Speaker 1: To me, bravery is back to that place that's never
Speaker 1: been wounded. Bravery is is just that acknowledgment that there's
Speaker 1: something in you that, no matter how dark or difficult
Speaker 1: things get, or how intense life can feel, sometimes there
Speaker 1: is a party that no one's ever got there, and
Speaker 1: no one's ever wounded. And I think that keeping that
Speaker 1: in the back of your head brings this level of
Speaker 1: bravery out.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: ne'all Breslin to the podcast. Nei'all is one of Ireland's
Speaker 2: most formidable and inspiring mental health advocates and public speakers.
Speaker 2: He is the lead singer and songwriter for The Wizards
Speaker 2: and was a coach on the Voice of Ireland. Is
Speaker 2: award winning mental health charity A Lust for Life teaches
Speaker 2: young people to be effective guardians of their own minds.
Speaker 2: He works with a diverse range of clients, including Apple, Google, International,
Speaker 2: NGOs and the European Parliament. Y'all host the Where Is
Speaker 2: My Mind and Wake Up wind Down podcasts, both of
Speaker 2: which are regularly in the UK and Ireland's top podcast charts.
Speaker 2: In this episode, I talked in n'all Breslin about mental health.
Speaker 2: During his early days as an entertainer and athlete, y'all
Speaker 2: has always tried to put his best foot forward, but
Speaker 2: behind this confident exterior, he was silently suffering. It was
Speaker 2: only after he came forward about his struggles that he
Speaker 2: sought the help he needed. Instead of avoiding negative emotions, ne'
Speaker 2: all encourages us to face them bravely, either through therapy
Speaker 2: or mindfulness. We also touch on the topics of education, introspection, resilience, community,
Speaker 2: and empowerment. I really enjoyed this chat with y'all. I
Speaker 2: found him incredibly sensitive and really touching. There were definitely
Speaker 2: moments in this episode in which I teared up, and
Speaker 2: I really like his message that we can find parts
Speaker 2: of ourselves that aren't wounded, and that we should search
Speaker 2: for those parts of ourselves because.
Speaker 3: We all have light within us. I really loved that message.
Speaker 3: It really resonated with me, and I know to resonate
Speaker 3: with you too, so that further Ado I'll bring you
Speaker 3: and y'all love to meet you, lovely to meet you too.
Speaker 3: It's been fun researching you.
Speaker 1: Oh God, Jesus, that's always when when you hear that,
Speaker 1: you go oh no. As a fear factor.
Speaker 3: What does he know?
Speaker 1: What does he know? Yeah, what does he know? That
Speaker 1: sounds like a treat, but I'm going to take it
Speaker 1: as not a non threatening thing to say. But well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's some people say that. But we'll see how
Speaker 1: we get on.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's all. It's all been an interesting
Speaker 3: journey for you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: You said somewhere in the first fifteen years of your
Speaker 3: life you were struggling every day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose the context behind that would have been.
Speaker 1: I always believe that it's some form of kind of
Speaker 1: post traumatic stress kind of thing going on. I moved
Speaker 1: to Israel when I was thirteen and lived there with
Speaker 1: my dad, and there was a what is now called
Speaker 1: Operation Accountability, but we were in Middle so it was
Speaker 1: my first realization that I'm not safe. But actually, when
Speaker 1: I really went into the therapeutic journey with my psychologists
Speaker 1: and therapist, it was really a physically abuse of primary school.
Speaker 1: That was the impact. That's what kind of I believe
Speaker 1: had the kind of prevailing impact on my psychology throughout
Speaker 1: my life because I learned to do what probably most
Speaker 1: people would have done. I just immediately cut myself off
Speaker 1: emotionally from the world and it worked really well. But then,
Speaker 1: as I said, as I got older, it became quite
Speaker 1: destructive and throughout the nineties in Ireland. You know, the
Speaker 1: only time I ever heard mental health mention was when
Speaker 1: Kirk Cobain died and I asked my Christian brother teacher
Speaker 1: what happened, and he punched his desk and called him
Speaker 1: a coward. So, you know, a lot of my work
Speaker 1: is really not around the psychology of the individual, but
Speaker 1: I've become so interested in the kind of cultural, social,
Speaker 1: liegical elements of mental health and how when I really
Speaker 1: look at it, how could many of us be any
Speaker 1: other way? And the impact culture has and society has
Speaker 1: on the individual is something I'm immensely interested in because
Speaker 1: I had a profound impact on me. Are you an introvert?
Speaker 3: Have you thought about that?
Speaker 1: See it's kind of strange. I know, I'm a front
Speaker 1: man in a band. You know, people say, how could
Speaker 1: you be that just because I was weirdly enough, completely
Speaker 1: comfortable on stage And people ask me why, Because most
Speaker 1: musicians will tell you it's almost an alter ego. When
Speaker 1: you go on stage. It's almost a different form of
Speaker 1: reality that you're taking, and for me, it was a
Speaker 1: brilliant place to be because I was myself and that
Speaker 1: was an escape that I really liked. And I loved music,
Speaker 1: and I loved the intensity and the noise and the
Speaker 1: aggression and the collectiveness of being in a band when
Speaker 1: there's four or five people and you're like looking at everyone, going,
Speaker 1: we all have a part to play here and if
Speaker 1: anyone messes up, and I love that. So in terms
Speaker 1: of an introvert socially, I think I am socially and
Speaker 1: particularly I can be particularly awkward at times, but I yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm I think once I know the person,
Speaker 1: I'm incredibly good and I love I love conversations and
Speaker 1: I love love chats. But I can be an introvert.
Speaker 1: I do like my own company. That's probably a good
Speaker 1: way bullet mm hm, you know, probably too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. And I think to the point is,
Speaker 1: especially the careers that I went on television, music, the
Speaker 1: entire part of my job was to care what the
Speaker 1: public thought of us, which when I look over my life,
Speaker 1: absolutely was the single worst career I could have took.
Speaker 1: Because I know, that's so cool, that's so cool. I
Speaker 1: did the voice here in Ireland. I was one of
Speaker 1: the coaches in the Vice and it was five years.
Speaker 1: It was cool and TV was great. But hand on
Speaker 1: my heart, if I was making a very clear decision,
Speaker 1: with full clarity, I wouldn't have done it again. Because
Speaker 1: everything changed. There was a sense of ownership over you.
Speaker 1: And at that point I didn't a clue what was
Speaker 1: going on in my head. I didn't know what my
Speaker 1: value system was. I didn't know what I stood for.
Speaker 1: I felt rudorless and you're giving yourself to other people
Speaker 1: to decide and that wasn't good. That's when things went
Speaker 1: pretty chaotic for me mentally.
Speaker 3: Yeah you had a panic attack, right, Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I had quite a lot of them over the years.
Speaker 1: I had my first panic attack when I was thirteen
Speaker 1: or fourteen and I was sent into hospital. Well, I
Speaker 1: was sent to a doctor because I told my mother
Speaker 1: I had asthma, because I I just wasn't catching my breath.
Speaker 1: I was fundamentally fighting for breath most evenings and the
Speaker 1: doctor told me with puberty. And I know for a
Speaker 1: fact that doctor knew it wasn't. I knew that was
Speaker 1: me kind of looking for somebody to give me some
Speaker 1: kind of answer to why I was suffocating at night.
Speaker 1: And I carried that on because in Ireland it's really
Speaker 1: interesting from a cultural point of view. And I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of my time in America, and I work
Speaker 1: with a lot of people in America, and I love
Speaker 1: the perception that they may have of Ireland and Irish people.
Speaker 1: But really, when you get into our history and into
Speaker 1: who we are, we have a very difficult, challenging, dark past.
Speaker 1: And the reason I bring that up is, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to mental health, shame was the prevailing
Speaker 1: wind in Ireland, and the Catholic Church weaponized shame and
Speaker 1: gave us the gun, and that's what happened, and we
Speaker 1: used it on each other, so whether if it wasn't
Speaker 1: and something like you know, sex outside marriage, where we
Speaker 1: put women and children in prisons, essentially it was we
Speaker 1: were putting people in institutions. And what people don't realize in Ireland,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting from a psychology point of view.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty, Ireland had the highest level of people
Speaker 1: in course of confinement and psychiatric institutions in the world.
Speaker 1: And the running joke, of course is that obviously Irish
Speaker 1: people were just more more mental illness in Ireland, but
Speaker 1: there's no evidence to show that was the case whatsoever.
Speaker 1: We loved putting people in institutions, and so for me
Speaker 1: in the nineties, this prevailing idea of institutionalization was constantly
Speaker 1: in my head because there was a hospital among Ark
Speaker 1: where I'm from, called Saint Omans, and the running joke
Speaker 1: in my town was like, you know, your dad's in
Speaker 1: Saint Omans or your Mum's in Saint Omens, and it
Speaker 1: was a kind of a joke, and I really believed
Speaker 1: that if I actually told the truth, that's where I
Speaker 1: would end up. So that type of stuff led me
Speaker 1: on this kind of silent fifteen years of holding on,
Speaker 1: and I was having panic attacks all the time. And
Speaker 1: I had ten minutes before the biggest live show of
Speaker 1: the Voice, my first live show. I had a really
Speaker 1: pretty brutal one and I had to do the rest
Speaker 1: of the show ninety minutes, and I was physically shaking
Speaker 1: throughout that whole ninety minutes. And that was the kind
Speaker 1: of rock bottom. That was the moment of change or
Speaker 1: the catalyst or whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 3: But you know, you got through it. You went through
Speaker 3: the ninety minutes. How did you do it?
Speaker 1: Because what I always say to people in my work
Speaker 1: is that people who struggle with their mental health are
Speaker 1: tougher than everybody else. And you might see the imagery
Speaker 1: in the paper where it shows you a young kid
Speaker 1: in the dark room with their hand over their heads.
Speaker 1: That is not the mental health I know. The toughest
Speaker 1: people in the world that I've met, or people who
Speaker 1: struggled with their mind because they have to be, they've
Speaker 1: no other choice. And I think I got through it
Speaker 1: because I was strong. And John at Dunna, who's an
Speaker 1: Irish potent philosopher who has inspired most of my work.
Speaker 1: He's actually an incredible man. He passed away recently and
Speaker 1: he said, there's a place within all of us that's
Speaker 1: never been wounded. And I think it is one of
Speaker 1: the best statements I think you in your work in
Speaker 1: my work.
Speaker 3: Oh I love that, Yes, I love that, and wringing
Speaker 3: that down.
Speaker 1: There's somewhere in us, and I suppose that's the kind
Speaker 1: of core for me of what mindfulness hopefully teaches is
Speaker 1: how can we find their access that place? And the
Speaker 1: prime example I use is the pandemic, like we're you know,
Speaker 1: three or four years ago, if I told everybody listening
Speaker 1: to this that this is what they're going to have
Speaker 1: to deal with. They won't see their parents or family
Speaker 1: or their loved ones, they'll be restricted with their movements,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, most of us would have said, Nope,
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. But you did do that. And the
Speaker 1: reason I'm saying that is maybe we're all a little
Speaker 1: tougher than we think we are. And it's that reminder
Speaker 1: of the place that's never being wounded that I go
Speaker 1: back to. That's the place that got me out of
Speaker 1: that whole before that live show and got me to
Speaker 1: the ninety minutes. Also, a really good professional presenter, Catherine Thomas.
Speaker 1: I looked at her and I just nodded and I said,
Speaker 1: don't ask me anything. I'm literally just in survival mode here.
Speaker 1: And that was it. I got through it, and that
Speaker 1: very evening I changed the dijectory of my life. I
Speaker 1: made a few decisions and I've never looked back.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean you're familiar with like Dan Harris.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course. I actually interviewed Dan on the podcast.
Speaker 3: Wonderful on your on your exemplary podcast, Thank you, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he had a similar.
Speaker 1: Experience on TV, which was even worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you the panic attack before the voice. You're
Speaker 3: supposed to go on the voice, and then you still
Speaker 3: went on. Is there footage of you from that day?
Speaker 3: You're like sweating, you were like you looked high, uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: The really strange thing, my panic attacks were very physical,
Speaker 1: are very physical, and I hate to be graphic about it,
Speaker 1: but I think, I think we're inside fans here and
Speaker 1: people listening to this podcast understand that we're only trying
Speaker 1: to help by having these conversations. But I was vomiting.
Speaker 1: I couldn't breathe, and I was vomiting, and I had
Speaker 1: scrape marks on my neck from trying to pull my shirt.
Speaker 1: But the really interesting thing with TV is like you
Speaker 1: go and do your rehearsal and you're wearing a certain
Speaker 1: you're wearing clothes, and your producer and your director who
Speaker 1: goes right, they work on screen that's grand thumbs up.
Speaker 1: You can wear that tonight. So I arrive out and
Speaker 1: I put a completely different shirt on, and the directors
Speaker 1: going like, what's going on here? Why is he wearing
Speaker 1: a different shirt? And I couldn't explain to him. I'd
Speaker 1: vomit on the other one. I'm sorry, but to me,
Speaker 1: there was an incredible power. The difficulty was I had
Speaker 1: to also advise and give feedback to singers. So what
Speaker 1: I did, you see? I learned coping strategies over the years,
Speaker 1: but what I knew purely from my anxiety is when
Speaker 1: my head is I call it the mind right. When
Speaker 1: my head goes on a mind right, I need to
Speaker 1: get out of it. So I need to get out
Speaker 1: on my head and get into my body. And I
Speaker 1: just remember my two hands on the chair and really
Speaker 1: feeling my feet in the floor, and it was enough
Speaker 1: to ground me and get me through. But I also
Speaker 1: took beta blockers just to get through it, and it
Speaker 1: changed how I look. I wasn't frightened of live TV.
Speaker 1: I was frightened of looking vulnerable on live TV because
Speaker 1: that was I know ten years ago, what would have happened,
Speaker 1: what would have been said, how would have the public
Speaker 1: reacted to it, Because it's very hard to explain to
Speaker 1: people that you're having a panic attack because it looks
Speaker 1: different for everybody. But I did get through it, and
Speaker 1: that night I made a decision to tell everybody in
Speaker 1: my life that this was something I had been open
Speaker 1: with on my own and I told friends, I told family.
Speaker 1: I then made a decision, which was a huge one
Speaker 1: to make because I wrote a piece of paper that
Speaker 1: was going to lose my job and I'd have to
Speaker 1: leave the country. But that's what anxiety does. It makes
Speaker 1: the impossible possible. And this is what I said. I'm gone,
Speaker 1: but it's worth it. So I decided to tell the public.
Speaker 1: And that came out of the discussion I had with
Speaker 1: my mother, and she said, what would have been different
Speaker 1: for the fifteen year old you if somebody had said
Speaker 1: something in the nineties about this, I said, everything would
Speaker 1: have been different. I thought I was possessed by the tevil,
Speaker 1: which was a viable option in the nineties in Ireland.
Speaker 1: She said, speak to the fifteen year old you, that's
Speaker 1: what you do here. And then I came out publicly.
Speaker 1: It was the biggest TV show in the country and
Speaker 1: I came out and I expected to be thrown under
Speaker 1: a bus and I didn't receive anything but empathy. And
Speaker 1: that made me realize that maybe we are ready to
Speaker 1: kind of move and start addressing these things.
Speaker 3: Oh this is really powerful. Well, there's something really powerful
Speaker 3: about you. Your energy I've met a lot of people
Speaker 3: in my life. There's a lot of depth to you.
Speaker 3: It's your very you're very complex figure. I can tell.
Speaker 3: I can tell there's a lot going on. There is
Speaker 3: a lot there. Yeah, there's a lot. It's like zipping
Speaker 3: and zapping and there's contradictions. I can feel it and
Speaker 3: see it all. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Welcome to my mind, Scott.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well I get it. I do get it.
Speaker 3: I can resonate for what it's worth.
Speaker 1: Good. Good, It's always good to meet people who can.
Speaker 3: To definitely, definitely definitely feel a kindred spirit. But look,
Speaker 3: I mean that there's always a double edged sword because
Speaker 3: the people that are complex like that tend to be
Speaker 3: able to make the most beautiful art. They tend to
Speaker 3: be the people that just resonate with the most of
Speaker 3: people on the planet. There's something much more beautiful about
Speaker 3: that than the quote nice person, you know, like the
Speaker 3: just nice person, the polite the person who never shows
Speaker 3: any negative emotions. They always they you know, they don't
Speaker 3: show it to others. Right, there are always people pleasing, etcetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, because people are kind of boring, right.
Speaker 1: I've always been my work strange and maybe it's a
Speaker 1: personal thing in my PhD is is I've always had
Speaker 1: an attraction to darkness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 1: I suppose you doing what you do. It's a huge
Speaker 1: But I struggle with the messaging we are now seeing
Speaker 1: because like I look at things like the wellness industry
Speaker 1: and I think they're generally quite positive. But I also
Speaker 1: look and go, hold on, the guys, there's an air
Speaker 1: brushing out here where we've got to be careful because
Speaker 1: it just becomes another form of silence. Like to me,
Speaker 1: the most important emotions in the world that are negative ones,
Speaker 1: the core ones. They teach you so much about yourself.
Speaker 1: And if you look at me music or any form
Speaker 1: of art. Back to Johnathunna, who is this quote and
Speaker 1: he says music is what language would love to be.
Speaker 1: I just like this guy's just golden coming out with
Speaker 1: these things, because often what music becomes for the artist
Speaker 1: is a way of communicating something that no one will
Speaker 1: listen to in words or will judge them for it
Speaker 1: in words. So it's their form of communication and it's
Speaker 1: generally quite authentic, and I think that's what audiences. When
Speaker 1: you look at the classic albums like the really like
Speaker 1: the album that has always had this profound impact in
Speaker 1: my life was Tom White's Closing Time. When you listen
Speaker 1: to it, just that's what it sounds like. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a lad who's not been able to say this
Speaker 1: to his friends, but he's able to play it on
Speaker 1: the piano. And I think that, to me is something
Speaker 1: that I've used over my life. That there's poetry, whether
Speaker 1: it's spoken word, whether it's music, any form of that
Speaker 1: is something I've used and it's been immensely therapeutic. And
Speaker 1: that's why, to me's therapy is becoming this very pervasive
Speaker 1: form of support and ally for people who might struggle
Speaker 1: with other forms of therapy.
Speaker 3: I love music therapy, so do I. Yeah, absolutely. I
Speaker 3: think relevant is a quote that you said once, you
Speaker 3: said you can run, but you can't out run. I
Speaker 3: think that is in line with this idea of that
Speaker 3: experiential avoidance is not the answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think. Louise, my partner, says it's slightly you know,
Speaker 1: it's a bit more dramatic, but she said avoidance is
Speaker 1: the root of all disorder, and true, I think about it.
Speaker 1: I used to get frustrated with that because so, for example,
Speaker 1: so avoidance is quite nuanced, I think. So I had
Speaker 1: two types of avoidance, pretending it didn't happen, or pretending
Speaker 1: I wasn't the way I was. But the other form
Speaker 1: that I thought was a form of escapism was I
Speaker 1: used to obsessively exercise, and I used to think that
Speaker 1: that was a healthy way, And because exercise is a
Speaker 1: healthy thing to do when generally good for you, you
Speaker 1: kind of believe that this is. So I would pick
Speaker 1: more difficult challenges. And what I was doing was I
Speaker 1: was picking challenges that gave me zero time to think,
Speaker 1: gave me zero timeists to rest, because that's when I
Speaker 1: used to get up, like that's when things would go
Speaker 1: wrong for me. So I picked bigger things. And I
Speaker 1: believe I would always believe that my happiness lay in achievement.
Speaker 1: So I would pick bigger goals and go harder and harder,
Speaker 1: and I get more and more disappointed when that feeling
Speaker 1: of right, this is fixed now didn't come. And it
Speaker 1: was in therapy. I had an amazing therapist, had a few,
Speaker 1: but it was actually in scheme of therapy where everything
Speaker 1: shifted in me. And what shifted was and my therapists
Speaker 1: had that I'm not giving anything away of my therapeutic
Speaker 1: journey I speak openly about it was very challenged by
Speaker 1: me because I was very good at over intellectualizing what
Speaker 1: they were saying, and I was shifting them from one
Speaker 1: thing to the next. But that therapist got me to
Speaker 1: feel and everything shifted, Like I moved from that cerebral headspace.
Speaker 1: And for twenty years I've avoided going into that feeling space.
Speaker 1: And when it happened, you literally fall apart and you're
Speaker 1: contained by a therapist and then you're rebuilt or you're
Speaker 1: you know. But I do think in terms of therapy,
Speaker 1: it's often sold as this. I look at the ads
Speaker 1: for it and it's like it's this pretty thing, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's not pretty. For me, it wasn't pretty.
Speaker 1: It was a very difficult, challenging experience, but it worked.
Speaker 1: It was very powerful for it.
Speaker 3: Dobrawski, the push psychiatrists call it positive disintegration sounds like
Speaker 3: that's what you went through it.
Speaker 1: That's a good way putting it. Yeah, there's a moment
Speaker 1: I think for most people. I think that's why within
Speaker 1: psychology and in therapy, I'm also doing my best to
Speaker 1: normalize it for people who said I've gone to it.
Speaker 1: It didn't work for me, or I did a session.
Speaker 1: You need to be prepared to show up. You need
Speaker 1: to come. You have to come into the room or
Speaker 1: in wherever you go for your therapy. You have to
Speaker 1: show up. That is the thing. And I think some
Speaker 1: people aren't either ready to do that or not willing
Speaker 1: to do that, and you have to you have to
Speaker 1: meet them halfway. And that's the thing I wanted more
Speaker 1: than anything in the world. I wanted to not feel
Speaker 1: the way I was feeling. So I was willing to
Speaker 1: do whatever it took. And I actually it was a GP.
Speaker 1: Was a GP that like a physician that put me
Speaker 1: on that path. You know, he didn't immediately go right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna drug you up here, and I was on
Speaker 1: medication for a long long time, but you know he
Speaker 1: was going, no, I think there's something else here that
Speaker 1: you need to look at. So he set me on
Speaker 1: a different path.
Speaker 3: So interesting, and I can always see this episode being
Speaker 3: so valuable to so many people. When you feel that
Speaker 3: bubbling up like I could come on. I can just
Speaker 3: speak to my own personal experience of having panic attacks
Speaker 3: when I was much younger. Your head kind of fucks
Speaker 3: with you. Let's just be honest, Like you think to yourself, oh,
Speaker 3: that would be bad if I had a fue pank
Speaker 3: attack right now, and then you think, wait, what's this
Speaker 3: is just how my head would go. And then I
Speaker 3: would think, well, what's stopping me from having a full bite.
Speaker 3: There's no restraints on my head right now. I could
Speaker 3: easily have one, and then it would start spiraling and spiraling, inspiring,
Speaker 3: and then my heart beats and I'm like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: I am having a I don't know if you can
Speaker 3: resonate with that way of thinking at all, but that's
Speaker 3: how it was for me and I would be. And
Speaker 3: the more public I was, the more my head would
Speaker 3: My head would fuck with me. My head would fuck
Speaker 3: with me, is what was happening.
Speaker 1: I became so good at them, that was what I
Speaker 1: was saying, Like I remember, and I'm sorry for I suppose.
Speaker 1: Like as I said, this isn't about being graphic. It's
Speaker 1: about being supportive because anyone listening to this who's had them,
Speaker 1: they're not pretty. And as my dad has always said,
Speaker 1: and it was actually quite a helpful thing to say
Speaker 1: to me. So the panic attack has never killed anyone,
Speaker 1: but every cell in your body thinks that that's exactly
Speaker 1: what's happening. But I used to be able to hold
Speaker 1: conversations my hand in my pocket. And I remember, like,
Speaker 1: really difficult thing that happened to me. I was in
Speaker 1: I was playing rugby at the time professionally, and I
Speaker 1: was speaking to my coach. I missed a breath and
Speaker 1: I could feel it. It just came out in my hands
Speaker 1: in my pocket, and I tore the skin off my
Speaker 1: hand with my fingers just to stop myself reacting. And
Speaker 1: I told him that I had vertigo. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I get vertigo sometimes, and he goes, oh, you should
Speaker 1: be talking to the doctor about this. And the worst
Speaker 1: part of this, this is where things start to become
Speaker 1: even you know, you feel very alone with this because
Speaker 1: what happened. Then I would take xanax and I was
Speaker 1: terrified I was being drug tested. I was a professional
Speaker 1: athlete being drug tested after games. Not every game, but
Speaker 1: you could be. And I know xanx is not a
Speaker 1: performance announcing drouge, but you don't want your coach to
Speaker 1: find out that you have been taken sanax to be
Speaker 1: able to deal, to literally be able to get out
Speaker 1: of bed. So I was always terrified at that, but actually,
Speaker 1: really interestingly on the podcast, I played profession rugby for
Speaker 1: three years and I kind of thought to myself, that
Speaker 1: was the darkest time in my life. I struggled with
Speaker 1: fairly acute and difficult depression during that period. And depression
Speaker 1: to me was I've only ever had a really acute
Speaker 1: phase of it once, thank god. But it was something
Speaker 1: that held this power over me because it was To
Speaker 1: this day, I haven't been able to adequately just define it.
Speaker 1: I cannot define how it felt. The only line I
Speaker 1: could say it was a complete quest for feeling any
Speaker 1: type of feeling, any form of feeling good or bad.
Speaker 1: I asked my coach, Matt Williams, who very famous rugby coach,
Speaker 1: on my podcast two years ago, two and a half
Speaker 1: years ago, and I was terrified and I said that.
Speaker 1: I said to him, what did you think was wrong
Speaker 1: with me when I played rugby? And he said, our
Speaker 1: coaching team thought you were an alcoholic and you didn't care.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: I fell apart and I cannot tell you how much
Speaker 1: respect I had to be honest about it. But he
Speaker 1: said to me, I missed you. I will never miss
Speaker 1: another athlete again. He went away and he trained, and
Speaker 1: so that type of stuff really focused me in my
Speaker 1: mission for life is that I need to start showing
Speaker 1: people a different side and kind of a paradigm shifting
Speaker 1: conversation around what mental health actually is and how we
Speaker 1: can support people and how it doesn't have this ridiculous
Speaker 1: idea that I had a pretty wonderful life of amazing
Speaker 1: woman dad, I've amazing sisters, I've kind I come from
Speaker 1: the country in the middle of Ireland. My dad was
Speaker 1: in the military, my mum was a music teacher. And
Speaker 1: the reason I think my head is the way it
Speaker 1: is is because I cannot stop thinking and I cannot
Speaker 1: stop solving things. But do you know what the really
Speaker 1: interesting part of this animal age is? But in therapy,
Speaker 1: but it became very clear to me was I have
Speaker 1: this sometimes uncontrollable level of empathy for the people I love.
Speaker 1: I can contain it and what I'm and how it
Speaker 1: manifests me is I worry relentlessly for them if they're
Speaker 1: going somewhere, relentless worry. It was probably born out of
Speaker 1: attachment as a child, but it was constantly worried about them,
Speaker 1: constantly are they okay? Do they have enough? Money. Are
Speaker 1: they sleeping all right? And I could think about them
Speaker 1: all the time, and I remember with therapists going that
Speaker 1: makes you a very good person, and I like, I
Speaker 1: used to get angry with that, But that, to me
Speaker 1: is the what you need to hear sometimes because you
Speaker 1: feel like it feels like you're going crazy.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it feels yeah, yeah, but that is a label
Speaker 3: that you put on top of the experience. As you know,
Speaker 3: one of the great aspects of mindfulness, one of the
Speaker 3: great benefits is you can train yourself to just experience
Speaker 3: the concretetions with that causing your own suffering. You know,
Speaker 3: have you changed your relationship to yourself?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Through meditation, you know what.
Speaker 1: I went on the journey of meditation. I did my
Speaker 1: Masters and mindfuls based interventions. I've committed the last six
Speaker 1: years of my life to it. At a part of
Speaker 1: my PhD psychosocial interventions, I teach young kids. I developed schools,
Speaker 1: programs and books for young kids at mindfulness. But I
Speaker 1: have a different relationship with mindfless than a lot of
Speaker 1: people may have. I really struggled with meditation because the
Speaker 1: biggest manifestation of my panic disorder or my panic attacks
Speaker 1: were my breath. I had a very negative relationship with
Speaker 1: my breath, so I had to change that. And then
Speaker 1: I started to realize, you know, it's not necessarily about
Speaker 1: the breath. I looked at other avenues into meditation and mindfulness,
Speaker 1: but what changed my relationship myself was Buddhism.
Speaker 3: And oh wow, interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I was raised in a deeply, deeply conservative
Speaker 1: Catholic country and that's still you know, Catholicism in Ireland
Speaker 1: is pretty much over for an abundance of reasons. There
Speaker 1: was a huge level of historical institutional abuse, child abuse
Speaker 1: that you know, the world around the world knows what
Speaker 1: happened in Ireland, and things like the Magnet laundries. So
Speaker 1: there was an gargantian abusive power by the Catholic Church
Speaker 1: that has led to the Catholic Church all but being over.
Speaker 1: But there's still a relationship between church and states. So
Speaker 1: most of our schools are run by Catholic churches, some
Speaker 1: of our hospitals are, so there's a huge conflict here.
Speaker 1: But mindfulness is in some of the schools that have
Speaker 1: gone into They perceive mindfulness as a form of religion
Speaker 1: and Buddhism, so they're quite reluctant for you to go
Speaker 1: in and talk to young kids about what this actually is.
Speaker 1: But actually I think I know when John cabots In
Speaker 1: brought you know, mindfulness to the hospitals in Boston, he
Speaker 1: kept it secular. But I actually think it's crucial that
Speaker 1: we give people the Buddhist language around why mindfulness has
Speaker 1: such a prevailing power and potential power for people. I
Speaker 1: think taking it out, I can understand why people do that,
Speaker 1: but I think we're missing a bait if we do that,
Speaker 1: because it's the language of Buddhism that makes mindfulness makes
Speaker 1: sense for me. And so yeah, I teach, but many
Speaker 1: times I have to take that Buddhist element out of it,
Speaker 1: but I bring it in other ways, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the first noble truth of suffering being an
Speaker 1: inevitable part of existence. That was game changing for me.
Speaker 1: That line suffering is part of life, it's not the
Speaker 1: only part of life, absolutely, And actually as soon as
Speaker 1: you accept that, ironically, you start suffering. Let's there's a change.
Speaker 1: There's a cessation of holding onto that, which is obviously
Speaker 1: the idea of aversion and attachment, letting go of this
Speaker 1: stuff sometimes. But here's where it gets interesting for me.
Speaker 1: Is the reason mindfulness feels so challenging for people, and
Speaker 1: my Buddhism is often removed from it is because it
Speaker 1: goes against the entire economic and social models that now
Speaker 1: run the world. Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is essentially the opposite for
Speaker 1: me of mindfulness, and it dictates most of the Western world.
Speaker 1: So there's this kind of interesting jarring going on between culture, sociology,
Speaker 1: and psychology, and we're at this alliance and it's the
Speaker 1: alliance and the intersection that I'm most interested in. But
Speaker 1: for me, mindfulness over anything. It was actually emotional focused
Speaker 1: therapy that I did with my therapist that got me
Speaker 1: to sit with that horrendous feeling of trauma that I
Speaker 1: had run from for song, and that trauma was you know,
Speaker 1: there was a few of them there, but was physically
Speaker 1: been badly beaten up by a teacher, having been hit
Speaker 1: across the face with a leather like a leather, a
Speaker 1: piece of leather with plastic in the middle. That was
Speaker 1: the That was the weapon of choice of the Christian
Speaker 1: Brothers in Ireland and they hit children with it every
Speaker 1: single day. So these are the realities of it. And
Speaker 1: I still remember that I still remember that day when
Speaker 1: I looked at Christian brother who was foaming at the
Speaker 1: mouth as he jumped with this leather and he was
Speaker 1: trying to hit my hand harder and harder and harder.
Speaker 1: What was my crime? I ate crisps in class?
Speaker 3: Wow, well I probably would have gotten that for cursing
Speaker 3: on my podcast.
Speaker 1: Well you know, you know what I mean. But that's
Speaker 1: that's and then you start to realize and remember, wow
Speaker 1: with mindless, I remember I was brought to that moment
Speaker 1: and with therapist was like, what would you like to
Speaker 1: say to him? And I was all being a kind
Speaker 1: of nice thingle what happened to you that you had
Speaker 1: to do this to me? And my therapist goes, noil,
Speaker 1: your anger feels very reasonable and he says what do
Speaker 1: I mean? He says, be angry? And it just exploded
Speaker 1: like it was. It was God help anybody who was
Speaker 1: in the room next to me. And ultimately, what my
Speaker 1: influence started to teach me was to sit with that discomfort.
Speaker 1: Understand it not always, not always, but if it came up,
Speaker 1: to sit with that. But more than anything, it taught
Speaker 1: me the space that I take up in society and
Speaker 1: the space society takes up on me. It taught me
Speaker 1: how to diffuse myself from how I was thinking. It
Speaker 1: taught me how not to fire that second hour of suffering.
Speaker 1: That the bullet talks about the first arrow being the
Speaker 1: inevitable stuff and the second arrow being the shame and
Speaker 1: the regret and the rumination. And this changed in me,
Speaker 1: along with more than anything, my community and building back
Speaker 1: up my relationships with the people.
Speaker 3: Ever, because I wasn't, well, wow, that's really powerful stuff.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't we get to to masculinity notions of masculinity.
Speaker 3: Have you felt the need to kind of reconceptualize or
Speaker 3: broaden a what a man could be in our society?
Speaker 1: Masculinity, I think, for me is a topic that I
Speaker 1: have weirdly been obsessed by for an abundance of reasons.
Speaker 1: I mean, culturally, we're at a very strange kind of
Speaker 1: point where we're using language consistently and constantly like crisis
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity without actually exploring this and understanding and getting
Speaker 1: into the getting into the weeds with this conversation. The
Speaker 1: reality is men have problems, and men have to accept
Speaker 1: those first. I mean, we just got to look at
Speaker 1: things I had Richard rieves On who wrote of Boys
Speaker 1: and Men, incredible book around what some of those problems
Speaker 1: are in terms of not just the suicide rates among
Speaker 1: young men, but even things like education and in home
Speaker 1: life where fathers are becoming less and less you know there,
Speaker 1: And to me, we have to be able to have
Speaker 1: these discussions. These are crucial discussions. This isn't a serious
Speaker 1: sum conversation. And I remember when I put up on
Speaker 1: I think LinkedIn that I'm interviewing Richard rieves about masculinity
Speaker 1: and AhR HR leadership boss said you should be talking
Speaker 1: about masculinity and I mean, hold on, I sei, guys,
Speaker 1: where are we going here? Where does this end? We
Speaker 1: have to talk about this. We have problems and we
Speaker 1: have to address them, and it's our responsibility to address them,
Speaker 1: so we have to have conversations around them. And she
Speaker 1: then said something about you know, you suppose you're going
Speaker 1: to bring up evolutionary psychologic guys, stop, Why is there
Speaker 1: always conflict? Why is there always conflict with this stuff?
Speaker 1: And it is because what we've done in the media
Speaker 1: is we've created the entire model, literally the entire model
Speaker 1: of how social media works. Its currency is division. It
Speaker 1: doesn't function without division, and the deeper that division, the
Speaker 1: better it works. Their algorithms are designed to divide. And
Speaker 1: that is not me being kind of that is just
Speaker 1: a fact. You can see it. So these important discussions
Speaker 1: are now being massively polarized. And the gray area, which
Speaker 1: is you know, as a psychologist where most of the
Speaker 1: stuff happens, is the gray area is now gone. Context gone,
Speaker 1: nuance gone, and we have this reductionist, serious sum look
Speaker 1: at things like masculinity. I have friends, close friends of mine,
Speaker 1: who died because they believed there was a certain part
Speaker 1: they had to play in society, our certain role that
Speaker 1: they had to be that they couldn't quite be. I
Speaker 1: was that person. I was grappling with that all my life.
Speaker 1: That I it was the vulnerability thing for me. Was
Speaker 1: just this idea I call it about this. I had
Speaker 1: this line that I wrote in a poem about Kirk
Speaker 1: Obain and he said, let's not pass on that baton
Speaker 1: anymore from grandfather to father and those that came before,
Speaker 1: and it is it's a baton that gets passed on
Speaker 1: father who's a certain way of life, then passes that
Speaker 1: to his son and son path and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that anymore. This isn't working for us.
Speaker 1: It's a different word, a different society, different culture, and
Speaker 1: it's not working too. Many of my friends are struggling
Speaker 1: because they believe there's a certain role they have to
Speaker 1: play in society, and that to me changed how I
Speaker 1: viewed masculinity. And I think the responsibility here is on
Speaker 1: men to do this. I think it's up to us
Speaker 1: to have these conversations with our friends, with our brothers,
Speaker 1: with our fathers. But I think we have to we
Speaker 1: have to remove we have to remove the labels, the
Speaker 1: toxic masculinities. We have to do that. Yes, there's absolute
Speaker 1: apparent bastards out there selling absolute bullshit on social media
Speaker 1: TikTok and saying horrific things, and kids are picking up
Speaker 1: on that. But if you keep telling young men that
Speaker 1: they're toxic, they will follow people who tell them otherwise.
Speaker 1: That is basic maths, That is basic human maths. So
Speaker 1: if you keep using this language, it will disempower, it
Speaker 1: will disenfranchise, and people will then follow. And that is
Speaker 1: something we've got to be careful with. And that's why
Speaker 1: your Andrew tates and you know, there's many other examples
Speaker 1: have this attraction for young men, That is not the answer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's multiple reasons why people like
Speaker 3: you and treat teen are popular to young men. There's
Speaker 3: also kind of a drive for like powers that as money.
Speaker 3: You know that he also gets people excited about and activates.
Speaker 3: It's not just the masculinity thing, but it's you know,
Speaker 3: those kind of motives. What do you see as some
Speaker 3: of the major values that we should be having in
Speaker 3: our society today, especially among young men?
Speaker 1: Values to me are probably at the beating heart or emotion,
Speaker 1: well being and actually figuring out what our values are,
Speaker 1: our values, not what we think our values should be.
Speaker 1: Don't google your values, don't look at them, Actually ask yourself,
Speaker 1: what does this make me feel like when I think
Speaker 1: about it? And the types of values that I think
Speaker 1: we have to start promoting. And you know, you can't
Speaker 1: tell people what their values are, but I think one
Speaker 1: value that I massively, massively feels missing as community connection, interaction.
Speaker 1: I think what we've done and I'm back to this
Speaker 1: idea of and I don't know it sound like, you know,
Speaker 1: a Marxist here, but when you look at neoliberalism and
Speaker 1: how it functions, it functions around individualism. That's so what
Speaker 1: happens in neoliberalism And for those listening on what's what
Speaker 1: effect does that mean? Neoliberalism is the economic kind of
Speaker 1: ideology that you essentially leave the market to dictate and
Speaker 1: solve all problems with very little government regulation. That's generally
Speaker 1: what neoliberalism. Why is that really destructive for values? Because
Speaker 1: it promotes, as I said, individualism. I have friends that
Speaker 1: say to me, that doesn't fit my brand. Ireland calls
Speaker 1: itself Ireland Incorporated. Can we see where we're going here?
Speaker 1: So what's happening is we're pushing this individualistic society at
Speaker 1: a time when we need to figure out how to
Speaker 1: come together because we've expected exextential threats that we need
Speaker 1: to solve. And ironically, the very thing that's dividing us
Speaker 1: the most is the very thing that said it was
Speaker 1: going to bring us together with the show social media.
Speaker 1: So for me, the thing I'm most passionate about is collectivism.
Speaker 1: How do we bring communities back together, how do we
Speaker 1: bring ways of connecting? And we also know from a
Speaker 1: mental health perspective, the true impact that communities can have,
Speaker 1: So that to me is something like if I go
Speaker 1: on TikTok now when I'm finished here. Within it's six
Speaker 1: o'clock nearly in cold, wet, irish evening. I'll go down
Speaker 1: for a cup of tea and some food, and by
Speaker 1: seven o'clock I'll have some guide on TikTok telling me
Speaker 1: that I'm not good enough if I'm not doing something now.
Speaker 1: I'm not a good enough entrepreneur. I'm not good enough
Speaker 1: in the gym. I'm not good enough at golf. I'm
Speaker 1: not good enough at this. This is the stuff that
Speaker 1: I think is making us feel like we're just not
Speaker 1: quite good enough all the time, and that is driven
Speaker 1: by this neoliberal agenda. I think. And my value is
Speaker 1: each day, how do I find a way to integrate
Speaker 1: myself more and more into my community? And that's just
Speaker 1: one value. You've other things like loyalty and honesty and
Speaker 1: all these other things that of this. But you cannot
Speaker 1: practice values unless you've a community to practice them with.
Speaker 1: You cannot practice values on Twitter. Putting a hashtag in
Speaker 1: front of a word doesn't make you that thing, be kind.
Speaker 1: That's not how it works. I'm sorry, it doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. You can't just put hashtags in and say
Speaker 1: that's the way I am. You got to go out
Speaker 1: and live it. You've got to be it. You got
Speaker 1: to interact and you got to you got to develop
Speaker 1: those relationships. And to me, I think that's when things
Speaker 1: start to kind of make a bit more sense to you.
Speaker 3: I just the title for this episode just popped in
Speaker 3: my head. Living Bravely. I think that's what I'll call
Speaker 3: this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think that is that. To me,
Speaker 1: that is a brilliant like brave. And what does bravery mean? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: what's to me bravery.
Speaker 3: Is living mentally brave.
Speaker 1: Bravery is the acknowledgment, like it's the same thing as resilience.
Speaker 1: So resilience is a word that is thrown around a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, when you go into a workplace and going
Speaker 1: we're doing a resilience program so we can make our
Speaker 1: teams work seventy hours a week. That's it's not resilience,
Speaker 1: that's madness. Resilience is the ability to come back from
Speaker 1: adversity and find your way back. You guys sometimes call
Speaker 1: it psychological flexibility. Yeah, But to me, bravery is back
Speaker 1: to that place that's never been wounded. Bravery is is
Speaker 1: just that acknowledgment that there's something in you that no
Speaker 1: matter how dark or difficult things get or how intense
Speaker 1: life can feel. Sometimes there is a party that no
Speaker 1: one's ever got there, and no one's ever wounded. And
Speaker 1: I think that keeping that in the back of your
Speaker 1: head brings this level of bravery out. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: think bravery just getting out of bed and working in
Speaker 1: a world that feels very overwhelming right now is a
Speaker 1: brave thing too. It's fairly chaotic. You know John Cabotson's
Speaker 1: book Full Catastrophe Living, it's the bible for Western mindleness.
Speaker 1: Why did he call it Full Catastrophe Living? Because life
Speaker 1: is tough. Sometimes I think bravery for me is ignowledg
Speaker 1: that just someday, some days you like the world in fire,
Speaker 1: you'll do something spectacular. Some days you'll literally sit in
Speaker 1: your arse and you'll do nothing. That's it, that's grand,
Speaker 1: that's life. Some days you'll just do enough to get
Speaker 1: through it. Some days you'll feel I'm good today, and
Speaker 1: some weeks you'll feel that. And I think it's that
Speaker 1: transitory idea of life. It's not just brave, it's the truth.
Speaker 1: And I worry that often when I'm getting lectured by
Speaker 1: somebody in the wellness industry telling me that these are
Speaker 1: things you shouldn't experience. I'm going no, no, no, no, I've
Speaker 1: done that, and I've done that silent thing for long enough.
Speaker 1: And I'm a very positive, optimistic person, but I'm actually
Speaker 1: okay with feeling a little ruby. It actually suits me sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I think this is this is the message I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get across the people. And I struggle with
Speaker 1: the conflict that I see all the time about every
Speaker 1: single thing. The reason conflict is so pervasive is because
Speaker 1: none of us are actually engaging anymore. We're not having
Speaker 1: civil debates. If you looked out your window right now
Speaker 1: and Twitter was real life, there will be houses on fire,
Speaker 1: That'll be lads screaming at lampposts. There will be you know,
Speaker 1: it's not real. It's not a good judgment of our
Speaker 1: metric to judge humanity.
Speaker 3: It isn't women screaming at the lads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely exactly. And that's the thing, that's what you'd say.
Speaker 1: It's just this. I have this analogy that I use
Speaker 1: that some people kind of go it's a little bit hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: but it's like, I think social media started with very
Speaker 1: positive intentions. I remember tweeting. I actually deleted my Twitter
Speaker 1: a few months ago anyway, but I tweeted, remember when
Speaker 1: Twitter was, when we just used to say good night
Speaker 1: to each other, And then Jack Dorsey went good night
Speaker 1: to me, and I was like, you see, you know that, Like,
Speaker 1: potentially that's what you started this ass But we have
Speaker 1: to eat. The fact that they're still arguing that that's
Speaker 1: what it is is just it's completely intellectually dishonest at
Speaker 1: the highest level, and it's utterly disrespectful to the people
Speaker 1: that use it because they know that's not what it is.
Speaker 1: So the analogy I use is what social media has
Speaker 1: become is where we're ripping each other limb from lim
Speaker 1: in a colisseum and the owners of the social media
Speaker 1: are up there watching it for their entertainment. That's what
Speaker 1: it's become. And I'm sad it's become that because I
Speaker 1: had so much potential to be something very special. And
Speaker 1: what I'm starting to learn is I have a part
Speaker 1: of my study I talk about the post digital revolution.
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe there's going to be a mass kind
Speaker 1: of I think there is going to be kind of
Speaker 1: a mass amount of people just rejecting social media and
Speaker 1: not technology because you couldn't exist without it, but how
Speaker 1: we communicate with technology. I think there's going to be
Speaker 1: a huge movement in the next ten years where people
Speaker 1: just go, Nope, I can't do it anymore. And it
Speaker 1: might start in some countries or some communities. I know
Speaker 1: there's some communities in America where you cannot use there's
Speaker 1: no kind of access to technology. I think that's a
Speaker 1: little bit difficult, but I do believe that that's what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. I think we're going to we're past
Speaker 1: tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell calls it, We're long past
Speaker 1: the tipping point of social media because democracy is hanging
Speaker 1: by a tread and social media standing there with the scissors.
Speaker 1: And these are the things we've got to think about
Speaker 1: and we need to protect ourselves and this and the
Speaker 1: way I believe we do that is to build stronger communities.
Speaker 3: I love that community actualization.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you really have made it clear you have a
Speaker 3: fundamental belief in human beings and that you want to
Speaker 3: empower people to find within them and maybe around them
Speaker 3: would already exist, but maybe they're overlooking.
Speaker 1: Is that a fair summation, Yeah, it is. And also
Speaker 1: I think a fair thing to say is is finding
Speaker 1: a way to without sounding like it's okay to go
Speaker 1: within yourself. And actually, you know, I think when the
Speaker 1: modern world become our the external world becomes too overwhelming
Speaker 1: for you, you need to try and find a safe space
Speaker 1: within yourself. And I think the best thing to teach
Speaker 1: that I teach in people ask me what's the definition
Speaker 1: of mindfulness? The definition, the psychological definition is paying attention
Speaker 1: to the present moment non judgmentally. And it doesn't really
Speaker 1: mean a lot sometimes when you say that to somebody,
Speaker 1: but when you actually tell them about the profoundness of that,
Speaker 1: what happens. And to me, the biggest, most important phrase,
Speaker 1: and that is non judgment. Everything we do in our life, professionally, socially,
Speaker 1: and personally revolves around judgment. Everything. There has to be
Speaker 1: a space in your life where literally nothing is expected,
Speaker 1: where the shackles of expectation are just gone, where this
Speaker 1: shadow of judgment is gone. And that, to me is
Speaker 1: the biggest challenge of mindfuess because you'll sit to meditate it.
Speaker 1: You sit there for a minute, you put on some
Speaker 1: nice music, and then within ten seconds you're like, oh god,
Speaker 1: I forgot to ring Mary. Oh God, Mary already hates me. O.
Speaker 1: Would I get a pizza later? I mean, so much crap,
Speaker 1: many calories in the pizza. But I go to the
Speaker 1: gym before or after work because now you're down a
Speaker 1: rabbit hole and you're anxious, and then you go, oh god,
Speaker 1: I knew it'd be terrible at this. What I'm asking
Speaker 1: you to do is recognize that minds drift. That's what
Speaker 1: they do. They love adventures, They're only doing their job.
Speaker 1: Don't follow them people it feels like not to follow them.
Speaker 1: And also, don't beat yourself up with this. This cannot
Speaker 1: become another stick to beat yourself with. Everything else is
Speaker 1: that this is your space, nobody else's, and slowly work
Speaker 1: with that and build that space out, and then you
Speaker 1: create this panoramic internal space where you actually feel like
Speaker 1: the most spacious place in the world is within yourself.
Speaker 1: And that's when things become very powerful with mindfless and
Speaker 1: you start to control your self awareness and to me, ultimately,
Speaker 1: what mindfulness teaches you with self awareness, which is a
Speaker 1: superpower in a world that feels already vacant up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and self awareness and also the power of just
Speaker 3: being and which is something you talk about and by
Speaker 3: the way, I loved your video with like you're like,
Speaker 3: how often do we appreciate a good hearty belly laugh.
Speaker 3: I love that, And.
Speaker 1: I think some like film and playfulness. I think the
Speaker 1: world has got so intense that some of us feel
Speaker 1: guilty sometimes to have fun or to last are worried
Speaker 1: that somebody's filming was doing it. And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'm the worst at it sometimes. You know, when you're studying,
Speaker 1: when you spend your days studying Irish institutionalization and psychiatric
Speaker 1: hospitals for two hundred years, and you come out of
Speaker 1: that you're a study room, You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I need I need to watch Shit's Creek our young shell.
Speaker 1: Then I need to not anybody just just I need
Speaker 1: to be stupid. I need to do something spontano. I
Speaker 1: need to do something for no reason. That's the other
Speaker 1: thing is like everything we do has to be for
Speaker 1: a reason now, And I like the idea just going
Speaker 1: why why, Like I'm going to go on like jumping
Speaker 1: the seed, and people are like what why not? You know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's that's back to this and I don't know,
Speaker 1: keep bringing it up with this world where we all
Speaker 1: now feel everything is transactional our friendships. What's in this
Speaker 1: for me? That's not that's not happiness to me. There's
Speaker 1: a connection and happiness. There's a feeling in a room
Speaker 1: where you can be with somebody and you don't need
Speaker 1: to speak to them and feel uncomfortable. There is a
Speaker 1: feeling that you know, what's A neuroscientist called it mirror neurons,
Speaker 1: where it feels like our brains are always talking to
Speaker 1: each other. And I learned this, like I started to
Speaker 1: learn the energy you can bring into a room. You
Speaker 1: can actually bring an energy into a room. You can
Speaker 1: actually dictate the other energies in the room by what
Speaker 1: you show up with, whether that's vulnerability or whether that's excitement,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It's very powerful to be able to
Speaker 1: just go right, I'm going to walk into this room.
Speaker 1: I'm in a band and sometimes we go in and
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to do is rehearse, like
Speaker 1: it's just like, oh god, rehearse. And if you show
Speaker 1: up like that, it's just like four of us going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is how do we get through this?
Speaker 1: How long is this going to be? It's so loud.
Speaker 1: But if you walk in and go right, lads, let's
Speaker 1: nail this, let's you know, looking forward to this, can't
Speaker 1: wait for the gig of the weekend. And you mean
Speaker 1: it's it's an energy if you create that in a room,
Speaker 1: and I just think this is something I feel like.
Speaker 1: Part of me is disappointed that I've missed this for
Speaker 1: fifteen years, and part of me actually realizes I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to think like this if I didn't go
Speaker 1: through what I went through. I wouldn't have this clarity,
Speaker 1: and anyone listening that I need to be really clear.
Speaker 1: I don't have all this shit figured out. I'm not
Speaker 1: speaking from a place of hierarchy. I am literally speaking
Speaker 1: with you. I'm down in the weeds. Some days I
Speaker 1: am having the time of my life. Other days I've
Speaker 1: utterly changed the labels I put on myself. And people
Speaker 1: will say, do you still struggle with your mental health? No,
Speaker 1: but I still have really bad days. I really have
Speaker 1: difficult days. I don't struggle with them anymore because I
Speaker 1: accept them. And there's even that language changes how you
Speaker 1: relate to it.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful. Well, I really I urge people to check
Speaker 3: out your podcast. You called mindfulness, You've called it the
Speaker 3: chill skill, right, I.
Speaker 1: Call that for kids. So I had to I kind
Speaker 1: of work a lot with kids, and I work with
Speaker 1: you know, we've done programs with kids with sensory issues
Speaker 1: and stuff, and you have to meet the murder at here.
Speaker 1: You know, trying to tell an anxious child to breed
Speaker 1: is pointless. But giving them something, give them a visualization,
Speaker 1: give them a physical cue to do it, and actually
Speaker 1: make them relate to it in a different way. It's
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful things you'll ever watch, just
Speaker 1: watching kids realize that because kids default setting, they're very
Speaker 1: default setting, is to be mindful, and they're losing that
Speaker 1: too quickly, too early, and they're meant to be curious
Speaker 1: to the world. They're meant to navigate and adventures, and
Speaker 1: they're meant to just that's what they're meant to do,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately a lot of kids are kind of accelerating
Speaker 1: behalf past that. So that, to me is tin the kids.
Speaker 1: What's it like to be just bored? What does it
Speaker 1: feel like to be anxious? Be curious? I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: where do you feel it? And they're like, oh, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? I feel that? I always feel it.
Speaker 1: My throat, my troat gets a bit sore when I
Speaker 1: get anxious, Oh, I feel at my belly. And now
Speaker 1: you're just relating with them. And now what you're doing
Speaker 1: is you're validating their emotion and you're saying that, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get them too, Jesus, yeah, jeez, they're not nice,
Speaker 1: but we all get them. And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're speaking to a child like a child, like you're
Speaker 1: a child. And our school, my charity Us for Life.
Speaker 1: We set up purely as an education, mental health, mental
Speaker 1: health advocacy charity. We are now in fifty percent of
Speaker 1: Irish primary schools. We will be in the curriculum by
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four and in every Irish school by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four end of twenty twenty four. That's how you
Speaker 1: solve problems. Early intervention. I believe it with every cell
Speaker 1: of my body. My entire study is revolving around if
Speaker 1: mental health intervention to this point has been so ineffective
Speaker 1: because let's face it, we've relied generally purely on a
Speaker 1: medical model that numbs the pain. How about we look
Speaker 1: at ways of creating really strong early intervention programs in
Speaker 1: the community and in schools. What does that look like,
Speaker 1: what will that do how will that impact young people?
Speaker 1: And that to me is how you change things. You
Speaker 1: don't change things thrown stones at them don't And I
Speaker 1: think that. I was in America recently, I was in
Speaker 1: the West Coast. I went to some of the schools.
Speaker 1: I looked at how the education system works there. It's
Speaker 1: a really great education system, but unfortunately it puts huge
Speaker 1: emphasis on results, not enough emphasis on being a human being.
Speaker 1: Everything is kind of driven around success. Every parent I
Speaker 1: met introduced me to their child with the grades they
Speaker 1: get in school. I don't like. I don't think that
Speaker 1: is the right way to bring the education system. I
Speaker 1: think is really important that we have grades and we drive,
Speaker 1: but there has to be more to this. Education has
Speaker 1: to be more about just grades. It has to be
Speaker 1: building a well balanced under kind of empathetic, emotionally intelligent
Speaker 1: young people and then we see change. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: kind of where my heart is now is in early
Speaker 1: intervention models of care and psychosocial interventions, working with the
Speaker 1: brilliant psychologists and the educational psychologists and the incredible people
Speaker 1: I work with to design stuff that actually works so
Speaker 1: we don't keep relying on a crisis model, because that's
Speaker 1: all we're doing here in Ireland and we've a population
Speaker 1: of five million people. If we can't get it right here,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And Ireland has a hugely
Speaker 1: strong international reputation. If we can prove we can make
Speaker 1: this work here and we can really make it kind
Speaker 1: of a framework, why can't we start looking at other countries?
Speaker 1: And unfortunately in America, you know, you have kids more
Speaker 1: worried about going to school than what they learned there.
Speaker 1: And somewhere along the line, people are going to realize
Speaker 1: that's the real madness, you know. And to me, I
Speaker 1: think we can do better, but I think it's going
Speaker 1: to take back to the bravery. It's going to take
Speaker 1: brave leadership, brave communities, and brave individuals to do it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, look Bressey, if I may.
Speaker 1: Call you that, only whatever you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, are you still performing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They pray we still. I do anything that makes
Speaker 1: me happy. So I golf, I play music, I I kayak,
Speaker 1: I study, I do whatever comes my way. And I'm
Speaker 1: very privileged to be able to do it.
Speaker 3: That's awesome. And yeah, and you have this podcast Where
Speaker 3: is My Mind? That is the I can't get that
Speaker 3: song out of my head now that I wanted.
Speaker 1: To play that. I played that had one of our
Speaker 1: graduation things in school years ago, and it was like
Speaker 1: the Tuchisian Brothers thought. I was like, that's devil music.
Speaker 1: But then no, I think that particular track has a
Speaker 1: sound or a tone or an energy, and that kind
Speaker 1: of really represented the melancholy and sometimes hilarity of my mind.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I love about that song.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not sad, it's just strange, and that
Speaker 1: was me. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I loved this episode and I do think it'll
Speaker 3: be really powerful for a lot of people. I feel
Speaker 3: real privileged that you came on the show to thank.
Speaker 1: You so much for having me any pleasure.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 3: If you'd like to react in some way to something
Speaker 3: you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion
Speaker 3: at the Psychology podcast dot com. We're on our YouTube
Speaker 3: page the Psychology Podcast. We also put up some videos
Speaker 3: of some episodes on our YouTube page as well, so
Speaker 3: you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such
Speaker 3: a great supporter of the show, and tune in next
Speaker 3: time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.