Pod Insights The Blindboy Podcast A Mental Health plan for Christmas About this episode A diatribe on the emotion of shame as it presents during the festive period Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
0:27 Speaker 01 If you've felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by Hers. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And Hers now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, Hers makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget. If eligible, you'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. Forhers.com/eligible.
1:12 Speaker 01 Weight Loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.
1:28 Blindboy Boatclub? Fart at the edge of heaven, you temporary Brendons. Welcome to the Blind by Podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode to familiarize yourself with the lore of this podcast. But if you're a regular listener, you know the crack. It's wonderfully freezing and icy here in Limerick City.
1:51 Blindboy Boatclub? One of my favourite things about this time of year is that I can, I can put food outside the window instead of putting it in the fridge.
2:03 Blindboy Boatclub? I have a tiny little fridge here in my office.
2:07 Blindboy Boatclub? It'll hold one pint of milk and a sandwich, but the fridge generates a humming noise, which means on podcast recording days, I can't turn my fridge on because it's too noisy. But then I have to put my sandwich and my milk, like, on my desk. But then I can't turn the heat up because the sandwich will get too warm. And the milk, you don't want milk getting warm. Milk will go sour in a matter of hours if it's fucking warm. And sometimes on podcast recording days, I have to navigate the, the violence of milk cardling in a cup of tea. When it goes all fluffy, all fluffy like snowflakes in the tea.
2:53 Blindboy Boatclub? And the thing is, is it's, it's just recently cardled. So you know that if you drink it, it's not going to taste sour. But the texture is off and then you raise it to your lips and you go, this isn't too bad. This isn't too bad. I can deal with this. And then you just notice that fluffy, fluffy milk and you go, fuck this. And it puts you off your next six cups of tea, but not today. It's freezing in Limerick City. The sky looks like a toddler's drawer with a fucking crayon. This perfect, bright blue and a wimpy little yellow horizon. And you can see ice crystals.
3:37 Blindboy Boatclub? And I'm sitting here in my office. The heat is up at 23 degrees, wonderfully toasty. And my sandwich and my milk are outside the window, staying perfectly cold. I don't need to have my fridge on. I love that about this weather. I'm several floors up. My sandwich is secure, so it's not going to fall on anybody below. So there's no fear of that unless a fucking, unless a seagull comes along, but that's highly unlikely. And even if my sandwich did fall, it would, it would startle or inconvenience a person rather than cause injury.
4:18 Blindboy Boatclub? Now, the milk is a different story. You don't want, you don't want a pint of milk falling on someone from several floors. But luckily, I hang the milk on the end of a shoestring. That's how I keep milk outside my window. I hang it on the end of a shoestring. And I've been doing this for several years. I've been doing that for nearly twenty years. I've been asked to leave hotels because of it. Because in my job, I stay in a lot of hotels and in the early days. You see, mi- milk, you'll know this if you stay in hotels as part of your job. Milk places you in a bit of a no man's land when it comes to hotels.
5:01 Blindboy Boatclub? So having a nice cup of tea, like an actual cup of tea, from my own mug with my own tea bags, but fresh milk is hugely important to me if I'm working in hotels so that I can have something to, to ground me. But you'll know this, if, if your job involves travel. Milk specifically places you in a bit of a no man's land in hotels. When you go to the cupboard to open up the, the kettle business. Also, there's a separate podcast about fucking hotel kettles. There's a rumour that air hostesses boil their knickers in hotel kettles. I don't know how true that is, but it sounds plausible enough for me to. I always wash my hotel kettle before I use it.
5:46 Blindboy Boatclub? The only milk that you get in a hotel room is U H T milk, which is disgraceful. But then if you want fresh milk, you're in no man's land. It's not available on the room service menu. You can't purchase it. So the only way to get fresh milk in a hotel room is at the discretion of the bar. So you have to ring up the bar and say, can you send me up a jug of fresh milk? And they'll always say yes, but the thing is, you're effectively asking for a favour. You're asking that barman, can I have free milk? And can you take, take the time to leave the bar and bring me milk? And they'll always do it, but because it's a favour, you can only do it once.
6:32 Blindboy Boatclub? What I've learned actually is the courteous way to do that. Don't ring up and ask for the milk. Walk down to the bar in the hotel yourself and ask for the milk there. And that's the least amount of inconvenience for the bar staff. And it's too much hassle, so early on in my days of gigging, I just stopped doing that. And I said, I bring my own fresh milk to the hotel room. That's what I do. But then you get to the hotel room, not every hotel room has a fridge. So I used to start hanging the milk out the window on the edge of a shoe string. And if I was staying there for a couple of days, I might have a two litre bottle of milk hanging out the window on a shoe string. A bottle of milk at room temperature, eight hours maximum.
7:18 Blindboy Boatclub? Bottle of milk in a warm room, three hours, that's it. So you have to hang it out the window. And I've been asked to leave hotels because of that practice. And I've tried to explain to the hotel manager about the milk limbo, the no man's land that hotels place you in with fresh milk. A lot of them have listened, but they've just said, please, please, we can't have two litre bottles of milk hanging out the window. Okay, I've spoken to the barman, he'll bring you up as much milk as you want. And I did that for, I'd say eight years, until eventually I figured out
7:57 Blindboy Boatclub? if, when you book a hotel and you can never guarantee that there's going to be a fridge in your room. You can't guarantee it unless you say in advance, I have medicine that has to go in the fridge. And if you say that, they have to give you a fridge. So that's what I do now. And now I'm guaranteed a fridge and I keep my fresh milk in the fridge and I don't need to hang it out the window. Sometimes you'll be hit with a wild card and the wild card is, well, this is rare, but they'll say, we can't provide you with a fridge in the hotel room, but there's a fridge at reception and you're more than welcome to bring your medicine down there. I got caught with that this summer.
8:38 Blindboy Boatclub? Stayed in a hotel called, a place called Bexhill, one of the strangest places I've ever been. I stayed in this incredibly hot beach hotel and it was just me and everyone else was in their eighties. And I used to have to go down to reception with my black tea to get them to put the milk into my fucking tea. There was a beach outside the hotel and I nearly died on it.
9:04 Blindboy Boatclub? The beach, it was the same beach that William the Conqueror landed in on ten sixty six. And it was one of those stony English beaches. And I went for a, an evening walk and the tide, the tide started coming in around me in the middle of my walk. And I nearly got like landlocked, is that what you'd call it? Bexhill was a very strange place.
9:30 Blindboy Boatclub? It feels like purgatory, it's so strange. I stayed there for about three nights, I think. It's just such an odd place. I couldn't get a taxi there to walk everywhere. It feels a bit, it's, it's kind of quiet and slow. It feels like it's stuck several years in the past. It's a seaside town.
9:53 Blindboy Boatclub? It feels like you could be dead.
9:58 Blindboy Boatclub? It's like that, it's like you could actually be dead, but you think you're alive, but you're not quite sure. You could be in this, this space that's halfway between life and death, like a waiting room. It was just a weird vibe. I got followed by a dog.
10:17 Blindboy Boatclub? I couldn't get a taxi there, there was no fucking taxis, so I had to walk everywhere and this dog.
10:24 Blindboy Boatclub? The dog was a cr- a cross between a bull terrier and a Labrador. Lanky with those little bull terrier eyes. And it was one of these stray dogs that's not socialized to humans at all. I tried everything, I tried the goodbye, goodbye, no- nothing, nothing.
10:47 Blindboy Boatclub? And wagging wagging the tail, but not in the friendly way, in the anxious way. And I kept walking and walking and the dog kept fucking following me. And then I started, oh, I'm being hunted. I think I'm being hunted. I think this dog is trying to hunt me. The way that the dog was wagging its tail. Felt like it had a curiosity about my pain. It was all excited and I kept looking back and imagining his parents fucking, imagining a bull terrier having sex with a Labrador. And then I just ran. And when I started fucking running, then the dog started running after me. Then I nearly died on the beach and then back to the weird hotel full of all people.
11:30 Blindboy Boatclub? And then the indignity of this boiling hot hotel marching up the reception. And the receptionist going, oh, here's the man. This is the man who lies. Here's the paddy, the paddy who lies about needing a fridge for his medicine when it was about milk all along. Here he is with his pint of black tea, asking me to be the milk custodian. Now, she was actually very nice and she didn't say any of those things. But this was me projecting those thoughts into her head. That's how I felt. The dishonest milk paddy who drowns on beaches and gets hunted by Labrador bulls.
12:12 Blindboy Boatclub? And I had to do that and the woman, the receptionist, taking my milk out of her little fridge and putting it into my tea.
12:21 Blindboy Boatclub? Very purgatory like experience in Bexhill. My memories of Bexhill are way closer to a strange dream than an actual physical place. And then during the middle of my life podcast, there was a giant storm with fork lightning.
12:38 Blindboy Boatclub? Fucking mad experience. And then the last day, the last day in Beck's Hill. I was telling my tour manager Darren, I was saying to him, look, there's the, I have to go up to reception and they have my milk in the fridge and it's the only way I can get a cup of tea. And then Darren is like, there has to be a solution to this. So he goes off and he gets me a cooler. So it's like, we'll have this cooler in your room now, but we gotta, we put ice into it, put bags of ice into it and that's like having a fridge. So I did, but it was so hot. This was like the start of July, it was roasting. It was so hot that the ice was melting after four hours. So then I'm like, I need, I need new ice.
13:22 Blindboy Boatclub? I need to get new ice or the milk is gonna get sour. But like I said, there was no taxis in Beck's Hill. So I had to walk to Aldi. It's about a thirty five minute, forty minute walk. I walked to Aldi and then purchased two like large bags of ice in Aldi. But then, no taxis, I had to walk back to the hotel in a T-shirt. So I'm cradling these two large bags of ice, walking back to the hotel. It was very painful. The ice was like burning my wrists.
14:04 Blindboy Boatclub? And then it was so hot that by the time I'd gotten back to the hotel, the ice had practically melted. A very Sisyphus like experience. Your aunt from Greek mythology had to push the border up the hill and it kept coming down. I went through quite a lot of like dreamlike archetypal trials while I was in, while I was in Beck's Hill. Like real fucking Jungian archetypal shit.
14:34 Blindboy Boatclub? Getting chased by that weird dog. The tide coming around me on the beach. And then having to walk in the hot sun with the ice in it melting. These, they were all like, like weird, bad things that would happen in a dream, like recurring dream shit. And then the irrationality of the old person, nothing against the old people, it's just there was only really, really old people and me, only really, really, really old people and me. And the irrationality and pointlessness of that march back and forth with the black tea and the milk. I don't think I'm gonna go back to Bexhill. If I'm ever doing a gig down that part of England again, I'll go for Hastings instead.
15:18 Blindboy Boatclub? I promised myself this week that I wasn't gonna do any stream of consciousness deviation. Because I really do want to, I'd like to do a straightforward mental health podcast this week. For a number of reasons. I haven't done a mental health podcast maybe in a year, possibly. Also, I'm currently, I'm involved in an active mental health recovery, I suppose you'd say at the moment. The word recovery there might sound a bit harsh.
15:55 Blindboy Boatclub? But I'm actively using tools to, to return to a place where I'm experiencing calm throughout my day. And when emotions pop up, they're experiences that I can observe and respond to, rather than experiences that I immediately react to. So that's an active journey I'm on at the moment. And when I say active. Deliberate daily practice, just like, you know, I'm going to the gym so that I can
16:35 Blindboy Boatclub? get my arms stronger or my legs stronger. I'm deliberately engaging with the daily mental health practice that I want to share with you. And the third reason I'd like to do a mental health podcast is because of the time of year, Christmas is coming up. Christmas can present us with carved balls which require emotional literacy and awareness. I'll give you an example. Now, this, this might be more relevant to my listeners who are in their twenties, but this can happen to anybody, any adult. It's Christmas time. So chances are you don't live at, now here's the thing, if you're fucking in your twenties,
17:19 Blindboy Boatclub? this is what I'm not taking on board. If you're in your twenties, you probably already live at home. Let's say you've emigrated, you've been living in England, maybe Australia.
17:29 Blindboy Boatclub? You return home at Christmas to what's called your, your family of origin. Now you've been living away from home. You've got friends, you have a job, you have an apartment, you're paying rent, you're living as an autonomous adult with responsibilities and you have a new identity, a new adult identity and a feeling of self-worth based around being an autonomous adult. And then you return home to your family at Christmas and suddenly your, your ma or your dad makes a comment or snaps at you or tells you what to do,
18:08 Blindboy Boatclub? speaks to you like, you know, your fucking parent. And then suddenly you regress, you wither back into feelings of, of being a kid. Old insecurities pop up or one of your parents compliments your sibling, but they don't compliment you, or they ask you, when are you going to get married? Or they ask you, are you going to have children? Or a comment is passed about your job because it's your family or your parents in particular, your ma or your dad, it really hurts. You're suddenly evaluating your entire worth as a person and you get this, this feeling.
18:50 Blindboy Boatclub? It's a sudden contraction of the self. One of the worst feelings in the world, to be honest. It's the feeling you get when, if you accidentally, if you've ever accidentally overheard two people talking about you and they're not talking about you in a very nice way. And you hear how people are speaking about you when you're not there. Like everyone that has experienced that, you get this feeling, this sudden contraction of the self. And that shame, that's what that feeling is. Oh, I felt awful, felt small, felt worthless.
19:31 Blindboy Boatclub? That feeling there is actually shame, the sudden contraction of the self. It's what you feel if someone makes a comment about your appearance. If you're in a group and you feel as if you're the butt of a joke. If someone you care about is giving you the silent treatment, the weaponization of silence to punish and emotionally manipulate you. Or if you're back at Christmas and you see your ex and your ex pretends you don't exist and you get that wave over your body that ends in the pit of your belly. The sudden contraction of the self, that's the feeling of shame. That shame, that little moment when you evaluate yourself and you really don't like the results.
20:16 Blindboy Boatclub? It's not pleasant and I'd argue it's, it's one of the most difficult emotions. And we do a lot to try and avoid it. The thing that makes shame quite unique. Now, maybe this is just me speaking from my experience. Maybe it's different for other people. As negative emotions go, shame feels very convincing.
20:43 Blindboy Boatclub? If anger pops up, even if you're really hot headed, there's still a little voice that goes, hold on, let's evaluate this. Same with anxiety, even when it's all consuming, there's a sense that you're evaluating it. But when shame comes in, that sudden contraction of self, it feels very convincing, it feels true. And shame is, it's when you globally evaluate your entire worth. It's when you come home for Christmas and your parent or sibling makes a comment about your career or your appearance.
21:25 Blindboy Boatclub? And then you shrink in that moment, you're globally evaluating your entire worth. Romantic rejection, some people experience shame. If, if someone they fancy turns them down, even if they're on a fucking night out and they're trying to chat up a stranger and the stranger isn't attracted to them. Some people experience that contraction of self, that feeling of shame. Like, you hear me speak a lot about fear of, uh, fear of failure. Like in my job as an artist, I have to try to fail frequently. So that it's not something I'm afraid of and to understand that failure is part of the process. But what is it for me that's so terrifying about failure?
22:12 Blindboy Boatclub? It's not the failing, it's the shame that I feel when I do fail. I mentioned a particularly bad review I got once for, for one of my books. Very harsh review. But that review, how I reacted to that review, put me in a position where I had writer's block for nearly a year. What did I feel when I read the review? Shame.
22:39 Blindboy Boatclub? This reviewer, this critic has found me out. I'm talentless, I'm worthless. Any success I've ever had before, that was a complete accident. It was a fluke. And this person has found out the truth that I'm absolutely pathetic, useless, stupid, talentless, worthless. An entire contraction of self. That shame, that is shame. That's my shame. Shame that I learned as a little autistic child in school. Trying my best to fit in and be normal like all the other kids and I can't. And then feeling the pain of the judgment from the teachers and internalising that as shame.
23:22 Blindboy Boatclub? And I work on failure because I can't allow the price of failure to be the feeling of shame. I need to fail so that when I do fail, it just means, ah, I fucked up this piece of work today. Excellent, I learned something, let's try again. That's the healthy way to do it. Not, I failed, I'm a worthless, pathetic, talentless piece of shit and now this critic has found out. If we live our lives as humans, if we allow our worth to be defined by other people's approval of us, then the price you're gonna pay is shame. The sudden contraction of self, the sudden sense that you're evaluating yourself globally, your entire worth.
24:07 Blindboy Boatclub? But here's the thing about shame. It's never accurate. Shame is actually bullshit. It's completely inaccurate. It's an unhealthy emotion. You're sitting down at Christmas dinner, your mother or your father makes a comment and it's negative about your job or where you're at in life. And you feel that sudden contraction of self and you globally...
24:37 Blindboy Boatclub? You feel worthless. You evaluate your entire worth in that moment. Because your ma doesn't approve of your career. And it feels so convincing. And it's objectively wrong. It's simply incorrect. It's not correct. What it tells you, and it's very common, is you've placed a hell of a lot of value on your mother's approval. When you were a little kid, your parents gave you love and approval. If you got good results in school, or if the teacher said that you were good, you internalised that. And now as an adult, your self-worth is dependent on those same external conditions of approval. And now internal conditions of approval too.
25:21 Blindboy Boatclub? And now you feel worthless. You feel shame. The reality is, another adult, your mother, is speaking out of turn, being a little bit rude. And they don't approve of where your fucking career is at. Sometimes with a fucking parent. If a parent is carrying their own shame, nothing you do is good enough. Nothing you do can be good enough to keep certain parents happy because their own shame means that nothing that comes from them could be worth anything anyway. And they're projecting their shame on you. So nothing you do is good enough. But really, your ma's not too happy with where your job is at? So now therefore you're a useless, worthless person
26:06 Blindboy Boatclub? who deserves to feel that your sense of self is contracting into nothingness? That's horseshit. That's bullshit. Just feels convincing. It doesn't mean it's real. Shame is deeply unhealthy. And because it's so convincing, it's one of those unhealthy emotions that we react to rather than respond to. And by react, what I mean is, the feeling of shame comes on. You wither. You feel the contraction of self. And it spirals into, oh my god, oh my god, this feels awful. I'm worthless. I'm terrible. Oh god. No truer words have been spoken. I feel exposed. The truth is out there. I'm worthless. And you want to hide yourself away. And that's a reaction.
26:50 Blindboy Boatclub? And what I'm trying to work on at the moment, not just with shame, but several other unhealthy emotions.
26:58 Blindboy Boatclub? Is to be calm enough to observe them. So when something like shame comes up, that contraction of self, I go, oh, there's shame. Oh, I know that one. A piece of information has just threatened my sense of identity. And now I'm globally evaluating myself as worthless. I wonder, is this accurate? And then, when you observe shame, when you respond to the triggering event rather than react, you can flip shame into regret. Now, what's the difference between shame and regret? Because regret isn't particularly pleasant either. With shame, it's a complete global evaluation,
27:42 Blindboy Boatclub? negative evaluation of your entire sense of worth, who you are. With regret, it's a flexible disappointment about a thing you've done or an aspect of your behaviour. So let's just say your ma does make a shitty, a shitty comment about your job or your career or wherever the fuck you're at. Sometimes when you feel that intense shame, it's because the triggering event, the thing that was said, it strikes a bit of a nerve. There might be a grain of truth in there. And that's what hurts so much. So your ma hits you with, it's just you spent all those years in college. I'd have hoped you wouldn't still be working in an office. With shame,
28:26 Blindboy Boatclub? it's, I'm worthless, pathetic, useless. With regret, it's... Do you know what? A part of me agrees with her. I know I'm working in the office because it's easy and it pays the rent. But I'd prefer to be pursuing what I studied in that degree. Can I constructively use this feeling of regret to motivate myself? You see, you can do something with regret. You can't do much with shame. And to draw it back to my own experience, when I got that negative review for my second book and I got writer's block, I was experiencing deep shame.
29:04 Blindboy Boatclub? A shame so painful, I couldn't access my creativity and that put me into a loop. It took me a year to move from intense shame to the healthy emotion of regret. First off, the person who wrote the review, they were being unnecessarily cruel for clicks. But also, some of their critiques about my writing, they had a point. These were areas that I could improve on. And when I accepted that, the feeling of regret there, I fucking studied and I got better and honed my craft. And none of those issues appeared in my third book. And having done that,
29:44 Blindboy Boatclub? I now realise, looking back on that review, which was like 2019, so that's nearly seven years ago. The things that that review picked at in my writing, it's just basic shit that you learn if you have the privilege of studying writing at third level. If you study creative writing in college, there's things around story structure, how to develop your character, there's all these standard things that you can actually learn. Not rules, but guidelines. Now, you can't learn talent, but with any art, you can learn technique. And with my first two books, I was just coming from the gut.
30:26 Blindboy Boatclub? An innate understanding of how to write stories, just being able to do it. But I was also very clearly someone who hadn't studied writing. And to be, to be the best version of yourself as an artist, you want both. You want your own innate, inimitable creative voice, but you also wanna be fully conversant with the established rules and techniques so that you can discard them and do something original. But the thing is, in my first book, I was breaking rules, which is a good thing. You wanna be breaking rules, but I didn't understand the rules that I was breaking. A skilled piece of art isn't necessarily about breaking rules.
31:11 Blindboy Boatclub? It's about understanding the rules so intimately that you can bend them in the right places. And now, several years after that review that crushed me, that I felt deep, deep shame over, I now go, fucking hell. I was getting critiqued over shit that I can just read out of a book. I can't believe I was so foolish.
31:34 Blindboy Boatclub? To call myself worthless over this, to think that this was confirmation that I had no value or talent, or that my work, to think that my work was absolute shit and, and if I'd done anything good before, that it was, it was an accident, a complete fluke. I'm speaking about this because that's a lived experience example that I have of how I turned shame into regret and then made regret into something quite constructive. It was a wonderful learning experience and I'm really glad that I got that really harsh, cruel review of my work. I came out the other end of that. I nearly gave up. It was
32:19 Blindboy Boatclub? so bad. The writer's block I got was so bad. The feeling of, of shame and worthlessness and having no talent and no worth was so extreme that I very nearly just said, "Podcast is over. That's it, lads. I'm, I'm quitting this. I'm gonna go back to college and, and maybe train to be a psychotherapist again. I need to give up on, on art." I nearly got there, only for having the, I have the emotional literacy to know that if, if I'm feeling that way, that self-destructive, that it needs to be interrogated and investigated. I'm
32:58 Blindboy Boatclub? speaking about shame because during the Christmas period, you, you might be thrown into a number of situations that threaten your sense of identity. You've been living in Manchester for the past two years. Now you're going back home to Cork for Christmas. You see school friends that you haven't seen in fucking years and then one of them shocks you because they arrive in, in a Mercedes or they have a brilliant job or someone you went to college with and you did the exact same course and now they have a fantastic job that you'd love and you don't have it and you both went to the same college course. And then the first thing that you feel...
33:44 Blindboy Boatclub? Is that sudden overwhelming contraction of self? Suddenly another, another human being's possession has you globally evaluating your entire worth as a human being and being disgusted with the results. And usually what happens there, like, cause that's a deeply painful, like shame is very painful. So what happens? You feel that contraction of self. Uh-oh, too painful. In comes the secondary emotion of jealousy to protect you from that feeling of shame. Fucking prick with his Mercedes. His dad probably bought it for him anyway. And now you're being rude. Cause the secondary emotion of jealousy has come in to protect your, your sense of identity from the intense feeling of shame.
34:29 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm speaking about this because
34:33 Blindboy Boatclub? half the battle is at least now having a name for that.
34:39 Blindboy Boatclub? We speak about anxiety. We speak about depression. We speak about anger. You know, you rarely hear people talking about shame. The sudden contraction of self. If you're listening to this podcast and going, oh, is that what that is? Is that what that is? That fucking awful, terrible feeling? When I, I receive information about myself that makes me look at how I am in life and I feel like fucking shit. Is that what that's called? Is that called shame? Like having emotional literacy. The capacity to attach words to certain feelings. That's half the battle because then you see when it pops up. Now you have a word to go, I notice shame. I'm feeling shame now. Oh, this isn't very nice at all.
35:23 Blindboy Boatclub? I'm noticing that I, I'm, I'm, I'm noticing that I feel like a worthless piece of shit. And I'm actually saying this to myself. I'm noticing all this. I wonder is this accurate? Am I actually a worthless pathetic, um, piece of shit because a fella from college has a Mercedes? I wonder, let's see if we can try regret instead. You know, if there is a little part to me, I'm a bit disappointed, bit disappointed that I didn't pursue the thing that my degree is in, but there was a number of reasons that I didn't do that. But what a lovely opportunity now, it's after telling me something about myself and my motivations. Maybe there's goals I can work towards. And earlier there, when I felt like a tiny useless pathetic piece of shit
36:07 Blindboy Boatclub? because I didn't pursue my college degree, not at all, that just tells me that I've placed, I've inaccurately placed my self-worth in external achievements. No aspect of my behaviour or anyone else's behaviour can define my worth because I have intrinsic worth, which is the exact same as everyone else's. Correctly recognising and labelling the emotion of shame, the thing we feel when something causes us to evaluate our, our worth.
36:38 Blindboy Boatclub? Another one, just while I'm speaking about shame.
36:42 Blindboy Boatclub? Misogynists and incels and these, what you'd broadly define as, as toxic masculinity. A lot of what I notice is, is shame. Now, there's many contributing factors, right? There's a culture of misogyny, patriarchy, male entitlement, but on the individual level, a lot of these young lads, they're not, not all fucking young lads, grown adult men of all ages, who hate women, who fucking hate women and who are deeply toxic online. People who enjoy Andrew Tate and agree with his views.
37:30 Blindboy Boatclub? Those lads' entire sense of self-worth depends upon the approval of women. And the, the, the women aren't doing this, that those men have made that choice. I mean, you're in a nightclub, there's a girl you fancy. You go up and try and, try and make a move or whatever, she's not interested. Are you a worthless, pathetic, unlovable piece of shit now? No. Ah, fuck. That's disappointing. Fuck it, I'll get a kebab. Try again tomorrow. Now, that's a very, I'm an elderly man, so that's quite a, a mid 2000s romantic encounter that isn't taking Tinder into consideration.
38:11 Blindboy Boatclub? So these misogynistic men, their sense of self-worth depends upon whether women approve of them or are attracted to them. And if they get, if their advances are rejected, they experience shame, that deep contraction of self. And some of them too, because I remember, I remember from, from nightclubs years ago, they would hate girls, girls who haven't even rejected them. They would hate a girl because in their mind, she's going to reject them. It's like you over there, girl over there.
38:54 Blindboy Boatclub? You can see how utterly small and pathetic and weak I feel about myself. And the fact that you're not attracted to me confirms that, and I hate you for that. There, there was lads who used to bump into girls. They'd be walking around the nightclub and you'd see, they'd bump into girls and say, what the fuck is that? He fantasized in his head that this girl he's never even spoken to has already rejected him and thinks that he's worthless and pathetic and small. And now his fury is. And they use that, the hatred there, the shame, the contraction of self, this inhibitory, this feeling of smallness, of weakness, of weakness, of powerlessness.
39:39 Blindboy Boatclub? The hatred that controls the misogyny steps in to restore the sense of power, to, to protect him from the feeling of shame. And none, none of this is, I'm not trying to say this is women's fault, that a woman rejecting a man is creating that feeling of shame. Rejection is, is part of being alive. Someone you fancy is not gonna fancy you back and that's part of life. We've all had our hearts broken, we've all been rejected by someone at some point. When you're really young, it's hard not to experience that as a global evaluation of yourself as a human being.
40:19 Blindboy Boatclub? That if the person that you fancy doesn't fancy you back, then no one can fancy you. You're unlovable. But as you emotionally mature, you realise, oh, that people are attracted to different people for whatever reasons. Everybody is different. Your best friend could be head over heels over somebody and you mightn't even rate them at all. But the misogynistic men, the lads filled with hate towards women, they've globally placed their entire self-worth in whether a woman rejects them or not, or in a woman's approval.
40:57 Blindboy Boatclub? These men's feelings of worth is quite low and any hint of rejection or disapproval or disinterest from a woman is proof of this. And then the anger and hatred restores the feeling of power and there's an entire societal structure built around this. I'm not getting emotional here, I just have a quivering voice from the remnants of my sore throat a couple of weeks back. Let's have an Macarena pause. So, I don't have my Macarena, but what I do have, so speaking of sore throats, so I
41:37 Blindboy Boatclub? had just like a regular fucking flu, just the bullshit flu or cold that's going around. I had it about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, wasn't even that bad, but I've got...
41:52 Blindboy Boatclub? Post-viral, it's post-viral phlegm. So every morning, my throat is sore and I've got a chesty cough and I'm not actively sick. It's just my body is producing mucus from the inflammation of when I was sick. It's very annoying. I'd love to get rid of it. And one thing I have, which I've been told is good at getting rid of it. And this is what I'm gonna do instead of an Ocarina Pots, because I have a bottle of it here. It's a supplement, it's a bodybuilding supplement called NAC. This isn't an advertisement, this is generic, you can fucking buy it anywhere, it's not an advertisement. It's a thing called NAC, it's an amino acid, but apparently this thing is very, very good
42:36 Blindboy Boatclub? at loosening up annoying post-viral mucus. So let's, I'm gonna shake this fucking NAC, this bottle of NAC, and you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit, alright?
42:51 Speaker 00 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a berry chantilly cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
43:19 Speaker 01 If you've felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by Hers. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And Hers now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, Hers makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget. If eligible, you'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. Forhers.com/eligible.
44:03 Speaker 01 Weight Loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.
44:17 Speaker 03 Soft, cushy, plush, cozy. Soft, smooth, buttery, marshmallow-y, warm. Soft. Socks, underwear, tees, and more. Bombas. Everyday comfort worth obsessing over. Visit bombas.com/audio and use code AUDIO for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash AUDIO. One purchase equals one donated, always.
44:52 Speaker 00 Cheers to fall savings at Whole Foods Market, home of higher ingredient standards. This Halloween, share chocolates and candies made without that spooky high fructose corn syrup. Throwing a party? Make it easy with a Berry Chantilly Cake. Ready to cook pizza? No antibiotics ever chicken wings. And sushi made fresh daily. Fall gatherings never tasted better. Save through November 3rd at Whole Foods Market.
45:20 Speaker 01 If you've felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone. Enter Weight Loss by Hers. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And Hers now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the Wegovy pill and the Wegovy pen. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, Hers makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget, if eligible. You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit forhers.com/eligible to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash eligible. Forhers.com/eligible.
46:04 Speaker 01 Weight Loss by Hers is not available in all 50 states. Wegovy is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wegovy clinical study information, and restrictions, visit forhers.com.
46:18 Speaker 03 Soft, cushy, plush, cozy. Soft, smooth, buttery, marshmallow-y, warm. Soft. Socks, underwear, tees, and more. Bombas. Everyday comfort worth obsessing over.
46:36 Speaker 03 Visit bombas.com/audio and use code AUDIO for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash AUDIO. One purchase equals one donated, always.
46:52 Blindboy Boatclub? Oh, a nice shake, actually. I thought it would be harsher than that. I don't want to shake it so much that I fuck the tablets up. Gentle shake.
47:09 Blindboy Boatclub? That was the Ocarina Pause. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills. Something which brought me a feeling of shame, actually, last week was on the phone to my mother, and my mother was at a funeral, and she met another woman, another elderly woman. And the elderly woman said, "What does your son do?" And my ma says, "Oh, he has a podcast." And then the other elderly woman said, "But what does he do to earn a living?" And that briefly made me feel a contraction of self, a feeling of shame.
47:52 Blindboy Boatclub? And then I stopped and I said, "Oh, there's that feeling of shame. Have I placed myself worth in the opinions of an elderly woman I've never met? Do I deserve to feel small and tiny and worthless because there's an elderly woman at a funeral who thinks that I don't earn a living from podcasting? Am I this foolish? Does that seem rational?" So I challenged this and said, "This, this actually isn't worth thinking about at all. This actually, I don't even have to move to regret on this. There's, it's perfectly rational. I'm not even sure if this woman knows what a podcast is. No disrespect to her, right? But I do earn a living from this podcast. Ma.
48:41 Blindboy Boatclub? This is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. And it's only possible because of you glorious cunts, because of ye patrons out there. So if you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you marked, merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck, please consider paying me for the work that I put into this podcast. All I'm looking for is the price of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month. That's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. You listen for free. Listen for free, because the person who's paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. Wonderful model, based on kindness and soundness.
49:25 Blindboy Boatclub? Patreon.com forward slash theblindbypodcast. If you're a new patron, don't sign up on the Apple Podcast app, because Apple will take 30%. Do it on a browser. And if you enjoy this podcast, please try and recommend it to a friend. If you have a friend who you think would be into this podcast, just tell them about it and say, "Give this a listen, you might like that." And I say that because social media is collapsing. There's no more social media anymore. And the algorithm is disappearing. The algorithm is now run by AI. So for anyone who's creating content out there, you can't even game the algorithm anymore.
50:10 Blindboy Boatclub? It's completely AI. And this is why Instagram, which is the only fucking social media left, really, it's why your feed feels nuts. There's no more algorithm, it's AI trying to predict what it thinks you want to see. So if you like this podcast, or any other fucking creator that you enjoy, just recommend it to a friend, recommend it to a person. Upcoming gigs in 2026. So a lot of my gigs are setting out quick, because people are buying them for Christmas, thank you very much. But I'm in Waterford in January on the 23rd, the Theatre Royal, then I'm in Nice at the Spirit of Kildeare Festival, glamorous stuff.
50:53 Blindboy Boatclub? Then in February, we move on to Vicar Street, Wednesday, which is the 4th of February in Vicar Street. That gig, that's very nearly sold out, very few tickets left for that.
51:08 Blindboy Boatclub? To the point that I'm putting on a second night, but it's not till like April. Okay. So because that gig is selling out so quickly, we're doing a second night in like April or whatever. But if you want to come to that Ficker Street gig, or if you're thinking of getting it as a Christmas present for someone, we're down to like 50 tickets. All right. Belfast on the 12th, selling out very quickly too. And then Galway Leisure Land, those are my favourite gigs. Oh, Kilkenny in the eye neck, where my dressing room is in a broom closet. Yum yum. I'm going to be going to Kilkenny. Ah, fucking, not Kilkenny, Killarney, bollocks. How did I get the two of them mixed up? Will they sound similar?
51:46 Blindboy Boatclub? What can I say about, I love Killarney. I like that venue. My dressing room is legitimately a tiny dark broom closet. And then at the back door by the swimming pool, there's, there's a big bush and I always take a piss in there because the toilet is too far away.
52:08 Blindboy Boatclub? And sometimes I might smoke a roly, even though I don't, I don't smoke cigarettes, but whatever it is about that venue, it's one of the security guards always rolls me a roly because he feels sorry for me that I'm in the broom closet and then I smoke the roly while I'm pissing into that bush near the swimming pool at the back of the hotel. Glamorous rock and roll stuff, lads. So come along to that gig. March Carlo, get in Carlo. Oh, yes. Very few tickets for that. That's a small gig. Cork down in the Opera House. Should we love Cork? Limerick's older brother. And then, where am I? Loads of, fucking Limerick, right? Limerick City, my
52:50 Blindboy Boatclub? hometown. University of Limerick Concert Hall there in the, what is that? The 9th of April? Come along to that there for the crack. I can't, so this isn't on sale yet, but I will be in Germany this year. Then October, even though it's a year away, this is, this is actually selling quite quickly. Tour of England, Scotland and Wales. Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham, and no fucking, no Bexhill. All right. Can you hear that? It's raining. It's raining. It's raining really heavily outside. I didn't expect to speak about shame, exclusively about shame.
53:37 Blindboy Boatclub? I didn't realise that Christmas,
53:41 Blindboy Boatclub? that shame is the big Christmas emotion. Well, there's other ones.
53:48 Blindboy Boatclub? I mean, we can't assume that Christmas is nice for everybody.
53:54 Blindboy Boatclub? For years and years, Christmas was awful for me because my dad was dead. So if you've lost a family member, Christmas instantly becomes shit. If you have a family where there's a high level of conflict or dysfunction, then Christmas can become scary. Instead of an enjoyable thing, it becomes, are my brothers gonna kick the head off each other? Similarly, addiction.
54:23 Blindboy Boatclub? You could have a family member who's on the dry all year and then Christmas is the trigger. And now this person that's not drinking is drinking again. And then the whole family's in chaos. If you come from a family that doesn't have a good time at Christmas, you can feel,
54:42 Blindboy Boatclub? you can be reminded and feel, I don't know, jealousy or envy. It can feel quite unfair that other families are having enjoyable Christmases. You can feel pressure. Some people are alone at Christmas and that's absolutely fucking grand.
55:01 Blindboy Boatclub? I've done many Christmases by myself because of being artistic. A choice, the choice to go,
55:11 Blindboy Boatclub? fuck it. The thought of having to go to this person's house for Christmas or I'm gonna go to this place and it's mostly gonna be, there's gonna be strangers there, so there's gonna be a fuckload of small talk. There's been a few Christmases where I've just simply made the choice to go, I'm gonna go it alone this year. Or maybe I've been struggling with burnout and I know that an entire day of speaking to people and masking isn't gonna be the best result. And even though I'm making that choice, I'm chosen to be by myself. You still get the little glimmers of loneliness.
55:52 Blindboy Boatclub? Even when being by yourself on Christmas Day is a hundred percent an adult choice that you're making.
56:00 Blindboy Boatclub? A dark loneliness can set in where you start feeling sorry for yourself.
56:06 Blindboy Boatclub? And half the battle is emotional literacy. I wanted to go through some thinking errors, they're called this week, but I suppose the big one I want to chat about, and this is why emotional literacy is important, to mindfully be able to notice and label emotions as they pop up, especially the negative or the unhealthy ones, is, let's just go with shame again, because like I said, shame, when it pops up, is very convincing. Emotional reasoning is what happens when an intense feeling comes over you and then you treat that feeling as a fact.
56:49 Blindboy Boatclub? So shame comes up and shame is that the sudden contraction of self and you feel worthless and small and then because you feel that way, your thoughts then scan for the reasons to confirm that feeling. Yeah, I am worthless, I am fucking small. What about that thing and that thing? I'm pathetic. What about that person who's so much better than me? And now all of your thoughts, your thinking and confirming to yourself to find reasons to confirm and, and prove as fact, this intense emotion that you're feeling.
57:30 Blindboy Boatclub? And then that goes into a loop and you feel the emotion and, and this can be your mindset all day long. And when emotional reasoning kicks in, it stops you from, from finding contradictory information. Let's just, as I mentioned there, there, there's been years where I've made the, the adult choice to go, I'm going to do Christmas by myself this year.
57:55 Blindboy Boatclub? And that's a rational choice based on my sensory needs. It's like, no, I'm, I'm not able for it. If I go to that person's house for Christmas, there'd be like six people I've never met.
58:10 Blindboy Boatclub? That puts a lot of pressure on me to do small talk. That's difficult. I'm gonna have to rehearse what to say. I'm gonna have to predict the chances that are gonna happen. All of this eye contact, looking at body language, making sure that I don't drink to compensate for the stress of it. Fuck it, I'll actually be so much happier if I just stay by myself. It'd be much more suited to my needs to stay by myself. And I'll make a rational decision like that. And then I'm there by myself on Christmas Day, having a great time, eating a lovely dinner that I cook for myself, playing Playstation, and I'll get the wave of loneliness.
58:53 Blindboy Boatclub? I'll hear the neighbours having crack, and I'll start to wallow in self pity and say, "Look at you on your own, worthless, pathetic. Nobody wants you. Nobody wants you at Christmas time. You're a burden. You're a burden on other people. Big, weird, strange, autistic freak." And then I have to go, "Hold on a minute. This sounds like self pity and a bit of shame. What's that about?" Ah, I noticed that the feeling of loneliness, that was powerful. Then I felt a bit of shame. And then my mind took these feelings as absolute fact and tried to confirm them using words.
59:38 Blindboy Boatclub? But actually, all that shit I just said to myself is bullshit. I was invited to someone's gaff for Christmas. They wanted me there, they asked me. I'm not there because I myself chose not to. There's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that nobody wants me. But what I've described there is emotional reasoning. When negative emotions pop up and they can be overwhelming. If we don't catch them, if we don't have the emotional literacy to name them, our thoughts will try and confirm, try and find information in our environment to fit that emotion. Feelings aren't facts.
1:00:21 Blindboy Boatclub? Shame is the biggest example of that. There's no such thing as being worthless and small and pathetic. There is no such thing as that. That doesn't exist.
1:00:33 Blindboy Boatclub? You can do things that you regret. You can behave in ways that aren't very nice. But those are behaviours. Behaviours don't define worth.
1:00:47 Blindboy Boatclub? Human beings have worth, simply because we're human beings. We all have intrinsic worth. We all have the exact same worth. I've got no more worth than anybody else. No one else is worth more than me.
1:01:00 Blindboy Boatclub? Because we're human beings. And, and human beings are really complex. And we're so complex that you can't evaluate one human being against another. Behaviour is different, but behaviour doesn't define worth. So shame, the sudden contraction of self, the feeling of having zero worth. It's, it's always bullshit. Whether you're, you're looking at another person and looking at what they have or who they are. And, and then this, you're looking at them and then evaluating yourself as being worthless because of what someone else has. It's completely inaccurate.
1:01:40 Blindboy Boatclub? And if you can name it and spot it, then you can challenge it and go, I know this doesn't feel nice, but maybe it's regret instead. What am I regretful about? And the point is, you can do something with regret. You can't do much with shame, other than get into a shame spiral. But regret, you can go, yeah, I do feel bad about this. Let's, let's set some goals. Let's have some ambition. Let's try and change this. What can we do here? So Christmas is the season of shame. The season where you have to watch out for fucking shame. Alright, dog bless. Wink at a swan.
1:02:18 Blindboy Boatclub? Fart at a kestrel. Geneflect to a wren. I'll hopefully have a podcast for you next week. My voice is country, you can hear it. It's, it's on the, it's on the quivering end. It's quivering. And next week is Christmas week. But I've never missed a Christmas before. So I'll see what I can pull out of my hope. I'm half considering a walk and talk podcast that I could do in one take. I've got a lovely new lavalier microphone that I can walk around with. And there's an, an 18th century cannon by a bridge that I have some strong opinions about that I might visit and talk about. We'll see.
1:03:00 Blindboy Boatclub? Doug Bliss
1:03:11 Speaker 04 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
Previous The medieval origins of 2fm Radio DJ voice Next Stories to listen to with your family or on a Christmas walk Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated