Find the Place in You that Isn’t Wounded || Niall Breslin

NGOs and the European Parliament. Y'all host the Where Is My Mind and Wake Up wind Down podcasts, both of which are regularly in the UK and Ireland's top podcast charts. In this episode, I talked in n'all Breslin about mental health. During his early days as an entertainer and athlete, y'all has always tried to put his best foot forward, but behind this confident exterior, he was silently suffering. It was only after he came forward about his struggles that he

sought the help he needed. Instead of avoiding negative emotions, ne' all encourages us to face them bravely, either through therapy or mindfulness. We also touch on the topics of education, introspection, resilience, community, and empowerment. I really enjoyed this chat with y'all. I

found him incredibly sensitive and really touching. There were definitely moments in this episode in which I teared up, and I really like his message that we can find parts of ourselves that aren't wounded, and that we should search for those parts of ourselves because.

my first realization that I'm not safe. But actually, when I really went into the therapeutic journey with my psychologists and therapist, it was really a physically abuse of primary school. That was the impact. That's what kind of I believe had the kind of prevailing impact on my psychology throughout my life because I learned to do what probably most people would have done. I just immediately cut myself off

emotionally from the world and it worked really well. But then, as I said, as I got older, it became quite destructive and throughout the nineties in Ireland. You know, the only time I ever heard mental health mention was when Kirk Cobain died and I asked my Christian brother teacher what happened, and he punched his desk and called him

a coward. So, you know, a lot of my work is really not around the psychology of the individual, but I've become so interested in the kind of cultural, social, liegical elements of mental health and how when I really look at it, how could many of us be any other way? And the impact culture has and society has on the individual is something I'm immensely interested in because I had a profound impact on me. Are you an introvert?

was an escape that I really liked. And I loved music, and I loved the intensity and the noise and the aggression and the collectiveness of being in a band when there's four or five people and you're like looking at everyone, going, we all have a part to play here and if

anyone messes up, and I love that. So in terms of an introvert socially, I think I am socially and particularly I can be particularly awkward at times, but I yeah, I don't think I'm I think once I know the person, I'm incredibly good and I love I love conversations and I love love chats. But I can be an introvert. I do like my own company. That's probably a good way bullet mm hm, you know, probably too much.

with full clarity, I wouldn't have done it again. Because everything changed. There was a sense of ownership over you. And at that point I didn't a clue what was going on in my head. I didn't know what my value system was. I didn't know what I stood for. I felt rudorless and you're giving yourself to other people to decide and that wasn't good. That's when things went pretty chaotic for me mentally.

And I carried that on because in Ireland it's really interesting from a cultural point of view. And I spent a lot of my time in America, and I work with a lot of people in America, and I love the perception that they may have of Ireland and Irish people. But really, when you get into our history and into who we are, we have a very difficult, challenging, dark past.

And the reason I bring that up is, you know, when it comes to mental health, shame was the prevailing wind in Ireland, and the Catholic Church weaponized shame and gave us the gun, and that's what happened, and we used it on each other, so whether if it wasn't and something like you know, sex outside marriage, where we put women and children in prisons, essentially it was we

were putting people in institutions. And what people don't realize in Ireland, which is really interesting from a psychology point of view. By nineteen fifty, Ireland had the highest level of people in course of confinement and psychiatric institutions in the world. And the running joke, of course is that obviously Irish people were just more more mental illness in Ireland, but there's no evidence to show that was the case whatsoever.

We loved putting people in institutions, and so for me in the nineties, this prevailing idea of institutionalization was constantly in my head because there was a hospital among Ark where I'm from, called Saint Omans, and the running joke in my town was like, you know, your dad's in Saint Omans or your Mum's in Saint Omens, and it was a kind of a joke, and I really believed that if I actually told the truth, that's where I

would end up. So that type of stuff led me on this kind of silent fifteen years of holding on, and I was having panic attacks all the time. And I had ten minutes before the biggest live show of the Voice, my first live show. I had a really pretty brutal one and I had to do the rest of the show ninety minutes, and I was physically shaking throughout that whole ninety minutes. And that was the kind of rock bottom. That was the moment of change or the catalyst or whatever you want to call it.

because I was strong. And John at Dunna, who's an Irish potent philosopher who has inspired most of my work. He's actually an incredible man. He passed away recently and he said, there's a place within all of us that's never been wounded. And I think it is one of the best statements I think you in your work in my work.

couldn't do that. But you did do that. And the reason I'm saying that is maybe we're all a little tougher than we think we are. And it's that reminder of the place that's never being wounded that I go back to. That's the place that got me out of that whole before that live show and got me to the ninety minutes. Also, a really good professional presenter, Catherine Thomas. I looked at her and I just nodded and I said, don't ask me anything. I'm literally just in survival mode here.

And that was it. I got through it, and that very evening I changed the dijectory of my life. I made a few decisions and I've never looked back.

But the really interesting thing with TV is like you go and do your rehearsal and you're wearing a certain you're wearing clothes, and your producer and your director who goes right, they work on screen that's grand thumbs up. You can wear that tonight. So I arrive out and I put a completely different shirt on, and the directors going like, what's going on here? Why is he wearing a different shirt? And I couldn't explain to him. I'd vomit on the other one. I'm sorry, but to me,

there was an incredible power. The difficulty was I had to also advise and give feedback to singers. So what I did, you see? I learned coping strategies over the years, but what I knew purely from my anxiety is when my head is I call it the mind right. When my head goes on a mind right, I need to get out of it. So I need to get out on my head and get into my body. And I just remember my two hands on the chair and really feeling my feet in the floor, and it was enough

to ground me and get me through. But I also took beta blockers just to get through it, and it changed how I look. I wasn't frightened of live TV. I was frightened of looking vulnerable on live TV because that was I know ten years ago, what would have happened, what would have been said, how would have the public reacted to it, Because it's very hard to explain to people that you're having a panic attack because it looks

different for everybody. But I did get through it, and that night I made a decision to tell everybody in my life that this was something I had been open with on my own and I told friends, I told family. I then made a decision, which was a huge one to make because I wrote a piece of paper that was going to lose my job and I'd have to leave the country. But that's what anxiety does. It makes the impossible possible. And this is what I said. I'm gone,

but it's worth it. So I decided to tell the public. And that came out of the discussion I had with my mother, and she said, what would have been different for the fifteen year old you if somebody had said something in the nineties about this, I said, everything would have been different. I thought I was possessed by the tevil, which was a viable option in the nineties in Ireland. She said, speak to the fifteen year old you, that's what you do here. And then I came out publicly.

It was the biggest TV show in the country and I came out and I expected to be thrown under a bus and I didn't receive anything but empathy. And that made me realize that maybe we are ready to kind of move and start addressing these things.

any negative emotions. They always they you know, they don't show it to others. Right, there are always people pleasing, etcetera, et cetera, because people are kind of boring, right.

And if you look at me music or any form of art. Back to Johnathunna, who is this quote and he says music is what language would love to be. I just like this guy's just golden coming out with these things, because often what music becomes for the artist is a way of communicating something that no one will listen to in words or will judge them for it in words. So it's their form of communication and it's

generally quite authentic, and I think that's what audiences. When you look at the classic albums like the really like the album that has always had this profound impact in my life was Tom White's Closing Time. When you listen to it, just that's what it sounds like. It sounds like a lad who's not been able to say this to his friends, but he's able to play it on the piano. And I think that, to me is something

that I've used over my life. That there's poetry, whether it's spoken word, whether it's music, any form of that is something I've used and it's been immensely therapeutic. And that's why, to me's therapy is becoming this very pervasive form of support and ally for people who might struggle with other forms of therapy.

I wasn't the way I was. But the other form that I thought was a form of escapism was I used to obsessively exercise, and I used to think that that was a healthy way, And because exercise is a healthy thing to do when generally good for you, you kind of believe that this is. So I would pick

more difficult challenges. And what I was doing was I was picking challenges that gave me zero time to think, gave me zero timeists to rest, because that's when I used to get up, like that's when things would go wrong for me. So I picked bigger things. And I believe I would always believe that my happiness lay in achievement. So I would pick bigger goals and go harder and harder, and I get more and more disappointed when that feeling of right, this is fixed now didn't come. And it

was in therapy. I had an amazing therapist, had a few, but it was actually in scheme of therapy where everything shifted in me. And what shifted was and my therapists had that I'm not giving anything away of my therapeutic journey I speak openly about it was very challenged by me because I was very good at over intellectualizing what they were saying, and I was shifting them from one

thing to the next. But that therapist got me to feel and everything shifted, Like I moved from that cerebral headspace. And for twenty years I've avoided going into that feeling space. And when it happened, you literally fall apart and you're contained by a therapist and then you're rebuilt or you're you know. But I do think in terms of therapy, it's often sold as this. I look at the ads for it and it's like it's this pretty thing, and I'm like, it's not pretty. For me, it wasn't pretty.

It was a very difficult, challenging experience, but it worked. It was very powerful for it.

show up. That is the thing. And I think some people aren't either ready to do that or not willing to do that, and you have to you have to meet them halfway. And that's the thing I wanted more than anything in the world. I wanted to not feel the way I was feeling. So I was willing to do whatever it took. And I actually it was a GP. Was a GP that like a physician that put me

on that path. You know, he didn't immediately go right, we're gonna drug you up here, and I was on medication for a long long time, but you know he was going, no, I think there's something else here that you need to look at. So he set me on a different path.

is just how my head would go. And then I would think, well, what's stopping me from having a full bite. There's no restraints on my head right now. I could easily have one, and then it would start spiraling and spiraling, inspiring, and then my heart beats and I'm like, wait a minute, I am having a I don't know if you can resonate with that way of thinking at all, but that's how it was for me and I would be. And the more public I was, the more my head would

My head would fuck with me. My head would fuck with me, is what was happening.

conversations my hand in my pocket. And I remember, like, really difficult thing that happened to me. I was in I was playing rugby at the time professionally, and I was speaking to my coach. I missed a breath and I could feel it. It just came out in my hands in my pocket, and I tore the skin off my hand with my fingers just to stop myself reacting. And I told him that I had vertigo. I was like, oh, I get vertigo sometimes, and he goes, oh, you should

be talking to the doctor about this. And the worst part of this, this is where things start to become even you know, you feel very alone with this because what happened. Then I would take xanax and I was terrified I was being drug tested. I was a professional athlete being drug tested after games. Not every game, but

you could be. And I know xanx is not a performance announcing drouge, but you don't want your coach to find out that you have been taken sanax to be able to deal, to literally be able to get out of bed. So I was always terrified at that, but actually, really interestingly on the podcast, I played profession rugby for three years and I kind of thought to myself, that was the darkest time in my life. I struggled with

fairly acute and difficult depression during that period. And depression to me was I've only ever had a really acute phase of it once, thank god. But it was something that held this power over me because it was To this day, I haven't been able to adequately just define it. I cannot define how it felt. The only line I could say it was a complete quest for feeling any type of feeling, any form of feeling good or bad.

I asked my coach, Matt Williams, who very famous rugby coach, on my podcast two years ago, two and a half years ago, and I was terrified and I said that. I said to him, what did you think was wrong with me when I played rugby? And he said, our coaching team thought you were an alcoholic and you didn't care.

another athlete again. He went away and he trained, and so that type of stuff really focused me in my mission for life is that I need to start showing people a different side and kind of a paradigm shifting conversation around what mental health actually is and how we can support people and how it doesn't have this ridiculous idea that I had a pretty wonderful life of amazing woman dad, I've amazing sisters, I've kind I come from the country in the middle of Ireland. My dad was

in the military, my mum was a music teacher. And the reason I think my head is the way it is is because I cannot stop thinking and I cannot stop solving things. But do you know what the really interesting part of this animal age is? But in therapy, but it became very clear to me was I have this sometimes uncontrollable level of empathy for the people I love. I can contain it and what I'm and how it manifests me is I worry relentlessly for them if they're

going somewhere, relentless worry. It was probably born out of attachment as a child, but it was constantly worried about them, constantly are they okay? Do they have enough? Money. Are they sleeping all right? And I could think about them all the time, and I remember with therapists going that makes you a very good person, and I like, I used to get angry with that, But that, to me is the what you need to hear sometimes because you feel like it feels like you're going crazy.

were my breath. I had a very negative relationship with my breath, so I had to change that. And then I started to realize, you know, it's not necessarily about the breath. I looked at other avenues into meditation and mindfulness, but what changed my relationship myself was Buddhism.

But there's still a relationship between church and states. So most of our schools are run by Catholic churches, some of our hospitals are, so there's a huge conflict here. But mindfulness is in some of the schools that have gone into They perceive mindfulness as a form of religion and Buddhism, so they're quite reluctant for you to go in and talk to young kids about what this actually is.

But actually I think I know when John cabots In brought you know, mindfulness to the hospitals in Boston, he kept it secular. But I actually think it's crucial that we give people the Buddhist language around why mindfulness has such a prevailing power and potential power for people. I think taking it out, I can understand why people do that, but I think we're missing a bait if we do that, because it's the language of Buddhism that makes mindfulness makes

sense for me. And so yeah, I teach, but many times I have to take that Buddhist element out of it, but I bring it in other ways, Like you know, I mean the first noble truth of suffering being an inevitable part of existence. That was game changing for me. That line suffering is part of life, it's not the only part of life, absolutely, And actually as soon as you accept that, ironically, you start suffering. Let's there's a change.

There's a cessation of holding onto that, which is obviously the idea of aversion and attachment, letting go of this stuff sometimes. But here's where it gets interesting for me. Is the reason mindfulness feels so challenging for people, and my Buddhism is often removed from it is because it goes against the entire economic and social models that now run the world. Neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is essentially the opposite for me of mindfulness, and it dictates most of the Western world.

So there's this kind of interesting jarring going on between culture, sociology, and psychology, and we're at this alliance and it's the alliance and the intersection that I'm most interested in. But

for me, mindfulness over anything. It was actually emotional focused therapy that I did with my therapist that got me to sit with that horrendous feeling of trauma that I had run from for song, and that trauma was you know, there was a few of them there, but was physically been badly beaten up by a teacher, having been hit across the face with a leather like a leather, a

piece of leather with plastic in the middle. That was the That was the weapon of choice of the Christian Brothers in Ireland and they hit children with it every single day. So these are the realities of it. And I still remember that I still remember that day when I looked at Christian brother who was foaming at the mouth as he jumped with this leather and he was trying to hit my hand harder and harder and harder. What was my crime? I ate crisps in class?

in the room next to me. And ultimately, what my influence started to teach me was to sit with that discomfort. Understand it not always, not always, but if it came up, to sit with that. But more than anything, it taught me the space that I take up in society and the space society takes up on me. It taught me how to diffuse myself from how I was thinking. It taught me how not to fire that second hour of suffering.

That the bullet talks about the first arrow being the inevitable stuff and the second arrow being the shame and the regret and the rumination. And this changed in me, along with more than anything, my community and building back up my relationships with the people.

those first. I mean, we just got to look at things I had Richard rieves On who wrote of Boys and Men, incredible book around what some of those problems are in terms of not just the suicide rates among young men, but even things like education and in home life where fathers are becoming less and less you know there, And to me, we have to be able to have these discussions. These are crucial discussions. This isn't a serious

sum conversation. And I remember when I put up on I think LinkedIn that I'm interviewing Richard rieves about masculinity and AhR HR leadership boss said you should be talking about masculinity and I mean, hold on, I sei, guys, where are we going here? Where does this end? We have to talk about this. We have problems and we have to address them, and it's our responsibility to address them,

so we have to have conversations around them. And she then said something about you know, you suppose you're going to bring up evolutionary psychologic guys, stop, Why is there always conflict? Why is there always conflict with this stuff? And it is because what we've done in the media is we've created the entire model, literally the entire model of how social media works. Its currency is division. It doesn't function without division, and the deeper that division, the

better it works. Their algorithms are designed to divide. And that is not me being kind of that is just a fact. You can see it. So these important discussions are now being massively polarized. And the gray area, which is you know, as a psychologist where most of the stuff happens, is the gray area is now gone. Context gone, nuance gone, and we have this reductionist, serious sum look

at things like masculinity. I have friends, close friends of mine, who died because they believed there was a certain part they had to play in society, our certain role that they had to be that they couldn't quite be. I was that person. I was grappling with that all my life. That I it was the vulnerability thing for me. Was

just this idea I call it about this. I had this line that I wrote in a poem about Kirk Obain and he said, let's not pass on that baton anymore from grandfather to father and those that came before, and it is it's a baton that gets passed on father who's a certain way of life, then passes that to his son and son path and I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. This isn't working for us. It's a different word, a different society, different culture, and

it's not working too. Many of my friends are struggling because they believe there's a certain role they have to play in society, and that to me changed how I viewed masculinity. And I think the responsibility here is on men to do this. I think it's up to us to have these conversations with our friends, with our brothers, with our fathers. But I think we have to we have to remove we have to remove the labels, the

toxic masculinities. We have to do that. Yes, there's absolute apparent bastards out there selling absolute bullshit on social media TikTok and saying horrific things, and kids are picking up on that. But if you keep telling young men that they're toxic, they will follow people who tell them otherwise. That is basic maths, That is basic human maths. So if you keep using this language, it will disempower, it will disenfranchise, and people will then follow. And that is

something we've got to be careful with. And that's why your Andrew tates and you know, there's many other examples have this attraction for young men, That is not the answer.

we have to start promoting. And you know, you can't tell people what their values are, but I think one value that I massively, massively feels missing as community connection, interaction. I think what we've done and I'm back to this idea of and I don't know it sound like, you know, a Marxist here, but when you look at neoliberalism and how it functions, it functions around individualism. That's so what happens in neoliberalism And for those listening on what's what

effect does that mean? Neoliberalism is the economic kind of ideology that you essentially leave the market to dictate and solve all problems with very little government regulation. That's generally what neoliberalism. Why is that really destructive for values? Because it promotes, as I said, individualism. I have friends that say to me, that doesn't fit my brand. Ireland calls itself Ireland Incorporated. Can we see where we're going here?

So what's happening is we're pushing this individualistic society at a time when we need to figure out how to come together because we've expected exextential threats that we need to solve. And ironically, the very thing that's dividing us the most is the very thing that said it was going to bring us together with the show social media. So for me, the thing I'm most passionate about is collectivism. How do we bring communities back together, how do we

bring ways of connecting? And we also know from a mental health perspective, the true impact that communities can have, So that to me is something like if I go on TikTok now when I'm finished here. Within it's six o'clock nearly in cold, wet, irish evening. I'll go down for a cup of tea and some food, and by seven o'clock I'll have some guide on TikTok telling me that I'm not good enough if I'm not doing something now. I'm not a good enough entrepreneur. I'm not good enough

in the gym. I'm not good enough at golf. I'm not good enough at this. This is the stuff that I think is making us feel like we're just not quite good enough all the time, and that is driven by this neoliberal agenda. I think. And my value is each day, how do I find a way to integrate myself more and more into my community? And that's just one value. You've other things like loyalty and honesty and

all these other things that of this. But you cannot practice values unless you've a community to practice them with. You cannot practice values on Twitter. Putting a hashtag in front of a word doesn't make you that thing, be kind. That's not how it works. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. You can't just put hashtags in and say that's the way I am. You got to go out and live it. You've got to be it. You got to interact and you got to you got to develop

those relationships. And to me, I think that's when things start to kind of make a bit more sense to you.

to that place that's never been wounded. Bravery is is just that acknowledgment that there's something in you that no matter how dark or difficult things get or how intense life can feel. Sometimes there is a party that no one's ever got there, and no one's ever wounded. And I think that keeping that in the back of your head brings this level of bravery out. And yeah, I think bravery just getting out of bed and working in a world that feels very overwhelming right now is a

brave thing too. It's fairly chaotic. You know John Cabotson's book Full Catastrophe Living, it's the bible for Western mindleness. Why did he call it Full Catastrophe Living? Because life is tough. Sometimes I think bravery for me is ignowledg that just someday, some days you like the world in fire, you'll do something spectacular. Some days you'll literally sit in your arse and you'll do nothing. That's it, that's grand, that's life. Some days you'll just do enough to get

through it. Some days you'll feel I'm good today, and some weeks you'll feel that. And I think it's that transitory idea of life. It's not just brave, it's the truth. And I worry that often when I'm getting lectured by somebody in the wellness industry telling me that these are things you shouldn't experience. I'm going no, no, no, no, I've done that, and I've done that silent thing for long enough. And I'm a very positive, optimistic person, but I'm actually

okay with feeling a little ruby. It actually suits me sometimes, and I think this is this is the message I'm trying to get across the people. And I struggle with the conflict that I see all the time about every single thing. The reason conflict is so pervasive is because none of us are actually engaging anymore. We're not having civil debates. If you looked out your window right now and Twitter was real life, there will be houses on fire,

That'll be lads screaming at lampposts. There will be you know, it's not real. It's not a good judgment of our metric to judge humanity.

positive intentions. I remember tweeting. I actually deleted my Twitter a few months ago anyway, but I tweeted, remember when Twitter was, when we just used to say good night to each other, And then Jack Dorsey went good night to me, and I was like, you see, you know that, Like, potentially that's what you started this ass But we have

to eat. The fact that they're still arguing that that's what it is is just it's completely intellectually dishonest at the highest level, and it's utterly disrespectful to the people that use it because they know that's not what it is. So the analogy I use is what social media has become is where we're ripping each other limb from lim in a colisseum and the owners of the social media are up there watching it for their entertainment. That's what it's become. And I'm sad it's become that because I

had so much potential to be something very special. And what I'm starting to learn is I have a part of my study I talk about the post digital revolution. I genuinely believe there's going to be a mass kind of I think there is going to be kind of a mass amount of people just rejecting social media and not technology because you couldn't exist without it, but how we communicate with technology. I think there's going to be a huge movement in the next ten years where people

just go, Nope, I can't do it anymore. And it might start in some countries or some communities. I know there's some communities in America where you cannot use there's no kind of access to technology. I think that's a little bit difficult, but I do believe that that's what's

going to happen. I think we're going to we're past tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell calls it, We're long past the tipping point of social media because democracy is hanging by a tread and social media standing there with the scissors. And these are the things we've got to think about and we need to protect ourselves and this and the way I believe we do that is to build stronger communities.

to the present moment non judgmentally. And it doesn't really mean a lot sometimes when you say that to somebody, but when you actually tell them about the profoundness of that, what happens. And to me, the biggest, most important phrase, and that is non judgment. Everything we do in our life, professionally, socially,

and personally revolves around judgment. Everything. There has to be a space in your life where literally nothing is expected, where the shackles of expectation are just gone, where this shadow of judgment is gone. And that, to me is the biggest challenge of mindfuess because you'll sit to meditate it. You sit there for a minute, you put on some nice music, and then within ten seconds you're like, oh god, I forgot to ring Mary. Oh God, Mary already hates me. O.

Would I get a pizza later? I mean, so much crap, many calories in the pizza. But I go to the gym before or after work because now you're down a rabbit hole and you're anxious, and then you go, oh god, I knew it'd be terrible at this. What I'm asking you to do is recognize that minds drift. That's what they do. They love adventures, They're only doing their job. Don't follow them people it feels like not to follow them. And also, don't beat yourself up with this. This cannot

become another stick to beat yourself with. Everything else is that this is your space, nobody else's, and slowly work with that and build that space out, and then you create this panoramic internal space where you actually feel like the most spacious place in the world is within yourself.

And that's when things become very powerful with mindfless and you start to control your self awareness and to me, ultimately, what mindfulness teaches you with self awareness, which is a superpower in a world that feels already vacant up.

I'm the worst at it sometimes. You know, when you're studying, when you spend your days studying Irish institutionalization and psychiatric hospitals for two hundred years, and you come out of that you're a study room, You're like, oh my god, I need I need to watch Shit's Creek our young shell. Then I need to not anybody just just I need to be stupid. I need to do something spontano. I

need to do something for no reason. That's the other thing is like everything we do has to be for a reason now, And I like the idea just going why why, Like I'm going to go on like jumping the seed, and people are like what why not? You know, it's just it's that's back to this and I don't know, keep bringing it up with this world where we all now feel everything is transactional our friendships. What's in this for me? That's not that's not happiness to me. There's

a connection and happiness. There's a feeling in a room where you can be with somebody and you don't need to speak to them and feel uncomfortable. There is a feeling that you know, what's A neuroscientist called it mirror neurons, where it feels like our brains are always talking to each other. And I learned this, like I started to learn the energy you can bring into a room. You

can actually bring an energy into a room. You can actually dictate the other energies in the room by what you show up with, whether that's vulnerability or whether that's excitement, whatever it is. It's very powerful to be able to just go right, I'm going to walk into this room. I'm in a band and sometimes we go in and the last thing you want to do is rehearse, like

it's just like, oh god, rehearse. And if you show up like that, it's just like four of us going, oh my god, this is how do we get through this? How long is this going to be? It's so loud. But if you walk in and go right, lads, let's nail this, let's you know, looking forward to this, can't wait for the gig of the weekend. And you mean it's it's an energy if you create that in a room, and I just think this is something I feel like.

Part of me is disappointed that I've missed this for fifteen years, and part of me actually realizes I wouldn't be able to think like this if I didn't go through what I went through. I wouldn't have this clarity, and anyone listening that I need to be really clear. I don't have all this shit figured out. I'm not speaking from a place of hierarchy. I am literally speaking with you. I'm down in the weeds. Some days I am having the time of my life. Other days I've

utterly changed the labels I put on myself. And people will say, do you still struggle with your mental health? No, but I still have really bad days. I really have difficult days. I don't struggle with them anymore because I accept them. And there's even that language changes how you relate to it.

make them relate to it in a different way. It's one of the most beautiful things you'll ever watch, just watching kids realize that because kids default setting, they're very default setting, is to be mindful, and they're losing that too quickly, too early, and they're meant to be curious to the world. They're meant to navigate and adventures, and they're meant to just that's what they're meant to do, and unfortunately a lot of kids are kind of accelerating

behalf past that. So that, to me is tin the kids. What's it like to be just bored? What does it feel like to be anxious? Be curious? I said, Okay, where do you feel it? And they're like, oh, what do you mean? I feel that? I always feel it. My throat, my troat gets a bit sore when I get anxious, Oh, I feel at my belly. And now

you're just relating with them. And now what you're doing is you're validating their emotion and you're saying that, Oh, yeah, I get them too, Jesus, yeah, jeez, they're not nice, but we all get them. And all of a sudden, you're speaking to a child like a child, like you're a child. And our school, my charity Us for Life. We set up purely as an education, mental health, mental health advocacy charity. We are now in fifty percent of

Irish primary schools. We will be in the curriculum by twenty twenty four and in every Irish school by twenty twenty four end of twenty twenty four. That's how you solve problems. Early intervention. I believe it with every cell of my body. My entire study is revolving around if mental health intervention to this point has been so ineffective because let's face it, we've relied generally purely on a

medical model that numbs the pain. How about we look at ways of creating really strong early intervention programs in the community and in schools. What does that look like, what will that do how will that impact young people? And that to me is how you change things. You don't change things thrown stones at them don't And I think that. I was in America recently, I was in the West Coast. I went to some of the schools.

I looked at how the education system works there. It's a really great education system, but unfortunately it puts huge emphasis on results, not enough emphasis on being a human being. Everything is kind of driven around success. Every parent I met introduced me to their child with the grades they get in school. I don't like. I don't think that is the right way to bring the education system. I think is really important that we have grades and we drive,

but there has to be more to this. Education has to be more about just grades. It has to be building a well balanced under kind of empathetic, emotionally intelligent

young people and then we see change. So yeah, that's kind of where my heart is now is in early intervention models of care and psychosocial interventions, working with the brilliant psychologists and the educational psychologists and the incredible people I work with to design stuff that actually works so we don't keep relying on a crisis model, because that's all we're doing here in Ireland and we've a population of five million people. If we can't get it right here,

you know what I mean? And Ireland has a hugely strong international reputation. If we can prove we can make this work here and we can really make it kind of a framework, why can't we start looking at other countries? And unfortunately in America, you know, you have kids more worried about going to school than what they learned there. And somewhere along the line, people are going to realize that's the real madness, you know. And to me, I think we can do better, but I think it's going

to take back to the bravery. It's going to take brave leadership, brave communities, and brave individuals to do it.