Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Jameela Jamil

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

Neal Brennan interviews Jameela Jamil ('Bad Dates' podcast, ''The Good Place,' + more ) about the things that make her feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how she is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro 2:48 Unsolicited Advice 20:41 PTSD 30:01 Worst Case Scenario Syndrome 36:41 Low Self-Esteem/Opinion  42:06 Social Rejection 52:04 Dysmorphia and Anorexia 1:07:35 Detached and Disconnected ---------------------------------------------------------- https://nealbrennan.com for tickets to Neal's tour Brand New Neal Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: GameTime App Code: BLOCKS for $20 off your first purchase Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I've never actually done the podcast of a friend who I know as well as I know you and so that feels terrifying. It's a fear that I'll let you down. You won't. Okay. I mean or we'll see. Hi. Hi I'm Neil Brennan. This is my podcast called Blocks based on my Netflix special. Award-winning? Nope. Nominated? Nope. Don't worry about it. Not for me uh it's not what i'm here for we talk about our problems on here guys and i'm told we heal the world my guest today is a lady this who this thirsty broad slid into my dms six years ago not even my dms my text my emails she got my email which i didn't want him to give out from the great mike sure who created parks and rec and good place this thirsty bro was on the good place i was you must believe me she messaged me and she wanted me to do emdr therapy

based on three mics she thought thought it would help me. She was right. And then we became friends. She brought her gangly boyfriend to the comedy store. I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who she was, really, let's be honest. And then I asked the gangly boyfriend who he was. He said, I'm a musician. And I was like, are you?

What's your name? James. What's your last name? Blake musician i was like are you what's your name james what's your last name blake i was like fuck because i thought i was going to be able to take this thirsty broad home with me this is the longest intro i've ever done for anything james the problem was james wake i'm a fan of and i had many of the songs on my ipod this is back in the ipod days my guest today is a woman who we have a lot of emotional conversations and we're ready to go public. She has a podcast called Horrible Dates. Bad Dates.

Bad Dates. Horrible is my podcast and I'm going to compete with you. Bad Dates. And her name is Jamila Jamil, everybody. We don't have a round of applause. We don't ADR it. I like to talk extensively, and then it builds up pressure for you to say something. And then when you say something, it'll be what will be.

Disappointing. Yes. It will be disappointing to anyone listening. She's leaning forward. She's's leaning forward she's very nervous she's very nervous because she as she said on before we you heard she doesn't often do friends podcasts and it's too exposing because i can't put my armor up around you because we've spent so much because i know what your armor yeah you know me too well you'll know if i'm bullshitting and that's terrifying although it's hard to call people on bullshitting it's just hard like a friend if you have friends with blind spots it's very hard

to just go ah i think you guys are pretty good to do that yeah i think you're rude i think you're ruder than me if we're really going there i think you're ruder than I am in terms of unsolicited advice. That's something I've tried to get over the years. The problem with my unsolicited advice, it would never stop. If I started giving unsolicited advice to anyone, I want to tell everyone what to do all the time. And I had to give that up many years ago. Why did you give that up?

Did you lose a friendship over it? Did someone tell you to fuck off? No, because I don't like passive aggression. And I realized like, well, if you don't like it, you have to stop doing it. I don't like getting notes. Famously don't like getting notes from women. How have you survived this friendship? I'm white knuckling it. You can't do it because you have your knuckle. You don't your skin those from women how have you survived this friendship i'm white knuckling it

you can't do it because you have your knuckle you don't your skin's too dark but white knuckles we go over it every time on this podcast i'd sit on the breakfast club got in trouble didn't get in trouble but i said white knuckles on the breakfast club in trouble my mom's like what i was like oh you got oh huh um yeah i had to stop giving people notes because it would never stop yeah i wanted to walk the walk yeah i i find it very hard to hold my opinion in as we've seen on twitter in the last decade um but i consider it an act of love and i love receiving notes you do i love receiving notes even if i don't agree with them or if I'm not ready to take the note as in to implement the note I love receiving notes because I feel like it is the most authentic and special moment of

friendship where someone takes the scary leap of saying the difficult thing to you because I cannot stand passive aggression it is one of the things that gives me the biggest ick and and I just prefer you know they're like I like my racist racist I like my cunts to be cick and I just prefer, you know, they're like, I like my racist racist, it's like I like my cunts to be cunts and I like someone if they are frustrated with me to just tell me and then I feel so close to that person and so I guess that's probably where I take my own cue of then trying to, carefully as I can, as a you know clumsy person I like telling someone the truth because it's a act of love where I see a thing that you're doing that I'm worried will misrepresent you or hurt someone's feelings or end up hurting your own feelings like I want to tell you because

I love you I don't consider it like I am better than you I'm giving you judgment I the great Jamila I'm giving you guidance I just see a thing Jamila, am giving you guidance. I just see a thing. You see it and then you say it. And sometimes that goes down quite badly. But I've really worked on nonviolent communication for the last like eight or nine years. I remember you guys, you and your boyfriend, James, recommending nonviolent communication, the book. I think I got the audio book and I hated the guy's voice so much that I couldn't do it. It's difficult. It's difficult. It's a hard pill to swallow but the the teaching of it is better i prefer reading about it from other people who listened to the book yeah i've noticed that if i give someone a note i don't trust where it's coming from within me i just don't think it's

the i don't think it's an act of love i just think it's i just like things the way i like things and i'm genuine uh generally speaking you don't feel like you're trying to sabotage them i don't know no i never feel like i'm trying to sabotage them but it's the thing of i don't know if we've ever discussed this if i break up with somebody i don't say why I don't think it's any of their business why it's because I'm not saying I don't like I don't think every note is applicable to everyone it's my preference that you don't chew with your mouth whatever whatever the the don't chew with your mouth open or uh why do you squeeze the toothpaste tube it's just

those are my preferences so I wouldn't feel comfortable telling someone how to be because I also I'm full of shit and I also know in terms of like even morality it's like

I'm moral in some ways some ways I'm not very moral so i think there's a spectrum though right you're talking about like little things that irk you versus things that you can see when your friend is doing something that's destructive or self-destructive like i i feel i would feel so guilty if i didn't say anything and i think that probably comes from years in which in my 20s, I didn't say something. And then people completely fell apart or killed themselves or did all kinds of things. And I feel as though I actually was the shitty friend for avoiding the difficult moment because I was afraid and not saying the thing that could have steered them towards a different path.

And so now it's kind of like almost compulsive in me to say something. And I also just wish someone had said something to me. I've been fucking crazy for most of my life. And because I got famous at 22, no one told me. No one told me how strange my behavior was. And part of that is because either they, I don't know, we have a certain idea of what mentally ill looks like. But I was out of my fucking mind and no one intervened. And I also had bad habits and I was badly behaved and no one said anything. And I resent the fact that once I got better and I opened up to my friends about it, they were like, yeah, they'd known all along and hadn't said anything to me and it's not their job to do the emotional labor but it would have been really helpful would have saved me a lot of time and so you know i think i project no no but i but my but my my own experience with this is

i've tried to tell people what to do and people are growing at their own rate. Yeah, but you also like struggle with tone. What a bitch. Bitch, she says tone. So you don't know that it's. No, but you do. You did. You did.

You're much better now. I have watched like X minute. I think we've both watched a lot of growth in each other. And it's really nice that we've changed so much and still come you know up alongside a kind of parallel as friends because but i don't think we helped each other well you help with the mdr but i don't know that we helped each other we helped each other that's what i'm saying like i don't think we helped each other that's is my point which is but that's not my point my point is that you've i've just like separately of me i've just been able to watch from the outside how much you've changed your tone is

much better now and you have uh you are an incredibly kind person who i think sometimes didn't used to represent your kindness in the way that you would speak to people and i think that whatever mushroom you've shoved up your ass has like totally changed the way that you communicate and you are softer and warmer and i love you even more totally agree love you also but doesn't this prove the point of that it's hard to that people are just going to grow at their own rate and all you can do is to quote a buddy of mine water the flower and not prune it no because well i don't think that james and i are responsible for your significant change i think all the hard work you did was i do also think that notes that your friends gave you did make you realize the way you were coming across

sometimes i would disagree i meaning i know what made me change, and it was my diction classes that I took. No, my tone classes. No, it was all the drugs, all the medicines, as I call them. But most people call them drugs. The cops call them drugs. So I know them as medicine, but that's my point. It's like you can't – all you can do is stay friendly with somebody or we have like a nice like port for each other.

Meaning I go to your house for like a nice, we'll order some food. We'll sit around, we'll talk for four or five hours, vice versa. So what I'm saying is it's up to people to grow and i don't know that that unless someone specifically asks i won't i can't i just can't because i i it's a it's a it's a just an issue for me it's like a real issue of like control and know-it-allism and like well you know and i don't like when people do it to me no i know i know and i don't think the i'd like i think when it comes to unsolicited advice that it is a really like difficult uh line to walk and i think i would only ever offer

unsolicited advice if i can see that someone is really struggling and they can't see it and they are surrounded by people who aren't going to be courageous or loving enough to say it and so other than that i try to like give advice if asked for yeah i can't believe anyone asked me for advice given what a fucking mess i've been my whole life but some people do come to me um but i i disagree with you i fundamentally disagree with you that we should just why are you smiling because you just said you agree with it no i agree with you to an extent just why are you smiling because you just said you agree with it no i agree with you to an extent when it comes to unsolicited advice but i think that it is i think it is important i have found it important in my friendships to be

called in and told to check myself and and my friends have found that like it's made us exponentially closer because there's a feeling of like chosen family in the fact that you're going to take the risk to cross the line uh to reach over to someone and and try to make them happier and just offer the advice they don't have to fucking take it that's what i think and you know maybe that's one of my blocks is the fact that i love to i love to engage in difficult no no i don't love to tell everyone what to do i just i believe in receiving and giving honest feedback and i think it's what's made my friendship so brilliant that might not be the case for you but i'm in a friendship with you and i don't and i'm what i'm saying is neither one of us have even the ways in which i've changed and the how i changed were totally independent and vice versa i don't think i've ever given you you've sort of said i don't like that friendship for you and i've

been like yeah i hear you but whatever and then on my own time it shifted but i think with all of this stuff it's the same lesson i've gotten from social media which is most of the people out uh telling you what to do it turns out we're all their own lives yes we're totally it's anyone any if anyone's telling you how to behave check your wallet and if you're a woman check your panties because like that's that's the bottom line anyone it's so hard to run a profit margin with you specifically though like i i don't think i've ever met anyone i think james is probably second to you okay i've never met anyone on such a dogged pursuit of recovery or happiness i've so it would be hard to even know where aside from sometimes like hey that sounded a little more offensive than i think you meant it or this person you're with is a fucking cunt yeah um other than that i think that i've never met any there was no space

was to suggest anything to you that you need to do because you're already going above and beyond anything that i even knew was in this there's no time yeah you're already doing it what was he always doing that too before you met him because you guys dated and no no not had a hard time we dated yeah i mean that's his sort of story to tell because it was something that he struggled with but he's been open about the fact that he struggled with his mental health. And once we got together, I think because I had just come out of doing EMDR and I was in my own process of recovery, he could see how much happier and stronger I was becoming. And then he wanted that. And James has an amazing hyper focus for anything. And his hyper focus became recovery.

for anything and his hyper focus became recovery and he went after happiness and has continued in the nine years that we've known each other to just try anything this boy is so fucking dedicated to recovery that he's been a lifelong vegetarian and one time i just sent him an article about the fact that there are studies that show that vegetarians are more prone to depression than meat eaters and he ordered a lamb curry and ate the whole thing this boy has no constitution that can can manage meat and he ate an entire lamb curry probably shit his pants all night but anything literally anything to uh try to resolve his depression and i find that so attractive uh in a person i find do you want to fuck it huh do you want to fuck it i could get fingered by it do you know that when you say you're attracted to it does that mean you want to have sex with it

no it means that i'm so drawn to people who are on the in the pursuit of happiness the people who just free fall and like trust fall on their friends without their friends consent i think is okay in your 20s but in your 30s and 40s you should get your fucking shit together because then you are just making an active choice to let everyone else just deal with the debris of your trauma and i'm being comforter yeah as i get older i really don't want to be around people who aren't on the same journey of like just trying the best. You don't have to achieve perfect like happiness or mental health, but we should all be on some sort of journey to try and get happier than we are, not only for ourselves, but for the people around you, because it massively affects the people around you.

I don't care about the people around me. It's all for me. Do you hear me? I'm doing this. As I said on this podcast before,'re so much nicer if i ever say i didn't do it for you fools i did it for number the kid number one whenever i say whenever i look at a crowd and say we did this i am lying i did it me you didn't come to the open mics you didn't write shit you didn't work the door at a goddamn comedy club you didn't hand out flyers let's go over some blocks oh no ptsd largely recovered

but still have anxiety that i'm not gonna read it out okay okay well no she wrote these to me stoned last night i got shit face last night because i was scared on edibles huh edibles no no no i just took far too much anti-anxiety medication oh really you can get gacked off that good for you guys buying tickets to your favorite events shouldn't be stressful right but most things shouldn't be stressful, right? But most things shouldn't be stressful. And you guessed it. Most things are, but now with game time, your problems are solved. Game time is the fast and easy way to buy tickets for all the sports, music, comedy, and theater near you with killer deals on last minute tickets and their best price guarantee. You can stop stressing over

the tickets and start getting hyped for the fun you'll have. All right, let's look through the app. Yngwie Malmsteen is, as I record this, is going to be at the House of Blues. And Yngwie Malmsteen, if you wanted to win an argument in the 80s and 90s about white dudes who shredded at guitar drop an Yngwie Malmsteen that sounded dirty when I said it drop an Yngwie Malmsteen I gotta go to the toilet and drop a see you know this is why you're back bad spokesman pentatonics is showing today showing pentatonics sounds of course we all knew it sounded like a medication they're a band there's five appears to be five of them pentatonix sounds like a medicine sounds like a game uh it sounds like a

place and it sounds like a fucking state of mind ghost is at the forum ghost i don't know who you are i don't know how many there seem to be five of you you're wearing you're dressed like the pope but like uh but like skeleton pope the pope of skeletons it looks like a eyes wide shut sex situation pretty cool fit for a king nope never heard of them but god bless there's three of them they're all wearing windbreakers michael franti michael franti is at the Greek. That's pretty good. That's good for him. Again, never heard it. Crooked Kings with K's. That's exciting. They're at the observatory. Alina Baraz. She's at the observatory. Don't know who

she is. Let's go theater. Aladdin. Here's a little known fact about Neil. Never seen a Disney, like Disney movie. I've seen the Pixar's, never seen Cinderella. I've never seen the old ones, never seen the new ones. I've never seen Lady and the Tramp. I've never seen Beauty and the Beast. I've never seen, I've never seen them and I never will. Now it's a matter of pride. I'm pretty proud of it. Two things I'm most proud of. Three mics and having never seen a Disney movie. So anyway, game time, game time. That's all in the game time app.

Snag the tickets without the stress with game time. Download the game time app, create an account and use code BLOCKS for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem code B L O C K S blocks for $20 off download game time today. Last minute tickets, lowest prices, guh, guh, guh, guh, guh, guh, guaranteed. Okay. Let's talk about PTSDd as you've seen in my new nightclub routine it's theaters now but as you've seen in my comedy routine i trauma is overused and kind of been bastardized

by social media when you say ptsd what does it feel like uh or what did it feel like ptsd yeah because i think i'm largely recovered because of EMDR therapy, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy. But what it felt like was a complete lack of control over my brain, my thoughts, my behavior, and anticipating the most terror possible all of the time. So constantly being in a state of fight or flight and finding it very rare to find peace and making irrational decisions that very, very quickly

led to immense and intense suicidal ideation. What ideation? Suicidal ideation. Yeah, very suicidy. Yeah? Big time. Big time, because not afraid of death so why not it's just like uh i don't know i think i've just done everything i want to do so i'm sort of like i'm good i'm good i'm ready to just tap out whenever okay i'm not feeling

suicidal right now i know we've had this conversation before the idea that you've done everything you want to do that's career or or just life stuff but what about just having a nice dinner or having me over or that would be great that would be great i'm just saying though that like getting fingered by the the guy that we discussed all of those things would be great and i i swear i am in a you know a better place of mind now but i you know i've i've had some of the greatest laughs often at your shows that i could have had i thought you'd like that i thought we'd give you a little semi um or a very big throbbing semi uh i have experienced the most extraordinary friendship the most extraordinary love uh i have the like just the best fucking dog i uh have had a fun career full of exciting

unexpected things and and i have eaten i believe all of the great snacks on this planet. And that was a big one for me to cross off my fucking list. And so there's a immense contentment in going, I've done everything that I want to do. I'm not very career minded, you know, or success focused. I'm very lucky that I've had success, but I don't really give a shit. I think of it as more a way to facilitate the things I really care about. But now everything just on top of that is cake. I have a very, very simple value system of the things that I wanted in life and I got all of them eventually.

And so now I'm just good to go. But I don't think that... But when I get suicidy, to be clear, that's because I struggle with such overwhelming anxiety that it's not like it's not like a sad i write letters yeah i'm gonna explain myself to everyone it's a stop the world i want to get off yeah that's it i just want to tap out immediately and it's really scary that i have that kind of suicidal ideation because it makes me more of a risk sometimes because i won't tell anyone and it happens very very fast and i feel immense conviction towards it and it's normally something

that can pass within 24 hours that moment of complete despair and hopelessness uh can pass but i just have to take medicine now in order to stop it when it's starting a specific medicine yeah yeah i take clonopin in the moment like an emergency anxiety medication uh to just see if i can ride it out and if in 24 hours time i don't want to kill myself anymore then i don't need emergency help and if i do then i need to talk to someone i find i kind of am of the mind that most people who commit suicide want the particular feeling they're feeling to end. Yeah, it's an especially bad few hours often.

Yeah. They just want this particular feeling. I don't, I think it's probably 90% of people are like, I just want this to fucking be over. Yeah. And I also don't know how to talk about it when I feel that way. I become completely mute. I literally become mute. I don't have the words I

shut myself away I can't reach out to anyone I I have no capacity to reach across for help and so that's how I what makes the anxiety kick in it can be anything it's normally um tremendous injustice just experiencing a tremendous injustice or or when the world just looks too ugly. That can be something. Beforehand, it used to be I didn't sleep very well for like 25 years. I've really only been sleeping well since I met James. He's the only person who makes me feel safe. And he's so boring.

It's just during his concerts mostly uh yeah no uh but you know i um i had terrible nightmares because i had a really abusive childhood uh in all of the ways it can be abusive which is physical sexual and emotional psychological uh and i'm from a south asian family you don't get help for that you don't tell anyone even that you're going through that you just try to become a doctor so you can fix other people's problems like that's what south asians do in pakistan if someone if a therapist opens an office they burn it down correct i don't know that's what i've heard i don't know but i uh but it checks the. I don't know. But I, uh, but it checks. The villagers come with torches and burn to the ground. Yeah, it tracks. But, um, but, uh, I didn't,

you know, I didn't have anywhere to put all these feelings. And so, you know, I just blamed myself for being weak, for having suffered, uh, the impact of what I was told was a very normal upbringing. I was raised was a very normal upbringing. I was raised by, you know, a family that was very insular and we didn't have a lot of outside people or friends or a support system. I think that's quite typical when South Asian families move to a predominantly white country, we just sort of stick together. And, and so, and were there other South Asians around? Not where I was, not where I was.

And our family lived like really far away, extended family. And so I, you know, I, I didn't know that my childhood wasn't normal. And one member of my family was actually going out of their way to tell me how lucky I was and how much worse other people's childhoods were. Were they correct? No. They would seek out in newspapers stories of horrific situations in which a mother burned her family alive or a father shot the whole family up and be like, do you see how lucky you are? It was such extraordinary coercive abuse. Did you always suspect that it wasn't great? No. Interesting. Your body wasn't like this isn't great.

No, my body was a fucking mess yeah i was sick all the time like i uh wasn't sleeping i had terrible terrible nightmares uh i had aches and pains i couldn't explain and i think now they say that's like somatic when you push the feeling down i had an eating disorder from the age of like 11 like it was all coming out in different ways but I just thought it was all my fault I thought I was broken I had no idea that that I was in an extremely because as a kid you just know what you know you have no idea I didn't know if I was rich or poor I was poor but like you just don't know you have nothing to compare it to especially if you are isolated from other people and so that was you know my experience and so you grow up like that and like the first seven years of your brain

developing are so vital and so I grew up in like nothing but abject terror with like little injections of love here and there mostly you know and I think like stability from my brother but then he left when I was six years old and moved to another country because he was so traumatized in England. So I was left on my own with a lot of very, very, very troubled adults who now as an old person, I can look back on at the age that they were and go, fuck, they just shouldn't have been around a child yeah i have immense empathy now for like how mentally ill they were but i was just i was just fucking emotional jumanji like from the minute i could understand and so that's why jumanji is that's a pakistani it's an indian restaurant

around the corner guys i'm i do racism professionally i do structured racism i've been doing it for about 20 years yeah but it's just i don't know it it just it set me up to be a nervous crazy uh anxious wreck of a person and i have managed to deal with the nightmares i have managed to deal with the sleep i can now be in the dark because of emdr because i couldn't be in the dark terrible terrible things happen to me in the dark and um and i feel generally like a happy person who's overall safe the only hangover that i'm not seeming to be able to get rid of is just worst case scenario syndrome yeah drives james crazy because he's so like everything's gonna be okay and i am the exact opposite of that spectrum i took medication last night because i was so sure that i was going to ruin this podcast finally and that you were going

to disown me as a friend uh-huh the night is young like there's still time yeah well james is such a musician in that he's like infinite money everything's infinite and you're like all right yeah as a as like somebody who's just oriented differently i'm like i okay i don't assume anything's gonna go well in the future yes and i also think that there's some value to that i think it's great i oh it's not amazing like i have uh terror terrorizing thoughts about like if my dogs are safe at home so is the fire alarm working like i have lots of anxious crazy thoughts about that sort of thing but i have none of that i have no ocb like that.

You don't give a shit about Keith. I don't. You know how I feel about Keith. I open with him. Neither of you care about each other. Yeah, we're roommates. Roommates. Yeah.

But I do imagine like worst case scenarios all the time. But when it comes to expecting everything to go badly, I cannot recommend it highly enough because my whole life has been like if I were to write like a biography of my life, it would just be called like pleasantly surprised I've been pleasantly surprised that things have gone nicely that I have made friends that that the tv shows I made were received really well I didn't burn anything to the ground um I just you know it's just a lifetime of right which is for me a much healthier feeling than expecting everything to go really well

and then facing the terror of disappointment. Like, whatever manifesting is teaching, I am on the exact opposite side of that. Yeah, yes. That's whenever people bring up manifesting. Or even, it's like, anything good that's happened to me it wasn't because i mean if you interrogate your dreams like deeply or your consciousness or psyche deeply enough you can go i guess i thought i would be a comedian you know what i mean or whatever like whatever your thing is like if you're like i kind of thought didn't you did you think you were gonna die or did you

think like i feel like i have something in me that's worth expressing when age 15 no age 15 i uh i hoped i was just gonna die you know i didn't have a plan i thought well i'll probably go to medical school in case i do survive this shit uh and then i can you know just recycle my problems and turn it into helping other people and so i've always been very obsessed with putting my energy into other people and helping them and just giving up on myself and the only reason you're a good woman is what you say yeah but i think james has been a huge motivator for me in getting my shit together because I love him and I love spending time with him and I want to be the best version of myself for him so that he won't leave but how did you pursue anything meaning how did you pursue

uh being hosting things and all the stuff you were doing in England? I got scouted. I was an English teacher. I was very happy in that job. I also worked in a video shop. Fucking loved that job. I was designed to work in a video store. Like stocking, managing stock, watching movies all day, like minimal customer interaction.

Like that was my sweet spot in life. It's funny. You're the only person I've ever heard enjoying working in a video store because of the stocking. I just love order. I love order. I loved fucking cleaning the surfaces at the end. I loved observing the little micro interactions between other people

and watching like people who were lonely on a Friday night, just going to the video shop and using it as a way, as an in to be able to talk to someone attractive because they'd notice what that person was looking at and then they'd be like, oh, I've seen that movie and they'd strike up a conversation. You'd watch people literally fall in love at a video store. So that was my favorite job I've ever had.

But anyway, I was street scouted to try out for a TV show. I'd just read a book called The Yes Man by Danny Wallace. And I blame him for my entire life. But he wrote a book about a person with severe depression who had nothing to lose, who just decided for one year to say yes to everything. That was made into a movie, right? Yes. The Jim Carrey movie.

It was, yeah. I haven't seen that movie because I love the book so intensely. But Danny Wallace is a fucking brilliant writer and i love him so much uh but this book just i was 19 and it was just a very porous at 19 yeah it was either the alchemist or that so other than anal i said yes to everything uh for like the next what about double anal huh what's double anal i think you know what double anal is no what do you have to create a new arsehole no i think you're you stick two two things up up it oh no i have my arsehole's tiny tell me mine's mine's mine's midsize what have you been stretching out i don't i know i think mine's tiny too i don't have a

butt like i work my glutes out and i just don't have the frame no you and i know i think mine's tiny too i don't have a butt like i work my glutes out and i just don't have the frame no you and i are both like it's just hashtag pray for the arseless isn't it it is sorry to drag you into that with no please uh so all right so but when you said yes it was all just from desperation it was just because danny wallace told me to but it but and it was from like i have nothing was from like, I have nothing to lose. Yeah, I have nothing to lose. I had no money and it was loads of money. I was making like 1,500 a month as a teacher at best,

working all fucking day and working week. Don't want them. This was 1,000 pounds a day. And I was like, fucking yeah, sure, I'll go. I didn't think I was going to get it. I've never thought I would do anything well. I never thought anyone would love me or like me or that I'll go I didn't think I was going to get it I've never thought I would do anything well I never thought anyone would love me or like me or that I would ever get a job or make any money I just thought I'll probably check out by 20 so I had nothing to lose

and it's been an incredibly liberating life in that way because I'm never afraid of embarrassing myself I'm very afraid of letting a friend down which is why i was nervous about this podcast but i've done other things on stage in front of a hundred thousand people i don't give a fuck because i'm not afraid of of looking bad or coming across badly because i think so lowly of myself i've such low self like um maybe esteem is that the right word yeah so i'd like i've such a low opinion of myself that it's like there's nothing anyone could say that i wouldn't be like yeah but i've already said worse to myself counter that by saying it's the it's like i have low self-esteem also, but

you might go, well, you talk pretty confidently, Neil, for someone with low self-esteem. It's Seinfeld's observation. It's Seinfeld's observation that he's like, I don't know about comedians saying they have low self-esteem where he's like, you're charging people to hear you talk?

Low self-esteem and you're okay. Self-esteem? Interesting. But I think it's more like low self-opinion then, but I have a low self-esteem and you're okay self-esteem interesting but i think it's more like low self-opinion then but i i have a low self-opinion but i also think that like a lot of arrogance or you know um precocious confidence is almost always a mask for uh extremely low self-esteem because you wouldn't need to blow your horn if you felt like someone else was blowing it that felt sexual but tell me about it maybe it was um but i hear you but i guess it's i don't i just have nothing to lose i just have a fuck it bucket yeah and i'm like sure i'll go to that audition sure i'll go be in the thing with ted danson even though i've never acted a day in my life or known anything about acting or gone to drama school like fuck it how bad how bad can it be my dad always used to

say to me like like no one's gonna take you out into the you know street and shoot you like what's the worst that can happen and so I think I mean there are some jobs in which that actually could happen so stay away from those jobs but generally that's been my attitude of just like well why not why not just go try it and if it if it goes badly then it's a funny story for your friends and so i almost go out in life seeking the most ridiculous outcome because i think it'll be entertaining so i love embarrassing stories and i love delivering embarrassing stories and so i really can't lose yeah i'm with you i always tell people like most people do stand up because they get to the point where they go well bad stand-up is still better than life

like i could bomb on stage i'm bombing constantly in life so why not bomb in a place where i can there's some upside paid for it yeah like there's upside there's like i could also potentially crush i just i've always had a very interesting relationship with imposter syndrome like i don't think i have imposter syndrome i think i genuinely am an imposter which is probably the foundation of imposter syndrome but i literally don't know what i'm doing i literally i literally have no idea what I'm doing ever. I didn't know how to start a podcast. I didn't know how to start a social justice company.

I didn't know how to be an actor or be a TV presenter or fucking model in magazines. I don't know how to do any of this shit. I am an imposter but I treat it as like, oh my God, I'm so lucky to be here. Why would I count myself out of this experience

just because I don't deserve it I'm gonna treat it like crashing a wedding and I'm gonna you know get all the you know cake and you know get fingered or whatever while I'm while I can don't mind if I do yeah you know just like it just like it life can be so much more fun than we make it because we put so much pressure on ourselves to excel but who gives a shit who cares I just think that we place too much importance on success i don't care about success i don't care about legacy at all i mean legacy is the dumbest thing in the world the most biggest load of bollocks um and so i really just care about now and you should try your best not to hurt and offend people if you can avoid it but other than that fuck it yeah i happen to agree

with you and that's hard to do if you have a very high opinion of yourself because then you've got something to live up to i'm of two minds on this it's the seinfeld observation of like oh yeah low self-esteem and then at the same time i know that he doesn't know everything jerry yeah he knows a lot yeah um the the but i agree with him on that regard where it's like yeah i don't think i i the low self-esteem thing and and like narcissists are actually hate themselves and i'm like yeah but they never realize it it's like all these sort of how many comedians have we seen kill themselves or develop like deteriorating and debilitating addictions and live lonely lives? It's like it's fucking out there.

Like comedians are some of the. But I'm not even saying comedians. I'm just talking about anyone. All of these disease. I don't know if people who move out here to work have low self-esteem or like I just don't know which part to believe within myself. Totally. And listen, it's going to be different for everyone. For me personally, I just live for the adventure because I don't think I'm like, I've never had the sense I'm going to be here that long. And you know, that's sad, but I, but I, I hopefully will. And I feel

better about that now, but I grew up for most of my life thinking I'm not going to be here very long. So just being like, well, just experience everything i'm a curious cat yeah when it comes to a lot of those things of just finding out who am i in this situation sometimes that person is a piece of shit but i like learning about it i mean you it's very exciting when you find out you're the piece of shit tell it you know what i mean yeah i've had several of those moments uh have some fairly strong stories from my formative years of being rejected socially yeah is that about the low self-esteem i think it's where it probably comes from yeah again another one who remembers childhood as a glorious easy cakewalk now i think we had very extreme childhood i would agree but i'm saying i don't the the social rejection part so some people really did just have an okay

time i know some people who were the bully which is stunning to me um but i uh i think a lot more people had an easier time than others and i think the way that you're raised and the kind of there's you emanate prey you know that right you emanate like a walking target yeah when you are savaged as a kid and so i think when you walk into something as terrifying as school or high school with that energy that you can't help but resonate like or not resonate you can't help but um put out there uh i think what's the word i'm looking for emanate emanate so you have that energy that you like can't help but emanate and i think other kids pick up on that and those kids are stronger or they've had their own reaction to their own trauma at home and you just get eaten a lot I was eaten alive at school and I was also a fucking weirdo who would stare at people too much because I was

always trying to learn how to be a normal person I always felt like an alien I never felt like I could relate to anyone about anything. I felt very, very like stuck in my body, very, very lost. And I was always just trying to study like TV stars or movie stars or other girls in school or anyone who seemed like they had their shit together. So I would stare at people all the time, which people don't love. And yet I couldn't look them in the eye when they would look at me. So I couldn't make eye contact, but I could stare at you like a creepy pervert in the lunchroom. You know, I also didn't know how to talk to people. I would panic at parties in the rare instances of which I was invited, probably by mistake, or it was just a sort of open house party. And I would get there, panic and set up like a coat

check. I would set up a coat check at a house party and charge people tip jar like 50p or one pound or whatever and i would look after everyone's coats all night and that would be my job 14 not cool not cool set up a coat check industrious yeah like entrepreneurial spirit but i would sit there and i would set up a coat check and i would diligently stay until the very end of the night to make sure everyone got their coat how many times do you do that about 11 times great and then other times when it was summer so no one had a coat check i would bring my own trash bags tidy up as the party was going along to keep it clean pretty great so you know i uh i've always found it hard to fit in and i'm really really lucky that when i was 19 i just happened to meet

a group of friends who finally understood me and let me be me and those people still live with me now in my house oh yeah you have a you and james have a good policy which i like you can afford your own house it's a large house and you guys have a few bedrooms extra and you have roommates yeah all the bedrooms are filled do you charge them a little bit a little bit to create a dynamic where they could still power dynamic just to create a dynamic where they can tell us they feel the right to tell us to go fuck ourselves do you know i mean if you let people live with you for free i think you can really fuck around with a balance where then they you run the risk of them not telling you if they have a problem with you or a resentment or they want a certain thing done in the house because they feel like they're living off you and you

see this all the time in this industry where people uh bring their friends along with them but then give them no sense of like agency, autonomy, self like self respect or whatever. And so we have learned the hard way via trying to be too generous when we were younger and just being like, no, no, no,

I'll cover everything. I'll pay for every single meal. I'll do everything. And what we ended up doing was disabling them in some way. And so we, yeah, we, we charged them a bit.

Yeah. But I liked it. It's a good policy. Yeah. And you have a interesting observation Yeah, but I like that it's a good policy. Yeah. And you have an interesting observation, which is you like seeing James, this would apply to anybody, but you like seeing your boyfriend

through other people's eyes. You see him interacting with people in your house, and it's not just the two of you hermetically sealed, slowly resenting each other fucking crazy spousal living yeah well you just piss off together like this is just so modern and individualism centric like i can't bear it it's so abnormal to how like the cultures that i was raised in like you were a fucking village you were a community we don't have a real sense of community anymore especially in los angeles and i love the feeling that like, we're not trying to find every single

thing that we fucking need from another person just in each other. It's so much pressure to put on another person. So we outsource like not sex. Sex is just for me and James. Sorry, Neil. And, and everything else that we need, if it's not fully there or if someone's having a shitty day or if they're working really hard at the moment, you can't expect them to be there for you every fucking moment that you need them. So we've got our other mates. I don't always want to go and play Rocket League with him.

He doesn't always want to go and watch this fucking TV show with me. It's like we have other people to go and do that with. And you sit in a... The amount of rocket league that the singer james blake plays you know when you listen to his music you go i know two things i know he doesn't play rocket league and he didn't fall for bitcoin but i have bad news on both accounts no he's actually in a very balanced place now with all of those things but he it's just it's fucking incredible also that because like a lot of my friends are men you know and i think people have this idea of me because the way i've been portrayed by the media that i hate men or if i ever talk about patriarchy that that means i hate men it's like patriarchy is something that i think hurts men in very different but um equal

ways to the ways in which it hurts women i care very deeply about men like i've been speaking about uh my love for men and my my fears for men for five years almost as long as i've been talking about my fears for women but people think i hate men i don't and and i'd say almost the majority of my friends are boys probably because I grew up so bullied by girls. I'm afraid of women sometimes. And my brother was like my everything. And so I have a comfort level with them. But I can't believe I found a partner who was comfortable with how many men I'm friends with to the point where he's let them move into our house.

And now they are his best friends. You know what helps is I wouldn't. I feel like that worry would be like, you're gonna sleep with them with you it's like so like fucking someone is the last thing you want to do so it would be like what do you mean like you're not gonna sleep with someone like the amount of things that need to happen for you to want to sleep with somebody and then you mean me specifically yes you specifically that you're sexually uh no but i'm saying i wouldn't worry if i were dating you i wouldn't worry about you like sleeping with other dudes because it would just because i come across as

a frigid bitch no not for a bit uh you just have other interests what do you mean like what even with in interactions with men you're not in it for no sexual attention is not a thing no that no i give off zero vibe yeah it's in the negative it's yeah i've thought, like, even the, I would have to, like, put my thinking cap on to think about sleeping with you. Like, huh. Everyone says that. Jamila. Yeah. Huh.

Yeah. How, okay. I'll see what I can do. I'll literally, like, would have to get, like, an app or something to try to figure it out. I mean, I wrote this in my notes to you. Like, I can't do, I've written sex scenes out of any of my contracts like i can't do sex scenes because i wouldn't even know like i am a sexual person but the sexual side of me is only reserved for my partner and even that person is switched off until he activates me yeah i believe yeah he he like pulls on my like clothes or underwear to let me know that signal he's

he's interested because i cannot pick up on social cues even with someone that i've been with for eight years that there's a vibe i give no vibe i receive no vibe and it's been like that my whole life which is why i've only kissed six people i've slept with five so it's been like that my whole life, which is why I've only kissed six people. I've slept with five. So it's actually like pretty good odds there. A five for six. Not bad. What are we? I don't know.

I'm trying to inflate something that doesn't need to be inflated. I don't want to sex shame people. I want to be sex positive. The people who kissed me wanted to have sex with me. That's cool. Oh, you're saying that they like what they they like the sample they tasted yeah yeah yeah yeah where hey you got a vagina on you maybe that i could interact with i liked your mouth i just don't have what about your puss i don't have a sexy personality you know i'm just a stone. I'm a stone statue and I can't believe that anyone loves me.

Severe body dysmorphia and face dysmorphia. Yeah. And anorexia. Yeah. I don't have those things now, but I just thought, given how much of my time publicly is spent talking about diet culture and the evils of it, it'd be a bit weird or disingenuous if I didn't just put it on my list. But I also said this might be boring and we don't have to talk about it. I don't, I mean, I'm more interested in the, how it, how it stopped.

How did it end? EMDR, EMDR. And again, having a boyfriend that I wanted to live for I'm still get suicidey now and then with James but it's harder to follow but I'm saying the dysmorphia like my oh no I haven't the dysmorphia hasn't gone the dysmorphia and the face hasn't gone that's I don't think that's ever going to go I don't know if that can go i think there's actually something like neurologically wired to mean that i can't see what i look like in the mirror uh and so weirdly a photograph i can believe but in the mirror i see something completely morphed and so i don't really look in mirrors very often and when i have to do my makeup i do it on a

compact that's literally this big even for like the golden globes like this big so that i can just look at one feature at a time rather than have to like terrorize myself in my face i haven't been to a hairdresser you know people make fun of how long i've had this yeah people make fun of how long i've had this uh haircut since i was two which is 35 years um and it's because i can't bear to go to a hairdresser because i don't want to sit in front of a mirror. So I just, you know, trust whatever's being done if someone does blow dry, but, but I cut my own hair, cut my own terrible fringe, um, because I just can't bear it. So it is fine. It's fine. It's a shitty thing to feel. Uh, but it also is why I spent such a long time focusing on my brain and my sense of humor and my personality

and making myself less and less of an intolerable person, which I'm still working on, is because I knew I didn't have that to rely on. And then the most confusing thing in the world is to go from being picked on for the way that I looked my whole life to now being told that i have this like pretty privilege and that i am considered an attractive person and i am put on the cover of vogue or whatever um my brain doesn't go huh well then i must be pretty gorgeous my brain just goes not everyone else is fucking stupid and that's fine i'll take the opportunity but they're wrong or I've fooled them. What do you think when you see a picture of yourself or if you see a video of yourself?

I feel disgusted. But like, is that you or is it you don't even identify with it? I just don't even know who that is. And I hate it. I hate the way it looks. Sometimes I look all right. Sometimes it looks okay. But generally, I just try not to like I'm not I'm I'm I really hate having my photograph taken

I really hate a red carpet I really I can't I've never watched The Good Place beyond like a few odd scenes that show up on the internet I can't watch myself i can't listen to myself back uh and so it's probably why i'll never really develop as an artist because i don't study myself but it's just it's hard it's i mean i've i think i've told this story before but like i've directed santa specials for people and then you send them you send it to them and they have to watch themselves for an hour and it's it's hard to do it's like challenging just like why is my face like why do i sound like that why does my face look like that don't cut over to that side like just weird shit that people have in their minds because it is and it is that thing that i'm not convinced of either way which is like we hate it but yet we

charge people to look at it everything is subjective right so so just because i hate something loads of people love the things i hate so if i hate me it doesn't mean other people won't love me or enjoy me just because i think i'm a fucking idiot doesn't mean someone else won't find some like nuggets of wisdom and what i say. And so I think just put it out there. Just put it out there. Don't try to be the jury and the judge of what is good because who the fuck are you to decide? How can you ever know what is good

or what people are going to enjoy? But it's your own because you have your own standards. Yeah, but my standards are just my standards for me. It doesn't mean someone else isn't going to enjoy it. Right, but then how do you decide what to write or whatever the output is? I don't think it's good, but somebody might. I think at some point there has to be a standard for your own.

I just do what I enjoy. The TV shows that I pick are based on who's making it, who am I going to spend time with on set, and am I going to find it fun to do this project? I never, ever, which you can probably see in some of my decisions, like just think, what is everyone else going to think? I never think that. But if you tweet something, isn't that, here's what what i think and here's what i would like you to think no not here's what i would like you to think this is just here's what i think and i would like to join in the conversation and it's taken me so fucking long to realize that i don't get to participate with my level of platform in like a discussion. We've now turned public figures, all public figures into politicians. And so everything is like a statement and an example being set.

And I just could not get that into my thick fucking skull until truly like the last year. And I still fuck up. But I really just thought I was joining in a conversation. I'm so desperate all the time to learn about people because I feel so abnormal. And I really want to understand people. And I think if I can understand them, then maybe I can be more like them. And then maybe I'll be more acceptable. And so I just want to join in the conversation.

I don't think my opinion is better than anyone else. Even when I came out swinging as this big feminist and everyone was like jamila jamil the feminist hero that we need like people were hyperbolizing how amazing and extraordinary like just this fucking pedestal right but i like the conclusion you came to with all that year years ago and i don't know if you even still believe it but the thing of like i'm canceled or whatever there's no there is no such thing you just go oh you didn't like it all right well i'm not gonna stop i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go away i'm not gonna disappear but what i was saying about the whole like you know like me being like hyperbolized that's how amazing i was even then back from the beginning i was like no no no i left school at 16 like i'm a a feminist in progress. I'm figuring it out. I'm just learning. I've always tried to avoid this idea that like, I think that I am on this soapbox and you should

listen to me. I'm just speaking my opinion. And I think the reason they're drawn to me is not because they think I'm always right, but I think it's because they think it's refreshing that I'm willing to just try publicly. I'm willing to show my workings out. I'm willing to make the mistake, get back up, try again. I'm not trying to impress or lead anything. I don't think that I have the right to tell anyone what to do. There are things that I feel should happen or there are things that I think are unjust and inhumane. But I'm just speaking about it as one human being who believes this thing.

And I think it got publicized because you're good looking and they're divisive issues and it's fun to pile on and we love to bring a woman up we love to build a woman up because then the higher we build her up the bigger the fucking drop we always cyclically drag her down by her pubes and then like throw her in a gutter like the is just a pakistan yeah but fuck me neil like but the the pedestal is just a trap door to a big toilet of shit and so you know and i knew that going on my way up yeah i knew that i remember you saying like yeah you were like i've watched these girls shirt or shrink from the negative attention except for a few of them who just go no i'm not going anywhere yeah man i get into trouble all the time and we are treated as women in particular as like if you've done something wrong you have to leave forever you have to you can't burden anyone else with

your existence we can't you can't set a bad example for the others that they know that they can also make mistakes we have to fucking get rid you need to get rid of yourself. A lot of the women who disappeared after they were canceled or globally, you know, like piled onto, they, they actually canceled themselves most of the time. They, they, they opted out of all opportunities. Yeah. Not to say that they hadn't lost opportunities, but they just like disappeared from public life because we're taught that our only value is how likable or fuckable we are, how easy we make it for everyone else. So if you create a challenging situation for people and you're a woman, then how fucking dare you?

Do you know how lucky you are to be in the room? And I just kind of was like, I don't know, man, like in 2020 when I got really piled onto for every single fucking thing that I did or said, like it was just, it was coming. I'd had too many years of being like hailed as god to survive it and i was being dragged down and i did have the thought of i should probably leave i should probably retire and go and do something else or retrain and yeah exactly oh go and start up a video shop i'm sure that'll do well in this climate um but then i thought well what would a white guy do i'm most of the white men that i know would go like oh yeah that was unfortunate but you know what i'll figure it out i'll just

keep going i was like why don't we all do that but it also doesn't mean any that's the other whether it's a white man or not it's none of it means anything but you don't learn that until you do it right and the only people that i had examples of who would just keep going were white men so i was like well why don't we all just try this i'm just going to stick around and see what happens yes people find me annoying or unlikable or flawed in some way fine i'm just going to keep going and see what happens this is going to become my own life experiment because fuck it because that's been my entire philosophy through life and in doing so i realized people move on they don't even remember what they were fucking they don't remember yeah they have no recollection the work comes back and you just grow and you do better and actually it's amazing for

some people in society to have an example of someone who does fuck up and then changes we have so many perfect idols especially women like where they look perfect, not hair out of place, like they have the right opinion or no opinion, the perfect behavior, the perfect smile. And I think that was fucking toxic for me as a kid to see that because that's the standard I held myself up to. And I know these people in real life, they are far from perfect. So projecting this perfect image just upholds this like bullshit standard that makes young people feel like suffocated by that level of perfection i would rather people know that i'm a fuck up and that like we're in this shit together my podcast is me learning in real time and being publicly ignorant i'm not proud of it but why i mean again why not but the other thing with all the all of the things that you saw as

like media things or whatever were nothing like they weren't and they to anyone that wasn't you was like i just they were all ignorable they weren't it wasn't like front page it was like i don't know some of it was front page okay some of it was really crazy and i did lose like work from doing so and i did lose a lot of money from the the choices that i made and the fights that i took on and so it was very real but it doesn't mean that i can't grow and change like something that just drives me fucking crazy about liberals now like especially social media liberals is this idea that like what's the point of all your activism if you don't actually fundamentally believe that people can change

what are we doing here of course why are we saying anything they all want criminal justice reforms but not social yeah yeah they hate cops but they behave like criminal justice it's just like i've more and more distanced myself from that movement i believe in all the same causes but the way that they go about it horrifies me and i own my own responsibility in the fact that i was complicit within pitchfork culture when i was younger i agree that's the only part of any of this that i hold my fucking hand up i regret is like being scoldy that's the only part of like the last 15 years that i regret i regret just being like yeah and it's so fucking gross myself like five years ago because just like who has ever learned anything who has ever grown from being shamed and maimed it's i certainly haven't i've learned from moments of grace and a bit of space to learn right and then i've grown

and i've changed I was a massive fucking misogynist like 10 12 years ago massive misogynist really didn't like or respect women and I've become who I am now who is a very different person who fights passionately for the rights of women and who really cares and it comes from really deep inside of me it's like I changed and so we can all change i have belief in change i have like an immense amount of grace and mercy i would like to extend to other people that was extended to me once and i don't i i do not subscribe to the way that that that social media liberals or liberals like you know use this the way they weaponize moral perfection it's just it i find it deeply

disturbing and i'm just like the hypocrisy is too much to bear and what i was joining in on with my like little pitchfork or my little soapbox five years ago was was me thinking we were a part of trying to change what was bad i had no idea what this was going to become, which was just like a constant self-sabotaging, self-mutilating, like witch hunt for each other. Like no big systemic issues helped. Nothing about poor people, nothing about like what's actually impacting the vast majority, just fucking infighting and nitpicking yeah and and egomaniacal

who like mirror mirror on the wall who's the like most i don't know yeah who's the purest of them all so that has been like a huge shift for me and liberating myself from that has been yeah it was a it was a it was it was all performative and it was not nobody was mine wasn't performative i really thought we were trying to change something but i but but in retrospect you're not changing anything you're not fucking changing anything no it wasn't helpful the way i spoke to people like when men were really horrible and vile to me online rather than ignore it or just challenge like hey why are you speaking to a total stranger like this i just call them an incel it's a fucking horrible thing to say even if they're being horrible to me

it's a fucking horrible like reductive shitty thing to say to someone you have no idea like what their life experience is like i i've just the last four years have been so transformative for me to realize that like i none of us have a leg to stand on if we don't treat people with the humanity and grace that we wish to receive ourselves. If someone's telling you how to behave, check your wallet or check your panties. I stand by it. Jamila, it says here that you're detached and disconnected and that you don't miss people. Once I'm out of here, you're detached and disconnected and that you don't miss people um now i'm out of here you are dead to me well you and i have that in common in that when if we don't if you don't text me back in three hours i assume i've done something and it's over our relationship's over um do you assume that people

have turned on you always yeah also like I had a friend one time um who was supposed to meet me and didn't turn up and then didn't respond to me uh all day and I was sending like angrier and angrier and angrier text messages about like how disrespectful it was and it turned out she was dead so I have that extra layer now of terror that if you don't text me back you've died and that really because of worst case scenario syndrome it's a sounds like a super storm very prevalent yeah but um yeah i uh i am incredibly um detached as a person like i i think i do feel a lot but I think it's happening in my body like I can feel my blood pressure go down when I'm around James are you I can feel my body

language change depending on who I'm with I uh when I get stressed I don't really feel stressed in my brain so like when I'm receiving like a pile on on the internet or something terrible's happening at work I'm completely pragmatic and highly functional and show no emotion. But I'll get like kidney stones. So all my shit's happening there. But generally, because of that, I feel quite detached. I really don't understand a lot of people. I don't understand people's motivations.

I don't relate to a lot of people. And that made me feel like an alien my whole life like et is the most seen i've ever felt et by a film yeah that for me was like such a formative experience and then data from star trek you know was like this is my guy that's my guy that's me that's my representation star trek was fucking amazing but i you know that's so that's been that's been difficult to uh make sure that people who love me know i love them back and i normally show them by getting them food because um one of my parents uh could never show me that they loved me and so would only bring snacks and uh that was how i knew that

they had any care or affection or thought for me and so i think i've internalized that as like my way of showing people love the thing of thinking that people it's the that nobody nobody's mad at you song that i that i wrote you sing it now nobody's mad now? Nobody's mad at you. Nobody's mad at you. You're having a private experience. Nobody's mad at you. Nobody's mad at you. Nobody really gives a fuck.

You also just realize, like, no one is thinking about you. It's in that no one's obsessed, no one's thinking about you. It's in that no one's obsessed. No one's thinking about you. We're all just flying past each other. I'm not even wondering about anyone else. The second you're out of my sight, I'm not thinking about you. And also like, you know, I think again, part of this is because of the way that my brain is wired.

But part of this is also childhood trauma. I had a parent who would say like, I'm just off to work. And they'd be in a, you know, work outfit and have a briefcase and say like i'm just off to work and they'd be in a you know work outfit and have a briefcase and look like they're going to work but then they wouldn't come back for several years and they'd have been in another country with another partner and so there's probably a little like actual i don't know is it trauma but like there's an injury there i don't like you overusing the word trauma i The assumption. I think it's a nightmare how much we overuse trauma. But there's an injury there that has now created an assumption that when someone says goodbye to me, like even James, who I've lived with for like eight years,

that when he leaves the house for tour or even just to go out for a meeting, I'm like, bye, forever. Yeah. And then he's out that door. you're fine with it yeah i'm i don't mean single as in like ready to fuck i just mean like well i'm alone now and i'll always be alone and and he it was great to know that guy what a great guy and i genuinely feel his way do you feel hurt no not at all and when i feel hurt like well I guess that's the end of that. I fucked up. I must have fucked up for Jamila to not text me back or whomever to not text me back.

Like, my assumption is, well, yeah, because of your faults, tone, whatever, you fucked up. You never have to worry that I'm not going to tell you if I'm mad at you. Okay. you never have to worry that i'm not going to tell you if i'm mad at you okay and you know that by now hopefully that i will always tell you if you've hurt my feelings or pissed me off because i like i never tell anyone if i don't care about them if i don't care about having a prolonged relationship with that person i don't give a shit about what they're doing that's pissing me off because i just want them to go away but i want to know you for the rest of my life you are one of my favorite people that I have ever met even when we clash I would rather clash with you than bond with someone else like I just adore you and I want to know you forever and James feels that way as well. And so I promise I will never, ever, ever just ghost you or let you.

Right. But I can talk myself into like, this is a lie. Do you actually think that's a lie for me? No, I don't. But I'm saying if I don't hear back from you, my brain will go, well, people change. Yeah. You said something when you were leaving my house like a few months ago that just made me go like um where you were walking out the door and you were i can't remember

exactly what you said but you were like you're one of the good ones so don't let me down yeah you're one of the ones that i still have faith in so don't let me down yeah uh and i felt both like very privileged to be in that you know in that in that place, but also, um, sad that there's a kind of like shadow boxing trigger happy. Well, I don't think I'm even making up the things that I'm, uh, paranoid about or, or issues I have with friends or like, know the backstory and it's like no i've been pretty severely let down by people so i don't i want to fight like eight of the people no i know your feelings like it's on fucking sight so yeah so i have to prepare yeah for the i need a go bag, an emotional go bag with my rations and my guns. Like I can't expect, I keep expecting people to be decent and they aren't. And I don't even know if it's because I have bad taste, like a bunch of reasons.

You see, you pick your friends based on decency. That's a huge mistake. I pick my friends based on who's funny. No, you've got it exactly wrong. You've got it exactly wrong. I'm sure. So, yeah, like I'm, whatever. So I don't know.

I am paranoid and they're after me, so to speak. Like I am paranoid and I, so I don't. Is that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after so to speak like i am paranoid and i so i don't is that that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not to get you both but both are true in my case so yeah i can't even i can't even i wouldn't even be able to gaslight you out of that because you've had so many shitty experiences yeah so yeah and i don't even feel especially sorry for myself i'm just like yeah i don't know human beings because that. We're all addicted to human approval and also have incredibly low opinions about human beings. But because I know that, I have a tender space in my heart to remind you when I can that I love you. Nobody's mad at you.

Nobody's mad at you. You're having a private experience. Nobody's mad at you, nobody's mad at you, nobody really gives a f***.