The Blindboy Podcast - Overcoming Social Anxiety

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

With society emerging from the isolation of the pandemic. I've found myself feeling nervous about social situations. I speak about tools I've used in the past to overcome this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gavmaleshgail, you barefaced aimans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I hope you're well. If you're a brand new listener, listen to some earlier podcasts. Some people even begin from the start. If you're a regular listener, you know the crack. Welcome back. I'd like to begin this week's podcast with a piece of prose that was submitted to me by the ghost of Hollywood actor Nick Nolte who according to Wikipedia hasn't even died yet

so I don't know how his ghost is sending me prose it might possibly be that Nick Nolte has died which I'm sure he will at some point so Nick Nolte has died which I'm sure he will at some point so Nick Nolte must have died

in maybe 2026 we'll say and I'm being contacted via his ghost who is both contacting me from beyond the grave and engaging in time travel

all at once. I don't know if there's a name for that. The piece of prose is called Tainted Wayne. Here we go. Suck rusty milk from Tainted Wayne's tin tits. Spit it into the engine of a moped. Drive the moped directly into Joe Biden's mind

while at the seat of Joe Biden's consciousness control him point him in the direction of Tainted Wayne make Joe Biden suck rusty milk from Tainted Wayne's tin tits now you are free very important

piece of prose very impactful work there from the time travelling ghost of Nick Nolte rest in peace in the future this week's podcast isn't about

Hollywood actor Nick Nolte or Tainted Wayne's tin tits I wanted to have a crack at a kind of a mental health podcast we haven't had a

mental health podcast in about six weeks we've had we've had podcasts about I pandered to Facebook and did a podcast about teenage discos and Lynx Africa

I did a podcast about teenage discos in Lynx, Africa. I did a podcast about aggressive speech. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I did one of... Victorian sex communes and breakfast cereal. I really enjoyed that one. That was good fun. I liked researching that one. But I like to do a mental health podcast.

Every so often. For myself and for ye. So that we can collectively sharpen our tools as we navigate the suffering of existence. Because I'm not perfect. I'm not a fucking perfect human being I don't have answers I don't have my shit together and there's no such thing there's no such thing as having your shit together

you know oh having your shit together and being an adult that's not like that's not a destination that's not a destination. That's not somewhere you really reach. And like, great, I've got my shit together now. I can lay back and it's smooth sailing from here on in. No.

Having your shit together is a process that requires effort. What is having your shit together? Having your shit together. To me it would mean. Being mentally healthy. That's what I understand. Having my shit together. To be able to say to myself. I'm mentally healthy right now.

I feel okay about who I am. I'm not comparing myself to other people. Whether that means. Thinking I'm better than someone. Or thinking not comparing myself to other people. Whether that means thinking I'm better than someone or thinking someone else is better than me. I'm okay with who I am and because of that I'm emotionally aware. I know what I'm feeling. I can confidently label my emotions. I feel sad. I feel happy. I feel angry. I'm able to meet my emotional needs. And because of that, I'm then able to have a day that's filled with meaning. So that for me is what I define as having my shit together.

And it's not a state that you reach. It's, like I said, it's something that you work on every day. And you can go through periods of months of having your shit together and then you can go through periods of months where you don't have your shit together and in those months I can feel like an incapable helpless child and I'm not happy with who I am and I'm consistently comparing myself to other people I'm not meeting my emotional needs and I don't really understand what I'm feeling. Am I actually angry or is it jealousy? Am I procrastinating or am I just scared to try because I'm terrified of failure? So when I feel like that and that's how my day is going then I'm in a state of mental unhealth I'm not mentally

healthy at that point I don't have my shit together I'm not meeting my needs and when I'm not meeting my needs I'm not living a life that has meaning in it and over the over the past year and a half of the pandemic I've been like a yo-yo with that shit. I've literally gone from. I'd say every two months. Going from feeling like I have my shit together. To absolutely not feeling like I have my shit together. I imagine it's been the same for you. Because.

The past year and a half has been very challenging. Okay. And I don't even mean. For the people out there who might have lost someone close to them as a result of coronavirus like for those of us who didn't experience the crushing bereavement

of losing a human being we experienced the ambient bereavement of losing the pattern of normality and we lived in a climate of anxiety which you couldn't control because there's a fucking pandemic so it's okay to have lived with anxiety for two years because there's a fucking pandemic we had to stay indoors for large periods of time

we were unable to communicate and contact other human beings the way we normally would. Our entire routines of how we work, how we live were thrown up in the air. Restrictions meant that we had to live lives that were mentally unhealthy. And this isn't me doing a fucking a rant in the back seat of a car into Facebook live giving out about lockdowns. I understand the importance of lockdowns and how they kept us physically safe. But despite that lockdowns weren't great

for anyone's fucking mental health at all. Thankfully we're emerging from it now. Like in Ireland we've got 90% of people are vaccinated. We're returning to something quite close to normality. I've done a couple of gigs and more importantly than that, over the past three or four weeks,

I've had actual normal conversations with people. By which I mean conversations that have nothing to do with coronavirus. At all. Nothing. Normal conversations like have nothing to do with coronavirus. At all. Nothing. Normal conversations like I used to have in 2019. Because throughout the pandemic, you meet people so infrequently that when you do, the only thing you talk about is coronavirus. So I've been having real conversations with people. However, it's been quite difficult.

It's been really difficult. Now this is a bit of a strange one. But I reckon you can relate to it, right? I feel like I've forgotten who I am. I feel like I was someone else two years ago. When I lived a normal life. Two years ago when I lived a normal life two years ago when I lived a normal life and I'd interact with people regularly and I was working regularly I was a person then

then I had to spend a year and a half in a cave now I've emerged from the cave a new person but because my past year and a half is rooted in the experience of isolation I don't know how the new me interacts with human beings like sometimes we get a sense of self a sense of who we are based upon how it's reflected back at us from other people in a healthy way you meet people frequently you have a bit of crack, they laugh or you might say something interesting and they listen and the entire ritual of communication is not only a lovely wholesome way to empathically engage with another human being but also it's nice to walk away from a conversation and think that was lovely, what a great conversation that just was.

The person I was speaking to left a lovely impression on me. I feel lovely having spoken to them. And I kind of feel that I did the same for them. What a lovely meeting I just had there. So you kind of healthily get a sense of self and a sense of identity from interacting with other humans. But like I said, all of us have spent the past year and a half effectively in isolation. So I've kind of forgotten how to communicate.

I'm not in autopilot anymore when it comes to communication. Like my main, I found myself shouting facts at people. Because all I've been doing for the past two years is this fucking podcast, which is a one-way conversation, so I found myself in real life over the past couple of weeks, feeling uncomfortable and then shouting facts at people, which isn't communication at all. Also a huge amount of us were communicating quite frequently over the pandemic,

but we were doing it via Zoom and FaceTime. And that is a type of communication, but it's not face-to-face communication. And if you've been on Zoom all day for the past year and a half chatting to people, you've probably developed a Zoom personality that you're not aware of to accommodate the particular medium

that you're using and to accommodate the rules and limitations of that medium like Zoom talking isn't authentic it's very much over and out because you don't want to be interrupting another person so you really sit back, listen, wait for your turn.

That's not authentic face-to-face communication that can contain multiple cues. You don't have, you're not reading a person's face, you're not reading their body language, there's a delay. People, people communicate on Zoom in ways that wouldn't be considered socially acceptable in a face-to-face conversation. People on Zoom yawn. You could be in a group meeting and someone's yawning while you're talking. Or some people just forget that there's a camera on them

and they roll their fucking eyes when you're talking. This happens on Zoom. Sometimes, when people This happens on Zoom. Sometimes, when people are chatting on Zoom, and if the conversation is boring, or if there's potential conflict, one person has the option

to pretend that their internet is shit and just shut the conversation down instead of resolving the conflict. You can't fucking do that in real life. You can't be standing beside the photocopy or chatting to someone in the office and then pretend you're going pixelated. It doesn't fucking do that in real life. You can't be standing beside the photocopier chatting to someone in the office and then pretend you're going pixelated. It doesn't work like that.

And to kind of put this to the test, if you spent like day in, day out speaking to a work colleague, we'll say, on Zoom every single day, but you never met them in real life, you only know them from Zoom, even though you're chatting all the time, and then you finally get to meet them in real life and it feels weird it feels strange it feels disconnected something is there but something isn't then that's quite jarring and a bit frightening and quite threatening to our sense of identities because i don't know if the human brain is equipped for that too odd so this week's podcast is about social recalibration, I suppose.

I reckon about 90% of us are re-entering society with a certain degree of social anxiety. And I'm basing that on the fact that I actually did suffer from social anxiety and agoraphobia more than a decade ago. And as I was recovering from that, as I was going from somebody who was experiencing intense panic attacks if they left the house and had to stay inside,

as I recovered from that and gradually introduced myself to social situations, I used a series of tools to help myself do that. And now I'm going to use these same tools to reintegrate myself into society. Now, even though I didn't spend the past year and a half with agoraphobia or with social anxiety, there was a pandemic, but the lived experience of lockdown for all of us is actually quite similar to the lived experience of having agoraphobia so there's two there's two sets of tools that i'm gonna speak about and share with you this week and to recover from social anxiety and to to peacefully integrate back into conversations with other humans and social situations and the two

main techniques are that I used and that I will be using right now are grounding techniques and also transactional analysis which is a school of psychology that focuses on how humans communicate with each other so my assumption that 90% of us are experiencing some degree of social anxiety now that we re-enter society I kind of I first made this observation with I've done a couple of gigs recently right I've done a couple of gigs and I've noticed slight a slight change in the crowds in these separate gigs now I've done I'm gigging a long time I've done hundreds of gigs so I I really feel and understand the dynamic the collective dynamic of a crowd that's my job when I'm up there on stage. Post-lockdown crowds don't have collective shared empathy. Usually when a crowd claps, the clap is in unison.

Everyone claps together and eventually claps in the same rhythm. Like if you get a crowd clapping, eventually that clap ends up synchronizing. That's not happening the claps are disjointed so when an audience applauds you might get a clap in the corner a clap over there to the left people are uncertain

similarly with the other reactions you get from a crowd there's many reactions you can get from a crowd when you're up on stage you could say something that elicits disgust and then the crowd together will go our laughter is another one or a gasp a shock an entire crowd together inhaling as one these are all normal things that happen in a gig especially when these things don't happen if people aren't coming to see you if the audience don't know who you are as a performer then you have to win them over but if you're doing your own gig if you're doing your own gig and everyone is there to see you then the empathy in the room generally is very strong because you have a pre-existing

unconscious contract of community we are all here together in this room to see a performer that we all collectively enjoy we're a community so you immediately get room empathy and that's part of the fun of a live gig that's why live gigs are a nice experience people laugh clap and gasp together as one it's a connectedness, it's a unity so that's gone the claps, the laughs and the gasps they happen but they happen in pockets they happen in pockets that are disjointed and not connected

which makes perfect sense when everyone in the crowd hasn't been in a crowd for nearly two years, that makes perfect sense when everyone in the crowd hasn't been in a crowd for nearly two years. That makes perfect sense. And then the hot taker in me, the hot taker in me says that this is a psychosocial response to having been conditioned to not spread a virus. If we've been conditioned over the past year and a half to adjust our behaviour to not spread or catch a virus, then surely that is going to leak into us. That's going to condition our behaviour unconsciously to not spread a clap, or to spread a gasp, or to spread laughter.

Now, you might be thinking, blind boy, what if, what if? The actual problem is that you've gotten shit at gigging and you actually did some shit gigs and people didn't enjoy it and now you're over intellectualizing and trying to explain why people weren't clapping enough or laughing enough. Oh believe me, I entertained that. I entertained that on the journey home but then I'd still get quite a lot of messages from people saying thank you for that gig tonight I really enjoyed it I really liked that gig and I know when I've had a shit gig because when you've had a shit gig you'd get people mailing you going I didn't like that gig tonight I really didn't enjoy it I was disappointed so the gigs the gigs are doing what they're supposed to do it's just that we've all kind of forgotten how

to be in a crowd and and that observation got me thinking about about this podcast it got me thinking about fuck for me this is a bit like when I was coming out of agoraphobia. And I think it might be similar for a lot of people too. We've kind of forgotten who we are as individuals and how to behave with other people in social situations. And that's okay. Let's tackle it. So the first really simple thing that I want to speak about is grounding. When I had social anxiety. And I had agoraphobia.

And I was recovering from it. And I was getting to the point where I'm like. Right. Now it's time to place myself in situations. Where I'm in a crowd. Or I'm going to have to speak to people. I'm going to have to communicate with people. This was frightening to me.

The concept and idea of being in a crowd or interacting and socializing with people I was perceiving this as threatening I was walking into these situations frightened I was walking into these situations with a sense of heightened anxiety and when you walk into a social situation afraid it's not going to go well for you. You're not going to naturally communicate with someone. You're not going to achieve empathy. You're not going to relax. You're not going to have a fun conversation because you're in your head.

All your energy is up in your head. So what you can end up doing is you completely withdraw and when someone tries to talk to you, you don't talk back or you just want to get out of the conversation as soon as possible. Or what you might do is you might fidget quite a bit. You rip up your fucking beer mat.

That's the classic. That's the classic one That's the classic one. Spot the person in the room with social anxiety. They're the one who's ripped their beer mat up into 60 different pieces. It's displacing the energy. Also what you might do if it's a pub situation, if it's a social situation where alcohol is involved, you might drink too much too quickly.

Also, when you speak to a person and you have a hint of social anxiety you might speak to them in a way where you're effectively looking for their approval. You're uncomfortably nice. You're uncomfortably polite. You're not really listening to what they're saying. You're lavishing them with compliments. Or you might just talk too much. You're in your head. You're not having a natural conversation sparks up. You're not listening to the other person at all.

Instead, what you're doing is talking, talking, talking at them because what's frightening is listening and feedback and stuff like that and the worst part of social anxiety is those behaviors become a self-fulfilling prophecy so if you're socially anxious and you're nervous about being in a social situation you you tend to overestimate the threat of the environment you tend to say to yourself you you tend to overestimate the threat of the environment you tend to say to yourself i'm not gonna have fun anyway and then you enter the situation with heightened anxiety you don't engage in authentic conversations you're nervous you're tearing up beer mats you're effectively rejecting people or you get too shit-faced and say something you don't want to say

objecting people or you get too shit-faced and say something you don't want to say and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get to go home then and say to yourself I knew I had a reason to be scared of being outside. That was an unhappy experience. I didn't enjoy that. I didn't have any fun. It actually made me more anxious. So what I used to do in those situations is I would ground myself before I met another person, before I went into a pub, before I went into fucking college. I would ground myself before entering a social situation. I would start by acknowledging and saying to myself, I'm nervous about this. So I recognize that I'm nervous about this. So I'm taking ownership of that anxiety and that fear and those nerves. I'm taking ownership of them.

And now I'm going to do something about it. I'm going to prepare for the social situation so that I can go in there in a way that I'm emotionally regulated. That's what grounding is. It's emotional regulation. It's taking yourself out of the heightened emotion of anxiety where you're not even using the thinking part of your brain and you're perceiving things as threats and you're on alert it's taking yourself down from that to a place of calm so what i would do and what I'm gonna start doing like I'm gonna start doing this

tomorrow if I know that I'm going if there's a chance of me going to the supermarket and meeting someone I'm gonna do this tomorrow before I go out because it just takes five minutes I'm gonna sit myself down on a chair and I'm gonna begin by breathing through my diaphragm right so I'm sitting down on a chair and what I do is I place both of my hands on my stomach and then I'm going to slowly breathe in through my nose and as I breathe in through my nose I want to feel my stomach expanding and what I'm doing there is I'm bringing in a lot of oxygen into my brain. When you're anxious, your breathing is shallow. It happens at the top of your chest if you're

anxious and you're gasping, but you're not actually bringing a lot of oxygen into your body. So when I sit down, place my two hands on my tummy, breathe in through my nose to the point that I feel my tummy expanding, that's my diaphragm, I'm bringing in a fuckload of air now and all that air and all that oxygen helps my emotions to regulate, to get to a base level, so that's the first thing I do, I breathe real slowly in through my nose and I feel my stomach expanding, then what I might do is little stretches I'll stretch my toes inside my shoe I might stretch my leg out a bit stretch my fingers stretch my arms whatever I want to stretch and after I've stretched I begin the core of the grounding exercise which is checking in with my body checking in with my senses with my eyes closed and breathing slowly in my mind I notice and feel my feet touching the ground

my eyes are closed and the only thing I'm focused on is feeling my feet touching the ground I then visually travel up my legs to my knees and I feel my thighs and my arse sitting on the chair and then I notice and feel my back resting against the back of the chair and then I go all the way up to the top of my head and I'm focusing all my mental attention on the physical presence of my body that's it the physical presence of my body and then I might draw my attention towards the sounds around me whatever the sounds are even if those sounds are what I'd consider irritating, it could be a fucking car alarm whatever the sounds around me are I notice and accept them, that's it, I notice and accept whatever sounds are going on

and if I hear the sound of a bird, I say to myself in my mind I can hear that bird, I can hear that bird chirping and I can feel my feet on the ground and I can feel my arse on the chair I might do the same for any smells

if my hand is on my pants I might notice the texture of my pants is it tracksuit pants, is it soft is it cotton, is it jeans and then finally what I do is I direct my attention towards my emotions and I'm not trying to change or fight it I'm just asking myself Is I direct my attention towards my emotions.

And I'm not trying to change or fight it. I'm just asking myself. What am I feeling right now? What are the emotions that I'm feeling right now? Oh I'm a bit nervous. I notice that this nervousness there. I feel a little ball there in my tummy and a little tightness in my chest and then I might notice

oh my fists are clenching and I try and find the parts in my body like if I do experience an emotion so if it's anxiety it's usually a tightness and if there's anger present it might be fuck it I'm clenching my jaw

and now I'm noticing that my jaw is clenched because I might be a little bit angry or my fists are clenched and I unclench them and I unclench my fists and I stretch my hands out and basically that's all grounding is it's not meditation

it's similar to meditation. It's not meditation. It's similar to meditation, but it's not meditation. It's just taking five minutes. And you don't even have to be in a quiet room. In fact, when I started getting better and advancing more about conquering my social anxiety, I used to enjoy doing grounding situations or doing grounding exercises in busy situations. I'd do it on a park bench with lots of people around because I'm challenging a fear

by doing that. And that's all the grounding is. And what that does is it regulates your emotions to a base level and it takes all the energy away from the front of your head where the anxiety is. And now you're at a base, calm level. Not only that, but on a neurological level, I now have access to more of my brain. I have access to my full cognitive faculties. You know when the hard drive on your laptop is really full, so your laptop isn't working properly. And it's slow, and it's hot hot and it's wheezy and the fan is going off. So then you defragment your hard drive or you delete a load of shit and all of a

sudden your hard drive stops wheezing. Your laptop isn't hot. You're able to use your computer more effectively now without things crashing. That's what grounding is for your brain so when I now walk into a pub or a social situation or into work or wherever I'm going to meet another human being I'm now present in the present moment in the here and now and what I'm focused on is empathy

I'm not going to talk at someone my my fear isn't dictating that I need another person's approval and now I'm going to focus on listening that's the best one start off focusing on listening if you spark up a conversation with another person and they say hello to you if you spark up a conversation with another person and they say hello to you you'll be the person to mindfully truly listen to what they're saying because when you're anxious you're not listening to another person you're glancing over their words or you're waiting for your turn to speak you're not actually listening but when you're grounded and you enter that first conversation with another human being, you truly listen to what they're saying.

And when you do that, you might even pick up the emotion that's going on with them via empathy. And once you've done that, once, if that person says to you, yeah, I'm having a great day. Or if that person says, I'm having a bit of a shit morning. You've truly listened and heard that their morning is shit. You might feel a little bit of it. And then you appropriately reflect back and go, I'm sorry to hear that. And you mean it. And within that, you then connect with who you truly are.

Now you're getting to your real self. You're no longer thinking about communicating. You're simply communicating and having empathy and compassion for another person. And that's what I would do all the time. When I was trying to get out of social anxiety. When I was trying to re-enter and become a functioning person, I would do that grounding stuff several times a day. I'd do it before I went into the supermarket.

Even if I didn't know I was going to speak to someone, I'd say to myself, I'm a bit nervous about this supermarket. What happens when you go into the supermarket and you're nervous? Well, you forget shit that you want. You'll forget something. You'll walk past, you won't meet your needs. You might walk past a sale.

You might see something that you didn't know you wanted because you're not thinking in the present moment. So I'd ground myself before I go into a supermarket. And once I get in there there if I pick up a carrot I'm really fucking engaged with this carrot I'm staring at that carrot and I'm wondering which carrot do I want

if I was anxious I wouldn't even know it's a carrot it might as well be a duck so that there is a very simple grounding exercise that anybody can do and if you're in any way worried or anxious or insecure about reading about getting back into society and communicating just have a go at that five minutes have a go at it it's so simple and tiny little tiny little warning.

For most of us, that's absolutely a fine, healthy thing to do. Some people, right, a small amount of people, if you were at one time a victim of assault or if you were in a very bad accident, some people can carry trauma around in their bodies and for these people mindfulness and grounding exercises should be approached with caution because it can bring up trauma so just be careful around that but you're talking about a small minority of people there but i still feel a responsibility to say it because no one says that

no one says that about mindfulness or meditation. No one says if you have body trauma this might not be the best approach for you unsupervised. So that's a grounding exercise. What I want to speak about after the ocarina pause is an incredibly powerful tool called transactional analysis which is a type of a psychotherapeutic theory around how humans communicate with each other and how we can build way more effective forms of communicating that can improve our mental health all right and this is something that i i also used when tackling social anxiety which i think is relevant right now. But first, ocarina pause. This is the ocarina. You're going to hear an advert.

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as a result of the past year and a half are experiencing some degree of social anxiety and that we should bring this into our awareness as we reintegrate into society. So when I was trying to tackle social anxiety one school of psychotherapy that I found particularly helpful when it came to how I interact with other human beings. Was called transactional analysis. And transactional analysis is.

It's a theory of personality. Basically that states that. Even as fully grown adults. When we speak to other human beings. We can enter into conversational dynamics that are rooted in childhood specifically child and parent interactions

and this can create quite a bit of distress in our lives we're not aware of it at all. And it can lead to conflict. It can lead to further anxiety. It can lead to feelings of anger. It can lead to feelings of not having your needs met as an adult. And when you understand transaction analysis, it's an incredibly powerful tool to gain an awareness of yourself,

your own personality, your emotions, and those of other people. And in my personal experience, out of all the theories of psychotherapy, transaction analysis can be the most transformative. It can completely and utterly transform your life. So transaction analysis can be the most transformative it can completely and utterly transform your life so transaction analysis was founded by a fellow called eric bern and eric bern eric bern stated that we go about our lives with three different ego states. And an ego state. He says is.

A consistent pattern of feeling. And experience. That's directly related. To a corresponding consistent pattern. Of behaviours. And the three ego states are. Child. Adult.

Parent. And we kind of shift between all three. At different points. In our day day so i'm going to keep this incredibly simple i've done an entire podcast before on transaction analysis i think of the more than one the first podcast on transaction analysis i've done is from 2018 and it's called creaking ditch pigeon if you'd like to go back and let get listen. So I mentioned earlier there about in transaction analysis, there's three ego states. Well, think of ego states as separate personalities. In all of us, we have three separate personalities.

We have our child. This is how we were as a child. We have our parent, which is modeled on our parents that we grew up with, or an older sibling, or even a teacher. We also have our adult ego state, our adult personality. Our adult personality isn't rooted in childhood. It's based in the here and now, it incorporates critical thinking and it solves problems and communicates in the present moment. I'll give you a very simple example of how this would play out in a normal day.

You want to drive to work and you realize that you're slightly late. you want to drive to work and you realize that you're slightly late so when you realize that you're slightly late you start to feel oh fuck i'm gonna be late i'm gonna get in trouble so you get into your car and you impulsively drive too fast you are unable to delay gratification and you're not thinking of safety. Instead, you're thinking about getting to work on time as soon as possible so you don't get in trouble. At that moment, you're in your child ego state. Those are the personality characteristics of a child.

Because you're going too fast, you're not able to brake properly. And someone in a car is driving a little bit dangerously too they pull out in front of you and now you almost have a crash but you don't have a crash because immediately your adult personality kicks in

you respond to the situation in the moment you swerve your car and now you've managed to stay in your lane and you've avoided a crash because you responded to the threat in the present moment, in the here and now, using your critical faculties. So at that moment, you've shifted from the child state who was scared of being late for work. Now you're an adult who's solving the problem of almost being in a crash. Now you're in your adult state.

almost been in a crash now you're in your adult state but then you drive up alongside the driver who almost caused the crash and you wag your finger at them and you go that was so irresponsible that was terrible that was so irresponsible at that moment you've shifted to your parent ego state you've become judgmental you've become critical of the other driver who was being irresponsible. And you're being a parent in a way that you personally, in a set of behaviors that you personally borrowed from your own parent or a parent figure such as a teacher. Even the way you wag your finger or the tone of voice you use or the choice of words you use could be directly taken from your own parents you're not even aware of it so you're in your parent ego state now now you finally get to work and you are late you become really worried that

you're gonna get in trouble your boss is gonna see you and you're late and your boss is gonna give out to you so you hide you hide and you try and creep in you could be you could be well into your 30s and now you're trying to creep in the door of the office so the boss doesn't see you now you've shifted back into your child ego state you now have a set of emotions and a set of behaviours that are exactly rooted in you when you were a child. And it could literally be when you were five years of age

and you were late for school. Your body language, the way you're thinking, the way you're feeling, you are now right back there. You're four years of age and you're terrified of getting in trouble then your boss who's another adult

catches you your boss unconsciously notices that the tone of your voice whatever way your your posture is the way you're making eye contact this unconsciously triggers in your boss

your boss's parent ego state because you've presented as a child so now your boss is going to shift into the parent ego state and now your boss is going to scold you, you start lying I'm so sorry there was a dead dog

on the road, I'm so sorry it won't happen again there was a dead dog on the road. I'm so sorry it won't happen again. There was a dead dog on the road. I'm so sorry. You've become a child at this point now. You're lying to your boss. Now your boss is wagging their finger, going, you shouldn't be late. You should know better than that.

This is so disappointing. Because your boss is now in the parent ego state and what you have there is not in transaction analysis is known as a complementary transaction it can go on forever without resolution so now you have a complementary transaction of parent and child between you and your boss your boss goes you shouldn't be late i don't care if there's a dead dog on the road well it was a big dead dog there was nothing I can do about it then your boss says I don't believe you

I think you're making it up I think you're just late then you get all embarrassed because you've been caught lying so you now start sulking or you throw a bit of a tantrum and walk off like the way a toddler or a child would do and then your

boss shouts at you as you run away and says don't run away from me don't run away from me or you won't have a job and your boss is taking on the the body language and the tone of their parent when their parent probably shouted at them to go to their room when they were a kid and what you have there is a conversational situation which is just going to cause both parties upset you've lied to your boss you feel like you're in trouble

your boss is probably a bit embarrassed because they roared at you and threatened your job now one of you is going to have to try and break the ice later or maintain a weird silence now what should have happened there what should have happened there well

if grounding was in place at the start of the journey you'd have entered the situation in your adult frame of mind. And an adult frame of mind is one that. Is in the present moment and in the here and now. And an adult. Understands that. I can't get in trouble.

I can be held accountable for my actions. But I'm an adult. Adults don't get in trouble. I don't need to feel like I'm in trouble. Also. Yeah. I am late for work, but I'm going to have to just be late for work and explain to my boss and apologize and take accountability. Because what I can't do is try and drive to work too quickly. Because what that might do is jeopardise my safety or the safety of other people on the road. Then you get to work, yes you're late, but you had a safe journey,

you recognise and understand that being late might be a bit unfair on your colleagues, it might mean that they have a little bit extra work to do, so as soon as you get into work, you go up to your boss and you say, about that I'm late I fucked up I take responsibility for it I'm not going to do that again tomorrow I apologize then your boss because you've presented as an adult is now also going to respond to you as an adult and just says yeah that was an inconvenience but I appreciate you coming to me. Thanks very much. Chat to you later. Situation resolved. No weird power dynamic. No unnecessary emotions.

You didn't have to feel like you were going to get in trouble. Your boss didn't have to give out to you. Your boss didn't have to walk away feeling like a langer because they gave out to you. And two adults just had a conversation in the present moment, in the here and now, about the exact details of the situation with no excessive emotion coming in. Now, the goal with transaction analysis is to foster a sense of self-awareness so that you can look at your own childhood and you can understand in your

day when am I slipping into the parent ego state when am I slipping into the child ego state and how can I as much as possible live my life and communicate with other people. In the adult ego state. Because the thing is. We slip into child or parent ego state. Because we're trying to resolve. Unfinished conflicts. From our own childhood. And often that's not very helpful. Now you might be thinking.

Why the fuck. The fuck is our brain doing that for. Why would our brain do that? And one thing I learned recently from the neuroscientist Sabina Brennan, who I had on as a guest, so our brains evolved to consume huge amounts of energy and calories. So in the human body,

the brain consumes far more calories than anything else in the body. And our brains, our human modern brains are 50,000 years old. So 50,000 years ago, calories were incredibly scarce. There was no supermarkets. There was no farming. It was hunter-gatherer stuff. So to conserve calories 50,000 years ago, our brains prefer to automate as much as possible.

Our brain likes neural pathways that we learn. So if you're having a conversation with someone and something triggers you emotionally, and the stress of that might cause you to go back into your child state to start feeling and thinking the way you did as a child and then to start behaving and speaking the way you did as a child because that's now an automated response it's easier and it consumes less energy similarly the parent response it's something you've learned that you can slip into really easily and rehearse and play out over and over again the adult ego state simply uses more energy you have to respond flexibly in the present moment you have to use more of your brain you

have to use your critical faculties you can't just rely on the emotional brain you have to rely upon the entirety of your brain to process information in the present moment to be that way all the time would simply consume far more calories and in the context of being a caveman that could mean life or death but not. Just buy a Mars bar and that's enough food for your brain for the rest of the day. So how is this relevant to social anxiety and what I was mentioning earlier about us returning to society, us possibly being nervous about conversing with other human beings, us being anxious of it?

Well, the thing is, when you're anxious about a social interaction, the emotional trigger of that is most likely to cause us to trip back into either a child or parent state when we interact with other people, which means that you're either a child which means you're afraid of being in trouble you believe another person has authority over you when they don't you want another person's approval because you're projecting on them that they're your parents your body language your eye contact the tone of your voice is inviting them to be your parent to scold you to tell you what to do

alternatively if you're anxious about a social situation and you're emotionally triggered you might walk into it and someone else is in a child ego state and now you become their parent and now you are effectively mistreating another person you're there with another adult and you're giving out to them. Or you're telling them what to do. Or you're trying to control them. Or you're scolding them. Or you're judging them. Like a parent would do.

Or alternatively, you're comforting them. It doesn't have to be negative. It can be the positive aspects of parenthood. You're comforting them or you're taking their workload on because you think that they're a child and they're not capable and now you're taking on their workload

like take it back when I said earlier about you're nervous about going into a social situation and then you find yourself in a social situation so you're speaking to another person you're not listening to them and all you want is their approval. You're now behaving in a way that tries to elicit their approval.

When you do that, you've shifted into your child ego state. The other person unconsciously becomes your parent and what you're looking for is your own mammy or your own daddy. You want your own mammy or daddy to say you're a good boy you're a good girl you're worthy you're worthy and then the other person might slip into their parent ego state

and possibly give you the approval you need in a very condescending way or they might scold you as a parent too if you spend a lot of your day interacting with people and you're in the child ego state, that will have a very negative impact on your sense of self-esteem and then your overall mental health. Because you're placing other people above you. You're placing another person in control of you. You're giving another person permission to push you around, to judge you you that's what being in the child ego state is like and then when you live in the parent ego state you're chastising another person you're looking down on them and that's not great for your self-esteem either so the goal is to be grounded and to communicate with other people while you're in the adult state and chances

are when you're communicating with another person and you're're in the adult state and chances are when you're communicating with another person and you're present in the adult ego state that invites that other person to go into their adult state as well the adult ego state is concerned with information that's happening here and now it's concerned with solving problems in the here and now that are only related to the actual problems the adult ego state is free from emotion emotion doesn't drive your speech or your behavior with another person an adult is capable of assertiveness and assertiveness basically means having healthy conflict if needed but in a way that expresses your needs doesn't disrespect the other person

and isn't ruled by emotion and if you can spend your day living and communicating in your adult ego state as much as possible you'll have a stronger sense of self-esteem you will have less conflict with other people. You'll have friendlier, happier, more relaxed interactions with people.

Because you're not on the defensive and you're not on the offensive. You're simply, I'm an adult. I'm grand. Everything's okay. You're also okay let's just chat about

whatever we're interested in chatting about right now and if we disagree with each other or conflict comes up that's fine, we're going to deal with this free from emotion and we're going to speak about whatever the problem is and we're going to come to a compromise about it if possible, but no one's going to sulk no one's going to have a fight no one's going to fall out over it that's the adult ego state and if you can live your life like that you'll simply have an easier life you'll have an easier

happier life a happier day even better other people won't come to you in their parent state or their child state because that simply doesn't work. When speaking to someone. Who's in an adult state. Transaction analysis says that. These. These unhelpful ego states. Such as child and parent.

They can only exist. In a conversational dynamic. When they complement each other so if I present to you as my child you've got two options you can also be a child and we can have a big argument and both sulk or I can invite you to be a parent and you can give out to me and then I can sulk or we could switch between the two and I'll go into my parent and you go into your child. But one thing, those two transactions are complementary and they never resolve. They never end.

They'll result in continual scolding or sulking or tantrums. Until one person is ready to present in the here and now adult state and then it ends but if you're grounded and you can enter conversations with the emotional awareness that you're an adult then the child parent shit

no one's going to come at you with it because it doesn't work you can't be a child and try to sulk when you're dealing with someone who's in an adult ego state because they'll simply say

is it okay with you if we talk about this later instead and then you have to go oh fuck, I think I'm a bit emotional, yeah so I can't speak for you but the reason I'm mentioning this transaction analysis stuff is for me and my own mental health regime this is what I'm gonna have in my fucking awareness because I've spent a year on my own because I'm nervous about communicating and reintegrating

I know that there's a higher likelihood for me to be emotionally triggered into my childhood state or my parent state when I speak with other people unless I fucking ground myself if I ground myself beforehand

checking with my body, checking with my emotions and take ownership of the fact being an adult basically taking ownership of the fact that I'm nervous about communicating I haven't done a lot of it so I'm nervous about this and that's okay that's absolutely grand so let's ground ourselves and try and step into each new conversation in the adult state of mind where I can be friendly, solution focused, focused on the present moment, empathic, listening to the other person and feeling confident that conflict can be resolved with assertiveness rather than anger or aggression or bitterness or sulking

so I hope that was if that was helpful for you then fantastic with Mental Health Podcast I'm also doing it for myself it's very cathartic to go through my tools

they're my tools grounding and transaction analysis that's a set of tools that I have that helps me with, that helped me with social anxiety and is now going to help me with the milder social anxiety that I have about getting out of the fucking pandemic.

And like I said, I'm not perfect. I'm a fallible human being. I don't have my shit together what I have is tools okay and it's no different to a person can know everything in the world

about exercising lifting weights eating healthily a person can have access to all this information but if they're not doing it regularly, if you don't exercise regularly then you can't expect to be physically fit. You can have it all in your brain, you can know what to do to become physically fit but if you don't do it you won't become physically fit and these tools for mental health are the same thing

similarly if you are exercising regularly and you become physically fit if you suddenly stop then you won't become physically fit but you can start again and then you will mental health is the exact same i have tools and depending on how I take responsibility. And use those tools. That for me personally. Dictates my emotional well-being. God bless. And if you'd want to hear about. Transaction analysis in greater detail.

Go to my podcast. Creaking Ditch Pigeon. And there's a couple of others as well. About transaction analysis. But I can't remember the fucking names of them rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now

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