The Blindboy Podcast - Why I'm going back to Therapy

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

I speak about the process of psychotherapy and why I'm going back. My own tools aren't working anymore Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Give me back the chapstick you backflip catherines. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode. To familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. My voice is a little bit fucked. Because I had a hectic week. I did four gigs this week. And it's after giving me a small bit of a cunty throat.

From just roaring and shouting. I really shouldn't have done. I should not have done four gigs this week. But the industry is still recovering from the pandemic. There's basically too many gigs on. Everywhere. Because all the gigs that were postponed for two years. Are being rescheduled.

So if you're booking gigs, you don't really have a choice as to when they are. So I had to do four gigs in one week. And the reason that's foolish is, I did one in Meath, two in Dublin, and one in Wexford. And gigs can be very taxing. I love, I adore the bit where I'm on stage. That's the bit that I live for. Those two, two and a half hours that I'm on stage are amazing. But really when you do a gig, it's an entire day.

So you have to get to the gig. You have to get there early to do the sound check then you have the worst part of a gig is and any any performer will tell you this it's the three or four hours of waiting before you get on stage because the thing is i don't get i don't get nervous on stage i get a healthy amount get a healthy amount of nerves before a gig, which is good. Because when you start getting no nerves at all, then you're not performing at your best. So I get a healthy amount of nerves.

But being up on stage in front of like a thousand people, no matter how much I'm enjoying it, the amount of adrenaline. That flows through your body. Once you're up on stage. Is unlike anything else. Now it's good adrenaline. It's adrenaline that makes you sharp.

And makes you want to entertain people. But it's still crazy fucking adrenaline. And I get off stage after two hours. Then I kind of have to unload everything. And I'm usually leaving the venue at 12 o'clock at night. And then getting back to Limerick takes two or three hours. I'm home at three. But again, every entertainer will tell you this.

Doesn't matter what they're doing. They could be singing at a wedding, DJing at a nightclub. The kick of adrenaline is so much that when you get home, you're just not sleeping. You're not sleeping. You need about two hours.

So for four nights this week, I didn't get to sleep till about six in the morning. But then I still had to be up at nine to prepare this podcast and to write my book. So that's why four gigs were foolish. But luckily, I only have one gig left till next year. I'm in Brussels.

I think it's the end of next week. I'm doing a gig in Brussels. And that's it. Because I had a gig scheduled in early December in Drogheda in the TLT Theatre, but that's now being moved for scheduling reasons to 2023, to like March, I think. So if you have tickets for that Drogheda gig, it's being moved to 2023.

And I'm going to use December to write and prepare this podcast. I also gave myself a head injury this week for the most ridiculous reasons possible. I banged my head and I cut it. As I was getting into the car that we were using to drive back to Limerick, as I was getting into that car outside Vicar Street, I looked across the road and there was a parked car but it was parked with the engine on and the lights on and the owner of the car wasn't in the car they were obviously in a house but who was in the car was an Alsatian in the driver's seat and it looked exactly like the

Alsatian was driving the car and I found this so funny that I quickly lifted my head and smashed my forehead off the door of the car I was getting into and I cut my forehead and as I was wiping the blood off my face I had the thought that I always have when I get into little accidents what if that had been a little bit harder and that's how I died would I be happy if that's how I died and I think I'd be happy if that's how I died how did he die he smashed his head off a car because he thought he saw a fucking Alsatian driving another car I'd take that death. If I died like that.

That's what I want on my fucking headstone. A headstone in the shape of an Alsatian. Driving a car. I don't even think it was an Alsatian. It was dark. It was night time. So I only saw his silhouette. But he was just propped up perfectly.

It wasn't like. Because I've seen. I've seen dogs. In the front of cars before. With their paws up on the steering wheel. I've seen that before. But this looked like he was driving. The fucking car. And I don't.

It was either an Alsatian. Or it may have been one of them. Belgian Malamuts. Which are fascinating dogs. They're like dog hardware and cat software. They're not Alsatians but they look like kind of slender Alsatians and they're really intelligent and very agile. They use them as security dogs.

They've kind of replaced Alsatians as the security dog of choice. But these Belgian Malamuts, they can climb walls, they can do backflips. And when you put them in the front seat of a car, they fucking look like they're operating the ignition. They look like their feet are on the clutch.

This dog was driving the fucking car as far as I was concerned and I had my head dipped in in to get into the fucking passenger seat and then saw the dog lifted my head

back up with tremendous force and excitement and then bam and I was seeing stars I should have sued the dog and then I had a big bloody head

all the way down to Limerick and then when I was on the. I should have sued the dog. And then a big bloody head all the way down to Limerick. And then when I was on the Tipperary bypass. It was about two in the morning. I became convinced that I saw a UFO. It was. So we were baiting down the motorway. Very clear sky. And I looked up.

And we were going very fast but it looked like a fucking UFO, it didn't look like a star, it didn't look like anything else it was changing shape it looked to be several different lights merging together

so then I rolled down the window in the back of the car and I hung out of the window. Like a dog. Like a dog would do. So I'm hanging out of the window like a dog. With a bloody head. Listening to Janet Jackson.

In the car. And I was trying to get a video of this fucking UFO. And then I kind of said. Hold on man. Chill the fuck out. Chill. Hold on a second, chill the fuck out, chill, look, hold on a second, chill the fuck out, your adrenaline is high, you're after doing a gig to fucking 2,000 people, you've had a couple of beers, you're after banging your head, now you're hanging out of a fucking window in Tipperary, thinking you're videotaping a UFO. Chill the fuck out. So I did.

But I was still looking up at the thing. And it was so strange. And the car was moving so fast. I couldn't tell if it was moving or not. So then I reached into my phone. And I remember I have an app. A very brilliant app. And there's a free version of it.

An app called Night Sky. It's fantastic. And what Night Sky does is. It it's amazing everyone should have this app you point your phone at the sky and it overlays all the stars planets and satellites that are there when you point at it. So I pointed this app at the UFO. And it turned out it wasn't a UFO. It was Jupiter. So that's what I was looking at. Jupiter was just incredibly bright in the sky.

So bright that it looked like a UFO. And then I thought, I'd kind of like to die that way as well. If that was how I died. If I. If I stuck my head out of the window of a moving car. Because I thought I was filming a UFO. That was actually Jupiter. While listening to Janet Jackson.

And then like. I got decapitated by a telephone pole. I'd be alright with that death as well. So I made the decision this week week that I'm going back to therapy not because of that not because of that not because of that's just normal shit

that's fine I'm going back to psychotherapy for the first time in a long long time in over a decade because I need it so I have I have a lot of tools

I have a lot of tools and a very large toolbox for my mental health for my emotional resilience as you can tell from the podcast how I speak about my mental health. From my emotional resilience. As you can tell. From the podcast. How I speak about my mental health. In my podcast.

But. The two years of the pandemic. Not just lockdown. But. I want to say trauma. I don't like throwing the word fucking trauma. Around the place. But as I had Sharon Lambert, a trauma expert on the podcast

a few weeks back or a couple of months back, and she spoke about big T's and little t's. So I don't have any big traumas, but the pandemic left me with lots of little traumas. And not just me, fucking everybody I'm guessing, but I'm just going to speak about me and my experience I had lots of little traumas over those two years of the pandemic I had lots of moments where my fear response was up at a 10 now I went into this in detail about two and a half months ago on a podcast called I think it was called a post-pandemic mental health plan. But, over the two years of the pandemic,

you know, there was one point where I thought my career was over. There was one point where I was like, oh fuck, can't do gigs. This is how I earn a living. That's gone. There was another point where I wondered if everyone I know is going to die because there's a new mystery illness and we don't understand it. Each lockdown brought a 10 out of 10 fear response at certain points.

The entire lockdown caused me to behave in a way that was very triggering for me because it reminded me of a time when I was suffering from agoraphobia. All of this left me in a state of hypervigilance. I haven't felt true, lasting calm in over two years now. I mean, I was diagnosed with fucking autism as well, six months ago, which is big, big for my sense of identity and sense of self. And I'm not in the throes of anxiety. I'm not in the throes of depression. I'm coping and existing and getting on with my day and doing my work and moving along but it's become clear to

me that my tools are not working anymore my tools that I have for myself that's not working anymore it's like there's a dog driving my car because I've forgotten how to drive and now I need a psychotherapist to show me how to drive again but I haven't experienced emotional regulation I haven't experienced emotional regulation in two and a half years emotional regulation is when I'm I'm able to achieve a completely base level of calmness and a base level of calmness of emotional regulation if I can achieve a base level of calmness then I'm proactive about my emotional triggers it means that when I'm calm and I experience the inevitable suffering of being alive, which is disappointing news. Someone might hurt my feelings or say something mean to me.

Or something might threaten my livelihood or something might threaten me in some way. Something might threaten my self-esteem. All of the regular inevitable stresses of being alive when i'm emotionally regulated and calm i can be proactive about the shit life throws at me and to be proactive means i can critically deal with whatever is thrown at me, deal with it critically and not get overwhelmed. But when I'm emotionally dysregulated, which means I do not have a base level of calm, I'm on edge all the time, 24-7 for about two and a half years.

When I'm emotionally dysregulated, when a stressor presents itself when suffering presents itself a disappointment whatever I'm emotionally reactive so now if the doorbell rings my immediate response isn't oh it's the doorbell I wonder who that is it's oh fuck it's the doorbell what terrible news does that bring if an email comes in it's not like oh an email how can I respond to this it's oh no what's this email what terrible news will it bring if someone says something mean to me on the internet it's not this person has said something mean it's not a very nice thing to experience but ultimately this is their problem because I've done nothing wrong if someone says something

mean to me now on the internet it's oh no I completely believe every word of what they said and I'm a fucking terrible person so I I'm emotionally dysregulated. I'm not calm. Exercise isn't bringing me to that base level of calm. Meditation isn't bringing me to that base level of calm. And now it's been so long that I'm forgetting what calm feels like and I'm forgetting what joy feels like. I have sprinklings of happiness like when I thought I saw that dog driving a car but it's fleeting, it's momentary. Before the pandemic I used to experience joy. I used to just sit down and be grateful for everything that's in my life. And be happy to be alive. And feel a lovely warm sense of joy.

And optimism and happiness about the future and about my day. That's gone. Now I'm not miserable like I said. I'm not miserable. I'm not experiencing depression. Because I have so many tools. But I kind of know at this stage. My self help tools.

Are doing as much as they can do. And now I need. I need to go to a fucking psychotherapist. Not a CBT therapist. A talk therapist. And I need to speak with this person. And what I'm. what I'm looking for is for them to help me find my blind spots I need to go far deeper than CBT and I need to

I need someone else to help me identify faulty beliefs that I have about myself about other people that I have about the future that are far beyond my awareness because they're too painful and I need the trusting process of therapy in order to unearth these things in myself but I'm not afraid I'm fucking really looking forward to it really really really looking forward to it because I've been to therapy before and I know how healing it feels and mostly what I need is to be using my self help tools

all the time all the time like all day I'm handling reactive emotions okay like I said when the doorbell rings Like all day, I'm handling reactive emotions. Okay? Like I said, when the doorbell rings, I immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion.

Whatever the fuck happens to me, whatever small trigger happens throughout my day, I immediately jump to the worst possible conclusion. And then I have to use CBT to talk myself back down from it. It's a huge amount of effort. It's a huge amount of wasted time. Like I tell you how I know how much wasted time it is. Like this week, like I said, I did four days of gigs. So the next day after the gig, because I only got like two, three hours of sleep, I'm not leaving the house. I'm staying at home and working. But I have a fitness app called Whoop, which is a bit like a Fitbit. And I look at my fitness app and I'm doing 20,000 steps a day just at home, just in my kitchen.

Now, if you have a fitness app app you know that 20,000 steps is fucking loads. So I'm doing 20,000 steps just pacing back and forth and when I'm pacing back and forth it's because I'm emotionally reactive and I'm worrying about the past, worrying about the future, and not living calmly, emotionally regulated in the present moment. And to be honest, not even aware that I'm after doing 20,000 steps back and forth in my kitchen. So that's the physical footprint of poor mental health. And I'm tired of that being the case for two and a half fucking years so a therapist is the only therapy is the only thing that will take me out of that and the other the other benefit of going to therapy over doing my own self-help and this is a big one my self-esteem is quite low my self-esteem is low because I've had two and a

half years of shit mental health so because my self-esteem is low I don't believe my own internal voice when I'm trying to use my mental health tools but when you're with a therapist and you have a trusting therapeutic relationship it's a lot easier to believe the other person's words. And the thing is with a good therapist, someone who's person-centered, a person-centered therapist doesn't necessarily tell you things or give you advice. What a person-centered therapist does is they empathically

listen to my words and then they repeat them back to me and when a therapist can repeat back to me my words I can hear myself better and if I do that then I will discover my blind spots I have um a fear or a shame a shame or a fear most likely that's so painful and so threatening to me and threatening to my sense of self and my sense of identity that I can't see it, I can't hear it and I don't know what it is. And this feeling of fear or shame creates within me a sense of crisis, a sense of emotional crisis and then these reactive emotions such as intense anxiety, intense anger, they pop up to protect me from whatever the fuck that underlying fear or shame is. That's what reactive emotions do.

That's their purpose. They give you a target. They make you feel like you're doing something actionable like the sound of an email notification suddenly making me feel dread or terror has nothing to do with the fucking emails i'm not expecting any terrible emails i have no reason to experience dread or terror around an email email notification. But my brain has decided. That's a much more appropriate target. To focus your anxiety on.

Than whatever the real reason is. Because the real reason. Is most likely. Deeply threatening. To my sense of self. And the brain will do fucking anything. To protect. Our sense of self-identity.

And that's my blind spot. And I need a therapist to be my guide that will help me to listen to that in myself. And also not only to be my guide, to create a sense of safety in the therapeutic alliance. To create a sense of safety in the therapeutic alliance. So that I'm okay to be present in whatever the fuck it is within me that I'm scared to be present with. And that's why I can't be emotionally regulated. That's why even when I meditate, I can't achieve that true calm. And that's why I can't experience.

Joy. For being alive. Or gratitude. And I tell you what. It's annoying. That I'm able to use words there. To describe the process. And yet still not have emotional access to what it is that's

causing me dis-ease so that's why I'm going back to therapy and I'm not nervous I'm really really looking forward to it, really really really

looking forward to it because I've really, really looking forward to it. Because I've done it before. And I haven't forgotten the feeling. The feeling of leaving a therapy session. How I used to describe it back then was, it was like going to someone, and it's like, do you know the lovely feeling when you get out of the shower

you know that you know you go you you have a shower and you come out feeling so fresh and new coming out of a therapist for me my experience of it it's like that for my brain and i'm not shitting on self-help here this is the interesting thing about the complexity of mental health management I haven't been to one-to-one therapy in over a decade does that mean that a decade ago I went to a therapist and they magically cured me and now all of a sudden I'm mentally unwell again no, it means that in that decade every single day I put in the work myself.

Whether that be through CBT, transaction analysis, exercise, diet, mindfulness, a real holistic approach every single day worked for me. And it's still working, but it's like driving on a flat tyre. You can still get to your destination. But the strain that you're putting on that tyre. Is going to fuck up your suspension. It's going to fuck up everything else. I know I'm using all the car metaphors.

This week. If I don't fucking. If I don't go to a therapist. And I keep putting myself under the stress. Of self help. In six months time, I'll actually think I'm chasing a fucking UFO down the Tipperary Bypass.

I won't rationally say to myself, maybe it's Jupiter, maybe it's something else. No, it's fucking aliens and they've got a very special message for me and I have to let you know what it is on the podcast. I'll end up manufacturing a different reality because the current one is too painful. And you might be wondering too, how does Blind Boy go to a therapist? Does he wear his plastic bag?

Like, no. I have to go to a therapist, obviously not with a fucking plastic bag. And I have to let the therapist know who the fuck I am. And I have to let them know this is my job now am I afraid of that absolutely not because that again is part of the therapeutic alliance a professional therapist is sworn to absolute privacy and secrecy regarding their clients unless that client expresses a desire to harm themselves, someone else or a child. A therapist breaks confidentiality only in issues around safety, around someone's safety.

But other than that, the therapeutic alliance is a complete private secret between client and therapist. private secret between client and therapist and also a good therapist won't give a fuck because a therapist operates under what's known as the core conditions of therapy and they are empathy congruence and unconditional positive regard so when you go to a therapist a good therapist will present with empathy whatever emotions you bring to the room you genuinely get the sense that the therapist believes those emotions and is reflecting them back at you appropriately then you have unconditional positive regard which is very important when you go to a therapist no matter what you say to him, and that includes me going, I'm blind by.

No matter what the fuck you say to a therapist, good or bad, the therapist always gives you unconditional positive regard, which is basically, no matter what you say or do here there's zero judgment you will not be judged here in any way because what i'm interested in is your innate humanity your intrinsic worth that you have that is no greater or lesser than anybody else and then the third thing that a therapist brings is called congruence, emotional congruence. What the therapist says and feels are the same thing. Complete honesty.

You as the client don't get the sense that this therapist is bullshitting me. Or this therapist is trying to charm me. Or this therapist is pretending not to be shocked by the thing I just said. See these are all the things you don't really get in everyday life and everyday conversation unless it's with a very close very trusted person but even that can be difficult because your pre-existing relationship with that person, your partner, your friend, whatever, that comes with baggage. With a therapist you don't have that. With a therapist you have a stranger who's establishing a therapeutic alliance within that room, within the counseling room. So if a therapist gives you empathy, congruence,

and unconditional positive regard, the purpose of that is to create an environment of safety. of regard. The purpose of that is to create an environment of safety. See it's hard to feel safe in the real world when people are judging you or people aren't using empathy they're using sympathy or when people aren't being congruent they're being false because the emotional space doesn't really exist in society for that level of authenticity it'd be too draining so the counselor's office the therapist's office it creates a type of safety that you don't find outside of that place and that safety is where you get to explore emotions that are too painful to explore in everyday life and that that's what counselling is. That's what psychotherapy is.

You're not just sitting down with a person. Talking about your problems and they give you solutions. It's not that at all. It's skilled helping. It's very unique. And you mightn't get it with every fucking therapist as well. That's the thing. It's okay to go to a therapist and go.

We didn't gel and again a good therapist will notice this and flag it with you because it could be that you need to move on to onto the therapist or the therapist could become my da or my ma and I'm not aware of it but all of a sudden I'm projecting these emotions that should be for a parent we'll say all of a sudden onto a therapist and that's quite common that's called transference and it's the therapist's job to identify and flag it and speak about it. The Sopranos is all about fucking transference. Tony Soprano's relationship with his therapist Jennifer Mi. Like he flitters between needing her approval

or thinking he loves her to flat out aggressively hating her. And the script leads us to believe that he's transferring feelings that he has for his mother onto his therapist. But the therapeutic environment in therapy, it's about fucking safety.

It's about a feeling of safety whereby i can explore thoughts feelings or emotions that are far too threatening for me to be experiencing in my kitchen and my long-term goal will be to be able to experience these things in my kitchen and for them to be non-threatening and it will happen because i did it for the past 10 fucking years but the pandemic threw me a wobble I'm going to do a little ocarina pause now because I want to get into the the reasons why I think I need to go back to fucking therapy

and that's what this podcast is turning into this is a self-journaling vulnerability podcast where I'm trying to be as introspective as possible in a way that might be beneficial for ye as well. So here's the ocarina. 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! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real.

Who said that? The first omen. Only in theaters April 5th. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together

and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. That's gone shit, man. What's gone... There you go apologies to any dogs

I hope no dogs crash their cars em that was the ocarina pause you would you would have heard an advert for some bullshit I don't know what they're selling

algorithmically generated adverts support for this podcast you would have heard an advert for some bullshit. I don't know what they're selling. Algorithmically generated adverts. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. If this podcast brings you joy, solace, entertainment, distraction, whatever the fuck, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast because it's my full-time job. This is how I pay my bills. This is how I rent my office to record the podcast. This is how I have the space and time to deliver this podcast every

single week to the consistent level of quality that you're used to. And all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it but if you can't afford that don't worry about it you can listen for free because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free everybody gets a podcast I get to earn a living it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash The Blind Boy Podcast. Also, the Patreon keeps this podcast fully independent. I'm not beholden to any advertisers.

No advertiser can adjust my content, tell me what to speak about. No advertiser can push me towards getting the maximum amount of listens by having reactionary content or clickbait shit or platform and absolute dickheads. No, this is an independent podcast

and each week I speak about something I'm legitimately passionate about. And if I can do that authentically, then I have a podcast that I'm happy with. Catch me on Twitch on Thursday nights doing my never-ending video game musical. Come over to my gig in Brussels for some crack bonus kisses before part 2

but the difference between me going to therapy now and me going to therapy more than a decade ago is I'm bringing mad shit to therapy that is very very unique and not a lot of people will have to deal with and the uniqueness

of it is quite lonely and what I mean there is in my fucking job because my job involves a really really large social media presence as a given multiple strangers either every day or several times a week multiple strangers tell me that they hate me that they want me to die or tell me that they love me and that I'm fantastic and that I've saved their lives and both of those things are fucking mad and I don't think the human brain is equipped to deal with that because it's so recent and so bizarre but for me it's completely normalized and I think I need to fucking deal with that now like even the fact that once a week I talk into a fucking microphone and a million people listen I'm just a people listen. I'm just a regular human being. I'm just a normal person.

So these are strange things and there's no support around them. I don't have anyone to talk about it. I don't have, I don't really have anyone I can ring up and they can go oh yeah that happened to me last week too. I've one or two people in the

public eye at the odd time where we might check in on each other. But regarding people who don't work in entertainment, family members, friends, I can't talk about this because it's too bizarre. There's no frame of reference. And most people think that notoriety is absolutely amazing, the pinnacle of human achievement. How could you not

want thousands of people knowing about who you are? How could that be a bad thing when the reality is it's a novelty for about two weeks and then it becomes so strange and weird that you kind of can't and don't think about it. I'll put things into perspective. It's November 2022. In November 2002, which is 20 years ago, when I was in school and I was a teenager. That's when I, this month 20

years ago, I made my first GeoCities website on the school computer and uploaded some prank phone calls. in 2000 when I was just going into junior cert I think we'd made prank phone calls put them on a couple of CDs and they had gone like viral but before the internet as CDs so all around Limerick while

I was in school all around Ireland there was these CDs of prank phone calls that were really popular but no one knew who made them no one knew it was these two lads in Limerick in school called the Rubber Bandits so in 2002 I made a Geocities website and uploaded some prank phone calls

and that's the first time I put creativity, creative content on the internet in that case comedy sketches in the form of fucking prank phone calls that started to get popular, as popular as something could get in 2002 when there was no social media

but within a week I had strangers calling me a cunt within a week I had vicious from adults, from grown adults, because I remember the first ever hate mail I got, and it was someone talking about their child, so they must have been in their 30s. But hate mail from adults just going, you're shit, you have no talent, you should quit.

Now also loads of other mails from strangers going, this is really funny, this is great, you should quit now also loads of other mails from strangers going this is really funny this is great you should continue but very early as a teenager I realized oh fuck if you put creative work on the internet and lots of people see it a small percentage of those people will hate you so much that they want to hurt your feelings and then I moved on to a Bebo page a few years later in the mid 2000s that had like 15,000 followers then MySpace had 90 or 100,000 followers then Facebook had 300,000 followers then Twitter had another 270,000 followers, then Twitter, and another, 270,000 followers, on and on and on, right up to,

this fucking week, where I started a new account, this week, on a website called Mastodon, so for 20 years straight, and I'd be honest, I doubt there's, I'd be surprised,

if there's anybody else in Ireland, who has maintained, we'll say a high profile internet presence for 20 years solid I can't think of anyone else but for 20 years solid every day all the time I've been harassed

and abused and bullied just as a normal part of my job that's just how it is it doesn't matter what you. That's just how it is. It doesn't matter what you do. That's just what happens. Now, also lavished with praise, but I've never taken the praise on board,

probably because of my incredibly low self-esteem. But I do take the hatred on board. That's much harder to ignore. And I'm not trying to say this shit so to be like oh poor old blind boy what I'm trying to do is to completely strip away the absolute bullshit the nonsense of notoriety or fame or whatever you want to call it strip that away to reveal the actual insanity of my lived experience with this job that I have. This week, for instance,

now you know from listening to this podcast, the past two years in particular, I really try and stay away from Twitter, even though I have 270,000 followers on Twitter, which is, that's a pretty big number for Twitter. But this week, I've been very active on Twitter. I've been posting multiple times a day. Now the reason is, Twitter's after being bought by Elon Musk. No one knows what's going to happen. And this shit is essential to my job, to my career. I can't just like delete Twitter if I don't enjoy it. I've spent 13 years there amassing

270,000 followers and that's essential to my fucking job because I'm an independent artist. I don't have a fucking record company or a huge TV job or any of these things to get myself out there. I have to be self-driven, self-promoted on social media. And it has to be my unique voice behind my social media presence. So all week, I've been posting. And the reason I've been posting is to test the algorithm, to see, is anything changing? Am I getting the same amount of likes?

Am I getting the same amount of retweets? Because I have to strategize. So over the past week, if I look at the impressions on all of my tweets right how many eyes how many human eyes have seen all of my tweets this week it's a couple of million it's about four or five million human eyes have seen my tweets this week now the problem with a couple of million is that a small percentage of that is going to be incredibly hostile people but a small percentage of a couple of million is that a small percentage of that is going to be incredibly hostile people but a small percentage of a couple of million is a couple of thousand and twitter is a very hostile place where hatred and combat and begrudgery are actively rewarded. And I managed to piss off everybody on Twitter this week.

I pissed off the Catholics. I pissed off anti-vaxxers, begrudging hipsters, everybody. Now, I didn't do anything. I didn't do or say anything bad. I wasn't cancelled, as they call it. It's just my increased visibility reminded a lot of people of why they hate me. So I saw fucking tweets, like mean tweets about me, just the usual shit. Oh, he's got no talent. He's an idiot with a bag in his head. He's not funny. His podcast is shit. His books are shit.

The usual stuff. But I saw tweets like that and they got like 500 likes. And this is the point I'm getting at. That's like an irrational fantasy of social rejection. Before I had notoriety and I would go to therapy and I'd be going to therapy for extreme anxiety and extreme fear of social rejection. A fear such as something I say or do will make everybody hate me. It will make hundreds of people hate me. Under normal circumstances, that's like an irrational thought.

That's like, that could never happen. We need to work on why you're catastrophizing to that extent. But no, literally, this is my lived reality. Someone called me talentless and unfunny and useless or whatever, and 500 people agreed. And then I have to go walk away from it and just make a cup of tea. There was a few tweets that had that and similar numbers of reactions. And then I have to block loads of accounts

because when a tweet goes out where a bunch of people are hating on you, then an even smaller number of people are fucking sociopaths. So then I have, not lots, but a small amount of people urging me to end my own life. Now not publicly because that rarely happens publicly, but in my fucking direct messages, and then I just have to report and block, and then block about 80 or 90 accounts a day. Then I have to go through a tweet where like calling me a piece of shit with 500 likes to see who to block,

and then out of the 500, you see one or two people, and it's like, oh fuck, I worked with you once. Oh shit, I know know you I thought you liked me I didn't know you hate me and like I said this is just this is just normal this is just the internet when you have hundreds of thousands of followers you don't even have to do anything bad that this is just how it is once you get a certain point, you're not seen as human anymore.

People don't look at the Blind Boy Twitter account and go, there's a lad in Limerick sitting in his house, and he's just after feeding his two cats. People don't think like that. The reason I'm meditating over this shit is, I never ever say to myself maybe that has me fucked up in the head. Maybe having to read comments with 500 likes about how terrible I am is actually immensely painful, immensely damaging and every time it happens

I have to use incredibly powerful defense mechanisms to make it seem not real and I've been doing that continuously for 20 years solid. I've forgotten what it's like to not have a stranger say that they hate me all the time or for a stranger to say that they love me all the time there's that's the flip side and I think and I mean this if I gave someone someone who doesn't work in entertainment someone who works in an office if I just dropped them straight now into my job they'd end up in a mental hospital in a week see I've been dealing with it for too long I'm 20 years at it so I've developed a a hard exterior like a plaque and a tooth I'm not coping with it I'm not able to deal with it I've managed to compartmentalize it so that it doesn't feel real and why do I feel so confident to say that that if someone had my job for a week they'd go mental because I know a person I know a person who they tweeted something offensive which was worthy of

chastisement we'll say but it went mad viral hugely viral overnight and then they woke up with death threats and they woke up watching hundreds of people saying that they hated them and what happened within 48 hours this person was rushed to hospital this healthy person in their 30s was rushed to hospital with the symptoms of a heart attack and you know how does that happen they did a study in 2003 in the university of california ucla they did this huge fucking study and they found that the human brain experiences like extreme social rejection as real physical pain. We're social animals so when the entire community turns on you we're hardwired to experience that as deeply, deeply painful and stressful.

My job for 20 fucking years is to normalize that, to make it completely normal and to be able to ignore it because that's what allows me to have a career effectively. If I don't have hundreds of thousands of social media followers, I'm fucked. That's how I get my work out there. That's just simply how it is. And just to reiterate, this isn't me whinging. Do I think that people who write shitty posts about me on Twitter are evil, bad people trying to hurt me?

Absolutely not. They're normal people who are just irritated by their day or whatever the fuck, looking for likes and clout on Twitter and they just post something out. Same with the people who like the comment. Nobody is thinking of impact. Twitter is a horrible place.

Being horrible is how you behave on Twitter. That's the algorithm. horrible is how you behave on twitter that's the algorithm the small minority of people who straight up put in effort to try and get me to kill myself they need to be in jail i don't give a fuck what anyone says that's exceptional behavior that's fucking exceptional and anyone anyone who do that society needs to know what the fuck else are they doing. Because that's, that's off the charts. That's very, very bad. And that's a minority.

Like, I'm more hurt by a snarky comment from a fucking hipster than I am by someone telling me to kill myself. Because when that happens, I'm not even thinking about me. I'm thinking, who the fuck is this person who clearly lives somewhere and is around people? And if you're thinking, Jesus, Blind Boy, would you not just hire someone to do your social media? I do. I have someone who will monitor my Twitter account, block people on my behalf, do stuff like that. But me, personally, I have to maintain a fucking regular social media presence and for my voice and observations to be present in my posts that's just my job that's

just how it is and I say this with 20 fucking years of doing this shit I'd say that puts me into a small handful of people in the world 20 years of social media and the internet as my fucking career the day i stop posting with my own authentic unique voice the day i stop doing that is the day my career ends unless i become ariana grande and i don't need to do that and the worst part is these people who do that shit if they heard this podcast do you think they're gonna go oh I never thought of it that way I think I'll stop a tiny percent might the rest will just be like oh my god I think he's talking about my tweet wow and then they'll make fun of me for more clout and call me a whinger and all I can say to these people is stop viewing me

as being above you and then you won't feel the need to take me down a peg because I'm not above you at all I'm just a regular normal fucking human being and if you spent five minutes in my actual real life company you'd see that I'm a kind and decent person and everything you fucking hate about me is a parasocial construct it's your own parasocial relationship with me with a version of me that exists in your head and it's not I just think your work is shit so I want to tell everyone that your work is shit it's not that at Loads of people think my work is shit. Do you know what they are doing? Ignoring me.

They think my work is so shit that I don't even enter into their heads. They're not posting about me. I don't exist to them. If you feel the need to get so emotional about any fucking artist or public figure that you're shitting on them publicly for clout. It's because you're in a parasocial relationship with that public figure and something about their output or their behaviour makes you feel threatened. It's triggering one of your insecurities that you can't take ownership of. Apathy is not liking someone's work. Hatred is passion. I can't believe Blind Boy did a whole

podcast on needing to go to therapy because people were mean to him on the internet. Grow up. No. I'm a fucking human being and it will never not be hurtful when another human being rejects me or tries to hurt me and trying to pretend that that's not the case for 20 years will absolutely fucking put me in therapy yes like I have to bring that up with my therapist by the way being showered with mass hatred and adoration is a daily part of my life coupled with the fact that I'm fucking autistic and I wear a plastic bag in my head and 99% of my life is spent as absolutely nobody, just a normal person.

And this other life where I'm like famous is a complete and utter secret. Like I have to go to a therapist with that. That's grounds for the therapist to look around the room to see if there's a hidden fucking camera. Maybe that's why I'm fucking mental. Maybe that's what this week's podcast is about.

Like in the year 2000 I was a fucking child in school. I made a couple of prank phone calls. Put them on a CD or a mini-disc or whatever, and then like a month later, people had copied it all over the school, and then it was in other schools, and I remember saying to myself,

fuck it, maybe I could be a comedian, maybe that's what I can do. I didn't think, like 22 years later, I'd still be doing this shit and trying to maintain a relatively secret identity that's not a very predictable trajectory to be honest so before I sign off though I do want to not all of my like fucking social media experience is terrible. It's just the terrible bits are quite intense. One thing that keeps me particularly grounded

and sane is Instagram. I don't know what it is about fucking Instagram, but people on Instagram are normal. Like people absolutely hating me is overwhelming and strange people showering praise on me is equally as strange but on Instagram

people are just nice and I want to thank all my Instagram followers because each week I'm blind by boat club on Instagram each week on Instagram normal lovely people give me comments or send me messages and it's just like,

thank you for that podcast. I really liked that. I hope you're well. And I read as many of those comments as I can. I read as many direct messages as I can and I respond to as many as I can. And the simple, normal, pleasant niceness of people on Instagram. I think as well on Instagram it's, on Instagram you're friends with your actual real friends.

So you tend to be the more authentic you. Twitter could be fucking anyone. Most people on Twitter, their followers aren't their actual friends. Twitter's a video game. But on Instagram, people are just themselves. And I can see their pictures. And it's like, here's a lad called Barry. Here's a woman called Marie. And it's just, I like this week's podcast. Thanks for that. Or I'm looking forward to the gig next week. Or even like. You said something on the podcast last week. And it was factually incorrect. So I'm sending you this message.

To give you the correct fact. And there's no performance about it. They're not looking for clout. They're just like. I'm helping you. Or someone might disagree with something I said on the podcast. And they're in my DMs talking to me about it and because it's so fucking normal

and not performative I'm taking that person's opinion on board and there's no emotions present it's literally just about whatever we're talking about Instagram makes me feel not mental I love seeing the names and faces and people who listen to this fucking podcast. Seeing all the human beings

and photographs of your dogs and saying to myself, that's who listens to this podcast. That's who I'm putting this out for. What a lovely, gorgeous bunch of people. I'm so glad that you like my podcast. You seem like a lovely person. Those are the feelings I get from Instagram.

And of course, I have loads of lovely sound people on Twitter too. But it's like crawling over a load of shit-covered broken glass to give you a hug. Alright, dog bless. I'm going to be back next week. There's a strong possibility. Wait, I can't promise week. There's a strong possibility. Wait, I can't promise anything. There's a strong possibility that I have an incredibly special guest. A very, very, very special guest.

Probably the most special I could ever have on this podcast. Right? But she could go wrong between now and then. Right? So I can't promise anything dog bless go fuck yourselves rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the toronto rock hosts the 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.