Ben Drysdale: Listen Now | Harmonizing Mental Health & Dark Times Through Passion & Art

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions and the culture of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the nation.

Warning this podcast contains explicit language and discusses sensitive topics related to mental health, childhood trauma, birth trauma, abuse, miscarriage and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. If you find these subjects distressing or triggering, we recommend taking caution and considering whether to proceed with listening. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a mental health professional or a trusted individual for support. Your wellbeing is our priority. Welcome to another episode of the Touched Out podcast. Today we talk to Ben Drysdale, an award-winning singer-songwriter who shares his journey as a parent and his experience with ADHD and mental health. Ben discusses the challenges of regulating emotions while being responsible for a child and the pressure to conform to the ideals of gentle parenting. Ben also talks about his work in the mental health and art space, including creating plays and theatre-based workplace training to address social issues and provide catharsis. Ben discusses his journey as a musician and content creator, as well as the inspiration behind his new single Listen Now listen now, it's alright, you'll be fine.

after the Touchdown Podcast. Take all night, you'll be fine, it's alright. The Touchdown Podcast.

Hey, so today we have a very special guest. We have Ben very special guest. We have Ben Drysdale. He's an award-winning singer-songwriter from Canberra. His new single, listen Now debuted at number two on the 100% independent single charts and number nine on the independent label charts. Welcome, ben. Thank you so much for joining me today.

No worries, man, it's nice to finally meet you face to face instead of just tick tocking back and forth.

Yeah, yeah, definitely yeah. We've been following each other for a hot minute now, so I really really enjoyed seeing the journey from when I started following you to now with your new single, which I'm absolutely in love with. I think it's such just a beautiful, beautiful song. Thanks so much, man. Thank you, You're more than welcome. So why don't we start off by you telling us a little bit about your family and a little bit about your history?

So my family is currently the Nucleus family is currently three, about to become four. My wife and I have been together either 12 years or 12 and a half years, depending on which of us you ask as to when the relationship started. We got married in 2016 and, yeah, had our first boy in 2021.

My wife had kind of like was feeling a bit down about there was all these things in her life that she wanted to achieve and we were thinking about having a kid and she was like, right, so she picked one and we decided to go on a trip around Australia and she was like such a mad gun in terms of getting that all organized.

We were sort of like, okay, well, if we come back with a road baby, then that's all good, because we've done this trip, we've got out there and, you know, experienced it all. And we found out that we were pregnant in Exmouth, wa, which sort of right to left across the country is about as far away as you can be from Canberra, and like, even though it's sort of like not exactly planned it, but we were no longer being careful or anything, it still kind of freaked us out a little bit and thought we thought we might get a bit through more of the trip than we did and it was a bit of a journey, yeah, trying to deal with all of those initial appointments and scans and stuff when you're moving from town to town.

You know, every other day, every other week we we tried to get one of those nipt is that what it called nipt, scan things where they sort of test for certain abnormalities or whatever, and you find out about the gender and it didn't work. Something you pay $600 for or something and it didn't work. And we got it done in Darwin and they're like oh, can you come back? We're in Alice Springs now. We can't just turn around and come back. Probably not. So, yeah, some stuff like that was a bit of a journey. Yeah, so we've got a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, jovi Cove Drysdale, not named after Bon Jovi not that that would be a bad thing and yeah, we've got another one dropping in 26 days or something like that.

How are you feeling about that?

Oh look, I am that amazing combination of excited and terrified. The wee man is two and a half and he's living his best two and a half year old life, so that comes with a number of challenges. And, yeah, I guess the other side of the story that's relevant to this podcast and all it discusses is that about about nine, nine months into having had jovi, I was starting to really not cope. There's like lots of high pressure stuff happening with work and, yeah, like I've always experienced, you know, bouts of anxiety and depression over my life, but was always that kind of like. You know, I knew people who were clinically diagnosed with one or the other and I'm like, well, I'm not that depressed or I'm not that anxious, so this must just be the normal level of anxious, which I think I've heard you talk about with other people on the podcast before. It's like, no, the normal level is none.

And yeah, I'd been on TikTok for a little while and, you know, watched one or two ADHD videos and when you do that, they show you more and more and more and I started wondering about it. I actually thought about it about 10 years ago when a colleague of mine was getting diagnosed while her 14 year old son was getting diagnosed and we'd always seemed like people who were. We saw each other as very similar personalities and we thought it was perhaps more than just the fact that we're both aquarians. And I just decided not to do anything about it at the time because I was like I was trying to get off the some bad habits that I've been on and was worried that I was just trying to find a way to replace those habits and so, anyway, then, yeah, towards the end of 2020 I'm losing track of years now I mean towards the end of 2022. Yeah, it all like I was having all these like really difficult times at work and my colleague, who I run this theater company with, had been talking to his both his current partner and his ex-wife, who were both adult diagnosed ADHDers, and he was talking about like how he was finding it really hard to manage the way that I was not coping with things and they each kind of like asked him a question here or there and they're like he just he just sounds like he's got ADHD. And he came and told me that and I was like right, between that, all the tiktok stuff and the fact that I was thinking about this 10 years ago. It's probably time to make a move and and do something about that. So I finally I started that process towards the beginning of last year and you know it's a bit of a process. I finally got diagnosed, I think maybe about May, and then finally got medicated in June, end of June, and so, yeah, the whole.

I guess my point to that is that the whole learning how to be a parent journey has also come alongside and, I'm quite sure, instigated the shift from someone who was able to manage and mask their neurodivergence throughout their life to like, okay, now I can't do it anymore, like between the pressures of parenting and the pressures of work, and it just bubbled over the edge, and the more I talk to people about it, the more I look into it, like I think that is a really big thing. That I mean yourself, you, you got your diagnosis after. Well, you managed to cram a couple in before you got yours, didn't you?

yeah, it wasn't till back number three, where I was well and truly just yeah, just spent well, one's, one's a handful mate.

So for you to make it to three before you tipped over the, tipped over the edge, then well done to you, yeah we're really lucky with our first two.

They were great sleepers. From six weeks old they both slept through like 12 hour nights, seven till seven, yeah. And so, like, apart from all of the other stuff, you know, I was diagnosed with part of depression after the first two, so I just kind of chalked it up to that. But after baby three and the first two lulling us into a false sense of security with their sleep routines, just fucking did not want a bar of any of that. All of a sudden, you know, I was having those same old depression feelings, but like with a little extra spice, you know, because I'll extra spice, no sleep, like just, yeah, I just became such a shell and I was like, yeah, I didn't know what was going on. And then, much like you, yeah, I didn't know what was going on. And then, much like you, yeah, the TikTok videos and you know my son's diagnosis on top of that, and then my wife kind of noticing a lot of the same markers in me led to my ADHD and autism diagnosis as well.

Yeah, I'm wondering whether my ADHD might have a missing you in it somewhere. I reckon you might. I might have a bit of the extra tism spice. I've had a few people one person who's like ADHD as all get out and they were sort of like, you know, just talking at me 100 miles an hour and I was just reacting to them in this like it was kind of triggering me. Their ADHD was triggering my ADHD and they were like I think you've got autism too and I'm like maybe. And then I follow a couple of other people specifically talking about autism on TikTok and yeah, I'm like looking at a lot of their things too and going, hmm, okay.

I'm just trying to manage one thing at a time, but we'll see how this next baby might kick in the for further investigation.

It might yeah, yeah, it's, it's. I feel like if I didn't have three kids I probably would have stopped at the at the adhd diagnosis. But yeah, like once I got medicated, my journey itself was once I became medicated for my.

ADHD and that leveled out the ADHD a little bit. Autism traits just started popping up like no tomorrow. Then my kind of unmasking was this inadvertent event in itself where I just had a full-blown autistic meltdown. I was like I don't know who the fuck I am, I don't know what I like, I don't know anything about myself. It was scary. It was like I don't know who the fuck I am, I don't know what I like, I don't know anything about myself. And it was scary. It was hard, man, and I'm trying to pick up those pieces. And I still have days where I get angry and feel sad at not having that diagnosis earlier in life and I have days where I wish I could put, put pandora back in the box and go back to before I was diagnosed and just live my little. You know, ignorant ignorance is bliss. Unmarked life.

You know, it is what it is yeah, and I mean like everybody, like everybody has a different kind of reaction and response to diagnosis. But I think one thing that surprised me about it is the different phases of it. Like for me at first it was just this relief thing, this way to understand myself in a way that I could relate to. I could see this list of things that explained all the things I didn't like about the way I have felt or the way I've acted in the past, and it's just like that's where it all came from and there was this huge sense of relief.

I've worked in the mental health sector through arts for a really long time and so I guess, like some people get an instant sense of shame, whereas I've sort of spent a lot of time working with people to celebrate their journeys and, you know, celebrate the learnings that they've had out of them.

So I didn't.

I never sort of had that kind of like diagnosis shame thing that I know that some people get.

But like, once the kind of honeymoon period of the relief wore off, and then there's there's like all this other stuff to unpack. That's like like oh, okay. So you know, at first it's like it's exciting that you can sort of look for ways to ask for accessibility for these things that you've never known you needed all your life. And but then there's all this other stuff where learning more things about traits of ADHD like rejection, sensitive dysphoria which is just like this horrible shit show inside your brain where you are assuming the worst of like what people think about you, or assuming how they feel about you, and holding them to account for these things that you've invented in your head and you're like, oh, this is some. You know, I've spent my whole life feeling like those feelings were justified and now I know they're not, or now I know that this is some of my bullshit that I've got to work through instead of being able to just lay the blame to everybody else.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that rejection-sensitive dysphoria is a fucking mean creature, isn't it why, you know, I kind of have spent my whole life just like in self-deprecation mode, like just not liking the person that I am. So when something happens, that's a completely different thing from the other person's perspective, but I will perceive that as some form of rejection. It just fuels that fire of self-hatred and it's like I just proved to myself that I was right all along, that I am a piece of it. It's not worth being loved. It sucks, it really sucks, and it's a really hard habit to break yeah, yeah, 100%.

I feel like throughout my life I've lived both sides of that spectrum of like self-deprecation counterbalanced with overconfidence, that I just fluctuate between depending on what sort of a day I'm having, depending on whether it's a yeah, I don't know an ADHD excited day or a depressed day or whatever. So, yeah, I guess there's like I think that was something that sort of came to the fore a little bit like in in my relationship, where my wife is sort of just trying to like manage, manage my roller coaster of being this like near breakdown person and trying to support me to like, oh yeah, I've got this diagnosis, great. And then me being like, oh, learning all this stuff and trying to process what I think I need or what I think the next steps are, and then not realizing that I'm like responding to her in some way that's just obviously just RSD and like realizing okay, yeah there's still a lot of work to do here.

Like, the medication is not a magic bullet. It helps you filter and process those impulses sometimes, but yeah, it's still that RSD demon can just like sneak in there at any minute. And yeah, I think, as well as all that sort of once the honeymoon period's over, there's other stuff. It's like the grief that I think you sort of touched on before, the grief of a life that I could have had if I knew about this earlier. And I mean, like you know, I'm very proud of the things that I've done In life. I sometimes wish that my bank balance reflected the work I put in better and you know, maybe it might have if I had yeah, if I'd had the kind of focus I can have now.

Or just even like what I. What I agree or what I get angry about is is if I was diagnosed earlier like you, you know, before I was 10 or even as a teenager, I would have had the ability to set in motion like healthy coping mechanisms and honing skills that would be suited for such a diagnosis, instead you being diagnosed with something like that at 35, when I'm already pretty bloody set in my ways. As far as developing habits goes, it's hard able to be different or like I will. You know things like cleaning the house and keeping up with chores, because we three places a fucking bombsite as daily cleaning, you know, and I'll have a week where I am on top of every house hasn't so spotless in so long, you know. And then, just like that, it's gone and I am just back to like couch melting and doom scrolling and not doing anything, while I sit there and shame myself for it.

And I'm having one of those days today Like I had so many plans for today, but like yesterday and today, man, yesterday I woke up and I was like I don't want to do this fucking podcast anymore. I'm fucking sick of it. I'm sick of like, who's's this for? Is it for me or is it for everyone else? I like, I feel like I'm spending my life like putting my time and effort into helping other people when I can't help myself, and that makes me feel like shit.

So it's, it's hard man, it's hard work, yeah I've had some of those feelings, you know, around this song as well, like which you know. I'm sure we'll get to that a bit later. But, like you put all of this time and effort and blood and sweat and tears in while there's while there's some great responses, like you know, this new news of being on on these charts and stuff it's it's hard like I guess I had envisaged that, like within the first week I'd be like making some massive donation to some charity, but while there's been like, yeah, there's just this sort of. I think a lot of people are kind of closed off and cautious around open dialogue, around mental health stuff. Still. And I will firstly, like you know, I'll say to you I've said it to you already but, like, after following you on TikTok for a year and then only finally listening to your podcast a few weeks ago, are you doing it? You're doing it, for I know you're doing it for you, but you're doing it for people like me who are sick of like they're not being open dialogue about this hardship and there needs to be more people doing it.

And I'm, like I was, I've been sort of trying to like get a handle on the tiktok thing and, through that process, trying to think more about, like, who I am and why I do what I do. And you know, now huge parts of that are parenting, mental health awareness, adhd and I was like, oh, maybe I'll start a podcast about that. And I listened to yours. I like he's already done it, but you know, maybe we all need, maybe there needs to be a hundred podcasts about this, because you know, like I get so much out of listening to this podcast and I'm absolutely pumped that you feel like I'm a worthy candidate to talk to on it. So thanks for having me and thanks for doing what you do, man.

No, I appreciate that so much I really do, and it's not a matter of worthiness or anything like that. The whole point of this podcast was real, real voices, real stories. So it doesn't matter who the fuck you are, it doesn't matter that you're a musician that's currently in in the charts. You know, you're a parent, you've, you've got a story to tell. You can be on the podcast, you know. So the messages that I get, like you know, I always wanted to go on a podcast and you know I've got like this cool story to tell. But like you wouldn't want to have me on, I'm like, why wouldn't I want to have you on?

I'm a nobody too, and we can just be nobodies together and then all nobodies love it can look into it and be like, hey, that really helps me feel less alone and it's those kind of little reminders that really reinforces the reason that I am doing it. Yeah, there are just some days where I'm like, fuck, I wish I could help myself the way that other people tell me that I help them with this podcast and that's it.

Hey, like you know, I've, I've, I've done work in music and theater and visual art stuff around mental health for ages and I can I can give great advice to people who are struggling. But it's much harder to take that advice yourself. Or, you know, try and quell the voices in the way that you try and get other people to do it, when, when you're inside your own freaking head yeah, definitely.

So we'll excuse me. We'll move past our little pity party. I want to talk a little bit about the changes that you you felt were challenging when transitioning from just a partner slash husband traveling around Australia to parenthood. So you did put down in your form that you wanted to discuss the challenges in regulating emotions when responsible for a tiny human.

Yeah, I mean, like many ADHDers, when I'm not doing well, I can be very quick to fire. You know, quick, quick to fire, I'm not. I feel like I've got the wrong metaphor there, but you know, it's the. The stress and frustration can just rise like that out of nowhere to things that other people can just handle very easily. And obviously, when you're responsible for the physical and emotional safety of a tiny human being who has no emotional regulation themselves, I don't, I don't even really know what I have to say about this, other than it's hard and it's challenging.

And I, you know, I've heard you talk about the gentle parenting, talk slash gram that you know, where everybody's just showing how easy it is to, you know, calmly whisper your child out of a screaming, raging tantrum, because you whisper in their ear that they're loved and supported. And it's like, well, yeah, try that it didn't work. And now I don't feel loved and supported. And you know how am I supposed to manage this? And then the shame comes and the guilt comes Like, oh well, if they can all do it, why can't I do it in this cool, calm, collected way? And one thing I love about this podcast is that you know, you normalize the fact that it's not all freaking roses and it's not all easy and it's hard for anyone. It's especially hard for people who have their own neurodivergence, mental health challenges, especially if they're sort of only recently diagnosed and trying to figure out where they sit in it all as well.

Yeah, definitely figure out where they sit in it all as well.

yeah, definitely the thing with, with, with the gentle parenting talk and and all of the glitzy, filtered, glamorous curated families is that it's just, it's just not fucking real and, while beautiful to look at and it's, it's, it's essentially parent shame porn. It's it's like look at how well we are doing and we're able to monetize this act, and it's not that the principles monetize this act is because you're like you're viewing this and we're feeding off your shame and it's just really kind of murky and yucky, I think.

And it's not like the underlying principles of it bad. Like you know, I want to teach my son sensitivity and validate his feelings and do all of that stuff. It's just wrapped in this like this slick, shiny package that implies that you're not allowed to be human and you're not allowed to have feelings, and you're not allowed to have feelings, Only their feelings are allowed to exist, and I just I don't think it's problematic and I think that you know well. To counterbalance that, there's some really hilarious people out there just putting up comedic videos about what a shit show it is to be a parent as well, and they make me feel better, you know.

And that's the most important thing is that we're just seeing snapshots, fucking lives that they choose to record and upload. But everything in life is about balance. But everything in life is about balance. So, whilst our kids are definitely in need of that gentle nature and that nurturing and emotional availability, it's also equally important, if not more important, to have your children see you fall down both physically and emotionally, get up, dust yourself off and apologise for your fuck-ups, because that's how they learn how to do the same.

They're sponges, you know, and it's also incredibly important for children to kind of experience that rupture and repair process with parenting. You know they have to understand that sometimes they're going to do things that I do not like or my wife does not like, or other people do not like, and they need to understand that their actions sometimes will have consequences and they're not going to like it, but that does not diminish the love or the care that I have for them. So I'd like to switch over now to maybe a little bit of history with your music career or your your work in in the mental health and art space. So how did that kind of come about? How did that start? And then a bit more about your new single yeah, sure.

So yeah, I've sort of always fluctuated between music and theater. I sort of did both in primary school and high school and then in canberra we go to like a different school from year for year, 11 and 12 that we call college, and so there I did a bit of drama and then got a c because I was I sucked at journaling and I still suck at journaling, like now I'm trying to doing a bunch of these sort of mindset things where everybody's like, oh, you gotta journal, like I hate journaling anyway. So I've got to see and I was like, well, stuff, you then I'll go do music. And I did music then and then finished there and I was like, well, I don't really want to like my music interest is not to go to the school of music and do jazz or classical. So when I went to uni I did theater and went and ended up going to canada to study for a little bit, because the uni here was like the theater program was pretty much an english program about plays, like it was very read plays and talk about them and not much learn anything about doing them. So I did that and then came back and I was just kind of I was planning on just finishing my degree and move down to Melbourne and in the first few years I graduated in 2005 and had been back for about a year.

Then I just started getting into the local art scene in Canberra and realised that this place that I'd grown up hating, thinking it was boring because it wasn't Sydney or Melbourne, it was actually an amazing city and being surrounded by bushland and being able to get from one end to the other within half an hour. So yeah, I just sort of dived in and started a business putting on music nights and theater shows and art exhibitions and just trying to get like some acting gigs where I could. And yeah, this friend of mine who I met through that scene was part of a project that got some funding from through the Mental Health Foundation to create some plays where interviews were done with people with lived experience of mental health challenges and or stories were gathered from them and then these stories and were presented by what they deemed local celebrities at the time, which I just thought was a bit weird. But you know, so you'd have this like weather person reading these stories or someone from I think there was a couple of politicians and stuff and I got on board as part of, yeah, a group of volunteer people that were sort of just doing some physical theatre stuff and a few little scenes in between all of those, and that was kind of like the first time I got a sense of how art can be used to address social issues and to provide catharsis for those who've had difficult times through storytelling and through their stories being heard and them feeling heard, and I ended up sort of interacting.

I got a side gig running an art gallery because I had put on some art exhibitions and that was for a community center and ended up, you know, we do mental health month exhibitions and international day of disability exhibitions, and between these plays and that world, um yeah, I just kind of I mean, in some ways it was kind of selfish in that applied art is one of the only ways to make money from. Art is like using your art through a community service in some way is like a place where you can get a paycheck. So there was a bit of that, but it was a really impactful thing to just yeah, to see, to get a sense of what art can do for anybody who's been marginalised in some way or another. And then the guy who got me to be part of that initial theatre show ended up having another project a few years later. It resulted in the beginning of this theatre company and so we were creating some theatre-based workplace training around accessibility and inclusion in workplaces for people with disability or mental health challenges, using this thing called Forum Theatre, where you'll use real stories of people with lived experience of an issue and create like a 10 to 15-minute play where all the things that could go wrong go wrong and people behave badly, and then you perform the play a second time and when the audience sees something that they think should or could be done differently, they yell stop, come up and replace one of the actors and try and improvise a better outcome. And yeah, it was this thing that was funded funded by a small grant and a lot of us were working volunteer on it, and but we were kind of like we've got something really cool here and so a small group of us kind of continued on and ended up becoming an incorporated association and just I mean, we sort of departed from that particular thing that we created and just started doing all sorts of different things we've we put on, put on plays where we interviewed people with lived experience of trauma about what it was like to live with trauma and then had, like an actor and a dancer and a musician come up with creative responses to those interviews and then present that as like a creative development.

With the Department of Defence, with soldiers how do they phrase it? Currently serving people who have physical or psychological injury was the way they phrased the cohort for that. And we, yeah, we was contracted to work on a great program they have where people could come to Canberra and spend four weeks doing full-time arts and yeah, that was an amazing experience and just yeah, seeing I'd had little to no interaction with anybody military until that point, and I think you sort of get a. You get a when you're an artsy leftist who doesn't like the fact that there's wars. You get this sort of sense of what military people are like, and it was so. You just broke all of that down, met so many amazing humans doing that program and saw really huge changes from when they walked in at the beginning of that four weeks to when they walked out and felt really proud to have been part of that and yeah, so how much should I blather about this? So, yeah, now we do all sorts of different projects and we've just celebrated 10 years of being a company.

You're still in that role as well.

Yeah, so I'm sort of a co-CEO and we've had anywhere from two to three CEOs at any one time over the years, depending on what's happening at the time. Both of us we've had some really big projects that have allowed us to expand the team, which has been really good because I think, like the arts is underfunded, the community sector is underfunded and when you're doing both, you're doubly underfunded and like burnout is a real risk. And, yeah, we've sort of got some big projects at the moment and it's allowed us to expand the team and allowed me to kind of like take a little bit of a step back so I can focus more on the music. Like I was working four days a week and then when my wife went back to work after having Joby, for a long time she was on four days a week and then she decided to they wanted her to go to five days a week and so when she did that, I stepped down to more like three days a week so I could, yeah, work more on the music side of things, because ultimately, that's more my passion project and what I've sort of throughout the last year and this process of trying to kind of market myself on the socials, but to try and do that in a way that's like you know. So you're not just trying to. People are only interested in your music if they're interested in you and your music is a reflection of you, and so it's not just like people. And people are sick of being sold to as well. So, like they don't want the, here's my new single, go and listen to it. They want.

Why did you write this single? Why do you write music in the first place? Why do you? And it's been a big process of, while trying to figure out how to be a parent and how to manage adhd, there's just all of this um whirlwind of also just trying to figure out who the hell am I, why, why do I do what I do? Why have I ever done what I've ever done? And it's a really, and doing it in this way. Which I love about TikTok is it gives me this like great way to play and be creative and merge my, my sort of music and theater backgrounds into one thing. One thing, and you know, talk about mental health in silly and funny ways to kind of disarm people's walls and barriers around talking about it and then talking about funny, ridiculous things in serious ways.

Just natural promotion really.

Yeah, just trying to be authentic, you know, trying to be authentic in the way I'm presenting to the world as I am when I'm writing a song, because that's that's what it's about. And I think, ironically, the the things that have gone most viral are not the things that I've done, either about my adhd or about my music in any. I was like spotting this trend of people doing the like you can't summon a generation with one song thing and I was like, well, I'm going to take that to the next level and make it about summoning multiple generations with one song and use ACDC Thunderstruck. And it just popped off on both TikTok and Facebook just hundreds and thousands of views. And then I was like, oh, that's a bit fun. And so I've been making a bit of a series.

I just posted my seventh one of those the other day and I was thinking I've been doing this program and and there's a mindset coach in there and it's like this program around like content creation and stuff like that. And you know, at the beginning they're like why, you know, why do you, why do you do what you want to do and why do you do what you do? And I was sort of just like talking about that sort of sense of like wanting people to not feel alone and people to feel understood, because that's what music's done for me. And they were like, yeah, that's great, everybody can say that. And like it sort of all clicked to me, the Mindset Coach guy told me to watch a video by simon sinek about, about the why, which I think it's a video about him talking about why apple computers were, you know, so successful in the face of all of their competition and, and I can't even remember exactly what he said to trigger it. But I ended up pausing the video and then just writing this whole thing about the fact that I think that the world is absolutely controlled by trauma and like whether you've got like big t or little t trauma, everybody has this like an experience or a series of experiences where the expectations that they had of the world and the fact that they would be safe in it and looked after by it is like shattered in some way by what happened to them.

And you know, I've got the most vanilla middle class example of when I found out the world was not a fair place. It was playing connect for at a school holiday program and I had one and the person I was playing against put one in so that it looked like they won on top, and then they pulled the thing out so that I couldn't prove that I'd won and like that is just such a middle class way to. You know, I didn't find out the world wasn't a fair place because someone was bombing my city or something like that. And look, I've got some much bigger trauma. That happened later on. But whatever you've got, you've got this. Everybody's got some experience where the unfairness of the world was a surprise to them and that has lasted with them in some way and that when, like, I'm not saying that example was traumatic to me.

But that's when you figured out yeah, it's what I figured out.

But, like there there are a number of things that have you know, have been traumatic in hindsight and that when you experience trauma, you sort of you have a loss. You have a loss of like, power and a sense of safety, and that it sort of clicked to it. So I sort of like was writing this stuff down and so that was kind of my why. And then I'm like, so how am I addressing these things? And I sort of, yeah, came up with this, like trying to restore innocence through nostalgia, like by, and I thought about the why people are connecting with these, like summoning multiple generation songs, and it's like it's either this sense of nostalgia about before the world hurt you or it's music that got you by while the world, you know, while you were trying to process what the world hurt you. And I think like, yeah, connecting to the inner child in some way like is a really powerful thing and yeah, that's essentially belger is when you really really break it down.

It's essentially just like positive core memories, before you realize just how fucked this place yeah, yeah and I mean there's, yeah, there's, there's sort of more to that whole thing. But I guess I I yeah wanted to reflect on that whole thing with the content creation and playing around with all of these different things and having these things that are not my core reason for being there, being the things that pop off.

But I'm, I journey in tiktok and and social media is very similar. You know, I started the Instagram and TikTok page for the podcast and I was just like planning on just posting like this is a clip from a new episode coming out whenever blah, blah, blah. No one wanted a bar of it. So then I started kind of doing little tiny bits and pieces of just like letting my humor show through a little bit more, instead of always being like doom and gloom and trauma, trauma, trauma. And then the first, my first viral, I guess viral video, just like I think 200, 250 000 views or something like that was about peter dutton saying that the reason for violence against women in australia is because of violence for the violent video games. And it's just like, oh yeah, I saw that one, yeah, two and a half minute rant of me just being like no, it's toxic masculinity and blah, blah, blah.

And like I've I've been lucky enough to guest on another podcast, um, and do a whole episode about toxic masculinity. It's called round table mindset and essentially it's like it was like a debate and it was really fun, but like yeah, that popped off and all of a sudden I've, you know, I went from three, four hundred followers to like twenty five hundred in the space of a week, and yeah, that didn't even like that. That was awesome at the same time. But then I was also like, why can't my podcast be that popular? You know like, and I really had to step back and put into perspective just how many people 250,000 people. So now, like, whenever I post any video, and I see like 400, 500 views and that's it. And I'm like, why can't it be a couple thousand? I'm like, no, no, be a couple thousand. I'm like no, no, picture how many people 400, 500 people actually are like, picture them in an auditorium and just fucking thankful because tiktok has really, really given me like this skewed view of of what success is and it's.

It's algorithms are super weird too, like like if, if, if it doesn't break through a certain barrier immediately, it will stay at that, like the 200 club or the 300 club, and it's you know there's all sorts of weird stuff that it's doing to figure that out. But yeah, that that toxic masculinity thing, like yeah, this revelation I had while you know figuring out what my why was, it's like so many of the you know toxic masculinity too is a bunch of blokes who have inner children that were bloody hurt and they've gone and their way of dealing with that is to go out there and be, you know, be aggressive and put other people down, and it's like everything I can. You can trace every single problem in the world to. You know, back to like some some kid feeling hurt at one point. And you know I know you've spoken about bullying a lot. You know, like I, I got pretty badly bullied as well and like people process things differently.

You know, like I look at my life and I think I've actually I've had a really easy life compared to a lot of people, and then I sort of sit back and I tally things up and I'm like, oh, actually, no, yeah, there are there, like is I may be, uh, you know, a vanilla middle class um person, but I've had real struggles and those struggles are valid and some of them, a lot of them, were beyond my control and were not my fault, or, and like some people can take that and and be bitter about that and go start wars or commit violence or, you know, try and exert their, reclaim their power through domination in some kind of way.

And like I've got this person who I adopted as a surrogate sister when we were in a share house years ago and she's had a really difficult life with some you know role models that left her in difficult positions and she's just this powerhouse. Like she's gone out and been like, well, well, I'm going to take that and I'm going to change the world and try and make it a better place and, you know, has had lunch with michelle obama and you know stuff like this and like I guess I don't even know what my point is. It's just that, yeah, what I, what I try to do, whether it's through my music or through the theater company, is to try and Be the change you want to see in the world.

Yeah, just try and rebuild people's sense of you know agency, innocence, safety, I feel like and have them do that for me too.

Yeah, post-covid man, I think we really like, we need the people like you and me and your, you know, surrogate sister, you know we need those people to rebuild because there's no community anymore post-covid. Everyone's out for themselves and it was very much that way prior to, anyway, but like people stopped being like, they stopped knowing how to fucking interact with people, you know. So, no, it's, it's awesome. I, I love, I love your, your tiktok, I love the work you're doing and I especially really do love the new single, which we will talk about now. So it is called listen. Now, why don't you run me through the story behind it and the writing process, how it became?

what it?

now is.

Yeah. So I got a. I was sitting there with my wife it was probably like it was nearly midnight and we were like we had a busy day and we were just like just finally settling down to try and watch a show together which is part of our love language, of like sitting on the couch and watching our stories and the phone rang and I kind of I looked at her you know how you can have that like silent communication with your partner where you just pull certain faces at each other. I was like my face was like should I answer that or should we just sit and watch the show? And then she sort of did that facial expression without talking. It was just like you should, you should answer it.

And so I picked it up and went outside and, yeah, it was a mate who I hadn't spoken to for a while and I could tell from his voice that he was. You know, his voice was shaky and wavery and uh, and he was slurring a bit, and so you know the way I sort of phrase it is. He had a belly full of whiskey and a head full of despair and throughout the conversation he told me that he had recently tried to unalive himself. You'll put a trigger warning at the beginning of this, won't you suicide?

on here, I'll tick.

Yeah, I don't know why I've actually sort of taken to just using that phrase anyway, I don't know why. Maybe it's because half the time I'm making stuff for TikTok, so I just do it. But yeah, and I just kind of like, despite having worked through the arts in these ways, it was, you, you know, never in a sense where I had to be direct support for someone going through that without there being someone better trained around, and so I kind of like was sitting there freaking the fuck out, just not really knowing how to handle it. So, but but then I was just like, okay, you know, what would, what would you want if you'd revealed this to someone? And so I just like listened I'm just her, you know asked him like what will you know? What were the thoughts that? What are the thoughts that you're having? That like make you feel like that's the solution?

And he, you know, went into all things about all that. You know really quite stock standard negative self-talk stuff that comes with anxiety and depression or anything. That's just like I'm a piece of shit, I'm never going to amount to anything, I've ruined this, that and the other about my life and you know, I'm not as a result of that, I'm not worthy of amounting to anything. And I was like, oh fuck, I've, I've had all those thoughts too sorry, are we allowed to f-bomb on here? Yeah, man, yeah. And so, yeah, I was just like it was this kind of weird revelation to me that we'd had the same thoughts but for some reason we just had very different possible solutions to you know how to deal with those thoughts. And he, yeah, he'd sort of like I probably always drank more than someone should, but you I don't think you would ever call me like an alcoholic. And he, he dived. You know he was buying a bottle of whiskey a day and just sinking it. And I I guess you know when you're doing that, the light at the end of the tunnel seems a lot further away. And so, basically, I just yeah, I just talk to him, I organise to meet up with him the next day, which, you know, later on I've done some mental health first aid training. That just sort of talks about how important that can be in terms of creating future plans when someone is a in a state of suicidal ideation. And, yeah, to sort of his.

His mom was like a facebook friend of mine through having followed my music or something. So I I sort of reached out to her and tried to build a bit of a better support network around, around his family and some some other friends. And yeah, then a few days later I was kind of driving along and, as is often the case, the start of a song strikes you when you're nowhere near a guitar and I just thought about, yeah, just how similar our, the negative things that happened inside our heads had been and how him, hearing that from someone who you know he was feeling like he was this huge piece of shit and viewing me as this person who had their life together because, you know, I had a wife and I had a job and I was doing something and hearing that I had thought exactly the same things about myself, just kind of like put things into perspective for him in a different way. And so the first lines of of the song, like you know, listen now, before you sleep, I'll tell you where I hide the secrets I can't keep it's like, yeah, man, like I've got those secrets too. Anyway, so, yeah, I sort of got to the point where I'd half written this song.

I sort of had a verse and a pre-chorus and a chorus and I was feeling a bit lost with it and I'd been doing this songwriting course and ended up taking this song into a co-write with the mentor of that course and he was like I really like the song. And he was like I really like the song and while I'm sure he didn't use these words, the way I took it, because it was a personal thing to me was like, oh, we've just got to throw out this chorus. And I'd always known that you can't be precious in a co-write. And but yeah, I was like, wow, ok, this is quite personal to me, but I just sort of trusted the process and yeah, he was absolutely right. We threw out the chorus, we kept some bits of it that were good and we wrote a new chorus and now the song does a greater honor to the situation than it would have otherwise, and so that was just a really big lesson for me in just trusting the universe and letting go of some preciousness about things.

And so, yeah, now the song is here, it's out. It's actually been produced since 2021, the first time I listened to it. I found a photo in my phone the other day which was of me listening to it in headphones in WA somewhere for the first time. And, yeah, I've now released it to the world and decided to yeah, to donate 50% of any income that comes through Bandcamp, which is one of the easiest it was sort of the easiest way to go. Well, I can track that income very easily as to what sales come from this song, rather than you know, whatever, zero, zero, zero, three cents of I get per stream on Spotify or whatever. So, yeah, I'll be donating to suicide prevention charities. I mean, the beauty part is that that can continue for all time, Like, I can just mix it up every couple of months.

I think I'm going to start with Lifeline. Even though they're, like you know, one of the big four in terms of, you know, that sort of thing, their phones need to be picked up because they're also one of the better known and one of the more likely to receive a call when someone needs it. But, yeah, I'm also wanting to mix it up and get in support some more local, grassroots-based charities as well. There's like one here in Canberra that I'm looking at doing next. And then, yeah, let me know if there's any down in Melbourne that need a hand. Or you know, in Victoria You're not actually in Melbourne, are you?

Yeah, I'm regional, I'm about regional out of. Melbourne, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, whatever, Let me know if there are any little guys that need extra funds because, yeah, this song can continue to do good things well beyond the now hopefully, yeah, no.

I definitely agree. This song can continue to do good things well beyond the now. Hopefully, yeah, no. I definitely agree, and I love the fact that you you are, you know, putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and and following through on those donations. As soon as I saw your post about the 50 being donated, signed up on bandcamp and sent you through through a little bit of money.

You were my second and my first was another one of our ADHD brothers on TikTok who I think I've seen you guys commenting on each other's posts. But yeah, that was a really interesting thing too, to you know, having been sitting in this world of TikTok where you're online. But I think this particular platform creates community in a way that Facebook and Instagram just don't like. The algorithms just work in that way. And to have the two people who were first to go and buy my single were not my friends or family who you know, or any of my fans who've known me for decades. It was these two blokes that I've just like connected with on this social media platform, which was just, yeah, that was really nice yeah, really nice feeling, I know.

Oh, I'm glad that I could be a part of that. Yeah, no, as soon as I downloaded it, like, I told you that I was going to do like a reaction video and um, it was, yeah, the first time I had listened to it, mate and I'm no stranger to crying on camera, as you would have probably seen on a couple of my TikTok videos but yeah, mate, it had me in tears. There's not many songs these days that can do that for me and move me in such a way. So, truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you because it's a special song for you. But like what special song for me? Because I've I've been where your friend is and I've been where you are and, unfortunately, not every time it's worked out to the best it could have. Yeah, it really is like a personal, a personal journey for a lot of people and it and it deserves all of the success and it deserves its its place in all of the charts.

I really believe that yeah, thanks, man, and I think, like, what, like, it's one thing to raise the money, but what one? I guess the thing I want the song to do the most is to just try and get that message through to people, to just like break down the stigma, and especially men, like, like, if you just try and ignore that stigma for a second and you reach out to someone, you might find out that you are not alone and that they feel exactly the way you do and that they have ways to help you. And if that message can stop one person ending up in a casket, then that's worth it. Hopefully it can stop more.

100%, 100%. Well, my friend, is there anything that you would like to throw out into the world before you go and retrieve your guitar to serenade me?

check in on, check in on people, because it's one thing to reach out, but, like, sometimes, uh, the people will be more likely to reach out when they never would. If you, if you say, how are you? And then when they go, I'm fine, you go, how are you? One more time, that might just be enough. And yeah, I guess just like, go out there and support all the people who are trying to make change in this world, with all the likes and follows and shares, because you know it helps us, it helps us do what we do and it helps us reach more people. And you know that's like not not just saying come and like and follow me, but like you know, if there's an artist or if there's a, if there's an advocate or someone, I think people underestimate what a few, a few clicks on their part can do for those of us that are trying to achieve something. So I feel like I want to be walking away with something much more poignant than this. I want a final mic drop moment, but maybe that'll just be the song.

I think it'll be the song yeah.

But yeah, thanks so much for having me on, man, and I love what you're doing and, who knows, I might go start my own one and get you on it at some point.

Mate, I would be absolutely honoured. And yeah, I'm not gatekeeping the parenting and mental health podcast world at all.

No, we didn't talk about the parenting anywhere near as much as I thought we would, but maybe you'll just have to have me back on. Yeah, have me back on once I've got two in the belt and see how I'm going.

Yeah, yeah, any time you, yeah, have me back on once I've got two in the belt and see how I'm going. Yeah, yeah, any time. You're always welcome. All right? Yeah, go grab your guitar and I'll see you back here in a minute.

All right, thanks, mate. This has been Drysdale and you're listening to the Touched.

Out Podcast. Listen now, before you sleep. I'll tell you where I hide Secrets. I can't keep Listen now, little why. I Will show you where I hide the cracks Behind my smile. Just a word Before you sleep. Let me help you up Before you slip away into the night. I'm here to get you by. Listen now, make it through the night, pick up all the pieces Enough to get you back, but listen now, it's gonna be alright. We'll take a stumble through the tunnel and we'll make it to the light, don't you know? You're not alone. Tell me all the things that you can't let them know and I'll listen here. But do I? Yeah, if you only knew the ways I put myself on trial. Just a word before you sleep let me help.

You see all the little things that you've done right, and it'll be better.

if you listen now, make it through the night. We'll pick up all the pieces Enough to get you back. Listen now, it's gonna be alright, we'll take a stumble through the tunnel and we'll make it to the light. Listen now, listen now, listen now, listen now.

Listen now. Listen now Before.

Go, thank you, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And yeah, yet again, mate, I really can't even put into words just how fucking beautiful that song is. And, yeah, you should be immensely proud of the work you've done. Thanks, man, thanks so much and thank you for coming on. Fuck, got me good. Thank you for coming on, and thank you for sharing your story and thank you for sharing your journey and just thank you for being here, man, you're, you're a fucking good dude and I reckon I got you, man, right back at you proud to call you a friend yeah, you too, man.

Thanks for everything you're doing.

No worries, mate, until we speak again catch you on the next one wake up, it's another day.

Try and find a way to make it so my life's a better place. If there's one thing I see, then your only thing is me Just knowing that I'm trying to make a change. Can I put it all on me, responsibilities and all the other nonsense coming by repeatedly? But there's one thing I know, it's knowing to let go. Just knowing that I'm tryna make a change Doesn't seem too much Just to ask for love, cause there's many things that I'll do over and I've got a lot, but I won't give up On those many things that I'll do over.