The Blindboy Podcast - Tinsel Pinochet

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Developing Emotional Resilience. I speak about fear, anger, sadness, and hurt. Distinguishing avoidable pain from unavoidable pain Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sig Sheeus, you foolhardy dooseligs. What is the crack, everybody? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Usually, if you're a brand new listener, I recommend that you go back and listen to some previous episodes. But the theme of this week's podcast I think is going to be quite accessible, so if you're a new listener, I think it's okay to listen to this one, and then go back and listen to some earlier ones thank you for all the feedback for last week's episode

I've been receiving a lot of nice supportive messages from people last week's podcast it was an unintentional podcast last week's podcast I had intended to read out a load of your questions i got one question which asked me about my experience in secondary school and i ended up only answering that one question for an hour and i got to talk about shit i don't really think about a lot i got to re-explore my childhood and my experience in school and I tell you I listened back to that podcast myself and an interesting thing

I started off that episode by saying that my time in school was happy and then by the end of the episode I realized no it wasn't that happy at all because I was rediscovering I tend not to think a lot about what went on in school I tend not to think a lot about um sad things that happened in school because I try and move forward but it was a nice opportunity for me last week to re-explore that and I got a lot of lovely sound messages from me and thank you so much and there was a lot of people who related to my school experience and found that their experiences were similar but mostly and this kind of made me a little bit sad most of the responses were people who were really really shocked people who were shocked to think that someone could go through the school system like that and be continually kind of ignored and pushed to one side and a lot of people were really shocked and then that made me sad

because it made me think oh fuck maybe my experience in school was really exceptional maybe I was truly an exception to have fallen through the cracks like that. And that made me a little bit sad. If you haven't heard last week's podcast, I suggest you go back and give it a listen. I spoke about my experience in secondary school, which was a negative experience, where because I was poorly behaved as a child, as a young child, I was thrown into a class which would have been considered at the bottom of the system in school. And then labelled as a result of that and got stuck into a system, a cycle of negativity in school. Which, over the course of six years, I ended up failing my leave insert.

But the long version is last week's podcast. But yeah, I don't tend to think about it a lot because I have a kind of a healthy attitude towards failure in that negative things are going to happen in life. That's a given. So when something unfair happens to me or something bad happens to me, I really don't dwell on it. I don't dwell on it because dwelling can be toxic.

I accept that I cannot change things that have already happened. I don't possess a time machine. So what I do instead is I acknowledge that a bad thing has happened and then say to myself what can I learn from this that will now make me resilient and achieve goals better and that's what I tend to do but last week's podcast made me realize that maybe maybe I should have thought a little bit more about school and about that heart and that pain because I don't think I did a lot of thinking about it and I don't even think when I was in therapy when I was in college and I was receiving psychotherapy I don't think I did a lot of thinking about it. And I don't even think, when I was in therapy, when I was in college and I was receiving psychotherapy,

I don't even think I went into school that much, even in therapy. And I tell you one thing, a little revelation I had during the week that made me step back from myself a bit and self-reflect was, do you know the way like with this podcast I'm always speaking about the value of of me being independent I shy away from getting working with broadcasters like RTE or BBC I'm always cautious of these things and I always strive to be 100% independent and autonomous and last week made me wonder is my strong desire for independence actually a fear based on my poor experiences in school am I projecting teachers basically into like teachers basically into like tv companies i work with and stuff like that do you know what i mean because i was failed by the system do i distrust the likes of rte or bbc or channel 4 or whoever

the fuck i work with do i distrust these institutions irrationally, because I'm projecting the school system onto them. And that took me aback, because sometimes I think, well look, if I'm 100% independent, and I've got this podcast, and I've got my stuff on the internet, then I'm my own boss. And if I succeed or fail, it's as a result of how hard i work but there's no one above me to fail me and it works for me and i could be right but the reason i'm saying it took me aback is i never want to be motivated by something that's unfinished business from childhood if you get what i'm saying i never want to be motivated by childhood needs i mentioned this before when i spoke about gestalt psychology

i as an adult in my 30s i'm finished with school the teachers are done school is gone it's in my past but if i'm projecting the fear of that system the fear of those teachers into institutions i work with then i'm being motivated by needs that were relevant to me as a child but not necessarily relevant to me now as in the here and now as an adult and when you do that it can cloud your judgment so that's that's the little self-reflection I had this week. That's the self-reflection I had this week. Basically if I'm working with RTE or BBC. And I'm being a difficult cunt.

Am I unfairly projecting onto them. The persona of a teacher who screamed at me when I'm 13. So I want to have the emotional. I want to have emotional awareness around my motivations. Is what I'm saying. I want to have emotional awareness around my motivations is what i'm saying um i i want to make sure that everything that motivates me in my life and the needs that i'm trying to meet internally within myself are are the needs that i have right now in my life at the age that i am right now that's what i want so this week I want to speak about emotions I want to speak about emotions and emotional awareness um also because what I did last week

is I deleted Twitter off my phone I deleted Twitter off my phone I'm still on Twitter I just don't have it on my phone anymore and I've had a very peaceful week as a result I'm incredibly glad I did it I've mentioned the past few weeks that I don't like Twitter at the moment Twitter is is a Twitter is a social media space that rewards hostility and combat and negativity and complaining. So when you spend a lot of time on Twitter, that's all you see. And if you're on it consistently during quarantine, where you're not interacting with real human beings, I found that Twitter can very quickly make my lived experience in life quite stressful and painful because this is my only conduit to other human beings so it's as if being on twitter a lot feels like living in a house

with people who are fighting if you've ever had to live in a house and have housemates who aren't talking to each other or who are fighting their drama creates tension in the house which then impacts you even if you're not involved in that drama and that's what twitter has the ability to do i'll scroll through twitter and i'll see strangers fighting with each other. It has nothing to do with me. I'm not involved in the conversation. I'm just seeing it on the homepage, and enough of it, seeing it, and all of a sudden now,

I'm anxious and frightened and feeling like I need to walk on eggshells for the rest of the day at home because there's two people in America who I don't know having a fight on Twitter and that's not great that's not good so I made the decision to remove Twitter from my phone so I can't open my phone and check Twitter and now I've got like three or four computers Twitter's only on one so I just go on to twitter maybe twice a day post something and get the fuck off and i make sure that thing that i'm posting is bringing positivity into other people's

lives and then i leave it and i'm not thinking about twitter i'm not thinking about seeing people fighting that has nothing to do with me and i'm'm exploring my day. And enjoying my day. And my anxiety is down. My sadness is down. I don't feel like I'm walking on fucking eggshells. And I've had enough distance from it. To go holy fuck. That was ridiculous. That's a bit mad.

That I'd allow a social media app. To make me feel upset. And I'm not even talking about people. Saying mean things to me on Twitter. I just talking about people saying mean things to me on Twitter I just, if someone says something mean to me on Twitter I just block them it's not even that it's simply seeing people

complaining, arguing and fighting is the worst seeing people fighting and really being mean to each other I allowed that people fighting and really being mean to each other, I allowed that to invade my emotional space. And that's not acceptable. I can't be doing that. The fuck is that about?

Like, I'm young. I have the gift of being healthy. I have the gift of choosing how my day can be and i'm allowing a fucking app to make me feel upset fuck that so i've had a clear mind the last few days i've had a clear mind and i'm feeling as happy as i could feel in the context of a global pandemic because that's the other thing too I've been on Twitter for years Twitter has always been a cesspit of negativity, always why now

is it encroaching on my emotional boundaries and impacting the quality of my day because there's a fucking global pandemic there's a global pandemic and i'm suffering and you're suffering we're all suffering our freedoms and freedoms have been taken away we're stuck inside our gaffes we don't have social interaction we can't do nice things you can't distract yourself yourself go for a coffee so the best i can hope for every day is to cope so my resilience is is

stressed my emotional resilience at the moment is under extreme stress so because of that my defenses are down and shit can just get past my emotional barriers easier and cause me to be upset and i'm sharing this with ye because i reckon a lot of you can relate to this all right there's loads of people leaving instagram leaving twitter taking a hiatus from social media because we're all under a lot of fucking stress at the moment so it's okay to do so. But the introspective emotional journey I took last week on the podcast. I think is what allowed me the emotional awareness. To make that choice and to delete Twitter off my phone. And in an ideal, under ideal circumstances.

I'd simply get the fuck off all social media right now. That's what I'd do right now. But I can't because my job my I need to be on social media and I need to be posting regularly because I have to tell people about this podcast I have to tell people about my twitch whatever I'm doing so my job requires me to be on social media and I would I'd love the luxury of going fuck that I'm getting off everything I'd love that but I can't so what I'm doing is I'm creating boundaries so this this week what I'm going to chat about is emotional resilience right which is emotional resilience and emotional awareness which is it's under the umbrella of mental health but here's the thing so when you're stressed when you're under a high amount of stress

what can happen over a prolonged not even prolonged over a day or two if your stress levels are up and you feel angry, anxious, whatever. When that happens, it becomes difficult to name and understand whatever it is we're feeling right now in the moment. And when I can't correctly label what I'm feeling that then influences my behaviors and that's a recipe for me not coping so for a few weeks there I wasn't coping very well on my day to day all right I wasn't I was like I was getting I was forgetting dinners man't, I was like, I was getting, I was forgetting dinners, man, you know, I love, like, I love making dinners, and I'd be walking around the house with heightened anxiety, pacing, ruminating, thinking negative thoughts, and all of a sudden sudden it's five o'clock and I was supposed to start my dinner at four and hunger didn't step in at four o'clock to say you're hungry you better make

your dinner because when you're anxious this sends stress stress hormones down to your belly which affect your digestion and you don't notice hunger and also I don't have the emotional awareness to notice hunger so then when I am hungry at five o'clock I'm even more stressed and now I don't want to make the right choice for dinner and what do I do then I get a fucking takeaway and there's nothing wrong with takeaways and I like getting takeaways but for me a takeaway has to be meaningful I get a takeaway as a reward something I do once a week but I don't ever want to get a takeaway because I spent the afternoon thinking negatively and being stressed and forgot to make my dinner and now I'm getting a takeaway because I have to and it's too late.

That's feeding a cycle of negativity. Then I spend the rest of the evening feeling a little bit of shame because I didn't cook the dinner I was supposed to cook and I got a takeaway instead. So it all spirals into negativity until I get to a point where I don't know what it is I'm feeling. All I know is that it feels bad. It's a mixture of sadness. It's a mixture of anxiety.

It's a mixture of irritation. It's interfering with my sleep. I don't want to do work. I don't want to write. I don't want to prepare for this podcast. All the things that I love doing, I don't want to write. I don't want to prepare for this podcast. All the things that I love doing, I don't want to do because I'm distracted by this overwhelming mix of unpleasant emotions that are keeping me out of the present moment,

stopping me from engaging in meaningful activities that I enjoy and fucking up my sense of time. If you're worried or anxious or angry or any of these things time can fly past you very quickly time can really fly past you and the day is gone and you didn't do the things you intended to do and then you end up in a cycle of shame and feeling as if you just wasted your day instead of going to bed with a slight feeling of accomplishment and having a meaningful sleep. So how do you how do you stop a cycle like that? Emotional awareness and emotional awareness is a skill it's a set of tools and it's a skill that we can learn it's something that i've learned

through attending psychotherapy and self-help and i did a little bit of study in psychology academically for a couple of years i'm not qualified because i never finished it but i'm qualified to speak about my own experiences and how i use psychology to be a mentally healthy person most of the time and it works for me so that's I'm going to speak on so first and foremost foremost first and foremost why can't it be foremost why can't it be foremost it's spelt like that. First and foremost, identify any behaviour in your life that is causing excess negativity. Alright? Any behaviour. That's the first thing to do.

Like I said there, for me, it was using Twitter excessively. Using Twitter excessively in the context of a pandemic was putting me in a situation where I was experiencing excess anxiety, anger, fear, all this carry on. Are you looking at the news too much? You know, what behavior do you embark on in your day that noticeably leads to you feeling like shit? that noticeably leads to you feeling like shit okay if checking the news cycle makes you feel upset assess your relationship with that behavior do you actually need to know what's happening in the news all the time do you really need that would it be detrimental to you if you took the news app off your phone or say to yourself i'm going to check the news in the morning and in the evening like it's fucking 1994 and there's no social media

and you had to watch it on tv is it the radio are you listening to the fucking radio all day and there's people on complaining and this is making you upset do you have a friend that you chat with a lot and they're unloading their shit on you all the time and that's making you upset do you have a friend that you chat with a lot and they're unloading their shit on you all the time and that's making you upset maybe write down a list write it down on paper the things in your day that are causing you stress and ask yourself realistically can i do without this and if i can't do without it what changes can I make to make this thing more manageable like I spoke about alcohol recently the the pandemic has completely changed my relationship with alcohol if you're a long-term listener to this podcast you know I love drink

I do enjoy pints cans I like the sensation of inebriation. I like drinking cans, listening to music. It brings me joy. I do it healthily. I have a healthy relationship with alcohol. Over the pandemic, I don't have a healthy relationship with alcohol. I'm not drinking excessively.

When I do drink, it doesn't make me happy. It makes me more upset. That's what I've noticed drinking excessively. When I do drink it doesn't make me happy. It makes me more upset. That's what I've noticed over the pandemic. It doesn't bring me happiness. It brings me a strange type of boredom. The next day I have an unexplained sense of shame. And my hangovers are now 48 hours long. It wasn't like this when the pandemic wasn't present.

So because of that I've drastically assessed and changed my relationship with alcohol. So for the first seven weeks of 2021, I didn't drink at all. I had a couple of cans last week. Thinking like, fuck it man, I was seven weeks off the cans. Let's have a shot at it again, see if anything's different. Nah. Fuck that. Drank some cans.

Two day hangover. Feeling like shit. I'm not making any promises, but I won't be thinking about drinking again. For a good long while. I don't need it. And when I drink, it just makes me more upset. I can do without it. It's fine. And it took me sitting down and writing some of that shit down.

You know, I had a hangover. And I had to write down on a piece of paper, what am I feeling right now? Is this because of the drink? And it was there in front of me on the paper. And because it was there written down of me on the paper and because it was there written down i drank six cans last night it wasn't even fun um i got shit sleep now i feel anxious and afraid and shameful and then this is lasting two days fuck this and when you see it

there on paper in front of you when you write it down it becomes very clear it's like okay here's a behaviour that I need to eradicate because my personal relationship with alcohol has changed which is shit and I hope it's not permanent but for me I'm just

I think I need a social element to drink so when things return to normal, I'll probably be able to enjoy pints again and enjoy a bit of alcohol and for it to enhance my mood rather than it to bring my mood back down. But I wasn't able to arrive at that action

and that change in my behavior without exerting emotional awareness around my drinking. Because here's the thing about suffering like i always say suffering is an unavoidable part of human existence if you were to exist you are to suffer right so that's part of the bargain of being alive if you want to laugh and have fun and love people and do all the wonderful fucking things that you get to partake in when you're alive suffering comes with that too

unavoidable suffering but here's the thing and here's the the icing on the cake about suffering the vast majority of suffering that we experience is completely avoidable suffering. The actual suffering that life throws at us, actual real suffering, it's painful but it's often meaningful pain within actual suffering. But then there's this huge other world of unnecessary suffering that we create for ourselves and that's what we can actually avoid because that doesn't need to exist that's what we create for ourselves think of it this way you go out for a walk and you're wandering around the woods and whatever you're doing you rub off a plant which is gives you an allergic reaction all right so you rub off a plant and now your right arm is itchy because you've just received an injury from a plant that is irritable

so right there you've just experienced the suffering of existence you went out to have a nice day and to enjoy the forest and a consequence of that is you've rubbed off a plant that is causing you to itch so that there is unavoidable suffering you now have to suffer in the short term with an itchy arm okay you can put a bandage over it you can use some calamine lotion or whatever to reduce the sensation of itching but you're gonna have to sit with it you've got an itchy fucking arm but then you start scratching it

okay and it can be so difficult not to scratch that rash but then when you start scratching it you get this very temporary relief a tiny tiny little temporary relief and then it comes back worse and then blisters form and you can't stop scratching it and you're scratching this itch more and more and it's

now far greater than the initial suffering that was dealt to you from the chaos of existence the chaos of existence gave you a plant in the forest that made your arm itchy but now you yourself have reacted and made a choice over and over again to continually scratch this itch until it's hugely inflamed it's spread to other parts of your body and now you're deeply deeply suffering and you've created a situation which is far worse than the original situation that there is avoidable suffering and that suffering is far worse that's the real bad one and you know yourself we've all had that. You start scratching that fucking rash and you're in for a lot of trouble.

That's avoidable suffering. The suffering is caused not by what's actually happened to you, but by how you've reacted to what happened. What's happened is that you've had an allergic reaction to something. The rational response to that is to follow directions, leave it alone and allow it to heal. That's the rational response.

But to continually scratch it obsessively until it bleeds, knowing that it's making you worse that's an irrational response and that's a behavioral choice that could have been avoided we do the exact same with our emotions we do the exact same shit with our emotions on a day-to-day basis and we create for ourselves huge amounts of suffering that is absolutely avoidable i'm experiencing quarantine so that's suffering there's a global pandemic i can't leave my house i can't meet people i can't go to the gym i'm suffering at the moment okay now the rational thing to do with that suffering is to go all right I can't change that I can't change the pandemic so what I can do is to the best of my ability cope so that I can be happy but instead I've chosen to exacerbate that suffering by checking an app called Twitter too much

I'm already suffering with a pandemic but yet i choose to continually go into this app where i observe other people's misery complaining and fighting and now this is what's making me deeply unhappy so the stress i was experiencing it wasn't the pandemic causing that stress it was choices i made the choice to continually check this fucking app and here's the thing whether it's me going into twitter too much or it's looking at the news too much or it's scratching a rash okay essentially what we're doing there is we're trying to control something that's outside of our control there's a little element of of instant gratification a very tiny amount of instant gratification when you scratch the it, you get a second of instant gratification immediately followed by pain. When you're coping with a pandemic and you then check the news, you're trying to control a situation that's outside your control, even though it's irrational.

Just checking that news to see how many cases today, what's happened today that little act and doing it if you're doing it a lot okay that's trying to control what's outside of your control and then it creates pain you're attempting to avoid the inevitable suffering the pandemic is inevitable suffering the rash is inevitable suffering. The rash is inevitable suffering. There's nothing you can do about it. It's outside of your control. But by scratching it, by scratching that itch, it's an attempt to control the uncontrollable and then that creates excessive pain. You have to accept.

You have to truly accept. There are things happening right now that are completely outside of my control nothing i do is going to change them what i do have full control over is how i react to them so why then make the choice to try and control it even though that creates avoidable pain fighting with strangers on the internet is another example. A lot of people are doing that right now on places like Facebook. You see people with opinions that you strongly disagree with, strangers,

and now all of a sudden you're in the journal.ie comments and you're having a big long argument with a man called Noel from Drogheda. That's a completely avoidable suffering you don't need to chat with Noel today Noel thinks that people are sheep Noel doesn't believe in masks you're going to have to let Noel do his thing there you're going to have to let Noel do that

because Noel's going through his own shit and is this 35 long comment thread under the journal.ie article where you and noel are calling each other dickheads what impact is that having on your day and what would your day have been like if you chose instead to just move past noel and say i need to be aware aware of my own boundaries right now i need to be aware of my own boundaries right now I need to be aware of my boundaries today and I gotta walk past Noel so now let's look at

unavoidable suffering and avoidable suffering in the specific context of emotions we'll start we'll start with concern or fear right I'm gonna call it concern so concern

is usually unavoidable. To be concerned is unavoidable suffering. To experience anxiety is avoidable suffering. Now there's a difference between to be concerned about something and to experience anxiety about something. There's a difference between the two and you very rarely need to experience anxiety only in certain exceptional circumstances is anxiety necessary and and these circumstances are usually genuinely life

threatening so right now there's there's genuine reason for concern. A lot of us, because of a global pandemic, have quite a few things to be concerned. I won't say worried, to be concerned about. We've got quite a few things to be concerned about. I know a lot of people right now are concerned about money. A lot of people right now are concerned about money a lot of people right now are concerned about your job genuinely concerned about you know if you work in the service industry you're not working right now and you might be wondering fuck it man is the restaurant i work in even going to

exist when things open up or if you are working right now and you're working from home you might be thinking this job that i have right now is my industry sustainable in the context of this pandemic and you might have social life concerns like some people entered this pandemic at 20 and mightn't exit it until they're 22 you know and 20 to 22 are quite important years for social life to speak from from my experience something that concerns me and something that's a genuine cause for concern is my career um in particular my mainstream career like i just before this pandemic started i'd finished a book of short stories and a bbc series and they both come out in december 2019 and these are two pieces of mainstream work that i'd spent two years working on and then they both essentially flopped

spent two years working on and then they both essentially flopped now that's a bit harsh that's a bit harsh like the book was a bestseller at christmas 2019 and the series got nominated for some awards but in in the pandemic made them a flop they were supposed to be a hell of a lot more successful the the time had been invested and planning had been put in place for them to be a lot more successful and they would have been if this giant pandemic didn't happen in january 2020 so my bbc series under the normal news cycle was something that was supposed to be spoken about and was i did things in it that would have made the news under normal circumstances and it was supposed to get me a better kind of footing into the UK sure that fell on its fucking arse because who gives a shit about some tv series that a fella called blind boy is making when there's a global

pandemic so that fell on its arse and then the book that I'd spent two years writing the fucking all the bookshops closed so anyone who released a book around then their book automatically kind of flopped and didn't sell as well as it was supposed to and these are things I invested two years of work into and the thing is with with mainstream careers I've now spent a year with no tv not made not being on tv or making tv because there's a pandemic and they're not making tv because of social distancing and then i have to go fuck the industry doesn't give a shit i will be someone who's done two years with no tv being made possibly longer because it takes so long to make TV.

So that's bad. That means I have genuine reason to be concerned that that poses an existential threat to my mainstream career that I've worked on since I was 16 years of age. So it's appropriate and it's okay for me to be concerned about that. It'd be strange if i wasn't but it's not okay for me to experience anxiety over it because if i experience anxiety over it then i create for myself intense unavoidable suffering now how do i tell the difference between healthy concern for something

that's happening and anxiety for something that's happening but what i do is i look at the thoughts that i'm thinking so when you're experiencing anxiety you can you can sense the anxiety but whenever you think about the thing whenever you think about the activating event so in my case it's oh fuck will i be able to get tv and book work after this pandemic fuck it i don't know that's that's a real thing that's happening but if i experience anxiety around it or if i want to give myself anxiety around it then i'll start entertaining thoughts that are extremely rigid and extreme that completely overestimate the degree or the threat so if i start saying things to myself like i'm fucked that's it that's it i'm done not

the no tv company will ever speak to me again as soon as this pandemic is over because they're just going to go man you haven't fucking released anything since 2019 and it was a flop if i start entertaining those thoughts now i'm going to start experiencing anxiety also something that's present in anxiety is catastrophizing, completely overestimating and catastrophizing. So I'll start saying to myself, I've spent all my life working on this fucking career. And when I come out of this, when I come out of this pandemic, I won't be able to get any mainstream fucking work. And that's it. I'm fucked. I won't be able to earn money. And then I'll be too old. I'll be too fucking old because I've spent all these these

years on an entertainment career but there's no career there and I'm too old to go back to college I won't know what I'll have to do the fact of the matter is is that I don't have any evidence for these thoughts these are what ifs these are what ifs and not only are they what ifs they're worst case scenarios and at no point does it factor in my capacity to cope along the way that's an important thing when you're experiencing anxiety you will fantasize about a worst case scenario and you'll never at any point in the in in that terrible terrifying fantasy of what you believe is going to go wrong at no point do you insert yourself as a person with agency who can cope along the way and maybe stop that thing happening and so how do I prevent myself from

experiencing anxiety around this very real concern? What I do is I make sure that I'm concerned because it's okay to be concerned because to be concerned means I have awareness of the situation. I'm realistically assessing the threat. My belief about the threat isn't rigid and isn't extreme. I don't feel helpless. And I say to myself, whatever the fuck happens, I'm going to cope along the way on a day-to-day basis. And the world has thrown a curveball at me.

And instead of saying to myself, fuck it, I've been working on this career since I'm 16 it could all end as soon as the pandemic is over instead of saying that to myself I say I've been working on this since I'm 16 so I've developed a shit ton of experience and tools that I can use to cope and survive and try my best and it'll probably be grand and if the TV companies don't want me I'll just focus on online stuff I'll cope, I'll figure something out 5 years ago lads 5 fucking years ago

I went through a phase of catastrophizing about my career it was before I did my podcast it was before I started writing my first book of short stories I was still in the rubber bandits. We were getting a little bit too old for it. Our gigs weren't selling as well as we'd like. We weren't enjoying it.

And I genuinely thought I'd be homeless right now. I thought in five years time I'm going to be homeless. Because I've spent my life working only on the rubber bandits. And now we're too old for the fucking rubber bandits and we can't sell gigs anymore what the fuck am I gonna do I'm gonna be homeless in five years time did that happen absolutely fucking not I stopped doing the rubber bandits thing I took a shot at writing books took a shot at this podcast and now I'm in a much better position than I was at any point in my career with the rubber bandits but five years

ago in a state of catastrophizing I genuinely believed that right now I would be homeless and helpless with zero options and I got myself into a right state and I created for myself a huge ball of avoidable suffering suffering that can be avoided so ask yourself right now are there things in your life that are causing you genuine concern right your social life your relationships your fucking career the economy whatever it is are you concerned about it or are you anxious if a huge part of your day is taken up with elaborate fantasies about how things are going to be terrible predictions about things that aren't happening predictions about things that you think are going to happen and in these fantasies it is terror and catastrophe if you you're doing that, first off, you have no evidence whatsoever.

You're completely underestimating your ability to cope along the way. And you are creating the current misery of your existence. The suffering of your existence right now is created solely by how you are thinking about unavoidable suffering. You've had an allergic reaction to a plant you rubbed off in the woods and you're scratching it until it bleeds and blisters and it won't heal. It's not healing because of your actions. And this is very unpleasant. So write down your irrational fears if it's your career write down your fears on a piece of paper no matter how ridiculous they are if you are fantasizing about not having a home fantasizing about whatever catastrophe that's in your head write it down on a piece of paper

and then beside it write down what are some alternative rational beliefs about the situation that are not anxious but instead are an appropriate level of concern and once you do that when you write it down because writing things down is really important when these thoughts are in our head and we're in a state of anxiety it's like you're juggling you can't focus on one thing but once you write it down on a piece of paper and you write down your deepest fear and your deepest catastrophe and you read it and it's right there in front of you it becomes a lot easier to actually see it as being quite ridiculous. And then you start farming alternative, fact-based, here and now solutions. And that becomes your new belief.

That's what you remind yourself of. And then you move to a place of concern. The problem doesn't go away, but you're not living a life of utter misery right now. I'm going to have a go at anger, sadness and hurt heart next but first it's time for the ocarina pause. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you.

No, no, don't. The First Omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey!

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That was the ocarina pause. I did that so you didn't get startled by an advert um this podcast is sponsored by you the listener via the patreon page when i find myself experiencing anxiety or catastrophizing about my career i remind myself of my patrons i make this podcast independently i put it out and people who enjoy it become patrons of the podcast and that's that's me coping with the legitimate suffering that has been placed upon my industry as an entertainer so if if you like this podcast if you enjoy it all right, this is how I earn a living. This podcast is how I earn a living via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. I make four podcasts a month.

It's a huge amount of work. It's a full-time job. So if you're enjoying it, just please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month all right if you if you can't afford to pay me that you don't have to right you can listen for free but if you can't afford it if you can afford to give me a pint or a cup of coffee once a month you're paying for you're paying me for my work that i'm doing and then you're also paying for the person who can't afford it to listen so everyone gets a podcast and i earn a living it's perfect patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast the patreon

also keeps this podcast independent i can speak about whatever I want advertisers can't tell me what I can and can't talk about it's that simple follow me on Twitch I'm on once a week on Twitch Twitch is unbelievable crack it's so much fun I fucking love it twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast

I'm on Thursday nights at half 8 I write songs I make up songs I write songs to the events of a video game and chat with the people who are watching and it's that's a social media app that's getting me through this pandemic because the sheer positivity

and support on Twitch and the fun it's fantastic and that's something I'm genuinely grateful for in this pandemic to have discovered Twitch so twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast

like the podcast, subscribe to it, if you're not from Ireland if you're Canadian, Australian British, whatever recommend it to a friend alright, that makes a huge difference so before I get into what was it

sadness, anger and heart like we say sadness versus depression before i get into these things i want to give a little disclaimer what what i'm speaking about here is how otherwise mentally healthy people can think themselves into a situation of mental unhealth. Right? We feel the way we think. If you think excessively negatively or excessively anxiously, you will find yourself in this state. I'm not speaking on mental illness. I'm not factoring in that some people are dealing with trauma.

I'm not factoring in that some people require medication, that some people require access to mental health services or psychiatry. I'm not speaking on any of these things because that would be inappropriate and irresponsible for me to do so. of these things because that would be inappropriate and irresponsible for me to do so i'm speaking about really basic tools around emotional awareness cognitive psychology and emotional resilience the shit i'm speaking about it's it's the equivalent of dietary advice that's what it is it's not medical advice it's it's like dietary advice it's like me saying here are some foods that can bring more fiber into your diet here are some foods that can bring in more vitamins here's how you hydrate better from a psychological and mental

health point of view that's what i'm speaking about, all right? I'm not speaking about mental illness, severe depression, anxiety disorders, things like that. That's not where I'm going. So sadness versus depression. Sadness is unavoidable suffering, all right? If you were to exist and experience the wonderful tapestry of being a human being,

you're going to experience sadness fairly frequently. Sadness happens when we experience a loss or a failure. And we're all experiencing quite a bit of a loss right now. All of us have lost our social lives. Some of us have lost our jobs. some of us have lost our jobs some of us have lost a year you know we've all lost quite a bit so it's okay to be sad about that that's unavoidable suffering and sadness is an appropriate response to this loss it's shit it's the pandemic is shit all right there's no getting away from that it's shit and it's it's happened to our generation that's what happened that's

what's happened like when we're old we're gonna be the fucking coronavirus generation you know what i mean and you experience sadness the way to experience sadness is acceptance. We can't change any of this. We can't change any of this. So you accept the sadness that's there and you focus on what you can do despite that sadness. The avoidable suffering is depression now the same thing has happened depression can happen around a loss or a failure when you experience a loss or a failure so quite a few of us are experiencing depression right now because of the pandemic and the great losses that we're experiencing because of the pandemic

here are some of the thoughts the incredibly painful and completely avoidable thoughts that you might be experiencing right now if you're responding to this pandemic via depression again your your beliefs and your attitudes about the pandemic about having lost a year about not being able to go to the gym about not being able to meet your friends your beliefs about these things are very rigid and extreme you might be saying to yourself very frequently this is terrible this is awful i can't deal with this i'm going mad somebody stop this change it these type of thoughts because you can't do any of these things so you're focusing on you're not accepting you're you're not accepting that things are happening outside of your control you might be obsessively focusing

only on the negative aspects of the loss or failure of this pandemic saying things to yourself if only this pandemic wasn't here all the fun i'd be having if only this pandemic wasn't here it is terrible that I can't go to parties it's terrible that I can't go to the gym it is terrible that I'm spending so much time on my own like this is awful you might also feel utterly helpless you don't feel that you can help yourself in any way you don't feel that you have a capacity to cope and you think that the future is is really really bleak and hopeless and this very gloomy pattern of thinking is prevalent throughout your day when you think about quarantine or the pandemic and this is creating quite a bit of suffering for you right now it's deeply deeply unpleasant that's avoidable

that's avoidable okay so what do you do to try and move these depressive thoughts over towards sadness because again it's okay to feel sad like here's the thing i'm not saying pretend that everything's grand it's not there's a fucking pandemic we're suffering but sadness is sadness is coping you can live with sadness living with depression is different because that impacts your behaviors so write down your depressed thoughts write down the rigid attitudes that you have write down how you can't feel like you can't cope write down how terrible you feel it is right now that you can't leave your gaff or meet your friends or see someone that you love and hug them i haven't hugged my ma i haven't

hugged my man a year that's really fucking sad i'm very sad about that that's really fucking sad but I'm not gonna make myself depressed over it because there's other ways that I can meaningfully connect with her I speak to her daily on the phone I check in with her and I do what I can do within those parameters if I was feeling depression around that I'd be saying what's the point sure what good is a phone call that's not the same as contact when you're sad about the situation as opposed to being depressed you're able to see both the negative and positive aspects of the loss and there are positive aspects because one way to look at this pandemic and is we've been forced into a type of asceticism we've been forced to give up a lot of pleasures a lot of earthly pleasures like party and and all and freedom and all these things

we're going to gain a new appreciation for these things once those freedoms are restored again we won't take things for granted this builds our character as human beings asceticism is something which is present in a lot of religious practices such as ramadan in islam or lent in christianity where you deny yourself pleasures so that you can so that you never take them for granted and you can experience them more meaningfully when you get to partake again that's a positive and if when you're being sad about the pandemic you can allow those positives in as well as the sad things you focus on your personal strengths and your skills you focus on you know what what i do with this pandemic when I feel sad about the loss of it is I say to myself

all right all I expect of myself today is to cope that's it every day I wake up and I say my goal today is to cope and when I go to bed and I've coped because you see I have the loss of career I'm not doing gigs I'm not reaching goals with tv all these things that used to give me meaning are now gone but i'm not going to beat myself up over it because i don't have access to these things it's outside of my control so i'm now not going to self-flagellate because i'm not achieving the way i used to achieve because i can't and instead I'm going to say to myself fuck that new rules all my only goal today is to cope and tomorrow my my goal is to cope as well and if I can go to bed at night and say today I coped then I can sleep sound and I have meaning so the sadness sadness is unavoidable it's outside of your control you must accept it this is part of being

alive the depression part that's completely avoidable that's the that's scratching the itch and creating the boils and creating the blood don't have to go there you don't have to it's not it's not necessary it doesn't help you so now i'm going to speak about anger versus being annoyed being annoyed is unavoidable suffering you're going to be annoyed in your life people are going to let you down people are going to do things that are going to annoy you the world is going to do things that will annoy you governments will do things that annoy you the world is going to do things that will annoy you governments will do things that annoy you and it's okay to be annoyed anger is a little different now when i mean anger i mean rage and real toxic bitterness because anger can be appropriate sometimes because anger can create action but toxic rage and bitterness the type of thing that makes your you know be aware of your

body too clenching your fists gritting your teeth your face getting so hot that you feel dizzy out of nowhere in the middle of the day it's okay to be annoyed with the powers that be all right all around the world there's governments not handling this as they should or not appearing to care it's okay to be annoyed with what's going on that's unavoidable but

is your day really improved if you're seething in a rage and maybe not just at the powers that be but a lot of people could be fallen out over this pandemic some people are fallen out because people who are close to them aren't coping too well and they're falling into the trap of conspiracy theory and they don't want to wear masks or they're becoming anti-vaxxers or quite simply we're all under a lot of stress so we're going to push each other's buttons a lot easier you might let people down a lot easier you might snap at someone a lot easier someone might snap

at you a lot easier you might have quite a lot of time on your hands to fantasize about past grievances you've had with people so unhealthy anger and rage happens when one of our personal rules is broken we all have personal rules about how we must be treated now sometimes these rules are quite unrealistic so we have all these internal rules about how other people must behave towards us and we don't tell them what these rules are and if your rules are very extreme and rigid your own personal rules about how you how you must be treated then the more rigid your rules are the more people are going to break them and then the angrier you become and the more enemies you have. A big one at the moment that I'm seeing.

People mentioning online is. People working from home are doing zoom calls. And you're doing a zoom call with a team. And you're speaking. And you can see. On the screen. That someone is yawning. Or someone looks like they're not paying attention.

To when you're speaking. Or someone is yawning or someone looks like they're not paying attention to when you're speaking or someone is looking at their phone and this is making quite a few people feel intense rage that they're not being listened to also quite a lot of communication that's happening now is being text based we're not physically meeting up so when you text people often tone can be removed and depending on what mood you're in you can inject malicious intent into another person's words where it doesn't exist because they're just words on a screen so here's how you know if you're experiencing unhealthy if you're experiencing the avoidable suffering of unhealthy anger in your spare time are you clenching your fists

gritting your teeth fantasizing continually about what you would like to say to the person who you believe has wronged you fantasizing about hurting them physically behavior wise are you plotting revenge on this person Fantasizing about hurting them physically. Behavior wise. Are you plotting revenge. On this person.

For some slight that you perceived. Plotting revenge. Or figuring out how you can fuck things up for them. Are you. Let's just say the person yawns during a zoom call. Are you now fantasizing. About how they did that deliberately. Just to hurt you.

And the thing is with rage and unhealthy anger that's all consuming it's all consuming and it can make time just fly by you could be standing in your kitchen for a fucking hour clenching your fist and it feels like 10 minutes have passed has someone been rude to you has a person who you believe to be a friend not been supportive of you not been sending you a text or checking in with you so if you find yourself consumed with rage and internal fantasies of revenge or are actually acting out revenge or a terrible fear of i really want to confront this person but i'm scared to confront them in case i explode that's a big sign that's always a sign if you're if you're scared to confront the person who you

believe has done you wrong because that fear that you have is that you'll explode that's usually evidence that you've grossly overestimated how badly you've been treated because the thing is when people actually cross a line or do something observably bad the thought of confronting them on it generally doesn't feel terrifying because you can literally call out the behavior and say i'm unhappy with x y and z can we speak about it but if instead you're going the thought of confronting this person is terrifying because i might just scream at them and try and bite their face then that's because they've broken a deep personal rule and the level of anger that you have towards them, it has nothing to do with them. It has to do with you.

So how do you move from being filled with rage and anger to simply being annoyed? Because the thing is, we're still talking about like a personal rule is broken or your self-esteem is threatened. Someone yawning excessively in the middle of your zoom call that's not nice and you might even be entitled to bring it up with the person or if the person's checking their phone or if someone who's

close to you isn't checking in with you or isn't returning calls or is cancelling if you're trying to have zoom pints on a friday and they're cancelling these are all things it's cancelling. If you're trying to have Zoom pints on a Friday and they're cancelling, these are all things. It's okay to be annoyed about these things. It's okay. And it's also okay to bring it up with the person in an appropriate fashion. But it's not okay to paint them in your head

as a very evil person who's done something deliberately to maliciously hurt you. So where you got gotta go is write down you write down all your angry thoughts about the person and what it is they've done try and identify the personal rule that that you hold that they've broken because me i wouldn't give a fuck if someone yawned during a zoom call i genuinely wouldn't give a shit because i don't have a personal rule

around that like we all have these personal rules about how we'd like other people to trade us that we learn in childhood and we learn them from teachers and people must be polite to me people must listen to me when i speak people must not be rude to me these are rules that we have and depending on how rigidly you hold on to that rule if you're very rigid about that rule and it's an extreme demand that you hold then you're going to get disappointed all the time by people who don't know these rules and you'll you'll be consumed by anger so it's helpful to identify those rules and you can still kind of hold them you just don't have them as rigid instead of people must be polite to me you change the rule to i would like people to be polite to me

but you accept that some people just won't another thing too when you're consumed by unhealthy avoidable rage and anger you're unable to see things from the other person's point of view so okay someone yawns in your zoom call if you're consumed with rage you think this person fucking did this because they think I'm boring

they're cunt when you're consumed by rage that's your only belief when you're annoyed by it and you have kind of a healthy attitude, instead you go, this person yawned, that was annoying, I didn't like that. Maybe they didn't get enough sleep. Maybe they didn't get enough sleep. Maybe what I was saying wasn't that interesting.

Maybe they have some shit going on right now and they can't concentrate. Now you're trying to see things from the other person's point of view you're compromising you're you're moving you're moving towards a position where you're able to see that both of you are a little bit right and a little bit wrong at the same time and you're interested in in in compromise you're interested you're not interested in revenge you're not interested in you broke my my rule and now i hurt so now i must hurt you no you're like what can we talk about the issue only here and then move past it and once we move past the issue we go back to a place of friendship that's healthy anger right there so again

rage unhealthy rage anger fuming fantasizing about hurting people fantasizing about revenge clenching your fists that's a living hell that's an unpleasant way to spend your day. It's a very unpleasant way. That's a lot of avoidable suffering to choose to introduce into your day. So the final one I want to look at is hurt versus disappointment. Hurt is avoidable suffering. It's unhealthy. It creates problems for you disappointment is healthy you're

going to be disappointed people will disappoint you people will reject you people might say things to you that are painful to your feelings and heart is quite similar to anger that I mentioned previously to unhealthy anger because you can also get very hurt when your personal rules are broken and the thing with heart versus anger is the person who experiences unhealthy anger is fantasizing about revenge

and fantasizing about evening things out an eye for an eye that's anger heart heart is like poisoning yourself and expecting the other person to die that's what heart is so heart has the same themes as anger except it's kind of turned more inwards towards yourself if anger is wait you see what i'm gonna do to you heart is look what you've made me do to myself so heart happens when you when you perceive another person's behavior towards you as being unfair or being a bit mean or you haven't been treated how you feel you should be treated it's okay to be disappointed disappointment is the

unavoidable suffering of existing with other humans people are going to disappoint you and it's okay to be disappointed if you were looking forward to a zoom call with your friend on a friday and you were going to have drinks and they they don't do it they don't show up or instead they choose someone else and they go to a different zoom call and you feel rejected it's okay to be disappointed in that person they might have let you down they didn't behave in a way that you feel is appropriate it's okay to be disappointed with that but to be heart is different heart is very rigid and it's very extreme you fantasize and focus on and you search for evidence that the other person doesn't give a shit about you the other person is deliberately not caring and being indifferent and they don't value you

in the slightest you're you're fixated on this you you grossly overestimate how unfairly the other person has treated you a big thing with experience in heart too is you bring in all the past hurts anytime anybody has disappointed you in your life you bring all that to the table and this new person who stepped up to disappoint you you start saying sure they're just the same as my dad or my ma or my fucking my ex-best friend who I don't talk to anymore they all become one big ball of heart people that are there to hurt you and to disappoint you the thing with heart is heart can work alongside low self-esteem where if you're experiencing heart you kind of go of course they

treat me like this i'm a piece of shit i deserve to be treated like this but how dare they remind me that i'm a piece of shit and and and of course the big big piece of evidence where when it comes to heart versus anger when you're feeling angry you're spending your day fantasizing about getting revenge or hurting the other person or fantasizing about having arguments where you win that's anger with hurt that's when your actions tend to be passive aggressive a person who's feeling hurt will give another person the silent treatment I'm not speaking to you I'm blanking you I'm completely blanking and ignoring you

because what I'm doing is I'm displaying you have hurt me so much that I have to perform this act of utter silence to amplify how big this hurt is so you can see what you've done to me and that's a lot of work that's a huge amount of work and it rarely makes situations better it just it increases tension and often what it does is if if you're experiencing this deep heart because someone has slighted you and then you ignore the person what you're doing is it's creating a situation where the other person

may actually shout at you and call you a prick because it creates so much tension that someone has to break it and often it's the other person going the fuck are you doing ignoring me it's like a self fulfilling prophecy now you've created a situation

where the other person actually is hurting you and is roaring and shouting at you and also the person who's hurt they have this secret belief in their head that it is 100% the other person's responsibility to reach forward with the olive branch but often so they can bat it away when it is offered so how do you move from hurt to

disappointment because the thing is the other person might have done something shitty they might have genuinely done something shitty and it's okay to be disappointed with their behavior and to be expect to be treated differently and again write down write it down write down what the other person did write down the extremity of how you're overestimating how unfair their behavior is write down if you think that they don't give a fuck about you that they don't care about you write down that it's they're just the same as this person who hurt me or that person that hurt me

write all that toxic stuff down that's making you suffer essentially and then form some alternative beliefs that are less rigid that are less extreme you try and be realistic about how unfair the other person was you have to look at times in your friendship when they were nice to you don't focus only on this this one instance of heart that you can't move past you focus on

why they're your fucking friend you don't create a rule that they must come to you and you try and see things from their point of view and feel okay with letting them know that you're disappointed with whatever it is they did but ultimately too that you're willing to forgive the other person if if they're willing to if they're acknowledging if they're communicating with you and acknowledging yeah i can see i can see now how i've done something that disappointed you if you can then move to a place of forgiveness because the important thing about forgiveness sometimes forgiveness isn't about the other person if you don't forgive another person for hurt that you perceive,

then you're going to carry that hurt around. And then your life is very unpleasant. You have an unpleasant day filled with hurt and fantasies of how another person deliberately tried to hurt you and how they don't care about you. And the only way to move past that is forgiveness and compassion seeing things from the other person's point of view while at the same time acknowledging that they've done something disappointing but holding on to this massive

giant heart it's it's like i said it's your you're drinking poison and expecting it to kill the other person so with all four of those examples I suppose what I'm trying to talk about is those are examples of avoidable suffering like things happen

that create suffering and this is unavoidable but the majority of the huge pain we experience in our day is shit we create for ourselves the way that you think about yourself other people and the world influences how you feel which then influences your behavior so if these thoughts are rigid and not flexible and extreme then you would create a lot of avoidable suffering it's scratching the itch that doesn't need to be scratched it's inflaming it it's making it bleed it's making it blister you got to acknowledge i have a rash i have a rash on my fucking hand and i need to let this thing heal i need to let it heal and accept that it exists and every time i scratch it what i'm trying to do is control what i can't control and if you can if you can have the emotional

awareness to achieve emotional resilience around that then like here's an important it'll be it'll be easier for the people around you in your own life because here's a here's a little thing people who don't understand their own emotions try to control other people's behavior that's how you find yourself on the internet calling a stranger a prick when you don't understand your own emotions you will try you will try to mediate that by controlling another person's behavior through being judgmental or rude or whatever so emotional resilience not only prevents you from suffering unnecessarily it means you're not creating unnecessary suffering for the people who have to deal with you and all this shit i'm talking about this is a process this is a process and all you can do is try your best, some days you're just going to have bad days,

I have bad days, I have bad days where I'm not emotionally aware, I'm not happy, I'm miserable, I'm engaging in behaviours that make me more miserable, and I'm not fun to be around, I'm not fun to be around, and'm not fun to be around. And. With all of this you have to accept. You're a fallible human being. You're gonna upset and disappoint other people. As you navigate life. And you're going to be upset and disappointed.

As part of life as well. This is the suffering of human existence. And. It's like nutrition. It's fucking like nutrition. Alright right you have to keep it going you have to keep it going on a day-by-day basis and sometimes you'll fall off the wagon and have an have an unpleasant existence for a while but all you got to do is try and bring it back into your awareness and get back on the wagon and live with meaning and it's going to be cyclical all right i hope you enjoyed that i'll be back next week i don't know what with yurt 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 center 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. Thank you.