Comedy Therapist

How To Stay Sane When Dealing With Centrelink, myGov and The ATO Online

Centrelink has been in the news lately with reports that dealing with them is “frustrating as hell” and that “the system seems designed to stop people using it”. An Adelaide man became so frustrated that he launched into a tirade at a Centrelink office. Thankfully we don’t have semi-automatic weapons widely available in Australia because the frustration of dealing with government bureaucracy can make even the most sane person want to go postal.

I used to think that people who complained about Centrelink were simply biting the hand that feeds. It’s a government department that gives you money for doing… well, not very much. So why shouldn’t there be a few hoops to jump through in order to proved that you’re genuinely eligible and keep the fraudsters from our hard earned tax dollars?

Well I changed my mind somewhat recently after actually having to deal with Centrelink myself while applying for a Low Income Health Care Card. I’d been to the doctor the week before in my continuing quest to find why I feel exhausted all the time, and the blood test results showed that I had a high level of cortisol, a primary stress hormone.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Risk Assessment for The Graham Stoney Band

As part of my music performance studies, I was recently asked to complete a Risk Assessment. The idea is that you identify potential hazards that could cause harm to someone, assess the risk of the hazard actually eventuating, and then design some form of risk control that mitigates the hazard so that everyone can get home safely to their family after the gig.

I’ve done plenty of these kind of things in the past when I was working as an engineer, but this was a little different since it was for a rock band.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

I Put A Show In The Sydney Fringe Comedy Festival. You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

I spent the week before my Difficult First Show at the 2017 Sydney Fringe Comedy Festival curled up in a foetal position on my couch. It was right in the middle of music college holidays and I had been putting off finalising and rehearsing the show until this crucial break when I had no college work to do.

When I first submitted my application to the festival back in May, I figured I had plenty of time to get my act together. Come mid-September with just a week to go, for some bizarre reason I figured taking it easy was the way to go.

I had eleven songs I’d written for the show, mostly about experiences at college this year, which made up about 35-40 minutes of material. All I had to do was spin 20 minutes of stories between them and I should be sweet. How hard can it be?

Well, quite difficult it turns out.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

The #1 Reason To Stop Seeking Other People’s Approval

When we’re a child, we’re biologically wired to seek the approval of adults around us. Otherwise we would die. Humans are born with very poor individual survival instincts, so we are reliant on our parents and other caregivers to teach us how to avoid threats to our well-being.

We are born to instinctively trust our parents and to seek their love and approval, however misguided they may be. We learn pretty early on in life to do what we can to keep them happy. And while we also develop our own ideas about what we want quite young, often we get punished harshly when our desires conflict with those of our parents. Some parents withhold their love and approval when we disobey, which uses the power of our own instincts against us.

This is why you see so many parents giving their children behaviour-reinforcing proclamations like “good boy/girl!” or admonishments like “bad boy/girl!”

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Invitation to my Difficult First Show… This Weekend!

I’m doing my first full feature-length one-hour show at The Sydney Fringe Comedy Festival this weekend, and I’d love you to come and join in the fun!

Two shows only:

  • First Difficult First Show: Saturday September 30th 2017 at 5:45pm
  • Second Difficult First Show: Sunday 1st October 2017 at 4:45pm

Tickets are $15 for adults or $10 for students/concession.

I’ll be mucking around and playing crowd-pleasing yet-to-be-hit original songs like: (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

Anger Denialism

The tendency among many modern people to deny their anger and pretend that they do not get upset when their needs aren’t met, fuelled by the overwhelming fear of speaking the words: “I feel angry”.

Often the result of misguided cultural or spiritual teaching that portrays anger as a “negative” emotion that must be avoided, suppressed or denied at all costs.

Let It Out, Dude

Anger denialists are deeply afraid of both their own inner rage and the anger of others, leading them to shut down healthy expressions of anger in themselves and others, in order to avoid their own feelings of guilt, fear, shame or embarrassment.

Over the long term, this leads to a sense of frustration that finds outlet via passive-aggressive behaviour which alienates other people, leaving them even less likely to meet the anger denialist’s needs; thus fuelling an ongoing cycle of thinly repressed rage.

The resulting suppressed anger can lead to explosive and unexpected outbursts when triggered, and/or may be internalised as anxiety and depression in the truly strident denialist.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

The Song To Play When You’re Having A Bad Day

I was gifted the song Everything Is Fucked by the Divine Creator during a yin yoga class in North Bondi, Sydney, Australia at 6:37pm on 17th February 2017; while in Frog pose for seven agonising minutes.

At the time, I had been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for nine years and after five months pushing myself through three excruciating yoga sessions a week, wasn’t getting the results that I had hoped for. I had totally failed to pick-up at a yoga studio full of gorgeous young women, I was rapidly going broke because my Life Coaching business had failed to really take off (who wants a sick Life Coach?!?), both my elderly parents had been diagnosed with cancer, a sweet hot girl I met online and completely fell for had started going out with a musician who lived 12,000 km closer to her than me; and I was still chronically ill. When the dishwasher in my apartment appeared to have stopped working properly, that was the last straw for me.

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How To Be Assertive With A Neanderthal

I was on my way to music class this morning and the peak hour train was a little more crowded than usual. As I headed downstairs to find a seat, I came across a couple of men occupying two opposite-facing three-person bench seats. I wasn’t keen on standing for a half hour while two guys occupied six seats between them, so I politely said “Excuse me” to the guy on the aisle end of backward-facing seat, and he kindly moved over to the window to accommodate me.

Closely Related Primate, Also in Genital Display Pose

As I sat in the newly vacant aisle seat, I felt constrained by the man sitting in the middle of the bench seat opposite me. He was sitting forward with his legs spread wide in the classic genital display pose that male primates evolved to demonstrate dominance to other lesser primates. So wide in fact that his left leg and knee were taking up almost half the legroom in my own individual seat.

His behaviour may have been unintentional and unconscious; but it didn’t feel good to have my newly acquired space dominated by another man’s knee.

I’m working on getting over my fear of conflict with strangers, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to be assertive with one who was overstepping my boundaries; albeit boundaries that I had just stepped into by requesting the seat.

I made eye contact with the spread-eagled man and politely asked: “Would you mind moving your leg over a little please?”

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By Graham Stoney, ago