Hello and welcome to The Blind Bye podcast, you holding girls? Thank you for the feedback on last week's podcast, which was, you know what it was, it was a quite an extensive hot take on chicken rolls. I didn't think it was going to be that extensive, but. I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I did it and I got a lot of positive feedback. I stepped outside of my comfort zone, I stepped outside of my comfort zone and I spoke about shaken Philip Rawls, which is something I wouldn't a topic.

That I wouldn't usually interrogate on this podcast, and I did interrogators, and it revealed several layers like an onion about Irish culture and Irish society and our food culture. So I'm actually really glad that I did the podcast and she can fill out roles and. It you know what it taught me, I think going forward with this podcast, I won't be so esoteric, I won't be so esoteric if someone asks me to speak about something which I might consider to be a cliche or to be basic.

I won't dismiss it outright, I'll say no, fuck it, I can talk about anything, and the way that I speak about the thing I speak about will still be unique because it's my podcast. So if we're a brand new listener, what's the crack? You don't know what I'm talking about. Last week's podcast was about Chickenfeed. It was. This week's podcast, I'm going to answer some of your questions, let's because I'm consistently getting Duffie, I'm getting the DMS, I'm always getting notifications, I'm always getting questions, and I never get around to answering them.

By the way, if you send me a damn and I don't respond, please don't take it personally because I get about 100 fucking DMS a day on Twitter or on Instagram, so I don't see them all and unpatrolled. I respond to what I can, but whenever I do question answering podcasts, as is the tradition, I only answer one or two questions. So I'll see what I can do this week. And I kind of talk it out with the All Heartaches.

Last week's heartache was so hot, that is it fried my brain a bit, so I think this week it needs to be response. Also at the end of this podcast, I have a little a little brief interview that I recorded with some people about around the concept of utopianism which are going to get to Imparato. But let's get straight into the questions. Be on Instagram, asks, how do you support friends who are depressed while taking care of yourself?

That's a tough question. Um. You know, we live in a country if you're living in Ireland, you're living in a country that has a mental health crisis. Which means that quite a lot of us are experiencing mental health difficulties and we don't have access to adequate services. Right. Especially if you don't have money. And even if you can afford weekly therapy sessions, you still might be on a waiting list. You know what I mean? So a lot of people in Ireland.

We rely upon each other for mental health support, which isn't ideal. That's not ideal at all. I'm. What answer would I give to this I would draw. So how do you be supportive to a friend who's going through depression if you yourself might be going through depression or other mental health issues as well? What I would do in this situation is I would look towards. It's a philosophy within. There's a form of therapy called Rashon in a mode of behavioral therapy, it's very similar to CBT, to cognitive behavioral therapy, it's a precursor to CBT and there's a tenet within this or a practice called responsible hedonism.

Which basically means looking after your own mental health first. OK. And that sounds selfish, but let me explain what why it makes sense. You know, when you're on an airplane and you're looking at the safety instructions and it's like in the event of an emergency on the airplane, here's what you do. And it always says when the oxygen masks come out on the plane, attend to your own mask first before helping the person beside you, even if that person is a child.

OK, and it's one of these things everyone remembers that bit. Everyone remembers, like, we all kind of like to ignore the safety based on the airplane because it's frightening. You know, we all like to ignore it. But the one bit you remember is put on your own mask first, even even even if there's a child beside you, because that's great a lot of people, because if you are on a plane and your child is with you, you want to save them first.

That's the human instinct. You want to put the make sure your child has got their oxygen mask first before you have yours on. But the airplane is saying no. And the reason is, basically is even though your instinct is to help the child first. If you don't meet your own needs immediately for oxygen, you can't be of service to the child beside you. So the smart thing to do is actually make sure you have your own mask on, but you have access to oxygen and then begin to help the child beside you.

Even though it goes against your instinct. And responsible hedonism is similar, and it's something that I apply to my life. I can only be of service to my community if my mental health is in check. It's as simple as that, OK? And by community, I mean people in my immediate vicinity, people that I care about are here on this podcast. My mental health goes up and down. And if I'm having a bad week, I'm not going to do a mental health podcast on the week that I'm having a bad week with mental health.

Because you know what will happen? I'll be unnecessarily negative. I'll be unnecessarily negative, and I won't have self compassion. I won't understand why my emotions are out at that time. And it would be irresponsible of me to do a mental health podcast if my mental health isn't in check that week. So I don't. And that's what I mean by responsible hedonism, when I mind my mental health and I have my own little routines, then I have the I'm grounded enough to be of assistance to other people.

And that's kind of how you need to look at the situation if you're trying to mind your own mental health. But you have a friend who's going through some shit as well. You have to you kind of have to remind yourself first. Like being on the airplane with the mask, because if you don't and you put their needs for first, even though that appears to be the selfless thing, it might not be the smartest thing because like, think of it this way.

Like, when you're going through depression, depression is a negative view of yourself and negative view of other people and a negative view of the future. And when you're going through depression, are going through anxiety, are having any mental health flare up.

Your. Your opinions are distorted, your opinions about yourself or the people in the future become distorted to suit the negative lens of your depression. So. You know, it's it's difficult for you to be of support to your friend then. You know, you might put an unnecessarily negative slant if they're like, I just need the talk, I need to talk about what I'm going through, if you're going through similar shit. The things you say might be grounded, they might be rooted in compassion, they might be rooted in interest in rationality, they might be rooted in irrationality and.

You'd have a toxic feedback loop with the toilet together. So what I'd say to you is if you and a friend are kind of relying upon each other for support. And you are kind of like, fuck, I have my own shit going on this week, I'm having panic attacks, I'm having this I'm not able to listen to their shit this week. Don't feel guilty and saying that to yourself, you're entitled to those boundaries and boundaries is an important word there.

A proactive thing to do is to establish a contract with your friend, and this is OK, this is what people do in like in things like AA, where people have sponsors, you know, and are around addiction.

Establish a contract with your friend, whereby if either of you. He's going to ring the other person up or contact the other person to look for support or to to just have their ear, if you need to speak and you need them to listen to whatever pain is going through, you establish a contract whereby you say to him, are you in a place right now to to listen to me? How are you in an emotional place right now?

Comfortably, to listen to me unload some shit and just ask them that question and and establish a contract with each other and make it safe for them to say, I'm not, I'm not. And establish a set of rules whereby. If you say to your friend. I'm feeling really shit right now. Are you in a place emotionally to hear me say this? Establish a set of rules whereby if they say no, that's not a rejection, that that's you don't have to feel they have rejected me.

They don't care. Instead, what they're saying is, no, I'm not in a good place emotionally. So if I was to lend you my ear. It might it might actually cause harm to either myself or yourself, so. I can't do that today and then you go. Fair enough. We've got a set of rules in place, I understand. And if you have that contract and those boundaries and that clarity. With your mates, who you have this this relationship with around your mental health, then that's the most proactive thing you can do and don't feel guilty about responsible hedonism.

Look after your own mental health first, and when that's in check, you're grounded and then you can be of service to your community. But if you're if you're mental health and shit, you're not going to be a service to your community and you're not on unreliable help. And, you know, unfortunately, that's what we have to do because like I said, we're living in Ireland. And Ireland is a country that's currently going through a mental health crisis.

And, you know, what's a mental health crisis? A lot of people have mental health issues. A lot of people have mental health issues right now, and we don't necessarily have access to services, so we are forced into a position to take individual responsibility or to rely upon each other, which. That's a good thing, but it shouldn't be the only option that's that's it shouldn't be the only option. And one thing I want to draw attention to as well.

And I usually don't like. Don't like bringing in direct, is this bringing in politics? No, this isn't politics. This isn't politics. This is what I'm doing here is I'm bringing in mental health and someone else has decided to make it political, which it shouldn't be. And but it's something I'm noticing recently that I'm finding it's it's grating on me. I'm. So in Ireland, there's there's two main parties right there, both two cheeks of the of the same masters, Phenergan, and there's the fact that the two main parties in Ireland, then there's Sinn Fein and other smaller parties.

Right. But. There's a trend I'm noticing during the pandemic, which I find troubling. So there's a fella called Simon Harris, Simon Harris used to be the minister for health. Now he's the minister for Education. And he's a member of Senegal who are a center right party. Very neoliberal in their economics, what is neoliberal neoliberalism basically is when when a government policy prefers to shift public services toward the private market instead of the government taking responsibility, that's.

The basic description of neoliberalism. So anyway, Simon Harris, the minister for education, during the pandemic, there's been this very deliberate attempt from Phoenixville to manufacture an image around certain members of their certain politicians that they have to manufacture an image that makes politicians very relatable to the average Irish person via social media. And one person are doing this with Simon Harris. And Simon Harris, the minister for Education, this is a politician with a lot of experience in a position of influence and power via social media quite, quite frequently is.

Sending out these messages, a lot of look after your mental health, look after your emotional well-being, things are really, really tough right now. Things are really hard. And ultimately the positive messages, positive messages of self care and mind your mental health and all this stuff. But the problem I'm having is there's something about it doesn't feel ethical. This is someone who used to be a minister for health. So this is someone who would have had quite a lot of influence in mental health services in Ireland, and this is somebody used to be a minister for health, so he's effectively telling people to cope and mind their mental health because of a system that he's had a part in creating and has the power to fix.

So. It's on the surface, it appears like a good thing that Simon Harris is telling people to understand their emotions, cope all these positive mental health messages on the surface, that looks like a good thing, but unfortunately. I think there might be I don't want to say sinister covert undertones on Lloris. When politicians right, so people in power who have the agency and power and ability to fund mental health services, OK. The problem is mental health services aren't being funded.

And because of that, people don't have access to mental health services. That's a big problem. The government has the power to fix that. OK, so if the government has the power to fix it, a member of that government shouldn't be saying, oh, look after your mental health and look after your emotional well-being. I know it's tough. They shouldn't be the ones saying that because it's like you can actually fix it, buddy, so don't be telling us to mind our emotions.

How about fucking fund mental health services properly so people can access them and then people won't have to look after their mental health. People won't have to rely upon their best friend to be their fucking therapist. Which is the question I've just been asked here on this podcast, someone is basically saying to me, asking me a question and the question got a ton of fucking likes on Instagram saying I'm my friend's therapist and they are my therapist and I'm burnt out and I'm not a qualified therapist.

People are saying that to me. So we shouldn't have government ministers what it is. Here's here's what I think it is. By them, Mark and Simon Harris, into this helpful elf like character who gives us positive messages about minding our emotional well-being and our mental health, what it's effectively doing. It's it's an ideology that pushes all the responsibility of mental health onto the individual and away from the responsibility of government or the health services, its neo neoliberal.

So that it's it's the government saying it's Simon Harris saying, I know it's really tough, what can we do about it? You must take personal responsibility for your own mental health, because I'm not going to do anything about fixing the fucking services or funding them. That right there is a neoliberal playbook and FENA Gahler and Neo Liberal Party and the manufacturing of Simon Harris on social media as a friendly elf type character. That's very deliberate. It's Finegan PR.

They've got other politicians. They're cooking meals on Instagram to let us see because one of the fears the people have afine again, these are rich elites, the rich elite party that represent landlords and they're aware that this is what people think of them. So it's like, let's get one of our politicians cooking dinner on Instagram just like a normal person. It's all ideological position. So when you get Simon Harris telling us to listen to our emotions and to to take stock of our emotions, but ultimately doing nothing to fund mental health services, that right now there is neoliberal ideology that's the responsibility for mental health is on you and you alone and the government cannot help you.

You must you must well, and and if you want a counselor, you have to pay for yourself, we're going to push it all to the private market and it ties in also with the same message that they're putting out about covid, which is coronaviruses not caused by government policy, coronaviruses caused by you, the individual going out and having all of these house parties enjoying yourself. It's you. That's neoliberal ideology. It's pushing it all out onto the individual and the government, wiping their hands clean and their hands of it and.

I said it on Twitter today. And someone said to me, are blind, boy, I guess you're going to be deleting all your episodes, so you tell people to mind their mental health and it's like, no, I'm not a fucking government minister. This is how I look at it, because there's a lot of people listen to my podcast for mental health advice, and I know from messages I get from me, there's therapists in in this the amount of people who sent me messages saying I started listening to your podcast because my counselor told me to listen to your podcast about CBT.

And on the one hand, it's a go, it's I'm not saying it's a good thing, of course I like helping people with mental health. Of course, I loved like when I speak about mental health on this podcast, I'm doing it for me because it's part of I speak about my mental health. And, of course, it's nice to know that I'm helping other people. But isn't it terrible, isn't it awful? That there's people in this country common to my fucking podcast to help them with mental health, that's really bad.

I'm some fucking idiot from Limerick with a bag in his head. I know I studied a little bit of psych psychotherapy, but, like, it's it's really bad that. People are listening to my podcast for mental health advice because they can't access services, that's fucking wrong. And it's because of that ideology. What am I supposed to do? You know, I what I say to myself is sometimes I consider when I speak about mental health in this podcast, sometimes I consider it an act of protest.

You know what I mean, a compassionate act of protest where I'm trying to help myself and other people, but it's a bad thing. It's a bad thing. That's. People are getting their mental health advice from my fucking podcast. Because I'm doing this and I've been speaking about mental health, I've been speaking about mental health since 2014 publicly. And I've been doing that because we've been in a mental health crisis for that long. I do it because of a sense of duty.

But it's just really it gets my God, I don't think it's right that Simon Harris gets a minister with power, an agency, a member of government, I don't think it's right. Like he's the minister for education. When I speak about Fokin CBT on this podcast and I speak about transactional analysis, what do I say? Imagine we learn this in school instead of religion. Imagine if a three years of age your teacher was qualified to explain to you what your emotions are.

You're like understanding. You don't feel jelly, you don't feel anger. That's jealousy. You know what I mean? These basic things. I speak about CBT. I speak about psychology in this podcast to you as adults. And it's like, imagine we learnt this when I learned it when I was an adult. I wish I learnt it when I was three. Simon Harris is the minister for Education. So the Minister for Education has the power and agency to do that right now.

If you don't want a mental health crisis in 20 years, then completely overhaul the education system so that children from the youngest age possible are learning about depression, learning about anxiety, learning about their emotions, learning how to ground themselves, doing all this stuff preemptively so that they have tools and coping mechanisms when they become an adult. So, Simon Harris, get off your fucking arse and do that then. But don't be on Instagram talking about, oh, it's so tough right now.

It's so tough for everyone right now, isn't it? Fuck off, Gino, and. That's not a personal assessment on him, it's this is a well thought out ideological thing. This is neoliberalism push responsibility onto the individual so that we don't look to government and. The portrayal of Simon Harris as a harmless, little helpful elf that you can't criticize because it hurt his feelings, it's bullshit. He's a government minister and we're entitled to criticize his behavior and I'm criticizing his behavior.

By all means, Simon, tell us about our emotions. Ask us to ask us to look after our own mental health, but only do it when there is clear evidence of you going absolutely out of your way to solve the mental health crisis in this country through funding, through fucking funding mental health services so that nobody in this country. Has to worry about access to mental health services if they can't afford it, go and do that. That's what we want to fucking see.

I don't give a shit about you talking about emotions. And why the fuck am I ranting about this? Something about that question that I got from B. That made me angry. That made me fuckin angry. How do I how do I look after my own mental health while also looking after the mental health of my friend, that just made me a little bit annoyed, to be honest, because that's the fucking hell. That's called burnout. That's what psychotherapists have to deal with.

Psychotherapists have to you know, a psychotherapist can have compassion fatigue because a psychotherapist job is to be present and listen to other people's problems all the time so a psychotherapist can experience compassion, fatigue and burnout. Civilians shouldn't experience compassion fatigue and burnout because they're acting as a therapist, their friend, and vice versa. That that's it's unacceptable. OK, I'll try and harsh through some more questions. Aaron asks, What's my opinion on the trend of idolizing artists and musicians once they have passed away?

It's very simple. It's scarcity. It's scarcity. You know, if if an artist is dead, they can't make any more art. So what's there is all we have. And if it's a good body of work, it means that that artist gets to be. Perfect forever. They never get to disappoint us, they never get to have their bad albums, you know what I mean? I mean, what would we think of?

Fuckin Havana man, never abandoned, never put a foot wrong. All three Nirvana albums are perfection. Start to finish. Kurt Cobain died at his peak before his vocal peak, and it breaks my heart. I love Jesus Christ. I'd love to hear the albums that Kurt Cobain would have been making in his 30s. You know, I think he would have gone fully acoustic.

But like, it's scarcity, it's scarcity, and we also when the person isn't around to disappoint us, we get to turn them into an unrealistic God. You know, shortly always says it about about Bill Hicks, shortly the comedian gets really angry about Bill Hicks. He goes, you're calling him the greatest comedian of all time. And essentially the man has put out three hours of comedy. When you put all of Bill Hicks specials back to back, it's like three hours of comedy and shortly he's gone.

He never had the opportunity to fuck up.

I have several questions about sleep paralysis, as usual, lol, everyone's always asking me about sleep paralysis. It must be much more prevalent. Do I get sleep paralysis once a year, once every two years, maybe? Not particularly pleasant. It's completely natural. If you get sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is when it's when you wake up in the middle of night and you're half asleep and half awake and you can't move or you want to scream and you can't scream, and it's not particularly pleasant.

And some people get sleep paralysis accompanied by hallucinations where they think that somebody else is in the room. This is the scientific explanation for alien abductions. And I've never gotten have I gotten that, I've never gotten that word, I felt the presence in the room, but I've gotten sleep paralysis and it's not enjoyable and it makes me not want to go back to sleep.

I've had during times of great stress, I suppose I have had the hallucinatory sleep paralysis, but I had one. Yeah, just I had a really unpleasant one around the time my dad was dying years ago, where? Yeah, it's just like incredible stress, sleep paralysis, where the world becomes you wake up and the world becomes an abstraction, it's like the fabric of reality breaks down and you're living in some type of hallucination of abstract. Fuckin shapes and all you feel is terror.

I don't want to do that one again, please. If you don't want sleep paralysis, don't sleep in your back. Give that a go. I don't I, I don't sleep on my back anymore, because if I do, that's when I will get sleep paralysis and most people are similar. You get sleep paralysis when you sleep in your back. I miss sleeping on my back, but I don't want sleep paralysis. What is sleep paralysis? It's just there's a part of your brain.

That's when you go to sleep, when you go to sleep and you have dreams if you're running in your dream. Well, if you don't want your body, move on, because if your body moves your wake yourself up so your brain shuts off your muscles so that when you're dreaming, you don't actually move. And sleep paralysis is when you wake up. But that part of your brain hasn't clicked yet. So now you're fully awake and you can't move your muscles.

So your body sends you a nice old jolt of terror to shock and wake you up from it, and it's not pleasant to sleep on your back if you get sleep paralysis. Yukon's on your asks. I want to do a podcast as part of my master's project. It would involve interviewing people really informally and chatting with them about Youthwork. Any tips on where to learn about making podcasts? I mean, look, you can go on to YouTube if you want to learn how to use a microphone and record.

And if someone says to me, how do you make a podcast, I'd give them the answer I'd give to anyone who's making anything. If you're making anything, a podcast should be entertaining, right? People should want to listen to it. Make sure it has structure. Set up conflict resolution three act structure and listen to something like this, American Life, This American Life is is a perfect podcast. They invented a lot of the rules of podcasting.

Look at how they interview people, look at how they use set up conflict resolution set up. Here is the person conflict here is a problem that they're having our apartment. They're speaking about resolution. Here's how they resolve it. And edit your interview to accommodate that. Ah, interject with the interview and narrate overseas so you can set up set up conflict resolution. That's what this American life does if you listen to any of my. Not this one.

You know what, even this one is going to have set up conflict resolution, because I set it up by saying I'm doing some questions now. I'm in the middle of doing the questions. The conflict is in the fact that I resisted some of the I resisted that question about mental health. And speaking about Simon Harris, there's your fucking conflict and the resolution.

I started this podcast by saying I'm going to have a little brief interview later on about Utopia's. But because I mentioned it at the start, when you hear that interview at the end, there's your resolution. So that's a very simple three act structure. And we all know we're waiting for three ACT structures, but we're not conscious of it. So that's the only advice I'd give with a podcast. Have structure. Matthew Griffiths of Griffiths asks, What's my opinion on how people let superstitions rule their lives, e.g. one magpie Acero makes some people already have a shit day.

People who allow their lives to be ruled by superstitions, these, I believe, are also the same people who can be prone to anxiety when you if you believe heavily in superstitions.

Everyone has a little bit of superstitious thinking, but if you believe heavily in superstitions and this includes astrology, all right, there's nothing wrong with being interested in astrology. But if if if you really believe that the fuckin how you feel right now is because mercury is in retrograde, like.

We tend to be we tend to be superstitious when we're terrified of uncertainty and terrified of change and people who need superstitions. I'm very anxious about uncertainty, and they need to have certainty and a sense of control over certainty to the point that horoscopes temporarily do the trick, superstitions can also allow us to not accept or take any responsibility for our behavior. I see people online gone, I'm a fucking dickhead to everyone this month because Mercury's in retrograde, I don't even know what fucking mercury in retrograde means, something to do with Mercury, the planet.

But I see a lot of people going, oh, I'm a prick this month. I'm a prick and I'm being mean to everybody. Sorry about that. Mercury is in retrograde. Fuck off. Like, that's that's most likely a person who. Isn't really willing to accept or acknowledge their emotions, moods or behaviors and the impact that has on other people. So the issue with a little bit of superstition is fine. And I'm not shitting on people who are into horoscopes.

I can understand the horoscopes are entertaining, but if they're governing your life. Then that might be unhealthy to the healthy thing to do is to embrace chaos and uncertainty, to truly understand and know life is meaningless, chaos and absolutely anything can happen and things aren't predetermined. And when you think things happen for a reason, that's just your brain making patterns. But ultimately. We have no control over what happens to us. OK, and when I was experiencing intense anxiety.

That used to freak the fuck out of me. It's a because I know I have no control over what happens to me, that's fucking terrifying. I need to be in control. I need to be prepared. I must not feel pain. Bad things must not happen to me. I must prepare. I must protect myself by only staying in my house so that bad things don't happen to me. And experience and anxiety. Is it quite similar to to superstitions and to being superstitious?

And how I got over that, like when you when when you have anxiety, you can be prone to what's known as magical thinking. So I wasn't into horoscopes or I wasn't into. Like fucking if I saw a black cat, my my dad was going to be shit. It wasn't that, but I had. I had safety behaviors, I wouldn't leave my house if I didn't have an inhaler or I needed to have constant access to a water bottle.

Ah, if if, you know, I was experiencing agoraphobia. So if I was in a a public space, like a lecture theatre or a cinema, I needed to make sure that I was sitting this close to the door as possible. These are all kind of superstitious behaviors because I wasn't willing to accept uncertainty and chaos, I needed to control my environment. I need to sit beside the door in case I have a panic attack. And what got me over that, I had to actually go, yeah, I might have a panic attack.

And when it does happen, I'm going to have to just call, put it in the moment. So if someone is being overwhelmed by superstitious activities and there are dictating how you behave, are there causing you to not accept responsibility for your behavior? Markarian, like if you're gone for the old, sorry for being a dickhead. Last week, Mercury was in retrograde. That's that's just not acceptable, that that isn't acceptable because it's hurtful to the other person who you are a protector, and it's also it's not very helpful to yourself.

So. What I did to get out of was a magical thinking around anxiety, I would simply say to myself a lot and to understand deeply understand I have no control over what happens to me in my life. I have no control. And that's a fact. I have no control over what happens to me in my life. What I do have control over is my attitude towards what happens. And once I started to understand that, then I started to develop a sense of personal responsibility around my emotions and uncertainty stopped being terrifying because I'm going, yes, life is uncertain.

Life is chaos. Bad things will happen. Life is suffering. I'm going to suffer as part of being alive, that's the trade off for joy and happiness. But one thing that that's a fact, no matter what the fuck happens, whatever life throws at me. In that I have no control over in that chaos, what I always have full control over is my attitude towards what happens. Did you get what I'm saying? That's quite empowering. So if I get really bad news tomorrow, yes, it's going to hurt, but I have control over how I cope and how I react, how I react to it.

And I have a lot of power in that respect. And just adjusting my attitude towards that line of thinking because it's fact based meant that I'm not. If I got if I'm in a public space and I'm worried about anxiety, I'm not going to engage in safety behaviors like needing to have a water bottle or needing to make sure I have my inhaler with me or needed to make sure I'm near a door. I don't do that anymore because I say to myself, whatever happens.

I'm going to call put it in the moment, because I have that power and agency, so that's what I think is superstitious. I think people who are overly superstitious are terrified of change and terrified of uncertainty. And they must have the they tried to control reality. They're trying to control reality. Same with people. Same with conspiracy theories. And again, I'm not so much shitting on everyone. A certain amount of superstition is healthy. It's it's when it becomes unhealthy and it impacts your quality of life and your relationship with other people.

That's all I'm saying. Let's have another Kaarina pause. So I'm going to play my little whistle, and when I play this, you're going to hear an algorithmically generated advert.

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I'm only doing it once a month from now on because I've got some projects on and I don't have time to be doing it three times a week. Like the podcast, Sharett, you're not a crack. OK, and answer one more question before I get onto the interview thingy that I promised you at the end, Maev asks, Do I have any views on the law of attraction? This would be quite similar to the the question before the ocarina was about superstition.

So the law of attraction, as I understand it, I think it's based on this thing called The Secret, which is popular with a lot of people, which it kind of states this. If you put positivity out into the universe, positive things will happen. So do I believe in the law of attraction?

Yes and no. So a lot of the time when I hear people talk about the book, The Secrets, I want to hear people talk about the law of attraction. They tend to attach a kind of a supernatural vibe to it that if you just ask the universe that you will receive, the universe would pay you back. Like. I don't believe that part, but what I will say is when I when I embarked on my mental health journey.

And when I became a mentally healthy person, all right, let's put it that way, I used to not be I used to be someone with depression and anxiety. When I had depression, I had a negative view of myself, had a negative view of other people. I had a negative view of the future when I had anxiety. I was terrified of everything. I had incredibly low self-esteem. So my quality of life wasn't good. I wasn't leaving my house, I wasn't.

I wasn't achieving goals, I wasn't achieving dreams, I wasn't. Earning a living. It was a very negative, self perpetuating cycle of negativity. Because I was depressed and anxious and my self-esteem was low, I wasn't a nice person to be around. I was suspicious of people because my self-esteem was low and I didn't have emotional intelligence, I was jealous of other people because I had low self-esteem. If I met another person, I would just assume that that person didn't like me because I didn't like myself.

So you just naturally assume you project all your own self-loathing and self-hatred onto another person. So if I feel like an incapable piece of shit, if I meet a stranger, I'm going to say to myself, they think I'm a piece of shit. That's why they didn't say hello to me this morning. So now I'm projecting all this negativity. And if I if I think someone else thinks I'm a piece of shit, then I'm not going to be nice to them.

I'm going to be standoffish. I also didn't love myself. So if you don't love yourself, you won't allow anyone to love you or be kind to you. You push them away.

So what I had while I had very poor mental health, poor opinion of myself, of all the people. This then reflected into my environment and my life and my world, so we actually had a negative life when I engaged in therapy and self-help and I started to become someone with who was mentally healthy. And what that meant was. I had good my self-esteem was improved by self-esteem, that meant that. I felt that I had worked as a person.

I felt that I was deserving of love and to love myself. I felt confident. Because I had self-love. I would just assume that other people were good people. I was no longer meeting a stranger and assuming that they think negatively of me, instead, I was just going, I feel OK. That person's probably grand now. All of a sudden I'm friendly to strangers. I'm not afraid of strangers anymore because I have solid self-esteem. So I'm in a very friendly, confident way, engaging with strangers now and building relationships because I have high self-esteem.

Now, the idea of setting a goal, you know, like. Haas outside and all that shit that happened with my career, that happened within a year of me sorting out my mental health, I'd been doing creative stuff since I was about four, 16, but it wasn't going anywhere. But within a year of me sorting out my fucking mental health, that's like truly sorting it out and becoming a confident, positive person within a year. I was realizing my dreams like I was on TV.

I had a fucking song in the charts that was nearly Christmas number one within a year of properly sorting out my mental health. Now, if I was superstitious, I could look at that from the perspective of the secret or look at it as the law of attraction, that because I put positivity out into the universe, positivity came back. And it's like, yes, it did, but not because of anything superstitious. Because I had was mentally healthy, because I had self-esteem, I had self compassion, I had emotional understanding, I'm quite simply a nicer person to be around.

I make it more meaningful connections by making meaningful connections. And genuinely being genuinely being nice to a person, genuinely being friendly, making meaningful connections, then from that opportunities come. If you're someone who's who's confident and nice to speak to and you come across as genuine, then the other person is going to want to help you. So opportunities start to arise. And I'm no longer scared to set goals for myself. When I was in the heights of shock and depression, I wasn't writing songs, I wasn't like going I'm going to I'm going to have a song written by the end of the week.

I wasn't because I didn't have the self-esteem to set that goal for myself and I didn't have the self love to do something as. Meaningful as create a song, this stuff only came from having good mental health. So by having good mental health, I was making meaningful connections with other people. And having the confidence to set goals and achieve them, and also because my self-esteem was based on an internal locus of evaluation, which means that my self-worth doesn't come from aspects of my behavior, it comes from just who I am as a person, my intrinsic worth.

Because of that, then I'm not terrified of failure. When I had poor mental health issues, I was defining myself, worked in aspects of my behavior. So if when I had poor mental health, if I was to even attempt to write a song or to create a comedy sketch. If if the result of my attempt wasn't good, then I would then use that as evidence to suggest that I'm a bad person. It's like, OK, I'm going to try and write a comedy sketch.

Fuck, it's not that funny cause it's not you fucking piece of shit. You've no talent. You're useless, you're worthless. That's what my brain would have said to myself. But when I started getting mentally healthy, I no longer placed myself, worked in aspects of my behavior or my achievements. So if I was to write a comedy sketch then, or to write a song, if my attempt wasn't good enough. I wouldn't call myself a piece of shit human, I would just say that piece of work isn't good enough for her.

I learn from it or try it again.

So I because I think about this a lot, I could have easily attributed that to something supernatural, like the supernatural, like the law of attraction. No, no. When you. Ah, nice to be around when you have the happiness and self-esteem to become the best version of yourself. Then naturally, things with things will start to go right for you because you're doing all the positive things that lead to success, and that's not the law of attraction.

That's called taken personal responsibility and. That's another thing that gets my fucking goat about the mental health system in Ireland. How many people are not? Being how many people do not have access to the best version of themselves because they don't have access to services to help them be that person? I'm very lucky when I was. I was in college LED's in when I was about 19 in our college and. For whatever reason, there wasn't big long queues to get to the counselor's office.

I don't know why that is, but there wasn't. And when I was 19 in college, I was able to go to the counselor in college and I got two years of weekly free counseling. And that's sort of my shit out. And that's just how it was back then in the late 2000s, you know, maybe, I don't know, the recession hadn't happened yet, I don't know. But when I was in college.

There was not giant queues for the counselor, I had access to a counselor and it served me well for two fucking years and I got two years of free counseling because I wouldn't have been able to afford it. I wouldn't have been able to afford private counseling every week. But because I was in college, I was for free. And and this is the thing with self-help. Everything I've done since then is self-help. But I didn't I didn't this is what pisses me off about Simon Harris and his message for us to mind our mental health or to exercise for our mental health part of self-help is get into a position where you can look for help.

And I am someone who I looked for help and I got help weekly for two years from a fucking professional counselor and then embarked on self-help.

But if I didn't have access to a counselor for two fucking years weekly, I don't know, would it would I have had a transformative effect of myself or what? I still have anxiety and depression. I don't know. So I'm going to end this podcast with a little interview I recorded during the week with two sound heads to sound heads who had a chat with an owner, Malali. Who is a journalist with a brilliant journalist with the Irish Times, and she also I think she has a podcast, too, I believe, and also Connor Habib.

Connor Connor was on this podcast before I had him, I had a full episode with Connor before Connor is he's a former porn star and now he's an academic and he has a podcast, too. He has a podcast called Against Everyone with Connor Habeeb, but ONA and Connor anyway, who are pals with each other. They started this project over over lockdown that they got on to me about to go. Can we come on the podcast and speak about this new project that we have?

And the project that they have is called Utopia Ireland Dorahy, and it's kind of a radical idea.

It's it's a website called Utopia Ireland Dorahy, but it's. It's process based. How do I explain this, it's not necessarily about an end result. All it is. Is a Web page, and what it says is, what is your what is your vision of an ideal Ireland like a utopia? And it's 100 percent completely anonymous. All the raises are a little box where you can type in your answer. What is your vision of an ideal Ireland?

And then separately, if you want to give them your e-mail to be part of a mailing list, you can. But ultimately it's completely anonymous. They've set up a survey asking people what is your vision of an ideal Ireland and. I've edited the interview, it was longer, but I edited it down and I was asking them, like my first thought was like, what are you going to do? What what's what what is the point of this project?

You know, if you have this website and you're asking everyone to write down what is your vision of an ideal Ireland, it's like, what are you going to do with this? But the fact of the matter is, this is a process based project, so they don't really know what they're going to do with it. It's more it's like the fact that this exists is providing. You everybody with an opportunity to privately write down and to the contemplative space to think what is an ideal Ireland and.

They're not looking for, like political solutions, it's literally the what I compare it to is like in in counseling and psychotherapy, sometimes a therapist will ask you, what do you want for yourself when you think of the best version of you? What does that person look like or what is happiness to you? A counselor might ask disk face of a client, someone who's gone through troubled waters. Happiness looked like for you. Where would you like to see yourself in four years and.

You can write it down yourself privately without any rules, and you don't you don't say to yourself, this is ridiculous or you don't allow yourself to say this is unrealistic. You truly ask yourself, what do you want? And you're not thinking of any boundaries or any negativity. What do you want? And you write it down and you can burn it afterwards because the value is in search and through yourself and simply saying it out loud to yourself.

And that's what this site is.

Providing a little space for anyone to write into a box, what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And if you want it completely anonymous, if you're worried about data, I would suggest just use a VPN or something and pretend pretend you're living in Moldova. It's it's it's completely ethical around data. So this is a project that's on a Malali and Habib are doing Utopia, Ireland Dorahy, a process based project, what they just want to ask people, what is your vision of an ideal Ireland to begin a conversation?

And there's a mailing list if you want. And like I said, it's a process they don't know where they're going with it, so I chatted to him during the week briefly to explain to me why is this project and why does it exist? So I spoke from and that's what I'm going to play for you right now. So this is me chatting to the journalist owner, Malali and Koner Habib, who's an academic and a podcast. And it's about their project, Utopia, Ireland.

And I'm aware that the the word utopia is is loaded. It's a loaded word, but hear them out and and consider going to the website yourself and just submitting without any boundaries. What's your vision for an ideal Ireland, this survey that we're doing, I guess for want of a better word on Utopia, and that's kind of like the first conclusion that we've come to is the part of the process that we've been thinking about, where people can articulate what they're kind of positive vision is related to Ireland, their ideas about society.

They could be small ideas or fantastical ideas or massive ideas. But what we want to do is remove the parameters of what people may think is possible and stop thinking about reactive solutions and stop thinking about kind of being in opposition to things and thinking more about what you really want. And I guess like the pandemic, if you instigated it in some ways with regards to all this discourse that was happening around the outside of the of the pandemic, that was really about like this is a moment to pause and what are the things that matter?

And there's so much potential for change here. And I think that through just being normalized by the grind of what's been going on the past year, it's fair to say that a lot of people maybe are losing that feeling a little bit. But that happened and it exists. So part of this is a is a bit of like how do you hold that potential and how do you keep that imagination going?

So the vibe I'm getting is that this project was inspired by the early days of the pandemic where there was this collective sense of camaraderie, camaraderie and cooperation. And the people of Ireland really came together like like Jesus that did 70000 people volunteered for the Hajazi or something like that, you know.

So if, you know, if I if I visited the website, you told me Ireland three and the landing pages there. What is your vision of an ideal Ireland? And I have to tell you, I'm putting put on the spot and type into the box. What's my vision of an ideal Ireland? I would probably say off the bat, and I would like to see an island where. Health care. Education and housing are genuine human rights, and everybody has access to equal access to health care, housing and education, regardless of how much money they have.

Simple as that, everyone has access to it, that that's what I would like to see in an ideal world. So I interviewed you on this podcast two years ago. You'd been living in Ireland one month at the time. Now you've been living in Ireland for two years and you're involved in this project. What would be your vision of an ideologue?

Well, I mean, as far as my idea of utopia, maybe mine will sound a little simpler than Oona's at the start. I mean, basically, like when people ask me what my politics are, you know, I try to avoid saying things like I'm an anarchist or I'm a socialist or whatever. Like basically I like to suck dicks and read books and I want to be able to do that all the time.

Connor is a former porn star, by the way. No, not mentioned. I was I was I haven't made a porn for.

It's been like eight years. Yes, but but what I mean by that is that, like, pleasure, the things that we find pleasurable are what is available to us to actually dedicate our time to you. That's just on a sort of surface level. So our days are composed of what we want to do. And in fact, it's something that I'm in the habit now of doing is like asking people how they'd like to spend their day, you know, what do you want your day to look like?

I think that that's a really important question for all of us. And I don't need everybody to answer in a way that's remotely similar to how I answer. But the end result of that would be, you know, maybe like a spiritual way of saying it is that people get to live out their karma and encounter the challenges and the things that give them pleasure in the ways that they want, so that we have people who are extraordinary as a kind of normal thing.

Like if we look back on history, we see people like, I don't know, like let's say Beethoven or, you know, like Michael Jordan for basketball or whatever, these people who are absolutely extraordinary. But actually that should be the norm. Like people should have the conditions set up in their lives to be thriving, that much to be flourishing, that much that what in whatever area. And it doesn't have to be on the public stage. You could be gardening.

It could be being a mom. It could be, you know, like being a farmer, whatever, that you're thriving in that area because you're not so beaten down by the social conditions that demand that you work and die, you know, from day one to the very end.

So the freedom basically to to live our lives in a way that affords us personal meaning individually, which that sounds pretty nice to me. That sounds pretty nice to me, to be honest. So can you tell me so far with the project, what have Irish people been submitting when you ask them, like, what's your vision for an ideal? And a lot of people been right?

Well, one of the things that I thought was really interesting is a lot of people seem to be referring to public space. And this is obviously like pandemic related and everything from like develop on a or like just have awnings that actually cover streets so people can see. Obviously, this has been happening in Cork before Dublin put a fucking roof on Ireland.

Yeah, I guess it rains all the time. Like I go to Spain. I love going to Spain. And when it's really, really hot in Spain, they put a roof over the street. So my vision for an Irish utopia put a fucking roof over the country. It's raining all the time, you know what I mean?

That is definitely a vision to enjoy the public space. But there's been like really kind of loving stuff around people like this real kind of simple desire around things to just not be so hard and not be so grinding. And I think that that's, you know, the part of the pandemic which has obviously killed so many people and made people really sick, you know, to return back to the thing that became almost a cliche instantly about the polls and about the breath and about the stopping.

And I think that an awful lot of the stuff that was coming through really kind of speaks to how a lot of people, even though they may be living, you know, relatively privileged lives and they might have you know, they'll have a roof over their head. They may have a job and an income, but there is a feeling, a broad feeling of dissatisfaction of Burness obviously is, you know, the another pandemic and of just feeling like one's very existence and desire to enjoy simple things and have nice things is not being mashed.

So we. Really have to dig into knowing that we have very simple desires, you know, you want to go to arrive at six o'clock in the morning or you want to have, like, barbecues in your park or awnings over a street or, you know, housing that is, you know, half a million quid for, you know, one and a half rooms in this kind of stuff.

Why is that so difficult and what does progress, quote unquote, really look like when it comes to economic systems and how much of that is almost like a.. Pleasure, antihuman and peace, you know, personal peace.

So an awful lot of that stuff is coming through around this feeling of what where is this grind coming from?

So one thing I find really encouraging about the survey you're doing. Is if someone goes to the website and it's just a simple landing page and says, what's your vision of an ideal Ireland? And you have the little box to type it in, you're providing a contemplative space for that person to think about, you know, without any boundaries. What do you actually want? What do you what is the ideal society that you would like to live in? But most importantly.

It's not a social media space when we if we were to ask this question on Twitter, what is your what is your vision for an ideal Ireland? You couldn't, because when we use social media, what do we know or not? There's always an element of performative. When you express an opinion on Twitter, on Facebook, you are performing. You know that people are watching. Right. And as a result, you're not completely honest because people are watching and you might be judged or you might want to impress.

So the complete anonymity of this and the privacy of it is as a process of just reflecting. That's the value that I see in this. Yeah.

And like, how are we honest with ourselves? You know, really, really fundamentally.

And you're so right about how the performative aspect of social media and any kind of online discourse and the tragedy of Twitter discourse actually now being framed as societal discourse when obviously which is which is really bad, and the idea that everybody is at their wit's end and everybody is angry and this is just rage piss designs, as we know, to like encourage this kind of like polarization.

And so therefore, the tech companies can benefit from the emotional fallout of that, unlike, you know, I mean, we could talk about that for ages and we shouldn't put, like, just bringing things back to, you know, yes, this is a website, but like trying as much as possible to bring it bring it back to a real human reality. And that is not an anti human space, as so much of the digital space increasingly is.

And like it can be very, very simple needs or wants. But like, those are really, really important and really legitimate. And as says around, pleasure, you know, that's it's something that has been really lost, you know, just the the validity of pleasure for loads of reasons. And, you know, I don't think that that's a privileged thing to say because then you're saying, like, only a certain cohort of people, you know, can afford to or are allowed to feel pleasure.

If we've learned anything over the past year, it's how removed from materialism pleasure actually is, you know, just about data and stuff.

Yeah, right. So I know that when when I put this podcast out, there's going to be people really skeptical and afraid of they're just going to go anonymous. Really. Is it really anonymous? Like, it's simple as that. And I know what shit like this. Like I said when I took it back to a terrible context, when a therapist would say to the client, just write down how you want to feel and you can you can find the paper afterwards.

It's that act of having full autonomy over your own data of your thoughts to be able to find it afterwards. That allows someone to be 100 percent honest. And this thing here can only work if the person writing down can truly, truly feel if like if a person's vision of Ireland is, I think everyone should have their kneecaps on the backs of their legs and someone wants to be able to write that without shame.

But if someone wants to write something crazy and it's like, here's my space to say the thing I would love to say, but I can't because I'd be publicly shamed if I do. Can they truly have anonymity? You know, should they use a VPN beforehand if they're worried about their data?

I these are questions that you're going to get like however people feel comfortable with it. The answer, the little survey box you're referring to like that is anonymized. We have a separate box where you can email if you want, if you want to put your email and you can if you want.

But the actual box just put the fucking answer in.

And it's an issue with. Yeah, disassociates the email from the answer. So those are actually two completely separate forms. So when we get the answer, if it's the person that wants, like deer legs for everybody in Ireland, we'll get that as a separate name. Someone wants that. That's what I want. I want to shame them for it, for their dear, dear beliefs. But the but the but the email thing which we have there is a completely separate sends us a completely separate email for that.

So we actually don't have the answers yet. And it and we asked people in that and this is how we will bring people into following up as the project develops is if you sign up for the email list, which we're not sending any emails out yet. So don't worry about getting weekly emails from us or anything that we're only going to use it to real effect. And it's like, are you interested more in ultra economics or politics as I broke down those fears before?

And then that's only to get people involved in the process as we get down the line interacting with those spheres and involving people more. And it's completely disassociated from the answer. The other thing is, if, like people kind of look at the page and and think about what do I want, but I don't want to write it on the website, just fuckin write it for yourself and burn it if you want.

You know what? There's nothing wrong with that. It's that that you've begun a thought process that you wouldn't have done otherwise because society has been told that things are a certain way. Yeah. Yeah.

And and tell and tell other people about it and start a conversation about it if you want as well. I mean, that's it's like this spreading out away from the website is also a healthy act. So it's not like it all has to come to us, you know, or anything like that. We're trying to inspire that process and people like. Yeah.

So as a final word on this, why should people go to Utopia, Ireland, Dorahy and. Respond to the survey question, what is your vision of an ideal Ireland? Why should people do it? Everybody has gone through a pandemic in the last year. We've also gone through a period of social change and social evolution. And this is kind of an evolutionary call as opposed to revolutionary call retcon build on be amazing. We can build something that is fucking beautiful and empathic and loving and kind and where, you know, that is has massive, like egalitarian qualities to us.

And we can do that within ourselves because if we're not willing to do the work on ourselves and imagine something for ourselves and put to work in ourselves, then we can't keep defaulting to the structures and systems that we now can't provide for it. So this kind of just like just, you know, just click into this and just think about it yourself a little bit. There's no commitment. There's no obligation. It's just take some of the magic that you were feeling last March, maybe along with the fear and pain and trauma and disruption and wonder how can that little glimmer be progressed into the present?

That kind of does an awful lot of things.

Yeah, yeah. And I just want to say just to go on that, you know, this isn't about revolution, right? We don't want to we don't want a revolution. That brings us back to the same place that we're always in again and again. That's what revolutions often do. You know, they just result in changing the faces of who's in power using the same old kinds of systems. I think maybe a way that I would describe it as, you know, we have in Ireland, there's a tradition of certain writers who make all the aspects of Ireland trans parent to themselves.

So we could talk about John O'Donohue or we could talk about John Moriarty. Those are my sort of go to examples, but even we could talk about pig's ears or somebody like that, like people who are going to show that there are many different versions of Ireland, but there's a kind of thing that's rising up through them in this really beautiful way. So we don't have to think about going back to an old way of how things were or going forward to a new Ireland, which people have been talking about since like the 1930s, but like rather just saying, who are we and what do we want?

And like and what do we want from the depths of, you know, of who we are and our various different histories and this land and this island, you know, and I think that that's really beautiful. So it's not quite nationalism. It's just sort of a recognition of the many different many different versions of Ireland and all those forms of beauty that are here. And I realise some of that, you know, some of what we're seeing may sound sentimental in a way, but I think also getting past the sentimentalism of it, like people can feel it, people can feel that, you know.

So thank you there to own a malali and konner a beep talking about their project Utopia, Ireland. Give it a crack. Give it a go, I think. It's I admire. I look, it's process based, I admire anything that's process based, that isn't necessarily focused on end results. It's about process and reflection, which we don't have a lot of in society. So give it a crack. Have a think about your vision for an ideal Ireland and submit it anonymously and know that nobody's watching.

Nobody knows who it is. Be as honest as fuck. I'll be back next week with a hot take. I'll be back with a hot take next week. I don't know which one of three or four hot takes published. We'll see what comes up. Mind yourself, have some self compassion. Be compassionate to yourself. Be compassionate. Rob a dog, rob a dog, feed a stray cat, wink at a crawl. You know what I mean?

Yade. This year, London's favorite thief is all grown up. People don't really call me Oliver anymore. Get ready for the Dickens classic tale with a modern twist fate.

And this is to us how we could bring him up. It's called surviving. I know you find any job I want in. We're on Michael Caine Raffle, Rita Ora and Lina Haiti. That was our one shot. It was a simple plan and we're sorry. It's what we do to survive. Twist Only on Sky Cinema, January 29 Sky Cinema, The Home of Sky Original Films.