The Blindboy Podcast - My mental health plan for a New Year

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

The pressure of a new year, and creating resolutions can bring up feelings of shame. I speak about how I address shame through self-compassion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy New Year you queefy teenies. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. It's 2023, which sounds like one of those made up years from science fiction. I was late recording this week's podcast because I've been having great difficulty with my dishwasher. I have a dishwasher that won't drain. Whenever I put the dishwasher on, it doesn't complete the cycle and it gives me this strange double beep and I open it up and at the bottom is a pool of grey dishwasher water and I've had to drain it manually using a mug I've had to get a pot and a mug and spend about 15 minutes manually draining the dishwasher and it's a very humbling experience and a very time-consuming experience and I've been doing it now about every

two days for the past three weeks and then this morning I said I've had enough I've had enough of this there has to be a better solution. I can't be getting down on my hands and knees with a mug and draining out this great dishwasher water. That's more time-consuming, more disgusting and less rewarding than actually washing the dishes by hand. So I need a better solution here. So I found a length of hose and I decided what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna siphon off the dishwasher sludge. I'm gonna siphon it off into the sink and I began the process until I remembered the last time I'd ever had to siphon anything. When I was a child,

well, a teenager, when I was about 13 or 14, I started getting into homebrewing. Started getting into making my own beer. Not because I wanted to drink, but because when I was like 13 for a brief period, I'd developed an obsession with 1920s American gangsters, like Al Capone and Bugsy Moran. And they operated in the 1920s in America

during Prohibition when alcohol was illegal. So they used to make their own beer, or they'd smuggle it. So when I was like 13, I decided I was going to become a bootlegger for a small amount of time because 13 is the age that like Irish teenagers start experimenting with alcohol. Trying to get a few cans of cider or beer on a Friday night and drink them in a bush but acquiring this beer was very difficult, incredibly difficult. So what my buddies used to have to do is, they'd hang around outside an off-license on a Friday night and hope that they would see maybe a college student, usually a lad who was maybe 18, 19, 20,

who was sympathetic to their cause. And they'd walk up to him and say please will you buy me some cans and it used to work maybe 1 out of 10 times that was it because let's be honest no one wants to buy alcohol for children even like

the maddest 18 year old college student you don't want to buy beer for a 13 year old. What's the point? It's not worth it. You could go to jail. It's illegal. Why would you take that risk?

Very rarely it would work. But most nights. What I remember from teenage drinking is that it was mostly unsuccessful. Until you got to about 16 or 17. When you were 16 or 17 in particular then strangers would buy you alcohol because you're clearly like 16 or 17 but when you were like 13 acquiring alcohol was difficult as it should be because it's not a good idea for 13 year olds to be drinking but I'd start to notice. Every Friday in school, one of the lads would say,

are we going bushing tonight? And we'd all go, yeah, let's go bushing. Big hard men. Bushing meant bush drinking. So what we'd do is, we'd agree to meet outside the off-license at about 6 o'clock. Only boys. We'd put D meet outside the off-license at about six o'clock. Only boys. We'd put Dax in our hair.

Dax was this fucking weird hair product. It was effectively Vaseline. We'd all put this Vaseline in our hair so that we had shiny heads. And we'd comb our hair forwards. I used to comb it backwards. I used to comb the Dax backwards so it was slicked back. Because I was obsessed with 1920s gangsters at this time so I wanted to look like Al Capone and I had a big giant gold earring.

So we'd put Vaseline in our hair, hang around outside an off-license and each of us would take turns asking college students to buy us Dutch gold which was the cheap alcohol at the time asking college students to buy us Dutch gold, which was the cheap alcohol at the time, asking college students to buy us Dutch gold until we got asked to leave by the person who ran the off-license. And then everyone in the group would blame each other until there was a fight. And that was it,

every Friday. But I was reading, I was reading all about the 1920s gangsters and I started to say to myself, geez, this is a bit like prohibition. Like we all want to drink beer, but when you're 13, it's illegal. This is prohibition. What if there was another way to get the alcohol? What if I became a bootlegger? What if I started making my own fucking beer and then selling the beer to the lads. I'd be like Al Capone. So I did. I took it upon myself to start trying to make my own beer when I was 13.

They used to sell the homebrew kits in fucking Easons for some reason. Which was a bookshop. It was the same place we bought our fucking school books. And I'd been saving up to buy a Destiny's Child CD. So instead of getting the Destiny's Child CD, I bought a homebrew kit in Essence, which they had to sell me because there was no alcohol in it. It was just like a jar.

It was a can of syrup and a little sachet of yeast and there was no alcohol. The alcohol had yet to exist. So I took the kit home, opened it up, looked at the instructions and then what I was missing was basically a big giant plastic tub which they sold but I couldn't afford it. That big plastic tub was expensive so I had to think and I decided I'd use a wheelie bin my parents had a spare wheelie bin the recycling bin

which we didn't really use back then so I decided I'm gonna make fuck loads of beer in a wheelie bin but when I opened up the homebrew kit and I read the instructions it was warning about how important it was that whatever you make the beer in, that it has to be sterile. It has to be 100% sterile or else you'll fuck up the yeast and bacteria will form and you'll make bad beer. But luckily, the homebrew kit came with a sachet of sanitising crystals, which I used with hot water to sanitise the wheelie bin.

So then I got my ma's big pressure cooker on the stove. I think she didn't mind because she was just happy that I appeared to be doing something that I was interested in. So I made, Jesus, about 15 or 20 liters of this beer mix, which was this syrup that you got in a can, then two or three bags of sugar loads of hot water then a load of cold water and then a sachet of yeast and I left it inside the wheelie bin to ferment for two weeks with a bed sheet over it and I followed all the instructions and after two weeks I mean

it kind of looked like beer it was it was foamy at the top, which I knew meant that carbon dioxide was forming, and if carbon dioxide was forming, that meant that the yeast was eating the sugar, and alcohol was forming, so I was like, great, okay, I've got a wheelie bin full of fucking beer, so I finally went to the lads, and I said, lads, full of fucking beer. So I finally went to the lads and I said, lads, all right, our problems are solved. I've been making beer.

And they were like, fuck off. How are you making beer? I'm like, I'm not telling you. I've been making beer and I will sell it to you for two euros for a two litre bottle. But you have to bring me the bottles because I don't have any. So all of the lads came over with empty two litre Coke bottles and they'd give them to me at my door

and I'd have to fill each bottle individually using a siphon which was a big long rubber tube and the reason I had to use a siphon was because the yeast had settled at the bottom of the wheelie bin so if I started sticking the bottles in and filling them that way it would disturb the liquid too much and then the yeast would end up in the bottle and that would make people sick so I couldn't do that so I had to siphon it off the top using this long rubber tube and what that meant was putting the rubber tube into my mouth the other end of it is going into the wheelie bin and then I'd suck it until I created a flow but it always meant getting a tiny bit of the beer into my mouth now I'd never drank

this beer I didn't want to drink it now the reason I didn't want to drink it is because Al Capone and them never drank any of their own drink and I was trying to be faithful to being a 1920s prohibition era gangster. So I'd siphon it off. And every time I'd do it I'd get a little bit into my mouth. And I'd be like, I don't really know what beer tastes like that much but this tastes disgusting. This really doesn't taste nice. It tastes a little bit like sour milk and vinegar. But I don't really know what beer tastes like so I have to assume it's correct. and vinegar but I don't really know what beer tastes like so I have to assume it's correct.

So I filled about 12 of these two litre bottles for various young fellas that I knew and made 24 euros and then surprise surprise everyone got incredibly sick when they drank it. Violently sick because you can't make 20 litres of beer in a wheelie bin you just can't do it I now know with access to the internet that I'd made what's called skunk beer and skunk beer is it's home brew that's made in a dirty bin so the yeast can't eat the sugar and make alcohol because there's all these other microorganisms getting involved and it just turns everything incredibly rotten and skunk beer tastes like if you've ever gotten a bad pint if you've ever gone to a bar on like a wednesday and they've been closed on monday and t Tuesday and they didn't clean out the taps and you get that first pint and you drink it and you want to get sick. That skunk beer,

it's gone off beer. So I'd made love to this gone off beer and given it to all the lads who'd paid me two euros and then everyone got sick. But because we were children, like no one blamed me. The lads didn't really know what beer was supposed to taste like. They might have had a sip of their dad's pint or if they were lucky they'd have had a can. But they didn't drink beer enough to know when beer is bad. when your 13 beer tastes horrible anyway. So everyone was just drinking this horrible beer, pretending to be cool. And then when everyone got sick, they were like, well, that's what's supposed to happen. That's what would happen if we drank two liters of normal beer worth 13. But that whole experience flashed before my eyes this morning, as I found myself on the kitchen floor draining the dirty dishwasher

and looking into that grey pool of sediment dishwasher water at the bottom of the dishwasher and as I had that tube in my hand ready to siphon it into the sink and suck on it I remembered back to the fucking beer when I was 13 and I remembered if you siphon this dishwasher water a tiny tiny amount is going to go into your mouth and that's not how you want to start 2023 that is not how you want to start the year so I said fuck it so what I'm going to do instead I'm going to start washing dishes by hand again I used to love washing dishes by hand I used to do it meditatively I used to do it as a mind from this experience and the dishwasher took that away from me you put the dishes in the dishwasher

you press a button you walk away then they're clean and dry so I'm not gonna do that I'm gonna go back to washing dishes by hand, and meditating as I do it, and the dishwasher's broken, like I can't fix that, whatever the fuck it is with the dishwasher, I'll need to get, I would need to get someone in to fix it, because it's not draining, I don't think, I think I'm just going to fucking, I'll use the dishwasher for storage, that's free storage. I'll keep shoes in there. Shoes that I don't wear. It'll be like a very futuristic looking shoe storage. And I can have it as a party trick.

If anyone visits me and I make them food. I can say to them after dinner. Oh will you put your plate in the dishwasher? And then they'll open the dishwasher and there'll be a lot of shoes inside there. And then I have a story to tell them when they ask me why. But I want to speak about the emotional impact of the new year. That's what I want to speak about this week. The pressure that we feel on January 1st.

And minding our emotional resilience around that. But I'll get to that in a minute. Because I'm thinking now about the. The homebrew beer when I was 13. So I only did it once. Because that experience was terrible. When I made it. And it didn't work.

And everyone got sick. I was disappointed. And I didn't want to do it again. And making that much beer in a wheelie bin as well, it really smells. Especially when the beer has gone off. So I'd given up on being a boatlegger. But I still had my fucking 1920s gangster obsession. Because I had this book about American gangsters from the 1920s.

And I used to love reading it and reading all the stories and reading all the things they used to get up to and while I was when I was making the homebrew remember I said I sanitized the wheelie bin with this little sachet of sanitizer that came with the homebrew kit and I was really impressed with how well it actually cleaned the wheelie bin now I didn't clean it enough that I could make beer in it, but there was a dirty wheelie bin, and I soaked it with this hot water and this sachet of crystals, and it did a pretty good job at cleaning the wheelie bin. And then I thought to myself,

Jesus, everyone in the neighbourhood has a wheelie bin, and they're all dirty. I wonder would they like me to clean their wheelie bins with these sachets of homebrew crystals. And this is the first time I ever got into trouble with the police. So in school at the time, they were doing this young entrepreneur competition. So it was like an extracurricular competition where they were trying to encourage 13 year olds to be entrepreneurs, to start their own businesses. Now the type of lads who were interested in this were the good students, really well behaved, taking their work seriously. Not me, because I was in the really shit class and I was very very poorly behaved but I'd gotten it into my head I'm like I've got a plan with this fucking wheelie bin washing business I want to

enter the young entrepreneur competition in school as a wheelie bin washer so the only way to enter the competition is your teacher had to sign off and approve your application to be in the competition and I was probably in second year I'd say and I was doing business studies and I said to my business studies teacher I want to enter this young entrepreneur competition I have an idea to start a business where I wash people's wheelie bins and the poor teacher got help him he immediately signed me off because he was so happy that I was interested in something because I was very disruptive and I wasn't interested in business at all so as soon as I expressed interest in the entrepreneur competition

he signed me off and I entered with my business what was the fucking name of the business? Mr. Clean I'd drawn a little cartoon of myself looking halfway halfway as a 1920s gangster and halfway as Snoop Dogg smoking a big joint

and this was my logo for Mr. Clean and I entered the young entrepreneur competition cleaning wheelie bins in my neighbourhood but the thing was it wasn't a wheelie bin cleaning business at all because I'd been reading my 1920s gangster book. And this had nothing to do with entrepreneurship. It had nothing to do with earning money. I look back now and I realise this is classic undiagnosed autism.

I was obsessed. Fixated. Fucking obsessed. With 1920s gangsters. Obsessed. That was the thing. I only gave a shit about that at that point in my life.

So I'd failed as a bootlegger. So I figured, what if I got into extortion? What if that's what I turned this business into? What if I start extorting people via wheelie bins? And I'd been reading all about how the 1920s gangsters like Al Capone,

they would have something like a legitimate business. Like Al Capone used to have trucking businesses, but they were front organizations for illegal businesses like smuggling drink. So my wheelie bin cleaning business, Mr. Clean, which was legitimate, was a front organization for a protection racket. So what i would do is i would call around to my neighbors in the neighborhood now i'm 13 now i'm a fucking child i'd call around to their houses and i'd say to them your bin is filthy do you do you want it washed most people said no most people were like it's a bin it's supposed to be dirty what do i want to clean for but other people said yeah okay how much five quid no problem here's a fiver clean my bin so I'd do it I'd clean it with hot water and one of those homebrew sachets

that I could buy for 50p in Easons and I'd clean the bin perfectly but then and these were mostly old women once I'd cleaned the bin I'd go back in and I'd have this contract that I'd printed out on the school printer. Now I had to have the contract because like I said I was entering this idea into the school entrepreneur competition so you had to have a contract. I think you had to do like a profit and loss sheet. You had to show some documentation that like even though you were 13 you were having a crap a proper crack at a business here but my contract it wasn't just a bin cleaning contract it was a security contract so I was trying to get these old women my neighbors to sign up for a contract where basically I clean your bin every month but also I provide security for your

bin so that it never goes on fire and then they'd say but nobody's bin goes on fire and then I'd say you never know you know you leave your bin outside the house anybody could come along and just throw some petrol in it and the bin would go on fire and then you wouldn't have a bin it'd be melted you wouldn't have a bin but if you sign up to my security program I'll make sure that doesn't happen I'll patrol the streets and make sure no one sets fire to your bin but if you don't want to sign up to this contract I might have to just turn my back if I see it happening, you know. Who's to say your bin won't go on fire?

So that's extortion. Basically what I was doing was I was going to set the bins on fire. I'm going to set your bin on fire if you don't pay me every month to not do it. And of course, everyone told me to fuck off everybody and there was one woman around the corner and she got really annoyed with me and her son came out who was in his 30s and I was carrying around a little fucking toy pistol with me.

I had a little metal revolver. Now here's the thing. I'm 13. I'm a child. So in terms of maturity, I'm at the precipice between childhood play and teenage accountability. I wasn't trying to be bad. I wasn't trying to be mean. I wasn't trying to be mean. It wasn't about earning money. I wasn't mature enough to think that people would take me seriously or might actually be worried that I'd set their bins on fire.

I don't think I'd have even set anyone's bin on fire. I'd have been too scared and I wasn't a bad kid I wasn't a bad person now if it came down to it I wouldn't have said anyone's been on fire I was just so fucking obsessed obsessed with these 1920s gangsters that I wanted to play out the fantasy of it like I had slicked back hair and my voice wasn't broken and everyone in the neighborhood knew me they're like he's a bit odd he's a bit eccentric but he's he's a nice fella his parents are lovely people just give him the fiver and let him wash the bin come on so when the woman's son came out and confronted me i pointed the gun at him and he got frightened for about two seconds

until he realised it's fucking Ireland and a 13 year old is not going to pull out an actual gun and then I think I got frightened and ran away crying

I was trying to be Al Capone and Bugsy Moore and I was trying to be a 1920s gangster and then the guards called my house and told my parents that what I was doing with the wheelie bins trying to set them on fire and then the guards went to the school and I got kicked out of the young entrepreneur competition for running a business that was a front for extortion. And the teacher who had signed off my business approval

was fucking mortified. Absolutely mortified. There was a lot of extracurricular stuff that I wasn't allowed to do after that in the school. I think that's what... I wasn't allowed to do transition year, which is like this extra year after your junior cert where it's not real school. It's like it's half school and you

get to do things like I know people who did transition year they got to learn how to make films they got to focus on artistic projects transition year would have been really really good for me I applied for it and I got rejected they were like no fucking way you'll go mad but what I'd like to talk about this week is it's the start of a new year and I've actually found the past week to be kind of stressful and I'm assuming if it's if it's that way for me it's that way for a lot of ye too the start of a new year, it comes with quite a lot of pressure. And I think it can trigger a lot of feelings of shame. And I want to speak about shame this week.

Because shame is a word you hear a lot. But it's not really spoken about and I don't think we fully understand what shame is. We don't have good emotional literacy around shame. First off, the expectation to have New Year's resolutions. That's quite a positive thing, setting these goals for yourself for the next year. But there's no way to consider your New Year's resolution without that being driven by a sense of shame or disappointment

in who you are and what you've done here's a good way to know whether the new year's resolutions that you've set for yourself are informed by shame or not when you're informed by a sense of shame, a sense of being unhappy with who you are or where you are, you tend to set New Year's resolutions for yourself that are a little bit too high, that are unachievable. When you're not informed by a sense of shame about yourself, when you have a more realistic view of who you are, when you have a more realistic view of who you are, then the New Year's resolutions that you set for yourself are quite realistic and flexible. Like I was in the gym yesterday, the 2nd of January, and the place was absolutely full.

Now, I go to the gym regularly. I've been going to the gym for years, so I'm very familiar with the gym and the type of people who are in the gym and yesterday I could just sense there's a lot of people here who are being very hard on themselves people who had clearly never been in a gym in their lives people wearing jeans

wearing the wrong shoes not knowing how to use machines, looking very frightened, looking very confused. Now I've been going to the gym a long time, I'll tell you how long I've been going to the fucking gym. When I was 13 doing that wheelie bin shit, a year later when I'd become more of a teenager and a bit more mature when I was 14 that's when I first started going to a gym and I've been in gyms quite regularly since so that's a long time so I know what the 2nd of January looks like in a gym and without casting aspersions based on my experience a huge amount of those people who turned up wearing jeans looking confused they might last

another week and you're never going to see them again and they're going to feel like absolute shit and they're going to feel like failures and they're going to find themselves in that cycle of wanting to get into exercise 100% and then giving it up all of a sudden and then experiencing a lot of shame around that and I use the gym as the classic example because that's a very common new year's resolution and the problem is with the gym is most gyms when you sign up in January like they have those offers the January offers but you're fucking signing up for the year and if you stop going after a week or two weeks the money comes out of your account and you have to spend the rest of the year feeling a sense of shame being reminded of this promise you made to yourself and you couldn't even do it and now you're after spending 400 quid on a gym membership for the year

and you're not even visiting that's a killer for a lot of people and my hunch is they set the bar a little too high going to a gym for the first time is quite intimidating because you're surrounded by people who look like they know what they're doing people with a bit more experience in the gym or people who look physically fit and know how to use the equipment and are at home in the gym. And for some people, when you launch immediately into that environment without guidance, you feel out of place and you quit. Now, if you are that person, if you are somebody who signed up for the gym for the first time the other day

and went there and you feel like quitting, stick with it. Lower your expectations. Starting off exercise is horrible and it's supposed to be horrible and it's unpleasant until you get good at it and that can take about a month or six weeks. It's supposed to be difficult. You will feel out of place. You will feel that you don't belong until one day you don't and then you start to fall in love with exercise but you won't get there unless you have some self-compassion around it, unless you take ownership of the fact that you're a novice. Ask the people who work there for help. If you're feeling self-conscious, using machines, I promise you no one gives a fuck. People are focusing on their

own workouts. And if you want to fit in, just buy some simple gym clothes. Look at what other people are wearing and dress like how they are dressing. And that'll help you feel better. And also, try not to have physical goals. Well, that sounds, because people go to the gym to get physically fitter, to get more muscles, to lose fat. That's what we think of the gym. But like, I guarantee you, the people who are regulars,

they're regulars because they love being in the gym and they like the process of working out and how it makes them feel. Now they might be setting themselves little goals, like getting bigger, getting smaller, getting fitter, having a better heartbeat but ultimately the people who stick with the gym are the people who are there because they love being in the gym. Like I'm one of those people. Like I don't have a fucking six-pack. You wouldn't look at me and go wow that fella's really fit look at. Because it's not really why I go to the gym.

I go to the gym maybe two or three times a week because I love being there. The process of it, exercising, it makes me feel amazing. It's mainly what it does for my brain. And what that does is it puts no pressure on me. I don't put any pressure on myself. I'm going to this place where I love going to enjoy what I do when I'm there. I see other people with New Year's resolutions around reading. I see people posting, I'm going to read a book a week for the next year.

And here's my reading list. And already I know by the list, it's like, you're not going to read that in a week. You will not read Ulyss that in a week you will not read Ulysses in a week you're going to set yourself up to fail and then when you don't meet that unbelievably unrealistic goal that you set for yourself you're going to experience the shame that drove you to that unrealistic goal in the first place and when I see someone set a very unrealistic goal for themselves around reading a huge I see someone set a very unrealistic goal for themselves around reading a huge amount of books as a new year's resolution through empathy with

that it lets me see that that person has a sense of shame around their intelligence when I was younger when I was 19 20 and I had failed my leaving cert certain school. I remember being like 19 and a goal I set for myself was like I would have loved to have gone to like Trinity College or UCD and studied literature. By the time I was fucking 13 that type of shit with the wheelie bins

and all the other ridiculous things I was doing to get myself into trouble, get a bad name for myself in school, be put into certain classes where opportunities were being taken away from me. Decisions were being made for me then that were like, this fella's never going to fucking Trinity College. Forget about it. And that left me with a huge amount of, a huge feeling of shame,

feeling like a failure. Because ultimately, like I was capable of going to UCD or Trinity and studying literature in terms of passion and cognitive ability yes I would have been able to do that the people in them courses now do thesis is on my short stories and I've been given like honorary lifetime membership in the historical societies and the philosophical societies and all that shit. So that's sufficient external validation for 19 year old me. But I was a neurodivergent teenager in a system that wasn't suited to me.

And that found its way out through pretty bad behaviour which took opportunities from me. But when I was like 19 what did I decide to do on January 1st I decided to look at the prescribed reading list for like I think it was Trinity College literature degree and I said to myself I'm gonna read all these books in one year did I did I fuck no because I was in art college trying to do an art college degree and you can't be in art college and then also privately try and read everything on a literature course in Trinity at the same time

a hugely unrealistic goal I didn't have that awareness at the time I just called myself a failure I said you told yourself that you were going to read all those books in a year and you've only read two because you're thick just like they said you are and that's why you failed your leaving cert because you're thick and I would have experienced a huge degree of shame around that because I wasn't exercising flexible self-compassion. So what are my new year's resolutions this year? I have two. I'm going to

fall back in love with running and I'm going to put genuine effort to be as nice as possible to every single person I interact with and I reckon those are achievable. Regarding the running I didn't say I'm going to run 20 kilometers every day. I didn't say I'm gonna run at this particular speed I said to myself I'm gonna fall back in love with running because I got an injury over the pandemic which started off in my Achilles heel then went up to my hamstring and then it was in my shoulder and then running stopped becoming enjoyable It became something that was physically painful because I was injured. And then I started doing less and less of it as I healed. But now I'm fully healed.

My goal is to simply start loving it again. To get back running, whatever that pace looks like, whatever that distance looks like, whatever that frequency looks like. But distance looks like whatever that frequency looks like but my goal is a feeling to do it so that I'm only doing it because it's so fucking enjoyable because I haven't enjoyed running in I'd say nearly two years and then my other resolution is to put the effort in to be as kind as possible to every single person that I meet. Now, I'm not saying I'm going to be as kind as possible to everyone I meet. I'm going to put the effort in to do that because I'm going to have off days.

Because to say to myself, you're going to be kind to everybody, that's fucking unrealistic. That doesn't take into account my fallibility as a human being that doesn't allow me to be annoyed it doesn't allow me to be anxious to be tired but I can put in the effort I can put in the effort I can try every time I meet another person or interact with a person online even if they're being a dickhead to me I'm gonna have a little flag in my head that says try to be kind to this person put in that effort have a think about how you can be kind I reckon I can do that and I know I'm gonna fuck up and I know I'm gonna lose the rag with people once or twice but I can always put in the effort but I felt quite a lot of shame

over the past week one thing that triggered shame in me and anxiety anxiety and shame at the same time something I didn't like um was people doing like end of year lists on Instagram in particular here's all the things I achieved in 2022 now people are entitled to do that people are entitled to go here's the awards I won here's the promotion I got here's the holiday I went on people were going on to Instagram and finding all the things they'd achieved the year. Now I was genuinely happy for people. I was happy for people to post their achievements. I was happy because I put the effort in to be happy for those people because that's something I do. I always catch myself when I see someone proud of what they've achieved in the year. I radically ask myself to be happy for that person because I will not allow resentment

I won't allow myself see another person be happy at their achievements and then for me to begrudge them for it and that's a promise I made to myself a long time ago and if I didn't make that promise to myself a long time ago I wouldn't, I wouldn't be doing this podcast now. I can only achieve my own goals if I'm happy for other people if they achieve theirs. Because if I'm harsh, if I'm resentful, if I'm going, look at them fucking showing off, or if I minimize their achievements and try and reduce them

by saying, you only got that because of this. You only achieved that because of luck sure anyone could do that why are you showing off about that if I entertain these type of thoughts that's how harsh I'll be in myself when I try to achieve anything but what I found uncomfortable about people synopsizing their big achievements over the year into a couple of Instagram posts. What made me uncomfortable was I now felt pressured to do it myself. And now I was looking at my past year and going, well, what did I achieve? What things did I do that would be good enough to put into a list? And I started thinking about, oh oh the podcast got 50 million listens or the fucking president asked me to come up and

interview him and I started thinking of all these things and thinking should I post it and I said no no because it's deeply unhealthy for me to reduce all that into this type of external validation. Even though one part of me was going, this benefits my career. Maybe I do need to put up everything I've achieved this year as part of my branding so that people see it. And that's something I really dislike about my job. When you're an independent creator and you have a social media presence and you're trying to generate your own hype,

you have to sing your own praises because if you don't, no one else will. Like every Wednesday even. When I put out this podcast on Wednesday and I put it on Instagram, people always tag me in their Instagram stories saying, oh, I love this week's Blind Boy podcast. And I really appreciate that. But then I share that person's feedback to my story.

Now, I really don't like doing that. That's actually unhealthy for me. That's unhealthy for me to acknowledge that external validation. It's okay for me to appreciate that a person likes the podcast podcast but for me to then share that and say to my followers here look at this person they think that this week's podcast is brilliant but I have to do it because only by sharing people's feedback will someone looking at it go fuck it I haven't listened to blind boy in a while now yeah I think I'll go back and listen to that podcast so I have to do that as part of my job but that end of year thing I just didn't do it because it was bringing up great feelings of shame in me I was now looking at my entire year instead of looking at the enjoyment that I had, the growth, the fun, the process, that's the shit that matters.

Instead of looking at that, I was reducing everything to these little bullet points of achievements. And then what happens? I start to not feel good enough. I start to not feel good enough and I start to compare my little achievements in the year to someone else's achievements in the year and I start to say their achievements were so much better than mine I'm fucking useless

I'm not good enough I should have tried harder I should have done this I should have done that why didn't I get mentioned in the list that they were mentioned in and then my ma rang me up and says, Brezzy was on the radio today.

Why aren't you on the radio anymore? Now normally I wouldn't give a fuck. But when she said that to me, I ended up having to defend myself. And I started to feel insecure. And I don't want to be on the fucking radio. So I left 2023 feeling quite a bit of shame. About who I am.

And what I've done. And what I haven haven't done and what I failed to do. But luckily, because I'm back in therapy, I'm able to flag all this shit as it happens. I'm able to flag all this stuff and to notice it and to step back from it and go, hold on a second here now. What are we going to do about this? and go hold on a second here now what are we going to do about this so in the second half of the podcast I want to speak about shame and I'm going to speak about what we can do with feelings of shame that come up around this time of year because I would be shocked if all of ye didn't see one of your friends getting engaged or getting a mortgage or getting a promotion or having a nice car or a nice holiday

and for them to wrap all that up in a lovely neat little end of year Instagram package and for you not to feel a little bit shitty because of that and that feeling is shame so let's talk about that but first

it's time for the ocarina pause do I have an ocarina? do I fuck? i'm in my office what have i got i've got a bottle of fizzy water that doesn't have any fizzy water in it oh let's play the top of a bottle all right you're gonna hear an advert for some fucking bullshit i don't know what you're gonna hear an advert for here's the top of a bottle pause i'll try and blow on it 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 don't

the first omen I believe girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil.

Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. It's not real. Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever?

Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. 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. All right, that was the top of a bottle of pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast.

So here's something I am massively, genuinely grateful for the past year and the year before that and the year before that. I've managed to do this podcast, which I adore and love doing every week. And for that to be what pays my gas bill and my electricity bill and my rent for this fucking office and what feeds me. I adore making this podcast. I fucking love it.

I love the process of it. I love the freedom of getting to explore ideas each week to speak about what I'm passionate about. And I'm so grateful that this is my full-time job and this is how I earn a living. So if you listen to this podcast regularly, if it brings you distraction, enjoyment, solace, whatever the fuck this podcast does for you, please consider paying me for the work that I put into it.

All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it if you can't afford that don't worry about it you can listen for free because the person who is a patron is paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast

I get to earn a living it's a wonderful model patreon.com forward slash theBlindBoyPodcast. And thank you to all my patrons for keeping this podcast going and for keeping it fucking independent. I'm not beholden to any advertiser. Nobody tells me what to talk about. No one steers the content of this podcast in any direction

so that I'll get more listens. Once someone says, be more popular that is the death knell of creativity and authenticity and passion. This is a listener funded podcast for the listeners and thank you to the people funding this who are paying for the people who can't afford to fund it. Do I have gigs to promote? I'm sure I do give me two seconds where the fuck are my gigs I definitely have some gigs alright

this month Waterford 21st of January almost sold out February Killarney oh that's sold out Cork Opera House few tickets left for that on the 15th of February March the Waterfront in Belf that on the 15th of February. March. The Waterfront in

Belfast on the 4th of March. Few tickets left for that. That's going to be a lot of fun. Vicar Street in Dublin, 22nd and 24th of March. That's going to be mad crack. Drogheda in April, 1st of April. Then I'm in Canada on the 24th, Toronto and Vancouver. Drahada in April, 1st of April then I'm in Canada on the 24th Toronto and Vancouver so a lot of you are wondering about my Twitch stream I took a break from my weekly Twitch stream

about 5 weeks ago, about 6 weeks ago and I said I was going to re-evaluate it in January, I'll be honest the weeks that I took off from doing Twitch have been hugely beneficial to me I started doing my Twitch stream over lockdown because I had a lot of free time on my hands. But at the moment, I'm writing a book of short stories

and not going on Twitch on Thursday nights has freed up a huge amount of time and creative energy for me to focus on my book and the thing is when I go on to Twitch and you've seen this if I do a Thursday night on Twitch like 90 minutes and I'm writing songs making up songs in the spot and playing a lot of instruments it's tremendous fun but it uses a huge amount of mental creative energy. That actually leaves me drained the next day. So when I do a Twitch stream. I'm not just using a Thursday night. It's like that Friday.

Ideas don't come to me. Because it's a bit like taking ecstasy or something. It's like I use up all the serotonin the night before. So then on Friday. My creativity is gone. I can't access flow. So I'm not coming back to Twitch every Thursday night I need my Thursdays and Fridays for writing and since I stopped doing Twitch my word count has gone up my flow is back and my book is getting done and I will come back

to Twitch because I fucking love doing that. I love writing those songs. But just not for the foreseeable future. Not until this book gets done. Now something I have considered. Something I have considered and I may try it to see how it works. I was going to see would it be possible for me to use Twitch to write short stories live. Because one thing I will say about doing my live twitch streams the performance anxiety like the good anxiety the useful anxiety the performance anxiety that I get making songs on the spot and knowing that people are watching and expecting

something from me the adrenaline and pressure of that causes me to experience a very very intense creative flow where i leave my body and i might see if i can try doing that while writing a short story i might give it a go once and the worst that can happen is it fucks up but if i do do that it'll be spontaneous and without warning. Because if I plan it, it'll be like trying to take a piss on a load of people watching. But writing fiction, writing short stories as a public act of participatory art, I find that very exciting. It takes a heritage art form, like short story writing, and fucks with its mechanics. Using the emerging technology of live streaming and also public failure. I've struggled with creative block with my writing over the past couple of years and creative block and procrastination is the fear of failure. So the best way to overcome the fear of failure is to fucking fail. Massively and publicly.

And then you get flow. So let's talk about shame. Shame is quite misrepresented and misunderstood. I find in society because we speak about it a lot. This person is shameless. They are shameless. They have no shame. Hide your shame. Have you no shame? We speak about shame almost as in relation to a sense of decorum. We speak about shame when what we're actually referring to is embarrassment or guilt. When someone says

that person has no shame, what you really mean is that person should that person not be embarrassed for what they're doing or should that person not feel guilty for what they're doing and also we use shame we use the word shame when we should be using the word judgment. Look at what that person's wearing look at what that person is doing oh my god look at them that's judging a person we call it shame in a person but that that's judging a person but what shame is really it's quite a painful feeling shame is a feeling it doesn't have a lot of words around it. Shame is something you feel and the theme of it is, I'm not good enough. Shame is like the vehicle that takes you to low self-esteem. I would consider shame to be a secondary emotion.

It's a feeling about a feeling. Like here's something that's quite common that a lot of people go through. You're trying to go to sleep at night time and then you remember something you said or did five years ago and you start to cringe. You start to feel embarrassed or you start to feel guilty. Oh my god I can't believe at that party five years ago I was drunk and I said that thing to that person and everyone went quiet and that comes into your head your face feels red and you sense a kind of a cringiness you sense a guilt you sense embarrassment you tend to feel guilt and embarrassment around the face your face feels hot you sense the guilt and embarrassment and the face. Your face feels hot. You sense the guilt and embarrassment

and then that's followed by something much sadder and deeper that you feel around your chest that pulls you a real sad hopeless feeling. That's shame. So you think of the thing you did that was that you regret, that you're embarrassed about or that you're guilty about. you think of the thing you did that was that you regret that you're embarrassed about or that you're guilty about you think of a behavioral thing and then this darker deeper thing comes upon you this sense of hopeless doom that there is shame now what's the difference between guilt regret and shame the guilt and regret that you feel is about an aspect of your behaviour. You're thinking about a thing that you did that you wish you didn't do or a thing that you said that you wish you didn't say. That feeling is about behaviour. Shame isn't about

behaviour. Shame is about you as an entire person. That's why shame hurts so badly. You feel the guilt in your face and then the shame is there in your chest. And it's quite hopeless. And there's doom around it. It's much deeper and it's about your core sense of self. And it's very painful. Shame feels like a wound or a stain.

When you think of the something you're guilty about or something you regret doing or regret saying, the shame is like the indelible mark that that has left on you that has forever changed your value as a person and that you can't get rid of. I'm damaged. I'm broken. I'm unlovable. I don't want to get too heavy. But shame is also what can come up.

If something horrendous was done to you. Shame is what comes up. This time of year. If you're to make New Year's resolutions for yourself. There's no way to think. About you'd like to achieve or like to be without first reflecting on what you are or what you are so if you look back on the past year and you're unhappy about a bunch of shit that you did or you're not where you're not where you thought you were going to be then that bad feeling that comes up as you assess the past year that bad feeling that comes up about

who you are that shame shame is the the vibration the feeling the sadness of having a low opinion of yourself. Shame is like the music or the song of low self-esteem. I think shame is an incredibly relevant emotion to what we'd call millennials and Gen Z. People under the age of 40. Because of external circumstances, it's very difficult to be in your 20s and 30s and to be happy where you are. Because our societal and cultural expectations come from before the Great Recession of 2008.

So most people in their 20s and 30s, the vast majority, you don't have the career that you were expected to have at where you are right now. You don't have the money. You don't have the savings. You don't have the home that you were expected to have right now. You didn't think you'd still be living in Australia right now. You don't have the relationship that you thought you'd have right now because you've been living with your parents. You're not engaged. You're not married.

You thought you would be. You thought you'd have children. You thought you'd have more children. You thought you'd be able to financially provide for the children that you have. You get my point? Two generations of people whose entire infrastructure for self-evaluation is based on a rubric which is no longer realistic or achievable and when you think about all that shit and you evaluate yourself against those external expectations and you don't meet them

that dark feeling in your chest that that shame. We have an economic infrastructure via social media that is able to monetize this shame. You can use Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or whatever to momentarily heal that feeling of fucking shame by projecting a more successful avatar of yourself on social media, which is then monetized as data you can curate a version of yourself on fucking instagram that's more physically attractive than you actually are more successful than you actually are happier than you actually are then you receive approval on the social media for this unreal avatar of yourself which is then followed by a deep feeling of shame because you know that none of it is real and it works like

a feedback loop so that's a shame economy if you ask me and regret disappointment guilt which are feelings we have about behaviors they all trickle down into shame and shame is the feeling that we have we globally have about who we are our identity the thing about shame is so when you have this dark feeling about yourself about you not being good enough then naturally you then assume this is what others see. This is why shame can cause us to withdraw. Shame will cause you to not want to be around other people, to hide yourself or to push other people away. Shame can also make you feel like,

make you think that other people don't want you. Shame can make you feel like you're being rejected from a group. And then when you feel that way, you can begin to feel resentment towards other people like if you've been looking through people's instagrams this week and they're synopsizing all their achievements for the year they got engaged they had a nice holiday they got a promotion whatever and you see that and you experience a resentment or a jealousy or a dislike of that person that's your

shame if something bad happens to another person if they lose their job if their marriage fails if they get dumped if their fucking partner cheats on them and then you feel good about it shad and friday that's our shame we feel happy and we feel comfort when another person falls because they're coming down to our level they're coming down to the shitty way we feel about ourselves that's shame now that all sounds really fucking negative but the thing is shame is part of being human it's part of the tapestry of the human condition. I don't know is it possible to exist without shame. And while shame really doesn't feel nice,

like the feeling of shame for me is, it's the opposite of everything I love about life. Like shame tells me to give up. Shame tells me not to try. Shame tells me that everything is pointless. Shame tells me that there's no hope. And when I listen to shame, that's when I'm at my fucking lowest. It's very hard to find inspiration from shame. But shame also communicates a need. When shame comes up, it means that we need love and connection. Because shame is quite lonely.

It's a lonely feeling. And the problems that arise from the sensation of shame often come from how we respond to that shame. What do we do with that shame? Like what I find with shame compared to other emotions like anxiety or anger. When shame comes up, that's the one that I tend to believe. I really believe it as absolute fact. Like if I feel anxiety, sense of terror about something, oh no, I'm going to lose my job and I'm going to be homeless.

There's something terror about something. Oh no, I'm going to lose my job and I'm going to be homeless. There's something specific about that. Even though it's terrifying, I can step back and kind of question it easier. Same with anger, but shame has less words around it. It's a deeper, more lonely, dark feeling about ourselves. It's like our core that we believe. Like here's the worst feeling of shame for me. this is this is specific to me because art and creativity is so important to who I am and how I achieve meaning in life if I'm experiencing writer's block if I'm trying to write and nothing is coming to me I'm not getting ideas I'm not getting flow I I'm not getting flow. I feel frustrated. Then I feel anxious about the specific task that I'm failing at. And then I feel a deep shame, deep, deep shame. And what this deep shame tells me is you're not really creative. You're not an

artist. This was all an accident. Anything you've done in the past that was good was a mistake. It was an accident. Your creativity is gone. It's never coming back. This was never who you were. And without this, you're nothing. You're nobody. Your life has no point. And I feel that in my belly and it's such a sad, lonely feeling. And I believe it. I'll 100% believe it as fact. That feeling is an absolute fact about who I am. And I believe it 100%. That's shame. Or if someone says something mean to me on the internet, you've no talent, you're shit, you're an idiot with a bag in his head. The heart that I feel from that is my shame. And I believe that person because it confirms my shame. And the other thing with shame, when it comes up,

because it's such a core evaluation about who we are, this terrible, terrible assessment of who I am as a person, and it feels so real, because it's so visceral and we take it as fact. We tend to react to shame. When shame comes up, it's not nice to sit with it. You want to turn away from shame as soon as possible. That's why I'm talking about wildly unrealistic New Year's resolutions. If you feel that sense of shame come up and your immediate solution is to set yourself these fucking mad goals that are unachievable, that's turning away from shame. It's like putting your fingers in your ears. I'm not stupid. I'm going to read Ulysses in a week. I don't feel physically

unattractive. I'm going to go to the gym every day of the week, starting now. Shame will also cause you to try and sort your fucking life out at four in the morning. If you're tossing and turning at night time thinking about your life and where you are and that horrible feeling that won't let you go to sleep and then you have to, instead of going back to sleep, it's now four in the morning, you've gotten out of bed and you're writing lists about how to sort your life out. That's the feeling of intense shame about who you are and the frantic lists that you're writing about how to sort your life out. That's the feeling of intense shame about who you are and the frantic lists

that you're writing about how to sort your shit out is turning away from the shame. It's too terrifying. It's too terrifying. You have to react to it. But what shame really is, it's not this visceral, accurate assessment of who we are. It's something deep in our brains telling us that we need a hug, that we need love and that doesn't necessarily mean the love of another human being. It's our brains telling us that we need love from ourselves. Something's not right here. from ourselves something's not right here you don't love yourself you don't accept yourself that's what shame is and when you can identify shame when you can identify that feeling and put words to it and when it comes up and you go i think this is shame that's when you can choose to react and turn away or to sit with it and look at it. It's an open wound that's too ugly to stare at.

Stare at it. Feel how painful it is. Step back and look at it as it comes up. And a great way to physically assist yourself in that situation is breathing so when the shame comes up breathe like a baby in through the nose put your hands on your stomach and you breathe in through the nose until you feel your stomach expand and breathe slowly and fully that way. And what that does is that's mindfulness. When you breathe in that way, you bring so much oxygen into your body that that stops your thoughts racing around the shame.

So now you're not writing this list about how to sort your fucking life out. You're looking at and feeling a pain within yourself, an open wound. And then once you're there and you're calmer, you ask yourself, what was I thinking about that brought up this shame? What was the memory of five years ago at that party that brought up the feeling of embarrassment, that brought up the feeling of guilt, that then brought on this huge feeling of embarrassment, that brought up the feeling of guilt, that then brought on this

huge feeling of shame. And you step back, you physically feel yourself taking a step back from all those visions and memories. You walk back and you watch it, you notice it, you observe it. When you think about something from five years ago or ten years ago something embarrassing you did or said and then you cringe and you have a red face right now because of something in the past you're not noticing and observing that thing that happened you're right there reliving the fucking the emotions but you step back from it and then you go but i hate my friend that much if they did or said that thing but I really hate them that much I don't think I would think I'd be a bit more compassionate if someone else did that

like I know people who do this over fucking forgetting someone's name they'd be at a party and they forget a person's name someone's name who they kind of should know because they met him a couple of times they get their names wrong and they're mortified people can relive that five years later in fucking bed when they're tryingified people can relive that five years later in fucking bed when they're trying to sleep another thing you can do with shame is trying to try to understand when it comes up and you're able to mindfully notice it and see that it's happening and see that you're feeling it is to understand the origins of that shame because a lot of our shame can come from childhood.

And it might be outside of our awareness. Like I said there, I experience a lot. I'll experience deep shame when it comes to creativity. If I'm trying to write and I get writer's block and the ideas aren't coming, and then all of a sudden I've got this doom-laden, dark feeling of, oh, you're fucking worthless now worthless now man you can't come up with any ideas your creativity has dried up it's gone you're with no fucking point in being alive now it's over like I know that I have that intense shame there because the only time I was ever told that I was good was when I displayed my creative

abilities. I was troublesome, wouldn't behave myself. I wasn't academically strong. I wasn't interested in schoolwork. But when I painted a picture, played a musical instrument, they called me a genius. And it felt amazing as a child. I remember those feelings. It felt like I had fucking worth and I have unfortunately internalized this into my sense of self that if I don't have my creative abilities then I do not have worth as a human being and there's no point in my existence and that's where that shame comes from. So that's why I'm terrified of fucking writer's block. It's why I can be utterly hammered by a bad review or a shitty comment on the internet and none of that is real. It's fucking

bullshit. If I stopped creating art tomorrow all it means is he's stopped creating art. He has stopped doing a thing. It has nothing to do with my worth as a human being. Now I know that. My shame doesn't know it. And what is my shame telling me? You need to fucking love every part of yourself. You can't just love you when you're being creative. That's bullshit. So here's some shame to tell you that you need to love all of yourself. Now I can't help you with your origins of your shame. But you experience shame. You're going to experience shame for different reasons than I experience shame. But it tends to come from what Carl Rogers would call

the conditions of worth in which we were raised things that we were scolded for or praised for as children by people who we held in high esteem adults caregivers teachers siblings like if your shame is around your physical appearance what messages did you receive as a child were you a very cute child that everyone gave a lot of attention to and said oh my god you're so beautiful oh you're gorgeous like the adults are being really nice but when you're three or four or five you can start to think oh okay when I'm beautiful and gorgeous and everyone is saying this about me then I have worth as a human being like it's not just adults that say that, fucking society says that.

Like advertising, magazines, whatever the fuck, influencers, they tell women in particular, your worth is dependent upon how physically attractive you are to other people. And then your shame will come up, and your shame is actually telling you, you need to love all of yourself. And when you view shame that way, not as this accurate, horrendous assessment of who you are, but instead view shame as your friend. When shame comes up, it's trying to tell you something. It's trying to communicate a need about loving

yourself that's what shame is and you can view it through that lens and then you don't turn away from it and it doesn't influence your behavior and a final point about shame and trying to understand where your personal shame emerges from in your origin story in your life when you know where your shame comes from when it presents itself then you can ask yourself self-compassionate questions and a self-compassionate question would be so that horrible feeling of shame comes up you're not liking who you are you're not seeing any positive hope and change in who you are that shame comes up and then you can say to yourself given what I know about my childhood given what I know about myself does it make sense that I'd feel this way right now

or noticing the feeling of shame and going I feel shame right now yeah that makes sense that makes sense considering what I know about my childhood that makes sense like if you get the shits after eating a lot of jalapenos like if you get a pizza with a lot of jalapenos on it and then later on that night you've got the scutters like if you'd never gotten the scutters before and no one had ever explained them to you you'd be on the toilet thinking oh no at my entire innards my guts and my lungs and my spleen are careering out of my arse into the toilet I'm gonna die this feels horrible like that's what the scutters would be if you'd never experienced them and no one had told you what they were. Well shame is a bit like that. But if you got the scutters it's like oh man this is awful. This is horrible. Fuck me. But I did eat

that pizza with all those jalapenos on it. Yeah I think that's why I have the scutters. I'm gonna have to ride this one out. It's entirely possible to view shame in the same way. Alright, that's all I have time for this week. I hope that was enough about shame. I think I said the word shame about 190 times in this podcast. Dog bless, I'll catch you next week you glorious cunts. Mind yourselves. 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 the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7 30 p.m. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you.