How To Overcome The Worst Pain Of Your Life - Jeremy Renner - #937

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Are you sick of people asking you how you are?

**Jeremy Renner** (0:03)
No, no, no. Well, there's a real honest answer that comes behind it, right? Whether they're asking or not, you get a real honest answer. And sometimes it's in the inopportune times. I remember doing a podcast, but it was over Zoom, right? And the technical issues that were happening, to set it up and the thing, and what mic to use and how to use it, I'm not the tech guy. And I was getting very frustrated, and I was getting probably pretty hangry. And like the beginning of this podcast was probably pretty awful. I was quite a cunt. I think.
But they ask you, look, I'm sorry, I'm just gonna work through this and the thing, I'm not good with tech. And I just have this real, realist, honest way to kind of live. So I'm not sick in the long way to answer this. I'm not really sick of people asking how I am, because I just really do tell them. And if they do care about, if it's about the recovery, or if it's about just sort of my health or even mental health, I don't care how they intend it. I just sort of explain kind of how I am in a really truthful, honest way. It's quite beautiful.

**Chris Williamson** (1:13)
Have you always been like that?

**Jeremy Renner** (1:15)
I've always been pretty direct, but I don't think I'd be as open and revealing. I'm much more open and revealing because of having to focus on myself so much.

**Chris Williamson** (1:27)
Why do you think that is? No time to obfuscate or sort of play the social moray game?

**Jeremy Renner** (1:34)
Yeah, I was never good at that, man. I'm in a crowd of people. I get anxiety and I'd have to like medicate with alcohol or something to sort of calm the nerves of being around so many people. I was thinking if it's going to be a fire, so many people are going to die and people are going to get hurt. People are kind of terrible to each other in large crowds.

**Chris Williamson** (1:54)
Yeah.

**Jeremy Renner** (1:55)
They get the more people in a room, the respect level for humanity kind of diminishes.

**Chris Williamson** (2:00)
Yeah, the more humans they are, the less humane they are.

**Jeremy Renner** (2:02)
Exactly. I just refuse to be in that environment because I think it's disgusting. That behavior, I'm very affected by it and very sensitive to it. So I just choose not to be in those environments.

**Chris Williamson** (2:14)
It sounds like you've got a little bit of a nervous disposition. I think I would say that that's my kind of background too.
Thinking, sometimes overthinking, looking for potential errors and issues and maybe being a little bit sensitive to the energy of what's going on around you.

**Jeremy Renner** (2:30)
Definitely very sensitive. I've always been an observer and quite insular in my thoughts and things. I'm not a talker of small things. I can't really have any quite small trivial talk. I certainly can have a good time, until jokes and da-da-da, but most of the conversations I have are quite in-depth, they're quite thoughtful, or spiritual, or psychological, emotionally driven, connective sort of tissue. Not just sort of like, let's just talk about the Starbucks order. I mean, I just don't belong in that conversation. But that's just me.
When I know those things about myself, I just try to put myself not in those situations. So I don't set myself up to fail.

**Chris Williamson** (3:16)
Is there a challenge with wanting that level of openness, that level of emotional connection vulnerability, but also having an additional level of scrutiny? Lots and lots of attention, press, people caring, so these kind of two things are a little bit at odds there.

**Jeremy Renner** (3:33)
Yeah, but not now. It used to be. Because the platform was to be a famous person talking about a movie, or some work you did. This is not that, right? I'm here today to talk about health and wellness and overcoming obstacles, and it's nothing more human than...

**Chris Williamson** (3:53)
So it feels much more personal.

**Jeremy Renner** (3:54)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more, I think, exciting, because I think there are willing ears. I don't have to force, hey, I'm here to tell you about this Avenger movie. And here I...

**Chris Williamson** (4:07)
There was a lot of willing ears for the Avenger movie.

**Jeremy Renner** (4:09)
Yeah, there was a lot of willing ears, but I couldn't really talk about anything. And then, you know, you're kind of... Not that you're selling something, but you're kind of selling something. This I'm not, man. I really am not. And it's... There's, I think... I still am not sure how and why there is interest in something. And me dying coming back, perhaps. You know, I don't really know what's interesting. I can tell you why it's interesting to me. When you ask me why it's interesting to me, is that I'm not fucking dead. That's why it's really cool, man.