HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K Answers Why You Hate Your Life

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K explores why so many people feel stuck in dissatisfaction—and how deeper practices like meditation and Vedic psychology can help. Rather than just focusing on surface-level self-improvement, he breaks down the inner journey of facing suffering, understanding the mind, and building resilience. On his iPad, Dr. K walks through Vedic psychological models that explain why we get trapped in cycles of frustration, self-criticism, and comparison. He then shows how meditation, properly understood, is not about escape but about transforming how we relate to our thoughts and emotions. Topics include: Why modern life leaves so many feeling empty The Vedic psychology framework for understanding the mind How meditation actually works as a journey, not a quick fix Breaking free from cycles of dissatisfaction and finding deeper meaning This episode offers both practical insights and a philosophical lens to rethink why you struggle and how meditation can become a tool for real change. Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Puer Aeternus: https://bit.ly/3G8KUGL Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take. Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals. Because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at firstcitizens.com slash ambition. One consistent color for every job, Milo's Pro Rewards members get a 20% paint discount on future purchases after paint annual qualifying spend reaches $3,000.

Plus, order eligible in-stock paint and paint supplies by 2 p.m. for free same-day delivery by 8 p.m. Improving is easy at Lowe's. Exclude spray paint and mistins. More exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Subject to change. Details at Lose.com slash terms. Same day delivery valid and select zip codes. Subject to driver availability. Details at Lowe's.com slash same-day delivery. Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-O Canojo, but you can call me Dr. Kay. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Let's get started. Welcome to other

Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. Just a reminder that although I am a psychiatrist, hello, my name is Dr. Aalogh Kanoja. Nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken for medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. If you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. Hello, chat. I hath returned. So welcome everybody. Happy Friday, everyone. Today, we're going to do something super fun. We're going to review voicemails again. We've got some banger voicemails. I hope to get through somewhere between four and six. As you all know, sometimes I am a touch verbose. And so we'll see how many we can through. First of all, thank you to everyone for submitting them because I know that, you know,

many of y'all submitted voicemails. We loved listening to many of them. A lot of them are great. It's just an issue of like how much we have time for. I'd love to respond to each and every single one, but that's not probably something we have time for. So thank you all very much for submitting them. I think they're awesome and I appreciate y'all keeping them to like around 90 seconds. It's a really nice blend of, like, depth and also being able to kind of get through a couple in one stream. All right. So let's get to the voicemails. Let me see if I can figure out.

Hello, Dr. Kay. I have a question about feeling accomplished at the end of a long day. I am currently trying to find a steady source of income until my employer puts me back to work. My bills are coming up and I face eviction. I can only control what I can control, and yet I still feel extremely disappointed in myself and like a constant failure. I have carried this self-hatred in me for a very long time, and I also feel like I will never be good enough for myself nor anyone else. It has gotten so bad that I no longer feel comfortable inside my own house, and I either ride my bike or walk around aimlessly until nightfall. I feel both trapped inside my own house and antisocial towards people I feel interested in getting to know.

I feel like no matter what I do, I will never be accepted, no matter how hard I try. I feel stuck, powerless, isolated, and constantly irritable towards the outside world. I can only describe this as hell on earth for me. Is there anything I can do to not beat myself up as much as I do and to finally accept what I cannot change? I have not been able to relax in weeks as I feel, as I have felt insanely stressed. Any general life advice you can give me about making money or meeting new people would be beyond appreciated. Thank you for everything, Dr. Kay. Kay, take care. Yeah, so this is like, first thing is like, this is brutal, man.

So, you know, this person is describing living in what they describe as hell on earth. And, you know, I think there's so many things going on here. I think it's a great voicemail because it highlights like how many dimensions are involved when our life becomes, as he puts it, hell on earth, right? So the first thing is, I think this is like something that we generally speaking grossly underestimate in the field of psychiatry, just how bad some or how someone's mental state is influenced by their circumstances. So generally speaking, I'm a pretty lucky guy. I've had things go my way most of the time. But I have had some rough patches in life. And one of the things that I still remember, when I was about to start medical school,

I had talked to some people who were like also starting in the class. And I had found, they'd sort of found a place. And I had sort of found roommates like two other first year medical students. And sort of like, you know, they felt really confident and they sent pictures and things like that. I was like, you know, I'm glad you guys found a place. I don't want to sign a lease until, like, I've seen the place. So I went to go see the place, and I noticed that there was something really weird, which is that there's like two, there were three bedrooms, and one of them was tiny,

and the other two were, like, pretty big. And so I was, like, kind of confused about the rent split and things like that. So, like, things just sort of didn't work out. We weren't able to come to an equitable solution. And I'm starting med school in, like, three days. and then suddenly I don't have a place to live. And I remember, like, not being able to eat, also wandering around. Like, anytime I would eat food, I would feel incredibly nauseous.

Here I am, like, this is my shot. Like, I finally made it in med school. I'm, like, working really hard. And, like, I don't have a place to live. And the thing that I really learned there was just physiologically. Like, all of the yogic training and all that stuff kind of went out the window when your physiology is running ragged. So my cortisol level was through the roof.

I was unable to eat. I was unable to eat sleep. I was like incredibly restless. And so the first thing that I kind of noticed is this person said, I'm looking for some way to make money while my job is like has me on hold or something. And if y'all are struggling in life, if you feel really bad about yourself, the first thing that we have to understand is that if you are in a chronically high stress state, right? where like your job has you on hold, you're being threatened with eviction, and you're scrambling to like make money,

that in and of itself is going to be a gigantic stressor. And one of the things that I think we've got to be really careful about is in assuming that if this is the situation that we're in, if this is what our life actually looks like, if we have very real material threats that our mental space is not is going to be very difficult to fix while these threats exist. And that's just because of the effect of those threats on our brain and our body, right? So when we have a high level of cortisol in our system, when we have sympathetic nervous system activity, it does the following things.

The first thing that it does is activates our reticular activating formation. This is a little part of our brain right at the brain stem. This part of our brain governs wakefulness. So this is the part of our brain when it turns on, it wakes us up. Right? So when you're asleep and then when you wake up, like, you know, something in your brain is telling you like, hey, it's time to wake up. So cortisol hyperactivates the reticular activating formation, which means that sleeping is

difficult. So sleeping is difficult. The second thing that's going to be doing is messing with your blood sugar. It's going to be causing you to release a bunch of like glucose into your bloodstream in preparation for kind of this fight or flight response. which can also explain why, like, we walk around so much because we feel incredibly restless. And the problem with these stress states is that they're designed to help us sacrifice long-term health for immediate survival. Right. So why does our brain keep us from sleeping?

It's because when these systems evolved, we were trying to avoid tigers in the jungle or being eaten by lions or hyenas or whatever. Right. So what the body sort of says is that it's really important for you to not sleep over the next 24 hours or sleep very lightly, don't get restful sleep, so that we don't get eaten in our sleep. The problem is the problems we deal with in today's world are long term. They're chronic, right? So if you're facing eviction, facing eviction means that the threat persists for like 30 days. And then we run into a really interesting problem, which is that since we're facing this threat for 30 days, our body gets run ragged. And as our body gets run ragged, our capacity to deal with our problems becomes impaired.

Because if you're facing eviction, if you're looking for a new job, if you're working on self-acceptance, self-love, whatever, if you're trying to make new friends, being exhausted, run ragged, etc., is like not going to help you over the course of 30 days. So this is where, like, the first thing that I got to say is that, you know, as long as your material situation is problematic, it is very, very hard to achieve mental peace, mental healing, mental growth, take whatever, however you want to put it. And this is where, you know, you're kind of saying, okay, like my job has me on hold. Like, this kind of stuff really scares me. So on the one hand, I have no idea what your situation is.

I have no idea what your opportunities are. But I think a lot of young people get trapped in a work situation, which they feel like they can't get out of, and they're at the mercy of their job. And so the first thing that I would consider is, like you're looking for some way to make ends meet until your job kicks in, but I would also start looking for another job, right? So as long as like material stuff, if you don't have a roof over your head, mental health is very hard to achieve. And there's a really great study that

sort of talks about this. There was a program in New York called Housing First. And what used to happen is that if you had some form of addiction, you had to be sober in order to get public housing. Right? So if you wanted like the state to give you a place to live, like you have to pass drug tests. The problem is that without having a place to live, it's really hard to get sober. Without having a place to live, when you apply for a job and there's this really simple part of the application, name, address. When you don't have an address for correspondence, it's really hard to get a job. When you're sleeping on the streets, it's really hard to resist some degree of comfort through substance use. Right? So this was kind of like this really interesting,

kind of perspective, which is you have to be sober first, and if you can become sober, if you deserve it, then we'll give you housing. But what housing first essentially found is that it works the other way around. If you give people housing first, even if they're using, their ability to engage in mental health care, their ability to get a job, their ability to not be on the fucking street so they have a roof over their head helps them with substance use. And what we know is that substance use is very, very context dependent. because a lot of people used like heroin and all kinds of stuff when there were like soldiers in Vietnam.

And when they come back to the United States, thankfully a lot of that substance use stopped using amphetamines and all kinds of stuff. People used to use all sorts of stuff when they were soldiers in Vietnam. So this is really challenging. And the first thing that I would say is, you know, we have a lot of resources through the healthy gamer community around career-related stuff. We've got an awesome career coaching program, which is probably the most stable, consistent and successfully growing part of the services we offer at HG. Started pretty small, maybe about 50 spots, and like it's gradually grown, people find immense value out of it.

That may not be something that's accessible to you right now if you're between jobs and facing eviction, but that's why we also have a lot of like free resources, videos, things like that about getting a job, et cetera. But I think don't mistake fixing the external things in your life. That has to be done. Otherwise, your brain is just going to be running ragged. Now, the second thing, so that's sort of like one piece, okay? And in terms of concrete advice, they're simple things.

Or first of all, polish up your resume. You know, do some research on how to polish up a resume. Second thing is, I think, like, networking is really undervalued. So we're reaching the state in the world right now. We're like, applying for a job is a total mess, right? So you have these companies that they sort of did it first. where they started using AI. So, like, they started using AI and they started using, like, these, these mega websites, like,

Indeed and Monster.com or whatever, right? So, like, like, you had of all these employers that are, like, like, filtering thousands of applications. And now employers are really upset because the people who are applying for jobs are also using AI. So you have some, like, automatically generated email where they ask you to upload, you know, you submit your resume, and then they have, like, 15 pages where they want you to manually input your resume. And now what's happening is like you have an AI employer, an employer who's using AI and a prospective employee who's also using AI. So it's just sort of like AI talking to AI. So in a world like this, employers are really unsatisfied. Employees are really unsatisfied.

And that's why I think networking becomes really, really important. Right. So go to job fairs, go to events or professional events of things that you're interested in. Go to conferences, meet people, grab business cards, introduce yourself to all the people at booths. You know, like go to all these booths and just ask people, hey, are you all hiring? Are you all looking for someone who's, you know, are you all hiring? Just ask, meet people. Go to these networking events and introduce yourself and things like that. Right.

And I think like people are starved for like real human beings in a world of AI. So I'd say that, you know, polish up your resume, start meeting people. You'll be amazed at how many job opportunities arise. Like everyone's like, I'm applying for a thousand jobs a day because that's how it's done nowadays. And meeting an actual human being who's like a decent human being who seems motivated, capable, like showed up, right? Which is what 50% of a job is will be a huge leg up over like all of these faceless, thousand AI generated applicants who are like drafting emails and asking chat GPT to build them a resume. And it's becoming more and more and more generic. Okay.

Now we get to the psychological stuff. I think is really interesting. So the first is I'm a huge fan of aimless wandering. And I have had literally years of my life where I used to do that. So when I was in Boston first moved there, didn't really have a job, didn't really have a way to pay my bills and things like that. I used to walk a lot. Like hours and hours and hours, I think it's a really great way to process emotions. I used to also like walk to the grocery store like carrying, you know, pounds and pounds and pounds of groceries.

And it would be like a 45 minute trip each way. And I think like that really helped me. So I think that when I hear someone is like wandering around, right, you want to be safe. But I think generally speaking, like that's a form of emotional processing. It's a form of getting rid of all of that excess glucose that your body is dumping into your bloodstream because your cortisol levels are really high. It can actually be really good. So I think that's something that you're doing that sounds really good. For those of y'all that feel stuck, I think walking is a great option.

heard you nine years of bring back the snack wrap and you've won but maybe you should have asked for more say hello to the hot honey snack wrap now you've really won go to mcdonald's and get it while you can now the last thing that we have to really talk about is you say that you have to walk and you know you're wandering around because you hate being at home and this is where i think there's a really important bit of work so and that's like what is it that you experience when you're at home. What is it that you're actually literally walking away from, running away from, biking away from? Because oftentimes when you wander, and I know that's how it was for me, like, I had to just get out.

Like, I could not be here. And for me, it was like this flood of like negativity that would just dominate my mind. And like, you, I would think about it and think about it and think about it and nothing would ever get better. So I just had to get the hell out. I had to escape these four walls. And I'm not saying that you should go home and say, you should go home and say, you. it in that mess. But I think a great place to start is when you're running away from your four walls,

in the middle of your walk, sit down somewhere, and let some of those thoughts come. Let some of that stuff come. Right? So usually when you're in these four walls, you get bombarded with too many thoughts at the same time. And when you get bombarded, you can't really deal with them. But when you walk, something really cool happens. you start to get exhausted. So as you start to walk a lot, your blood sugar starts to drop, right, because you're using your muscles, biking, whatever.

You start to breathe more heavily, right? So your respiratory pattern changes. You start to take more deep breaths, your exhalation, your rate of exhalation may increase. You start to physically exhaust yourself. That's why we walk. Because when we're physically exhausted, we become mentally calm. Right? So then if you sit down, you'll sit down.

notice that there is a dullness to your mind. But that dullness is amazing. Rather than having hyperactive thoughts that are like looping, looping, looping, looping, now that you're exhausted, now that you've walked, your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. You're running out of blood glucose, right? So then you're starting to calm down, sit on a park bench somewhere, and let whatever thoughts come.

Let whatever thoughts arise, let them come. and just try to pick one or two things to work on, right? You may notice that something floats to the surface, because while you're walking, your brain is doing a ton of processing. And this is where whatever floats to the surface, there's one really critical mistake that a lot of people make, which is that when problems arise in their mind,

they view them abstractly. Okay? Let me see if I can pull up some language about this. Okay, here we go. Found it. Found it, found it, found it. Okay, thanks for being patient with me, chat. Okay.

So this is a great paper on rumination. And if you look at people who get stuck in their own heads, right? This is rumination. They use something called an abstract... They use an abstract processing style for their thoughts. And this is a huge problem. So if you're someone who ruminates, who gets one problem stuck in your head,

And you can't solve it no matter, you have a bunch of useless thinking about it. You can't stop thinking about it. You're thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking, but it never gets better. One of the reasons it never gets better is because the way that you view things is abstract. Okay. There is now extensive evidence that there are different processing styles during rumination, each with distinct helpful versus unhelpful consequences. The processing style characteristic of the phenomenology of depressive rumination,

especially the most pathological brooding style is abstract and analytical. I want you all to understand what this means. If you are abstract and analytical, it will cause problems for your mental health. Okay. This processing involves general, superordinate, de contextualized mental representations that convey the essential meaning causes and implications of goals and events, the why aspects of an action. In contrast, there is a more adaptive processing style,

which is more concrete that involves a focus on the direct, specific, and contextualized experience of an event. This processing mode addresses the details of goals, events, and actions that denote the feasibility mechanics and the means of how to do an action. Now, I know that that's a lot of different information, so let's explain what that means. Some of us are abstract thinkers.

And what we know is if you study people who ruminate, who think over and over and over again, what we find is the ones who think abstractly when they ruminate run into all kinds of problems. These are people who generalize things way too much. They also decontextualize things. So they form meta-level conclusions usually about themselves that are independent of context. I'm a loser. All women are bitches, right? There's, now that I've never dated anyone, I'm never going to be able to date anyone.

These are general, superordinate, abstract meta constructs. I'm screwed. I'm a loser. They're not contextual. It's not that I lost in this situation because of these three or four different things. And then I lost in this other situation because these three or four different things. Or like, they don't, they remove all context. They remove all.

concrete information. And they focus on why. Right? Why is the world this way? Why am I alone? Why? Why? And they think in big picture, oh, yeah, like there's like all of the elites are now

ruining everything in the world and I'm not an elite and there's the elites and I'm a pleb and like they think in these ways. And it's not that that stuff isn't true. Let me be very clear about this. This is not about whether that is true or not true. It is about whether it is useful or not useful. And what we, there's research on this, right? The research on rumination shows that people who brood and think in an overly abstract way, this is not actionable.

If I'm a loser and the elites have all the power, what do I do when I wake up on a Wednesday morning? What action do I take? And what's way more useful is a concrete processing, a concrete way of thinking. What is the context that put me here? What are the individual circumstances that are contributing to this situation? Because the cool thing is if you think about the context of a particular failure or problem, if you change that context, the outcome of the problem can change, right? If the reason that I failed this class is because my bipolar disorder was way too active,

that doesn't mean that I'm going to fail forever. That means that if I adjust this bipolar variable, right, if I get appropriate, treatment for bipolar disorder, then I can pass. So the moment that you add context to your situation, I'm a loser, that's not something that you can fix. Right? That's like, what do you do about that? I don't know.

So be very concrete. Focus on how. And this is what people with rumination, people who ruminate who get stuck in their own head. This is what people really struggle with. They have a lot of difficulty thinking in this way. And this is really important to understand. It doesn't mean that you can't think in this way. It just means that it's difficult.

So oftentimes what these people will also do is if I ask you what is the context that is creating the situation, they say, I can't think of anything. And then they conclude that means that there is nothing. Huge mistake. Okay. Just because you can't think of something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And this is exactly where they have difficulty because their brain is not able to see contextual variables. It requires way more stretching of their

calculative function to be able to find these concrete variables. Their brain is very tuned to abstract big picture, meta, superordinate kind of ideas. They're deep thinkers, big thinkers. But they have a lot of difficulty thinking about how, the mechanism, The concrete stuff, the contextual stuff. So what I do is take a long walk, sit down for a little while, let something float

through to the surface, and then focus on the context that is creating your problems. If you have some negative thoughts about yourself, think about the context of your various failures that allow you to form this meta-level abstract conclusion about yourself. If this variable had changed and this variable had changed and this variable had changed and this variable would have changed, what would have changed? In this third instance, if these two variables changed, what would have changed? And then you have your road forward. Now the goal is going to be focusing on changing those variables. Right?

So here you are in a situation where you're lost, you're walking around, you feel terrible, you don't know how to socialize, you're struggling to socialize. And like, yeah, it's going to be hard to socialize. it's going to be very hard to empathically connect with other human beings because you're burnt out. The first sign of burnout is a lack of empathy for other people. If you don't have empathy, it's very hard to form an organic connection with another human being. Doesn't mean you're a loser. It doesn't mean you're an in-cell. Doesn't mean that you're a beta.

If you are burnt out, it's going to be hard to connect to other human beings because your brain is like, we don't have time to think about other people's perspectives. We don't have time to feel what other people are feeling because we're way too busy dealing with the excessive amount of feelings that we have. So it's completely ordinary to be in the situation. Okay, doesn't make you lose or anything like that. But let something float to the surface and think about how can I make this concrete? How can I make this actionable?

What is the context to my situation, which is creating this particular? particular scenario, how can I alter my context to hopefully change in a positive way, right? So what are the variables that I need to change? That's the way that you need to start thinking. And I remember when I was, you know, wandering through the streets of Boston and feeling really terrible about myself and nauseous, you know, I would sit down at places and I'd be like, okay, like, what is like one thing that I need to do? And it started, I still remember to this day, I said, okay, I need to like get some food in my body. And then I sat down. And then I sat down, and I, like, tried for, like, the course of a day, I tried all kinds of things.

And what I settled on was plain yogurt and choking down a bagel. So I could eat yogurt. I could eat bananas. And I was like, I forced myself to eat a tiny bite of, like, a bagel, like one bite at a time. And it took me an hour to eat a bagel because I felt chronically nauseous. Those are the kinds of steps that you need to take because now at least my body has some food. Now it's got some calories because I'm burning through. calories. How do I get to bed? Fell in love with audiobooks. Right. So I'm going to listen to an

audiobook and I'm going to lay down and it'll help distract myself. Eventually I'll fall asleep and it's like I like reading anyway. So let me just go ahead and do that. So it's really concrete actions to start to turn your life around. And I think it's incredibly hard to be in the situation. I think it's tragic that so many human beings are in the situation that this person described. People are just getting screwed. They're getting like ground down. And hopefully this helps. It's bad, y'all.

Bad out there. Okay. Let's do another one. Good luck to you, friend. Hey, Dr. Kay, I go by CTR and I'm part of your Discord community. My question to you is, how do you determine whether or not something is degenerate when it comes to activities and hobbies? What are your guidelines? I hear you use the term degenerate gamer.

and I've been watching content for a long time, and I've had a degenerate gamer phase, so I think I have a clear understanding of what you mean by that. Sometimes it's negative, sometimes it's endearing. But lately, I've been questioning how we determine these things as an individual and as a society. Why in the year 2025 is gaming still stigmatized and seen as lowbrow by a lot of people, but something like going to an art museum is received a lot better. I know I'm generalizing here, but from my experience, I have an easier time telling people that I go to art museums compared to telling them that a game. And if I were to make the example of going to a gaming cafe compared to going to an art museum, at the end of the day, at their core, I'm still doing the same thing, right?

I'm looking at pixels on one end and on the other side, I'm looking at paintings. Why is that so much better? I could either socialize or not socialize in both situations, but like I said, one has received a lot better. And I want to look at this question both philosophically and practically. So I'd love to hear our thoughts. Thank you for your time. And I hope I get to hear from you. This is awesome.

I love this. Okay. So the first thing is like, you know, sometimes when on this channel, you know, we try to like help human beings. And to be honest, I mean, look, I, I know it's useful to do that. I know it's like part of our mission here. I know it's important to do. I know people are struggling.

We just heard that from the other voicemail. But this is what makes me love this community. I love this question. What does it mean to be degenerate? And let's talk philosophically about whether going to an art museum is somehow superior to looking at pixels on a screen. Okay? So this one may not help y'all very much, but it's one that when I heard, I just fell in love

with the question. And I love these kinds of things. I love this community. But apologies if this isn't maybe helpful. Okay. So first question number one is what is it, what is it a degenerate gamer? So it's funny. I recently tried to teach my kids how to be degenerate.

And the problem is that they're not degenerate enough. And this bothers me because, like, I am, I'm a degenerate. And so, like, it dawned on me that one of the, like the biggest like parenting gifts that I have to give my children is like how to be degenerate. And here's what degeneracy is. So like I had to sit down and I had to figure this out. Like I had to figure out how to explain this to them.

So I was trying to tell them, hey, you all need to take a nap today. And they like don't want to take a nap. They want to waste. And the hours like between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on a weekend. These are the most wasted hours of the day. They're not doing it. They're not on a play date. They're not having any very much fun.

We're taking a break from like screen time or whatever. And I had to sit down and try to explain to them. Hey, if y'all take a nap right now, we don't have to stop playing D&D at 10 o'clock. We can play D&D till midnight. We can play D&D till 1 a.m. And during the week, we're trying really hard to enforce a really healthy bedtime of 8.30s so that they wake up and they're well rested and their brains have plenty of time

to consolidate information and their bodies are growing like. Bedtime is 8.30. And they didn't understand this concept of, like, taking care of yourself now so that you can be debauchous later. The total amount of debauchery that you can engage in is greater if you do certain things. And so when I heard this voicemail, like, what is a degenerate gamer? Here's what I think of. A degenerate gamer is someone who optimizes.

the extraction of dopamine from their brain. Your life starts to become structured around this one thing and getting the most out of it. So this is like, I still remember I've told this before, but like I would order fried rice in two pound increments, one KG of fried rice. And I would do it to optimize my ability to play. this game. I would get Coke by in 20, I would buy a six pack of 20 ounce bottles. Now, y'all may wonder, why wouldn't you get a two-liter bottle? Because the two-liter bottle runs out of carbonation too quickly. I need the right amount. If I buy cans, it's more expensive. But 20 ounces is the right level of carbonation. And then I would fuel this binge. So I think a degenerate gamer is,

is someone who optimizes the dopamine extraction from their brain through video games and sacrifices all kinds of healthy stuff due to that degeneracy. Right? So it's like, I'm going to fuel myself. And sometimes, like, you know, this sounds so bad, but, you know, so I did a fair amount of addiction psychiatry back in the day. And, like, I understood, man. I understood my patience because for many of them, like, you know, when we're talking about an addiction like heroin or meth, it's like it's all about that thing.

It's like the rest of life just disappears. We're willing to sacrifice all other things in order for this thing. And when I was a degenerate gamer, that's what life became. It became a sacrifice of all kinds of things. But here's the really interesting thing. there was this brilliant optimization of this downward direction of my life. I was optimizing how bad I was screwing up my life. That's what degenerate gamer is.

It's when you use all of your analytical power to play as many video games as you can while like, you know, really just accelerating the plunge down to rock bottom. that's what degenerate gamer is. So, you know, I have a, I still have a fondness for degeneracy. Like, it's something that I try to engage in from time to time. Now I do sort of this, this, maybe I'll share this with you all one day. Now I'm sort of thinking about it. I did this recently where like, now when I do degenerate gaming, I do it in sort of a healthy way, right?

So I'll set aside like a 24-hour block where it's like, I'm going to play games. but now, like, now that I'm like north of 40, right? I'll do things like I'll do yoga in the morning. And this is what I really love is like I'll do yoga. I'll go to the gym. Like I'll especially swim if I'm doing a lot of gaming because of my back. I'll do yoga. And here's the really cool thing is like when you like cook yourself a nice meal,

like I'll do something like back in my when I started to be healthy. I'd like make like a pot of stew and I get like a loaf of fresh bread. Right. So instead of like two pounds of fried rice and a ton of Coke, it's going to be like, I'm going to make this healthy, tasty, tasty pot of stew, I'm going to get some fresh bread, I'm going to do yoga in the morning, I'm going to go to the gym, and then I'm going to play. Right? And so you're still sort of optimizing your play, but like you're doing it in sort of a healthy way. And this is the really cool thing, like is that it makes the gaming more fun. It's like when you feel hungry, like there's this pot of food, which is like not going to screw you over for the next three days.

So I'm still a fan of optimizing the dopamine extraction. It's just you don't have to sacrifice everything for it. I think it's wild, but I'm like teaching my kids how to be degenerate. I'm like, look, if you guys eat this kind of stuff, you're not going to be constipated. And then you could have as much chocolate. Like, we're going to have like, you know, chocolate and popcorn. And we're going to play D&D until like midnight. And I told them the other day, I was like, look, I used to play D&D until the sun came up.

We'd go to Taco Bell at like two in the morning because it would close at three. And their minds were blown. Like here's their dad who's like teaching them yoga, making them go to bed at 830. And I was like, I don't think y'all understand. I want to have so much more fun with you. I love playing D&D with y'all. But y'all are fucking amateurs. You can last for two hours before you start fighting each other.

And you need to like take care of your body so you don't get wiggly. Like you need to do the yoga. You need to eat properly so you don't get constipated. And then we can like run it all night long. Like this is what we're shooting for. Y'all fucking amateurs. Like this is you have a seven. year old body. You can't run all night long. You really have to optimize it in order to get to

midnight or 1 a.m. Right? So it's like this is what I'm trying to impart in them. And they're learning like that, you know, in a good way. Like I'm really happy with it. They're kind of struggling. So we're going to continue working on it. That's first thing is degenerate. That's what a degenerate is. Like a degenerate is someone who optimizes their crash towards a rock bottom. Now, looking at pixels and looking at paintings, is it the same? So I'm someone who will totally agree that there is an unfair judgment of gaming. So we can talk about great works of art. So I love impressionistic painting.

We can talk about great works of art. I think it's super cool. Like art is very cool. there's an exhibit here in Houston called the Murakami exhibit, which is like literally mind-blowing, or metaphorically mind-blowing, I guess. It's like super cool. I've gotten super into art recently, and I love it. And is gaming art? Is it the same? And the answer is like yes and no. So I think if you're playing Expedition 33, I think Expedition 33 is one of these games that makes gaming an art form. This is like, here are the forms of art. There's like sculpture and painting.

and symphony, and orchestra. And then occasionally in a video game, we're like entering the field of great art with Expedition 33, better than cinema. Because with a game, you can do, gaming is a level of art that other forms of art can't touch. Because you've got music, you've got interaction,

you've got participation. This is the big thing that makes gaming, I think, a new tier of art. because most art is not art that you participate in, it's art that you observe. Gaming is the one form of art that I think has a lot of participation. So it activates your brain in different ways. So I think gaming can absolutely be art. But let's be honest, not all gaming is art.

And there is a huge difference. So when I think about something like art, what I think is amazing about it, and especially a game like Expedition, is that it activates like all kinds of stuff. off in your brain. You feel philosophically activated. Like, I've been having this, you know, two-month conversation with a body of mine about the nature, reality, metaphysics,

Hindu cosmology, and how Expedition 33 is basically, like, maps onto a Hindu perspective of what the world is like, Hindu Buddhist perspective. So it triggers you in lots of different ways. It's beautiful to look at. It's engaging analytically. It, like, there's all kinds of great stuff in it.

Right? I think it's awesome. But then there's also like the 14th game of degenerate Dota or like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans or whatever the fuck. Like dopaminergic, 14 hour what granny? You know, we always talk about video game addiction. You know all these kids, all these kids on iPads. Let's forget about kids on iPads for a second. Let's talk about grandma and grandpa on an iPad. They'll be glued to that shit for like hours.

The weirdest complaint that I've ever gotten from a. patient of mine is a patient of mine had an in-law who is complaining to my patient that, oh, like, you guys don't like spend, you know, you guys don't send the kids over. Like, I'm not like, you guys, you're, y'all, y'all are depriving me of time with my grandchildren. And it's like, Grandma, when we come over and visit you or when you visit us, you're just on your iPad the whole time while the kids are there. Like, you're not engaging with them in any meaningful way.

There's a huge addiction problem in seniors with mobile gaming. That I don't think is the same as art. So gaming is not all the same. Some of it I think is like not activating us in an inspiring and positive way. Some of it is just squeezing the last drops of dopamine out of our nucleus accumbens as we like zone out and become a zombie who's like just glued to the screen. The 14th game of Dota or grinding the Warcraft three ladder or whatever. When gaming becomes a grind, I think it's no longer an art form.

And I think philosophically they can be the same. but they're not necessarily the same. I think there are soul sucking games and there are soul expanding games. And I think it's an awesome philosophical question. The last thing is it's easier to tell people that you went to an art museum than it is to say that you played a video game.

And I think that there's a very real stigma associated with it. I think people don't really get this. And this is, you know, my pet peeve is like sports. Like, I'm convinced that e-sports is objectively superior to physical sports. I'm just convinced. So like here's the thing. I don't know if you guys watch like basketball or football,

American football, or soccer, whatever, European football, the rest of the world football. The thing is those games like, there's the crazy thing. So if you look at most physical sports, the game is determined by length, right? So like in a basketball game, this is what really infuriates me.

The last three minutes of a basketball, game. If it's close, is the most boring, frustrating, blue balls, 45 minutes of your life. Fowls constantly, timeouts constantly, commercial breaks constantly. There's two minutes left in the game. The score is even, and it's every 14 seconds, we take a two and a half minute break. Like the tension is boring AF. And you know what I've? fucking love. I love Dota. And I love Dota because you don't know when it's going to end. The game can be 25 minutes and it's like, oh my God, it's over. 60 seconds later, they're running down mid. This is over. I didn't realize the game could end right now. So I think that there is an

objective level of excitement when you don't know whether a game will end. Tennis, I think, is the best example of this. So tennis has this, right? Because like you don't quite know if it's going to go to three sets or five sets or like whatever. Sumo. Sumo is actually a good example. Susuma has this too. Like, is this, uh, is this Bosho going to be like this long or this long?

Like nobody knows. Right? So like, I, I think that we do unfairly judge gaming, but I think that there's a lot of like crappy gaming out there that does not to be deserved to be put on the level of art. So do people judge you harshly if you tell them that you game?

Like, yeah. And I think that's okay. Let them judge. They're the ones who are missing out. If you're busy watching basketball, instead of watching League of Legends or Dota or like CSGO. Like I don't know if you guys have ever seen this clip from MLG like this, this, you know,

I think this is what put Tarek on the map, if you guys know Tarek. But like this epic, epic clip, like that's what I'm talking about. These are these like moments in gaming history. You know, OGs run at TIA like moment in gaming history. They're like these moments in gaming history that I don't know if physical sports can like touch. You know, like it's like you just can't have like there's no like physical sport where it's like, okay, we're playing like American football, or let's say we're playing basketball. And like there's one player left on the team against a team of like five people.

And so the amount of tension, the amount of upsets, the scenarios that can be upset, like you just can't do that in a physical sports. It's always like five dudes on one team and like five dudes on the other team. You're never like one v5 and the one person wins. And this is where if people want to disrespect you because you play video games instead of going to art museums, I say, fuck them. They're the ones missing out. Right? And I think it's important to consider that like if what we say about being a gamer is like,

and I say this is someone who did this, right? I do think it's an absolute waste of a couple years of your life if you're gaming for like 10 or 12 hours at a time. I don't think that that's good. Like the problems with gaming are that, you know, it's not, the skills aren't transferable, first of all. So if you spend like, you know, four years of your life grinding like, I don't know, like, escape from Tarkov or whatever. Like, it's not clear that that'll be transferable. There's some amount of FPS skill that is transferable,

but generally speaking, you can't like GoPro in Fortnite and then GoPro in Valourn. It looks like really hard to do. And if you look at some of these things like investing in sports or investing in art, I think those are skills that yield more over time. And there's even some neuroscience evidence of that, right? So first of all, if it's a physical sport,

using your body is a good thing. But art, I think, like, activates different kinds of your brain in, like, very, like, healthy ways. And especially if you're learning later on in life, I think it's going to be really good. Generally speaking, the more diversity that you put into your brain, the more that you make it do new things, the better off you will be. And I tend to find that a lot of games, especially people who get super into one game, become very, very, like, automatic with it, right? Like, these, like, kind of completionist, like, gotcha game sort of things. Like, I don't think that those are good for your brain. I think there's a lot of random reinforcement schedule.

I think there's a lot of just like mindless grinding and shooting for things and getting really upset about stuff and like molding and all that kind of stuff. So I don't think gaming in art is the same. Do I think gaming gets a bad rap? Yes. Do I think it deserves a better rap? Yes. But also, I don't think that, you know, paint on a canvas is the same as pixels on a screen. Are you using your eyes in both cases? Absolutely.

But the way that your brain is being activated by the two of those is very different. But I love the question. What do you all think? I'm curious. How would you all define degeneracy? Yeah. So I think like this using the word irresponsible, I think is like really good, right? So.

And I mean, you can be like I've worked, I've had patients who are, you know, arguably irresponsible in the creation of their art. I don't think that that's, you know, that can happen too. Yeah, so someone's mentioning, you know, that sports can be degenerate and healthy. So I think there's a different kind, like when I think about unhealthiness in sports, there's a certain obsessional quality, right? So I've worked with athletes who have like body dysmorphy and things like that. Like that's, it can be unhealthy too, but I think the nature of the unhealthiness is different.

Art tends to be quieter. Certainly true. But do you all like to, I sometimes listen to music when I'm at a museum. Is a God gamer a glorified degenerate? I don't think so. So here's the really sad thing. I think Godtier gamer is not usually the same as degenerate. There can be some overlap in that Venn diagram, but, you know, most people who play games for 16 hours a day are not God tier.

Most of them, like, suck, right? Like, you've got some, you know, bronze level person on, like, glass. Valerent or League of Legends or whatever, who's got like 40,000 hours in the game or something, and like they're still bad. So I don't think that degenerate. And I actually think, and we're seeing this in e-sports, right?

So I had a little jaunt in e-sports a couple years ago. And I think what we're seeing in e-sports is that the more degenerate of a gamer you are, the worse you do. The people who really win are people who take care of their bodies, take care of their minds, like learn how to meditate, start working out, start eating health, healthy, they do all the stuff, and then they put in the hours. They'll, you know, play for 12 to 16 hours, go to meetings, things like that, discuss strategy. But it's, I mean, it's not degeneracy at all. Like, these are some of the hardest working professionals that I've ever seen. And it's relentless. It's like 100 hours a week is like normal for them. That's cool. Someone became a chess instructor. Awesome. Would you say gamers in general or idiots who are using it to escape from their life? No, I think this is one of the big problems. You know, this person was talking about the

stigma of gaming. I think one of the biggest problems that we have right now is that gamer used to be like one group. Right. So like when I was in college, let's say like 2001, so 24 years ago. So I think at that point, gaming was far more homogenous. But I think you can't say gamers are anything now. I mean, you can, like, do research on fluid IQ and stuff, and you can make some claims about gamers. But I think gaming is now so diverse that it's like, it's hard to say gamers are this. Do a lot of people use video games as an escape from life? Yes. But I don't think that that's all gamers. I think most, like, well, part of what's cool about is, is nowadays, the demographic of gaming is changing very rapidly. You have tons of successful professionals

who are games. So they don't all use it as an escape. for life. I think it is a very common, maybe the most common escape from life that we see amongst people nowadays. So it's easy to think about it. So are there gamers who escape from life? Yes, but are there gamers who don't escape from life? Absolutely. And then you also have these like, you know, World of Warcraft weddings where it's like that's not escaping from life. Now it's like, I'm going to get married to this person that I'm in a guild with. And like that happens. Hey, y'all, just a reminder that in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr.

Kay's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description below and back to the video. Hello, Dr. Kay. So I've grown up in a narcissistic family system for about two decades. And even after I escaped, I ended up in the wrong crowd a couple times, had a couple of bad relationships. And I've been betrayed a lot because more than anything, I really wanted to trust someone without having my guard up. And I still want that on some level. But because of that, I've trusted people too easily and I've gotten backstabbed and exploited way too much. And it's

gotten to the point now where I can't even trust kindness. Like, I see the potential for abuse in it. Like even if someone gives me emotional support during a difficult time, how do I know they're not trying to figure out what my weaknesses are so they can exploit me later? And even if they reassure me that they're not being abusive or anything, I mean, they could be lying to me or maybe they're not self-aware of their abusive patterns. Like the paranoia runs deep right now. And the best answer I've been able to give myself is that deep down everyone has the potential to be a little bit manipulative or a little bit abusive. And I just have to find people where they're good outweighs their abusive tendencies. But I don't know if that's the best answer. So I'm wondering what you think.

What a wonderful question. Okay. So I'm going to say a couple of things that I think are really, really, I hope they're helpful. But they're going to sound harsh. They're not harsh, I hope. I'm not going to try to come across this. So please bear with me, okay? So this is a really common problem because so here's what happened.

Like 10,000 years ago, there was like some narcissistic human being. And then they had children and they raised their children in a narcissistic environment. And what we know about children who grow up with narcissistic parents is that they will adopt be socialized or conditioned to some narcissistic traits. And then, you know, 10,000 years ago this happened and then they raised a little narcissist, and then that little narcissist grew up, and then they had a child, and then they raised a little

narcissist, and it went on to the ages. And so what we tend to see is that if you have like narcissistic parents, or what we know is that narcissism is somewhat transmissible from parent to child. child. And when I say transmissible, there may be a component that's genetic, but a lot of it is the way that you are taught to relate to other human beings. So one of the biggest challenges, if you were someone who grew up with narcissistic parents, is that you will have narcissistic ways of thinking. Now, that doesn't mean that you're a narcissist, and it's not your fault. It's like literally, you are taught a certain mode of interaction. acting with other people.

And until you realize that that mode may have been internalized, you will continue to run into these problems. And so this person is saying, okay, I came up with the solution, which is like maybe everyone has the capacity to manipulate, everyone has the capacity to be kind, and I just have to look for the right people. Okay, so I want to show this to you all.

I want, we're going to listen to this voicemail again. I'm not saying you're raging narcissist, bro. But there are certain patterns of narcissistic thinking, okay? So we're going to listen to this voicemail again. And I'm going to jot down some phrases. Okay. And then we'll see. Hello, Dr. Kay. So I've grown up in a narcissistic family system for about two decades. And even after I escaped, I ended up in the wrong crowd a couple times, had a couple bad relationships. And I've been betrayed a lot because more than anything, I really wanted to trust someone without having my guard up. And I still want that on some level. But because of that, I've trusted people too easily and I've gotten backstabbed and exploited way too much.

And it's gotten to the point now where I can't even trust kindness. Like I see the potential for abuse in it. Like even if someone gives me emotional support during a difficult time, how do I know they're not trying to figure out what my weaknesses are so they can exploit me later? And even if they reassure me that they're not being abusive or anything, I mean, they could be lying to me or maybe they're not self-aware of their abusive patterns. Like the paranoia runs deep right now. And the best answer I've been able to give myself is that deep down,

everyone has the potential to be a little bit manipulative or a little bit abusive. And I just have to find people where they're good outweighs their abusive tendencies. But I don't know if that's the best answer. So I'm wondering what you think. So I think this is a great example. So first of all, like props to this person because the first step to overcoming this narcissistic conditioning, which is kind of what I would call it, is to like question and respond. That is the main thing that narcissists don't do. So when I talk about narcissistic conditioning, what do I mean? So let's understand a little bit about narcissism, and then we'll go back to the list, okay?

So when a narcissist goes through life and they feel hurt, the instrument of agency for me being hurt is something outside of me. right so like the reason i'm hurt is because of what people do to me they betray me they exploit me i end up with the wrong crowd right so i want you all to think about the responsibility and not in a negative way responsibility is not the right word it has a bad connotation to it i want you to think about the agency oh i ended up well whose fault is that not mine I didn't make a mistake. I ended up here. I got betrayed.

I got exploited. I want to trust so bad. I just want kindness. I want people to like me. I want to be free. And it's great. You want all those things. Like those are wonderful things to want.

Really human things to want. But I want you all to pay attention to the language. Things are happening to this person. That's the key thing about narcissism. It's not I am doing it. I'm not responsible for it. Things are happening to me. If I get hurt or something bad happens in my life, other people are the ones responsible.

And so this makes sense, right? So what is this person looking for? This person is, I jotted this down, this person wants to find the right people. Right? Because if I can find the right person, if the fundamental unit of agency, if what determines my life is the people outside of me. These people are betraying me. These people are exploiting me. So if I look, I will find some people who love me. And then I'll be okay. This is never going to work. And the problem is that it fits within the narcissistic frame, which is that my life is going to be determined. My happiness,

everything that happens to me is determined by the people around me. You wore that dress to make me feel fat. You got a new car to make me feel like I'm a failure. You are making me feel this way. You're betraying me. You're exploiting me. You're doing it to me. I want you to love me. And love comes from you, too. And this is what's so hard about it. It's not this person's fault. This is like literally the conditioning that I've seen time and time and time again. Because what this person, I want you all to understand this. What this person internalizes, right? So it's not their fault because this is like literally when you're fucking three. Okay.

And like your parent walks up to you and says, you just ruined my day for like shitting in your diaper. Right? You ruined my day. The way that I feel is determined by you. Now I'm upset. Now I'm disappointed. Now I'm angry and it's your fault.

My internal state is determined. and I have no agency. I can't do anything about it. Holy crap. You pooped your pants at the age of three. It's not like it ever crossed my mind that if you're pooping your pants, that's because I didn't potty train you because, oh, right, I'm the parent. I'm supposed to teach you out of potty train.

Never crosses their mind. They blame people around them for their circumstances. They ended up this way. They didn't choose, oh, yeah, I'm just a victim of my circumstances. So not this person's fault, really. This is what gets past. down. Now, is it genetic? Is it nurture? Is it something about conditioning? I imagine it's like all of the above. Okay. But this is what's so scary because it's so subtle. It's the way that you're, and so

when you're like three years old and your parent tells you like, oh, this is your fault, you internalize that structure. There's no way to not internalize that structure unless you're like enlightened, I suppose. So these kids grow up and they move through life feeling like I have to find the right people because the people are responsible for me. And then this person is doing really great because they're reflecting, right? They're like, okay, I have this pattern. They, like, you know, are asking this question. They're trying to question what's going on.

And here's the really cool thing. You can absolutely break free of this. But you need to change your fundamental way of thinking. They're saying, how do I find the right people? It's not about finding the right people. This is where we get to some of the fun stuff. Okay. So, when this person was,

was talking, right? So trusted too easily. Can't trust kindness. How do I know? So now the question becomes, why do you trust too easily? What is it within you that selects for people who are going to betray your trust? Right? So there's some signal that you're sending out. And when you say betrayed or exploited, I wonder what they would say. What is their side of the story? Right? So I don't know if y'all have ever dealt with someone with narcissistic conditioning. Let's put it that way.

I'm not saying this person is a narcissist, right? And the way that they're like, oh, yeah, you're like exploiting me. And you're like, I'm not doing anything, bro. I just asked you for a favor. I've done you favors. I'm asking you for a favor in turn. And suddenly that's exploiting you. Right?

There's a lot of this strong language. And I'm not saying the person wasn't exploited. Very possible they were exploited. Quite likely they were exploited. If that's what they're going to. say we are going to accept that at face value and still be a little bit questioning of it. We're going to accept it, but we have the thought in the back of our mind that maybe there is some form of miscalculation here.

Okay, so we just accept that you've been betrayed. Even if that's the case, trust too easily. You can't trust kindness. How do you know? You know by paying attention to yourself. You know by the way that you fix this is by fixing this. So how do you find someone that you can be let your guard down, that you can trust them completely and they're not going to take advantage of you? You pay attention to them.

You work on yourself some. You don't utilize them for whatever it is that you're utilizing them for. So this person says, I wound up. I ended up in the wrong crowd. Hold on a second. Because ending up in the wrong crowd is a series of decisions. in a series of feelings, now you're over here,

and then there's another feeling, and there's another action, and now you're over here, and then suddenly before you realize that you're in the wrong crowd. And so I don't doubt that they ended up in the wrong crowd, but it's not that ending up in the wrong crowd. This is the key thing.

The main thing that someone with narcissistic conditioning needs to learn is that they are responsible, right? If I feel like you are making me look fat because of the dress that you're wearing, that's not on you. This feeling that I have is coming from me and is my responsibility. Because I look at you and I feel insecure, now I'm blaming you for making me look bad. But that insecurity is for me. So I think the key thing here is you don't have to just hope that, and this person sounds super smart, and they're right, right?

So we all have the capacity to manipulate. We all have the capacity for kindness. we all have both of those things. Absolutely correct. But this person is spot on that this seems like a terrible way to navigate life. It's going to get you screwed over and over and over again. So I think what you really need to do if you're in a situation like this is pay attention to this. That in your life you will have a chain of feelings and actions that will wind you up,

that you will wound up in a place. you ended up in a particular place surrounded by certain kinds of people, right? And who is it that betrayed your trust? Maybe you spent time with people who were really, really kind to you and asked to borrow 20 bucks. And they made you, they're like, oh, you're such a great person. You're such a great friend. I can trust you so much.

You're so kind. And like you were like, mm-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m- Right. And then that person will exploit you. They are, they're already exploiting you, but it feels so good. Oh, my God. I'm such a saint. oh my God, tell me how much I'm a saint. And why are you so addicted to that?

Because you didn't get it from your parents. Right? This person sounds Indian. Weird. The accent. I don't know if it sounds Indian to you. Maybe I'm wrong. But like, you know, it's like it's really hard because I mean, Indians are some of the, I mean, I'm not sure they're not any more narcissistic or less narcissistic than other people.

It's just a flavor of narcissism. I'm really like familiar with. So in parts of Indian culture, also East Asian culture, right? So there's a certain amount of like narcissism that is respectable. We're the best. We're the brightest. Harvard, Harvard, Harvard, IIT, MIT, MIT, Google, Facebook. Right?

Not like Doctors Without Borders. World Health Organization. Like that helping the world? unless it's a mega guru. Oh yeah. I work for Google and then I go to my mega guru on the weekend. And it's the best guru, not the guru that you've never heard of. It's the mega guru.

It's the most famous guru. Oh, yeah. I had a weekend retreat with the most famous guru and I met the most famous guru. And ah, wonderful, wonderful. Right? This is sort of an attitude. So I think the key thing here is that it's not about finding the right people. it's about looking at yourself

and what is it that causes you to respond to the wrong people in a particular way? What causes you to run away from the right people? And I know this sounds crazy, but there's a great paper called the repetition compulsion. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Which is something that I think originally Freud talked about. But it's this like, right?

This is like old, okay, so this is like from residency days. So, you know, the role of loss and the repetition compulsion, this is by Paul Russell, this is a great paper about, you know, how we seek out the same kinds of people over and over and over again. And that we have like, you know, all this unconscious stuff, this stuff that's suppressed, like, whatever. We don't need to go into it. But the key thing is that, like, you know, if you're someone who has one of these kind of like narcissistic upbringings, there's a really good, and it's not just narcissistic. It's also like abusive. Right?

So you're going to be seeking people out that make you comfortable. That's not healthy, but you'll feel comfortable. You'll feel like you understand what's going on. They'll make you feel good in some way. There's some part of you that will gravitate towards it. And so if you're ending up with the wrong crowd, if you continually get betrayed and exploited, you need to be more careful about who you choose to spend your time with.

And then you ask yourself the very logical question, How do I find the right people? But that's not, even though it's a very good question, very logical question, it's not the right question. The question is, what are the signals within you that induce you to gravitate towards these wrong people? Because you certainly know who the wrong people are, right? And so then what is it that made you wind up there? What were you chasing? And then try moving in the opposite direction.

And it's really about interesting. What is going on within me? And this is why this is hard for people who have narcissistic conditioning, which is literally why a really good treatment for narcissistic personality disorder is something called mentalization-based therapy. And what mentalization is, this is something that people with narcissism really struggle with, is when they look at other people, they don't understand that someone, not understand is not the right word. Their brain is not able to calculate that someone else's behavior is very. driven by all kinds of internal things, right? All they see is the injury to them. So let me explain. So if you wear this dress and then I say you're wearing this dress to make me feel bad. Oh my God. My handwriting is so terrible chat. Okay. You're wearing this dress to make me feel bad.

This is an action that induces a feeling within me. And what what narcissists lack, like literally their brain has difficulty making this calculation, is that this action was done because you wanted this result. Since this resulted in this, this is the same as the why. This is why you did it. I feel this way, therefore you did it because these reasons. This is all they have awareness of. They don't have awareness that this person has feelings, desires,

insecurities that lead to this action. They have no vision of this, right? It's not about you. There are other things involved. That's the difficulty that narcissists have. The other difficulty that narcissists have is when someone is a narcissist and takes an act, they are also blind to the thoughts, feelings, insecurities in themselves that result in this act.

They don't have access to this. So if you're struggling with this kind of problem and you have what I would call narcissistic conditioning, which is you grew up in a household of narcissists, you were probably blind to this. And this is why it feels like you ended up somewhere because you're not aware of these drivers of your behavior. And you ended up getting exploited.

You ended up getting betrayed. There were probably signals that this person was exploitive, signals that this person was maybe inclined to betray you or they didn't deserve that much trust from you. And this is where I want to trust so bad. So when you want to trust so bad, what do you do? You ignore red flags that get in the way of the dream that you want. And this cycle, by the way, gets worse.

I want to trust. I get disappointed. And then what happens to my desire for trust? My desire for trust increases. Now I want it so much more. I've been betrayed all I want. I want it so bad. I want it so bad.

When you start wanting it so bad, then you ignore more red flags. And then since you're ignored, you want it so bad, oh my God, all I've ever wanted was someone to love me. And now this person is love bonging me. Oh my God, they love bombing me. Oh, my God. It feels so good. And then they start abusing me. And then after I get out of that relationship, all I want is to be loved. And so I will ignore the red flags in the future.

Happens all the time. Repetition, compulsion. It's why people who grow up in abusive households end up with abusive partners. Very common, right? Increases the risk. If you have an abusive parents, you're more likely increases the risk for you to have an abusive romantic relationship. And so what this person really needs to do and what everyone with narcissistic conditioning needs to do and everyone without narcissistic conditioning needs to do, what everyone can benefit from is this and this, right? Recognize that there are things within you that are driving you in this situation.

And as you become aware of this stuff, as you become aware of what your drivers are, the way you're thinking, the way you're feeling, something cool will happen. Then when you interact with people, since you're aware of all of this stuff and you're aware of all of this stuff, now you can be more discerning

because this stuff is bad and this stuff is good and this person makes you feel really good and this person makes you feel somewhat uncomfortable. And actually the relationship that you need to go for

is this one, not this one. Because this person is making you feel great but they're doing it in kind of a shady way. And even though this person is being open and accepting, they're making you feel insecure because they're comfortable in their body. And if you spend time, more time with them, maybe you will learn how to be comfortable in your body. That'll rub off on you. And this is really

hard, but it's really opening up these dimensions of awareness. And for this particular person, and I think this is a great exercise for people who have narcissistic conditioning, if you ended up somewhere, look at the process of ending up. somewhere. Look at what happened with you. What were all of the steps? And the better resolution and the better detail you have, the better off you're going to be. How did you end up here? What were you feeling? What did you do? What did they do? How did that make you feel a certain way? How did they pull you into this relationship? Because for them to pull you into a relationship, you have to walk with them, right? They send you a signal and then you have to say yes.

that's the big thing that we sometimes have a lot of difficulty understanding is you are complicit in the creation of this situation and this is what's so hard about doing therapy with people who are chronically abused is you have to show them in a non-blaming way that you participated in this reenactment. You actually do have agency and that also means you have responsibility.

That you took certain actions that created this situation. Not your fault, but that's where your power lies. If you didn't create this situation in some way, then you don't have the power to change it in the future. Now, there are various limitations to that philosophy. The top of the list is children who are abused. They oftentimes don't have any agency in the situation. They're just victims, right? And so then the challenge there is that even if you had no agency at the get-go, what these children come away with is this idea that since I never had agency in this situation, I don't have agency now.

It is impossible for me to have agency now. And since they give up their agency as adults, then they find themselves in terrible, terrible situations again and again and again. So then what we have to do is teach them, even though you didn't have agency over here, you do have agency now. Stop giving it up. really, really tricky tightrope to walk. So what should you do? Pay attention to yourself. Pay attention to other people.

Be careful about how your desire for trust and freedom in a relationship, the freedom to trust and not fearing betrayal, how that very driver may attract you to the wrong things. Great question. Let me just see. I'm going to try to catch up with chat. Yeah, so someone says, someone said, well, my parents made me a people pleaser.

Absolutely. Right. So if you have narcissistic parents, you have been shaped. You've been shaped to be a people pleaser because their needs matter. Your needs were completely irrelevant. And so if you've been shaped in this way,

you'll do one of two things. Either you adopt their role, and you become narcissistic towards the people around you? Or you continue playing the role that you played growing up, which is why you end up in situations where people will exploit you. Because when you're a people pleaser, that's great. Oh, my God. So if you have narcissistic conditioning and I'm a sociopathic narcissist myself,

it's going to be, I will love you so much. You're going to be exactly what I'm looking for. Someone who I can betray, someone who I can exploit, and someone who I can blame for all of my shortcomings. Best thing, best, five out of five stars, highly recommend. So be careful about your conditioning. Be careful about your internal programming. Hi, Dr. Kay, my name is Tim.

I've been following your work for a while. Two years ago, I came across four videos of you training healthy gamers coaches where you talked about resistance, intent, and action. Out of everything you've shared, those four had the biggest impact on me. They reshaped how I understand motivation. I have been using those insights in my own journey as personal coach and corporate trainer. Since then, I've been trying to find more material like this. I know if you've recommended motivational interviewing.

I have studied that. I even went further to sign up for the master degree of clinical psychology in my country. Vietnam and I'd love to go even deeper. If you have other frameworks, thinkers, and resources you think are worth exploring, please let me know. And if there's even a slightest chance I could observe how you train your coaches, not for a job, but to grow, I would be incredibly grateful. Thank you for all the work you have already put out. It has a real impact on how I think and teach. Thank you.

Awesome. So it's interesting. So these were some of our contest winners from May about, you know, which voicemails people wanted answers to. So this person is asking, okay, what is the most, do you have other useful frameworks for like understanding people and how to interact with people? Absolutely. We're going to go over it here. And the person said that, okay, watching how you teach coaches was something that was really helpful to them. Awesome.

We're glad that it was helpful. to you, that's why we share it. So first thing is like we have something called the Healthy Gamer Institute now where I understand our first four cohorts basically filled up where we teach these skills. So if you all want to learn these skills, you can like learn them and we will teach you. You may not be able to sign up right the second because as I said, the first four cohorts are full. But our coach like certification process is really, really good. It's now NBHWC certified. so there's all kinds of other stuff that we sort of added to the program so that you will come out of this with a more complete like skill set, right?

It's not just the stuff that I thought was important. There's a national board in the United States that overlaps with some boards in Europe and things like that. We basically included all the stuff that they need for their certification. So you all can sign up for it and check it out there. Okay. Now, this person asks, you know, is there something else that I've, would share that is like a framework like motivational interviewing that I would use and the answer is

absolutely okay so this is something I've talked about before but I'm going to talk about it in a slightly different way so I think if you want to understand how human beings work both yourself and other people I think the best model to use is Vedic psychology okay now why do I think this is the best model. I'm not saying it's the best model, period. I'm saying if you, human being, who is not formally trained and is not going to spend eight years becoming a psychiatrist or five to six years becoming a psychologist and you want to understand how you work and other people work, I think Vedic psychology is the best model for that. So in the West, we have all kinds of ideas about psychology. This is why learning psychology is hard. You guys didn't see me there, but I have this.

So I just grabbed some books off of my bookshelf. Let's go through them. Okay. These are all great books. Book number one, Prisoners of Hate by Aaron Beck, CBT and Anger. Book number two, mentalization-based treatment for personality disorders. Excellent book we just talked about in narcissism is great. Memories, dreams, and reflections. But Half Price by Carl Jung. Excellent book. Less excellent book. The Red Book by Carl Jung, a reader's edition.

This book is damn near incomprehensible. Okay? Eh, not really the same thing, but the Life Divine by Oribindo. Cognitive behavioral therapy. This is excellent by Judith Beck. This is way more practical. Okay? Psychodynamic psychotherapy, a clinical manual.

Pretty good. Great for introductory psychology. psychiatrists. Change of heart. This is a little bit more, I don't know, like, feely. This is like not really a clinical manual, but it's a book. What Psychology can teach us about spreading social change?

Fine. Psychodynamic formulation. Another pretty good book for starting out, but I much prefer this bad boy. This is what I use when I'm doing a psychodynamic formulation, which is the psychodynamic diagnostic manual. Nancy McWilliams is great. But this is this.

So, if you want to learn psychology from someone in the West, that's just like eight books. And on my bookshelf, I have like, I mean, that's maybe 5 to 10% of the books that I have on that bookshelf. I've got another one over here. So here's the problem, is if you want to learn psychology from someone in the West, like, which of the these theories is correct. Should I read the Red Book? Should I read CBT? Should I take a look at internal family systems? That one's over there. Should I read the psychodynamic diagnostic manual? There's a lot of great information, but it's really like hard to figure out what to read. And it's all useful. But if you're looking for a really simple model that will teach you about

yourself and other people, I think Vedic psychology is way better. And why? One really simple reason. In the West, you have a bunch of people who are studying other people. But the problem is that if we look at the mind, the mind involves thoughts and emotions. Let's say just as a simple, it's more than that, but let's just start there. The problem is that no scientist can observe either of these two things directly. Impossible. We have yet to figure out. out a way of detecting precisely what emotion or what thought someone is experiencing.

So there is a fundamental weakness to Western psychology, which is that we cannot directly observe what we are trying to understand, which is why people write such big, thick books about it because we have no direct observation, right? We can't say it is this. Instead, we have to come up with all of these very complicated and useful. It's good in some ways. Love it. Not saying it's bad.

You know what I'm saying? If you're looking for one skill set, this is it. Very accessible. Vedic psychology was developed by the yogis, and the yogis were looking at themselves. So they had one advantage that no psychologist, psychiatrist on the planet has. They could observe their own thoughts. I mean, well, we all have that.

Jung and Freud did a lot of self-work, right? But in terms of our methodologies, our methodologies don't involve thought observation directly, whereas the yogis, it involves thought observation. So here's what they learned and here's how to use it. If you want to understand other people. There is something called the Antakarana. The Antakarana is the internal instrument. That's what Antakarana means. Okay?

It's the internal instrument. Now, in the West, this gets translated as mind, but I think that mind is a terrible word. So if I ask you, what is the mind? It's thoughts. Is it thoughts? Is it emotions? Is it memories? Is it, what is it?

Identity, personality. Internal instrument, I think, is a way more precise definition. It is the instrument that you as a human being have that is inside you. That's the definition. It's just the stuff inside. The instrument, my hand is an instrument that I have on the outside. My mouth is an instrument that I have on the outside. But the internal instrument is what we call, is the mind.

Right. I think it's a more precise definition. That's why I love ethics psychology. I think it's actually more precise. And the reason it's more precise is because they have direct observation. It's easier to be precise when you can directly observe something. Okay? Now, the Antakarana has five components.

Chita Manas Buddi, Hamkar, and Samskhar. We're going to ignore these two for now, although I teach extensively, especially about Samsqar, but we'll talk about that later. If you understand the interaction of these three things, your ability to navigate other human beings is going to be so easy. Okay? Let's understand how they work.

would be is your intellect or analytical capability. And by the way, like, I think part of the reason that our coaching program is so effective is because we take all of the required stuff that people have sort of found is useful for coaching, and then we usually teach our coaches this stuff too. So I think this is what gives our coaching program an edge and is responsible for some of the outcomes that we get. It's very accessible, okay? So when we think about analytical reasoning, when we think about logic, all this kind of stuff, this is Buddha. But then we have monas. So monas is judgment and emotion. Now, this is where things deviate a little bit from Western psychology.

Because we think of judgment as an intellectual capability. Right? The intellect judges that this is good and this is not good. But if you really look at your experience of it, if I try peanut butter and I say, say, I like peanut butter or I don't like peanut butter. That is not intellectual. That is a judgment I'm saying I like it or I don't like it or like, don't like. So this is what I love about Vedic psychology.

If you were to ask a psychologist, and I'm sure there's psychologists or psychiatrists in chat now, I'm really curious what your answer would be. Which part of you likes and doesn't like things? Where does the liking and not liking come from? right it's like i'm i'm so curious what how people would answer this question and this is what was so interesting for me like in training is that you know i would learn all this like i would read all these books and stuff and i'm not saying they're not useful they're incredibly useful we just taught about narcissism i use them all the time but there were like some things that were just missing

in the western view like which part of your mind likes or doesn't like things And it's like the hedonic circuit, maybe. People are saying emotions, people are saying taste buds, but like, which is it? So this is what's really interesting is that the Vedic psychology model is based on the driver. So everything is explained from the driver's perspective. So if you sit in your mind, this is what you will observe. Okay? It's not senses that like or dislike things.

senses is what senses the taste, not the liking or disliking. This is perfect. I love it. Do you guys get that? My sense detect something cooking, whether I find it revolting or delicious, is a separate part.

That's not the sense. That is a judgment that is made by the mind. So what they realize is that judgment, emotion, and like and don't like have a very similar quality. It comes from the same place. And this is the monas. This is the part of the internal

instrument that has likes or dislikes and generates emotions. Because if you sort of think about it, and that may sound weird, why are we lumping likes and dislikes together with emotion? It's because both of them are very fast and very reflexive. You don't get to choose to feel it. It just happens. So they're like, okay, there's two parts of the mind. One is deliberate, one is analytical, one is intellectual, and one is like reflexive. So the key thing about the monas is that it's a reflexive. Now we get to the fun part. Ahamkara. This is ego.

So what is ego? It is everything that comes after the phrase I am. Ahamkara is the I feeling. That's literally what the translation is. The feeling of I. So I am a doctor, father, husband, gamer. that's what a hum god or ego is in the west. Sorry, in the east.

Right? So if you look at your mind, this is not a thought and it is not a feeling. It is an identity. It is a part of you that you identify with this. And here's the cool thing. These three parts of your mind interact. And if you understand the way that they're interact, this will solve 90% of your problems, in my professional opinion.

I would say 100%. That's really what I believe, but I don't think 100% is nearly a defensible statement as 90%. Okay? So, what is the interaction between these things? So can you go to the gym every day? Yes or no? What do you all say, chat?

Can you go to the gym? Every day? Who can go to the... Okay. Why not? Why can't y'all go? I'm not allowed back. I fucking love you guys, man.

Burnout. Chronic illness. I don't want to. I'll be out of mana. It depends. Fatigue builds up. Okay. Circumstances, motivation, etc.

Okay. So if I were to ask you, can someone else go to the gym every day? You may say yes. Right? You'll say it depends. Sure. But so the first thing to understand is that all of the statements of your intellect are shaped by your humka. So if I believe I am a loser and you ask me a question,

my analytical capability will be filtered through my Ahamqa, my ego. Always happen. Not always, but it usually happens that way. If I think I'm the best person on the planet, if I'm a raging narcissist, if I think I'm a winner, the analytical answers to my questions will be filtered through my Aham Gah. Does that make sense? So if I ask, can you go to the gym every day, depending on who you believe you are, the answer to that question will be yes or no or maybe or whatever. It'll change depending on your sense of identity.

So if you tell an in-cell, if you ask someone who's a 10 out of 10 Chad about how to get women, they'll say just put yourself out there, just try to have a good time, and it'll work out. If you ask an in-cell, how do you get women? The answer is it's impossible to. And there may be some attributes of them that are different, but this is what I want y'all to understand. Their analytical capability is going to be shaped by their ego, 100%. Right? Who I believe I am is going to shape my conclusions.

Second thing to understand, why does a humkkar activate? A humkhar activates because of menace. So anytime I experience unpleasantness, the ahumkara will activate to protect me. So if I feel sad, if I feel ashamed. the Ahamkara will activate. Right? So we understand this in the West, too. This is what we call the triggering of the narcissistic defense mechanism.

It's not like, I mean, we're aware of this in the West. So I'll give you all an example. If I feel sad, right? If I get rejected by a woman, what is the Ahamkar? I am a loser. This is what the Ahamkar will say. All I feel, the emotion is just rejection. That's it.

But then the Ahamgar activates and makes it a part of my identity. So rejection leads to this statement. I am a loser. Now, you may say to yourself, well, hold on a second, why would the Ahamgar activate in this way? The job of the Ahumgar is to protect you from the Munas. So when I feel bad in the Munas, the Ahamgar activates. And you may say, but how is this a protection? Ho-ho, it is such a big protection.

If you are a loser, then it's not your fault that you got rejected. If you are a loser, there's nothing you can do about it. This will help you soothe yourself very, very, very, very well. Being a loser is such a protective identity. It protects you from these stupid things like effort. It protects you from these stupid things like trying and failing. It protects you from these terrible things like believing. in yourself, because if you believe in yourself and you hope, then you open yourself up to

disappointment. It protects you from disappointment. It protects you from failure. Like, what the fuck? Like, that's so powerful. Think about it for a second. Another really good example of this, right? I used to self-sabotage a lot. I used to self-sabotage by committing 75%. And why would I never commit 100%? Because if I committed 100% and I lost, that means I'm a real loser. But if I only give 75%, I have the doubt in my mind. I have plausible deniability that I'm a loser. If I had tried harder, maybe I could have done it. I'm not a loser. I could have been a winner, I just couldn't bring myself to give 100%. Negative emotion, a humkar, modifies your analytical capability.

And this is why people who are but hurt believe they're logical, but are completely illogical. Right? The more emotionally activated you are, the less logical you will be. But if you ask that person, are you logical? They will say, yes, I'm 100% logical. You can try to have an argument with someone who is butt hurt, someone who is tilting and inting down mid or whatever you want to do. It's never going to work.

And this will lead to all kinds of frustration. So understand this fundamental sequence. Emotion, judgment, ego statement of protection, and modified intellect, shady intellect. If you understand this fundamental mechanism, it will help you so much in your own. life and dealing with other people. Right?

So if you're dealing with like a boss who's coming at you and asks for unreasonable things, let's say your boss has unreasonable demands. So then what you do, you make the stupid, stupid, stupid mistake of trying to argue with them by using facts and logic. Big mistake. These unreasonable demands are being dealt with by or being driven by their Humb by their ego, which in turn is being driven by their monas. They're getting pressure from the top.

They're afraid that they're not going to get promoted. They know that they're not doing a very good job, that they should be doing a good job. So they feel insecure. They feel threatened. And their ego activates. You're great, bro. It's your employees who are slacking.

And then you're going to make unreasonable demands. So instead what you need to do, don't worry about this, focus on this. Help me understand it. So it sounds like it's really important that I work 80 hours a day for the next 16 years to get this work done. Help me understand where this pressure is coming from. Where is this like pressure coming from? Like what's going on? Like what necessitates this kind of work?

Forget about, don't argue with them about whether it's possible or not possible. Deal with this. Go straight to the source. What is the emotional energy that is altering their logic? As long as this persists, it's going to be really hard. So once you deal with the emotion directly, once you calm down the monas, then something cool will happen. The Ahamkata will calm down. Once the Ahamkata calms down, then they can start to see reason.

Okay, I understand that you're under an immense amount of pressure. I absolutely want to be a team player. I'm not sure that I'm capable of doing this. Once you calm down the among us, the whole structure will calm down. Next thing to understand about yourself, right? So the more you make eye statements, I am dot, dot, dot, winner, loser, gamer, whatever.

All of these things will create a filter for the world around you. Oh yeah, I don't like art because I'm a gamer. I can't ask her out or I can't ask him out because I'm a loser. I can't ask him out because I'm a girl. Girls don't ask out guys, right? I am dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. Think about all of the decisions in your life that have been shaped by the fatal words,

I am dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. I'm happy in this marriage. No, you're not. I'm a good wife. Maybe you may not be. Number one statement that gets people in my office is when a parent says, I'm a good parent. I'm a good parent.

When a parent says that, in that way, their children end up in my office. You all understand? IAM statements are very, very dangerous. because they determine. This is really interesting. So your brain has this part that makes an action success calculation. Anytime you're trying to do something,

if there's something that you want to do, it makes a calculation. What is the probability of success? Depending on the probability of success, it increases your motivation or decreases your motivation, right? This is why, like, we're not looking, we're not digging for gold in our backyard because our brain is like,

there's no gold there. Like, we don't think that will be successful. Therefore, we are not going to do it. Your motivation is determined by the percent success of a calculation. This induces motivation. Now, here's the crazy thing. Identity determines this. Losers stay losers because they convince themselves that trying isn't going to work.

And that's how they stay losers. because they never try. So since their brain convinces them, there's no point in trying, then motivation decreases, right? Actually disappears. That's actually correct. No more motivation. And then they never try. And then they never get new data.

And so they never can disprove themselves. And it becomes a mess. So this is the crazy thing. Your identity determines your belief about your chance of success. And so that's why in yoga, what we try to do is we try to reduce. the strength of the Ahamka. You become an empty vessel. The goal is to be an empty vessel and then respond to the environment.

Right? So when you say, but Dr. Kay, like, let's talk about expertise for a second. So I am a doctor is different from I know some medicine. I know some psychiatry. These are not ego statements. These are facts. And if we're not careful, our ego will get in the way of facts. Oh, I'm nothing special.

I'm average. No, you aren't. You're above average. That's a statement of fact, not a statement of ego. But in the West, we don't understand what ego is. So if anyone says, yeah, I'm exceptional. We call that ego. Even though it's not, it's just a statement of fact.

And how egotistical, how narcissistic. My exceptionalism is not ego. It's a statement of fact. What fucking ego is that, bro? So a hum god is I am. Not I know or am capable of or whatever. You all understand the difference? So this is the framework that is really, really important.

So how do you use this framework? Use it in a very simple way. For whatever analysis you have, doesn't matter. Whatever logic you have, you ask yourself, how does my identity shape this logic? And so if you look at people who are black-pilled or red-pilled or whatever, this is huge. Man, it is like gigantic.

Very true politics and things like that as well. But their logic is 100% shaped by their identity. Everyone's is to a certain degree. And then the identity is a response to usually negative emotion from the monas. So the way that we want to use this is for any logic that we have, what is the identity contribution to that? How do I reduce that identity? And then one way to reduce it is by disabling or processing the negative emotion

that is driving the protective mechanism. So if you think that you can never find a boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, you can never find a job like you have all of this logic. You need to get back to the root emotion. And that's something we understand very well in psychiatry. right? Like we know this. We know that dealing with the emotions at the... I mean, some people believe that emotions are at the bottom of everything. That emotional work is sufficient. But this is the paradigm to use, y'all. And if you can

calm your emotions, then the ego will calm down, and then you will start to think clearly. Then you will be able to look at your situation and say, the odds are against me, but I want to do it, so I'm going to try. right? So for me, this was huge when I got rejected from medical school over and over and over and over again, because 119 rejections can really work wonders for your confidence. Let me tell you what. But if you're trained in this stuff and you do not let them pile up, you don't let them become a part of your identity. Each rejection comes with an emotion, so be it. Another one. But as long as you don't let those emotions integrate into an identity, of you who you are, abstract out into an identity, you will be fine. You will be able to never give up. Never giving up is really simple. All you have to do is avoid the aggregation of each of

your failures. Then you will never give up. Easiest thing on the planet. Just don't avoid, just avoid the aggregation. It is in the aggregation of these events that we develop these abstract ideas about ourselves. And those are the things that determine your future. This is so important to understand. It is not a thousand failures that determines your future. It is the thousand failures that you combine into an identity that will become your destiny, because then that will affect your action success calculation. So the most important framework that I would add with motivational interviewing, if you're working with someone, is to understand this framework. Ask yourself, what is going on in their buddi? What is going on in their humkar? What is going on in

their monas? What are the judgments, likes and dislikes and emotions that they're experiencing? How is that affecting their identity of self? Because the identity of self is going to protect against those things. So the narcissistic injury is rooted in insecurity. Right? The narcissistic defense is rooted in insecurity. That's what we know. Since I believe, since I'm a of my appearance, I'm going to be very narcissistically protected against attacks on my appearance. So you can read people like a fucking book. If they have some ego, you automatically know the flip side of that is what their insecurity is. It's that simple. So easy. And if they have perverted logic, you can immediately their perversion, the perversion of their logic

signals to you what is going on in the ego because you have the truth of the matter and then you have some modification and in that modification it's an upward deflection that means something is going on in the ego depending on I don't know if this makes sense the kind of change they have in their logic tells you what's going on in their ego

right so someone says oh yeah it's impossible for me to ever find a job that tells you what's going on in their ego that tells you who you think they are it's so simple And if you guys want to understand this stuff, go and watch our old interviews. Like, this is what I'm doing. And you'll be able to see.

You'll be able to track very easily. I mean, very, not maybe you have to train in it. You have to get good at it. But you'll be able to see. Right? Because the cool thing about the Antakarana is there's a logic to it, which is why psychiatry is a thing. If it was all random, we wouldn't be able to make any hypotheses. So this is like a system that is really, really powerful.

We teach a lot about it. If y'all are interested, check out HGI. I mean, like literally the question was, this thing that you taught your coaches was really helpful. What else do you teach your coaches? This is at the top of the list. Okay. The other thing is that if you all are interested in, I mean, so,

a lot of our coaches utilize these things. So the other way that you can learn this stuff, and it can be really helpful to work with someone like a coach who understands these concepts, and then will help you see insight into your, self. So that's the other thing that is really simple. Right. So you can like work with them. The way I learned this stuff, by the way, my best teacher for this was I did sumskaric work on myself as part of my education. So I had a like a therapist basically do this with me.

And as I went through my own somers, I was like, holy crap, this makes perfect sense. So I was on the receiving end of this. Basically as a patient and it helped so much. Okay. Let's do another one. episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home.

With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. I used to have crippling anxiety and hypervigilance. Getting groceries is overwhelming, and I couldn't handle trying new things or letting my kids do so. Intrusive thoughts and dangers from common to absurd plagued me. Three years ago while meditating, I had the sensation of stepping backwards in a direction that doesn't exist.

In this new mental space, I met a knight in armor and intuitively knew this was the part of my mind that had been working over time to keep me safe. I told Knight, you must be so exhausted. Thank you for everything you've done, but I'm an adult now, and I've got it from here. Two days later, I nearly avoided a terrible car crash with my toddler in the car. car. Normally, this would have disregulated me at least a full day, but I was shocked to realize I was fine 20 minutes later. A month later, I went horseback riding with my oldest daughter's Girl Scout troop, got thrown off the horse, and literally got back on the horse. Two months later, I let my son try Taekwondo, which he'd been asking for for two or three years at that point. And then when

he wanted me to take the class with him, I moved past my fear of being on the mat in front of an audience of other parents and joined him for a good three years. The overnight change. from that meditation session have stayed strong for over three years now. My life is just unrecognizable. My current therapy work with IFS and EMDR feels very, very similar, but slower and like a lesser version, but the same kind of effect is just not overnight. So my question is, what the heck is that mental space? Because it's not the Cheetah Cash. And what's the neuroscience explanation for what actually happened to me? Okay. So this is another one of our community winners. How do you answer this?

Let me think for a second. Okay. So, sometimes when people meditate, let's start with this. Let's start with a series of questions. So this is a case of someone who had an experience in meditation that seems to have made a profound impact on, their anxiety,

which has been persistent. Right? So they used to be really, really anxious and then like this thing happened. It had some imagery with it of a knight who was protective and persist, the benefits of persisted. And then this person has done work with IFS, internal family systems, EMDR, eye movement desensitization retraining. EMDR is a trauma-oriented intervention. IFS is, I don't know if it's, I mean,

internal family systems is about unifying the different parts of yourself. Okay, understanding that you have all kinds of voices within you. And this person says that this seems like a slower and less effective. It's sort of what I heard, maybe slower, right? So not as rapidly. effective. So let's actually, let's remove less effective. Right. So it's a slower version of that work. So what the hell is going on? And then the person asks, what is the neuroscience explanation? Okay. The neuroscience explanation, I don't know. So I can hypothesize a couple of things.

And let's just say that let's use like, we're going to go more evidence based towards less evidence based. Okay. So let's talk about neuroscience for a second. So this person sounds like they've been meditating for a while. And we know from studies on meditation that all kinds of things happen. So meditation will reduce the feeling of anxiety. How? It'll reduce the feeling of anxiety through interrupting the chain of thoughts. So meditation strengthens attentional control.

And if we look at anxiety, what is anxiety? It's the inability to control your attention. start worrying about something and you can't stop. We also know that meditation increases, generally speaking, parasympathetic nervous system activity. And when you increase the parasympathetic nervous system, you reduce anxiety. Okay? So this is an immediate effect. This happens within minutes.

This happens maybe over the course of weeks. And then long-term meditators will have some other kind of architectural change. We know that meditation can also affect. affect our default mode network, which is our sense of identity and who we believe we are. This can change over the course of months to years. And this can have profound effects on our sense of self in the way that we navigate the world, right? So we feel connected, we're just not so caught up in ourselves.

We, like, have compassion for other people. There's all kinds of things that happen. Meditation also improves empathy, right? So this person had a lot of compassion for a part of their mind. So they sort of got freed up from this night who was busy protecting them. They're like, you can rest. I can handle things. Right.

So I detect a lot of empathy, a lot of compassion. I'm an adult now. So what is a neuroscience perspective? This. Now, did this happen in this way? Who the hell knows? Right? There's more and more I could say about the neuroscience.

mechanisms of meditation. But is that what happened? Who else knows? So there's also something that is really common. And this is something that like psychiatry has had, or psychology and psychiatry have had a very contentious relationship with, with meditation and spiritual practice for many years. And that is because this is like, I'm not, I mean,

hopefully this is clearly factual. Maybe it's my bias. I think we definitely have cases consistently of human beings who have psychological problems, who meditate, and those problems seem to get, like, fixed. That there is a persistent benefit, which seems to happen suddenly. Seems to happen suddenly. Right? Where they have this moment in meditation, and after that moment in meditation, the person is

changed. There is a change. And I think for a long time, psychiatry and psychology felt very threatened by this, because meditation was doing shit that happens way slower for us, and arguably, I shouldn't say less consistently. So I think the strength of IFS and EMDR is that it is way more reliable than meditation. Because it's not like this person set out trying to cure their anxiety. They were just meditating and this random buff, you get some kind of random buff if you're lucky. But people do change with meditation. I think that is a fact. Do they change consistently?

No. Do they change all the time? No. Can you control the direction of the change or when the change is going to happen? Do you have to meditate for a year or five years or a day? No one knows. There's no consistency. But there is change and the change feels damn permanent.

and doing things the psychological way feel way slower. So what the hell is going on? So I have a sense of what's going on, but is it this? I don't know. Does that make sense? Like, I can hypothesize. We know what the neuroscience changes of meditation are, but does this constellation of things result in this thing?

No. That's the whole problem. Because even though we know that meditation does all of this in the brain, everyone who meditates gets all of these things, but all of these things are not the monumental change that someone experiences in a moment in meditation. That's what's so damn confusing about it. So what happened? Who knows?

From a neuroscience perspective. Now, if you want to understand what happened, this is what I believe happens. Here's you. And then you have something called your mind. And your mind is all kinds of activity. There are times when the activity is more calm, like when you're living. looking at a sunset. There are times when the activity is engaged in present like a video game.

And there are times where the activity is an absolute mess, like a panic attack. But this is all within the mind. Right? So we have all kinds of mental states. And we tend to believe that we are our mind. But we get into some weird stuff. because even though we have a mind, and in psychiatry, we work, generally speaking, within the mind.

So we try to, like, modify this. In psychiatry, we try to move from here to here. Or we try to move from here to here. We make modifications within the mind. But meditation doesn't care about what's going on in your mind, right? Like, the whole point is to move beyond mind, to move past mind. Move away, just move past the mind. We want to shut the mind off when we meditate.

And then the question is when we shut the mind off, what happens? So we have the capacity for conscious awareness. Now, if you're a biological reductionist, you will say that consciousness is something that arises out of neurons. Neurons just create consciousness. And there's good evidence for this. Best evidence for this is anesthesia. There's really good evidence for this.

because if I alter your neurons by giving you something like ketamine or medazalam, Versed, I put something in your brain and your conscious awareness disappears. There is a causal relationship between doing things to your neurons and doing things to your awareness. But there's something called the hard problem of consciousness, which is that there's no clear, discernible reason why we need consciousness. So our neurons could just respond to stimuli and send like we get hunger signals from our gut, we get hunger signals from our liver, our neurons detect those hunger signals, activate certain parts of our eyes, activate our feet, we walk to the fridge,

we grab some food, we put it in the fridge, I mean, we put it in the microwave, we heat it up, we eat it, now the signals have all changed. So the whole neurological, biological apparatus can function completely fine without conscious awareness. There's no reason for it. If it's all neurons, we don't need consciousness. So if we look at the yogic system, here's what happens.

Okay? Consciousness is up here. This is something called Brahman. This is collective consciousness. This is without form. So it has no qualities. It's just pure stuff. it doesn't have shape or form.

And then what happens is out of this universal consciousness, we get these little drips. And this is what we call an Atman. Atman is the Sanskrit word for soul. And then this soul inhabits a body. And then there's this thing called our mind in here. And so we sort of are out of touch with our soul. And our soul has a conduit to this thing.

And like, look, I'm just answering what my opinion is. I'm not saying this is true. So what I have observed as a long-term meditator, as I probably, I'm not even counting streaming, okay? So I've taught easily 1,000 people how to meditate, maybe 2,000, maybe 5,000. I don't know. I lost count at some point. I stopped.

I never really counted, but it's got to be up there. And as someone who's taught meditation, as someone who has had patients who I teach to meditate, What I have learned is that moving past the mind and connecting to whatever is beyond mind is healing. That all kinds of crap exists in our mind. Trauma, conditioning, habits, perceptions, cognitive biases. All this crap exists in the mind. And you can do psychotherapy and work on it in the mind.

But that through meditative practice, you can bypass all of this stuff. and this is what's really interesting, right? So meditation is a very interesting evidence-based psychiatric practice. And what makes it very special is that it works for all diagnoses. Maybe not technically all, but let me be a little bit more precise with my language. There are studies that show that it helps mood disorders. There are studies that show it helps anxiety disorders. There are studies that show that it helps ADHD.

There are studies that show that it helps personality disorders. there are studies that it helps OCD and this is really special this is like super cool because generally speaking we think about these as unique pathologies right it's like a flat tire

is not the same thing as a broken steering wheel or an empty gas tank or a broken windshield or a steering you know like these are all different problems so it is very unusual in psychiatry to have something that works for everything. Actually, maybe not so unusual because psychotherapy, you can also say works for

everything. But it's pretty cool because despite there are a lot of distinct pathologies and where do these pathologies exist, they all exist in the mind. These are all like things that happen in the mind or in the brain. You could argue that ADHD isn't really a mental thing. It's a neurological thing. So maybe that's not really fair. I could go, I could talk for an hour about that. But generally speaking, psychiatry is not neurology, and ADHD is a psychiatric diagnosis, and psychiatrists are doctors of the mind, not doctors of the brain. So in our system, we think about ADHD as a mental diagnosis. So what's going on here?

Meditation bypasses the mind and moves beyond it. And what I've observed in myself and the people that I teach meditation to, and by the way, this is why I didn't stop teaching meditation when I became a psychiatrist, because I've seen this shit time and time and time again, is when you connect to that which is beyond mind, it just fixes shit, period. It just fixes things. It seems to go wherever it is needed.

Now, what I'm talking about here is not truth, is not correct. It is my best attempt at observation. It is actually not observation. It is observational. observations that I've made and me trying to make sense of these observations. So what is going on? All I know is that when you connect with Atman, you will be healed.

Does it work through the default mode network? That's a big part of it. Right. And we know that meditation disables the default mode network. We know that psychedelics to the degree at which they disable the default mode network correlate with healing. So when you connect with, I know this is going to sound wild, right? And I'm skeptical of this myself.

but when you connect with the divine, you get healed. Like, that's just sort of what happens. And this is like literally like this, I mean, this is not something, this was a contest winner. So someone submitted a voicemail and there was a process

which floated this voicemail to the top. And this is why I teach meditation. Because I know that as a psychiatrist, I can get maybe 60 to 70% efficacy with psychotherapy and medication. If I'm really lucky, someone will get really, really, like permanent remission

or will feel healed and things like that. But as someone who's a practitioner, I like to take the long shot. There's a chance if these people meditate, and I've seen it time and time and time again. You connect with something that is beyond you. And in this space, you feel like a different person.

You don't even feel like you. You connect with something that makes you no longer you. And like this person was saying, I stepped back into a place that does not exist. this is the language of transcendental meditation. Not like TM, like TMTM, like not the trademark. This is transcendence in meditation. That's why we use the word transcendence,

because you are stepping into a place that does not exist. This is without rupe, without form. How can you step into a place that does not exist? The way that you step into a place that does not exist is you, you hang out here in the collective unconscious, which is without form. That's why people will use paradoxical or contradictory language to describe these experiences. I was someone way beyond myself.

I stepped into a place that does not exist. That's how you know the real meditation is happening. And that's like, this has been phenomenologically studied. So we can take people who have these transcendental experiences and how do you know someone has a transcendental experience? because they describe it in a way that does not make sense. I stepped into a place that does not exist. I stepped into a place behind myself.

Like, that doesn't make sense. You can't step into a place behind yourself. You were stepping backwards. That's not what this person said. So the experience of these things is qualitatively different from an ordinary everyday experience. It defies our understanding. I know exactly what this person means.

And if you have had a transcendental experience in meditation, you may understand exactly what they mean too. To step in a place that is beyond you, outside of you. And when you step into these places, the best way I can understand it, right? So I've tried to like calculate and analyze this is you get this spurt of like divine energy. And then the spurt of divine energy

goes to where it needs to go. In the same way that your body has this really wonderful, like clotting mechanism where your platelets go where they need to go. You don't have to direct them. They know where the cut is and they automatically go there and they start platelet aggregating.

They're just doing their thing. That's what it feels like. You get this sort of super conscious platelet that enters your psyche and then goes and patches up whatever needs to be patched up. This has been my observation.

Could be completely insane. Could have a very understandable biologically explainable mechanism which you just haven't figured out yet. We talked about all those. Like, there's what happens from a neuroscience explanation? Something like this. But this is what happens.

When you achieve transcendental states and meditation, like people get like fucking changed from it. Oftentimes, usually in a good way. And so that's what I think happens. And I'm really thrilled for this person. And like, it's like these stories that I hear, I mean, I've been through it, done it with people, and hear from, for every one person that I've helped with this journey, I've heard about at least 100 more who have gone through it. Right? And that's why I believe this stuff, because it's like clearly something is going on, and

there's some data behind it. The problem is that it's really inconsistent. So the nice thing about psychotherapy, things like IFS and EMDR, is that they're reliable. So the biggest problem with meditation is if you ask me, Dr. K, if I have crippling anxiety like this person, how long do I need to meditate before this happens? The answer is I have no clue. That's the big problem with meditators. That's so damn frustrating about it.

What is the outcome that you can expect? When I teach meditation to my patients, the outcome that I tell them to expect is the outcome from the literature, not stories like this. What can you expect? 20 to 30% improvement in your anxiety if you practice for 8 to 12 weeks. That's what we're probably going to get.

That's what's reliable. But the truth of the matter is there is so much more that is capable, that is doable. And that's why I love people like Marshall Linnahan. Like she was someone who had borderline personality disorder, like studied mindfulness, got a lot better from it, and then like protocolized it. And now DBT is one of the hottest treatments out there because it helps a lot of people who other forms of psychiatry have been insufficiently successful at helping.

Seems anecdotal. It is absolutely anecdotal. And that is what is so hard about it. This is why psychiatrists don't teach meditation. I mean, more and more psychiatrists and psychologists are, but we're not trained in meditation precisely because it's anecdotal. It is not reliable. You can do this for 20 years and not achieve.

And, I mean, I have a good hypothesis why. We can go into that if you all want. But, like, this happens. You know, this absolutely happens. And so what goes on? I mean, you connected with that, which is divine. within you and it healed you. I think that's the best way to put it. Okay, why? Okay, let's understand. So here's the biggest problem with meditation. Meditation is an internal practice.

And what I've noticed is that there are many people who go through the motions of meditation. They sit and they observe their thoughts. They sit and they observe their thoughts. They sit and they observe their thoughts. But they don't put their whole totality into it. They do the actions of meditation. without doing the internal work, or their internal work is precise or imprecise or hands-off. Right? So they'll do the form of meditation. They'll sit and observe their breath.

And maybe they'll really observe their breath very diligently for 20 years. Like, I don't know. But what I've noticed is that a lot of people, like, meditate as the verb. So they'll meditate for five years. They'll meditate for 10 years. but they don't do the focusing of their consciousness. Like when I meditate, so I sort of meditate every day, but part of the reason that I don't meditate the same way every day

is because meditation for me can be rejuvenating, yes, but it is also the most intense thing that I do. So like, I'll give you all an example. So, you know, there's a great meditation practice that I love, which is find the moment where inhalation becomes exhalation. And these are powerful practices, but they're so hard. They require, or another really good one is observe your breath without changing it. Just observe your breath without changing it.

And it's really hard. So it's funny, you know, the most search meditation practice was Thratica. And I think there's something about, I think Thratica is like special to me. But Thratica is a really good example of another practice where Antirthratica, if you all have tried that, is like a really good example of how hard meditation is. It requires your totality. And it requires the totality of your concentration without effort. And that's what makes it so hard. So I see a lot of people who go through the motion of meditation.

And when you go through the motion of meditation, you'll get the benefits that studies will say. People will use like meditation apps. but the kind of meditation that you do from an app, you can do it the right way. But generally speaking, a guru will teach it to you. They'll teach you this weird balancing of like complete. There's all kinds of stuff. So zero expectation, complete dedication.

So like, you know, it's so interesting. But like the mantra practice that I do was something that I didn't realize that that's what I was doing until I, you know, did it for a while. I just did it and did it with a lot of dedication for many years without expecting a result. And like the results have been gigantic. And so I think that a lot of people will like, it's hard to describe, but they'll go through the motion of meditating without really meditating. And by go through the motion, what I mean is they will do the verb. But there's an internal aspect of meditation.

That's not just concentration. It's to put your full, like observe the breath. People will say, okay, I'm observing the breath, observing the breath, observing the breath for years. But what have you learned about the breath? Because if you observe it for five years, you should understand it in a deep, deep, deep way. You should understand all kinds of nuances from the breath. If you've been doing breath meditation for five years, you should understand some aspects of swara. You should understand that every time you exhale, not only is there a dominant nostril,

but there are five regions of your nose that the breath comes out of. There are five patterns of exhalation within your nostril. And this is the kind of stuff that when you meditate, I was going to say legitimately, that's not the right word. There's an arrogance to that word. What I have observed is that when people meditate with this degree of vigor, these kinds of experiences are more common. weight there is 100%, maybe more.

So we can try this right now if you all want. And it's no problem if people have difficulty with this because it requires a lot of subtle awareness. So if you close your eyes and you pay attention to your exhalation, what you'll notice, I'll offer just a tiny bit of guidance. This once. Maybe I've done it before, but I don't think so. What does it mean to observe the breath?

If these are your nostrils, this is the tip of your nose, nose. This is the area around your lips. What you will notice is that when you exhale, not only is there a dominant nostril, which has your breath going out, but that the breath will come out over here, over here, over here, over here, over here. Then it'll come out at the front. It can come out at the back. It can come out on the side. and there are five distinct ways that the breath comes out. And then that's just, it's a big step, but it's like, like that's just the beginning.

This is swara yoga, the yoga of breath. Right. So then it's crooked, so deviated septum can interfere with this stuff. Then another practice. So are you all able to detect which region of the nostril it's coming out of? Okay, right? So some people are saying yes and some people are saying no. So this is the kind of thing where it's like if you are

So I'll give you all like follow up practice, okay? So if you are someone who cannot detect this, no problem whatsoever, don't worry about it, first of all. But try it every day. So this is great. For those of y'all that don't detect it, you can learn real meditation. Because what I'm telling you is if you try it every day

until you detect it. I want you to close your, eyes right now if you don't detect it and feel with every fiber of your being pay attention the closest attention you just tried for three fucking breaths that's nothing give it your all right really try to feel it try to detect put all of your concentration and all of your awareness into one nostril okay that's what real meditation is it's so hard so this is what i'm saying like this takes and do it for a year and then tell me you can't feel it. Do it for 20 minutes a day for one year, 365 days in a row, and then tell me you can't feel it. That is real meditation. This is the kind of concentration

that is necessary. And the problem is when we teach like ordinary meditation, these kinds of experiences are rare because some people stumble into this. Okay? But the cool thing is if you do meditation in this way, the likelihood of this experience rises drastically. Not this particular experience, but the likelihood of a transcendental experience, you need complete one-pointedness. And when you have complete one-pointedness and you live there for a while, then you will transcend. There's even layers above that. Now, for those of you that were able to detect, there is a follow-up question. What are all of the regions that you can experience this.

Right? So I drew some random things on the iPad. That may be where they are. That may not be where they are. Who knows? So you should map out all of the regions for yourself. That's step one. Step two.

Figure out why do they change. How often do they change? What is the pattern of change? Step three, what is your physiology for each? of these states? What is your mental functioning for each of these states? What are these different patterns? And I'm sort of giving you guys a little bit of a hint, right? So I said they're five. Maybe I'm wrong. And as you go deeper and deeper, you'll discover certain things about it. And this is like real meditation. And that's just steps one, two, and three. This is just the

beginning of the journey. The journey goes really far, y'all, like really far in a very, very fun way. What I like about meditation more than anything else is it's the final frontier. And the reason it's the final frontier is because the rest of the world can be explored and that exploration can be transmitted to you. People can map out the continents, they can develop technologies, and you can benefit from all of that mapping out. But when it comes to exploration of your own consciousness, you are the only one who can do it. Because you're the only one who even knows it exists. I don't even like, you know, you don't even know. Like, I could be a I could be an AI.

You have no experience of my consciousness. Right? And someone saying this is so similar to the weird stuff membership stream? Yes. Right? Someone's saying, can you start a live streaming meditation,

whatever? So like, this is the kind of stuff we cover way more on the membership side. And the reason that we do it on the membership side is because the YouTube algorithm

doesn't tend to like these sorts of things. So be careful. It's not solipsism. This is a critical mistake. You all have to be super careful about this. The moment that you call it

solipsism is the moment that your intellect takes charge. Your intellect says, oh, I know what this is and shrugs. If you have that attitude, you will never put your attention into it. Because the intellect says, oh, we know this. There's no point in exploring. Be very careful about that kind of thing. Right. So one of the biggest dangers on the journey of meditation is the intellect claiming knowledge over the practice. Because once you are like, oh, it's this thing, then notice what happens to your vigor. You're not going to give 100% if the intellect says, oh, yeah, I know what this is. I understand this already. If you understand it already, you won't give 100%.

Because you don't need to. You've already figured it out. So we did a stream over on the membership side about, I think about finding a guru at some point. So if you guys want more guidance, things like that, if you guys like this kind of stuff, Like we have a bank of lectures about this sort of stuff. And by the way, next weird stuff lecture is ready. So the other thing is on the membership side, we tend to do sequential lectures. So we've done weird stuff part two, I think, right?

Or weird stuff part three. But we like on going. And what I really like about it, and the reason that we don't do it here is because generally speaking, what we've observed, and I'm sure you all will understand this, every subsequent thing that you teach on the internet, fewer people, stay with you. Right? So a lot of people come and go. So the problem with like live streaming and YouTube is that generally speaking, we'll

sometimes do part twos and stuff like Puera Turnus. And by the way, there's a Puera Turneris part three. Like we'll sometimes do subsequent stuff because it's just too good not to. But it becomes really hard because if you do a part 15, like no one is good. Like very few people are going to pay attention. So if y'all are dedicated enough and are willing to commit like time and energy, then definitely check out the membership stuff. there's a bank of stuff there that y'all can sift through.

Okay. All right, y'all. It's 244. Thank you all so much for submitting the voicemails. Awesome. Awesome. Absolutely love hanging out with y'all. It's such a privilege for this to be my job.

And like, man, I'm so excited for y'all. I know it's like, I know y'all are struggling. Like, some of y'all are really struggling. I get that. I really do. but man, life has so much to offer and just like keep at it. Like being a part of this community is a huge step in the right direction. Not saying that we're better than anybody else, but it just, it's signaled.

It's not that we are great. It is that you are signaling and you are putting forth effort into like learning about yourself, working on yourself. And I'm telling you guys, like, I've been in the dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark parts. I don't know if I've been in places that are as dark as you are. But like there is light at the end of the tunnel. And if you're here, you're already like halfway through. And that's what's so challenging about this stuff is that, you know, most of the work that happens happens under the surface. And so you put forth effort, you put forth effort, you put forth effort.

But if you, and it feels like you're not making much progress. And that's just because that's how like human beings work. We don't really, like mental change is not linear. It tends to happen. it's kind of like, you know, drilling for oil, where you drill and drill and drill and then you hit the oil and then it comes out on its own. But for a lot of time, like doing mental work

can feel very, very difficult because you put in a lot of effort, you don't see any yield. But then something happens. You have a breakthrough. And then, like, there's a change. So keep at it, y'all. Keep at it. I know we've been getting,

we've been seeing a lot of really positive stuff recently. I think the Puares in the audience are getting their shit together, which is like wild. But that's great. Anyway, thank you guys so much for coming. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.

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