Blindboy Boatclub speaks his struggles with his mental health as a teenager and how he managed to overcome his anxiety.
Blindboy Boatclub from The Rubberbandits appeared on The Late Late Show on Friday night and spoke with his typical wisdom about his struggles with anxiety as a teenager in Limerick.
Speaking with host Ryan Tubridy, Blindboy spoke about how he suffered from panic attacks and, as a result, developed agoraphobia before gaining access to therapy in college.
"Everyone goes through some kind of mental health issue in their life," he said. "My thing between the ages of 16 and 19, I had severe anxiety and panic attacks.
"But what would happen is that if I got a panic attack, we'll say, in a shopping centre, I would then associate the shopping centre with the panic attack and then I would no longer go to shopping centres.
"I ran out of places to go and I could leave my room.
"Your anxiety then becomes so much that you can't go outside or do normal things; I experienced that as very shameful, and the shame then led to a cycle of depression. So I was in a very very bad way."
Blindboy - who will appear on
The JOE Show next Tuesday night - went on to describe how he managed to overcome his problems with the aid of cognitive behavioural therapy, while acknowledging that what worked for him might not necessarily worked for everyone else.
"I managed to get into college on a means tested grant and while I was in college I could avail of free counselling. That was what did it for me. I'm 10 years free of any mental health issues because (of cognitive behavioural therapy).
"Every person is different but for me, that sorted me out and I use it every single day."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt4YJ9QjzmI&feature=youtu.be
