I was the funny type of performer.

If you’d put me in a party or something, I was always telling, not really jokes, more like funny stories or taking the piss out of myself or other people, bantering and having everyone laugh as much as possible.

That was very much a mixture of me genuinely enjoying myself and having a laugh.

There have always been people I do this with, when I’m not trying to get approval, like my best friend, for example—we're just having a laugh together.

Then, there were other times when it was much more about me controlling the approval I was getting from the room, trying to be the funny guy, sort of the Jim Carrey approach to life.

It's always been a mixed bag for me until I started my recovery and realized that there were healthy and unhealthy motives—like a closer shot of the person speaking directly to the camera.

The primary underlying motive had always been to get approval, love, and validation from people.

To be a healthy performer, that needs to be removed or reduced as much as possible.

A key way to look at it is that a healthy performer would not be largely affected by the reaction of the crowd.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here:

https://youtu.be/Ru-Lia8iVTM

‍