Tell us about your work with Oberstown and how that came about.

Yeah, so the work in Oberstown, that was a couple of years ago now, but I was just serendipitously asked to do a prison talk at one stage.

And The reality is that probably for people going into prison, about 70% of them have an addiction problem.

And I suppose that's where I was brought in on that angle.

And I think something really important to understand is that for me and for many people, addiction isn't the problem.

And that's a personal problem.

And for many people committing crimes, like the underlying issue is usually some kind of trauma, some kind of challenge that they faced.

What are some of the tools that you bring, Brian, especially when you touched on giving people different coping mechanisms to deal with trauma, to deal with behaviours? What are some of the tools you try and impart to others?

They're addicted to feeling like difficulty is like is the norm for them so do you think people can actually become addicted to stress

100% like addicted to stress addicted to anxiety and it's it's like we start to play word games as well like are you addicted to stress or are you addicted to the work that creates the stress it really is a bit of both but let's just peel back addiction like addiction at its core is is like the definition of addiction is continued use of a behavior or a substance despite harm to self or others so can you become addicted to self or addicted to stress well if the stress is causing problems in your life and that let's be clear there is good stress bad stress again there's variances of that as well but if that stress is causing problems in your life and you can't stop the behaviors that are creating that stress by definition you are addicted to that stress.

And there's nearly an element of getting addicted to the adrenaline rush that goes with that as well.

But what else can we get addicted to? The ego is an addictive entity in itself.

Like if you're struggling with self-worth issues and all of a sudden you're getting this incredible self-worth and praise off other people because you're doing great in your job.

Well, that in itself is addictive and the ego is going to feed itself in terms of you're doing brilliant, keep on doing that.

Another really powerful behavioral principle, there's very few powerful principles in psychology.

yeah

Yeah

... on our, on our podcast, and I love that, right? And I think what you're looking for, we're looking to build a wall of evidence.

Because we talk about self-belief, we talk about these things, they're very arbitrary and abstract, right? So I like this evidence.

I like to think about it as a wall of evidence.

So say, right, "I'm good enough.

I done that.

I done that.

Mm.