that's what you've been requesting that's what you've been requesting as i mentioned earlier long dark days and no christmas things are getting tough so what i'd like to look into this week i want to look at anger and the relationship that anger can have with depression so if i had to sum up my my personal mental health approach in one word and this is what i've learned from over a decade of doing this shit the one word i'd use is proactive and the opposite of proactive is reactive okay so my goal and journey on a daily and weekly basis with my mental health i proactively manage my mental health so that i never have to react okay i don't want to be pulling myself out of depression i don't want to be pulling myself out of depression. I don't want to be talking myself down from an anxiety attack. Those are both reactive positions.

I want to ensure in a proactive fashion that I don't find myself experiencing depression or experiencing anxiety. Okay. And if I'm proactive, I can spot, I have a good enough understanding of self, understanding of my own relationship, my own mental health, that I, I can spot the earliest, earliest signs of mental health issues so i try and catch the seeds of a panic attack two months in advance three months in advance and i do this through years and years of self-awareness understanding my triggers most importantly understanding that the earliest possible toxic behaviors that i

engage in the earliest possible toxic behaviors and understanding the environmental triggers that bring them on so the biggest one for me is procrastination if i find myself procrastinating and i'm talking the smallest things if i find myself procrastinating and i'm talking the smallest things if i find myself usually something like an unanswered email if an important email comes in and for whatever reason my mind just bats it away instead of opening it the email gives me a little fright a little fright or the email coming in feels a little bit overwhelming and I decide I'm not opening that now and then four days have gone and now I have an email that's unopened and it's important and now this tiny email is four days down the line and it's it's now now it's a bigger problem

now I have the the slight shame and embarrassment of a person thinking that I've ignored them when in fact it was just for some reason felt a little bit overwhelming and I didn't respond overwhelming and I didn't respond so that to me is always the earliest earliest sign that what it means to me is something about my environment and by environment I mean my workload my relationships with other people the length of the fucking days. The temperature. Of my gaff. All these different things. My diet.

My exercise. Whatever. My environment. Is probably. Slightly overwhelming. And stressful. And I'm not taking note of the stress. And it's now manifesting itself.

As. An email. From. Someone I'm supposed to do some work with. Is coming in. And now. I'm as an email from someone I'm supposed to do some work with is coming in and now I'm ignoring an email and it's not a conscious decision I'm not like fuck this email it's just it comes in and I go no I'll do that later and then more emails that come in are different tasks that I'm supposed to do because see now I see now I'm anxious about the first email. Because now I've actually created a problem. I've created a problem of.

Fuck. I've left this person on read for five fucking days. Now I think I'm going to go back and lie to him. Because I'm not going to just say it's been overwhelming. You have to lie and say I'm sorry I didn't see this. Which is stressful in itself. And the pressure of that now has caused me to procrastinate some other stuff and now I've got my fucking studios untidy now you know I'm avoiding and now I'm engaging in in avoidant behaviors and the avoidant behaviors that i'm engaging in

to get away from from the procrastination the avoidant behaviors they're usually things that give me kind of um simple endorphin hits so spending too much time on social media wanting to get the endorphin hit from a fucking Instagram like or a retweet to avoid this procrastination going for the easy hits the empty easy hits now all of a sudden I'm playing I'm playing a bit too many video games

instead of working I'm playing video games too much or I'm watching too much television and this is now like a six or seven day spiral all because I didn't answer one email a week ago and now I have all these new problems and these new unhealthy like the health what's the healthy way to deal with the problems you fucking do them that's the healthy way the healthy way is here's a task this needs to get done last week i spoke about get out and or sorry gestalt and task completion when an email comes in and it's important

and i feel overwhelmed or some anxiety and i don't answer it what i've done there is i haven't completed the gestalt of open that email. That email has a journey. Email comes in, next step, I open the email, I read it, then I respond to the email, task is done, and I feel a little sense of completion. But for whatever reason, that gestalt isn't getting isn't getting completed something something something larger is stressing me out and for whatever reason this email has become the object of the thing i need to avoid and now i have an incomplete gestalt and when i have that incomplete journey of procrastinating around the email i've got this frustration and i'm building up all this negative negative toxic energy is a shit word for it.

There's probably a better word for it, but that's what it is. It's negative toxic energy. And now I'm going to meaningless behaviors. So spending too much time on social media is meaningless. Spending too much time playing video games is meaningless spending too much time watching tv is meaningless by meaningless i mean the internet can have meaning so can video games so can watching tv you can do these things meaningfully right but you all we all know the tipping point when it's it's no longer meaningful

We all know the tipping point when it's no longer meaningful. It's kind of like when a chocolate bar is lovely, right? And you can have a meaningful chocolate bar. You can have a chocolate bar that is just fucking lovely and it's just the right amount and you feel great having eaten it. But we all know the feeling of eating chocolate or biscuits that's completely meaningless it's trying to stuff our faces with some simple sugary treat and it feels good and horrible in equal parts that's a meaningless behavior and when my mental health is at risk at the earliest stages i engage in meaningless behaviors to try and give myself this endorphin hit but it i can feel it as this vibrating stress in my body i'm certainly not happy

playing the video game i feel this uh tension and apathy i'm not happy i'm not making the right food choices now i'd rather have a takeaway. Than engage in the journey of a meaningful dinner. And satiate myself. If I allow this continue now for two weeks. Two and a half weeks. All because of this one email. And now there's several emails.

That I haven't answered. Because I'm thinking I have to go back and answer the first one. And now there's a dirty studio. And now I'm behind on deadlines and stuff, now I've really created a genuine overwhelming situation for myself, coupled with the fact that not being able, I now have a sense of shame as well, I feel a certain degree of shame, and I feel shame because I wasn't able to answer the email I feel shame because I'm procrastinating I'm putting people off I feel shame because I'm not eating properly I feel shame because instead of working I'm engaging in meaningless behavior

and then the shame begins to affect my self-esteem and now that my self-esteem is affected to affect my self-esteem and now that my self-esteem is affected now I start to feel less capable so the part of me that actually rationally says go and answer the fucking email go and clean the studio go and make a better dinner now that part of myself that's able to go from that thought to actions that's been weakened the shame and the effect on my self-esteem has weakened my ability to enact change in my life and i'm only three weeks into this now and that feeling of being incapable can grow and grow and. Until the smallest thing. Now seems. Impossible. And then I start to feel like I'm withdrawn socially.

Now I can't go out now anyway. Because of the fucking. Coronavirus. But that right there. That's. Over the past 10 years. That's usually as far as I let it go. I've gotten to those situations.

Where I feel incapable. But that's as far as I let it go. And gotten to those situations where I feel incapable but that's as far as I let it go and I usually don't but like I know that beyond that if I go another month with that that's when Mr. Anxiety Attack is there and I also know if I let myself get as far as anxiety attacks then what follows on from that is depression that's my pattern now I don't if I get as far as anxiety, I've lost opportunity to be proactive and now I must be reactive. Reactive is when you've reached crisis point and you're now, I don't want to say fixing. Fixing is the wrong word.

But when I get as far as panic attacks, I'm losing a sense of agency. At that point, I'm genuinely, my capacity to help myself is reduced. And that's where I might need to seek help from someone else or medication or whatever. And also, I don't have the full faculty of my thoughts when I'm at that stage. Thinking back to when I used to be there, I've told told you before I used to literally be afraid of my shadow you know in the throes of anxiety and that doesn't mean in the middle of an attack

the bits around an attack I used to be afraid of my shadow I used to think that my shadow I used to depersonalize so I don't want to get to that level of mental ill health I don't want to get to that level of mental ill health i don't want to get to the situation where being reactive it's when it's it's that's too late for me so i try and manage

things proactively another early red flag for me is number one is always procrastination. That's me personally. Number one, always procrastination. And then what arises from that five days down the line? Anger. Anger is a big one for me. Anger and losing a sense of resilience. Becoming sensitive to comments or critique. My job is online. My job is on the internet so i obviously receive quite a

lot of negative comments every single day and that's part of my job and in general i just i don't give a fuck about him genuinely i just go sure look this is another person on the internet who's pissed off today if the critique is genuine i take it on board but most of the time it's not it's just people calling me a prick and that's fine and that's what happens when you have a large online presence but sometimes if I find myself if someone says something negative to me online and I'm walking away from the computer and I find myself being angry about it all day or hurt by it, or offended, now I know that that's another signal for me that, okay, I need to accept, I need to do something, I need to be proactive now about my mental health, because I shouldn't be bothered by that comment there online, or I shouldn't

be ignoring an important email, or I shouldn't be doing three hours on the fucking xbox when really all I needed was a half an hour or I shouldn't be getting Chinese takeaway for dinner when I should really be preparing my own wholesome healthy meal from scratch and going to the shop and buying the ingredients so with that self-awareness of knowing what my steps and triggers are So with that self-awareness of knowing what my steps and triggers are, I take responsibility for them before they get out of hand. And how I do it, I just kick myself in the arse. I literally, I do my CBT. I write down, there's an unanswered email and I write down, why you not answering the email and I can't think of a

good answer how hard would it be to to respond to that email right now so I do it I respond to the fucking email the first email I ignored I respond to it I complete the gestalt and now I'm reversing the process now I feel a little victory and then I do the next task and before you know it I've cleaned my fucking studio and now I've gained self-esteem back my self-esteem has come back because I've shown myself these things that I was scared of I've now overcome them even though they're small I have a sense of achievement I have a sense of control again and I've rolled it back now my mental health is being repaired again now I don't want to play Xbox because I'm feeling good about doing some work

and I don't want to eat shit for dinner because I'm feeling good about cooking and the process has been reversed and I've proactively taken myself out of an unhealthy cycle and avoided anxiety attacks in two months time and i do that all through self-awareness through knowing myself

but understanding why i procrastinate understanding why i get angry you know what i mean also what i'll do as part of my proactive approach when when I identify negative patterns in myself I'll immediately go back to meditation I'll do I'll meditate daily 15 minutes a day because for me personally meditation is the best way for me to to truly listen to my emotions when I'm under stress when I'm stressed, when there's pressure I'm not listening, I'm not sitting with my emotions and truly feeling them I'm not truly

listening to anger I'm not listening to frustration I'm instead I'm using defence mechanisms and ignoring the true emotions until they express themselves in irrational behavior. Not answering an email. An important email comes in and I don't answer it, even though I should.

That's irrational. It's not rational. It doesn't make sense. it doesn't make sense so if I'm to be engaging in a simple little irrational behavior like that I'm probably using some type of emotional defense mechanism and that's how it's manifested in my behavior in an unhealthy behavior a harmful behavior and so what I want to look at this week specifically is anger because so many messages are received from people This week specifically is anger. Because so many messages. I receive from people.

Are about them experiencing. A sense of anger. And I think. Just a personal hot take. I think the reason I'm. Seeing a lot of people. Asking me about anger. Is because of the fucking pandemic.

There's a lot of stress. Our freedoms have been restricted. For a fucking year stress our freedoms have been restricted for a fucking year our freedoms have been restricted we can't we can't go to the shop we can't do the things that we previously enjoyed these things have been taken away it's outside of our control we're trying our best to manage it but that energy has to go somewhere. There's also a relationship between anger and depression. So I'd like to take a proactive look at anger. Speak through some of the conditions and emotions and ways of thinking and feeling when you're experiencing anger. To proactively look at it, take ownership of it.

So that in two months time the anger might not express itself as depression which needs a more reactive approach. But before we do that, it's time for the little ocarina pause. The little sweet ocarina pause. And I think we're going to do the pause. Ocarina pause. We'll do a combined ocarina and shaker pause today. So the ocarina pause pause if you don't know there are adverts digitally inserted into this podcast okay at three parts in this podcast

there is an advert inserted okay and i don't know what it's going to be it'll depend upon your algorithm but so you don't get a nasty fright from an advert here's a little pause ocarina and shaker will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever join the sunrise challenge to raise funds for cam age the center for addiction and mental health to support life-saving progress in mental health care from may 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind.

So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. 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. It's all for you. No, no, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what? It's the most terrifying.

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The First Omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Oh, how pleasant was that? Ocarina and Shaker paused there. And in the middle of that, you heard an advert for something. I don't know what it was. Could have been bullshit. This podcast is supported by you, the listener.

Because this is a listener-funded podcast, no one tells me what to talk about i've got full editorial control complete creative control over the entire podcast to say whatever the fuck i want speak about whatever i want i don't have to stay away from certain subjects because it might frighten off brands or advertisers there's two types of people this week on the social media sphere in ireland lads if you have a decent following there's those of us who got put into a government report because we were criticizing the government and then there's those of us who got free playstation fives i did not get a free playstation five um a lot of people got fucking free playstation fives not me but yeah a lot of the

I'm very political and this scares the living shit out of brands and I don't give a fuck it doesn't matter because I have the Patreon so

patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast if you like this podcast if you're listening to it regularly just please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing that's all I'm asking pay me for the work i'm doing it's a lot of work i love fucking doing it but i also love earning a living doing what i love so patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee

once a month and if you can't afford it you don't have to you don't have to pay it if you can afford it then what you're doing is paying for somebody who can't afford it to listen so everybody gets a podcast i earn a living it's fantastic and i don't have to suck too much corporate flute i don't i can only. I can suck the corporate flute that I want to. But I don't have to suck the corporate flute that I don't want to. I can tell them to fuck off. And the podcast gets paid for by the community of people that listen to it. Join me in my utopia.

Alright. Subscribe to the podcast. Recommend it to a friend. Share it, come join me on Twitch lads, I'm having tremendous crack on Twitch, three nights a week, alright, it's free, live streaming, I'm writing a musical to a video game, a never ending musical, writing songs to a digital version of the wild west and it's great fucking crack and you can come on you can chat with me and i strongly recommend you join me on twitch it's good fun i usually mention as well that like i can't do gigs i haven't been able to do gigs for a year because of the pandemic which is true but the year of not doing gigs i i do miss gigs i do and i don't miss gigs all right i think when we come out of this pandemic

i'm definitely going to be doing a lot less gigs i'm going to be doing a lot less gigs because i'm getting older now and i've been gigging a long time throughout my fucking 20s now i'm in my 30s a long time throughout my fucking 20s now i'm in my 30s and i was gigging nearly three times a month like giving every weekend away to fucking traveling all around the place and i think i think once gigs are allowed i'm gonna lay off the gigs a bit and only really do ones that i'm really really excited about you know what i mean that's that's one thing I've taken from this pandemic it's forced me to chill the fuck out because I work a little bit too much and even without the gigs the Patreon's been paying my way and when we come out of the pandemic I'm gonna I'll have the Patreon I'm gonna start writing a new book and i'll do gigs that i want to do and i'll try and plus as well to be honest the pandemic scared the living fuck out of me man

like if i didn't have the patreon i'd like i'd literally have no income at all because it took book sales away it took gigs away it took television opportunities away do you know what i mean it made me freaked out that like fuck it if i didn't have the patreon and i put my eggs in all those three baskets i'd have nothing i wouldn't know what i'd be doing right now i don't know what i'd be even even being an artist would i try to be looking for a different job you know what i mean i'm grateful of the terror of coronavirus for making me realize that making me realize that gigs alone is a kind of an old school way of looking at things that there's different ways so onto anger with depression right

generally with depression when depression is is assessed within the school of cognitive psychology, three indicators need to be present. If a person has a negative view of themselves, a negative view of the future, and a negative view of the other of other people in the world so a negative view of self negative view of the future and a negative view of other people in the world when all three of those mindsets are present pervasively that person will experience what we call depression okay now negative can mean many things we think of depression as as just a sadness but anyone who's like when i i had depression i experienced it as a nothingness as as an inability to experience hope but negative view can also mean not just sadness it can mean a fearfulness you know you can be fearful of your future you can be afraid of other people you can be afraid of the world or you can be fucking angry

you can be furious you can be angry with the world you can be angry about the future you can be angry about other people and this can also be something that leads to and presents as depression so how do we know we're experiencing or suffering from anger well a good one is to to check in with your body and the body it's strange the body we can hold a lot of emotions in our body and we're really not aware of them until we point them out to ourselves i find out about my body through mindfulness meditation and body scans i will literally meditate and you can look these you can look up a body scan meditation online and it means me sitting down with my eyes closed and breathing counting my breaths getting real calm and then i do a visual scan of all of my body i check in with every from

my head to my toes i in my mind's eye check in with every part of my body. And if I have anger that I'm not aware of, because that sounds odd. It's like, how would you not be aware of anger? If your entire day is consumed by anger, it just becomes the way that you are in that day and you tend not to notice it. You tend not to be really cognizant or fully aware of it so I check in with my body

and I'll notice my jaw your jaw will be clenched a lot of the day you might grind your fucking teeth in your sleep trembling or shaking

certain thoughts will enter your head and you might tremble or shake your fist will clench throughout a lot of the day without knowing it you've got your fucking fist clenched your heart will be racing a lot of the time

you might feel hotter these are the then that always leads to neck pains pains in the neck and the shoulders because you're tensing the muscles of the fucking neck and the muscles of the face for a long time and tiring them out until it's actually sore and now you've got neck pain and anyone who's familiar with neck pain you know you might get the odd headache as a result of neck pain too. So these are physical indicators that you might be experiencing anger a lot in your day. Okay, what are the psychological kind of way of being if you're experiencing anger, right?

kind of way of being if you're experiencing anger right the thing with anger is a huge part of your day i think out of out of out of all the the emotions anger in particular will most keep you out of the present moment like if you've ever been furious about something and you get into your car and do a drive and you spend the whole drive fantasizing about the person that you're angry with and going over in your head arguments winning arguments with him you won't even realize that you've reached your fucking destination you could be in the car an hour and it's like you just downloaded yourself to a location. Because the intensity of anger to take us out of our present environment, our present moment,

it's very powerful like that. You might find yourself fantasising about hurting someone. It could be a fucking stranger. It could be someone close to you, but you fantasise about saying really mean things to them or physically hitting them and gritting your teeth and throughout your day almost finding yourself physically as if you're in a fight swinging digs without even knowing it. The person you're thinking about, it could be your fucking boss.

It could be someone at work. It could be a family member. You might be unaware of why you have this intense anger towards them. So then you kind of, you spend your day searching for reasons to prove to yourself why this person is acting maliciously towards you. You're thinking about that thing they said yesterday, that was deliberate. They asked me to stay on longer because of this, because they fucking hate me. They know exactly what they're doing.

And you don't necessarily have evidence for it. And you don't necessarily have evidence for it. But what you're doing is making reality fit the evidence. Just to justify the seething hatred that's inside you towards them. That you don't really know why it is but you know it feels real. And now you're plotting revenge. You're plotting revenge on a person because you have manufactured evidence that they're trying to hurt you now you're actually now this person might receive some vitriol you might believe that this person is standing in the way of some gold that you have

there might not be evidence for it but you say yourself, if only it wasn't for them. If it wasn't for them, I'd have this, I could do that, but they're in the way. Now you're on edge, not just with the person or persons that you're fantasizing angrily about, but you're on edge for anybody who's around you. People are feeling as if they have to walk on eggshells, the slightest, you lose your tolerance for another person's fallibility, usually someone close to you, someone close to you says something silly, or loses the fucking TV remote, or doesn't put enough milk into your tea, and now all of a sudden you're snapping at an innocent party or getting angry with your fucking dog your dog is barking too much because they want to go out for a piss and

now you're screaming at your dog and every aspect of your behavior now is becoming filled with rage and anger and what i'm describing there that's's unhealthy anger. Alright, there's healthy anger and there's unhealthy anger. And unhealthy anger is the one, it's the one that consumes you. It's based in rage, fantasizing about revenge, fantasizing about hurting people. Reliving conversations and arguments over and over again trying to win them in your head spending a lot of time thinking about another person not being in the here and now not being in the present moment having a real blockage and inability and lack of desire to empathize or see something from another's point of view becoming consumed with the certainty of

how right you are about your own anger and one of the most disempowering things about that type of unhealthy anger and one of the most unhelpful things about it is you might actually have a gripe with someone like if it's your boss or co-worker you might actually have a basis for conflict there or you might actually be being treated a little bit unfairly but the problem is is that when when when you're trapped in this fantasy cycle of rage revenge hurt right there's no way for you to confront that person and actually meet your needs if what's actually required is for you to say to someone what you said i didn't like what you said what you're doing needs to stop can we do this in a different way you're not going to have access to that type of rationality and the other thing too is most of us the fantasies that unhealthy anger the fantasies of causing physical harm screaming at someone revenge society often the fantasies aren't in line with what society deems

acceptable so you don't you're not gonna headbutt your fucking boss you might fantasize about headbutting your boss but you won't because you still know that well that's losing my job and going to jail so most people it doesn't get to the point where they explode but the thing is you you're you're still aware of the capacity to explode and then you become fearful of the potential of your anger and then you can't meet your needs of actual conflict so you become afraid of the person you become afraid of the tiniest disagreement because the tiniest disagreement with that person means explosion absolute explosion and then you start to feel powerless towards them in this continual fantasy of anger and

powerlessness feeling weak feeling dominant feeling weak feeling dominant and no rational in between that's unhealthy anger now what does healthy anger look like healthy anger is much more closer to being annoyed healthy anger is well you're not you're not fantasizing you're not fantasizing about beating the person in an argument but you might fantasize about the best approach to speak to the person to resolve the conflict or the issue and when you are thinking about it you're doing it in a calm rational way it's it's not you don't feel overwhelmed by the thoughts in your head. You don't feel powerless to the emotion of anger.

You're not scared that you're going to kick their head in. The idea of being physically aggressive with the person or shouting at them, that doesn't enter your head. You're not in that territory. The thought of resolving the conflict isn't frightening or extreme with healthy anger when you're thinking about the other person you're able to consider things from their point of view you're able to use empathy and put yourself into their shoes and understand try and understand try and understand at least why they might have a problem and understand the conflict from that point of view you're also able to take ownership if you actually did something wrong if if part of the

conflict is that you did something wrong you're able to see it take ownership of it and the thought of apologizing doesn't terrify you the person with unhealthy anger apologies an apology is not something that's going to happen the thought of the apology increases the rage but if you're healthily angry the thought of going i fucked up i'm sorry that doesn't feel threatening it feels possible healthy anger isn't personal it's it's about the thing that the disagreement is about. A healthily angry person, if they're in a disagreement or having an argument with someone, all they want to do is resolve the topic and issue of that argument and move forward and move away from it. That's what that person wants to do.

The deeply, unhealthily angry person they're not really interested in the actual issue they're more interested in hurting the other person the way that they hurt they want to balance the hurt i feel pain now you have to feel pain too. That's unhealthy, consuming anger. So what are the proactive things that you can do to prevent yourself, working yourself into a situation where you have this unhealthy, consuming anger, which can then lead to depression? Well, take a look at maybe

how you respond to criticism or critique. Let's just say it is your boss and you have to hand your boss some work and the boss doesn't like it. The boss is just like, this isn't good enough. Maybe when the boss says it, they're busy and they're rude in the way that they say it this isn't good enough how do you respond to that critique internally do you change the words that he said in your head or she said if your boss is this isn't good enough do you walk away going they said this is shit all my work work is shit. I'm shit. Who the fuck are they to call me shit? That's the start of it.

The rigidity. And absolutism. Around receiving critique. I mean I mentioned earlier. If I'm keeping an eye on my mental health. Then I have to be careful about if I see people critiquing me online if I'm in an unhealthy place and I see one person say that I don't like this thing you did I don't if I see one person doing that and I'm not in a

good place I'm not able to take that critique as there's one person who doesn't like it I then add all this weight to that person's view as if it's the absolute truth and now the piece of work I've done is actually shit because and I ignore all the people that like it or the fact that I like it and now one person has said this is shit and And now I'm walking away going, yeah, it is fucking shit. This work is shit. How dare you make me feel this upset about my work. And now I'm angry about a stranger. Now I'm angry about a stranger and I'm giving a stranger an hour of my time.

With anger. A fucking stranger. So how do you get out of that loop if it's your boss and your boss doesn't like the work you've done you catch yourself in the moment and if you you you have to identify if you're feeling this if you're feeling the anger over a rejected report or rejected piece of work. You have to write down, where's the evidence? What are my inner thoughts? My boss thinks I'm shit. My boss thinks all my work is shit.

All my work is shit. And you have to go, where's the evidence? You have to challenge it. Think like a scientist. And then you go, no, the evidence is, my boss doesn't like this report. but why was my boss rude to me when they said it instead of searching for evidence that your boss was trying to be rude was trying to hurt your feelings you go maybe they're having a bad day and that's why they

were short with me and they weren't aware of it and you basically challenge all the all the these assumptions and expose the faultiness of them until your view of the triggering situation becomes more rational and you're evaluating it for what it is and you move away from the rigidity so your boss's critique now you're still if your boss was rude you're still allowed to not like that but you move it instead of it being must instead of it being my boss was rude what what what a fucker you kind of go i didn't like that that wasn't nice for me, that they were rude, but that's life, sometimes people are polite, sometimes people are rude, it's okay for me to expect that my boss speaks to me in a friendlier tone, it's okay for me to expect that, and I'd prefer that, but I certainly don't have a

fucking rule, if I have a rule that my boss must at all times speak to me in a nice way if that's my rule then i'm going to get fucking disappointed because that's unrealistic that's not how humans are and with anger a huge theme with a lot of anger is personal rules right we all have these personal rules inside us that we're not really aware of you get them from your childhood you get them from how you were raised we have rules about how other people should treat us we have rules about how the world should be we have rules about how other people should behave and if our rules are incredibly rigid and are non-flexible right you're going to be furious because you're consistently going

to be getting disappointed but who's to say that your rules are rational who your rules that are deeply held inside yourself that were handed to you by parents your school your life experiences you have these rules we all have these fucking rules that we don't question and we're living our lives and looking at the lens of other people through highly unrealistic rules and if they're very very fucking rigid and they don't change then life is going to be disappointing all the time imagine like a real common rule is other people must be polite to me other people should be and must be polite to me now that's rigid as fuck other people must be polite to me not all people are polite some people are polite some of the time and then not polite

all the time depending on their moods or their relationship with people but if you have a rule that people must be polite to you then that sounds like a tough fucking day to me you know what i mean because when the rule is that rigid you can't see things from the other person's point of view and people are then just being rude to you all day but maybe they're not being rude maybe they're being sad maybe they're being frightened maybe they have issues with compassion issues with being friendly to other people maybe that person grew up in an environment where aggression was valued aggression was the language used but now you've just personalized their entire life experience to mean this person has been rude to me

and now you're walking away fuming and the other person doesn't even other person hasn't even tried to be rude to you that's just how you experienced it but But now you're fucking fuming. Because of another person's behaviour. They fail to meet the imaginary rule that you have in your head. That other people don't know about. Because that's the thing. Other people don't know about our personal rigid rules. About how we should be treated.

About how the world should be. Or how we should be. Other people aren't aware of them. but we treat them as an absolute truth but when they're rigid and unmoving they're going to get broken all the time we'll take that personally and we're fuming angry all fucking day so what do you do and that's just one rule what do you do with that one rule people must be polite to me first off you identify the rule identify it and you identify it by going about thinking back on your day thinking of trying to think back at the triggers that set off your anger what is the rule then you ask yourself where did the rule come from now that can take

you know you might go into generally rules like that you you'd look at your your fucking parents or your teacher someone who has a rule that you must be polite was probably brought up in a household where politeness was valued and impoliteness was chastised so if you're young enough and your da or your ma tells you when guests come over now you have to be polite politeness please and thank you and if you don't do it if a guest comes over with saying they've got fucking sweets and you're just three years of age so you reach for the sweets before saying please or thank you because you're a kid and then your dad screams at you please and thank you we say please and thank you in this house you don't just reach for the sweets you'll internalize that because an adult

is saying something and you're a child and you internalize that as a rule of i must be polite to other people and people must be polite to me so now that you've identified the rule and the rule is people must be polite to me then you ask yourself in what ways is this rule or this assumption about other people unrealistic unfair and unhelpful and you'd write it down and you'd go it's unrealistic because people don't know about my personal rule it's unfair it's unfair because you you're failing to take into account other people's life experiences other people's upbringings other people's attitude towards conversation other people's emotional boundaries how other people are feeling towards conversation, other people's emotional boundaries, how other people are feeling that day.

And you take that on board. How is it unhelpful? It's unhelpful because you're demanding things of people and they don't know that you're making these demands. And then you go, and you're writing this down, what are the negative consequences of having this rule or assumption? The negative consequences is that you're getting disappointed all day by strangers and people in your life. And you're fucking furious with them.

You're really, really angry with them. And it's causing real problems for you and your life. And the amount of quality time you're spending in your day. Because when your head is up your fucking hole. Fantasizing about arguments. Fantasizing about winning arguments. Fantasizing about screaming at people. You're wasting your day.

It's the biggest waste of fucking time. To be in a cycle of angry fantasies. And then you ask. You write it down what is an alternative more helpful rule or assumption and here's the thing you just take out the rigidity you don't have to be like go the opposite, and it's like, people treat me like shit. You just, instead of, you take out the should and the must. So, instead of saying people must be polite to me, people have to be polite.

Politeness is the backbone of society. This is how you have to be be and if you're not this way you're rude to people instead of that you just go i like it when people are polite to me i would prefer if people are polite to me i want people to be polite to me polite to me but i understand that not everybody's going to be that way and if that's the case i might be a bit disappointed but i'm not taking it personally i'm not taking it personally you know what i mean i i expect that some people will be impolite. I expect that. And I understand most importantly. That's reality. It's.

People must be polite. Isn't a fact. Some people are polite. And some people are not. Is a fact. People are going to be rude to you. Is a fact. That's an unavoidable. Part of dealing with other a fact that's an unavoidable part of dealing with other

human beings that's unavoidable you embrace that you embrace that and once that happens now you're not being sorely gravely disappointed you've rejected the rule you've said this rule i learned that from my fucking parents. It's not helpful to my life. I'm rewriting it. I'm writing a new rule and the new rule is flexible and it's not rigid and it has empathy and compassion and it allows other people to be the way they are. They benefit. You benefit. You're a nicer person to be around and you're not see them with anger all day. And then you make your little homework,

the final thing you write down. What can I do to put this new rule or assumption into practice on a daily basis? Now you have a new fucking rule. So you're going to go into work and you're going to remind yourself before you meet every person, you know, when I walk in this this morning sometimes the security guard in work doesn't even say hello to me so before that happens

today I'm going to say hello to him or to her and I'm going to remind myself that I don't know what their life is like at home I don't know what's going through their head but what I can do is I can take responsibility for myself so i'm gonna say i'm gonna give them a lovely hello and if they don't respond back in kind nothing to do with me i've done my job it's not a personal slight on me if they're not polite they're probably not even thinking about me. Let them do them. I'll do me. And that's, you know, you think of all the different ways in your day

to introduce your brand new flexible rule. And then what's going to happen? You're not going to get disappointed. You're not going to be seething with anger. Your stress levels will be down. You'll feel a sense of accomplishment that the new rule that you've put in place is now feeding back to you as, wow, this is reality. Your confidence starts to grow.

Your happiness grows. You become a better person to be around. Your unhealthy levels of anger are greatly diminished and you've reduced your prospects of depression that's just one rule and we all have different fucking rules and we're not even aware of them half the time do you know what I mean

what if you have a rule that other people can't get in the way of what you want if you want something no one else is getting in the way of it well people get in the way of what you want. If you want something, no one else is getting in the way of it. Well, people get in the way of what you want. That's life. Life contains pain, chaos, disappointment and rejection.

That's a fact. You're going to be rejected. People are going to be rude to you. People are going to be mean to you. This is a given of human existence. So if your rules, personal rules, don't incorporate the givens of human existence then existence is going to be painful and it's going to make you furious so what i try and do i can't go through all the rules i ask myself all the time are my are my are my new rules are my rules my rules about myself about how i should be my rules about how other people should treat me and my rules about the world in general i ask

myself do my rules accurately conflate with the givens of existence. And like I said, the givens of existence. Suffering and pain and rejection and rudeness. These are givens of existence. They're not pleasant. They're not nice. But pain is a part of being alive. Death, bereavement, all these scary, frightening, bad things.

These will happen. They're unavoidable so if you have rules that don't allow for these things then life is pain but if your rules are flexible enough to allow them in then you've diminished your fucking pain and i'm not saying avoiding pain because you will never avoid pain pain is a given of existence but the vast majority of pain that we experience is it's self-inflicted walking around furiously angry all day that's avoidable pain so if your rules incorporate the givens of existence the painful givens of existence then you only ever have to feel that pain and not the unnecessary pain all right that was a bit scattered at the end there now that was a bit scattered at the end but uh i enjoyed that i like um that's cathartic for me as well, you know,

to go through that, and I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope it resonated with you, and I hope I answered that, fucking correctly for you, for the people who wanted me to speak, about, feeling angry,

feeling fucking angry, you know, what if your rule, what if your, you know, there's a lot of people at the moment who have a rule that the pubs need to be open there's a lot of people who have a rule that we shouldn't be in quarantine who have a rule that christmas must go ahead look at all the rules that are getting broken rules we never thought we had to consider but they're getting

fucking broken lads because life is pain there There's a pandemic. And some disappointing shit is happening. So adjust the rules around them and then you can cope. Yart. 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 tor 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. Thank you. Thank you.