Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Dr. K on Fixing Your Anxiety, Redpill Men Are Good, & Beating Cheap Dopamine

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

YERRR – the boys linked up with Healthy Gamer GG for a marathon deep dive into the mind, ego, and trauma. Dr. K makes this episode part therapy, part philosophy, part “bro-yap,” and it gets real. Dr. Alok Kanojia and the boys are talking: – Mid-life crisis and almost becoming a monk – Emotional baggage, procrastination, and why diagnoses don’t always work – Guilt, sadness, autism spectrum, and male anger – Talk therapy vs. podcasts, estrogen, and Red Pill 2.0 – Psychedelics, meditation, breathwork, and power posing – Regulating ambition, ego, and the shame/anxiety cocktail we all carry It’s raw, funny, and kind of life-changing. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 0:00 Intro 1:39 Dr K's middle life crisis 5:55 Studying to be a monk + Success 9:24 Ashram, Purging + Feeling Control 15:24 Brown love + Actions over results 20:44 Learn everything before specialising 22:54 Ego driving decisions + Emotional baggage 29:56 What is the mind? Yogic method 41:53 Emotional coping + Not even trying 49:38 Diagnoses aren't working 51:07 Understanding motivation + Ping Ponging Content 55:05 Procrastination + IQ v EQ 59:42 Samskara & Guilt + Male Sadness & Anger 1:09:17 Autism spectrum + Sadness 1:13:14 Talk therapy is gold standard for women 1:16:30 Podcasts let bros YAP + Estrogen 1:20:26 Demonising homosexuality + Overburdening wives 1:24:43 Aversion to touch, ARFID + Kiss test 1:29:52 Fixing samskara + Red Pill 2.0 1:39:19 CBT, Looping + Awareness is enough 1:45:32 Psychedelics + Dealing with that stuff 1:51:16 Confidence, Disabling Ego + Ket v meditation 1:57:44 How to meditate, EFT + Power posing 2:06:52 Breathwork + Emptying the well 2:09:00 Anxiety & Shame 2:30:37 Regulating ambition + Responsibility Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People who have anxiety have a very low heart rate variability. This has nothing to do with what you're worried about. This is the way that you're physiologically wired. So what you need to do is there's like a red pill 2.0 that's kind of like happening right now, which I think is actually quite healthy. So I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. If there was not good stuff in there, it would not be growing, right? That's why you're angry all the time.

Oh, no, that's true. He's reading you. All those women being yapping. But look at all these podcast bros, right? So at some point we started demonizing homosexuality, and when we started doing that, men stopped touching each other. We can't just do this. We got to do like a... Yeah, it's got to be borderline aggressive.

It's got to be like, ah. Borderline aggressive or borderline homosexual. We can't touch someone unless it's a joke. I want a girlfriend, I want a girlfriend, I want a girlfriend. Just bro, like there's no way you can get this person to fall in love with you. Go be the best person that you can and accept that sometimes they're going to say no. So we could all kiss each other on the cheek and we could ask each other, what is your experience of this? right this has been a great podcast guys

see this is where he blames his autism that's why I don't believe it's autistic he's just black and homophobic I don't even know how to respond what's up everybody on the podcast today we are honored to have Healthy Giger also known as Dr. K, if you're not Indian and if you

are Indian Dr. Alokanoja he's a Harvard trained psychiatrist maybe a monk judging by the way he's sitting I believe him and the single best source to address mental health in today's doom-scrolling society. He's here to fix Alex's autism, my anger, and Mark's paralyzing fear of conflict. Guys, give it up for Dr. Alope. Hey, give it up for me.

Give it up, give it up. How are you, sir? So autism paralyzing fear of conflict and... Just general anger and just hold on. Okay. I don't even know what I'm angry. We can run this thing. Yeah, but if I got a grudge, it ain't, it ain't, I'm not letting go of it.

Like, Andrew, who's normally in this seat, he's like, as I've gotten more successful, especially if I get more successful than the person I didn't like, I let go of it. I don't. I still am like, nah, fuck that guy. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are we talking about that? No, me, I got out later.

Yeah, so here's... Fix it. Yeah, they have a real problem with this. Even though I'm right 95% of the time, these guys can't handle that. But point is, I listened to your diary of a CEO. I thought it was awesome. I think you're awesome. I've listened to a couple of your videos.

But I feel like, and I was just saying this to you, I feel like you're in a different place than you were a year ago when you recorded. There is a, you said I've connected more to my spirituality. I'm looking at, you're sitting in half lotus. Okay. You got the redrakshan. I don't think you had that on.

You were in a suit. You were like, now you're in the black tea. What's going on? So probably what, so I went through a midlife crisis a couple of years ago or started a midlife crisis. We'll see whether I'm done or not. Okay. And, you know, this is something that I think,

first thing that a lot of people don't understand. is that it's like developmentally appropriate. So there are periods of time in our lives where we have to go through crises. I think we're seeing a lot of quarter-life crises now. You know, the classic perception of a midlife crisis is like, dude is in his 40s check. You know, starts, buys a sports car, like, dies his hair,

maybe is going through a divorce or something like that. So I think we tend to like, first of all, pathologize it a lot. We say that this is a bad thing. But I think that many people, you know, There are periods in your life where, like, you are operating based on a certain strategy, and then you reach a certain point, and you're like, that strategy is not working anymore. Yeah, there's a ceiling on it. Yeah, or it's just like you feel like you're taking all the right steps, and you sort of end up in the wrong place.

Right? Which is oftentimes how we, like, live our lives, right? So we're both brown. And so when I was growing up, it's like, Alok, you're going to be a doctor. Yeah, yeah. You did it. I did it. Yeah.

I mean, I did it super late. So I started med school at 28. Yeah. And so I remember, like, you know, going home for Christmas one day, and I was like 24, 25 at the time. And, you know, one of my friends from high school, I was like, hey, what are you up to? And she's like, you know, I'm in my first year of ophthalmology residency. And she's like, what are you up to? And I'm like, I'm applying to medical school for the third time.

Yeah. You know. Oh, you applied three times. Oh, yeah. I got rejected from 120 medical schools. Wow. It's not too late, man. My mom is going to hear of this and absolutely right so so and that's what happens right here I mean we joke about it yeah but that's really what happens especially like manner you know taught to be a particular thing and then you do all of those things and you end up in a place where you're kind of like what am I doing here like what's the point yeah so um was somewhat unhappy which is kind of ironic because we you know I was successful yeah um but then is like stuff

started happening, it sort of felt like it was growing out of control in a good way. So I started streaming back in 2019 and sort of like blew up during the pandemic. And then a couple years later, you know, we started this company and we have like this research division and we have this coaching program and, you know, I'm going on these podcasts and stuff. And I was like, I don't know if this is actually what I want to do. Oh. Right. So what happens is like opportunities start coming towards you. Yeah. And I think a big lesson that I've learned is like walking away from good things is how you achieve peace and freedom in life. Wow. Yeah. Right. So you're like, someone sends you like a good opportunity and you're like, oh, I should really take advantage of

this. Yeah. But is that really what you want to do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So went through sort of a midlife crisis, had a lot of problems in my marriage at the time, too. I was just unhappy and I think my wife is awesome. I think she dealt with it really well. And then started to really engage in spiritual practice. So was coasting for a long time. So I spent about seven years studying to become a monk. and then basically, like, went to med school and all that good stuff, and then was, like, in residency. What is studying to become a monk? So when I was failing out of college, so now I'm 19 years old, just finished my sophomore year, have, like, a 2.0 GPA. You know, my parents had tried kind of everything.

They'd tried, like, tough love. They'd tried, like, you know, being loving and supportive. But I was just playing video games for 16 to 20 hours a day, joined a fraternity. I mean, it was great. like yeah yeah i actually don't regret it at all i i think if you want to you know if you want to screw up your 20s is the time to do that is true and um i also think it's really weird because like especially like a lot of indian people you know they'll be like oh like i got to like get all my stuff done and i'm like super like type a right yeah and so what they're the earlier i start working the

earlier i can retire yeah yeah yeah you're trading your 20s for more free you're giving up the freedom in your 20s for more freedom in your 60s yeah yeah that's that's doesn't sound like a good trade. No, it's not. I think we defined, we are taught by our parents, and they didn't mean to, but we're kind of taught success is one metric. It is financial and academic and whatever, and that's it. There's not like a 360 degree view of what success is for us. Like success is being a great father. Like if you're a billionaire and not a great father, I think most Indians would still be like, look at that guy. But most Indian parents, or at least we would look at that as successful. But now I'm learning, that's failure.

If my wife hates me and I have kids who would resent me, it all matter. matter what I do in my career. I'm a failed. Yeah. So I think that that's a virtue of the world they grew up in and the virtue of the world that we grow up in. Right. So my parents, uh, you know, emigrated from India and like my dad, you know, grew up living in like an eight by 10 room with like nine people. So they would sleep like outside the house in the stairwell. Like so they'd put out like sleeping, not sleeping bags, but you know, God was. Yeah. You know what that is. But they put out like basically like, their beds they would sleep like in the stairwell like every you know area where you kind of climb up and then you know you kind of turn around so it'd be like one or two people sleeping there right

and so they grew up in a in a situation where like success was survival yeah like financial success financial stability and security security absolutely so you know my grandmother would tell me that like we'd run out of money on the 25th of every month and like out of money and so you have to figure out how to like stretch for like five or six more days. So I think that they grew up with a set of value system, a value system that was sort of determined by the system around them. I think the reason we all, I don't know about y'all, but, you know, I'm making assumptions about, gosh, but I can't imagine your path to being a comedian

was like easy. Looked upon favorably? Yeah. No. Right? No. And so we have to learn a different system. And I think that's why people are struggling so much because like,

The rules that applied 20 or 30 years ago about how to become successful, at the top of the list is go to college, get a good job. Right now, that doesn't work anymore. Like, you show up with a ton of debt. Jobs are being replaced by AI. You know, like 50% of people under the age of 30 are living at home. Buying a house is, like, not really a possibility for most people of like the Gen Z, millennial generation. So, like, all the old rules don't work. And so we have to discover a new set of rules.

And that's what I really tried to start helping people with on the internet. I realize we got far away from the actual question. No, dude, not at all. Oh, yeah. So just before we get too far, so you said you were doing bad in school, and then that's when you left to that practice? So my dad, I still remember the conversation. We'd been talking for like three hours, and it was like one in the morning, and he was like, Alok, you need to go to India.

Yeah. And I was like... That's her solution to everything. Yeah. Well, so I think it was a good one. So I was like, why? And he's like, you just need to go. And that was the one time in my life that I just, like, listened to him.

And so about 10 days later, I think eight days later, I was, you know, getting on a plane and then went to a part of India that I've never been to before, don't speak the language there, you know, got picked up. Like, so I remember, like, walking out of the airport. And, like, I didn't understand, like, who was picking me up. Where was India? A Bengal. Banglor. Oh, okay. So I still remember, like, there was no one with a sign.

or anything like i just walked out of the airport and i was just like there waiting with my suitcases and there was a you know a bunch of people milling about i don't know if y'all ever been indian and then eventually everyone left yeah and there was like one guy there yeah and he walked up to me and we like kind of shook hands he didn't tell me his name and he started walking and i started following him and it's like he's there to pick up he doesn't know who he's there to pick up i'm there to be picked up so i just got in a car with this stranger and we started driving sorry this might not be important why did you go to banglor To me, it's the most western city, so maybe that's why I would go. No, so I was going to an ashram outside of Bangor.

So I flew into Bangalore. Okay, got it. This is like reverse home alone, like instead of them leaving you behind the gesture. Absolutely. So they just sent me, right? And I was, like, desperate. I mean, I had tried so hard to, like, get control of my life. Like, I didn't understand, you know, I remember, like, every morning I would set my alarm clock

and, like, my alarm would go off at, like, 7 a.m. Because I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but I started signing up for 8 a.m. classes because I thought like, okay, like, if I sign up for an 8 a.m. class, then I have to wake up, right? And then if I get up early, then I can take control of my day. I tried that one semester. It didn't work. Yeah, right? It's so interesting. So I, like, would try to set up all these structures around me to, like, get me to do the things that I couldn't make myself do. And that just failed catastrophically. I'd, you know, the alarm clock would go off. I'd turn it off. I'd go back to sleep. What I discovered, interestingly enough, is the best way to sleep through my alarm clock,

avoid all the guilt and shame was to go to sleep at like five. Then I was so dead tired. Yeah, yeah. So dead tired that it feels impossible to get out and I'd just be like, okay, I'll get out of bed tomorrow. Then since I have this morning class load, I wake up around one or two o'clock. I, oh, if I get my ass out of bed, I can go to like one class at 2.30, but I've missed the whole day. Like, might as well just start fresh tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And then the cycle would continue. Yeah. Yeah. So I went to an ushrum. Yeah, okay. And I still remember the first, is it okay that I'm telling stories? Not a, yeah, everything, whatever you want to do, we're with.

So, you know, I still remember, like, I got to the ashrum around, like, 3 a.m. There was no, no power. So, like, their power had gone out. So they, like, took me to a room, and, like, there was a bed, and then I go to sleep, the moon was out. And then I wake up a little bit later because there's this bell ringing. Like, someone's ringing a bell. I look outside, the moon is still up. I'm like, I don't know what time it is.

Yeah. I didn't have a cell phone back then. Okay. This was 2003. Oh, that's a long time ago, okay. So, and then I walk outside and I see that there are people milling about. I hear, like, toilet slushing, things like that. So I'm like, okay, I guess I have to get ready.

And then, you know, I start walking with the, just following the herd of people in the moonlight. And then I hear this, ugh. I'm like, what was that? And then I hear, and then I'm like, that sounds like vomiting. and then I hear a lot of it like people like like like six seven eight ten twelve people and then I'm following these people and I see there's like a ditch yeah with a row of people vomiting like leaders of stuff into the ditch and there's a group of people walking behind them like kind of patting them on the shoulder and being like oh it's like okay like and I'm like what's

going on do like did I come to the plague like what's happening did they drink the water yeah so it turns out it's a yogic practice called Vamanthotty, where you drink a bunch of isotonic water, so like basically like salinid water with electrolytes, and then you vomit it out and it like cleans out your whole system. And so it was just this weird, like bizarre, like kind of esoteric yogic practice. And what I found in India was basically a system to understand why I could not control myself. Like I wanted to get up, but I wouldn't get up. and so how does that work like if you want something why don't you do it you know it's like such a simple thing

yeah but we don't teach this stuff right so fell in love with it because i felt in control for the first time in my life um you know found someone who was something like a guru who just really helped me immensely and then i decided it three months later um that i was going to become a monk so i went to one of my teachers and i said i'm ready to become a monk going to take my vows and so my teacher said, you know, becoming a monk is about giving up a life, and you don't have a life to give up. You're like nothing. Oh, God, you haven't done up. So he said to me... That's the most Indian parent shit ever. You're a loser. What do you give them up? Yeah, so he said, you know, I'll teach you so you can come back every summer and every December, and you'll continue learning. Like, you can progress and do, like, more advanced spiritual practices and things like that.

But you're also going to go get a doctoral degree. And then if you decide at the age of 30 that you want to take your vows, if you still want to do it nine years later, you can still continue learning, then we'll take you. Okay. So I was like, okay. So then I went back to the U.S. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go get a doctoral degree. Met my wife. She's Indian.

Right? Jesus. I knew I liked this guy. I knew I liked this guy. He's a big brown love guy. I love brown love. I also love brown love. You're learning.

You didn't even know he loved it. This guy acts like a monk, dude. Okay. The first time he's never said brown love in his life. I mean, when I'm really doing brown love, I don't know if I'd look like a monk. Y'all got to check out the OnlyFans. Which is interesting because actually, one of the things that we discussed, like, literally a week ago, my wife was like, you know, we should really start an Onlyfans. and she's CEO of Healthy Gamer,

so she's my boss. So she wasn't... I'm so Indian, it's unbelievable, dude. We need to talk about the conversation, by the way, but that's a later conversation. Sure, we can talk about that. Yeah, sure. So, yeah, she was saying, like, you know,

you should, like, start helping people on Onlyfans. And anyway, so going back to the Monk story, so then I went back and I met her and then, you know, promptly fell head over heels. We were dating for a couple of years. And then at some point, I was like, okay, I have to get a doctoral degree. And she was like, I want to be married. She was watching a Grey's Anatomy at the time.

And she was like, I want to be married to a neurosurgeon. So I was like, why the hell not? That's so cute. So it's so funny because people think that, you know, the early when I like was, I majored in pre-med, obviously. Yeah. But like I was like, oh, I'm going to be doctor. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be the best doctor.

I'm going to go to Harvard. I'm going to be the best. And then years later, it's like, we're going to do this so that we can get laid until we're 30 years old. and then we're going to give it all up. And so I was also telling her, I was like, you know, there's no, like, long-term potential here because, like, I really want to become a monk and that's my path in life.

She's like, yeah, whatever. She was like, okay, fine, whatever. Like, she did not bother her at all. And so ended up going to med school and then really didn't care about, like, grades and stuff because I wasn't, like, you know, oriented towards that stuff at that point. And then it was actually kind of embarrassing because my mentor called me after,

like the day of graduation he's like where are you and I was like oh I you know I'm not coming to the dinner or whatever and he's like you're like I'm presenting an award for you like why aren't you here and I was like oh shit because I didn't even know like I'd never looked at my grades like so I ended up winning a couple of awards

how are you not look at your grades yeah so like that's a big part of like spiritual practice is not being oriented towards the outcome of your actions okay so you focus on the action itself and so everyone around me, I still remember, like, the first year of med school, I, like, kind of came in. I was a little bit

older. It's a bunch of, like, 22, 24-year-old kids. I was 28 at the time. And then they're so paranoid about, like, grades, grades, grades. There are a bunch of these, like, you know, brown kids and Asian kids and white kids and black kids and Hispanic kids. And they're all oriented. Not a bunch. In order, by the way. So it's funny you say that. So I still remember my, the day I walked into intern orientation at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Um, like a third of the room was brown. A third of the room was Asian.

Yeah. Like East Asian and a third of the room was everything else. And I was like, this is insane. Yeah, I've never seen. Yeah, I know. Absolutely, man. All over the world. I mean, it's a big problem right now.

There's so much talking about it. And then they also litter all over the place. Wait, what? Like Brown people, have you guys not heard about those things. It's a real problem. You said it. Not me. I'm not part of this.

I'm in my uncle's house. I had like a rapper. I'm junk food, obviously, because I'm fat. And I was like, hey, where should I throw this away? I don't see a trash king. He's like, I just throw it outside. No way. I did see a video of a hotel, I think, in Mumbai where a girl brought her trash down.

And the guy goes, oh, thank you so much. And then tossed over the fence. And I was like, well, what's their culture? I'm not going to judge. Yeah, it's like when you have 1.4 billion people, like, maintaining civil order is like super hard. A little tricky. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Anyway, so I don't remember where I was. You're in med school. You're getting an award. You miss it. Yeah, so. So you just know that you pass. That's all you know. Yeah, I mean, I knew I had passed.

Like, you know, you sit down and you take a test. You know whether you know the answers or not. I didn't know about this. I didn't know about this. And really, I mean, when I was in med school, my orientation was like, okay, I'm going to be a doctor one day. You know, I'm going to just try to learn as much as I can because I'm not going to, like, practice. I don't know if I'm going to practice for long, but, and then was 30 years old when I was still in med school and had gotten married at that point, I think, yeah. So decided

to get married, decided not to become a monk. So, but really was just about, and this is what I even tell, like, the medical students and stuff that, you know, I'll mentor. I think a lot of people think, like, medical school is all about getting grades, because this is the way we've been conditioned, right? So, like, you've got to get A's in high school. You got to make the decision to become a doctor at the age of 15. Yeah. And then you can. You've got to be like, do good in high school so you can get into a good college, be at the top of your class in college so that you can, you know, so you're grades, grades, grades, grades, parents, parents, parents, parents.

So all these kids are like oriented towards getting good grades, but like I still remember I was doing interviews for residency. So I was like on a flight and then there's like, you know, you hear this intercom and it's like, is there a doctor on the plane? And I was like, like, I'm a fourth year medical student. I'm not a doctor. Yeah. And then like, I'm like, okay, hopefully somebody else will answer. Yeah. And then like a few minutes later, they're like, is there a doctor on a plane? And I was like, oh, shit. Yeah. You know, so then I like ring the call bell and I go to the back. Thankfully, there was another doctor on the plane. So I was like, you know, I'm a fourth year medical student happy to help. And there's like a dude like laid out. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, is he having a heart attack or a panic attack. And so I felt lucky. But that's what I sort of realized at that moment, and this is what I tell everyone who goes to. medical school is one day you could be somewhere like a wedding yeah so 50% of the weddings

i go to will have at least one medical emergency um you know that are indian because there's like hundreds of people there and you don't get to say i didn't study hard enough i don't know what's wrong with you right right at the end of the day like the practice of medicine is like a human being walks into your office and if you make a mistake like this person could die so you should learn as much as you can about the human body. Don't just focus on the thing that you want to do. Like, everyone sort of focuses on their specialty, but I strongly recommend that if you're going to be a psychiatrist,

you should focus on everything else in medical school because you have your whole life to learn psychiatry. But this is the last time you're going to get a chance. Like, I haven't delivered a baby in, like, you know, what, 10 years. And so every baby that I delivered, like, hopefully, those are the last babies that I'm going to deliver, and I won't have to deliver a baby. but if you're on a cruise ship or something and some woman goes into labor,

you don't get to say, yeah, I'm a medical doctor, but I'm a psychiatrist, and I just know how to talk about feelings. Like, I don't know how to do that. Right. So went through medical school, and then, how do we, why am I talking about my life story? Oh, I was wondering if you ever went, like, did the whole shave head, Tao is silenced, all that? So the other big decision I realized is that, like, after years of spiritual practice, I realized that I wanted to become a monk out of ego.

So, like, I had failed at life, right? So I remember, like, being 26 and hearing from my friend who was, like, finishing med school and I'm, like, applying for the third year in a row. And then, so, like, you know, what happened in my ego was like, oh, these people are better than me. How do I become better than them? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to become a monk. I'm going to become non-materialistic. Give it up.

I'm better than you. You are successful, but I am a monk. I see you are chasing all of these monies. I'm better. Yeah. I'm developing. It's a fantastic accent. If mine was that good, I'd have a whole different career.

So, yeah, I'd be selling out of the garden right now. Unbelievable. How's your accent's not? Dude, it's not that good because my mom moved here when she was 14. So she has an accent, but it's not like the traditional accent. And my dad's is kind of off, too. It's not like, it's so hot. I didn't have that, like,

Indian accent in my house. So I didn't learn that. Yeah. So what's funny is my kids will do the accent. But I don't know where they're learning it. Because we're not, you don't speak that way. My mom doesn't have it anymore. It's so weird. Like it's like genetic or something.

Yeah. Maybe. They're like six and eight. I'd be a doctor if I had the accent. I'm missing this genetic component. This is because you're pushing this whole time. That's really what it is. You're nice, dude. Exactly. Fucking unbelievable. Yeah. So I, I, I,

decided to i decided that spiritual practice is like not about wearing robes and shaving your head it's how you live on the inside um it's all like internal like that's what it is like you don't it's not about what you physically do it's about your attitude and what happens in your mind and what happens internally so it's like oh i don't need to do that it seems like there's a transformative like point like i don't know if there's like a specific moment or it kind of happens over time but i'm curious were you able to sort of self-diagnose the things you were going through in that period while you're in college, dealing with this sort of lethargy and, like, maybe depression. Again, I don't want to diagnose you.

Yeah, yeah. And what exactly is underlying there? And what are the tools that you use to get yourself out of that rut? So I can absolutely look back retrospectively and understand exactly what was going on. So I don't know if there was like a moment, but what I've qualified for clinical depression, absolutely. If I saw a psychiatrist, like I met all the criteria, wasn't getting out of bed, all this kind of stuff. I mean, I was addicted to video games. And so I think I probably could have been diagnosed that way.

But I think in terms of the understanding, I think it happened really in phases, right? So the first thing that happened was I sort of learned from a perspective of ego and stuff like that. I was like, okay, I'm like doing all this stuff out of ego, so I'm going to just devote myself to, like, action. So that's also where, like, you know, if you look at getting rejected from med school for basically three years in a row, a lot of people would like give up right but the reason you give up is because each rejection is not an individual event it becomes a pile that you carry yeah yeah yeah right so if you look at what really weighs people down in life it's that they accumulate stuff that they don't know how to put down so in my case every rejection i'm like oh this is like me holding on to stuff that's called

a sumscar. So I'm going to, like, let that go. I'm going to change the way that I view this, that I have a bunch of, I have the storm. Somescar. What does that I mean? Sunscar is teaching, right? It's the same word, but it has a couple of different meanings. The way that I understand this is, so you know when we say, like, oh, like, I've been traumatized, like you carry emotional baggage, right? So if you sort of look at the way that human beings work, we have emotional experiences and we internalize them in some way. We carry them around. So a great, great example is I had a patient once who was engaged to be married when she found out her husband was like living a lie. So husband claimed to have a job, would leave the house every day,

or a fiancé, would leave the house every day, would go to his parents' place, brown guy, would go to his parents' place, would just hang out there during work hours and then would drive back. And his parents were putting money in his bank account. Wow. Yikes. So all of them we're maintaining this lie that he's got like a career so that he can get married. And so she ends up like discovering this one day because someone sees him somewhere. And then he's, you know, he like goes to McDonald's or something and he gets spotted. I think literally at a fast food drive-thru. Nice.

On in a different part of town. And she thinks that he's got an office over there. So she starts asking him about it. And he's like, oh, yeah, like I had something. But she can tell that he's kind of BSing. So then she starts digging, digging, digging. And then basically like discovers like he's not employed and his parents are in on it. And they're, like, depositing money in his account.

That's great. That's crazy. And so she's so terrified of this. Then she gets into another relationship. And then this is how she ended up in my office because she's now scared because her husband, like, won't let her look at her phone. Right. So she's like, she's like, I want to look at his phone and I want to make sure he's not having an affair. So the second person has given her no indication that he's unfaithful.

But what happens is when she sees certain things. Yeah. So when she sees him on his phone, like texting people or whatever, like late at night, her brain has these prior experiences, which then interpret this completely normal thing with the context of her experience. Does that make sense? Yeah. So even there's nothing wrong, I had this experience in the past. I'm carrying this experience forward and injecting it in the present.

And if I don't know what y'all's like. Relationships are like, but we see this all the time. relationships were like they're not judging you yeah they're they're judging all of their past and they see their past in you yeah right which is why we will talk about relationship baggage we know is a society that people like carry stuff forward right so what is the mechanism through which we carry that stuff forward that's what in Sanskrit is called sumskar this is in in psychiatry you know we'll call a trauma okay or now you've been traumatized so you like see the world in a different way guys big announcement first of all we have a lot of

dates from now until the end of the year at akash sing.com. But the generational triumph tour, we're entering theaters. Starting 2026, we're going to be at theaters, probably near you. Presale starts now. Go to akashsing.com. The code is Akash. And then the full on sale is Friday. Thank you guys so much. We're in theaters, baby. We got some big announcements coming that I left off the list. You'll see what they are soon. I'm very excited. Let's get back to the show. I love you. And we're back with a brand new ad rate as a more style. We're going to be in Dubai on Number 7th, Nashville, Tennessee, Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Denver, Oboken, Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Detroit, and a bunch of other places you can...

Suck his dick! You can get it, Mark Agnon Live. I'll see you guys all the show. Thanks so much. Let's just understand what a sumskar is. Yeah. Actually, let's take a step back and understand what the mind is. So what I like about the theory of mind from yoga in the karmic religions is that it's

kind of a DIY theory. So if we look at like, if you study psychology, it's really hard to understand Freud's theories in terms of like what's going on in your head so Freud was like there's an anal stage

a phallic stage an oral stage and like I don't know what that looks like in my own life right I mean maybe if we're talking about Only fans but

but you know like a lot of these psychological concepts if you sort of look at the way that psychiatry developed is like you're sitting in that chair and you're talking to me

you're making observations about my mind and you're the psychiatrist and then you develop these theories. But fundamentally, you have no idea what I'm thinking or what my memory. You don't know what my internal experience is. So Western psychology and psychiatry is about observation from the outside. That's how our whole system of medicine works.

Yeah. Right? So how do we know if you have COVID? And I'm trusting that you tell me everything. Well, we account for the fact that I'm not telling everything. Right? So that's how we learn how to detect things. But if we look at like even how do we know if you have COVID or not, we'll like, you know, do a swab.

We'll take a chest x-ray. So Western medicine is like, you're over there and I'm going to look from the outside. So if you look at the application of psychological theories, it's really hard to do yourself. Right. It's very hard to like therapies yourself. Right. Whereas in the yogic system, they had one bit of information which Western science doesn't have access to, which is they could observe the mind. So I know what's going on in my mind. None of you all know what's going on in my mind. But I know what's going on in my mind. So the yogic system, I think, is way better if you want to do self. self-work, which is all what yoga's about.

Like, yoga's not about helping another human being. It's about my journey to enlightenment, right? I'm only working on myself. So in their system of mind, which I think is super cool, I've taught this to, like, eight-year-olds, and it's amazing how accessible it is to people. So the first is that you've got four parts of the mind, or five. So chita. Chita is what I would call, like, the sky.

It, like, if you look at the sky, there's, like, clouds in it, there's the sun, there's the moon, but there's, like, a backdrop. So the chita is sort of the backdrop on which other things exist. People will also call the chita the unconscious, but I don't think that's really fair. Second part of the mind is something called buddi. This is intellect. So we all have a capability of reasoning and analysis. Third part of the mind is the monas.

So this is the emotional mind, also the judgmental mind, also the part of us that gives us like or not like. Okay? So just to give you a simple example, if you use... give me almond butter versus peanut butter. Do you like almond butter or peanut butter? Peanut butter. Okay, so all three all like peanut butter more than almond butter. Which part of you does the liking? The muna. The munas, right? So there is this thing within us that gives us preferences. We don't choose them. It's not our intellect. It's not analysis. And if you pay attention to that thing, that's the same thing that gives you emotions. Because the emotions

just come up. You don't choose to feel a certain way, right? It is a preference or a reaction that arises within you. Then you can analyze it. You can think about it. But if I touch you over here, that's going to make an emotional reaction. Right now, you're suppressing it, right? But like, as I'm touching you, like, what's going on within you? Fucking get off me. Right? So that's the Munas reaction. And then your Buddha is like, he's Catholic. He's afraid of how much he liked it. So, so, right? So when you feel uncomfortable, you, you, you lock down, and when you feel uncomfortable, you make a joke.

Yeah. Right? So then we have this initial reaction, and then we respond to it in a particular way. And that touches like, nope. So, yeah, you got lucky or in law on my dude. Then the third part of the mind, and this is the, I think the main thing that Western psychology sort of doesn't get right is the third part is the Ahamqad. The Ahamgar is what we call ego, but is the feeling of I.

So this is not whether you like peanut butter. Do you all see how liking peanut butter is like qualitatively different from an emotion, which is qualitatively different from like my ability to do logic. So a humkhar is if I, if you make the statement, I am dot, dot, dot, dot. Anything that comes after the dot dot dot dot is your ego. That's the ahum car. So if I say I'm a man, that's my ego. Now that seems really weird because we'll say, well, like you are a man because I've got.

So let me ask y'all. Are you all men? Yes. How do you know? You can say X, Y, chromosomes. Okay. Yeah, you could say, you know, biology, the way we operate in society. So let's say that, like, you have an accident and something happened that you no longer have a penis.

Are you still a man? I don't know. Right? It challenges your self-scope of masculinity, certainly. Absolutely, right? So if you sort of think about your experience of life, like when I take it. a sip of this water, if all of my existence was just what, if let's say I was conscious for just one moment of life, which is this moment, would I be a man?

Hmm. I don't know. You don't know. Right? So that, it's just sipping water. Yeah. That's all it is. So if we really look at our lives, like whether I'm taking a dump or eating a taco or sipping water, right, like 99% of our lives, Me being a man is, like, not a real thing. You wouldn't be able to detect being a man. You know, when I'm, when I pull the covers over my head, like, I'm not a man or a woman. I'm just a dude with covers over my head. So this is where a lot of, like, our identity, our Hamgar is, like, this is our, it causes us a lot of problems.

Maybe the reason that you get angry. We'll talk about that. Can't wait. Conflict avoidant also. This notion of, like, the I am blank. Like, this is tightens like machismo. We're describing like, you know, masculinity, for example. Yeah.

Like, I guess we can understand physiologically people may be, you know, male or female based on like chromosomal makeup. But in terms of how that actually manifests in society, that's ego. Yeah. So you, if I say I'm a doctor. Right. Okay. So question number one, am I me? Yes. Okay.

Am I a doctor? Yes. Yes. Was I me before I was a doctor? Yes. Yes. Okay. So is being a doctor part of me? Yes or no? Yes. So which part of you? It's a part of me. But so if we sort of do that exercise with every attribute of ourselves, I'm successful, I'm rich, what we'll discover is that like all those things are temporary. Right? Like I could lose my license. Like I could retire and then am I still a doctor? All of the things that we think we are are actually illusions. Okay. So like let's say I'm a doctor. If I got trapped on a desert island for the rest of, of my life would I be a doctor right i would say yes but his why his license would expire right

and then there's no longer a practice of oh this is interesting maybe this is how i look at the world but your achievements are something that live on they cannot where do they live on very good in your i guess in your ego or like what i've accomplished so it lives on within me in my psychology yeah what i used to say is uh as i climb in the career like early early early on i'd be like oh, they can't ever take that away from me. Even if I don't make it, if I stop after my first good review and I don't become, I can't sustain as a comic, I did these things you can't take away from me.

Right. And being a doctor is something they can't take from you. They can't, you've done that. Yeah, but so you notice how that structure requires a me. Right? So remember, we're talking about parts of the mind. So that's not an emotion. It's not even logic.

That cannot exist unless there's a me. So that's the third structure of the mind or fourth, if you can click jit that. Then we get to Sumskar. So Sumskar is basically, I kind of think about it like emotional baggage that lives within you. So it's sort of like when we feel powerful emotions, generally speaking, what happens is some of those emotions go dormant. They don't disappear, right? So if I get like bitten by a dog, the next time I see a dog, I'm going to feel fear.

Where is that fear coming from? I'm not in any danger. So what happened is when I got bit by the dog in the first place, let's say my mom or dad comes. comes up to me and let's am a kid, and they're like, oh, you're crying, crying, oh, you're crying, we're to let's get you an ice cream. They get me the ice cream and suddenly I'm happy. So even though the emotion seemingly has disappeared, it can absolutely come back. So that's how a somskar works. So usually what happens is we go through life, we're accumulating this emotional energy which then comes up, right? We call it triggered. Yeah, yeah. Right? So if I say this particular

thing just don't comment about my beard like don't ever talk about my beard you know like that oh just like you can say anything but just don't do this like how does that work i'm not saying whether it's like fair or unfair or kind or unkind just how does that work mentally so generally speaking what we find is that if you have a sum scar here's the first way to detect it when you have a disproportionate emotional response to a situation i've been doing that yes you have right that's why you're angry all the time because that dormant energy comes up over and over and over again. Because the source of it is in your subconscious, and you calm yourself down, you calm yourself down, you make jokes about it, you make jokes about it.

Right, that's when you respond to it in the right way, but it'll bubble up. Oh, no, that's true. He's reading you. No, no, because my wife's auntie snapping. That's when you know you're honest and shit. My wife'd be pissing me off and I'd be making jokes a lot. I'll just kind of look at her and laugh because it's like, eh, I don't want to get angry.

See, that's beautiful. You know, the root of that. I've never lost my temper with any of these guys. I have a temper. But this thing that he, it's fucking, whatever, dude. Whatever. It's okay. It's all right.

You know, I hate you, dude. All right, go ahead. So here's the really interesting thing. So if you guys. He triggered something. He triggered. Yeah, I feel I find this a bit unfair. go ahead go ahead you find it i find it a bit unfair i'm misjudging you i feel they're misjudging me

you're not if you read that then i i'll believe it okay right so which part of you gets judged um the intellect the munas or the ego the ego 100% and when the ego arises anger will come with it so these two things will happen so another key thing to understand so let's let me finish this okay so first thing is if you have a disproportionate emotional response yeah that's how you know there's a sumscar. Because that's not coming from now. It's coming from the past. Yeah. The second thing to understand is when your sumscar activates, your ego will activate to protect you. So, when I was in college and I joined a fraternity, I was hanging with my homies. And what we would do is... Brown fraternity? No. Damn. So, yeah, Brown fraternity,

dude, there's... I mean, no offense, people would join Brown fraternity. They're, like, so toxic. At least they were at UT back when I was there. Oh, you were in? There was like two of them. them and they'd always get in the beats me. Oh, dude, I know probably the two brown fraternities. There was a beta kite beta and there was fucking, that was my cousin, DSP Delta. That's that. Right. Okay. Yeah. So like they would always go to six three, they'd go to clubs and then they'd always fight with each other. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, it was just, anyway. So, so funny. So once you have that negative, so I like, I like, I like a girl, right? And I'd be like, oh, like, my friends would be like, who do you like? And I'd be like, oh, yeah, she's hot, like whatever.

Then you, like, ask her out. And she says. no. Right. That's not good. Then what happens? Oh, your ego's great. Oh, she's not worth it. She sucks. She sucks. She's ugly anyway. Yeah, she's ugly. Like, I was doing her a favor. Right? So how do I feel emotionally? I feel rejected. And then my ego comes in, and it does one of two things. Either puts them down or it pumps me up. That's how the ego works. Yeah. Okay? So the sequence of event is, I'm going through life. I have a disproportionate emotional response. I feel a ton of emotion.

Happens a ton for men, by the way. Women, too, but I see this a lot in the men that I work with. Then what happens is you'll have some kind of thought, and you can pay attention, you can track this in your mind. I will start thinking negatively about somebody else, or I will think positively about me. And then here's the really interesting thing. So if you argue with someone who says,

I didn't like her anyway, No amount of argument is going to work, right? If you didn't like her anyway, why did you ask her out? Ah, I was just, I felt like it at the moment. So this is where a lot of people get so frustrated because they'll try to use, when someone else is behaving emotionally, egotistically, and you try to point it out to them, their mind is like a steel wall.

Like there's no amount of logic that seems to work. The defense mechanism is so strong. Absolutely. Can I ask you about a third option? Do you want to continue on those? I guess what if you agree? Like, is it possible that a woman could reject you and you go, you know what, she's right, I am the worst, I do suck?

Is the ego getting attacked in that case? So this is where there's two, yes. So this is where there's two kinds of ego. So this is what's really interesting. So in the West, we're very familiar with narcissism, right? And narcissism is like, I have a big ego. So I'm the best. I'm better than everybody else.

everybody should, you know, get in line to spend time with me. There's another kind of ego this gets a bit technical called Tham Sick Ego, which is just as powerful of an ego, but it is negative indirection. I'm a loser. I'm pathetic. I'm an in-cell. And if you try to talk to a narcissist about how they're not the best shit on the planet, they will never understand.

And if you talk to an in-cell, which I've done a lot, about how they're not pathetic. You're not a loser. You're, you know, like you've had some bad experiences. But believe in yourself, man. that low self-esteem is also ego because the really strong thing is I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. And when I work with patients who are depressed,

it's really interesting what they say, I'm a loser, my family is better off without me. My kids would be so much better if I was not alive anymore. Everyone at my job hates me, but it's still me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Which is what's really interesting because if we look at meditation and psychedelics in their usage and treatment refractory depression, The mechanism through which they work is they shut off a part of our brain called the default mode network.

This is the part of our brain that gives us self-awareness and allows us to think about ourselves and self-reflect. So when someone is hyper, super depressed, they're constantly thinking about themselves. I'm a loser. I'm pathetic. When someone is narcissistic, they're constantly thinking about themselves. When we shut off that part of the brain, that's what correlates with healing and depression, healing from some degree. of trauma, and meditation shuts off that part of the brain, too. So then we start, stop thinking about myself, right? That's sort of like, I'm not trying to get an A in class. I don't, I'm not looking at my grades. I don't care about achievement, right? It's just, I'm going to try to learn medicine as best as I can. So once the default mode network shuts off, and this is why people

who use psychedelics, like, they feel connected to everything. I realize I wasn't what I thought I was. This whole life has, there's this bigger purpose, this grander thing. I used to exist like this. And now I realize that I'm so much more than that. So it's really fascinating how all these things, there's a lot of, and the reason I sort of talk about these yoga concepts is because I think there's a ton of scientific evidence for them now. I detourge you a little bit. You were talking about how the ego will pump you up. Yeah, so here's the sequence of events. First of all, you have an experience where there's more emotion than you can metabolize, and we'll get to that in a second. That emotion goes dormant. The second thing that happens is you are going about your

life and you encounter something that pisses you off, makes you way more sad. Really good example as you're walking down the street. You see two people, this happens a lot in my community. You know, I see two people holding hands and it just makes me so angry. It's like, what did they do to you? They did nothing, right? That powerful jealousy arise. I want that. I hate them for having that. I want it. I hate myself for feeling this way. There's all kinds of just emotion that comes up. Then the ego arises. So how does that? the ego protect us? Let's see if we can do this, okay? It's okay if you all don't get it. It's a hard question because I'm just introducing these concepts. But, and for people listening at home,

how does the ego protect someone? What does it say to you when you see two people holding hands and you feel incredibly jealous and incredibly angry? They're probably not even happy. They're probably just doing this because they don't love each other and they're pretending. That's one way of the ego. be up you don't need that that's another way of the ego right we see that all the time right dudes who are like yeah i don't need anybody else i'm a pillar i'm a mountain i'm a stoic right i don't need anybody that guy's probably gay holding hands with a woman you know what's he doing that what a bitch that's one way of doing it right so i think the more common way is i'm a loser that's never possible for me okay right because that's protective it's 100% right because if it's impossible

for me to get a girlfriend, if I'm so ugly, so pathetic, what does that allow me to do? Not go after it. Absolutely. And when I don't go after it, you can't get rejected. Absolutely, which means I protect myself from, what? Rejection. Rejection, pain, negative emotion. Right?

So giving up on life is actually a protective mechanism because then you don't have to try. And so when you see people that are self-sabotaging, is this going in line with this sort of thinking here? It could be. That's one form of self-sabotage, but there's all kinds of other reasons why people will quote-unquote self-sabotage. But I think that a lot of people, so a lot of people who are stuck in life have a certain identity which excuses them from action. Right? So you'll look at these people and you'll see like, oh, like this person isn't trying. They've given up. Because giving up protects you from pain. It's also why people stay in abusive relationship. right? Because if I just give up and I just take it, all I have to focus on is survival.

And these people who have these identities that protect them from trying, these are the people we see this so much. They're just existing. Every day I'm on my phone. I'm playing video games. I'm using drugs. I'm doing pornography. Why? To advance the clock until I die. So what's happening when you actually want to do something but you're procrastinating and you're not doing it? But you actually want to do that thing. Like say, do something productive and it's like you just find a bunch of other bullshit to do instead of the thing you actually want to do. So the short answer is it depends. Okay?

So it depends on, so this is where I think one of the key things that I learn and I try to teach is that good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So right now, if you look at the world, right, including influencers like myself, we're out there on YouTube, giving people all kinds of answers, you should do this, get your testosterone tested, learn about stoicism, take these supplements. you know like do all these things like and so everyone's focused on solutions yeah but the problem i mean i you learn this the hard way in medicine real quick where to like i try treatment number one it doesn't work i try treatment number two it doesn't work i try treatment number three doesn't work

what's the problem my diagnosis is wrong so there are a ton of people out there why is the self-help industry so big because everyone is selling answers and the reason people keep buying it is because it's not working. Because the diagnosis is incorrect. And maybe it worked for the influencer, but the influence is different than the person listening. Absolutely. So that's another key point, right?

So people will sell what worked for them, but their diagnosis could be different. And this is where the word, for words like procrastination and motivation, these things do not exist. What do you mean? Motivation is a umbrella term that describes a ton of neuroscience deficits.

procrastination can come from many places. Your advice deficits is interesting. Yeah, so motivation is like, is that a deficit of willpower? Is it a deficit of emotional activation? Just to give you a couple of examples. So if I say that I'm not motivated, why is this? Oh, I thought you were saying motivation. Being motivated is deficits.

Oh, being motivation can be a deficit too, which we can talk about, which is really interesting. So if I say I'm not motivated. One place that this could come from is my emotional circuitry. So if we sort of look at what our primary source of motivation is, as humans, is emotion. Okay. Right? So if I, like, if I, like, show up at y'all's house in the middle of the night, like, you're in your bathroom. And, like, I step inside and I'm like, hey, gosh, you said I couldn't come by any time, you know?

And, like, your reaction to that, like, you're going to be motivated to do something. Yeah. So here's the reason. Probably. Whoa, what? I'd be like, why are you talking like that? I guess I walked into that one. I was like, what did I expect?

No, you're outside my apartment. Keep on. All right. So if you sort of think about it, like, most of, like, you know, if I, like, slap someone across the face, I feel anger. Mm-hmm. And then I want to slap back. So if we look at like anger, anger suppresses our risk assessment circuitry, which is on purpose, because I got to be angry in order to, because if I think about what's going to happen, like, you know, I need to act fast.

So here's the problem is right now in our society, we are messing up our emotional circuitry so much, especially through technology use. So everyone thinks about dopamine, but the key thing is if you spend your time, if you spend time on, let's say you scroll on your phone, do you all know what your average cell phone uses, by the way? Oh, it's probably high, six hours a day. Yeah, six hours is about average. What is your emotional experience on your phone? Yeah. I mean, neutral to negative. Neutral to negative is exactly what I would say.

Sometimes some laughs. Like, sometimes some positive. It's variable, I guess. Overall, I would say, it is variable reward, right? No, no, no, no. So when you scroll on your phone, let's be precise here, okay? Okay. I'm not talking about overall.

What is your emotional experience for like five minutes or ten minutes? Joy, I guess. Some joy. And then what? It's a sadness probably. emptiness. I think it's probably perfectly neutral. It's probably a slot machine, right? Like it's... So you guys are thinking, you guys are thinking it's probably, no, I want you to pay attention to your experience. Don't think about, forget about slot machine and random reinforcement schedule. If you look at the internet, what we see is variable emotional engagement. That's what all the algorithms do. So you see some terrible shit happening. People are dying over here. There's inflation. You know, this prime president is saying this. This prime minister is doing this. Then you see cat videos. Then I see my boy, Akash show up on some. short because he was at the comedy seller or whatever, right? And then I'm laughing over there

and I scroll and they give me something else. So what happens is there's a ping pong. If you really pay attention, they will ping pong you. And if they don't ping pong you, what you will do is switch to a different app that does a better job of ping pong. Wow. Right? So I'll see, I'm following some, you know, person on Instagram who's shown me a lot of flesh. And then some people make me feel really good. Some people actually make me feel really bad. Right. So there's a ping pong new emotions. Then what happens is it exhausts our emotional circuitry. So when I'm sitting in therapy with a patient, really powerful session or a podcast, I'm drained afterward. I'm emotionally activated. We're expressing so much emotion. And so then once my emotional battery is empty,

there's no motivation left. What is it that gets us doing things in life? I'm excited. I'm curious. Or I'm angry. I'm never going to let that guy. This, my girlfriend, dumped me and now she's dating a different dude. I'm going to get sexier. I'm going to get a hair transplant. I'm going to show her. Right? So so much of motivation comes from emotion. And then there's the dopaminergic circuitry, which is a completely different system. This is when we talk about reward and stuff like that. So when we talk about something like procrastination, oftentimes procrastination is correlated with things like perfectionism. So are you perfectionistic? do you need it to be perfect before you get started right so i have to figure everything out and then

i want to do it now why are we perfectionist that's how i used to be right because insecurity of i don't want to get rejected i don't want to fail to face that failure so i procrastinate absolutely right so if you can't afford to fail then it needs to be perfect so perfectionism is an antidote to anxiety because anxiety is like this could go wrong this could go wrong this could go this could go wrong how do I fix this problem, I make it perfect. Then there's no room for anything to go wrong. And so if I become perfectionistic, now everything has to be perfect before I get started. That means I'm procrastinating because getting things perfect is hard.

Right? So I know so many people who are like they want to do something, but they want to do it perfectly. Yeah. There are other reasons that we can procrastinate. So I think oftentimes procrastination is about emotional avoidance. So my favorite example of this is something that I struggled with a lot And I remember on the receiving end of or I used to be When I was faculty and teaching is like sometimes you know you have to email a professor

Hey can I get an extension But what if they say no? Right So there's this part of your brain that is like this is a bad outcome If I never send the email I can never get rejected So there's a certain amount of emotional avoidance in procrastination So if you're trying to overcome procrastination A couple of things that you can do is do you have anxiety or is there an emotional consequence that you're avoiding?

Yeah. Why are you avoiding that emotional consequence? Because of a somscar. Because you know that if you're in that situation, there's going to be a ton of emotional stuff that you can't handle. And so once you've identified that sum score, how do you ameliorate that? So it involves a couple of steps.

The first is notice it, right? So notice that, okay, this is a disproportioned emotional reaction. Second thing is observe what your ego does. And this is the other part that I was getting. to then the ego hijacks the intellect the ego goes to the intellect and says hey bro we're feeling terrible about ourselves i need you to help me feel better so give me a very very selective logic that justifies why this bitch doesn't deserve us and then the intellect is like yes sir yeah she does this she does this she does this she does this right and the smarter you are the more

reasons you can come up with. Absolutely. So this is why higher IQ is associated with depression. Higher IQ is associated with procrastination. Right. So higher IQ has become really maladaptive in our current world because our EQ does not balance. Right. So we don't know enough as people become hyper-intellectualized, they lean into their IQ. They lean into their IQ. There's a really great study that showed that how well you understand your diagnosis correlates with the degree of suicidality that you have. So if you're smart and you can look at your life and you can project out, I never dated a girl in high school. I never dated a girl in college because it was COVID. Now I'm 23 years old. I've had no experience the likelihood. And then I read all this stuff on the

internet and I see how bad things are. I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. That is a hard calculation to argue against if you're super smart because you're right. Statistically. What I mean is that if you have high IQ, the likelihood that you make a correct calculation is higher than if you have moderate IQ or lower IQ. There are still cognitive biases as a plane. It's easy to feel hopeless, I think, if you're really, if you learn smarter, because you just look at the state of the world and you're like, what is all this for?

Yeah, so IQ also correlates with like existential depression. So I did a whole lecture about that. That was fantastic. It's on YouTube. And so there's all these problems that we think of IQ as just like a good thing. And generally speaking, it is a good thing. But you need an EQ to balance it. And the reason that people with high IQ tend to be emotionally stunted is because early on when you're like a kid, you learn what you're good at and then you use that think.

Right. So if I'm right-handed, I don't go around using my left hand for things. My brain defaults to the most efficient thing possible. So then we start using our intellect, we start using our intellect, we start using our intellect, and then our emotional circuits become underdeveloped. Okay. That's really interesting. Now, in this case, why is the, I'm sorry, what is the term again for this baggage?

The sumscar, why is it different than the munas? Is that what it is? Yeah, so, so Munas is where we experience the like or dislike. It's where we experience the emotion. but the monas just creates emotion right now. So I'll give you a simple example. So the first time I touched your leg, there was no baggage, right? But now if I do this, what's happening?

Like I was going to grab my thigh again? Right, but I'm not grabbing your thigh. Right. But you're feeling emotion. Now, where did that come from? Some of it comes from this experience. Some of it comes from the last experience, which you haven't metabolized. So it is a storehouse of emotion.

That's what a somska is. And then it activates. Yeah. But now, is it not the inverse of like my mom would make me a specific soup? And I would have it and it reminded me of this time. I would spend it with my mind. You can have positive somscars too. So that would be allocated under some scar.

Absolutely, right? So when you have a disproportionate reaction, emotional reaction, that's what a sum scar is. They're not all negative. It's good or bad, yeah. Yeah. So this is interesting because through therapy I've learned. And I know, I guess you're a proponent of therapy, but maybe not all. One thing I learned, my wife and I, if we, if we,

got in like a really explosive argument usually be me because she'll like get annoyed and say stuff and she's just getting annoyed and venting i would take it as i'm not good enough because that's what i my sum scott was i'm not good enough so i had to learn when i would explode and i've gotten much better at this take a little pause and i literally just write a thing out to myself hey i'm good enough and she knows that this is not about that she's just frustrated that xyz if i take 10 minutes i can come back and be like okay i think i see what you were feeling i was feeling this but i understand you were feeling that cool great so now let's ask y'all a tough question why you said that when she gets mad at you you feel like you're not good enough right why does he feel that way what in

his history would create emotional experiences of him being insufficient i could think of a few things yeah like what i mean can we share like yeah yeah i mean like akash just talked about his relationship with his father. Great. Yeah. I grew up in a house where there was, like, abuse, and I felt like I could have stopped it or done something, and I didn't. And I carry that a little bit. I also think there's a little survivor's remorse that I'm here, and I see they're doing better now. Like, my mom's family in India, I remember going there 2008, and they were studying with the fucking torch. And I'm like, I'm here with electricity and a house and whatever. And I can't become a doctor. I can't X, Y, Z. And these guys. Studying by Torch cannot. And I carry a lot of guilt of like, why did I get that blessed here to be born here? Now the question for you, when I sit like this, how do you feel? Not good enough. Not Indian enough.

There we go. You guys see it? So he shows it as respect. He's like, oh, you're a real Indian. Yeah. And I'm bad as fucking. I'm like every Indian parents dream and every Indian kid's nightmare. I wear this, I sit like this, I became a doctor at Harvard.

medical school yeah oh my god right indian kids would always get straight days i would not right so all of that every time yeah every single time yeah you get an 88 or an 86 78 78 right and you can go gosh and you feel bad yeah and so these somcars accumulate over time and now they're so big that when you see things and in these things the reason that you use this is really important to understand. So men do something very special with anger. We turn all of our negative emotions into anger, which is why men are so angry.

Oh. So now, let me ask y'all, what is the evolutionary function of sadness? What does sadness make us do? I mean, we cry. Good, excellent. The connection with grief, maybe, to process negative emotions? Okay, okay, no, no, no, no, no, don't use psychological talk.

Okay. I can't think of an evolutionary advantage to grief. I can think of sadness. No, not grief sadness. I can think of one for anger. I go do things. What does sadness do? When I am sad.

So first of all, sadness has high visibility, high auditory stuff, right? You can see someone is sad. You can hear someone is sad. So sadness is the most outward facing emotion, if you really look at it. Now, when you see someone crying, on a park bench, what do you do? I mean, you want to go and pat him on the back and be like, if you're in New York long enough, you're like, shut the fuck.

At the very least, you want to know what happened. Instinctually, you see someone cry. If we look at the evolutionary purpose of sadness, I feel sad because I can't handle something I'm hurting. Fundamentally, we feel sad when we can't handle the world around us. So what do we do? We signal for help. SOS.

And then people, what do we feel like as human beings? because we're communal animals. I want to find out, hey, what's going on? Oh, my God, are you doing okay? It is a signal for help when you feel like you can't handle the world around you. That's literally what sadness does.

Why does a kid cry? Because they're like, hey, I need help. Now, this is the really tricky thing. When a man needs help, what does society do? What does society do? So when I signal, when I'm a dude, and I'm crying, what's going to happen? Right.

Rub dirt in it. Yeah. Grow up. You make fun of you. Right. What are you crying about? Men are privileged. I'll give you something to cry.

Yeah. All right. So we don't respond to men. So we have, there's one really troubling thing in our society right now, which is that we expect men to solve their own problems. We don't help men, right? So male rates of matriculation, so their ability to go to college is like, I think 60 plus percent of people in college are women. But there's no male only scholarships are very few. Right?

We're not trying to fix that problem. Yeah. male suicide has been four times the rate of female suicide for the last 60 plus years that's not a problem that there's any real systemic movement around right so we expect men to help themselves yeah so what men learn is that when I cry it doesn't work so sadness is a signal for help and so what we do is we turn it into anger because when I feel the only masculine way masculine acceptable way too and it's not even about masculine acceptability I think it even goes deeper than that what is the purpose of anger what is the purpose of anger what Is anger? Like rectifying injustice? Very, okay, so rectifying, right? So sadness makes me do what? Correct. Good. And that makes me do what? To fix my problems. Get help? Nothing. Nothing in America. Nothing. Right? So sadness is like I'm not, I'm not doing the problem. You guys fix it. Okay. Okay. But what does anger make me do? I fix it. Rectify. Yeah. Now I'm going to do it. Now I'm going to show them. Anger is a motivating emotion. Right? So anytime we feel angry, you feel like doing something. Right? And oftentimes when people get really, really angry, we tell them, don't do anything. But what do you want to do when you get pissed? Anything. Anything. Everything. All of it. Right? So this is where what we've learned as men is like, okay, the sadness signal doesn't work. So instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to transmute that into anger. And once it gets transmuted into anger, now I have the motivation to fix this problem because ain't no one going to fix it for me. Guys, today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. You know what Acorns is, this financial wellness app that helps you take control of your money, invest for the future, save for tomorrow, and spend smarter today.

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And so now I'm way more secure of myself. I'm in a better place. I actually force myself to cry. Like, I'll purposely watch a sad movie because I just need to feel something, make sure that's still in there. And then I feel way better after I get those tears out. Why am I doing that? What the hell's wrong with me? what makes you think there's something wrong with you well diagnosed me why is something wrong

with them yeah there's something there's something off he texted me he said what was what i don't know what do you think is what do you think is wrong with you i'm confused about why so you view that something that's wrong initially i would do it because i was worried that i was emotionless okay and then i was like oh okay i feel something when i watched these sad movies and then it actually felt good when i felt something so i'm like oh let me pick a time and place where I can get it out, and now it's like I have some nice balance in my life. Like, I'm happy, high highs. Do you feel like you have a lot of sadness in your heart way deep down?

Like, if I look at the state of the world and stuff like that, yeah, that will make me sad. Okay, but do you feel like you carry sadness, not the state of the world? Yeah. But do you have, if the world was a good place, would you still be sad on the inside? I don't think so. Okay. So I think, I mean, we don't know, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First is that people on the autism spectrum love anime.

And one of the reasons I really think they love anime, I've worked with a ton of people who are on the spectrum, is that, so if we look at autism, autism affects the emotional circuits of our brain in a very profound way. So it affects social circuits in our brain, it affects emotional circuits in our brain. Generally speaking, the intellectual circuits are completely intact and not affected at all. So oftentimes people with autism spectrum, this is also why people on the autism spectrum

are more likely to be transgender or non-binary identity because people who are non-binary, our sense of gender identity comes from our emotional experience. So, like, how do you know you're a man? Well, I feel like a man. Wait, hold on a second. Which part of your brain does the feeling like a man? That's fundamentally, usually an emotional and social circuitry.

So both of those things, there's a very high correlation between autism, spectrum and being transgender. And this is why I think that there's like a good biological basis for being transgender, because we know that there's social alterations and emotional alterations. And if those two things contribute to gender identity, then we would expect if we tamper with those circuits, gender identity will be affected. Now, the reason that people watch anime is because anime tends to have a hyperactive,

a hyper elevated signal of emotion. And what my patients who are on the spectrum, they just love, because it helps them feel. So I think what you're doing isn't unhealthy. There's nothing wrong with you. You are doing what a hungry person does when they eat. You are discovering that there's some environmental stimuli that are almost like self-medicating, that are bringing out these emotions that you don't know how to bring out in other ways, but they absolutely need to get out. And especially when we talk about things like sadness, I mean, there's so many physiologic things with sadness that are helpful. The rate of our breathing when we become sad and we start crying and then we're

right? When we do that kind of thing, that alters our parasympathetic nervous system activity, ends up reducing our stress level and things like that. So there's all kinds of benefits to getting your emotions outside of you. And I think what you've discovered, like many people who are on the spectrum, is that I need a particular kind of emotional trigger to help me get that stuff out. the other really important thing there is I think we make a huge mistake in the field of psychiatry which is that somewhere along the way we got into this idea that talk therapy is the gold standard talk therapy is the gold standard for women 70 percent of psychiatric patients historically have been women 70 percent of therapists and psychiatrists historically have been women so what do men

need to do to be better off less angry whatever if it's not to watch anime really i think I think talking about it is correct, but I think the way we should talk about it is different. We should use more physical language, right? When I get dumped by my girlfriend, it feels like she kicked me in the nuts, man. Right? So we force men into using like these very, like, certain kind of emotional words, which we just don't have access to. There's a couple of great studies about why men don't like to go to couples therapy, and it's because they feel outgunned. Not me, Doug.

I'll be dunking on my bitch. So, so hold on. No, hold on. Let's, what just happened? He's feminine. He's, because he likes therapy. I made a joke. No, he's, he's, he made a joke, right?

So what just happened? Happened like this. Did we see it? Mm-hmm. Men feel outgunned. Mm-hmm. What, does he feel outgunned in therapy? What do you all think?

I'm going to say yes. Good? Because just like when he said that you're a real Indian, he also said that he dunks on his girl in therapy. Right? So is he, is he putting himself up and putting somebody else down? Yeah. Right?

I don't, that doesn't happen to me. Can I be honest with you? I feel outgunned in every other part of my relationship except when we went to couples therapy. Awesome. That's probably what it is. Because in couples therapy, if you're a comic, you just, you tend to be bad, like, good with words.

So she would actually have the complaint of like, he can verbalize everything really well and really coherently. And I'm kind of like emotional and I can't find the words as well as him. But I think in the rest of our relationship, she'd be doing that shit perfectly. Yeah. So I think it's a great example. so I'm wrong, and I think it perfectly illustrates the point, right? So I think 99% of people will have Akash's experience. No, not 99% of people, that's wrong. I think it's probably

closer to 70%. But 70% of dudes aren't good with their words. They're not good at expressing themselves. They're not good at being emotive. Right? So Akash is, all y'all are incredibly emotive. But when he laughs, he doesn't... Yeah. Right? If we go back and we watch when all y'all like rolling around. I'm kind of like, this is funny. Yeah. But I was kind of like, okay. Right. So he is very emotive, very in touch with, which I think is part of what comedy does, right? So you have a lot of hurt. And you have to like learn how to grapple with that hurt. I think comedy is incredibly therapeutic. Right. So you take that hurt and you turn it into jokes and you help people laugh and you feel connected with people. So I think you're not lucky, but your

professional training, I imagine, helps you with that quite a bit, which is great. Yeah. I think the majority of men will feel outgunned for a couple of reasons. One is that women or girls tend to have a higher verbal fluency than boys do. So this is like, you can detect this at the age of like six. Their ability to like put things into words is better. They'd be apping. Huh?

They talk a lot. They do talk along, right? So, and we don't. Yeah. Right? Unless we're podcast, brus. Yeah. It's the one space

that we're allowed to talk, right? I love y'am. I mean, all those women be, so all those women be yapping. But look at all these podcast bros, right? Like, oh, yeah, like, we don't talk, but, like, acceptable where we get together. Is that because this is a one space

where it's, like, acceptable for us to talk a lot? Absolutely, bro. Wow. Right, why do you think it's not, why is the podcast, like, it's all podcast bros? Yeah. Because we don't have this anymore anywhere else. Ah.

It's not acceptable for guys to just get together and just get up with their boyfriends and talk. Exactly. So what do we do? Think about this, right? How do y'all select topics? What's, I guess, trending that we're interested in? Absolutely. So how do men address the issues that they deal with? We like listen to podcasts where they address the zeitgeist that all the men are going through. So we're talking about motivation, relationships, pornography. This is all the shit that people are dealing with. So they tune in, they hear us talking about it. And this is the beautiful thing. When y'all laugh, they laugh too they feel connected they're not alone anymore y'all are doing god's work here i say that

seriously right so there's a lot of emotional connection last thing about women that makes them better verbal things is estrogen the amount of estrogen in your system it correlates with your awareness of your emotions so a lot of times you know we joke about PMS and like when you're dating a woman and she's on her period you know there's like this weird like emotional fluctuation, that's literally because estrogen correlates with like our ability to detect emotions. So it amplifies emotions.

Yeah. And this isn't just women. Yeah. So I think the other thing that you can do is increase your estrogen level. Then you won't need to watch stuff. Hmm. And I'm going to grow tits. You don't need to do it that much. So there's a that has other advantages.

You feel? I don't know. This is really fascinating. So, you know, I used to never cry when I would watch a movie. And then I had kids. And what happens, it was so weird. Like, I had kids and, like, my, I have a two-year-old, and we watched, like, The Lion King. And, like, I started bawling. It's a movie you've seen before.

It's a movie I've seen before. And I was, like, crying. And I was like, what the hell is going on? And now, like, I cry all the time. And what I realized is, like, oh, like, in order to understand my six-month infant, They don't know how to use words. I need to increase, like, my empathic detection capabilities. He started crying more, and I might even saying this is a joke.

He started crying so much more when he had the sun. Yeah, absolutely. So this is a universal experience for men, if we're lucky. Yeah. Right? So our estrogen level actually increases when we have a kid at home. That is funny. And it helps us become.

Now you don't want to grab me, huh? I'm grabbing for, to be honest. So annoyed. No, no, no, not annoyed. I was like, I have, you guys don't understand who I am, man. What I'm going to do, what we should do is we should signal, bro. And you go out to one side, recording. You won't grab a tin.

Double team. Double team. Right? My husband, my head did his podcast, you're going to be an Eiffel Tower, right? I'm going to Taj Mahal, baby. That's good. What's the Eiffel Tower? You never heard of an Eiffel Tower?

No. Okay, we'll send you an, oh. Hey, we'll pull up a picture. Just I do an urban dictionary link later. Is that a direction? It's a sexual turn. It's a sexual turn. I'm intrigued.

Show me later? You and I'm looking at two. You're a double team and a girl and two guys. And then they give each other. He'd be supporting the beings. This is lowbrow. This is crude. This is how men connect.

Yes. So another really interesting thing is I think we got way worse when we so one of the biggest things the wrong with our culture right now is when we started demonizing homosexuality so what happened when i was growing up that's them when i was when i was growing up like you know touching another dude i remember when i went to india i was 21 years old and i had a friend there and like he was like there like two of his friends showed up and it was just the weirdest thing and i remember thinking because i grew up in like south texas and so like you know things were gay so like we're

this dude, my friend was there and he had his arm around two of his male friends and they were both rubbing his belly. And they were talking about how he's going to get married and how he's going to eat real well. And I was like, what is this stuff? So at some point we started demonizing homosexuality and when we started doing that,

men stopped touching each other. And now even as we're talking about this, right, what's the kind of touch that we do? We can't just do this. We got to do like a... Yeah, it's got to be born on aggressive. It's got to be like, ah. No, it's not a borderline aggressive or borderline homosexual, right?

So these are the kinds of touches. Like, I mean, you went for the tit, bro. To be funny. Yeah, so we've started doing this thing where we can't, we can't touch someone unless it's a joke. Yeah. And even the male hug is always pat that you don't hold. There's no like hole. Yeah, I think male hug is.

Two pets, heterosexual. I'm not trying to fuck you. I'll give a nice one. Right. So something weird happened where like men stopped touching each other. Yeah. And, like, people who are going to hear me say that are like, right?

Like, really, and now men are so, like, starved for touch. Women are, too, in today's world. But, like, there's so many dudes, like, I mean, I have held men in my arms as they cry in my office. And it happens a lot. And it feels great. You know, to be a dude and to cry and to just be, like, held. Yeah. And if men can start doing that for each other, I think our relationships with women will vastly improve.

Really? Absolutely. Because here's what happens. Like, so a lot of men are struggling to date because the woman becomes all of the things. She's not just your life partner, your sexual partner. She also has to become your therapist. Right? So now, like, when we share emotions, we only have one person.

We basically will cry in front of, like, two people. Yeah. Our wives or our moms. Right? Those are definitely not our dads. Yeah. So we'll kind of do this thing. And so what happens is a lot of times women will feel like there's a,

too much of an emotional burden when they date a man, like because the man puts all of their emotions on the woman. So many of my female patients experience this because the man doesn't have an emotional outlet outside of his wife. And so as you start to have, as you start to deal with your own shit outside of that, then you're like a normal human being with her, drastically improves the quality of the relationship.

Yeah, it takes some of the burden off. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. I'll come coddle you a little bit. I would absolutely love that. Physical touch is my love language. I love it. My favorite thing.

Now you made it weird. You hug. No. See, I want you all to pay attention to what happened. You made a joke. He was authentic. And then you said what? You're rejecting him.

This guy paints his nails and hugs everybody he meets. And I'm gay for wanting to hug it. Because you really want it. Don't want it so much. Yeah. So I think this is like an excellent, excellent example of. trying to kiss him on the cheek for years he won't let me Jesus Christ, Akash. What? I kiss Mark on the cheek when he had a baby. I kiss

Andrew on the cheek all the time. What makes you uncomfortable about kiss? His lips, they're nice. They are. I got a good set of lips, dude. You do how good list. If he had some white guy like one of these, whatever. That's like nothing. Did you let Miles kiss you? Miles, would you kiss Alex right now on there?

Miles kind, he got a kind of got a bottom. No, see, Niles and everyone has lips Just have, like, some ductwigs. What do you and I don't have lips? I mean? I'm catching strange. Miles, just kiss Alice on the lips, dude. No, yeah.

All right. Let's get back to therapy on all the good shit. We don't have to kiss anybody on the lips. Yeah, let's, yeah. But so the other thing, if you're on the spectrum, too, this is another important thing. People with, uh, on the spectrum and ADHD, their brain processes a touch in a different way. So it's really interesting. It's fascinating.

Some people with ADHD have a lot of. difficulty with sex because they have something called tactile defensiveness. So the way that literally your brain processes, when you feel a physical touch, if you have ADHD or you're on the spectrum, this can be perceived is ticklish or aggressive. So like a lot of like the foreplay that will engage in to sort of like, you know, loosen people up will actually like trigger weird things if you've got ADHD or autism spectrum. Another really good example, of this tactile sensitivity is textures

for people on the spectrum or ADHD. So I have a daughter who probably has ADHD and you guys know what Dahl is? Yeah. Okay, you do, okay. So Dahl is like an Indian lentil soup. But we put a bunch of stuff in it. We'll put like curry leaves

and mustard seeds and all kinds of stuff. And so one day, a couple years ago, you know, my wife was getting mad at my daughter because she had made Dahl and she wasn't eating the Dahl. And then I asked her a question, I said, you know what is it that you don't like about the doll and she doesn't know how to answer that question I was like is does it taste bad or it feels bad in your mouth and she's like I'm not sure and I said let me do

something so I took the doll and I strained it and then I gave her the doll and I was like how is that and she's like that's fine the really interesting thing is she ate the doll yeah and then she can take the individual pieces that I had strained out and she ate those individually but she just needs it separated so there's another diagnosis called arvid which which is avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, which also has this sensory difference to it. So, I mean, I know we're all joking about, you know, why don't you want to get kissed? But, you know, it'd be really interesting.

Like, we could do a very interesting experiment. And I'm not joking here, but I am joking too, because that's how we test boundaries with dudes, right? I'm going to make a joke. And like, if you guys treat it as a joke, then cool. But then, like, if y'all are like, okay, let's really do this. So we could all kiss each other on the cheek.

and we could ask each other, what is your experience of this? This has been a great podcast, guys. See, this is where he blames his autism. That's why I don't believe it's autistic. He's just black and homophobic. You know what I mean? I don't even know how to respond.

It's like, if I say what's in my heart, y'all can say it. My ass is going to get canceled. We got it. We'll say it for you. No, let us say it. Nah, he's not wrong, though. It's his culture.

It's his upbringing. Right? So, yeah. The problem is, even if that's your culture, the fundamental... I'm going to keep going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please, please. So you guys can keep...

It doesn't bother me. It really doesn't. But I think there's something important because I think a lot of people struggle with this. Your body's need for oxytocin, your body's need for connection, does not change, right? So if you grow up in a culture where you're not allowed to touch dudes, and it feels really

uncomfortable for you, it feels uncomfortable at the beginning, my guess, unless you have this neurodevelopmental thing going on where there's tactile defensiveness and things like that, so we have to be careful, right? Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So we don't want to force him into a situation because his brain is processing things differently from the way that our brains are processing. Yeah, no, I think it's more so growing up, it was like taboo, guys don't touch each other. And then being around more white guys, they do.

do the white boy fun. And I've gotten better with it over the years. Like, yeah. So, but does it, does it feel, does it feel like, like, is it just the physical sensation? Does it feel like, you know, here's the way I would describe it. So people want to understand, okay, is this like emotional for me or is it physical for me? If it's physical for you, if it's a sensory processing deficit, or do we call it the deficit alteration, you've all ever had, like, scrambled eggs with a piece of shell? Yeah. You know how, like, it's, fucking ruins it. That's what it's like to be autistic

and navigate through the world. That's a good-ass way to put it. Right? That's how you feel for real? Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, right? Like a little thing could happen and that just throws me off.

And it's like it ruins your whole, like it doesn't matter if it was just one little bite and there's four bites left that are totally fine. One little thing is like, ah, it just ruins it. If you talk to my short issue, you can tell you thousands of instances. Right, so this is where I think we should really have a ton of compassion with people for people on the spectrum. I apologize for not believing you.

It is their life is going through a neurotypical world with fucking eggshells and their scrambled eggs all over the place. The clothes we wear, the way that we touch, the sounds that we make, right? It's like there's just fucking, their life is just a little bit shittier, but way worse. Their experience of it is just so difficult. So in relevance to like the anger conversation we're having, what can you do to, you do to, basically disengage that anger, disengaged, that is the only way that someone feels emotion. I'm going to go back to the Sumskhar thing.

Then we're going to talk about your anger because I think that's the best way to do it. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me know if you don't feel comfortable at that. So, Sumskart, here's the basic sequence. Disproportionate emotion. Mm-hmm.

Activation of the ego. Mm-hmm. Hijacking of the intellect. So what we want to do is a couple of things. One is exactly what Akash does in therapy. So he takes a step back, removes ego from the equation, just notices what he's feeling, doesn't engage in an intellectual discussion. That's the biggest mistake that a lot of people make. All these people who are red-pilled

and black-pilled, they're just operating on the intellectual level. They're not getting to the ego or the emotions underneath. That's a great way of putting it. And so you could play that game as long as you want to, but it doesn't solve problems. It's a way of coping, and not necessarily in a bad way, but like we said, right, so if I give up on life, that allows me to protect to myself. So they sort of adopt this negative worldview. Right. And like then that protects them because it's not my fault. If I'm fundamentally broken, it's not my fault. Right. That I am not successful. It's not my fault that I'm single. Right. If I'm fundamentally ugly. Right. So then what we want to do is there are two important things to do. One is if you just observe the process, that is enough.

I'm sorry, just to go back to the red pill thing. They what is, so their process or their cope is it's not my fault it's women's fault they xyz is that what they do i think they're a lot more uh heterogeneous than we give them credit for they're not all one way they used to be that way but now i i think there's a there's like a red pill 2.0 that's kind of like happening right now which i think is actually quite healthy so really if you go to red pill like subreddits and stuff they tell each there's a lot of encouragement get your ass to the gym right like do something with your life become professionally successful and go to therapy like they're huge proponents of therapy now Oh, wow.

So I think that there's some, like, adaptive. So there's an evolution of red pill that's not what it used to be, and it's potentially a good thing. Yeah, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. If there was not good stuff in there, it would not be growing, right? So anytime we see human beings changing in a particular way, that is because they are adapting to their environment. So in a world where the systems do not support men, what choice do men have, we're going to support each other. Right. And I think the problem is that there's all kinds of negative emotion that gets turned into anger, which we already talked about. Right. So like sadness doesn't work. Crying about it doesn't work. So I'm going to get angry. And then when you get angry, it's very easy to blame someone else. There's also a hum car at play. So these people will like pump themselves up and put someone else down. Who do they pump up?

men who do they put down women there we go right so this is why i love this model like y'all are a bunch of comedians i think smart for sure right but once you understand this model you can understand so much human interaction around you right this is the ego at play so anytime you see someone being egotistical the question to ask yourself is what are they protecting themselves from yeah in the moment that you soothe that thing the ego will disappear. You can disarm ego by giving people kind of what they need. Now, fixing the sumscar involves understanding the process, doing kind of what Akash said, where if you just sit down and just write your emotions, so you can use an emotional regulation technique. So if you even do

like deep breathing or something like that, some like meditative stuff, I teach a lot of that stuff and meditation stuff. I have these guides and things. But if you do that kind of stuff, that'll help because then what is activating the ego is the emotion. So the moment that the emotion goes away, the ego will go away. And then when the ego goes away, this fucked-up logic will go away, then you'll be okay. The second thing that we want to do, this is the really cool thing, that dormant emotion can be brought to the surface and experienced fully and metabolized. So when you have like a breakthrough in therapy, right, this is where something comes up, there's a ton of emotion that comes to the surface and it's felt and accepted, not suppressed,

not distracted from. That's what we usually do, right? We bury it. But instead, what we want is like, so what's going on in therapy is like they're talking about some time in their life where they really felt hurt. And then they're bawling. I'm holding them. You know, we're all like crying. I'm crying.

They're crying. And then how do you feel? Oh, I feel so much better. And then they walk out and like a chunk of it is gone. So the way that to do that is I would recommend that people, when you feel this disproportionate and emotion, ask yourself, when was the first time? I felt this. And what you'll discover is that people who feel this disproportionate emotion, there's a time that

happened a long time ago where they felt that way. And it was a really powerful moment for them. And so when you go back to that thing and you sort of experience that again, that gets a bit technical and there's a whole somscar digestion process that we go through in our trauma guide. But that's the essence of it, is that you go back and you re-experience those things. You bring out that emotion. And that's literally what we do in therapy is we take all these dormant emotions

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I spoke with a therapist, and I was talking to him about early childhood experiences that I had, and he basically said, I don't want to talk about any of those. I want to give you tools to deal with the emotions you're feeling today. Sure. And I felt frustrated by this because I was like, my suspicion is that the reason I feel these things is because of these initial experiences I had in my childhood through, you know, family or whatever else, and I'm just now manifesting them in my adult life. And if I just dealt with it in this first instance, I can probably deal with it better. I'm curious if you've heard

of these different therapy tactics. Absolutely. So, so, you know, I think talking about your past, I'm going to oversimplify, but that's what we call kind of the psychodynamic model, where we like, it's sort of about dormant stuff. But then more recently, what we've had is something called a cognitive behavioral model, which is like, we're just going to alter your behavior and we're going to deal with the present. And if we really look at like what's causing problems in your life, it's not the hurt that happened before. It is the way that the hurt that happened before shows up today and affects your life. Right? So even if I like, even if Akash's, you know, his dad was mean to him or abusive or whatever, that's manifesting in the present in a

particular way. And we can deal with that manifestation in the present and his problems will be solved. It is the manifestation of that hurt that really screws up your life now. But so this is kind of like saying, I guess what I could say is like, you know, if I have a well that is ejecting feces, I can clean up the feces every time it comes out. Or I can go down and empty out the well. Right. But both of them will end up with a clean. surface. And the cognitive behavioral model, I think, so some people just like that model more.

That's just where their mind actually goes. And I don't know if you all caught that, but we sort of included both the sum-scar digestion. So you can regulate the emotion directly in the moment with breathing practices. And then the Humgar will deactivate, the Buddi will deactivate. We're not actually solving the sum-scar. We're intervening at the level of the monas.

Or you go back. And what I tend to find works really well is both. Right. That's what I would think. Yeah. So, I mean, when I work with people, I do both. And I think also from like a yogic standpoint, yogic standpoint, they don't give a shit about what happened to you in the past. They just focus on the present.

They're like, just understand what is happening. And the beautiful thing is that works, like, incredibly well. Even if you just understand this process and you observe it, that will take the emotional bite out of it. So I don't know if you'll get this. But when your somscar activates, you activate like a program. They'll kind of get that. You lose control.

I do. I do. Right? There's like, oh, like, now they're thinking, like, they're judging me and, like, I feel this way. And now I'm going to do this. Like, people start operating in a really repetitive way. And if you're in a relationship and, like, you trigger your partner, you're like, oh, shit, they're doing this shit again. And you can predict it. It's like, first they're going to do this, then they're going to do this, then they're going to do this. And until they calm down, like, there's nothing that we can do.

Right. Right. So you can stop the, in that pattern, a big part of that pattern is a lack of awareness that happening so if you go to your partner and you say hey you're doing this shit again they're like no i'm not you're doing this they have no insight into it so insight anytime you have awareness of what goes on within you you automatically control it you guys want to test that yeah observe your breathing but don't change it go impossible i can't you tried for like three seconds try for a little bit longer can you observe your breathing without changing it

I think so but I don't know how I was breathing before I started observing it so I don't know are you controlling it if you're observing it right now yes can you stop controlling it and observe it you can stop breathing yeah I don't know stopping breathing is controlling it yeah that's what I'm saying I can't

this is incredibly hard for me when I focus on my breathing like if I'm trying to meditate, I've noticed I'm like, I feel like I'm breathing. Like I'm not, now I'm in control of how I'm breathing and that's weird. I'm not just observing the breathing. Yep, right? So this is really cool. You guys have heard of this thing called Enlightenment. The person who can observe their breath without controlling it will become enlightened.

Really so. Oh. Okay. So that makes me feel better because it's actually incredibly hard to do is what I'm saying. Because I used to be like, what the full? why am I so in my head that I can't even just watch myself breathe? I have to, now I'm changing it every time. Yep.

So this is the beautiful thing. You cannot observe without changing, right? So even in physics, which I'm hesitant to draw correlations from, there's like this idea of the observer effect where we can't measure something without altering it in some way. So the beautiful thing is that even in your own life, if you have patterns, the moment you start observing them, they'll start to dissipate. They'll start to like sublimate and become weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker. So this is something that in the West we really don't

understand. Awareness is enough. You don't actually need to do anything. You just need to observe, observe, and observe properly. That's a technique that's pretty hard. But as you observe what happens, as you become, like, think about any problem that you've had in your life, once you really understood what was going on, it becomes way easier to handle. So even just acknowledging, oh, I'm in this recursive anger program. Just watch it. Take a step back and watch, okay, I'm feeling anger. There's the ego thought, right? And we've done it a little bit today.

Like, y'all, I'll ask y'all to, you know, what is Akash feeling right now? Where does this come from? And y'all are like hypothesizing, hypothesizing. So if you do that process for yourself, and this is important because this isn't like analyzing. A lot of people, this is the big mistake that a lot of people make. People will analyze their problems, but observation and analysis is different. Biggest mistake that people make. They say, oh, I'm aware of my problem.

No, you're not. analyzing. You're not watching them in real time. You are thinking about them retrospectively. You are analyzing them. Just watch it. And not as a detour is completely, but I find that this is a benefit of psychedelics. And that I've spoken to people that have done, like, ketamine therapy or even prescribed ketamine therapy, like there's psychologists that do ketamine therapy. And basically, because it's a disassociative, it will strip the behavior and the emotion or the thing that was done to you in the emotion. You're able to see the thing as a third party.

And you can kind of see things objectively and as a result of that, be able to draw new conclusions. I think he wanted our attention. Oh, no, you can stay on that topic. Okay. So psychedelics, I think, are really great because they give us a scientific insight into things that meditation have been doing for thousands of years. So the hard thing about understanding how meditation affects your brain is that the majority of studies on meditation in order to be, you know, like, I mean, to be non-biased, we take a bunch of random people, we teach them a meditation technique, and then we measure the results. So one of the exclusion criteria for most

of the studies on meditation involve not knowing how to meditate. So what we're basically doing is we're training up a bunch of amateurs. So the hard thing is that you have some of these people who have been meditating for a very long time, and successfully too, there's a big difference between just doing it a lot and doing it successfully. Yeah. And those people, we don't know how to study. So I saw this great, like, TikTok of this, like, yogi in the Himalayas who's just, like, running around, like, basically, he's got a loincloth on.

But there's a lot of stuff that people do. So there's one study that was done by the Benson. Henry Institute, I think, many years ago, that showed that you can, through yogic practices, you can alter your body temperature by nine degrees Celsius. Wow. Right? So there's all kinds of weird stuff. Like, there are people in the Himalayas.

20 plus degrees Fahrenheit, right? Nine-fifths plus 32. But I think the alteration is, you'd have to do both conversions. Okay. Right? But so, yeah, about 20 degrees. So there's a lot of weird stuff in yoga, but we don't know scientifically, like, how to study that.

So the biggest, at the top of the list is, like, altered states of consciousness. So the cool thing about psychedelics is that people will really like them, and why? Because they give people dissociative experiences. So let's think about this. In our Vedic model of the mind, which is what I taught y'all, a lot of our problems come from which part of those, which of those five things, chita, samskar, ahamkar, wuddi, and manas. Which one do you think causes us the most problems in life? Samskar or... That's what one would think. Or a hamkar.

It's a hamkar. So our samskar, for a particular problem, it's some scar. But when you're a humcar is out of control, every dimension of your life will be a mess. That's your ego again. Ego. Right? So ketamine comes in, dissociative agent. What does it do? It disconnects you from your sense of self. Deactivates the default mode network. Exactly what happens in a practice like Shunya meditation. Shunya means void, null, or nothingness. Right? So when I'm going through my midlife crisis, what do I do? What am I doing now? Like, you know, we started this company and like I'm actually making way less money than I would have if I just continued being a psychiatrist to like start up companies from MIT and Harvard and all this kind of stuff was doing work at Harvard

Business School and like, you know, I started working with gamers and that like felt good for a while but like now what the fuck am I doing? Like I spend all my days in meetings and I'm not, you know, so what am I doing? So then do Shunya meditation. Go back to being nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. And really this is beautiful because if you, I don't know if you guys can do this right now, but if you pay attention, what you'll find, I'm trying to debate. Okay, let me try this first this way. What do you feel at the core of your being? I'm talking about feel. Don't give me an intellectual answer. Say more. Like a void kind of like where? Deep in the pit of my stomach. Okay. Do you all feel nothing? I have sometimes, I have issues. I have issues.

with mind-body connection and fitness. I'm not sure. Okay. I have a hard time answering that. So a lot of people will experience, like you can feel the outside, but right here, it's kind of empty. You don't feel anything. There's an absence of sensation somewhere in here.

So a really powerful Shunya meditation is like, the simple way to do it is if you want to, if you feel like you have ego, and by ego, I mean the Rajshik ego or the Thamsik, you ego, which means the ego where I'm really great or I'm pathetic. There's a really beautiful practice that you can do is just focus on this and whatever you think about yourself, send it there. Just send whatever you feel about yourself. Just feel that emptiness within you if you can. And if you feel that emptiness, and this is why you shouldn't do breath meditation, you should do this. Because you have a lot within you that you're trying to get rid of. How do I stop being angry? How do I get rid of my self-esteem? Right. And you figured out how to adapt to

this stuff on the surface, you've done what his therapist tried to teach him, which is how can I functionally, how can I exist and adapt, how can I be happily married, how can I be professionally successful, how can I survive with this stuff? But the stuff is still there. You've adapted, but you haven't fixed it. And breath meditation doesn't work for you, so you need to do Shunya. You need to send all that negative stuff. Just send it in there. And you'll be amazed at how much things change. No, I'll absolutely try that. think you've said this, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it was something to the effect that true confidence is not thinking, oh, I'm so great, or thinking, like, that inverse of, oh, I'm

so terrible, the universe is conspiring against me. It is a lack of thought about yourself. It is a lack of connection to your performance, that you just sort of are existing. Is that a fair assessment? Sort of, yeah. So here's what I would say. When you are egos, you will be incredibly confident. Right? So if we look at like, okay, who is confident in the world? Who is the most confident person that you can think of? It's a class of people, actually. Most confident people on the planet. Is it the top 1% or something? Nope. Mm-mm. Way more common than that. Narcissists? Nope. So narcissists have a sense of inferiority. It's not old people. Oh, kids

Absolutely And what does a kid think about themselves If I take a one-year-old Nothing They have no concept of ego They have no Amgar And look at their confidence Yeah

It's amazing It's almost as if When they develop an ego Oh, you're a good boy Yeah You are a bad boy It doesn't matter whether you're good or bad, it's going to create problems for both of you.

I get people in my office who are failed at life, 29 years old, living in mom's basement, watching pornography all day, playing video games, and I get 44-year-olds, CEOs of billion-dollar companies. I don't know what to do next. I built this thing. I feel stuck. I want to quit. I can't afford to quit. Other people aren't going to be able to do it as good as I can. Now my wife expects me to be able to take her on private planes or my husband expects me to be able to take him on private planes. The moment you add ego to the equation, and ah, what happens if we give you a drug that dissociates you? Disables the ego. Now depression improves. Treatment refractory

depression improves. The kind of depression that doesn't respond to cognitive behavioral therapy. The kind of depression that is so deep that the regular techniques don't work. What we have to do is unplug it at its root. Disable the ego. Meditation can do it too. It's way harder. So why, in this case, would I ever meditate if I could do psychedelic drugs and achieve the same end goal? Great question. For two reasons. First is you're not going to achieve the same end goal. You're going to move in the same direction.

Second reason is because ketamine is a drug of abuse. So I remember when I was training to be a psychiatrist. You know, we got a lecture because the nice thing about, you know, being at Mass General and Harvard and all that good stuff is we get a lot of experts there. So this person came to talk to us about psychedelic therapy and ketamine, actually ketamine treatment for depression. And she's an expert in it, right, was doing it. This is back in 2015. So back before it was cool. And so she talks to me and she's like, yeah, some of my patients require ketamine infusions every single day in order to

keep their depression abate. And I was like, hold on a second. Yeah. That sounds like an addiction. Right? So the problem with ketamine is that we can become dependent on it. And that's what we see. I mean, so many people abuse ketamine because we love that state, but it requires a drug to get there. Right? And then there are other problems with ketamine because you're artificially doing something. It's sort of like, you know, I can give you, if you exercise, you can increase your heart rate. I can also inject you with adrenaline to increase your heart rate. Both of them involve the same physiological endpoint, which is increase in heart rate, but the mechanisms through which they achieved are very different.

And I imagine the benefits your cardiovascular health is... Night and day. Yeah. In the same way when you meditate, you're not just going to disable the deal. default mode network, you're going to improve your frontal lobes, which allow you to focus your attention and stay on task. They're going to make you better at stopping distractibility. They're going to improve your emotional regulation. So what I tend to find with people who engage in psychedelics is that the amount of transcendental experiences they have is very limited

compared to a very experienced meditator. So a psychedelic is like getting on a helicopter and boarding a train and going from like zero to 6,000 feet. It just goes from this place to this place. You don't get to control what happens in a psychedelic. When you meditate, you learn how to fly. So you can go beyond 6,000 feet, 10,000 feet, 12,000 feet, 20,000 feet. And you can understand things and experience things that people with psychedelics, I don't think I've ever done.

I've never heard of a psychedelic experience that. It takes to that height. Yeah. Yeah. I've also heard people say, in relation to this, be concerned about unearned wisdom. Yeah, so there's those kinds of truisms, which, sure. Which I wonder if it's kind of sort of alluding to the same sort of sensation, that you're getting access to experiences without really learning and building the steps.

So that's a problem. I think the other problem is that when you get a psychedelic experience, it's completely decontextualized, right? So when you meditate for a long period of time, kind of like you said, you kind of pick up things along the way. so as you pick up things along the way it's kind of like if i if i take you from zero to six thousand feet and you run around you're going to have a lot of trouble you'll get altitude sickness but if i want to climb you know it's really interesting many years ago i climbed kilimanjaro and i did it in about five or six days and as i was looking at it one of the things that's really interesting is the longer

you take the more successful you are so the highest failure rates are the shortest trips so when you take 11 days to climb to the same height, your body has more time to build red blood cells. You have more time to adapt. So when you meditate for a very long period of time, your capability to stay in that state. Explore in that state. Actually, utilize the state is very different. Working out for steroids. What are some tools for being able to meditate?

When I was younger, I used to being karate for many years. And I actually remember times where it's like I felt like true meditative state where it was like nothingness. It wouldn't be often, but I can recall the times it would happen. Now I've been my adult age, I've tried a couple times and it's like, I can't meditate for shit and I give up because it's just so frustrating. Like what's something for me per se? Okay. So I made a whole guide of meditation precisely because of this. So I think one of the biggest problems in the world right now is that we have all this mindfulness. So you have all these apps that basically give you basically one kind of meditation. Most of them are descended from the Zen.

tradition, like the Buddhist Zen tradition. And so there's a lot of different types of meditation in the same. I'd kind of say like, you know, if we have American cuisine, you can have a lot of derivatives of American cuisine, but like sushi is like completely different. Dosa is like completely different. So I think the reason that a lot of people struggle to meditate is because they're not meditating in the right way. The reason they're not meditating in the right way is because teachers of meditation.

So it used to be that if you wanted to be a teacher of meditation, you had to achieve. So the average time it takes to become a Zen master is 30 years. Shit. And at the end of 30 years, you don't even become a master. Your master says either you are a master or you aren't. So right now, like the idea of investing 30 years and then not getting a degree, so right now the way that people teach meditation is they get certifications. And getting a certification meditation does not mean, like how do you guys think, what do you think it takes to get a certification in meditation? With all the respect, an online course.

Yeah. Right? You just have to show up. Yeah. And sometimes you don't even have to do that. So no one is saying, oh, yeah, I'm going to like, you can teach meditation because you've had transcendental experiences. You've been to 20,000 feet.

Now you understand, now you're prepared to teach. So this is why this is a big problem, because everyone is teaching meditation, very few people are qualified. Now, in terms of you, I think this is where, like, we get to a lot of details, right? So if you were to ask, like, I would need to know more about what you struggle with. So a couple of things that I can already piece together. So one is that, especially if you're on the spectrum, once again, the way that you manage sensory input is different.

So oftentimes when I have patients on the spectrum, we will do very body-oriented meditations. So what I would tell you to do is if you want to achieve a no-mind state, stand on one leg. And, you know, I don't know if you guys know this like meditation, where you're standing on one leg and this leg is tucked in over here. I mean, I can show you all later. The clock tree pose? I don't know what the actual name is. Yeah, I don't know what the... So, you know, just stand on one leg for as long as you can and then switch to the other

leg. And what you'll find if you do this practice is that at the beginning, you know, you're going to be thinking about all kinds of stuff. You're trying to focus your mind, trying to focus your mind, and your mind wanders. You don't need to try to focus your mind. Try to distract yourself. Try to think about a million different things. As you stay in that pose, what do you all think will happen?

Your leg's going to get so tired, and you're going to start thinking about. Focusing on what? Just how exhausted your leg is from holding. Very good, right? So you're going to think about that, and then you will enter a no-mind state. This is the piece that a lot of people miss. When you focus on one thing for an extended period of time, what does your mind do with it? No, no.

I don't know. When you put on your shirt first thing in the morning, you feel it? Mm-hmm. What happens? Do you continue to feel it all day? You're wearing it all day. Yeah. You lose awareness.

When I enter a crowded restaurant and I hear everyone talking, what does my brain do with that? Right. Any constant stimulus will then disappear. So the whole point of meditation is I am trying to. to do one thing, because emptying my mind is impossible. If I create an empty mind, there'll be a vacuum. All kinds of thoughts will flood in. So what I try to do is I focus it on one thing. And I focus it on this thing so that everything else disappears. I'm kicking it all out. I can get down to one thought. That's it. And as I acclimatized to that thought,

then that thought will disappear. And then what you will be left with is emptiness. And those times when you did martial arts, you were fully focused on the art and at the end of full focus becomes empty mind. So whatever it is that brings your mind to one point very, very easily is what you should do to meditate. So I asked y'all a question, what do you feel in here? You didn't feel anything.

You didn't feel anything you felt something. That's what he should do. Forget about breath meditation. Not good for you. Yeah. for trauma i did a breath work uh session where they like find the points and all that and that was actually very i found that talk therapy was really helpful and then now i find that more helpful for like processing stuff yeah so you know that's earlier i i mentioned that you know

we thought talk therapy was the gold standard yeah so i think men especially need to do a lot more stuff in their body ah because my wife did it and she was like i don't so so this is something i remember in 2012, I was in medical school. I'd done research at Harvard for a couple of years. I got an email from a cousin of mine in India, and he's like, hey, there's this thing called the emotional freedom technique. Like, what do you think about it? And I was like, it sounds like it's BS. And then he's like, shouldn't we? So we got into this debate about it. I looked at some research. It didn't seem very convincing. Many years later, now we have a ton of studies on EFT, which is similar to kind of like tapping is what they call it. So there's like trauma is like stored in the body.

in some ways and there are now studies that actually seem like pretty solid that there's ways of bringing stuff out through the body we see this also

in like you know masculine communities of when you get dumped what do we tell people to do hit the gym right so physical and if we think about

emotions we think about emotions is mental they're not mental they're physical too heart rate you know how do you know there's a beautiful paper I'll see if I can send you all

and you guys can link but that maps on I use it all the time with the men that I work with. Maps every emotion to your body. So they did a beautiful paper where they measured, like, where people feel things. And what's really cool about is there's like 100 emotions there. And even little things like feeling rejected, feeling disappointed, feeling angry, feeling frustrated, feeling like someone denied you something.

These are all things that we call anger, but there's subtle variations in where that emotion shows up in our body. Yeah. And so the really cool thing you said you struggle with. mind-body stuff, but this is what's really neat, is the research that I did many years ago on mind-body stuff is that when you move the body, you activate the brain in different ways. So if I'm feeling like I have a, you know, a pit in my stomach, as I move my body, literally that sensation will change. And once I fix, if I fix the emotion mentally, it'll change my physiology. Right. If I no longer feel sad, then my physiology will calm down. If I change,

my body, the emotion will fix itself too. It's like a two-way street. Everything in the body is a two-way street. I've heard this about like power posing and things like that. It's like kind of the way people have corporatized and westernized it where like you're feeling nervous, put your hands above your head, be in a large state. Are you feeling sad? Try to smile and it'll actually send oxytocin to your brain and make you happier.

Is that related to what you're saying? Yeah. So I think it's corporatization. But there's a really cool study about someone was trying to, someone was trying to, someone was studying how we detect emotions and faces. So what they did is they took all their lab students and they had them make facial expressions. And what they specifically were measuring is how quickly can someone detect a change in your facial expression? So if I go like this, and then I go like this, if you guys slow that down and make like microsecond cuts, there's a transition from happiness

to like anger, right? So when can people detect that? So they stumbled upon a really interesting finding, which is that they were training their lab people, right? So I'm doing experiments with people. So my lab assistant is like making smiling faces and angry faces. What they discovered is that when they trained the lab assistants, those lab assistants started feeling that way.

So the person who had to make the angry face was pissed at everybody. And the person who was smiling a lot was happy with everybody. So everything in the brain is like reciprocal and homeostatic. Right? And if you kind of force yourself to smile, that's hard because forcing yourself to smile.

if you just do it, like, if I go like this, it feels crazy. Yeah, it feels crazy, right? But if I go like this, right, you could tell the difference. Yeah. Right? And he didn't get to see it.

No, I was thinking about the breathwork thing. I remember the first time I did it, my male friend had told me about it. He's like, it's crazy. And I was like, I was kind of skeptical. I remember going in, she starts poking around. Do you feel anything here? And then I felt this crazy pain.

And then she would say, like, thrash around, whatever. And I did. And I just started crying. And then I remember, she was like okay turn on your stomach as i turn on my stomach i look at a mirror i'm pouring sweat my eyes are puffy from crying and i'm like all right well i'm done and then she goes okay this is the heart of the spine you can store a lot of trauma in here along my spine or the heart of the back and i was like what the fuck is she talking about we're done she starts going along the back i felt even more crazy even more

tears and that was since then it hasn't been as extreme of a thing but it's interesting that you say men feel that more because my wife didn't she was like i don't know i don't feel right so you feel it less because now it's out. Yeah, right? So that's emptying the well. Right? So what I love about hearing stories about this is if we come up with a model, we should be able to make predictions. So if there really is a well of emotion down below, if we get rid of it, it should be gone.

And that's, and I hear stories like this, that makes me think we're kind of on the right track. Yeah. And it was, I've stopped doing talk therapy. I thought it was very helpful. But this seems like it's a more helpful thing now. Yeah. So I think they help with different things. Yeah.

Hmm. Can we change gears just to anxiety? Sure. That's something that I personally deal with. I think a lot of people probably deal with. Okay. So I want to also just be cognizant of time. I'm not saying we should rush. But do we want to talk about anger?

Do we want to talk about anxiety? We want to talk about Kamasutra. Kamasitra, I think what we feel is that most people struggle with a lot of anger and anxiety. Okay, let's talk about anger. So I think we are the conduits, hopefully, for anybody who's feeling these things. And I think these are both things. I'm on lexapro, low dose. I've actually found it to be pretty helpful with even that super peak anger.

I don't get there the way I used to. I don't think I've gotten there early since. But, like, there was an anger level that I would hit that the Lexpro's help with. I don't know if you find those things helpful or not helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, anxiety, I think it's tied in. I prescribe medications, yeah. Okay.

Oh, you're a psychiatrist. That's right. Yeah. Okay. But yeah. Yeah, so let's talk about anxiety. So I'm curious if you have helpful tools for, I guess, assessing anxiety and trying to deal with them in different cases. So for me personally, before I have a big show or a big meeting or some

type of life event that I'm concerned about, I'll feel intense anxiety. And then there's also sort of a secondary ambient anxiety that I'll feel generally without even really knowing it. So I don't know if there's one of those that's easier to sort of discuss first. What's the problem with what you described? That I will, before a show, I'll feel this anxiety that then will manifest in different ways. I'm feeling really anxious, then I might do nothing and I'll try to just sleep because that is a way that I cope with the anxiety. Or I'll just feel generally uncomfortable. And even on stage, if you're, I've noticed, if I'm nervous, I'm less free and my performance tends to suffer. The times where I'm like almost weirded out that I don't seem to care

before I get on stage, I actually kind of do better. Sometimes I'll be so not nervous that it makes me a little nervous. But then I get up there and I'm so free that I can ride any kind of quiet tension without war in about what it's, and then usually, the set is just... Or I'll rush to a show and I get there right when I'm supposed to get on stage and I have no time to think about it and then I go on and I have a great set.

Or if I'm thinking about it all day and ruminating and thinking and thinking and then there's actually a stiffness that's sort of goes along with that. Okay. So you would like to be relaxed because you want to do better or because it feels better? I think both.

And I think that creates a cycle that the better I do, the better I feel. The better I feel, the better I do. So let's understand. There's so many ways to tackle this, but so we're going to go through all of them. So the first thing to understand is baseline anxiety. So there's this measure of physiology called heart rate variability. Now, HRV is the variability in your heart rate. How much it can go up and how much it can go down. So I'm going to ask you all a question. If I take a 29, it's hard question, trick question. If I take a 29 year old, gamer who's sitting in their basement. And I take an Olympic athlete. Which one do you think has a greater heart rate variability? The Olympic athlete. Absolutely. Okay? Why? Why? Why? Why is what I assume it's a heart health thing? The heart's capable of. Yeah. I've ordered a nervous system. Yeah. So if you look at an Olympic athlete, their baseline heart rate is bradycardic. It's 40.

So the capacity for their heart, the variability in their heart rate, they can go from 40 to 140. So their HRV is 100, okay? People who have anxiety have a very low heart rate variability. They are always living high, and their body's capacity to respond to stress is lower. So as your heart rate variability increases, your capacity to handle stress increases. So high-H-R-V good, low-H-R-V bad. Right. People who have baseline high anxiety have a low heart rate variability.

So what we want to do is increase. This has nothing to do with what you're worried about, nothing to do with being on stage. This is the way that you're physiologically wired. Now, I really got into this stuff, not when I was working with anxiety, but when I was working with trauma. So I was working with a group of first responders for a period of a few months, and I kind of notice they're just like always on edge.

There's hypervigilance. They overreact to things. They're just very, they have very little like, you know, they go from zero to 100. That's not technically true. So a lot of people think, oh, I go from zero to 100. The person I'm dating, oh, gosh, he gets so angry. He goes from zero to 100. He doesn't go from zero to 100.

He lives at 80. Yeah. So getting to 110 is only like a plus 30, whereas the rest of us are at zero. And, like, you know, we can handle 30 points. So what you need to do is alter your base. baseline physiology. So there's a trauma guide where I kind of lay all this stuff out. There's a series of practices that you can do to essentially increase your HRV. Now, the way that we do it has something called physiologic stretch. That's what I kind of call it. So one thing that I'll do with my patients is I'll tell them to run for 60 seconds as hard as they can. Just stretch your physiology. Push it really hard and then relax. So anything that you do that increases the top end will increase the bottom end. So you want to stress your physiology. This is a also why people with anxiety find that exercise is so helpful for them. That if they exercise regularly, the baseline anxiety level goes down. I find this to be the case. Right? So, but this is

the important thing. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. So your anxiety is not one mechanism, it's multiple. So your baseline anxiety, it's beautiful the way you described it. You said there's actually two things. So let's deal with each of those things. Okay. So with this baseline anxiety, I think it's great to start with physiology and to use physiology and to understand that half the reason that we have an anxiety crisis in the world today is because the majority of people who treat anxiety have zero training in the body. Oh, okay. Right? Okay. Psychologists don't learn medicine. They learn psychology. And it's not a like knock on their profession. But they're not going to prescribe fitness. Forget about, they're not going to take anatomy. They don't know. They're not

going to take physiology. Right. Right. And that's why our, I think our treatments are fundamentally not as effective as they could be. We have someone like Akash who's been to therapy, and what does he say? He said, the moment I started focusing on my body, I got better in a completely different way. But psychologists don't learn, like, nervous system. They'll learn nervous system, but they won't learn physiology. Right? They'll learn neuroscience. They won't learn about the four chambers of the heart, you know, your lateral circumflex artery, what it feeds, and things like that, right? That's just not part of their training. That running exercise, how often do you have to do it? And for how long before you start to see the benefits of?

So the running exercise starts, you see the benefits right away. So if you're feeling anxious and you run for 60 seconds, just run just as hard as you can. Do push-ups jumping ice, doesn't matter. That will activate. So what will happen the moment that you,

if you ran for your life for 60 seconds, what would happen in your physiology afterward? It would calm down. Because now we're exhausted. You're not thinking about anything. You can be anxious, right? You're running for your life. You have one pointed mind.

And then, you know, you'll start so it can happen immediately but then the more you stretch your physiology the more gradual the change will be generally speaking if you do this stuff for about eight weeks i think that's when we really start to see a lot of change and how many like daily three times a day once a week i mean so running really hard is something that sure you can do once a day if you're looking for a daily practice i would say a mind-body practice like yoga or tai chi is better so do 20 minutes of yoga a day do 20 minutes of tai chi a day you can take your pick if you like to move do tai chi if you like to be still do yoga. Oh, okay. Okay. Um, so that's baseline anxiety. Second thing we can do for baseline anxiety

is some scoric work. That's the well of anxiety. It's always there. You have this kind of existential dread about, you know, why are you anxious, right? Because like, oh, I can't handle things or something is wrong. There's something that you're very sensitive to. So if you do that kind of inner emotional work, that'll help too. Now, anxiety in the moment, this is we're going to, we're going to do a couple of cool things. The first thing is just to change our relationship with anxiety. You see a anxiety is a problem. It's not a problem. It's your friend. It's there for a reason. Everyone's like, oh, everyone has anxiety. Like, yeah, we're supposed to. Right. It helps me in some ways. Right. So changing the way that, and here's the beautiful thing, you said that it kind of

becomes a vicious cycle. Right. So if you set up, if you start off right, it's a vicious cycle in the right direction, virtuous cycle. Right. Where now I'm relaxed. Now I'm vibing. Now I'm having a good time. Now they're having a good time. That relaxes. Let's just like, you know, I'm relaxed. They're having good time now I'm vibing now we're vibing now everything is great anxiety is the opposite I'm nervous I go up there I screw up my joke they're not laughing as much now I get more nervous it's a vicious cycle yes so you learn to fear the anxiety you learn to panic you have anxiety about the anxiety that's the real problem that's what creates the cycle so change your relationship with anxiety I'm anxious right this is my body telling me that this is important to me this is important to me

it's okay for me to be anxious. I'm going to go out there. I'm going to do the best that I can. I could screw up. I may not. Out of my hands. Very foreign to people with anxiety. Yeah, giving up control would be concerning.

Concerning. And so practice giving up control. So I came to this podcast today. Is this important for me? I don't know. Yeah, right? Like, think about it. Why do guests come on your podcast?

it's a good platform to talk about what they want to talk about absolutely right you all are fun to talk with you guys have a good reach all this kind of stuff it's a great podcast

what if I screw up hmm no really you guys are saying as if you learn something articulate it what if I'm not like you you might get negative comments

you might yeah so what are I going to do about that nothing you can prepare you can think about every yeah so I'll solve that problem when I get to it

but like being worried about it now doesn't help me at all. Right. So I show up, and this is sort of the attitude that can get you in trouble because you don't show up to your med school graduation to get your award. But like, you know, you can just do the best that you can. The rest of it is out of your hands. But you need to have confidence that you can fix it when you get there. Yeah. So that's another, it's a great point. So if you look at people who have anxiety, they misestimate, they underestimate, they underestimate their capacity for damage control. Have you had bad sets before, Mark? you're not fucked why not see your brain doesn't connect those two dots so literally if people have anxiety focus

rethink how good you are at damage control and if you want a complete lack of anxiety be really good at damage control this is the big mistake that people make when I feel anxious I want everything to be perfect that's not the winning strategy

the right strategy is be able to handle the shit when it gets bad if you can handle the shit when it gets bad it can go good or it can go bad doesn't matter and if it doesn't need to go good then i can relax yeah that's the thing and i think i do think men are maybe i remember a friend of mine saying well women are better at making decisions and i said yeah but at what costs like they're constantly thinking about what could go wrong and i think men generally are just like i'm going to make the decision it might not be right who cares yeah i think that's the thing we're a little better at so i think we can cultivate a sense of

detachment, that's kind of what I call it. And I think it's like, it changes your relationship with anxiety, right? The anxiety is no longer something that you need to be anxious about. That's what you need to change. Then the rest of it is just a physiologic response in the moment. Okay, fine, I'm anxious today. Maybe I'll screw up. Right? Tomorrow's another day. And this is really something that I think it's so hard for people to learn. Like, I think I learned this as a doctor because you sort of like, that's how you learned that, right? So like, being a doctor is like, maybe it's similar to being comedian, I don't know. But you just faced with a lot of situations that there's like no way to win. Like, you know, kids with cancer and patients who kill themselves and you did

everything that you could, you learn really, really quickly. One of the biggest lessons I learn in residency, really, is that we think that doctors save lives. Like, I can't save anybody's life. I don't know if you guys get this, but as a doctor, I do not have the power over life and death. What absurdity is this? Right. So as a comedian, what do you have power over? Mark? I mean, the jokes I say, the way I present myself on stage. No, the first thing you have, the second thing you don't. The way you present yourself, no, you don't have control over that. I guess the way I'm perceived, I don't have control over it, but like, my affect?

You don't have control over that? Why? Because what if you're anxious? Can you just control that? No. Okay, let that go. See, here's the problem with anxiety. We don't understand what we really have control over. And if you think you have control over the way that you present, well, what are we talking about, bro?

We're saying that when you go on stage, you have anxiety and you don't want anxiety. It changes the way that you act. It changes the way that you talk. Changes how locked up you are. You have control over that shit? No. If you did, then you wouldn't be asking this question. So oftentimes, if we look at people who are anxious about things,

they believe they have control over something that they don't have control over. What if those physical things affect your performance and adds more anxiety? Like, how can you, like I, for example, I have extreme stage fright, and we have a live show coming up in Saudi Arabia. And I'm right now I'm worried about the show. And it's like, I'll get fidgety. I start sweating, all that type of shit. When I'm on stage, it gets 10 times worse.

What can I do to prevent that from happening, knowing that it's going to happen? I want you to listen to what you said. How can I prevent that from happening when I know it's going to happen? Every time I've been in front of a group of people that happens. How can I rewind time because time keeps moving forward? Yeah. How can I prevent something? something that I know is going to happen. How is that?

Yeah, it's a paradox. You can't. Are there ways or, like, actions I can take to prevent it from happening? No. So just forever, I'm always just going to sweat and get the shakes every time I go in front of people. Isn't that what your experience has been? Yeah, it sucks. Okay. So- Fix me. Yeah, this is not comforting.

Yeah. Hold on a second, right? I can't. Now what are you going to do? It can never be fixed. keep doing it or avoiding it right so that's the decision you have to make so this is the interesting thing you are afraid of your anxiety the problem here isn't that you're anxious is that you're afraid of anxiety and here you are trying to prevent something that is inevitable like bro how can you prevent something that is inevitable you can't like i'm using your framing i'm not trying to do some you know psychiatry magic on you're like you see this as inevitable and you ask me to prevent it. You are setting up an unwinnable situation. And when you set up an unwinnable

situation and you fail and you fail and you fail, what do you think that does to you? It confirms it and strengthens it. Yeah. And you become more powerless and more powerless and more powerless. You are setting yourself up for constant failure. And then what you have at the end result is this. It happens every single time because of the way that you're doing it. So the problem with his sentence was knowing that it's going to happen. If he just said, how do I keep this from happening? No. No.

It's the exact opposite. Now you get it, my dude. So it's like, hey, all right, I'm going to go on stage, but I'm going to sweat and I'm going to shake. It is what it is. Absolutely. Right? So, like, look, you're a comedian. You're going to Saudi Arabia.

Do you want to go to Saudi Arabia? Yeah. A little afraid. But, yeah. There we go. Yes is the wrong answer. Yes and no. Yes and no.

I want to have gone. I want it to be behind me. I want to be done with it. That's the way you really feel about it. But there's a part of me that hates this. But I'm going to do it anyway because this is who I want to be in this world. And it ain't going to be easy. It ain't going to be pretty.

And there is no way to prevent the shit. The moment you start living life like that, your anxiety will disappear. It won't disappear physiologically, but you'll be able to handle it. Let's put it that way. Right? You can't control. This is the problem with anxiety. The reason that the human brain thinks we can solve our anxiety is because of our perception of control.

What is, are you anxious about getting hit by a nuclear bomb today? No. Why not? Maybe you didn't think about it. Yeah. So people will actually get anxious about things that they can't control. But I think a big part of it anxiety is like our perception of control because if we can control something, then we can do everything right

and if we do everything right and we can control thing then it'll be perfect and then I won't have to suffer but the moment that you're like look I want a girlfriend I want a girlfriend and I want a girlfriend

just bro like there's no way you can get this person to fall in love with you go be the best person that you can and accept that sometimes they're going to say no as you start living your life that way and there's a lot of psychological mechanisms

that I'm kind of throwing around here or injecting into this this thing your relationship with anxiety will change right and then you say okay my life is not about preventing anxiety my life is i want to go to saudi arabia i want to try to make people laugh there's a part of this that's going to suck but i'm choosing to do it anyway except don't try to fix your anxiety train yourself to act in spite of it then you will be free because as long as you are trying to get rid of anxiety

if anxiety shows up then you're fucked no control over your life This is something, by the way, that happens to men a lot. So as men, we are trained to fix ourselves by changing our environment. If I feel like I'm ugly and unattractive to women, what do I do? Work out. Absolutely. I change, right? So I had a patient once, 18 years old.

I was working in jail. I asked him, bro, how do you get, how do you get, how? how do you get in jail at the age of 18 like what happened he said when i was 12 years old my dad left i have three sisters that are older they came to me and they said you got to be the man of the house now man of the house provides well right so we need this we need this we need this we need this it's time for you to step up now that makes him feel how do you all think that makes him feel a lot of pressure a lot of pressure right right so it's interesting the language that we use we don't use emotional words did you all see that pressure this is the emotional experience of men

not anger not sadness not frustration pressure this is the number one emotional experience of men pressure so then he starts selling drugs because that's the only thing you can do at the age of 12 and then they the way that they treat him creates emotions with him he feels guilty ashamed of himself if he doesn't bring enough money and so then something really interesting happens whether he feels ashamed or not depends on his environment. If they're proud of him, he feels proud. And if they're disappointed in him, he feels ashamed. So if you look at what happens, what men do,

we will shape our whole environment to make us feel a certain way. Right? So if someone's disappointed me, Akash, you have to go to medical school. You need to do yoga. I need to shape my environment to make me feel a certain way because I can't handle the feelings in here. does that kind of make sense this is the way that men get emotionally manipulated all the time because if someone in your environment can evoke a feeling in you

they can control your behavior right so if I can make you feel guilty you're going to do what I want because then I can tell you oh I love you and then you're going to feel better I control you right by evoking your emotions because we don't know once we have guilt on the inside

the only way if I feel ugly, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to change the world outside of me instead of dealing with the emotion on the inside. This is how we develop body dysmorphia. Really interesting study. The drive for muscularity, which is how swole dudes want to be, correlates with divorce rate, unhappiness in marriage, unhappiness in life. If I'm relying on something else to create an emotion in me, then the moment my environment changes, I change in response to it. When your dad, making your dad happy, avoiding his wrath, became the way that you felt safe. Right? That's the only way we shape our environment to make us feel a certain way.

So in this way, learn how to manage your emotions, learn how to accept your emotions, learn how to experience your emotions. You're anxious. I'm sorry, bro, that sucks. You've got the short end of the stick. You've got the short end of the genetic, shallow end of the gene pool. You're wired for anxiety. Poor guy. You're a little bit autistic. Your life is going to suck more than other peoples. I hate to break it to you. But you know this. I know this. Everyone on the spectrum knows this. I'm sorry. Really yeah. But you are amazing. That stuff doesn't have to dictate the life that you live. Stuff is going to be shittier for you than it would for anyone else. Is that fair? No. But you get to go to Saudi Arabia. You get to do your comedy. It's going to suck for you,

but when you're done, you're going to love it. And that's what got you here. You haven't conquered your anxiety. And look at where you are. You don't need to conquer your anxiety. It doesn't have shit on you, my friend. Right? How do you balance acceptance with ambition in this regard? Like, I recognize that many successful people probably have a dearth of self-esteem and they might have some insecurity that flares up that then compels them to do these great things but then you also might have someone that's you know playing video games all day and is overweight and maybe they just are accepting of their position and we've recognized that both are kind of bad um so i don't think that the person who plays video games so generally speaking i think ambition

Okay, so I think ambition gets you to a certain point. So I think ambition is adaptive and then becomes maladaptive. So for example, you know, I can have ambition and that can drive me to succeed and can even give me some degree of happiness. But like, so ambition is really good at getting me out of inaction and action, but it won't give me happiness. And we don't actually need it to start. start acting. So I think the problem with ambition is when we become outcome oriented, so

if I'm super ambitious and I work toward something and I get it, that's great. But if I'm super ambitious and I don't get it, what do you think will happen? I mean, I get frustrated and disappointed. What do you think it'll do to your motivation? If you don't get it for long enough, it'll discourage you. Absolutely. Right? So ambition will like get you part of the way there. But it's like, I would call it, like, toxic fuel. Like, it'll get you there, but not in a good way. So I think what works way better is actually acceptance. And when we say, like, the 29-year-old at home is accepting his circumstances?

No, he's not. He's ignoring his circumstances. He's running away from his circumstances. So ambition is about where you want to go. Acceptance is about where you are. Ambition is about the last step you're looking to take, right? It's about achieving your goals. Acceptance is about the next step that you're going to take.

Okay. I have anxiety. It's there all the time. What am I going to do about it? See, he thinks in terms of ambition, how do I end this problem? That's not what you want to do. What do I do about it now? What's the first step that I take? This gets like so confusing because when I work with people with trauma, acceptance is really hard. Accept that this happened to you and take responsibility for it and what are you going to do about it. right so when i'm working with someone in an abusive relationship one of the reasons that they're in the relationship is because their partner has taught them that they're powerless but what you have to accept is that you're not powerless but that's really scary it's hard to do because if you accept you're not powerless and you have the power to change what does that come with you have to do something not just i have to do something if i have the power to fix my situation Who is to blame for my situation? Myself.

Right? And this is what's so weird. There's a bunch of pathological self-blame, but this is what's so tricky when someone's in an abusive relationship. You have to show them that they do have power. They do have agency. But then that comes with responsibility.

And people don't like that. So acceptance, I think, is way harder than people think it is. It's not just... So a lot of people think that acceptance means giving up. That's not... acceptance. It's the opposite. It's like, okay, I'm done. It's giving up. That's what it is. Acceptance is saying, okay, this is the reality now and what am I going to do about it?

That's the really important thing. I have to accept that my child does not love me. So they always go hand in hand acceptance and ambition. No, I think they actually don't go hand in hand. I think so acceptance oftentimes gets confused for apathy, like in action. Right. So if I'm like, if I have a patient who comes in and has cancer, we need to start by accepting that you've got cancer, but that doesn't mean we're giving up. Right, it's acceptance plus responsibility. So, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

You accept where you are, and then this is where I want to go. No. So that's the subtlety. So where I want to go is the end. I think the most healthy way to do it is this is my next step. It's not even about the goal.

It's like, this is the direction I'm going to go. Okay, my child never wants to speak with me again. What do I do about that? let me if i want to repair my relationship with shop it's okay to think about that goal but i think the most adaptive way to do it is to focus on the next action you can have some vision and you should think about where that action leads but don't attach yourself to that outcome let me start therapy yeah yeah but if therapy doesn't work so be it and why didn't therapy work because i fucked it up too bad with my kid and you accept that you accept from the get-go that i have damaged this

relationship so much that it may not be repairable, but I'm going to do everything within my power to make it right. The moment you have that attitude, like when you all hear me say that, right, what does it evoke within you? There's ability, there's capability, there's not guaranteed success. In fact, quite the opposite. When you accept that you have very little control, a lot of people think that means apathy. I think it means freedom. It's a bit daunting, though. very daunting the prospect that all of my problems in life are maybe not all but many of them are fundamentally my own yes and that they're my responsibility to then take the first step yes it is daunting it is also the best way to do it it's better than the alternative which is i have no control

on everything is happening too it seems initially like there's a feeling of hopelessness with that even though even though i understand in the end it's not hopeless but But the alternative is more hopeless, though. No, no. So let's understand why it's hopeless. Why is it hopeless? Because there's nothing I can do. This is what it is.

Yes. Right? So there's hopelessness because you can't control the action, the outcome, sorry. But there's another layer of hopelessness. Because you don't have faith in yourself. Right? So what's daunting about it?

You're saying it's daunting because it's like so much work. That's only daunting. Like when I have an eight-year-old art. So when my eight-year-old daughter tries to take a 50-pound suitcase up the stairs, it's daunting. But that's because she doesn't have the capability. So as you start living like this, you start to realize, okay, what is my true capability? When you face a daunting task that you feel is impossible and you even get 25% of the way there, holy shit, what it will do for your confidence. Right?

Did I get what I wanted? Oh, but I got way further than I thought I would. In the moment that you realize, holy crap, my understanding of my capabilities is wrong. My understanding of my capabilities comes from which part of the mind? Ahamkar. There we go. So here I am at work.

Oh, my God, I'm not going to get promoted. I take this dissociative agent, and now I'm not worried about it. it anymore. I'm going to just do my best. Right? So easy. Once we let go of that ego, what am I capable of nothing? I showed up today. How is this podcast going to be? I have no idea. I'm just going to show up and do my best. Is it going to be good? Is it going to be bad?

I had no idea what y'all have really liked to sit with. First sentence out of y'all's mouth. Let's fix his anger, fix your anxiety and fix his autism. Holy shit. In two hours? that's daunting that sounds daunting what am i going to do about it let's get started yeah how do you think we did fantastic yeah interesting did i know that this was going to work did i know did i prepare no the irony is i did prepare but for a lot of things we didn't talk about dr connogea this was awesome we would love to have you back uh you are great do you want to

plug anything. Obviously, there's a book, How to Raise a Healthy Gamer. We've got to talk more about gaming and just fixing the youth. I feel like you fixed me, but let's fix the youth, too. No, part two, Andrew will be here. He has a lot of fixing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, man. Thanks a lot, man. Thank you. Check them out. Healthy gamer, Gigi. Guys, thank you. See y'all next week. God bless.