Slowthai checks himself with "innervention" rather than wait for intervention

Tyron Frampton is a musician from Northampton - you’ll know the 28-year old by the name Slowthai. One of the UK’s most raw and unfiltered artists in decades, his energetic blend of post-punk, rap, and everything else distorted, lingering, and dark.

He’s set to release his third album UGLY, on 3 March. In the build up to the album release - which comes after two hugely acclaimed records, a general edge-of-the-seat whirlwind of a celebrity persona that has had to develop warts and all, fatherhood, and the making of a beautifully candid, introspective new record - he said “at a time when I hated myself, creating this album saved me and taught me how to love myself.” More recently, he told Rolling Stone UK that therapy just didn't work for him and instead he's relied on "innerventions", something he name-checks in the record.

“I might’ve made it up, but you have an innervention where you do it yourself. You look inward and you go, ‘Check yourself, man.’ Then you’re like, ‘OK, I went into autopilot and I had to pull myself back into my body in some way but I’m awake now.’”

Sometimes therapy doesn’t work at all, for myriad reasons. But this doesn’t mean we haven’t learned from our time there, nor does it mean we no longer want to improve how we feel within ourselves.

It can also take a while to find the right therapist for your needs. Jonah Hill’s therapist Phil Stutz is a revelation for many of his patients, including Hill, because his therapy is different. Stutz saw that his therapy wasn’t really helping people on the level he wanted it to. In his words “I felt like I'd lead the horse to water but didn't have a way to make it drink”. So he changed his therapeutic practices, devising his own methods, coming up with his own terms. Suddenly, people were getting better, and it was thanks to him.

Slowthai might not have a psychology degree, but it doesn’t mean he’s wrong about having found a tool or technique that helps him to stay on the right path. Not to fall back into behaviours that have sparked criticism and general frenzy.

You could liken an "innervention" to "a moment of clarity", a phrase is used especially around the idea of sobriety and abstinence (or mindfulness) about addiction and addictive forces. Often, people say that that moment is what caused the change for them to aim to be a better version of themself. That’s been happening long before blokes were going to therapy, and will continue to. Not to mention, for the majority of us, therapy is hard to access and unaffordable.

We like to use the phrase therapised king, but this doesn’t mean someone has completed therapy. Nobody can complete therapy, or be therapised forever, really. We have times where we’re doing well on our own, and times where we need support and guidance. Whether that’s because something external has happened that affected us, or because we get to a stage in life that we’re less sure how to navigate.

Therapists can be the people we turn to in these situations, sure. But with anything, often speaking about your thoughts to people you trust is invaluable when trying to better yourself. Sincerely listening to other perspectives, guidances, can help us detach from our own mindset enough to look at the issue we're having from a different perspective. A bit like when you’re in a room and get so used to a smell that you don’t notice it, only to leave and come back in and then notice it.

People are always a work in progress, and whether it’s through experiments like staying in a box alone for (almost) 24 hours - Slowthai literally did this! - to just trying to be authentically himself and spending time having interesting conversations with people he admires – Slowthai is working to find the tools that help him feel good.