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[0:00] Bobby Steggert: I'm Bobby Steggert, and this is The Quiet Part Out Loud.

[0:15] Bobby Steggert: Some of our parts feel, some react, and others observe. Whatever you call that part. Some clients call it their lighthouse, their air traffic control, their bird's eye view. It's that part of you that sits above all the other parts, keeping faithful watch like a sentinel, observing all of it, judging and assessing your every thought and word and behavior, scanning the environment and the people in it, keeping vigil over any possible sign of danger or risk. Our brains are wired to anticipate danger in an actually legitimately dangerous environment. Think saber-toothed tigers and warring tribes. Today, we're afforded the luxury and ironic curse of being relatively safe from most imminent danger.

And so that very same part of us that preserved us in life-or-death settings is left to worry over primarily social dangers. What do they think of me? Did I say something wrong? Am I fitting in? Will I be accepted? Add to that, like bees and ants, we're highly cooperative creatures, and social cohesion was always essential to survival. Watching ourselves with an outer eye is something we all navigate to one degree or another. And artists have a particularly tricky experience with self-consciousness. They must use it to reflect life. There's clearly a desire to be seen and taken in by others, and at the same time, to live a life that is on display risks an alienation from experience, when monitoring how one is perceived may take precedence over the moment itself.

My friend Christian Coulson is an actor, a director, a photographer—he took my headshots at one point. He's an all-around thinker of great thoughts, and since we were in our 20s, one of our favorite rituals would be to meet for several coffees to discuss the ways of the world for hours on end, searching for meaning and answers in all of life's challenges. His own experience of being monitored by the outer eye was informed by many things. An early awareness of otherness. A family life that required strict behavior. Interestingly, an inescapable all-boys boarding school environment with no privacy ever. And add to that a highly successful career as a young actor right out of school. Imagine graduating from college and appearing in a Harry Potter movie only two years later.

We discuss the omniscient, ever-present outer eye in many contexts, and most notably, how it's often a desire to loosen the straitjacket of watchfulness that leads people to escape self-consciousness using any number of avoidance strategies. When people say they're self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, what they often mean is that they're trying to create a merciful distance from their own inner watchfulness. Christian and I share how we are both currently searching for creative expression that is less about how we appear, and more about the creativity itself. This podcast is my genuine attempt at such a quest, and as you'll hear from him, his search may inspire you to explore the ways in which you can watch a little less, and be a little more.

[3:31] Christian Coulson: You play the cello?

[3:39] Bobby Steggert: I do, I'm taking cello lessons.

[3:41] Christian Coulson: That new?

[3:42] Bobby Steggert: Two years.

[3:43] Christian Coulson: What a cool thing to do.

[3:44] Bobby Steggert: I've never played for another person.

[3:46] Christian Coulson: Today's the day.

[3:47] Bobby Steggert: No, I have my first recital, and it's like me and a bunch of six-year-olds.

[3:50] Christian Coulson: Okay, okay.

[3:51] Bobby Steggert: Yeah.

[3:52] Christian Coulson: What a beautiful thing. What made you take that up?

[3:54] Bobby Steggert: I wanted a... This is interesting towards our conversation, actually, about the outer eye, because I wanted a relationship to art that was not about presenting anything to me. So, it's my way of being creative with no outer eye.

[4:08] Christian Coulson: I think I heard you mention that on one of them, and I really love that. So, I love scent.

[4:13] Bobby Steggert: Smelling with your nose?

[4:14] Christian Coulson: No, like, perfume. Like, the art of... I just love scent. And people are often... I actually have a friend who one day just went off to France to, like, train, and now works at IFF and makes a lot of the great scents. And someone, I remember, around the time that he was doing that was like, you should do that. You love this. And I was like, no, you don't understand. There's so many things that I love that I have changed my relationship to by trying to do those.

[4:37] Bobby Steggert: By monetizing them?

[4:38] Christian Coulson: By making a career?

[4:39] Bobby Steggert: By becoming obsessed with how they're done in a way where I don't get to enjoy them anymore. Engaging with it in a... Can I do that? How do I do that? How is it done better? And to just have... Unlike... I'm not playing the cello. I'm not making the scent. I just really like having something where I just enjoy it as an audience member.

[4:56] Christian Coulson: You don't know how the sausage is made?

[4:58] Bobby Steggert: No. I do a little bit because I, like, get curious. I don't have any interest in frying or... I just want to be, like, transported by other people doing it. And that feels really sacred in that way. I sometimes feel when friends in their twenties are like, maybe I should be an actor. I'm like, if you love it, find a way to do it that doesn't make it paying your rent. Unless you really have to. Because you get to enjoy it without having to worry about it all the time.

[5:25] Christian Coulson: I was thinking about the part that you suggested, the outer eye part. I was also thinking about the fact that when you started performing, you did a lot of film and TV as a kid. I'd done youth music theater. I'd done musicals as a teenager. And I had done, like, school plays. And then my first job was the week I graduated from Cambridge. So I did a TV show right then. But then I don't think I did a play for the first three years.

[5:48] Bobby Steggert: I've seen clips. You've shown me clips of your early TV work, which is... you're adorable. I guess I was just wondering if being on film and watching yourself as a young performer was part of what developed that outer eye as a very strong part of you.

[6:03] Christian Coulson: Wow, that's a relief. So I think I had that already. That was sort of a problem that I had. This, like, outside the sort of parental monitoring from the corner of that, like, how is this coming across? How am I being perceived?

[6:17] Bobby Steggert: Self-parenting?

[6:18] Christian Coulson: Yes. There's this bit of my brain that would watch me, that I think of self-consciousness or as this enemy force to me now in my imagination. And actually, what happened was when I started filming, first of all, I had to learn to ignore the lens because my brain would immediately be like, someone's pointing a gun at me from over there. And I learned ways to trick myself out of that. But then I discovered I can't watch. I couldn't. When I would watch, this terrible thing would happen, which is that I would have this strong sense of how I felt at the time of doing it, and I would see that's not what it looked like. That's not what came across.

[6:59] Bobby Steggert: When I watch it, I don't see that. I'm not watching it the way other people watch it. I'm spending most of the time being like, wow, is that my face? Why do I look... why am I doing that? I had this very distinct experience. It was actually the first screening of Harry Potter. I went with my dad till it was like a 10 a.m. screening, the first time they showed it to the cast and crew, I think the day before the premiere. And I remember really distinctly having this feeling of... I'd spent my whole childhood going to movies and feeling, oh, I wish I was that person up there. And I watched that movie, and I was like, I wish I was that person up there, and I can see that I am, and it hasn't taken away that feeling.

The experience of being in it, of doing it, the moment that we were filming, totally, but then the seeing of it, which I thought would feel like, oh, that's me going through the thing. It felt like watching a stranger, and it was this moment where my mental health really suffered, because I would think, oh, when I get that, I'll feel...

[7:55] Christian Coulson: Same happened on my first day of work filming ever, where I was like, oh, when I get to work as an actor, I'll feel in my skin. And then I got to the end of that day and was like, oh, no, I just have a whole new series of questions and discomfort. And I was like, maybe when I get to play the sort of role that I've always wanted to play in a major movie, I'll feel that. And then I watched it and was like, oh, it still feels like it's happening to someone else.

[8:19] Bobby Steggert: You're observing something that feels foreign as compared to how embodied it felt in the doing.

[8:24] Christian Coulson: Yes. Yes. I find watching very unsatisfying. And actually, it makes me feel more self-conscious next time I do it, so I just have to stop.

[8:31] Bobby Steggert: Because then it plays into the outer eye part.

[8:33] Christian Coulson: Yeah, I become the future me watching, being like, what's that going to look like? What's that going to look like?

[8:38] Bobby Steggert: I just want to share with you that I just did ADR for my role in The Gilded Age.

[8:41] Christian Coulson: Yes, how was it?

[8:42] Bobby Steggert: And I had the exact same experience. I was like, who the fuck is that?

[8:45] Christian Coulson: Yes. And how did you process that? And when that feeling comes up, what did you do with it?

[8:51] Bobby Steggert: I blamed myself.

[8:52] Christian Coulson: Okay, yes.

[8:54] Bobby Steggert: Oh, I lost it. I'm not talented anymore. All the work I did to prepare for it, it doesn't come across on the screen. And then I realized, wait a second, this is about editing. And they were editing between characters, and you don't see what I thought I crafted because they are crafting a relationship between three people, not just my performance.

[9:09] Christian Coulson: Right.

[9:10] Bobby Steggert: And it wasn't sound mixing, and it didn't feel full in the scene because it was just bare footage. And so I worked through bringing myself back to reality, but it certainly made me very self-conscious.

[9:21] Christian Coulson: So yeah, I thought ADR could be really, I really had to switch off the brain of that because I want to also start to correct things sometimes. And I don't remember the reasons why I did what I did on the day months later, so I just have to trust. But I really relate to that. And no one else is interpreting your face the way you see it yourself, because it's such an alien thing to see yourself not from the angle of a mirror. And one of the things I also discovered is people will say lovely things about a performance. But if I've seen it, I can't accept those things. Whereas at least if I haven't seen it, I can be like, oh, often they'll tell me things emotionally that are the things that I wanted to come across. The way they're interpreting it feels like exactly the story that was happening. But if I've seen it, I don't see those things. And so it messes with my ability. Then I decide everyone's lying to me.

[10:10] Bobby Steggert: So once you've observed something that does not feel authentic to the experience that was original, you discount it.

[10:17] Christian Coulson: When you're watching yourself and it's edited and the camera goes to behind your head, for example, the thing that I automatically find myself doing is watching the back of my head, which no one watching the scene is going to be doing. I'm like, oh, my mouth is not moving in time with the things that I'm saying at this point. Or that's what the back of my ear looks like. It's just very disorienting.

[10:35] Bobby Steggert: I want to back way up because what I loved about theater as a kid is that it was freedom for me. I didn't have to watch myself in any way. And so when you were a kid, how did as compared to childhood innocence, where one is free in their presence and their experience, how did you start watching yourself? What is your earliest memory of this outer eye bringing self-consciousness into your experience?

[10:59] Christian Coulson: Wow, that's really... I think I would have thought of that knowing we're going to talk about it. I don't know if this might just be apocryphal, this story, but I was in an all boys school and I played the Virgin Mary in a nativity play. And it was very...

[11:12] Bobby Steggert: Was it campy?

[11:13] Christian Coulson: It was the story of the nativity. It was only boys at the school. Hawley Farm is the name of the school in North London. And I remember my... I don't know if I've stitched this together since, but the joke of the thing was when I sat down, my school shorts were like visible. Mary's robe like rode up and my school shorts were there and my parents thought this was very funny. And I suddenly became aware that there was a different experience that they're having watching me than I'm having in it. But I don't know. I feel like that outside eye has always been there. I'm pretty... I'm very vigilant about any room I'm in. I tend to notice. I tend to have a poker player's reading of tiny shifts in people's behaviours, which I think served me very well as an actor.

And I think I apply it in reverse at the same time. I'm like, I wonder if they can tell these things. I've gotten much better, I have to say. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you today is that I would say over the last 13 years, this has become much less of a thing. Talking about it now feels like talking about an ex, rather than about something that's in the room.

[12:15] Bobby Steggert: An ex you're still friends with?

[12:16] Christian Coulson: An ex I run into now and again.

[12:18] Bobby Steggert: Okay. But do you like exchange pleasantries?

[12:21] Christian Coulson: Ooh, more like, oh, I know you, you're not good for me, but I can like wave and walk on.

[12:27] Bobby Steggert: So you're defining the outside eye, even from early childhood, as not something that was just watching you?

[12:34] Christian Coulson: It's self-consciousness, basically, to feeling that feeling of being trapped slightly in am I doing the right thing?

[12:42] Bobby Steggert: What was a concern with you being or not being primarily?

[12:45] Christian Coulson: Oh, I don't know. Do you?

[12:49] Bobby Steggert: For me as a kid, it was gay, right? Don't be gay. Don't betray your femininity, your difference in that way.

[12:55] Christian Coulson: I think sexuality probably is in there. I certainly am aware that like I was told I walked funny. My parents tried to get me to walk in a different way. I remember feeling like I was walking wrong. I remember that very specifically. It's making me blush even to say it. So it's obviously like potent, but I think it was actually more general than that. There's this not causing damage or getting something wrong. My sister and I were both very well behaved, I'm told by observers when we were young, in a sort of like we had to be well behaved or we'd be in trouble.

[13:27] Bobby Steggert: Was that an actual consequence you were trying to avoid?

[13:30] Christian Coulson: Yes, yes. There was a real need to be encouraged in the home we grew up to present well and to get things right in front of other people and to excel at what we were doing.

[13:43] Bobby Steggert: What about emotional expression in terms of having big feelings, in terms of having a tantrum? You're smiling.

[13:51] Christian Coulson: Yeah, I am smiling because the question is making me nervous.

[13:59] Christian Coulson: Was it encouraged? Was it even allowed? As according to this part of you, not even by your literal parents? What was the outer eye editing emotional experience? Yes, I think it was. And then also, as a teenager, I went to boarding school, all boys for the first three years, and then there were women in the last two years as they came in, like at 17 and 18. But I was in an all-boys boarding house, and there I would say it's hard for me to know about the very early childhood part. I would say probably no, there wasn't much space for emotional expression, and I think that there was also a house where other people were expressing very big emotions. There wasn't necessarily space for mine. But then I get to boarding school at 13, and there it's just deeply unsafe. There is no moment where you go home and have your feelings. I was in, from 13 to 14, I was in a dormitory with nine other boys, so 24 hours a day monitoring of your behavior.

[14:59] Christian Coulson: Yeah, by this part of you. Yes, and one of the things I started to do was actually, like 14, 15, I discovered that if I changed into my own clothing, I was making myself vulnerable to people's opinion about like how I dressed or how I express myself. So I actually made this decision about halfway through boarding school to just stay in uniform all day. It was just a neutral safety, and also to not even use the uniform particularly to express myself, to keep it very, like I was not someone who like untucked their shirt or grew their hair out. I was like staying very on the line to remain safe in that environment. For me, I think of an American version of this, and it terrifies me. Okay, I almost actually went to a boys' school, very fancy, the kind of Ivy League feeder school called Saint Andrews, and I visited. It's in Delaware. I visited, and it just scared me too much because of the kind of jock preppy quality to the boys.

[15:57] Bobby Steggert: How old would you have been?

[15:59] Christian Coulson: 15. Okay, but I imagine a British boarding school being like easier for a boy, a gay boy. Is that not true at all?

[16:04] Christian Coulson: No, I don't know. I can't speak about other people's experiences, but mine was, it can't have been easy because I didn't even, I didn't start like acknowledging my own sexuality till I got to college after I left. So there must have been this like repressive force, but it was strong enough that I didn't, it was like one of those things, you know and you don't know at the same time. Also, if you're so busy watching yourself, what room is there to wonder or explore? Right, and also being the thing that people need in the room at any given time. And if that's not desirable, that doesn't come in, that I don't allow that thought in. And again, this is like not how I live anymore. It really does feel like talking about an alien person, but that was just a space where there was no, I was surrounded by some really wonderful, like my housemaster was an amazing mentor and force for good in as much as he can be as an adult who's not my parent.

And there's still no space for me to like have a tantrum or break down or confide in someone really. And I also spent weekends at friends' parents' houses. I would often go stay with them, but again, I was like a guest in an environment where I wanted to fit in and be welcome.

[17:07] Christian Coulson: So you discover acting?

[17:09] Bobby Steggert: Yes. Was it like it was for me, ever freedom?

[17:12] Christian Coulson: Oh yeah, before the outer eyes started to get at you in that space too, 100%. I loved it. It felt like the place where I could channel the feeling. Also, it just felt like a place of having a feeling and it being seen, and also a very safe place to have big feelings where they're not going to cause a crisis. And I also just loved pretending to be other people. I like the joy of play in that way of make-believe is really core to the thing. It's so fun to me to imagine yourself into a circumstance and then see where it takes you. And also to do that with someone, it's like being a child all the time, and it's intimacy if you especially if you don't find it in other places.

[18:03] Bobby Steggert: Yes, that's true. That's true. And I just, I don't know, it was also something that I was praised for earlier. I think I started doing when I was five or six in these school plays, and people were like supportive of it. And so it also felt like having a skill. My only other skill was like being academically nerdy, and this got like a place where also getting applauded is so enjoyable.

[18:25] Christian Coulson: Of course, we all pretend as even the more successful actors become, the less they own how much they love the attention.

[18:30] Bobby Steggert: Yeah, sir, I did that for sure. I think it's interesting because the attention part, I have such a mixed relationship to it. I love it at arm's length, from a distance, and I find in the time that we've been actors, the shift into a sort of very direct relationship with an audience where they talk to you afterwards or they reach out to you on social media, and your own self is implicated in a much more 24-hour way. That sort of attention I actually find very troubling in some ways. It's not that anyone's doing anything wrong, it's just it feels like it invades some area of my life.

[19:09] Christian Coulson: Sure, and yeah, the impulse from a distance in the dark, isn't it? Yes. So when did you start noticing in your early professional life this part of you complicating things?

[19:24] Christian Coulson: I had a director who said she was mean to me. I was probably extremely difficult in that fact I can say I was difficult in that rehearsal process. We were doing Ghosts in London. I was playing Oswald, and I've been aware that it could come up that would sometimes freeze me, but we were having this sort of psycho drama of friction between us.

[19:46] Bobby Steggert: You and the director?

[19:48] Christian Coulson: That's certainly how it felt to me. I don't know if that's how it felt to her. And she one day was just like, you have this problem, which is that you are constantly watching yourself and could do yourself a favor as an actress, switch that off, which is a great thing to know but was brutal in that also a great way to not get the actor to do what they needed. One of the things that had to happen in this play was in the stage directions anyway of this adaptation, they were like, tears run down his face. I was like, I don't know if that's going to happen. I have a very hard time crying. This is actually one of my favorite things she said was, that's why it's going to be so interesting when it happens.

And then on the first preview, it happened so overwhelmingly that I could not recover from it. Oh, like I was shaking. I was so surprised by how upset I was. Now it's something that I could do, not I wouldn't say easily, it always requires this crafting, but at the time I never thought I would be able to do it. Despite that, success was she right?

[20:40] Christian Coulson: She was right. I also know that you have a director in you. I just wonder if that might be part of it too, that you understand story and how to put together story from a wider lens. And so was it also that your outer eye was not only conscious of you but conscious of how the story was being structured?

[20:59] Christian Coulson: I think that at its best, I can notice how it's fitting in the things, but it becomes this straightjacket. What really changed for me, there were several teachers who I went to who really reformed my way of working into focusing on the other person, into taking it off them. Remember when you did all the Meisner stuff? And I'm thinking of that specifically. I was actually just back in a Meisner class with Tonya Pinkins for three weeks at the Actor Center, and it was the most incredible experience to be back in that work. She had me up with her and had me in tears so fast. Like I was, it was just the vulnerability to be reminded that I've learned how to do that is really exciting. And in that work, I forget who I am or that there's anyone in the room. It's like I'm so channeled into the thing that's in front of me.

[21:46] Bobby Steggert: We'll be right back. I have to ask you, yeah, because you've been sober for how long?

[21:59] Christian Coulson: 13 and a half years.

[22:01] Bobby Steggert: Was alcohol use a way to try to?

[22:07] Christian Coulson: 100%. I didn't have to ask. Oh my god, from the moment I discovered, I think I started drinking when I was 14, and it was like the straightjacket was just snipped at that moment. So it really was about removing you from self-consciousness.

[22:19] Christian Coulson: Oh yeah, I can remember so distinctly there was this jazz fest in Brussels where my parents still live. They moved there when I was 13, and this group of American students from my sister's school, I went out with them, and we just were drinking late into the night. And it was like I was dancing on the tables, and I could like feel this connection to people. And I stayed up all night like talking and fell in love. And it was truly like I had discovered what it felt like. I had discovered how to finally escape my own shackles, I guess. It was like the voices got switched off, and for a long time they did that so well for me. It was just a really good tool to feel, as it is for anyone who can like maintain their relationship to it in a healthy way.

Social anxiety is something that everybody experiences. Self-consciousness in a sudden social setting is so common. It's probably universal, I'm sure. I imagine. And it's like a lovely way to take that edge off. And then if I could just stop there, it would be amazing. Or if I could just not do it when I know I have something important to show up for the next day, that would also be great. But both those things don't happen for me.

[23:24] Bobby Steggert: And did you then become reliant on the alcohol to deal with the self-consciousness in a way that felt like there was no other relationship to the self-consciousness?

[23:32] Christian Coulson: I wouldn't say it felt that way, but that might be the case. What did happen was when I stopped, I stopped twice. The first time I stopped, I just stopped drinking and tried to, I was just like, this is something I can just not do for a year. And then it was crippling. What came in was that was the worst I think I've ever felt. What was waiting for you on the other side? Yeah, that year was like torture. It spiraled into a deep depression, and I was suicidal by the summer, by like nine months into it. And I lost the relationship I was in, and I was like running away from credit card debt and like all this stuff was just like, I just couldn't function. I couldn't work. I could barely communicate with people.

It felt like, I don't know how it looked from the outside, but from the inside, it was like a horror movie. And then after that year, it was like I can drink again now. I haven't done it for a year. In my mind, I didn't realize how the timing fit together. And then suddenly everything got easier again. I was like able to pick up the phone and talk to friends.

[24:33] Christian Coulson: Do you know why? I think it was just the deep discomfort of being alive underneath I had dulled, and then it was incredibly sharp and painful to have it back. And I had also never developed any life skills. If I had started drinking when I was 14, I had developed every adult skill I had with alcohol. So I had no experience of how to do any of those things without it. And I also didn't know enough. I certainly didn't have the humility to understand that maybe I would need help or that it would be something I would struggle with. I was just like, I'm doing this now. And then a few years went by, and that was when I had the realization, oh, all I would have to, all I need to do is keep the amount to a really small amount.

But that's for whatever reason is something I'm not capable of. So I would try all these ways, like not having it in the house, not like drinking for a certain hour. And every day I would wake up and be like, oh, that didn't work. Somehow it ended up happening again.

[25:34] Bobby Steggert: What do I do? I have to imagine once you got sober for real the second time that the self-consciousness, the outer eye was able to helpfully also keep you sober. Is that true that it also had a function of watching you in a way that was healthy?

[25:46] Christian Coulson: No, no, I haven't thought about that. We can't not watch ourselves. So are there ways that we can watch ourselves that is better? No, if that's true for me, I think that what I started to learn was I was given a lot of help. And part of the things that I was encouraged to do was to find ways to be helpful to other people instead of obsessing about myself. And then watching yourself, it was about being of service. Yeah. And so that shift, this like real daily encouragement to show up for someone else, to find ways to show up for other people or reorient my life in order to be useful. I just remember being given this advice early on when I finally got sober and got help with it when I was really struggling to actually call someone else and ask how they're doing.

And it was even if it was just for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, two minutes of not thinking about myself, it was this relief in the same way that that acting exercise, that throwing it on to the other person, it was like freedom. It was the same sort of freedom of like the straightjacket is gone because I'm not busy here thinking about what does this mean about me. And when that creeps in, it's now so visible to me. I'm like, I'm making this about me, and it's not about.

[27:01] Bobby Steggert: What's been your experience with it? You said you have it. You don't drink as a...

[27:06] Christian Coulson: Yeah, I stopped drinking.

[27:08] Bobby Steggert: And did you find anything the other side of that decision that was tricky?

[27:12] Christian Coulson: Anxiety. So I had spent my whole young adult and adult life medicating anxiety. Would I call it self-consciousness? No, but just a lot of rumination about danger, what could happen in the future, and uncertain, unstable future that felt scary to me. And what alcohol did for me was to calm the fear.

[27:33] Bobby Steggert: And what do you do instead now?

[27:35] Christian Coulson: It's interesting. It does come back to helping people, right? Like my job, it helps me to feel present with other people in a very engaged, helpful way that helps. But exercise is the thing for me.

[27:45] Bobby Steggert: Oh nice. What did you do?

[27:47] Christian Coulson: I ran a marathon.

[27:49] Bobby Steggert: Yes, that's right.

[27:51] Christian Coulson: CrossFit, that kind of stuff. And of course, there's egotistical reasons to do those things, but it's...

[27:58] Christian Coulson: Also just about setting my body and my nervous system into a place that feels safe and a little bit more optimistic.

[28:04] Bobby Steggert: What starts happening if you don't do it? That anxiety creeps back in.

[28:08] Christian Coulson: Yes, I'm not necessarily depressive, usually, except for recently, because of the world. But, but yes, I tend towards fear, not depression.

[28:15] Bobby Steggert: Don't you remember when we were both younger, and my ethos was one of anxiety?

[28:19] Christian Coulson: Yeah, I remember you would talk about worry a lot. I think I didn't understand anxiety for a long time.

[28:25] Bobby Steggert: So when we were talking about those things, I think I probably didn't know how to process that feeling from your point of view. Because I, for a long time, was like, I had an ex who talked about anxiety. I was like, I don't know what that feels like.

[28:38] Christian Coulson: But wouldn't you consider the outer eye watching you?

[28:41] Bobby Steggert: Now I know. So this thing happened, the reason I'm saying this is that I would be like, I don't know what anxiety feels like. But then I would notice this thing would happen where I would start lashing out at people around me. There was this period I was in therapy for a long time, and I think this helped with that. But I realized that these moments where everyone else seems to be pissing me off and doing everything wrong, they're eating too loudly, or they are in my way, or they are really interrupting me when I'm trying to like that feeling of deep irritation.

[29:09] Christian Coulson: I slowly realized that for me was how anxiety was manifesting. There was this secondary thing being put on top of it, which was rage. And as soon as I started to notice that, A, I stopped being so annoyed with people. And B, I became aware that I can be deeply anxious. I can go through phases, as I'm sure many people can, of really feeling it strongly. But I really thought it was a feeling I did not have in my makeup before that.

[29:35] Bobby Steggert: It's that straitjacket idea. It's that if you're watching yourself, you're also preventing yourself from being inexperienced.

[29:40] Christian Coulson: 100%. My first ever therapy session, they're like, why are you here? And the reason I was there was because I was like in this place where I was like banging my head against a brick wall. I felt like I kept making different decisions. I kept ending up in the same place. And I talked to him for about whatever it is, 45 minutes. I remember at the time I noticed I talked a lot about drinking and it was a week later that I got sober for the second time.

[30:04] Bobby Steggert: But the thing that I remember most about that session is that we got to the end and he said, it's very clear to me that you were starved of affection as a child. And I said, that's not true. And before I could say the word true, I burst into tears.

[30:18] Christian Coulson: And that moment was this discovery of, oh, my brain has a very strong narrative. My body has a completely different story. And my body is going, oh, the thing he just said is true. But my mind is like, why are you crying? There's no reason to cry about that. That's not true. And it was like the armor got like cracked open at that point because from that moment of being like, oh, I don't know everything. In fact, my brain might not be trustworthy on a lot of things was the reason when a few days later someone said, hey, you don't have to live the way you're living. Like you don't have to drink like that. That was because of that that I was able to be like, you're probably right. Like, what do I have to do?

[31:03] Bobby Steggert: So you were walking around the world with a sort of significant level of dissociation from yourself.

[31:07] Christian Coulson: It does sound that way.

[31:10] Bobby Steggert: And I would get cast as characters who are. That was the thing is that actually a lot of my work in my first 10 years of working are these like dissociated characters. I was playing people who really had that experience often. And then suddenly this like shit happened and I don't live like that.

[31:26] Christian Coulson: So what I find so interesting is that you were an early listener of the podcast and you reached out. You're like, this is so cool. I love it. I was like, we should do it. And you're like, no, you wouldn't.

[31:35] Bobby Steggert: That's true. I said yes. And then I ghosted you.

[31:40] Christian Coulson: Did you?

[31:41] Bobby Steggert: I think so.

[31:42] Christian Coulson: Oh, you're right.

[31:43] Bobby Steggert: I think what I did was I said, sure. And then I just vanished.

[31:45] Christian Coulson: In terms of the part we're talking about, what was that part worried about a year ago when this was a possibility? And then also, why are we here today?

[31:55] Bobby Steggert: For all that thing of wanting to stand up and be seen, I think I also have this strong part of me that wants to stay hidden or be seen in terms I can control or in a safe way. And so I just got anxious about what it would mean to talk about myself.

[32:11] Christian Coulson: Do you have a particular anxiety about how you might be perceived?

[32:15] Bobby Steggert: Yeah, of course. Yeah, sure.

[32:17] Christian Coulson: What does it circle around?

[32:19] Bobby Steggert: That's good. What does it circle around? Everything?

[32:21] Christian Coulson: I don't know. The one I probably wake up with more than anything is the idea of I loved you talking with Lonnie about success. He mentioned something about redefining success as he got older, really identified with him, this reorienting on a daily basis of actually... I have a friend who likes to remind me that maybe success is like living usefully in the world as opposed to trying to dominate the people around you with your achievements, which is very hard. We're in a culture where the opposite growth and growth of a very specific sort of nature of an acquisition or of things you've achieved, achievement growth, all those things are really reflected back to us all the time, or at least that's how I feel.

[33:01] Bobby Steggert: It requires really a rejection on a daily basis of that cultural ideal.

[33:07] Christian Coulson: Even as I say it, I'm like, of course, that's the sort of thing you say when you don't have those things. But the truth is that I know people who have those, and I have actually at certain points in my life have had those things, and I was not happy. I've had nothing and been blissfully happy.

[33:24] Bobby Steggert: I do know that even though I wake up with this idea that if I only had that, whatever it is that day, if I only had that thing, usually something that someone else has, if I only had the thing that they have, I would be happy. And I have to remind myself that I have the experience, and that's not historically been true. Then there's the voices. There's just some tiny thing that you didn't have yet that you're missing. But I know people who have those things, and they're not happy because of them. When they are, it's because of other things.

[33:50] Christian Coulson: We're both privileged in that we got to check out several boxes off in our histories, and we know people who have checked a bunch of boxes off too. And those two forms of perspective can remind you that it ain't much. It ain't all it cut out to be.

[34:03] Bobby Steggert: Now would I like to be on the days when I'm unhappy without those things? Would I prefer to be unhappy with those things? Sure. Would I love, I don't know, money to do whatever I wanted at any moment? But I do recognize that does not equate to joy. There's so much joy elsewhere in life for me. I don't know why we started talking about this. I've led us off.

[34:23] Christian Coulson: No, it's like you've answered the question that's not, which is this, what is it that you feared you would be perceived as in terms of opening up?

[34:31] Bobby Steggert: Oh, I sidestepped that one.

[34:32] Christian Coulson: I don't know. That's a good question. What is the fear underneath it? I guess the same fear is like the not being good enough, not being lovable, being too much, being inauthentic, any of those things. One of them, even as we're doing this, I can feel that where the outside eye comes in this process is I've lived in America for 17 years. I'm very aware that my dialect has shifted over 17 years. It changes slightly. When I'm doing an audio book, I make sure to be listening to UK radio and making sure that I'm back in the place where my dial sounds all the time the same. But I can feel as we're talking the moments where I'm so used to talking to you in this environment where the lilt in my voice, it's like that little roaming commentary that's like, if you people are listening to this, they're going to be judging you that you sound more Americanized than you used to.

Because in the country I grew up in, in the UK, dialect is such a marker of where you're from and what your parents did and where you were educated and how we code all this information into accent there. And so shifting it is also a suspicious axe. You can code switch a bit, I guess, as we would call it here, but it has its own inauthenticity to it. And so that's when I can feel it monitoring me as I go.

[35:48] Bobby Steggert: This fear of being fraudulent in some way.

[35:50] Christian Coulson: It's not that I feel fraudulent. It's that this fear of someone else deciding I am, which is also interesting.

[35:56] Bobby Steggert: And we dumb Americans think your voice sounds wonderful no matter what.

[36:00] Christian Coulson: You're not a dumb American. A, I reject that idea of dumb Americans.

[36:03] Bobby Steggert: We have terrible voices.

[36:04] Christian Coulson: You are certainly not one of them.

[36:07] Bobby Steggert: We have terrible voices. It's true.

[36:08] Christian Coulson: Do you think so? I don't feel that way.

[36:10] Bobby Steggert: Yeah.

[36:11] Christian Coulson: I actually love it. I feel whenever someone reminds me I'm English, I'm like, damn it. Grass is always greener. But I think our vowels, our big, open, wide vowels are unseemly compared to your dialect.

[36:21] Bobby Steggert: I'm good at singing.

[36:22] Christian Coulson: That's why all English singers sound like Americans.

[36:25] Bobby Steggert: They do. Often the vowel sounds shift a little. Yeah.

[36:28] Christian Coulson: And Welsh people have their accent, the singing, which always has that, also has that wide.

[36:33] Bobby Steggert: Is Enya Welsh?

[36:34] Christian Coulson: I don't know. Tom Jones is, if you know who that is.

[36:38] Bobby Steggert: What else do you want to talk about?

[36:39] Christian Coulson: I want to ask a final question about now and forward.

[36:43] Bobby Steggert: Oh, you asked why today?

[36:44] Christian Coulson: Yeah, why today?

[36:45] Bobby Steggert: I wonder what you asked. Two things. One was when this year started, that thing of you get at the beginning of the year and you're like, what's my sort of word for the year? Which sometimes is helpful. And I started directing on camera last year. So I have been directing stage stuff, particularly comedies and one person shows in and assisting like Cromer for years in New York. And there's always been this feeling where I feel with stage, like I know how to doula Cole the Scholar and I worked together for many years and I knew how to like develop their shows with them. But it was really like a light touch. Cole brings so much. And then it was just like very gently being like, what if this were there and that were there? They know how to tell a story.

[37:27] Christian Coulson: Yeah, 100 percent.

[37:28] Bobby Steggert: And so I just felt like I was helping birth the child, not creating the child itself. And then two friends last year asked me to direct their music videos for them. And it felt like the opposite experience. It really felt, oh, it was actually the first time in a while where I felt like the thing that I love when I'm acting, where it feels like my personal psyche is in the material and it won't be clear to people where because it's hidden under the writing and the scenario as someone else chose it. That feeling of being seen and also it being a safe distance is how I felt putting these videos out into the world.

[38:08] Christian Coulson: It's a bit insulating you from the self-consciousness of the outer eye part.

[38:11] Bobby Steggert: Yeah. One thing I do love about directing is that the opposite to what we were talking about watching my own performance is that I can watch the video if I like the thing, it doesn't bother me in the slightest what other people think of it. I love when they enjoy it. And if they don't, that's also delicious to me, too, particularly if they have a violent reaction against it. That's exciting because I know I would enjoy it.

[38:32] Christian Coulson: So it's fine.

[38:33] Bobby Steggert: Performance, there's this paranoia where I'm like, I can't tell I'm in it. If someone doesn't like it, it feels like maybe they don't like me. It feels like I have embarrassed myself in some way, like I'm complicit in they're not liking it. But the directing feels and particularly when this felt like it sprung so clearly out of my imagination. And I will say directing the camera is so clever, like every single person's everybody is involved heavily, right? But when I see it, I see a little piece of me in it and it feels very satisfying.

[39:04] Christian Coulson: And what I realized was that if I wanted to keep doing that, I was going to have to not do the thing that had happened in COVID, which was that I got very cozy staying home, enjoying being on the couch. My socializing really dropped. Once things came back, I just felt like I had gotten out of the habit. It felt exhausting to get on the subway and talk to people. And so I made the decision this year that every single opportunity to leave the house and do something, I would say yes. And this felt like part of that. Like doing something different.

[39:35] Bobby Steggert: Like I know if I stay home and if I don't do your podcast, I know what happens. I think I'm also trying to, it's like another way of switching off that outside eye is just to put it out into the world, to be like, this is, here it is. And I don't have to be quite so secretive.

[39:51] Christian Coulson: And to be in connection versus relationship to self.

[39:55] Bobby Steggert: Yeah.

[39:56] Christian Coulson: And one of the reasons why I didn't want to do this on Zoom is because Zoom is another one. I have to have the self view off. I'm still aware that there's this odd, with the self view off, I'm aware there's something I'm not seeing that they're seeing. And with it on, it's just the worst. So it felt like coming in person would just feel much more like genuine in action.

[40:15] Bobby Steggert: How's it actually, I had a question for you, which is that doing a second season, what were the things that you, how is this feeling different? And also how is just going into a second season feeling?

[40:24] Christian Coulson: I did the Leilani episode about ambition.

[40:27] Bobby Steggert: Yes.

[40:28] Christian Coulson: I've really been questioning a lot about my own ambition. It used to be so focused on who would see me and who would validate me and what jobs I would get and all this stuff. And this feels so free of that. It feels like a really fun opportunity to delve into people that are interesting to me. And so whereas last year I was trying to build something, this year I'm only doing it for the joy and with people who really want to do it and who feel excited about doing it. So it feels deepened and more easy all the time.

[41:01] Bobby Steggert: The joy part, what are the things that bring you joy in it?

[41:03] Christian Coulson: It brings me joy when someone is surprised by a question that they've never been asked.

[41:08] Bobby Steggert: Oh, nice.

[41:09] Christian Coulson: And it brings me joy when someone surprises themselves with a level of depth or vulnerability or insight that feels new.

[41:17] Bobby Steggert: Sorry, that hasn't happened today.

[41:19] Christian Coulson: I think it has.

[41:20] Bobby Steggert: No, it's felt really good.

[41:22] Christian Coulson: This feels really lovely. And let me remind you, you said, I really want to have a project to focus the conversation around. That was one of your last years.

[41:30] Bobby Steggert: Oh, that's right.

[41:31] Christian Coulson: And congratulations, we talked about your personal life for at least 50% of this.

[41:36] Bobby Steggert: So that's, I think, a huge victory.