Episode Transcript
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0:47
Hello and welcome to an episode of I
0:49
Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against
0:51
shame. This is a special Ask Me Anything where
0:54
I told you on social media that you're allowed
0:56
to ask me about anything you like and
1:00
I just thought that would be a nice way for us to connect
1:02
with each other. It is a terrible time right now
1:04
and everyone's being fucking awful
1:07
and anything that I can do to create
1:09
more community or connectivity feels
1:11
like something healthy that you
1:13
might like. And so a bunch
1:15
of you sent in loads of wonderful, wonderful
1:18
questions. Now some of those questions were
1:21
very specifically around mental
1:24
health conditions
1:26
or around psychiatry
1:28
needs, asking me things about
1:30
medication, etc. Those questions
1:33
I'm not going to answer today because I'm on my own
1:35
and I left school at 16. But
1:38
I will have an expert
1:40
coming on to the podcast soon who will be
1:42
able to answer those questions responsibly.
1:45
This is more me shooting the
1:47
shit with you about things that I think
1:49
and feel based on what I've learned on this podcast
1:51
or learned from you or learned in life or learned
1:54
from my many, many failures. I
1:56
want to give a disclaimer, this is not any kind of medical
1:58
advice and also we're not going to be...
1:59
veering too much towards that.
2:02
I think the most I ever get into it on this podcast
2:04
is to discuss my own personal experiences
2:07
with my mental health and EMDR
2:09
therapy, which is iMovement Descentitization
2:12
Reprocessing Therapy. But again,
2:14
please don't ever use me, or any
2:16
celebrity for that matter, as
2:19
a substitute
2:19
for actual proper mental
2:21
health care or guidance.
2:23
So let's just get into it.
2:42
So a question I got from loads
2:44
of people was around
2:46
what's happening in the Middle East right
2:48
now, and it's not specifically about my stance in the Middle
2:51
East, that's all on my Instagram. I can't
2:53
talk about it here because it's so easy for me to be clipped
2:55
and taken out of context when I'm speaking.
2:57
So I've put it all in
3:00
walls of words on my social media that
3:02
you can find that no one can take me
3:04
out of context because there are so many bad faith
3:06
arseholes on the internet. But a
3:08
lot of you are talking about the pressure
3:11
to say something or do something and be
3:13
effective. And a lot of you
3:15
are really struggling with the
3:19
way in which people are talking to each other. It's just so
3:21
vitriolic and violent and awful. And
3:23
so first and foremost, I want you to know that
3:25
the vast majority of questions were about
3:28
that. And so you're not alone
3:30
if you're feeling really overwhelmed, and if you're feeling
3:32
guilty for wanting
3:34
to take a moment here and there for yourself
3:37
and not knowing exactly what to do. There's
3:39
a lot of posturing going on online right
3:41
now with people who suddenly became experts
3:44
in the Middle East about three weeks ago, who'd
3:46
never spoken about it before and using
3:48
it as a kind of, I don't know, like weapon
3:50
to beat other people over the head with. There's a lot of posturing
3:53
for moral superiority and people
3:55
shaming other people and there's a lot
3:57
of hyper scrutinizing, all of which I think is very
3:59
unhappy. healthy because it only makes people
4:02
less likely to use their voice and we really
4:04
need people who can handle it to
4:06
use their voice. Now the reason I say can handle
4:08
it is because I most
4:11
controversially feel that some
4:13
people are
4:14
fragile right
4:16
now and
4:17
maybe those people don't have to feel
4:19
forced to speak out publicly about
4:22
one of the most upsetting
4:26
and intense subjects in the history of the world.
4:29
When it comes to what's happening in Israel and Palestine
4:31
whatever you say will incur some form
4:34
of vitriol and some form of
4:37
emotional violence from someone you can't please
4:39
everyone and so I
4:42
do worry that people
4:44
out there don't have a support system
4:46
or mental health access like
4:49
a mental health expert they can access or
4:52
they're not feeling very stable or well at the moment
4:54
maybe you're dealing with your own grief, your own
4:56
loss, your own trauma in your life right now
4:58
and there are actual public figures
5:00
with ginormous platforms who
5:03
are calling anyone who
5:05
feels overwhelmed right now weak and
5:08
I think that's really dangerous and irresponsible
5:10
of them because they're saying this while
5:12
they're sitting outside their massive house by their
5:15
pool where they have access to a therapist
5:17
anytime they want and they've got I know them they've
5:19
got big families and happy
5:21
relationships and they're generally in quite a
5:23
stable place right now. That is immense privilege
5:26
and so those of us who have the
5:28
privilege to do so yes we should do the
5:30
hard work of speaking out I am doing
5:32
that because I have that privilege but it's
5:35
okay if right now you are feeling overwhelmed.
5:37
I had a lot of people with disabilities and sickness
5:40
and neurodivergence messaging me saying
5:42
they can't handle all the vitriol
5:45
and they don't feel as though they are allowed
5:47
to find alternative ways
5:50
to be helpful it doesn't mean you have to check out all together
5:52
but you can donate or you can
5:54
raise awareness in other ways within your
5:56
private community you can educate
5:58
yourself you can educate your family. family members,
6:01
you can harass your reps to make
6:03
sure they call for the things that are important to
6:05
end all of this violence that we're seeing. You
6:08
don't just have to post an infographic
6:10
publicly. A lot of that doesn't really make a fucking
6:12
difference. It's important as
6:14
a start, but there's many things that all of
6:16
us have to be doing to follow up with that, to
6:19
actually have actions that take place
6:22
off our stories and off our grids.
6:24
So don't feel like you're less valuable if you're
6:26
someone who would prefer to be helpful privately.
6:29
That's okay. An example of one
6:31
of the messages I got is how to navigate
6:34
a chronic pain condition as well as making a
6:36
difference in the world. I'm barely paying bills
6:38
and sleeping, never mind activism, but
6:40
I want to contribute. Now that wasn't specifically
6:42
about this situation, but it kind
6:45
of spoke to something else I wanted to discuss
6:47
with you, which is that the
6:49
world is fucking unbelievable
6:52
right now and has been so. It feels like trying
6:54
to get out of the sea, you know, when you're trying to climb
6:56
right out of the sea and it's just wave upon wave
6:59
upon wave upon wave. And
7:02
we are made to feel as though we are supposed
7:04
to, like it is normal to be able to handle
7:07
seeing that much pain and that much hell on
7:09
the news all over social media,
7:12
all of the doom scrolling, and we're supposed
7:14
to survive a cost of living crisis and our
7:16
own physical health problems and our own mental
7:18
health issues and maybe our own increasing
7:20
neurodivergence, et cetera, seamlessly,
7:23
especially people who have been socialized as
7:26
female. And it feels
7:29
very important, especially as I am an
7:31
advocate who spends a huge part of my
7:33
life fighting for these causes to again,
7:35
remind you that you
7:37
are only human and you are
7:39
allowed to sometimes switch your phone
7:42
off and take a break. And it's not just
7:44
that you're allowed to, it's that
7:46
it's actually better in the long run
7:49
for being able to help other people to do so.
7:51
And I say this as someone who felt for the longest
7:53
time, like I'm not allowed to look away from
7:55
anything because as soon as I started speaking out about Diet
7:57
Cup, just suddenly everyone was like, Oh, you think you're an activist? speak
8:00
about this, speak about that. Speak about my issue
8:02
in my country that you don't know the history
8:04
of. Speak about this cause that I care about. And
8:07
I understand why people were doing it. And
8:09
because I understand, I really empathize
8:11
and I didn't wanna let anyone down. And I started
8:13
to cover everything all of the time. And I was watching
8:15
the news 24 hours a day in
8:18
between takes on set at my job
8:20
and in between trying to have, you know, time
8:24
looking after my family or my friends,
8:26
et cetera. And I just burnt out and
8:28
my health absolutely collapsed.
8:31
And my brain melted. And
8:33
for about a solid six months, I'd
8:36
say in 2020, I couldn't even think
8:38
straight. And then I wasn't really able to be
8:40
very helpful to anyone at all because I
8:42
hadn't paced myself. What's happening
8:45
right now in the Middle East is not going to be over four
8:47
years. What is happening in Sudan, Armenia,
8:49
Kashmir, in America, in the United
8:52
Kingdom, in Brazil, in Afghanistan, in
8:54
Iran, in Pakistan, like all
8:56
these countries around the world in which people are suffering,
9:00
it's not possible for us to fix it all at
9:02
once. And for us to never,
9:04
ever, ever take breaks. You have
9:06
to prepare for the marathon that
9:08
is this shit show. And especially
9:11
if you are dealing with chronic pain and
9:13
especially if you are dealing with stress
9:16
and an inability to pay your bills and
9:19
an inability to sleep. You are
9:21
no good to anyone if you are dead. You have
9:23
to protect yourself. And I think, again,
9:25
always comes from the most privileged people
9:28
who shame others for not doing that. And I know
9:30
those people, they're not spending 24 hours
9:32
doing this shit either. And they've got teams of people
9:35
who are researching and finding and creating infographics
9:38
and even posting for them. So don't listen
9:40
to anyone online. Follow your instincts. Remember,
9:43
the world has always been a shit show. Whatever
9:45
the media is now saying is the current
9:47
crisis in the zeitgeist, it doesn't
9:49
mean that any moment is more
9:52
important than another for you to make
9:54
sure that you survive. And
9:56
not to survive, but dare to live
9:59
any kind of... a stable and happy life. It
10:02
is something that all of us should want
10:04
for ourselves and I don't want
10:06
you to feel guilty if you need to
10:08
do make certain adjustments to
10:10
be able to live some sort of a sane
10:13
existence. I'm sorry if I've been rambling but
10:16
I just feel so passionately about this and
10:18
I speak from experience that the most helpful
10:20
I ever am is when I look after myself,
10:23
when I eat properly, when I sleep properly,
10:25
when I make sure that I take breaks
10:27
from looking into these fucking screens that are so
10:30
bad for our brains. It means that I'm
10:32
able to speak more carefully. When I'm sleep
10:34
deprived, I'm sloppy and I say things
10:37
callously and I make mistakes and I piss people
10:39
off. If I haven't slept properly or
10:41
eaten properly, I might be less aware
10:43
of what I'm posting. Maybe I'm going to be more
10:45
likely to post misinformation. Just
10:49
as I said about a million times the last
10:51
five minutes, please pace yourself and especially
10:54
if you are struggling with any kind of disability
10:56
or chronic illness, we need you
10:58
around
10:59
and
11:01
you deserve to look after yourself.
11:04
Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Okay,
11:07
so on to a very different question.
11:10
Someone asked me if I believe in ghosts and
11:12
I really love your range as an audience
11:15
that we can go
11:16
from very, very
11:19
specific types of questions to completely
11:21
surreal.
11:22
The answer to that question
11:24
is I really hope that
11:26
they're not real
11:28
but clearly I must believe in them seeing as I'm
11:31
so terrified. I don't
11:33
look in the mirror at night because I'm scared Bloody
11:36
Mary is going to be there and yes, I am in my
11:38
mid-30s. I am
11:41
terrified of being in the dark. I'm very
11:43
afraid of being on my
11:46
own in the house and I mean a clear sign
11:48
that I must believe and ghosts on some level. Is
11:50
there any hotel or
11:52
housing I have to stay in when I work on location?
11:55
The first thing I Google is if there have been any
11:57
reports that that place may be haunted. time,
12:01
I was asked to go and film in New
12:03
Mexico and they
12:05
wanted to put me up in this very fancy hotel
12:07
and I looked at pictures and I was like, there's something fucking
12:10
wrong with that place and I can just sense it,
12:12
I can feel it, it looks creepy and
12:14
it might be really bougie
12:17
and expensive but I don't like the look
12:19
of it and I googled it and
12:21
it's like one of the oldest mental
12:23
health psychiatric institutions in
12:26
America. As we know, psychiatric
12:29
institutions
12:29
now
12:31
are still sometimes quite brutal
12:33
places but nothing like they were hundreds of
12:35
years ago when we didn't know anything about mental health and
12:37
they used to torture patients. I
12:39
was like, if there are ever
12:41
any ghosts that I don't want to fuck
12:44
around with, it's ghosts that might be very angry
12:46
because they were treated very badly and
12:48
there were reports that people's sheets were
12:50
being ripped off them in the middle of the
12:52
night and there were ghosts in the mirror and people were
12:55
hiding their clothes and I was like, absolutely fucking
12:58
not. So I do
13:00
and I don't. I clearly do more
13:02
than I don't but I've never
13:04
seen anything and please
13:07
God, may I never see anything. I really
13:09
don't want it to be confirmed but my biggest fear
13:11
is that it will be confirmed.
13:15
I think it's so far that my boyfriend just played a
13:17
really important gig in his life that
13:20
was in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
13:22
where all the movie stars are
13:24
buried and I didn't go.
13:27
All my friends, all of our friends went and
13:30
I normally go everywhere to support him but
13:32
I was like, if I see a little Victorian girl
13:35
standing behind a tree, I'm going
13:38
to shit myself and jump off
13:40
a balcony. So yeah, I
13:42
don't feel like I've come across very well right now
13:45
but there's something real about
13:47
me
13:48
that
13:49
no one should really have heard.
13:55
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Okay, next up we have...
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how to get rid of imposter syndrome.
16:02
We all lack knowledge expertise and maybe in
16:04
my case also eloquence this person says,
16:06
although I highly doubt that, but they
16:08
have a fear of making mistakes and saying inaccurate
16:11
things. And so they want
16:13
to know how they
16:15
can get out of that. I've said this before on
16:17
a few ask me any things. And
16:20
it's I've also said it on my social media. I
16:23
have a very strained relationship with imposter
16:25
syndrome. I really just don't see what
16:27
the big deal is. I've
17:00
said it a lot of times, literally put myself in positions where
17:02
I am an imposter and my self esteem
17:04
has been so crushed by the world. I don't know if I'll
17:06
ever be like, I totally deserve this.
17:09
And so therefore I was like, if I can't achieve
17:11
a perfect mental attitude about myself,
17:14
then why don't I just take the importance out
17:16
of that feeling? And then it's very similar
17:18
to my body image stuff, right? So I can't,
17:21
I don't love my body. But if I could just
17:23
get out of hating my body, what if I could just be
17:25
neutral and not really think about my body at all?
17:28
So when it comes to imposter syndrome, you
17:30
know what, maybe I'm an imposter. Maybe I don't fully
17:32
deserve to be here. Maybe I'm not the most qualified
17:34
person who was ever
17:35
born to do this job. But
17:37
fuck it.
17:38
I'm here now. What am I going to do? Quit. I'm
17:41
going to rise to the occasion. I'm
17:43
going to figure it out. I'm going to learn on the
17:45
job. I'm going to do my fucking best. And if
17:48
I do fail, it's highly unlikely that I'm going
17:50
to die dependent on the job. And
17:52
so therefore the stakes aren't as high
17:55
if you don't put so much value
17:57
in the bruise of the ego of failing.
18:00
Failure is something that I consider to
18:03
just not be that big of a deal. All my best
18:05
learning has come from failure. All my best
18:07
stories come from my failures. All
18:09
of my funniest moments have been my failures.
18:12
I run towards failure and I think that's really
18:14
noble because it's no fun
18:16
in running at something that you always know you're going
18:19
to have guaranteed success at. I think it's really
18:21
cool when people run towards failure. And
18:23
so my analogy that I tend to use
18:25
for imposter syndrome is just that I
18:29
look at it as crashing a wedding. It's
18:31
like, well, I wasn't invited here. I'm not
18:33
supposed to be here, but I'm going to try and snog
18:35
someone and get some free cake before
18:37
I am thrown out. And that has been
18:40
my entire attitude towards this industry. Remember,
18:42
I never had acting lessons before I became an actor.
18:45
I'd never gone to drama school
18:47
before I became a TV host. I'd never done
18:49
radio before I did the radio. I am fucking
18:53
figuring out. In England, we
18:55
call those people a blagger. Maybe
18:57
the word that's closest to that in America
18:59
is hustler, but it's been
19:02
my attitude to life. It's
19:04
just I'll figure it out. And normally
19:06
we do. Specifically, people
19:09
who've been socialized as women have
19:11
been raised with this idea that we have
19:13
a very small amount of
19:16
things that we are going to be able to achieve in our lives.
19:18
And it's very difficult for us to be seen as
19:20
accomplished. And so therefore we should
19:22
be grateful with whatever little we
19:24
can gather in this life. We're not encouraged
19:27
to keep learning about ourselves.
19:29
We're kind of told that by about 25, you
19:32
know everything about yourself that you're ever going to know. That's
19:34
not true. At 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, people are always learning about
19:36
new skills and interests that they have.
19:42
And if you shut yourself
19:44
off to exploring those, then you
19:46
might never learn who you really are. There are so
19:49
many people who've been hugely successful
19:51
who didn't even find the thing that they were good
19:53
at until they were middle aged. And I
19:55
think that's amazing. I still don't know what
19:58
I'm going
19:58
to do for the rest of my life.
19:59
highly doubt is going to be me
20:02
in the entertainment
20:05
industry, I might go back to school,
20:07
I might train as an EMDR therapist,
20:10
I have loads of things I want to achieve and I refuse
20:12
to let society tell me what I can and
20:14
can't accomplish. And so when
20:17
it comes to my attitude to imposter syndrome,
20:20
it has really freed me because
20:22
I have decided
20:24
that I have no boundaries and barriers
20:26
in front of me, I'm just going to figure
20:29
it out, make a mess, get some
20:31
good stories, get some good experience from it
20:33
and prove to myself that I'm capable
20:36
of more than I thought. And so
20:38
I hope that's helpful, I hope that's
20:40
what you needed to hear today, you do
20:42
not owe anyone complete perfection
20:45
and it is not something that is expected of straight
20:47
white men and so the rest of
20:49
us are allowed to give ourselves a fucking
20:52
break, which by the way is especially hard
20:54
from an ethnic minority, especially if you're Asian
20:56
like I am, where your parents put so
20:58
much pressure on you to be perfect, you have to divorce
21:01
yourself from that, there is so much
21:03
fun in the unknown, there is
21:05
so much fun to be had when you take yourself by
21:07
surprise and so treat it like a
21:09
wedding that you've crashed, just fuck it, have as
21:11
much fun as you can, whoever has the most fun
21:14
wins. So another
21:16
question I received is what is an achievement
21:19
or other moment in your career that you are proudest
21:21
of and it doesn't just have to be in your career? I think
21:24
because I've spent most
21:26
of my time at my career for half
21:28
of my life, I'm going to talk
21:30
about that and I'd say it's actually this podcast,
21:32
this is my favourite thing I've ever done and the
21:36
thing that I'm proud of is
21:38
having put
21:40
myself out there, a bit like with
21:42
the imposter syndrome stuff I was talking about earlier,
21:46
who did I think I was to have a podcast,
21:48
who did I think I was to be able to get
21:51
very esteemed, clever guests on to talk
21:53
to me, but I did, I just thought
21:55
fuck it, I'm going to try and
21:58
I'm going to be willing to look silly and I'm
22:00
going to have to learn stuff in front of other people,
22:02
which means daring to show that I didn't have
22:04
all the answers. I'm going to improve
22:07
as a person in real time. You're
22:09
going to watch me become more humble
22:11
and hopefully a bit more informed. It's
22:14
been, God, like over three
22:16
and a half years now. I'm
22:18
so proud of the community that we have. I
22:21
love all of you guys. I learned
22:23
so much from you. I find so
22:25
many of my great guests via you. You
22:28
have expanded my world and I'm
22:31
proud of how much I've learned on this podcast. I'm
22:33
really thankful that so many of you have
22:35
stuck around from the start. There's
22:37
just so many of you who
22:39
are willing to learn with me and
22:41
who don't make me feel bad for what
22:44
I don't already know. I'm proud
22:46
of creating a safe space that doesn't make people
22:48
feel judged. I'm so sick of the fucking
22:50
shaming and judgment in this world. I
22:53
think it's such a dangerous, toxic way to
22:55
treat people. No one knows everything
22:57
about everything. I think
23:00
that when our culture started shaming
23:02
people who are still learning, that was
23:04
the beginning of the end of
23:06
civilization, in my opinion. When
23:08
we started to make people feel embarrassed for not having
23:10
all of the answers, that's
23:12
when I started to divorce myself
23:15
from a lot of social justice spaces and
23:17
just start to lean into mental health and being
23:19
a humanitarian. I think you
23:21
can sense that if you've been listening to this podcast
23:23
for a long time, that I'm not into
23:26
the division that I first came
23:28
up in in 2018 when I was a more spiky, outspoken
23:34
person. I've changed quite a lot. I
23:37
have decided to move away from
23:39
that judgy, preachy shit
23:41
that was being clicked and clapped
23:44
at post the Me Too
23:46
movement. I think that it's really
23:48
important to move with the same
23:51
grace towards others that you would hope to
23:53
have for yourself. That's been a big
23:55
learning journey after the way that I saw
23:57
everyone speak to each other during COVID. didn't
24:00
want to be a part of that. And so those are
24:02
things that I'm proud of. And
24:04
I love that you asked me that
24:06
because you're asking a woman to brag.
24:09
And I love it when women say a thing that
24:11
they're proud of. I think we shouldn't demonize
24:14
women being proud
24:16
of themselves. I think that we should
24:18
all encourage more people to,
24:21
especially women, to say
24:23
shamelessly something that they feel like
24:25
they did well. And I urge you to maybe
24:28
pause this episode for a second and write down something
24:30
that you're proud of about yourself. So
24:33
thank you to the person who asked me that question. This
24:35
podcast is my proudest achievement. So
24:37
the next one is quite a personal one where someone
24:39
said, how do you cope with having EDS?
24:42
That's Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which is a
24:44
condition I have, which is caused by a lack
24:46
of enough collagen in my body. It
24:50
means that I struggle with my joints
24:52
because collagen is something that you need in every single cell.
24:55
So if you have a huge deficiency of it, it
24:57
makes your life so fucking hard.
24:59
And I have issues with bleeding
25:02
and I have issues with every organ
25:05
in my body and nothing works
25:07
at the pace it's supposed to and nothing heals
25:09
at the pace it's supposed to. And I'm always
25:11
falling over and I'm dysbraxic and I have
25:15
neurodivergence issues and
25:17
all of this is caused by
25:20
Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and it's a fucking
25:22
nightmare. So sometimes very often
25:24
I'd say people come onto
25:26
this podcast to ask
25:28
me about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
25:30
And we actually have an episode in which we
25:33
talk about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and chronic health
25:35
issues that we did a few months ago
25:37
with Megan O'Rourke and it's an amazing listen
25:39
and I highly recommend it. She's so
25:42
fantastic and we really get into the
25:44
personal of that. But anyway, so
25:47
I just wanted to give context for anyone who doesn't know what EDS
25:49
means. So this person says, how do you cope with having EDS
25:52
and doing all the cunning stunts and coping
25:54
with a massive workload? Do you
25:56
have performance anxiety? And
25:59
so this person goes on to
26:01
tell me about all the things that they do. They are
26:03
in the entertainment industry but they also have to cope
26:05
with EDS which is ruining
26:08
their health and therefore ruining their life and
26:10
they want to know if I ever worry about my EDS
26:13
window of opportunity. This is a question I
26:15
get all the time and loads of you wrote
26:17
me this question today about how I balance
26:20
my life with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and
26:22
I always think it's really important
26:24
for me to be very candid and responsible
26:26
with you about that which is that I can't
26:29
do it all. I cannot
26:32
do it all and I did try. I really
26:35
spent a solid part of the beginning of my
26:37
adulthood being like I'm not going to be held
26:39
back by this. I'm gonna prove
26:42
the doctor's wrong. I'm gonna be an example
26:44
for all other people with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
26:46
You know I'm like some sort of fucking superhero. I'm
26:49
gonna show them you can achieve all
26:51
your dreams and sure maybe you
26:53
can but I have chosen not
26:56
to anymore because it was fucking
26:58
killing me and so for the last like
27:00
four years I have been and I
27:03
think a lot of people went through this during the pandemic
27:05
where they were like why am I in a rat race?
27:08
Why am I killing who am I killing myself for?
27:10
For capitalism? Why am I
27:12
not seeing my friends more often? Why am I not
27:14
having more fun? I just live a
27:16
different type of lifestyle. I think that happened in a big
27:18
way for me where I was like I don't
27:20
think I want to push my
27:23
joints and my body and my kidneys
27:26
to this level. Being in the entertainment industry
27:28
and thriving in the entertainment industry means waking
27:30
up at 4 a.m. and going to
27:32
work and then coming back from work at like 7
27:34
p.m. and then going to
27:36
the gym because everyone has to be fucking
27:39
thin and toned in this industry and then going
27:41
to an event and then maybe getting about
27:44
five hours sleep which is very bad for
27:46
your health and then going back to work in the morning.
27:48
Now I could do that in little bursts and I'm so
27:50
grateful to have the opportunity to work in the entertainment
27:52
industry however there is
27:55
a certain level I can't
27:57
get to unless I'm willing to sell my whole
27:59
soul. unless I'm willing to give up every hour
28:01
of my day and abandon all my friends, abandon
28:04
my relationship, abandon my dogs most importantly
28:06
and abandon myself, abandon
28:08
my health. I would just have to throw everything
28:11
at it and not
28:14
to, you know, try and get too deep
28:17
but or to sound like Tahani. Oh
28:19
my god this is going to be so Tahani. But I've
28:21
met a lot of the world's most famous people
28:23
as Tahani would say, they're all her good
28:25
friends. And I
28:28
don't know any of them who are
28:30
very happy and they've got as much money
28:32
as you can imagine in a massive house
28:35
that they hang out mostly on their own because
28:38
they've lost touch with all their friends and family and they're
28:41
so famous that they can't really go anywhere privately
28:44
and their love life gets smashed all
28:46
over the world and people are always trying
28:48
to use them, invade them stuff and I
28:51
just think it's such a fucked reality and you can apply
28:53
this in different ways to industries that aren't
28:55
as unrelatable as mine, right? Like thriving
28:58
and getting to the very top of academia
29:01
or medicine or business. There's
29:03
so much sacrifice. And so if
29:05
that is your lifeblood,
29:07
like if that is like the thing that's in your DNA
29:10
that you feel the most alive when
29:12
you're doing it then you should do it and we need
29:14
people like you to go and fucking
29:17
sacrifice it for the
29:19
journey. I am
29:22
just personally not that up for the
29:24
journey anymore. I want to sell
29:26
my home to get a cheaper home so I can
29:28
do less work. I want to move to a cheaper area.
29:31
I would like to work less. I would like
29:33
to look after my body more. I'm
29:35
starting to think about old age and
29:37
as you get into your 30s in particular, you
29:39
start to really come into a time where how
29:42
you treat your body in the next like 20
29:44
years from between 30 and 50 is
29:47
really going to be a big determining
29:49
factor in what your old age is going
29:51
to look like and I want it to be happy. I
29:53
want to rest and I want to have social
29:56
time. I don't want to be someone
29:58
that strangers admire.
30:01
I just want to be someone who gets to
30:03
admire my own friends up close. And so I
30:06
know that's not the girl boss mentality
30:09
that I'm supposed to say publicly,
30:12
but I try to show how much I'm at
30:14
home resting with my dogs on my social media so
30:16
that people don't think I'm just constantly girl
30:18
bossing. But I'm
30:21
sad if it's ever made anyone who's not
30:23
very well feel like they're not doing enough. I can't
30:26
stress you enough that I really
30:29
have taken a big chill pill in the last four or five
30:31
years and slowed down. And that
30:34
I really want you to evaluate
30:36
if it's going to be worth it. If
30:38
an award in your hand or a certain
30:41
amount of money, everyone wants to be financially comfortable.
30:43
I'm not talking about that. But if excess
30:45
is worth it, is the big house in
30:48
the fancy area or the fancy bags
30:51
and cars is the staff and
30:53
the awards and the recognition from strangers
30:57
genuinely going to be worth it for you.
30:59
If you're thinking about the entertainment
31:01
industry, which is such a grueling, such
31:04
a grueling industry for people with chronic health conditions.
31:06
And if it is great and more power to you,
31:09
but if it might not be, then this
31:11
is your reminder to really consider,
31:13
you know, we're not our generation
31:15
isn't really programmed to
31:18
consider the long game. To look at
31:20
what happens at the end of the rainbow, we're always, you know,
31:23
thinking about the journey, but we never think about
31:25
the destination. And I've become
31:28
kind of obsessed at that destination. I think a
31:30
lot of people as I said, during, during COVID,
31:33
when people started to lose loved
31:35
ones or lose their health, they started thinking a lot
31:37
about like, what are my actual values
31:40
in life? Like if I died tomorrow from a
31:42
pandemic disease, would
31:44
I have lived my life as happily as possible, not
31:47
as impressively as possible, but as happily
31:49
as possible?
31:50
That is
31:52
a poignant question. And I
31:54
think that it's a healthy
31:57
question to ask yourself. It's a really, really, really
31:59
important question.
31:59
vital reminder,
32:03
you know, even though I know it's a bit stressful to think about
32:05
our mortality, sometimes there's a great
32:07
beauty in it because it forces you to check
32:09
in with yourself and be like, did I live well
32:11
today? Did I live well yesterday? Is what
32:14
I'm doing going to be optimal
32:17
for the most lulls and
32:19
cuddles and happiness
32:21
ever?
32:22
If that's what's important to you, that's what's important to me and
32:25
just not well enough to go
32:28
for all of the possible dreams in
32:30
the world and that's okay because my biggest
32:32
dream is being happy and somewhat
32:34
well, which is very difficult with a condition
32:37
like this. And again,
32:39
I feel like I feel a tiny bit of shame
32:41
saying all of this and being honest about it because I know
32:45
it's not the most inspiring answer,
32:47
but I find it inspiring.
32:49
I wish when I was younger and sick I'd
32:52
heard someone in a powerful
32:54
position say the same thing, say
32:56
that they've had a peak at the other side and
32:58
it's not going to
33:00
be good for me. I wish I'd known
33:03
and I think I would have had a happier and healthier
33:06
adulthood up until
33:08
now. I'm currently the happiest and healthiest
33:11
I've ever been, even though I know I had a bit of a health emergency
33:13
recently. That's just a fluke,
33:16
but generally I've been really well and
33:18
I attribute that to the fact that I've decided
33:20
to
33:21
get off the treadmill, get off, get out of the
33:23
rat race and
33:25
choose myself above a dream.
33:28
Hope that's helpful. Sorry.
33:31
Someone's asked me how to love your body
33:34
when you have chronic pain. My
33:36
body doesn't work like I want it to when I
33:38
do feel okay. This
33:41
kind of somewhat touches on the same
33:43
area of my experience with Ayla Stanlassen-Drome,
33:46
but it is a massive
33:48
struggle in all of our chat online about body
33:51
positivity. There's very little of it that
33:53
goes beyond accepting love handles
33:56
and stretch marks. Body
33:58
positivity is like real... body
34:00
acceptance and liberation
34:03
is also being able to accept that our
34:05
bodies are all doing different things and regardless
34:08
of what they look like on the outside it's
34:10
really hard to not feel like your body is truly
34:13
working against you to feel like it's your worst
34:15
enemy but i have
34:17
decided to really work
34:20
on that inner voice of mine that's like come
34:22
on fucking hell why are you swollen
34:25
why are you hurting why is my kidney not working
34:28
and you know i had so much rage and
34:31
jealousy of other people who had good health
34:33
like i used to get so mad when i would see other people
34:35
drink or take hard drugs which
34:38
you know i can't do because if i do i'll probably
34:40
fall over and die um and i'd
34:42
be like why would you take things that are bad for
34:44
why would you smoke why are you doing things that are bad
34:46
for you you're so lucky you have good health why are you
34:48
staying out all night you know why are you being
34:50
reckless why are you rock climbing i
34:53
used to get so bitter about everyone
34:55
and then i realized that i was becoming quite an ugly
34:57
person so i checked myself and
35:00
just thought how
35:02
would i wish to be spoken to if i was my
35:04
body what if i personified my body what
35:07
if i called my body steve i don't
35:09
know why i chose that name i just love that name i
35:11
don't know i have no reason for you
35:13
but i was like how should i treat
35:16
steve steve my
35:18
ride or die steve maybe doesn't
35:21
function perfectly but that's okay
35:23
steve's doing his fucking best no one
35:25
has
35:26
no one that
35:28
i know would ever be willing to go
35:30
through all the shit i've put it through the way
35:32
that my body does like the amount of work
35:34
my body has done when i made my body do stunts
35:37
for marvel i
35:38
can't believe i put my body through
35:40
that 30 fucking five
35:43
uh when no one should start doing stunts
35:45
for the first time
35:46
the amount of late nights out
35:48
and the dancing and the stupidest heels
35:51
and all of the terrible crazy
35:53
crap decisions i've made and the sleep that i didn't
35:56
get that i needed and all the times
35:58
that i've been at death's door or
36:00
with different illnesses or accidents,
36:02
and I got hit by a car, broke my back.
36:04
My body has always somehow just
36:07
about made it through. And so
36:09
am I in pain every day? Sure. Am I swollen
36:11
every night? Sure. Are there many things that
36:13
I can't do? Yes. But that
36:16
is not the fault of my body. My body that
36:18
I was born with is doing its best. And
36:20
it loves me so much that when I'm sleeping,
36:23
all it's doing is trying to heal whatever
36:25
it can. When you think about it like
36:27
that, you start to develop more empathy. You're like, oh,
36:30
that is my best friend. That's
36:32
the most loyal robin
36:35
to my Batman that I'll ever have. And
36:37
so now I look at it more as something that I want
36:39
to look after. I want to look after my best friend. It's
36:42
made me more thoughtful about what food I
36:44
put in it, what drink I put in it, how
36:46
good my sleep routine is. Am I really,
36:49
you know, my body does all this shit for me. What am I doing
36:51
for my body? So much of my anorexia
36:54
with me just punishing my body and starving
36:56
it and over-exercising it and talking
36:58
like shit to it. How awful. I
37:01
have so much making up to do with this
37:03
body. It heard everything I said, and
37:05
it watched everything that I did. And it
37:07
watched me be jealous of other people's bodies. And
37:09
I feel very embarrassed by that now. So I know what I'm
37:11
saying is a bit surreal. But
37:15
I find personifying things very
37:18
helpful for my brain. I have a very
37:20
literal brain. And so when
37:22
I do things like that, I'm
37:24
able to kind of logic my way through
37:26
it. And I hope that even if you are someone
37:29
with chronic pain, you can find
37:31
a bit of this philosophy helpful. Give
37:35
your body a break and know it's doing
37:37
its absolute best for you.
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Lastly, a question I got again from
39:54
a lot of people, of course, because of my work around
39:56
diet culture and eating disorders, was
39:58
a lot of you asking me.
40:00
about my recovery journey. And
40:03
as I kind of said at the top of this, like
40:05
I don't want this to be your reference
40:07
for mental health, but I could just tell you about what personally
40:10
happened to me and then tell you that if you
40:12
think you might have any issues with orthorexia,
40:15
which is a kind of fear of food and
40:18
issues with and fixation on food and
40:20
restrictive eating and diets, or you
40:22
think you might have an eating disorder or
40:24
body image issues, I urge you to
40:27
seek out an expert, some
40:29
sort of mental health expert or any kind of clinic
40:31
that deals with eating disorders. As I
40:33
said before I tell you my story I'm going to quickly offer a trigger
40:35
warning which is that I'm going to talk
40:37
about body image issues and my
40:40
anorexia. So I had
40:42
anorexia for about 20 years from the age of
40:45
about 11 to 31 and I've been
40:47
in recovery ever since and I wasn't
40:50
starving myself that whole time but I
40:53
kind of would go between starving and binging
40:56
and then starving again and then over exercising
40:58
just a constant state of punishment and
41:01
this went on for well over a decade and in
41:03
the years in which I wasn't starving myself
41:05
I was still engaging
41:08
in very restrictive eating and my body
41:10
dysmorphia was still like at the forefront of
41:12
my brain and I was not only thinking
41:14
about food and only thinking about weight and only
41:17
hating myself constantly all of the
41:19
time and never just freely eating
41:21
any meal. I knew the calories of literally
41:24
every single thing I put in
41:26
my mouth. I knew what the calories of a hundred grams
41:29
of almost any food on the planet was and thank
41:31
God I have started
41:34
to divorce myself from that knowledge and have kind of forgotten
41:37
at large the calories of anything because
41:39
also that is just not a clear science
41:42
and that's not how we should be working out
41:44
what to eat in the day. When
41:50
I got to Los Angeles
41:52
I realised that I just couldn't live
41:55
like this anymore and I was you know I just
41:57
got on a job as an actress which I hadn't planned
41:59
on. I didn't really want to be on TV again because I thought
42:01
it was really bad for my body image and for my mental
42:03
health and it made me self-conscious
42:06
and women are just treated so appallingly when it
42:08
comes to our appearance. So I'd resisted
42:10
being on television again in my 30s knowing
42:12
what had done to me in my 20s. And so
42:15
I reluctantly re-entered
42:18
the industry and decided
42:20
that if I'm going to take this on I'm
42:22
going to have to be really
42:25
really really mindful of
42:28
recovery because this is
42:30
Hollywood, this is the hub,
42:32
this is the belly of the beast. This
42:34
is where so much of the evil that we
42:36
learn on social media comes from
42:39
about our bodies, about ageism,
42:41
about women and so I was like I
42:44
really need backup. So I did something called
42:46
EMDR therapy, eye movement reprocessing
42:49
and desensitization therapy to
42:51
deal with my feelings around food
42:54
and so I used EMDR to
42:56
and I want you to google it and look it up and see
42:58
if that's something that you would find interesting but
43:01
what it's really good for is breaking thought patterns.
43:03
So I was like one of the first things I can do is
43:06
break my thought pattern as to how important
43:09
my body shape is to my happiness.
43:12
Like can I break the pattern
43:14
of thought that thinness equates
43:16
value, that thinness equates
43:18
happiness, that thinness equates
43:20
being worthy of being loved and so I
43:22
really worked on that with my EMDR therapist
43:25
and that was very successful where I started to get to
43:27
a point of neutrality. You know as I was
43:29
sort of touching on earlier I don't really have body
43:31
positivity but I have been able to get to
43:33
a point where I'm just like it just doesn't matter, it doesn't
43:36
matter. It's not amazing, it's
43:38
not shit, it's just not important because
43:41
me and my body Steve are out here doing the
43:43
fucking best we can and
43:45
if it turns out that I'm not thin
43:48
enough or beautiful enough for this industry
43:50
I'll just leave. I can't
43:52
be bothered, I'm not going to suffer for this
43:54
anymore, I think I'm worthy
43:56
of love. It doesn't mean I think I'm the best
43:58
or the most beautiful. It's just that I know
44:01
that the thing that makes me worthy of love is
44:03
not on the outside of me. It is who
44:05
I am as a person and who I am as a person
44:07
has improved exponentially
44:09
for no longer being obsessed with food and calories
44:12
and my weight and my appearance because that all means
44:14
me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And
44:17
it made me a boring person. I was
44:20
a really rubbish lover. I
44:22
was a shit shack because I
44:24
had no energy and was so self-obsessed
44:27
because it is kind of self-obsession which doesn't
44:29
mean you should feel ashamed of it. That's what it's supposed
44:31
to be. It's an incredibly
44:34
pervasive mental
44:36
illness. But I just didn't
44:38
have time to learn anything. I didn't know
44:41
anything. I didn't know what was going on in other people's
44:43
lives. All I was thinking about was surviving
44:45
one meal to the next. How can I get out of eating
44:48
one meal to the next? And
44:50
so that was really helpful for me. I
44:52
also dealt with my issues around food because
44:54
for me, food was anything but
44:56
fuel. It was rebelling
44:59
against my parents or it was the
45:01
love of a parent because I had a parent who couldn't say
45:04
that they loved me but they would show me they loved me via
45:06
food. So food was also
45:09
love. Food was parenting.
45:12
Food was acceptance but also food
45:15
meant being fat and being
45:17
fat was unacceptable in my family
45:20
and in the world because I grew up during heroin and
45:22
cheek. So it was just a nightmare.
45:25
Everything I was eating just felt like I was always swallowing
45:27
a grenade of emotions rather than just
45:29
having a fucking sandwich. And
45:32
again, it didn't take long with the MDR to be able
45:34
to break those thought patterns to be able
45:37
to identify the trauma I had around
45:39
food and just get to a point, again,
45:41
not of positivity but of neutrality. When
45:44
I look at chicken, it's just chicken.
45:47
When I look at chocolate, it's just chocolate. And
45:49
I don't feel afraid of it. I haven't been
45:52
in like eight years which is insane
45:55
or maybe a bit less but I haven't overeaten
45:58
to excess. gone, oh
46:00
diet starts on Monday, I haven't starved myself before
46:03
a photo shoot in
46:04
a decade pretty much.
46:06
It's amazing. Just a place of neutrality.
46:10
I've said it a lot on this podcast before and
46:12
I talked about it with a few different guests
46:14
that sometimes the body positivity
46:17
movement has felt quite oppressive to a lot of us. It's
46:19
a very important and amazing movement and it
46:21
isn't for someone like me because I'm straight sized,
46:24
I'm slim and privileged. But for
46:26
a lot of people who even do live in bigger bodies
46:28
or bodies of disabilities, it's a lot
46:30
of pressure to be told in a world
46:33
that is telling you constantly to hate yourself,
46:35
you better love yourself and you better be the best at it and
46:38
you better think you are the hottest sexiest thing
46:40
ever. And then you feel like, oh great, well now there's
46:42
another thing I'm fucking failing at which is having perfect
46:44
confidence as well as not having the perfect
46:47
body I want it to have. I really
46:49
think that capitalism is a massive
46:51
part of that, of always setting these really unrealistic
46:54
ideals that we always feel like we're working towards
46:56
something. I'm just not about that. I
46:59
believe in finding ways to be proud
47:01
incrementally of myself or wherever I'm
47:04
at. And if I'm always at neutrality
47:07
around myself work as a person, around
47:09
my achievements at work or around my image,
47:12
then I will have beyond one as
47:14
far as I'm concerned. I hope I get
47:16
to a point of pride. I hope I get to a point
47:18
of bigging myself up. But when
47:20
it comes to certain things, I'm poisoned
47:23
and programmed by the whole of the
47:26
fucking media that's everywhere, including
47:29
at my fingertips on my phone. If
47:31
I can just stay at neutrality, that's fucking
47:33
great. And so if you can even get to neutrality,
47:37
we're smashing it. And I'm so
47:39
proud of you. But learning that it
47:41
is a lie, it is a sinful
47:43
lie that any of our
47:45
worth or anything that's important about us
47:48
is in our exterior or in our
47:50
perfection. Being able to divorce yourself from
47:52
that fallacy is true
47:55
liberation. And it's something that I work
47:57
really hard towards. EMDR
48:00
therapy as well as incrementally
48:03
just, you know, instead
48:05
of going from starving myself to just eating everything
48:07
in the world, just kind of incremental progress, bit
48:09
by bit, learning to eat a type
48:11
of food, like bread or something that I'd never
48:14
eaten before, and just have a little bit
48:16
and realise that the world doesn't stop turning, and
48:18
then, you know, gaining a bit of weight
48:20
and realising that, oh look, all my friends are still
48:23
friends with me. Oh look, people still
48:25
find me attractive. Oh look, I'm still able
48:27
to do a job. Oh
48:29
look, I feel okay today, I'm still surviving.
48:32
I'm not manically depressed, I'm able to get out of
48:34
bed. I kind of actually have a bit more energy,
48:36
and I had fun last night at dinner instead of dreading
48:39
it. And so just incremental
48:42
progress, everything in life, everything I try
48:44
to encourage you towards in this entire podcast,
48:47
there's just little bits of incremental progress. Incremental
48:50
progress towards food, incremental progress
48:52
towards your attitude towards yourself, or your attitude
48:54
towards your body, or your attitude towards the way that
48:56
you look. Be very careful as well,
48:59
the last thing I did that was I think very important is
49:01
being very, very mindful
49:03
of the media that I consume.
49:06
You know, my algorithm is just
49:08
a reflection of what I've already
49:10
shown an interest in. So if that's gonna
49:12
be really skinny models
49:15
who talk about weight loss all the time, and fitness experts,
49:17
that's all I'm gonna see, and then that's gonna destroy
49:20
and break my tiny fragile mind. So
49:23
about maybe in like 2017, 2016, 2017,
49:29
I, you know, when I first really got on Instagram
49:31
properly, I was like, okay, this is fucked.
49:33
I need to change my explore page. I
49:36
need my explore page to be dog and
49:39
funny animal videos, which is why my social media
49:41
is mostly funny animal videos. That is very
49:43
much on purpose, so I can help my algorithm as
49:45
well as help yours be mostly about funny dog
49:47
videos instead of fucking weight loss shit
49:49
that we're all bombarded with. And
49:52
I started following accounts of like old
49:54
Italian movie stars
49:57
who are women who had curvier bodies and
49:59
following people. and bigger bodies and following
50:02
people who had similar health
50:04
conditions to me or who had
50:07
similar belief systems or who fought for humanitarian
50:10
causes or who loved animals.
50:12
I just was so, so, so
50:14
mindful with what my feed looks like and
50:17
so I don't really follow a lot of models
50:19
and celebrities and the ones that I do are mostly
50:21
on mute, not because I have any kind of personal
50:23
problem with them, I really don't. But just
50:25
because I'm honest enough to say, ah,
50:28
looking at you triggers very bad
50:30
thoughts in my brain about me. I try
50:33
to be mindful about what I post on social media
50:35
so that doesn't make anyone else feel
50:38
any kind of a way and it doesn't make me feel bad.
50:40
I don't use filters because I don't want to hold myself
50:42
up to an insane beauty standard that doesn't
50:45
exist and is ruining all of our brains and ruining
50:47
the world. So curating
50:50
your feed is something that we refer to as self-defence
50:52
of the mind. It's important to learn self-defence
50:55
of the body but it is so almost as
50:57
important if not more important to learn self-defence
50:59
of your mind. If you're really, really,
51:02
really careful with what you're looking at, you actually might
51:04
have a fighting chance. Be careful of the magazines
51:06
you pick up and be careful of the
51:09
television that you're watching. Really,
51:11
really listen for the thoughts in your head
51:13
when you're consuming certain types of media and if
51:15
you find that anything is causing you shame,
51:17
even if you really like to admire that person
51:20
or you're a friend to that person at work but their holiday
51:22
pictures make you feel like shit. You're not a petty or small person
51:25
for wanting to look away. You can still
51:27
be nice to that person, respectful and friendly
51:29
but whatever you're looking at that makes
51:31
you feel like shit, stop looking at it. Even
51:34
if it's just for a while, stop looking at it. Try
51:36
to access some kind of therapy that might make
51:38
you find it easier to tolerate that sort
51:41
of material but please never force
51:43
yourself to do anything that
51:45
makes you feel shame and like shit
51:48
because life is too fucking short.
51:50
That kind of brings us back around just as
51:53
we close out to what I was talking about
51:55
at the beginning of this episode. I
51:58
want you to be mindful of the content that you
52:00
consume. If you are someone
52:02
who is traumatized
52:04
by seeing images of people covered in
52:06
blood and in explosions
52:09
and dead bodies, you are
52:11
not weak or bad for choosing
52:14
not to look at that. It doesn't mean you don't have to stay informed.
52:16
There are plenty of news articles that print the words
52:19
without the pictures. This shit
52:21
can really fuck you up and
52:23
it can bring back terrible memories of other things
52:25
that you have experienced. Our friends who've survived
52:28
other wars who are now seeing these images come up without
52:30
a sensitivity warning, who are
52:32
having panic attacks and nervous breakdowns over
52:34
the imagery that's all over the internet. Maybe
52:37
get offline for a bit and maybe just
52:39
read about it in the newspapers and
52:41
then find other ways to be helpful or
52:44
be very mindful of the accounts. Maybe mute a few
52:46
accounts who are posting explicit shit without
52:48
warning. Again, just think about
52:50
the long game. Think about what's good for you in the long
52:52
term and know that it means
52:55
that you will be happier, healthier
52:57
and more helpful person at the
52:59
end. I don't want you to be doom
53:01
scrolling all day. I don't want you to look at the news
53:04
all day. I don't want you to look at models
53:06
and people with unachievable lifestyles all day. I
53:08
want you to look at things that are just going to bring you some
53:11
peace and some joy and be actually
53:13
helpful to you and to the world. So
53:16
I hope this has been helpful. These are just some of the thoughts that
53:18
have been in my brain. Thank you so much for your questions.
53:20
There are more to get through. I'll do more episodes like this
53:22
if you don't absolutely fucking hate this one and
53:25
message me with any thoughts or
53:28
feelings you have about what I said and
53:30
I will see you next
53:32
week. I love you lots. Please look
53:34
after yourself.
53:41
Thank you.
53:49
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