Dan Burn: From Silent Suffering to Rewriting Newcastle’s Story (E357)

I was struggling, just could not concentrate and like just in my head all the time and it's like such a horrible feeling. But you don't understand why your brain's doing that. Like this is going the wrong way, like having like suicidal thoughts, like really struggling, do you know what I mean? And then thinking like I need to speak to someone and know why I'm feeling like this. Having my daughter changed my life completely.

Your perspective changes, you realises that like I'm here for you. And you don't let like a bad day become a bad week become a bad month. That is the voice of Newcastle and England defender Dan Byrne, who joins us this week here on High Performance. And what a story he has to tell. Look, Dan is about to go deep on the pain of being released by Newcastle United, aged just 11, but then scoring a goal in the League Cup final a couple of decades later that ended the club's.

70-year wait for silverware. What a story, Damien. What a story. But this isn't just somebody whose comeback was bigger than the setback, but it's about somebody that's had to overcome severe anxiety and real crippling self-doubt at times. Dan speaks really candidly about the intrusive thoughts that occupied his mind while he was at Fulham, how he struggled with social media, and how he's finally managed to stop caring what people think.

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