How To Stop Living Life In Your Head - Jonny Miller

Why is it so hard to feel feelings?

(laughs) Ah, jumping right in. Um, I mean, we both grew up in England and I think, you know, we're kind of known for having a stoic, keep calm, carry on, uh, mantra in- in our culture. And I think that, I- I- I mean speaking for myself, I grew up... What I realize now is I was, like, numb from the neck down. I- I was really out of touch with so much of what was going on outside of my intellect. And it's really been, you know, the last, like, five, five or six years that I've come back into appreciating this, like, um, the- the diff- like, flavors that are going on inside, inside my system. So, I mean, I'd also be curious if, like, for you, what- what has your journey with feeling emotions been like? Like, do you consider yourself as someone who, you know, we both went to, uh, Newcastle, Durham, like, up there, it's- it's not, it's not cool to kind of express emotions in public. What- what's your journey?

Yeah, standing on the front door of a nightclub isn't exactly a hotbed of talking about feeling feelings.

Right.

Um, and, yeah, there's a lot of expectation, I think, about being a young guy, um, that wants to be attractive and- and competent and have mastery and- and, you know, is sort of competing with other people, other guys, especially in an industry like nightlife. And, um, yeah, emotions are kind of a- a sign of weakness. Um, I got really disappointed with the "It's Okay To Talk" campaign that happened in the UK. I thought that that was just so ridiculous and telling guys, "It's okay to talk," like, what does that mean? What does it mean, "It's okay to talk"? They haven't got... Th- they don't know what they're feeling. I didn't know what I was, I don't know what I'm feeling much of the time. I, you know, I think I had a small, and probably still do, a small number of buckets of emotions that I kind of default to. It sort of snaps across into one of a bunch, so very competent at feeling anxiety, very competent at feeling worry, getting better at feeling excitement, but, you know, distinguishing, "Okay, so what are we talking about? Is this, is this, uh, restlessness? Is this resentment? Is it bitterness? Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it..." You know, like really kind of breaking apart the component notes of emotions. There's just a few that I seem to snap to in terms of a default, uh, and one of the main reasons that I wanted to have this conversation with you in particular is, between the UK and the US, there is so much turmoil at the moment. Like, the- the entire world just feels like it's up in the air, changes in political party and you should care about this thing and climate change and all the rest of it, and so much of that is outside, but so much of that is impacting the way that we feel internally. And I think it's nice, I- I like believing that, you know, I'm a stoic ship in a storm and I'm not gonna move and it, you know, the world out there isn't gonna hurt me and all the rest of it. Mm-hmm.