Goes Without Saying - friends, influencers & bad influences: she's a mirrorball

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

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Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Here's a show that we recommend. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world.

The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com It goes without saying, you're listening to Goes Without Saying with Sefi and Wing. I'm Wing. And I'm Sefi. And this is one of my favorite episodes, actually.

It's been really fun. We've been talking about when we feel like the people around us are maybe being a little bit of a bad influence on us and you start picking up these mannerisms and habits and beliefs and morals that aren't necessarily true to you and if there is a way to shake that off how can we do that distance ourselves from the shit people and feel more confident in our own hopefully truest selves enjoy divine okay perfect i really need a wee all right cool oh sorry i almost did that as in like cool let's go and then just like waited it's like as if there was a show start no i kind of forgot yeah well the show i forgot we were the show god we were the show god worst realization oh my god

we're under the spotlight i kind of settled into my seat oh god oh yeah i was just starting to look forward to the popcorn out what idiot how are you i'm good i'm good we just had like a little break in our day of recording had a shower in that time pretty crazy move huh it's always a good thing to do it definitely was i feel reset i feel good that's what i need what did you do in the break um i just sat around waiting for you really but actually i wanted to ask i'm gonna do a big call out now like i'm actually genuinely asking for you to come into my dms anyone who has the answer to this because i was gonna say i'm feeling good but i'm on my period which if i've spoken about this that much but i have found over the past maybe like six

months to a year that my mental health's never been better however it's almost like just before my period i reach a low that has never been lower before like i actually get so low like it's such a steep drop into quite a dangerous place for a day or two or a week and i've actually been all right this time um which i'm really happy about but like when it's bad it's really really bad and i was looking into it because also a lot of the kind of conversation around it is like you know if you're having this huge hormonal drop, it can really impact your mood and etc, etc. Yeah.

Sometimes they offer you antidepressants, which I'm already on. So it's kind of like the normally what they would offer you as the solution. It's like, oh, well, it's obviously not working. Because I have found. Hello, Ozzy. I keep saying Ozzy Dougal writes for the daily bugle come here wait what no he doesn't want to what is that you know the daily bugle yeah but what's the ozzy doogle that's just his name oh that's quite cute i say ozzy doogle mr moogle writes for the daily bugle anyway

basically i'm thinking i've been looking into p p m d d premenstrual dysphoric disorder basically just like i mean medicine hates women but basically what they seem to know what they do know is that obviously there are huge hormonal changes around somebody's period and it can really impact people's mental health and etc etc and for some people they like experience it in a really extreme way and like what can we do about it and blah blah and there are kind of like groups basically what i'm asking is if you know anything about it i would love to know basically if you're me from the future and you've cured it what did we do yeah kind of um if you know anything about it like i would love if you had some sort of medical

background but if not if this is your personal life experience and you have it or you think you have it what helps you like a lot of the conversation is around like nutrition and stuff which is fine but like i just space i want like all the information i can get because it's i'm so basically i'm kind of querying sorry i really i'm using this as like my google i mean it can be whatever we want it can be but i need people as like my google i mean it can be whatever we want it can be but i need people i need the support i think it's interesting as a women's issue let's don't even don't even go there a hundred percent it's interesting but i would really love to know i've seen some people like cycling their antidepressants so like taking a certain dose

and then like upping the dose before they come in everyone's stuff like that i just i'm finding when it's bad which is seven out of eight times i don't know why i said that nine out of ten times let's say seven out of eight yeah not a thing love it nine out of ten times it's it's really like it's not a livable situation it's not sustainable like i i really need to sort it out um so how have you done that if you have done that like what helps like what do you know do you know something that i don't know please please please tell me yeah come into my dms i want to be overwhelmed with knowledge and information absolutely um if you'd be so kind

as to share but that's how i am at the moment i'm actually fine i've had a really nice day and a really nice time and i've had a really good um first couple of days in my period and like i was gonna say how far into you are you like second day this is my second day which by second day it's like oh we're done we're in the clear yeah it's literally like the week before and like the like the days prior it can be so bad i also feel like which i've really realized sorry go on now no i was just gonna say i've really realized it now that my mental health is better and it's almost like with my medication that i'm on it does so much at like really balancing me out and like really making me a little bit more like emotionally robust yeah in like handling life but it seems to i don't know if it's exacerbated the symptoms that i would have

around my period or just like highlighted that yeah by contrast now it feels worse but the symptoms before my period are absolutely outrageous like mental symptoms yeah i feel like periods like i've always had a pretty easy period like literally a two three day sort of thing and like i never really had period pains that much or like i would get a bit moody blah blah blah but recently it my one recently was horrific like i feel like what's bad about it and it's not that i go into depression like i don't think it's not i'm not saying it's the same thing at all but what i find so jarring about um periods or like the like pms sort of vibe is that it's like i personally i don't think anyone would expect me to i don't track my period like i'm not really a tracker yeah i don't think i'm somebody that tracks

things in my life i think i track your period yeah no i think you do 100 i at my period every time is a surprise every time i'm called god i'm never expecting it so i then in recent like i reckon it's in the last couple years where i've had like maybe like um a lower mood or i'm more anxious or something like that i literally feel like i'm like this is just um come out of nowhere this is just my life and then my period comes and it's almost such a relief every time of like especially this time because i was convinced i was pregnant about a week ago, took a lot of pregnancy tests, all negative, although one was inconclusive, and I was like, what the fuck? But it was fine. But every single one is a relief, because I'm like, oh, that is why you were feeling shit. That explains it. Like, that explains it so much.

I feel like one of the most, almost gaslighting bits of periods is that you forget that it's, like, PMS, like, pre. No, it's real. It's not, like, as soon as I that you forget that it's like pms like pre it's no it's real it's not like as soon as i'm on it the expectation is you just get on the expectation is you just get get on with it but it's like there's something yeah it's all oh it's just it's crazy the expectation is that on your period yeah you can have like your first day if it's heavy okay take it easy you can make it cute no no it's not have a packet of not necessarily on my period like yeah then i need to lie in bed with a hot water bottle blah blah blah it or sometimes i can power through sometimes i absolutely can't but it's not so much the period that is so distressed distressing i guess to me it's the

bit before when i'm not sure what's going on i'm just mental for three days i'm just insane a lot of people find like um around the time that they're ovulating as well they can be a bit mentally just the whole thing there's this whole thing about like cycle syncing as well yeah which i i'm i'm very curious sorry what's curious i'm very curious about this whole thing i just almost wish i was born like 50 years later so there was like a little tiny bit of research on it yeah i wish there was some more research someone with a doctor like even my poor therapist was like i'm so sorry like i'm as annoyed as you are sort of thing like people just you know anyway this is what i have so that's my call yeah that's my call please i think that's the whole thing about like women and medicine and the lack of research and all

that stuff is so absolutely depressing like i have a smear next week and i find smears so fucking horrific because it's one of those things and i think i'll probably feel it in birth and all of those times when almost your body just gets kind of ripped open as like because book your smears by the way guys your smear and make it as comfortable for you however old just whenever you can book a smear like you should but it is i was just so shocked by like the lack of um almost like the nurses everything's so amazing but almost it's just the infuriating thing that if men were expected to feel that pain it would never happen you'd be given all your stuff so i went in prepared and asked for like the basically top tip if you're really scared about your smear like me ask for the smaller speculum i was vaping cbd in the hospital toilets don't tell anyone

but take some cbd whatever you need take some you know smoke some weed whatever you need to do take something a little stronger yeah take the edge off i would also say ask for the numbing gel you can ask for things in some hospitals i have heard of them giving gas and air for smears and it's like if you've got anything that causes is available to be more painful to you or if you just don't like the pain of having your vagina fucking rank um sort of yanked open which is very reasonable i would say ask all the painkillers available because that's what i do i always as well not even for smith just in general like if i ever feel like um like i remember we had this conversation

and i remember it specifically because i remember i must have been about five years old and i remember my mom doing it for me for something and it's stuck in my mind since then is any time i'm doing anything where i feel like it might make a difference i always ask for a like woman doctor or nurse like i'll always specifically request and when i do my therapy like on the nhs i always say like i want a woman i would rather wait six months longer and make sure i get like a woman um so just you know think about the things that are available to you definitely but book your smears guys like book your smears yeah you'll be all right they are absolutely fine they last a short amount of time ask for all the painkillers possible and just we're with you we're with you it's not pleasant but we're with you and you're

gonna be with me next tuesday when it's happening to me see you next tuesday not nice um should we get in yeah let's do it so bit of an intriguing one hey yeah i'm intrigued it's something we speak about i'm intrigued too i'm always intrigued but we speak about this quite a bit um do we is that anywhere you were on the podcast or in our lives i think indirectly on the podcast and maybe a little bit more directly in our in our lives something it's just a it's kind of a pressing matter that we need to it is a pressing matter it's kind of alert alert like we just quickly needed to give a little bit of a psa and make sure you're all happy with the people that you're surrounding yourself with yeah just wanted to quickly check in on that i

almost feel like it borders on a kind of it's kind of the sort of conversation they'd have on sort of diary of a ceo of like you are the son of all the people closest to you like i can hear the men's voices steven bollock yeah yeah um which i don't necessarily like but i do think there is absolutely something in like i don't think it's a pressuring thing of like my friends are failures oh god they don't have what i want so i've got you don't need to be surrounding yourself with them what is it like high value females and all this bollocks god the amount of times i am called a low value woman by like sort of the sort of men in my life that like love the andrew tate stuff i'm literally like i can't hear these words i cannot hear these words one more time um you know

what on that note as well so i'll start us off something that kind of brought this to mind for me or something you know i haven't really formulated this idea but i'm just just let me run wild for a sec let me run right i was thinking okay you know we've spoken a bit about like when you come away from meeting with someone you feel shit or when you start hanging out with people and then after a while you start picking up their lingo or you know all of this just catch the ways that we are just you just catch with sponges and i think it's funny how easily we say like our children are sponges like they just absorb so much yeah and obviously like i do think that is like hyper true as a child but i still think it's kind of the case

with adults i think we're like not as um individual and like unique and special and autonomous as we like to believe however then it was kind of just briefly ran through my mind this teeny thought that i thought was quite interesting which is the idea that i was thinking about you know who i spend my time with and how they impact me and how it's influenced me and then i was thinking about when we get lovely messages that are like oh i've really like been a lot more confident since I started listening to goes without saying or like, oh, I've started saying fucking the crux since I started listening to you guys or whatever. So sorry about that. But no, I'm not apologizing. there's an added layer of not just the people that you're surrounded with in your very tangible physical like one-on-one or day-to-day like world like in your work or your school or your

relationships your family etc but also what kind of content are you consuming and how is that infiltrating your brain and changing your behaviors maybe because i do think that isn't um rare at all i think it's actually extremely common that not just with the people that we're surrounded by but all the content that we watch it changes who we are in i think quite a major way it changes the books that you read it changes the jokes that you laugh at it changes your opinions it changes your behavior i think it is so um formative definitely especially with algorithms and things like and things like that now where you will just get refed the same message so if you start going down one hole you're going to be more and more like those people but i always

think of that in terms of i'm gonna go right back to kind of um a couple of our ancestors almost like i often think about this with the introduction of like so lame the printing press for example yeah like the beginning of yeah the beginning of maybe we don't have to go that far we go google the internet like the introduction of like information being more like readily available to people that if you are born in a time pre-internet or let's say pre-books then you really have to be the sum of the people around you because you literally don't have access to anyone outside of the people you know yes so that's the printing press then you get the internet covered early modern world covered it and how it transformed society but

then if you go in an internet goes wider and wider and wider it doesn't have to be people that just have published books you can also get more access to potentially less educated people people from all different worlds everywhere people compose from everywhere so now we're in a place that's so highly saturated with that that there are like little pockets of the internet that you can go into i do find it fascinating because we will be saying things that are for example we have a really high american audience which i find so fascinating hey guys hi if you're from america um which and we have a quite high australian audience things like that i just find that so interesting that there'll be people in their australian high school i don't know if you call it high school let's go american high school you're in your american high school i know they

call it high school you're in your sophomore year it's your freshman year and you're gonna be here you're in your sophomore year it's something a yale yeah i don't know where you are so dude yeah you're saying things like assume the worst it's like yeah you have that's cute yeah picked up we'll be saying assume the worst in an american accent oh it's so cute it's so cute um and i just think that's so funny that and for example we were saying jokes that were on fucking h3 in the other episode yeah those are a load of kind of men in a basement somewhere in america recording a thing and then there are two girls in england saying it like i do find it fascinating because you are then a sum of your following people that you follow and the people that you watch on youtube and the podcast

you listen to you're a sum of all of people yeah and that's why it's really important to be quite i mean people say all the time unfollow the people that you don't want to follow i think you really should because it is all going in all of it i saw an interesting article the other day actually that you just reminded me of kind of talking about globalization but it was i think the headline was something like why do we all look the same or like why is everything the same now and it's like you go into a coffee shop and there's like kind of this generic like relatively like kind of scandinavian industrial vision of what a coffee shop might look like exactly you go um i don't know like into a fucking hair salon and you ask

one of the stylists what is the most common like cut and color she's done recently it's the thing yeah right so suddenly things start to look the same and that and there's i'm not critiquing that i don't think that's you know there's pros and cons but almost the idea that because we there's so many kind of ways that we could look at that like it's obviously a really complex issue or like topic but the idea that like you know i'm gonna open a coffee shop i look for inspiration in my real world i see one okay nice i might imitate that then suddenly obviously like with the printing press or pinterest what's popular is much more accessible and we're not only inspired by one another but then like the resources that we need to recreate

that in our own lives become more accessible so something that you would have only would have previously only existed in like some kind of maybe not one percent but like some certain nepo baby's house you now see on instagram and then it infiltrates two years later primark homeware and it becomes much more excited like there's this really um steady like trickling of all of the ways that we are like emulating one another which is quite cool in that we can be more than ever kind of inspired by each other it's kind of exactly really connected and stephanie and i briefly had this conversation the other day outside of the podcast where i was talking to my therapist and she was talking about jealousy and um comparison and stuff and i know sephi and i've been like oh it's just the ugliest feeling like it's just such a horrific

feeling and um in the session my therapist was talking about how um and i use this example with teffy the other day like in a primal sense it's incredibly human to look down the street and see someone else has put a roof on their shack and you think oh shit well i should probably get a fucking roof on my shack too there is like an extent to which we can like really benefit obviously from like being inspired and lifting ideas and like ways of living from the people around us however pulling back to kind of the andrew tate conversation there is so little obstacle now in the way of interrupting the fall into the rabbit hole like it's a very steep and easy drop to make yeah um just getting fed shit every day it's no longer groups on shacks it's um no women are um property and it's your job as a man no stop i'm not in the mood stop it so no that's not my echo chamber sorry lock the door honestly shut the door get out of

my shack don't need that in my ears it's horrific but i do think as i get older i realize more and more how influenced i am by social media the media that i consume and i also think in a major sense the people that i surround myself with and i am very picky with like who i spend my time with because we put on the story i was saying how have you been influenced by your friends great question and there were so many interesting responses and it really i think just emphasizes how influence can be extremely positive or extremely negative or even just a complex mix of both um should i find i haven't seen a single thing on the story yet so i kind of want to have a little look they're so good i just have to wait a second for my instagram

to look because i've got that app one sec have you got it what's that no it's this app where like you can set it up for different apps but i think the main one is for instagram where if you it's like a shortcut basically so if you open instagram it cuts over to the second app which is like one second it's like you're supposed to take a deep breath before you open it and then it will say like yeah i'll send it to you or like i almost need 10 minutes and then in the time in those 10 minutes you decide yeah i don't need to go on that well then it says so it says like oh you've tried to open instagram seven times in the past 24 hours and then it says like i don't want to open instagram anymore or like i do want to open instagram sort of thing that because i never have instagram downloaded on my phone anymore like i re-download i re-downloaded it like to record this so i could

see the answers yeah i it kind of refreshes your intention of like oh no i intentionally want to go on instagram yeah kind of what i was talking about in the episode i think that we just recorded where it's like instagram is no longer a place that's like oh i'm in my evening i'm just like scrolling through it's like no no this is an intentional place i'm entering into now i'm engaging with something i've got a couple minutes before my bus gets here i'll scroll for a bit it's like no no it's not that place it's not um leisure time go in it's not maximum see things and leave there are some really like positive messages like someone said they've encouraged me to be more myself as the years have gone on i have one really good friend who highly influences my actual voice and accent ha ha ha in the best way my best friends now are those who

have modeled confidence and love so nice that's like you seffy you model confidence and love i think god thank you like the real and good that's true the real and good friendships i've had have made me a better person and brought out the best in me so can i ask your question of course is there a time when you've come away from not even like being with someone physically but you've been reflecting on a relationship or a friendship that you have and you've noticed an influence on you or like the introduction of some new behaviors or like patterns of thought that you weren't necessarily happy about.

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals. Does that mean I'm gay? So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever.

I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer. and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com and monetize their podcasts everywhere akast.com i don't know whether this like i definitely wasn't happy about this and none of us were

okay none of us were we were all collectively sad about this um is this recent no this is in first year of uni so i got to uni and i met some of my best friends ever that I lived with the whole way through uni lived one year with them with wing as well yeah and we got there none of us knew each other obviously we arrived and then by the time that we went back for what's the first Christmas is that the first holiday you would have um you would have your reading week in October so maybe we had a reading week where we went back home and we we spoke we suddenly I got a message on our group chat and one of them said oh my parents just said I started doing this weird thing with my mouth and then I was like oh my god you're joking my mum said I'm doing it too and we all had developed a thing where we'd say something

then we go and we'd like pout and we started calling it dinking we're like shit we've started this thing where we're like dinking we'd go in it'd be like you'd say something like can i have a tea yeah sure and you do this little pout a little kind of kissy but it wasn't in a cute kissing way it was almost like in a a bit of like an awkward way i don't know it wasn't cute it wasn't it wasn't a good cool thing to be doing i remember you talking about it but i always thought it was cute no it was like and then it was a thing when we all tried to get out of it because the fact that we had all caught it in this we don't know who started it i don't know which one of them gave me the dink but we all started dinking and then when we went home everyone was like what are you

doing like it's not a collective joke that people be like peace like cute it's like no you look weird you look like to be honest like you're doing something weird with your face um almost is it a bit rude yeah it's almost a little bit like i don't even know what the intention was but we were all can you do it now if i asked you would i do it so like can i yeah can i see it so like if i said to you um oh could you chuck me that t-shirt when you get here yeah sure it was just weird it's kind of a little shrug a little shrug kiss okay but it was one of those things that we came back and we're like right nobody do it again ding nobody dink no one and even now it's like if we start talking about dinking we all start catching again so it's like

no one talk about dinking no one do it you're making it look quite good now i'm not gonna lie you're making the dinking yeah you're pulling it off yeah i like it you're selling it but it wasn't cool it was actually quite it was quite lame it was very actually uncool because it wasn't a thing that everyone was doing it was just the three of us and we don't know where we got it from but now it's a thing that it's like if if i see one of them dinking it's like get that away from me get that put that thing back where it came from or so help me. So help me. I cannot have a dink near me because I will start doing it.

And that was definitely a thing where I was like, where did we catch this from? And almost like the power of these girls that I've met, that now my face is doing something involuntary when I'm not around them. I'm with my grandma Christmas Day going, thanks, Grandma. What is happening right now? That's a fun one. Yeah, it is a fun one. That's harmless. But we were not happy with it.

No, I mean, I get it. I get it. But like, it's kind of, you know, when you start saying something as a joke and then it ends up like in your real everyday vocab. Yeah, it's kind of people that would, everyone started saying lol as a joke. And now lol, I mean, people say it and it saying lol as a joke and now lol i mean people say it and it's kind of a joke but i remember there being a bit of a transition phase with the word lol yeah where people were like god i'm saying lol seriously now and now lol is just part of the discourse just

part of the language lol oh my god lol oh god oh you just catch these things so right it's kind of getting to me a little bit she's making me a bit like oh god yeah if i suddenly started being or like you know that all of these things can't rub off because i remember there report being a point when we would all do this awkward turtle awkward oh i remember what when we all did that you brought out like the weirdest kind of like pocket of this conversation like you were focused on the weird like awkward turtle i didn't think we were gonna be saying awkward turtle neither did i neither did i jesus it hurts my but that does show how impressionable we are but it kind of goes into that thing that you were saying about kind of globalization but with the idea awkward turtle goes into the conversation

about global globalization i think in terms of like printing press the idea of trends like and how we all kind of are connected through these things like me you listening now chances are i've never met you but we were both saying awkward turtle to our friends maybe yeah it's crazy well when we were saying awkward turtle, we had never even met. No, but we both said it. Just two star-crossed awkward turtle lovers. Awkward pineapple. Awkward palm tree. Cute.

Did you ever do that one? Awkward palm tree. No, I don't think so. Awkward pineapple. Awkward palm tree. Ooh. Okay. There's a lot going on here.

Mine have moves that go with them. I'm sure everyone else's do as well. Yeah, you're really pulling out the stops today. Yeah. Okay. So, you were dinkinginking you didn't like to do you stopped dinking but that's kind of about anything is there something a bit more hard-hitting that i could maybe rinse from you you don't have you guys want to drag the depths out for me right okay i wouldn't mind it right as much as we love dinking like as much as we love what you just did i absolutely love what you gave us but is there anything else on offer what else is on the menu today yeah like i loved that appetizer really weird um what was the question let's let's go into someone i

was gonna say like the question was like picking up like coming away from a friendship and being like oh i didn't like that so actually something i will should i pull up one of theirs yeah or you could answer that for yourself i like that as a question what so you take the lightness and the jokes and i come in bad cop and bring us to the pits please let's fulfill our roles like not the roles so um let's think i think sometimes and i think just the overall like the crux of the conversation really and not even just in my personal experience but just for all of us one could argue that really like any time that you come away from a relationship or like you reflect on a friendship that you have and you feel like when you're with them you're maybe acting out of alignment with yourself and like your beliefs and your values and almost like your morals like i

think that is one of the most um that's kind of the ones yeah that's maybe the most urgent where i would be like quick like let's do kind of escape route i was gonna say would you invest that eject button how many relationships have you had where you've invested that much time into something that feels out of your morals like i wouldn't expect you uh yeah loads cool really out of your morals in what way i would say um i'm definitely okay so in my history yeah in my in my recent history like just in as a person i'm not someone who likes to rock the boat i like to be nice and easy breezy harmonic just keep things nice and simple i don't want confrontation i just want to be happy and just keep people happy and be nice it's reasonable most yeah it's pretty reasonable i guess the most

recent experience of like acting i guess out of my morals or just like feeling like i wasn't in alignment with the people i was surrounded by was university in the sense that as we've spoken about before like a real um like an introduction to people who were in really not just different situations to me but like different situations than like the vast majority of the human population on earth like their dad is in places i could never even dream of like ceo the ceo like just it's like i it's unspeakable because i actually just i can't even fathom the wealth and like experience of that and i knew that bugged me deep down because i also was you know it's not just like oh i don't want to be friends with someone who's insanely rich that's not it it's more so like i don't want to be friends with

someone who's insanely rich and an arsehole ignorant completely ignorant completely like just like rude disrespectful like weird bitchy mean just like not very nice and i knew for a really long time that i felt really out of alignment with certain people and yeah i kept myself in that situation and i almost felt like i was the person in the wrong yeah in that situation like i am wrong because i can't relate and like i need to assimilate to this type of person which is really concerning actually but i don't blame you for that if you like i don't either not that i ever like acted immorally in the company of these people like i wasn't like robbing people's graves and like beating up homeless people but more so just like

the idea that would be concerning what am i associating with i'm associating with people who are never going to understand me and the more I try and understand them the worse I feel about myself and actually I was thinking this just yesterday I was thinking how um kind of my perception of like privilege and like just kind of the nepo baby conversation um like I think back at uni I really would have done anything to just like almost have that and now as i get older and i almost i get off my own back i get more into the world of like privileged people and like sit next to people at a nice restaurant who are having a conversation about a certain something or like for example like the influencer industry just like hearing things and

like coming a bit closer to a world that would have been completely out of reach before through nothing other than like my sheer will and determination and like yourself a degree of privilege um i just think now i'm it makes me feel almost like um like it's worth it now to not be an arsehole. Like all of the shit that you take by not having certain things. As I get older, I'm like, you know what? It's like so fucking hard and shit to live through like real shit struggles. But at least I'm not a dick. And it is worth it to not be a dick and like no matter what

anyone else thinks i have to know deep down i'm actually not a dick and that does feel a bit better but i've spent my whole life assimilating like i've said before like i've changed my voice i change everything about myself constantly um but i definitely feel more secure in myself now than ever but i'm very aware that like the people that i surround myself with like my real life my real friends why i always say sephie like you're very confident and like it really balms me like it helps me live more confidently and like more happy in myself which is the nicest thing that i think you just continually say about me which is so nice unconsciously you just lead by example just the way that you live is

very um free and like you're very liberated and god i love it there are certain things almost that you take for granted i think like you take it as a given it's kind of what we were saying earlier in a previous episode that's what shocks me because i think i i don't necessarily um even like i do see that and i do think that about myself but i almost don't see it as like a notable noticeable thing i almost think it's not it's top of the list it's literally like most which is why it's so nice notable thing about because it's nice to realize that you do take a good thing for granted because it almost means it's so i do feel that so much like yeah i think i've only really started like noticing it since you've been pointing out all the time which is the nicest thing ever

other people do point it out surely thank you they do i know they do i've always been called confident that's i do it every week yeah you do it almost you're forced to sort of give monologues i have to acknowledge it which is so nice elephant in the room i love it it's so nice i've always been called confident or like um and that's not to say it's unjustly confident by the way i want to make that clear i'm not saying she's very brave oh god please i mean please i'm brave gryffindor through and through i must say um but yeah no that's yeah it's just really nice so thank you yeah it's true thank you it's true but I think sometimes like finding differences

in other people have made me feel worse because I feel like oh well why am I different that must mean there's something wrong with me which sounds really kind of juvenile and like simple no but when you're older I realize it is same it's back to the fucking human evolutionary charles darwin coming right out of my body even though i know nothing about yeah you need to survive but it's like yeah you want to be part of the pack you don't want to be definitely everyone else is talking about daddy's yacht you might suddenly be like yeah yeah my daddy's yacht it hurts i mean i never said yeah yeah my daddy's yacht i would just sit there silently like glum

and be like why am i so poor why can i not afford the rent when these girls doesn't even matter it's horrific anyway um what would you do like so someone said and actually quite a few people said something similar to this they said i noticed myself becoming more bitchy when surrounded by bitchy friends which and also somebody else said and i just really liked this one i kind of wanted to give this one a little bit of space this person said i'm a 31 year old gal with no real friends because the old ones sucked the life out of me congratulations is what i'll say to you congratulations because i think um the worst thing you could do is be 30 what did you say 31

with a load of friends that suck the life out of you so congratulations for doing a really fucking i imagine hard thing and well exactly yourself it kind of um preempts i guess the question i was gonna ask you in relation to being surrounded by bitchy friends and feeling like you're becoming more bitchy and just kind of the negative influence that people can have on you what would your advice be to someone who feels like they're surrounded by people who aren't necessarily good for them or bringing out something that they don't like in themselves well my advice is kind of that i well i'll just say that i really relate like i kind of have i definitely have been in that situation i remember at school there being a point where i like very consciously decided to kind of drop out of a group.

And like pave my own way with a couple of my chosen friends who weren't necessarily in a group. Like I feel like at most kind of schools, there's a lot of groups and there aren't really. You kind of stick in your group like maybe a few members change but in my school definitely our group stayed the same throughout the whole of school and that but then it kind of merged with another group a bit later and i there were just some members that of members of this new girl band that i just was finding so difficult and like to be honest they were bullies in loads of ways they actually were bullies like god and i definitely don't think they would view themselves in those terms because i don't think anyone views themselves in those terms um and i think they

wouldn't even be able to recognize themselves in the story but i think so much of oh i don't know it there's it's so normalized to be so cruel as like a teenage girl it's horrific and i think i probably was like participating in a lot of that kind of cruelness up up into a certain age like between the girls like kind of oh it's it's kind of a bit of a dog eat dog thing for popularity it's horrific but i definitely think when i got into sixth form i was like i actually don't want to be around these girls because i am definitely getting swept in it like not even in a way that did you kind of capitalize on the change of year like almost we're going into sixth form now fresh start sort of thing i think so i capitalized in the free periods i think just almost like i don't need to be here i don't need to be in the school anymore like i can go home for lunch like i can go home

is that what you used to do yeah you just go home as much as possible really or i would be like smoking quite a lot by the bike shed kind of crazy so some people would say i moved to the wrong group um maybe yeah maybe i did but I know that I didn't because it was actually nice people like that I don't know I just definitely feel like there are I'm being really careful with what I say because it's like these are people that know me sort of thing but they're they don't really know me anymore but I definitely dropped out of a group because of that the behavior that I could see was becoming really normalized and when i hear things about this group now from some friends that still know them i just think god they're

still fucking going they are still going oh yeah like it did they didn't grow out of it or anything like that like it wasn't oh they changed at uni they changed their jobs but no they're still fucking going and it's like oh my god thank this is what i mean by in that episode a few episodes ago from an hour ago for us but weeks ago for you whereas i'm happy with my decisions my 18 17 year old self 16 maybe even even i knew that that behavior was wrong yeah and i thought fuck that i'll literally go and stand by the bar i would literally rather inhale um nicotine all day long than being in your presence and good decision for my mind but maybe not my body but you know i just think the advice is trust your gut that's exactly because i think sometimes it gets to a

point where like the exchange like that you're making like almost like you're exchanging like in exchange for kind of basically getting the easy life of like having people around with you'll be at the party yeah just whatever like you don't have to have an argument like whatever you are having an argument that's the thing well in exchange for basically keeping things comfortable and normal and like just following the routine you are living through a lot of shit that you don't want to do and it's when that exchange stops being worth it you start like dealing with more shit than it's worth i think you know after a while like i think everyone surely has their limits definitely and i

just think especially in those young ages that the amount of cruelty that goes around like i actually met one of my friends recently who i was friends with at school and i'm still friends with been friends with her since a lot three younger actually and she was saying that she had a similar thing where she kind of dropped out of a group in sixth form because she heard someone be like just basically shouting across the room calling someone a loser that we knew from like primary school and it's just things like that it's like the amount of shit that you're expected just to kind of take and it's like i was probably in the room i didn't i don't remember this like i didn't probably didn't say anything like i remember it wasn't a big event that i remember but my friend

remembers it and it obviously completely shocked her that people are still talking like that and it's like i just think this shit continues and that's why i think it's so amazing to be 31 and then just go just be like no i'm not gonna fucking do that i would literally rather have no one than have you and i just think that's so strong because also like if you boil it down to the crux where you really if the one thing for sure in life is that you always have yourself you could either have a version of yourself that you believe in or a version of yourself that's been tainted and warped by a load of shit that doesn't align with you or you're just like i wouldn't i don't think anyone would oh i don't know it's kind of the thing of like how do you sleep at night like

how do you go on with your life knowing that every day you're betraying yourself pretty extreme isn't it and on that note oh god yeah on that note jesus sorry we'll see you next time if you don't hear from us assume the worst We'll see you next time.