HealthyGamerGG - Dr. K Explains 'Looksmaxxing'

Episode Date: May 2, 2026

In this episode, Dr. K explores the viral trend of looksmaxxing, identifying the specific inflection point where healthy self-improvement transforms into psychological self-harm. He breaks down the biological, psychiatric, and cultural drivers behind the movement. From the "control paradox" to the "looking glass self". What to expect in this episode: The Inflection Point: Understanding the transition from healthy "softmaxxing" (skincare and fitness) to dangerous "hardmaxxing" (steroids and permanent bone remodeling). The Control Paradox: How hyper-fixating on the body becomes a way to reclaim power in a world that feels increasingly out of control due to AI and social uncertainty. Self-Objectification Theory: An analysis of how men are now internalizing the "observer’s perspective," treating their own bodies as objects to be evaluated by others. The Social Media Lens: Why the internet’s focus on the top 0.1% creates a distorted sense of "normal," making the vast majority of people feel abnormal in their own skin. The Science of "Mewing": A critical evaluation of why medical professionals argue that tongue posture cannot significantly alter facial structure despite its popularity in online "bro-science". Mental Health May: An introduction to Dr. K’s new Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships, which provides evidence-based tools for communication and attraction. The Trap of External Validation: Why becoming attractive can lead to internal resentment and isolation if your self-esteem remains dependent on the superficial reactions of others. The "40 Mid Years" Trade-off: A serious look at the risks of anabolic steroid use, including cardiovascular disease and the psychological desire to "go out with a bang" Dr. K's NEW Guide to Love, Sex, & Relationships is coming May 2026! Pre-order now: https://bit.ly/4dO3x0VQuestions for Dr.Malik Stream on May 5th: https://app.sli.do/event/k1dKYRPNB2X58nGxeSq2jVHG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3SztHG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Alo Kanoja, but you can call me Dr. K. 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. All righty, chat. Let's get started. Welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream.

My name is Dr. Al-O. Kanoja. Just a reminder that everything we described, on stream today is intended to be taken for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing is intended to be taken as medical advice. So if you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. Very true. Oh, wait, hold on a second. I think, is this too dark?

Should I turn on more light? So if you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional, y'all. Let me find a chat link. Good. and then I want more chat link. One chat link is not enough chat. I need double chat. Twice the chat.

More chat for more people. Let's go. Hold on, hold on. Where is this? There we go. Pop out chat. There we go. And then,

hello. Okay. This and then this. And then, thank you. Okay. All right. Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to be talking about some stuff today that is somewhat medical, right?

So we're going to be talking about looks maxing today. So if you all have concerns about this stuff, please go see a licensed professional. We are going to be covering some stuff that I think is harmful and we'll make, you know, our case for that. Super excited about the month. So let me tell you all a little bit about that before we get started. So this month, we are focusing on relationships for mental health. And I want to talk for a second about, like, why? Okay, so here's the thing.

I'm not an expert at relationships. Like, that's not what my background is. Technology addiction, sure, the effects of technology on our minds, absolutely. Evidence-based, complementary alternative medicine, sure. But here's what I noticed a couple of years ago. the amount of work that you have to do to improve your mental health if you don't have a good relationship is astronomical. So if we think about the human brain and mind and how we evolved, we evolved to be in relationships.

And when you take away that fundamental pillar of like nutrition, right? So if we deprive a human being of like food, they struggle. And there's like studies like the Romanian orphanage study is a really famous example of like if you deprive children of human contact, what impact does it have? And in some cases, if children are deprived of human contact in a critical period of their life, like they will never develop in a normal way. And we see so much evidence of like when you have, you know, an unstable home environment with adverse childhood experiences, how that results in avoid an attachment and anxious attachment. So basically, like a couple of years ago, I was like, I have to help people find relationships. And I have to just help them do that because that is like outside of getting them to stop smoking is probably the single thing that I can do to help them have a good relationship. So we have a lot of stuff about sex and relationships this month.

Next Wednesday we have Dr. Rina Malick, who's an awesome buddy of mine, amazing YouTuber in her own right, or urologist who focuses on sexual health problems. We've got a video about, or sorry, a lecture about the science of flirting. Then we're going to get into Jungian psychology towards the end. On the membership side, we've got a watch party and a deep dive into psychedelics, and then we have a lot of different interviews scheduled. Okay, so we've got a lot of great content. We are also, we have now, it should be live, Dr. Kay's Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships.

And this two is basically like there's a lot of advice on the internet about how to find relationships. And when I was thinking about this guide, what I was sort of thinking about was I'd worked with people who like I would, who had never, virgins never been on a date before. And then they would kind of like, you know, we would help them get to their first date. and then they would run into a problem because a first date doesn't turn into a second date. And then we had people who are like, you know, they've got like three dates, but then they keep getting ghosted. So then we solve that problem. How do you avoid that?

How do you take someone who initially says yes and structure a dating experience based on that keeps the other person engaged, right? What are the things that you can do that facilitate a romantic connection? What are the different kinds of romantic connection? What are the neurotransmitters involved? And so one of the things that I was really scared about is when I worked with people, there was sort of this idea that if you fall behind, right? Let's say you're 30 years old and you haven't had a good relationship ever, never been on a date, or you maybe had one relationship some time ago, that now that you're behind, like, you don't have those 10 years to catch up. So the guide to love sex and relationships is designed to walk people through the whole spectrum of the relationship cycle.

So even if it is your first date, how can you optimize your chances to getting a second date? How can you open the door to things like how do you learn how to hold hands? There's a lot of like really simple things that we don't get taught. And we do talk about sex. So what is an evidence-based perspective on a healthy sexual relationship, right? So what like where does orgasm come from? What's the deal with the G-spot? T-L-D-R?

It's fascinating. Like, because I think there's a lot of people offering advice on dating, but not much of it is based on science, which we're going to talk about a little bit today. But like when I was trying to, when I was doing research for this, I discovered this was probably the thing that I liked the most about this research, like the thing that I learned the most. What's the deal with the G spot? It probably does exist or it probably does exist, but not everyone has one, right? Which explains so much. It's like, oh, that's why it's like so hard to find because not everyone has one. Fascinating.

And I'm talking about women, people with vaginas. So what we've tried to do is kind of walk people through things like communication, sex, dating, falling in love, dead bedroom, basically all of the most important topics that foster healthy relationships. And it's sort of designed that if you're behind, you know, if this is your first time, you can kind of think about it like using a walkthrough, right? So if this is my first time against this boss, even though I haven't tried to. 99 attempts on this boss, if I know what the movesets are and I know if I can go in prepared, it optimizes my chances of success. It's basically like a walkthrough. It was, I sort of modeled in that way, kind of like a video game. It's like, what's a walkthrough for relationships? So that's available now. Really like it. And there's something that you guys may see,

hold on, let me see what else there is. We've got, yeah, we've got groups and a community challenge, but I want to talk a little bit about this bar for a second, okay? So you guys will see that in the bottom we have a gaming stream with 3% of our current goal. So I want to explain what we're doing here. Okay, give me a second. Let me find this. Okay, so what are we doing here? So I want to talk a little bit about what we do here at H.E.

And then we'll hop into the lecture. So I've been doing this now for almost the, This is year six. And we have a, we have like some serious struggles here at H.E. And we're here to help people. But one of the most stupid lessons that I've learned, which sounds so like it makes so much sense in hindsight, but. So we do a lot of stuff for free. And what I didn't realize is if you do something for free and you do it for a small amount of people,

that doesn't cost very much. But if you do it for a large amount of people, that costs a lot. right and I didn't quite appreciate that so there are a couple of we've struggled with this we've done a fundraiser several years ago we don't have sabathons we don't have goals what we try to do we don't we're not like a non-profit that focuses on raising you know doing a bunch of fundraising um i don't like that model for certain reasons we don't take capital uh so what we try to do is for the things that we want to build, we try to be beholden to you. Okay?

So we try to basically sell y'all some stuff. And here's why. So our goal for this month is to try to sell these guides. Okay, so the guide to Dr. Kay's guide to love sex and relationships. We built it because we think it helps. I really think it helps, right? We're trying to equip y'all with solid evidence-based information about how to fall in love, how to communicate effectively, how to help your partner achieve climax, how to deal with a breakup, right? So we're going to provide y'all with

this stuff. And here's why we try to sell you guys stuff. So if we get 3,000 guide sales, that's the cost to producing this guide. So we've already invested that amount. If we get 4,000 guide sales, we get to add additional streams, right? So we have a content team of like nine people. We pay those people. And so this is useful for maintenance, right? This is what it costs to run HG. You'll may have noticed that we don't take many sponsors and stuff like that. We get offered lots of sponsorships from all kinds of companies for millions of dollars and stuff. And we turn that stuff down because we don't think it's good for the community. So then the other thing is I have ambitions.

Okay. So there's like stuff that I want to do. So I was like, there's stuff that I think would be helpful. There's stuff that I think would be fun. And then what we want to do is raise money from y'all, basically. So if we can get 5,000 guide sales, then we're going to pilot a new type of content. 6,000 guide sales helps us develop a research infrastructure to start publishing some of the research that we've been doing for five years. 7,000 guide sales helps us build this thing called the HG Institutes or grow.

So it's already built. It's actually doing fantastic. We're trying to educate therapists and mental health professionals and coaches about the kinds of things that you all need help with. And then we're also getting closer to actually building a mobile app. And as you all may know, mobile app development can be very, very, very expensive. And so we don't want to take outside capital for that kind of stuff. And then as we hit some of these goals, we're going to do things that we have lined out. I think a lot of these are going to be a lot of fun.

And the first one is going to be a gaming stream. And I'll play whatever you all want. That is the thing that I'm the least excited about TBH. I think some of the stuff is coming down the road. So this thing in the bottom right corner is basically as we... Oh, blurt. There we go. As we hit these goals, it'll unlock a new goal every time we hit 100%.

Okay? You guys decide. So we all can vote on what we play. But that's what we're kind of doing here. We build stuff that we think is helpful to y'all. We'd appreciate it if you all support us financially. And then we take that money and this is what we do with it. Okay, it's like we're going to build more stuff.

We want to do more stuff. Research is expensive. You know, app development is expensive, but that's what we're trying to do. Okay? So, let me just make sure. Super excited about this stuff. And then today what we're going to be doing is I think we're going to try to show one episode of the guide for people who are interested later in the stream. So we're already at 4%.

Thank you guys very much. Shall we jump into the lecture? What do you all think? Lecture time? Okay. Today, we're going to talk about looks maxing. And my take on looks maxing is that it's really fascinating. So this is a trend that's been blowing up.

And I think looks maxing is the prime example of when self-help becomes self-harm. So there's like this inflection point. where like self-help is like good, but then at a certain point, it literally can become bad. And that's exactly what looks maxing is. And I think what's really interesting about looks maxing is that, you know, I've been talking to my psychiatric colleagues about this. And what's really interesting is how much people are trying to bucket it into something. So they'll say, okay, looks maxing is body dysmorphia.

Looks maxing is muscle dysmorphia. Looks maxing is insecurity. Why is this? Looks maxing is like insecurity, right? Like, it is these things. It is depression. It is this, whatever. So here's what I think is really fascinating about looks maxing.

It's not any of those things. So we have certain psychological and biological drivers within us. And a hundred years ago, those things manifested in a certain way. But I think what we're seeing for the first time is like technology is affecting us in an entirely new way. So I don't think it's fair to even say that looks maxing is even pathological, right? Because there's a lot of it that's actually very helpful. So today what we're going to do is I'm going to kind of do like a deep dive into looks maxing, the different aspects of it, as well as in my opinion, the various psychological things and psychiatric things that,

are going on. So it's not just, so just to give you all an example. So there's a piece of body dysmorphia. There's a piece of something called self-objectification theory. And this is what's really fascinating. So in the 70s and 80s, there were mental health professionals, psychiatrists and psychologists who were also feminists. And what they did is explore this idea of when you objectify a human being, when I, they're looking primarily at women and the 70s and 80s. So when we start judging women for their appearance, what happens is these women start internalizing the judgment of other people. So if I get treated well for being beautiful, I feel good about myself. This becomes my objective. There becomes less of a separation

between other people's opinions of me and my opinions of myself. These become the same thing. So if people treat me well, that means I am beautiful. That means that I am good. I do have value. I do have worth. And what we're seeing across the board in mental health is an equilibration of men and women's mental health issues. So anorexia and body dysmorphia, men are catching up to women. Things like addiction, women are catching up to men. So this, I made a video recently about female pornography addiction because I made a bunch of videos on male pornography addiction. I didn't realize how big female pornography addiction was. Men is maybe somewhere between 7 and 20% of men are addicted to pornography, but still about 5 to 7% of women are addicted

to pornography. And even though it gets outshined by the size of the problem in men, just to give you all a sense, like 5% of the population is about what alcoholism is. So it's a huge problem in women, too. So we're going to dive into all these theories, but let's start by simply defining what looks maxing is. Okay? So I found this thing. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but the complete looks maxing guide. And I want to just talk about this for a second, right? So here's the problem with a lot of this looks maxing stuff is it's not actually scientific. They'll lay these things out, right? So what actually determines attractiveness? This is incomplete at best. But if you look at this guide, right, there's this idea of soft maxing, which is things like facial aesthetics, skin care,

hair care, like sleep quality guide, puberty timeline, like, you know, you know, you're not, you using supplements, grooming, things like that, right? So it talks about all these things that are good for you, like good exercise routine, plenty of sleep, plenty of hydration, make sure you're eating good nutrition, make sure you're taking care of your face, like wearing the sun, like SPF protection, make sure you style your hair well,

make sure you manage it, make sure your clothes fit, right? This is not bad, this is self-help. But then the problem is that we get to self-harm. Right? So we get to surgical and medical interventions. We get to things like mewing and facial bone remodeling, chewing for jaw development, stuff like that. Okay. So here's like an interview that I saw some time ago. I don't know if you all have seen this.

But let's just watch a few seconds of this, okay? Did you learn how to do this? I watched like a few YouTube videos, honestly. What do your parents think about the fact that you're on steroids? My dad isn't too supportive of it. And he was very like, like, what are you doing to yourself? Like, you're going to hurt yourself. He's just worried for me.

I explained to him everything, told him like, hey, like, I'm doing this regardless, basically. Even if you tell me not to do it, I'm still going to do it. So if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it in the safest way possible. I just want you to know that. I mean, like, I look healthy. I am healthy. I can show my blood work.

Lila told CBS news he blocked his parents from his social media. They learned of a steroid use after a family member saw a video and informed them. Lila's father declined an on-camera interview, but told us he's deeply concerned about a son and overwhelmed by the misinformation side uses to justify his steroid use. Are you not worried that you could do real harm to your body? I'd say I do care and I know what can come with it.

I'm just going to do it the safest way possible. If I have a hard attack at 30, I have a heart attack. Dr. Jason Nagata is a professor of pediatrics at the university. So here's the thing, right? Here's what's kind of scary about it, right? So I think this is beautiful. Like this is the inflection point. He's like, this is what I want.

And if I do harm, I do harm. I'm going to try to minimize the harm, but I'm okay with it. And here's what's scary. Like, I'm going to kind of go a little bit off course here for a second. So I want you all to think about this statement. If I die at 30, I die at 30. So when I've worked with people like this, I've worked with people who are athletes who have body dysmorphia.

I've worked with people who are sort of like in the pickup artist culture, plenty of influencers, plenty of celebrity types and stuff like that. So what I notice when I listen to these people is it's like they're trying to compact the good years as much as possible. And what kind of scares me about this, like when I work with people who have used like

anabolic steroids and stuff, and they're like, you know, if I die at 30, I die at 30. And what that sort of tells me, we can't read too much into it, but this is just something I'm going to share my thoughts about. You know, it's almost like what they are avoiding at all costs is a low quality life.

Right? So I want to optimize my life and I want to be sexy and I want to be successful and I want a lot of female attention. I want to be proud of who I am. And actually, if I die early, that's not even a bad thing.

I want 10 good years and then if I die of a heart attack, what I don't want is debilitation. What I don't want is to have a heart attack and survive and then have an ejection fraction of 20%. and not be able to work out and have an oxygen tank, right? This is what's really scary about it. They're okay doing damage to themselves now, which will show up decades later.

And oftentimes what I see when I work with people like this who use anabolic steroids, very high risk of self-harm and suicidality. Because once the decline starts, and this is what's so scary, right? I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but they're trying to optimize. They're trying to become this person, this beautiful person, this successful, person, this amazing person, this strong person, this respectable person, it is the very opposite of unhealthy. It is the very opposite of debilitated. And when things, when that needle starts to shift, when they start to have problems from anabolic steroid use, when their EF starts to drop,

when they start to have other kinds of problems, then it's very, very, very difficult. Like, the crisis that they run into is very acute. But I think this kind of highlights the sort of idea that, okay, we're going to try to achieve this ideal and kind of at any cost, and we'll try to mitigate the risk. So I think that, you know, this paper is, this phrase is sort of being tossed around in the scientific literature, but when help is harm, health, lookism, and self-improvement in the manosphere, this is just a paper that sort of talks about this point where, like, we're shifting from self-help to self-harm at some point. Some of this stuff is good, right? But then we start talking about mewing. So for those of y'all that don't know,

mewing is sort of this concept. Let's see if we can find it here, page seven. Okay, so let's talk about soft maxing versus hard maxing. Okay. So this is stuff like soft maxing is improvements requiring no permanent changes, skin care, grooming, diet, training style posture, right? This stuff is like healthy. Permanent or semi-permanent interventions, surgery, braces, envisoling long-term medication also includes things like, you know, smashing your hammer with, smashing your face with a hammer, and then let's talk about mewing.

Is the practice of maintaining correct tongue posture, keeping the entire tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth, lips sealed, and breathing through the nose. The core theory is that the correct tongue posture creates upward and forward pressure on the palate during development, supporting more forward facial growth. Well, poor posture allows downward facial growth. Okay?

And then they talk about what science supports. Right? And this is where, like, they don't provide references. So let's take a look at the science of mewing. So this is from the American Association of Orthodontists. While tongue posture plays a role in facial development, muings promises may be as distorted as some Instagram filters. Okay. So proponents claim it can even realign teeth and improve overall facial aesthetics. Okay. Facial restructuring is not simply achievable by changing your tongue's resting position. It's a complex process that involves moving jaw bones, facial bones, soft tissue to alter shape and alignment, and facial, shape, and alignment of the face and improves aesthetics, functionality, or both. While facial restructuring can occur naturally over time, maxillofacial deformities are usually corrected with orthodonic treatment. So let's just talk about this for a second. Let me see. Okay. So I'm going to just talk about mewing. So there's a lot of evidence that some of the things that you do early on in life will alter your jawbone and

facial development. Okay. So for example, I think extended pacifier use. Like, right, so a two-year-old or three-year-old will sort of like that, that constant kind of sucking will sort of cause your teeth to like grow a little bit forward potentially. But basically what we know is that pressure on the soft palate, right? So pressure by your tongue on the on the, on the, on the. palate, the hard palate and soft palate of your mouth, doesn't appear to be sufficient to significantly

alter your facial structure. So in the first, maybe five years of life, some of that stuff is maybe possible. But the current medical consensus is that you can't just push against the roof of your mouth or, I don't know, I'm maybe getting mewing wrong. And there's like more, you know, evidence about this. Which will show in a second. I'm not an expert in facial bone development. Okay, I'm a psychiatrist.

But basically, like, there's no evidence that this actually works, right? That generally speaking, if you want to alter your, like, facial structure, we use things like the way that teeth come in, we use orthodontics, we use braces that are, like, really painful and exert a level of force that is, like, not what you can do with your tongue. So it is possible, and we have, like, dental surgeries and stuff like that, that this kind of stuff works, but there's sort of this idea that mewing works, which does. doesn't seem to be based in science. Okay? So, mewing is an eponym of Dr. John Mew, a professor at his own London School of Facial Orthotropics who recently, who was recently stripped of his

dental license by the General Dental Council. The dismissal, like basically, he sort of made this stuff up. Specifically, Mew's theory postulates that genetic control of skeletal growth is not precise, but rather that the articulation of the jaws and teeth is dependent on environmental guidance from orophacial musculature. Okay? And, like, the public needs to be made aware that this is not based on sound scientific evidence that would make it a viable alternative to treatment to orthonathic surgery. So basically, like, we don't have evidence that mewing works. Okay? And then for some of the more extreme things, like taking a chisel to your face or a hammer to your face or whatever, like, this is where I want you all to understand, in order to know that something works, it's not just some guy's scientific.

theory from the 20s. It's like what we do is these things called randomized controlled trials. So we'll take 100 people who do mu and 100 people who don't mew and then we'll observe their changes over time. Right. And we'll see what is the effect of this. How do you know that it is working? But what we tend to find is that if you talk to, let me find this.

Yeah. So if you like read people's experiences, right? they would like hard disagree. So here's a looks max tier list based on my experiences. S tier. Mewing is the holy grail. It really all starts with tongue posture and breathing patterns. Took a while to see anything visually,

but after like four or five months of consistent proper tongue posture, my face started to look noticeably different from the side. Okay? Non-negotiable. So now we have an interesting problem. which is if we have a bunch of these surgeons and orthodontists and people who train, and by the way, I don't know if you guys know this, probably the hardest training in the field of medicine is maxillofacial surgery.

Like an oral surgeon trains the hardest. You guys know why? They go to dental school and they go to medical school. They have two doctorates of medicine. Like MD and DMD. And then you go through there. It's usually like a combined training program, which includes residency and stuff like that. So it's kind of truncated.

But it's like you go to school for like over a decade. Okay. So these are not people like this is a very extensive deep science that involves everything we know about dentistry and everything that we know about medicine. Two doctorates and not even a PhD. This isn't those MD PhD people. This is like two medical degrees. Two medical degrees. It's insane.

Okay. So now if a bunch of orthodontists are saying, hey, this stuff doesn't. work, how the hell do we have people saying this is S tier, this is the non-negotiable? How do we bridge that gap? And this is where we have to be humble as medical practitioners. Just because a bunch of doctors believe that this is the case doesn't necessarily mean that it is the case. So I'll give you all a simple example.

Sixty years ago, people were like, hey, meditation helps with my mental illness. And a bunch of doctors were like, there's no way this is possible. And we were wrong. Right? So this is where I think it's important. I'm not saying that mewing works. I don't think it works based on my primitive understanding of facial structure and bone structure and stuff like that.

Basically, the micronuton of force that the tongue can apply on the soft palate and hard palette, I don't think is anywhere near the neutons and persistency of force that are provided by braces. It could be a false equivalence. There's way more to it than I even understand. But I sort of, I'm with my orthodontist friends. on this. And then people will say, but like the orthodontists, like, oh, you know, that's like a scam and big pharma and they're trying to prevent the people from using mewing.

I just don't think that there's evidence. There's not scientific evidence to support that it works. But then we still have this sort of idea that, like, this is the Holy Grail, and we can't discount that. So what's going on there? And this is where I think we get to, like, some weird psychological stuff, okay? So why do extreme things? Why do extreme things appear to work for some people?

People will swear on extreme stuff. So now we're going to get into the weeds, okay? So here's the thing. So there's a person. And then I kind of grow up in a world where I get judged. And as I get judged, I start to feel bad about myself. Okay? And I look at the world around me, and I notice that appearance is important.

I notice that there are people who have and people who have not. That job, money, this stuff, like, how do you attain financial security? A million people on the Internet will tell you exactly what to do, and it's not. clear if any of them are right, myself included. Right? So your self-worth, your worth, especially as a man, is dependent on how much you can provide. And appearance is important for jobs, right? So if we look at statistics on height and being a CEO, CEOs over six foot are way more common

than they should be. Right? So fundamentally, money, respect, attention, right? All of this stuff depends on your appearance. Okay? And they're not wrong, right? So people say, like, why do we look smacks? So if we go to objectification theory.

So this is a paper from the 70s, okay, or 80s. Okay? Hold on. Okay, so take, for example, the array of life benefits that physically attractive are eye-catching women receive in American culture. Studies have been demonstrated, for instance, that obesity negatively affects women's, but not men's social mobility. No longer true, by the way. With obese women showing lower educational and economic attainment than their parents,

physical attractiveness has also been shown to correlate more highly with popular dating experience, marriage opportunities for women than men. And so this is like a paper from the 70s talking about what physical attractiveness gets you. I think if you look at modern research and you look at men, physical attractiveness helps you get jobs, helps you rise to become a CEO, arguably improves your financial outlay, right? So there's a reason why a lot of people are prioritizing physical attractiveness. And basically, what I've observed as a psychiatrist is the worst that you feel about yourself,

if this makes sense. the more extreme solution you feel like you need. So I'll give you an example. So let's say there's negative 100 and positive 100. And let's say I'm at zero. What is the size of intervention that I need to go from zero to 100? It is plus 100. It's a regular intervention.

If I'm decent, if I'm at plus 50, to get to 100, I only need, a modern intervention. If I'm at 75, I only need a small intervention. But if my self-esteem is absolutely in the pits, if I look around and I feel pathetic, small things won't fix how pathetic I am. I need something extreme. And I've seen this all the time in medicine. Okay? So sometimes what I see is Dr. K is the only one that can save me. I need to talk to Dr. K. K. no one else on the planet will be good enough. And these people feel severely bad about themselves. I have problems that are so unique and so bad, I need only the most brilliant person

on the planet. Like literally, I'm not saying this to toot my own horn. This is like literally what people will approach me with. You're the only one. I'm not the only one. I'm not even like I'm not mid, let's be honest. Like I'm better than average, I think, right? Like trained at Harvard and all that good stuff.

I work hard. I try hard. A lot of my colleagues are burning. doubt. But what I see with people who are very severely ill, right? So I see this a lot with like fibromyalgia and complex regional pain syndrome and gut dysbiosis. Sometimes when you feel really sick, you feel like you need the inverse of how sick you feel is the size of treatment you need. I need all of the treatment. I need the most extreme thing. And when you do the most extreme thing, it feels really good. And so here's my.

question about mewing. For someone who says it works, how do you navigate what percentage of your benefit is placebo effect? Right? So I saw a really cool study. I wonder if I can find it real quick. Oh, this is such a good paper. Overdose on placebo. No. So I saw this cool case report recently. Nope. Can't find it. Oh, here we go. Okay. So, so this is what's so fascinating. A man who overdosed on, this is not the case report that I was thinking about, but a man who overdosed on placebo, 29 capsules of an experimental drug, you know, he overdosed on placebos, this is not the one.

But basically, there was a guy who was hospitalized because he overdosed on his placebo pills. And he had all these like, like, hemodynamic changes, elevated heart rate, blood pressure, and they like hospitalized him because it wasn't like he was psychological, like he wasn't physiologically normal. And then when they found out, but then they did a drug screen. So they like tested his blood and they're like, what did he OD on? We don't know.

And they couldn't find anything. And then they looked into it and they were like, okay, like what happened? Then they figured out that he overdosed on placebo. And then they told him, hey, you took like 29 sugar pills. It's like the equivalent of he ate a Snickers bar. That's your OD was a Snickers bar. And once they told him he got. better and got discharged.

Right? So sometimes people believe in really drastic treatments, and when they get those really drastic treatments, the placebo effect can be quite large. I'm not saying that mewing doesn't work. I don't know that. I'm saying that the medical professionals who spend over a decade say that it doesn't work, but people feel like it works. And if people feel like it works, we have to explore that.

Either it does work, or there is something that makes them feel like it works. And here's the other challenge that I have when I see posts like this, the tier list, right? So if you're doing all of this stuff, body recomp, neck training, tea pulling, I don't even know what that is, skin care routine, chewing, cold showers, subliminals, supplements, working out, adjusting body fat percentage. How do you know that it is the mewing that is doing the job? Right? So when we're doing like scientific studies, the whole point is like we want to isolate. something to determine what it's effected us. So there is some of the stuff that is either harmful or maybe doesn't work, things like that, some of the things like leg lengthening surgeries

and stuff like that. You know, people, I remember the first time I've told this story on stream before. I think it was 2016 and I was working in the emergency room and there was a guy who came in and he was like, he was manic, but he was like telling me that he was going to go to like Indonesia and get leg lengthening surgery done. And I kind of looked into it and people will basically crack your shin bones, insert metal rods or plates, and then like reaffix them to give you a couple inches on height. And when I looked at the outcomes from that, it's really scary. Like you can have lifelong debilitating pain anytime you walk if the surgery doesn't go well. Right? So what is going on psychologically with these people? Like what on earth is happening?

And this is where we get to a couple of things, okay? Hold on, looking for a paper. Not this one, not this one, not this one, not this one, not this. There we go. So we're going to talk about a couple of different psychological things today, okay? So we're going to talk about anorexia. But before we get to anorexia, let me just explain what we're going to do. So if you guys want to understand psychologically what I think is going on with looks max.

let's understand. Okay. Okay. So what we're going to do is look at some psychiatric drivers and or diagnoses. So there's anorexia, there's self-objectification, there is borderline personality disorder, okay? And then there is muscle dysmorphia and body dysmorphia. So people may say, and sometimes when I talk to my colleagues, they'll say, like, oh yeah, looks maxing is body dysmorphia.

Right? So there's the healthy side of it, which is fine. But if you do this stuff like mewing, that means you've got body dysmorphia. I don't think that's correct. I think what happens is each of these things is driven by a psychological root. Okay?

So for example, as I showed over here, so the control paradox and anorexia nervosa, we're going to explain what this is. So there is the control paradox. Okay. There is self-identity. There is empathic connection. I know this sounds so weird with others.

And then there is like judgment on your body, which I know sounds like the core, right? But here's my take on what looks maxing is. if we look at the effect of things like social media. Okay, so for example, let's take a look at the association between social media use and body dysmorphic symptoms and young people. Frequency of use of image-based but not text-based platforms was significantly and positively associated with body dysmorphic symptoms, and this association remained significant in the adjusted models. self-oriented perfectionism may amplify the relationship between social media use and body dysmorphic symptoms.

So what does this mean? Okay. So now what's going on is social media use is exacerbating this. Okay? Does that kind of make sense? So the internet is exacerbating our judgment on our body. And there's also a differentiation. So if you were perfectionistic, this gets amplified even more.

So this kind of explains to me, like, I'll tell you all why this is important. So if using social media makes you a looksmaxer, then everyone who used social media would make you a looksmaxer, right? If it caused body dysmorphia, then everyone who did it would result in, everyone who used social media would have body dysmorphia. But I think what's really interesting is we dig into the science of it and the reason that we have to talk about the complexity is because, Because if you have a perfectionistic personality and you use image-based social media a lot,

if you, the more that you look at images of other people who are beautiful and you are perfectionistic by nature, then that contributes towards looks maxing. That's how we move from self-help to self-harm. So if we take someone who isn't very perfectionistic, but spends time on Instagram, their likelihood of becoming a self-harming bot looks maxer is lower. Does that make sense? So I think it's more complicated. It is not one thing.

What we're actually looking at is there are all kinds of new effects on social media that activate these things. And the more of these things that you have going on, the more likely you are to be a self-harming looksmaxer. Right? But if you don't have these negative effects, if these things are not super active, then you can do the looks maxing stuff. And then you can have self-help looks maxer. Does that kind of make sense?

So we have to look at these psychological elements. Okay. I'm going to pause for a second, make sure, does this make sense to y'all? Or is this too complicated? Right? So like basically live in a world where there's certain psychological things and that plus the internet results in the harmful behaviors of looks maxing. That's my theory.

Okay? Okay. So now let's dive into it, because this is what's really fascinating. I mean, like, to me. Okay. So let's start with the control paradox, okay? So, Anorexics achieve perfect and absolute control at two levels,

control of the size and shape, and control in the sense of self-denial and moral. Anorex, and then they also have, anorex experience themselves as entirely out of control at two levels. They are terrified of becoming fat, physical, and they see themselves as gluttonous and debased immoral. Okay. So, the term control is obviously related to the term power

in the sense of potency and force, power over something or someone. So I'm going to ask you all a crazy question. Let's just pause right here. if we look at the science and psychology of power and control, do you think, do you all know of any populations or demographics who are hungry for power, control? Can you guys think of anyone, any group, any demographic of people? It is necessary for her to engage with other people in such a way that the interaction allows her this control.

When anorexic, anorexics talk about control, they invariably mean the power to regulate. command and govern their own lives and actions. They generally fail to do this by turning outwards and engaging with the world on their own behalf. Instead, they exercise self-control, which we might understand is the power turned inwards. The battleground then becomes an internal one. The battle is fought within the individual rather than between the individual and the world. Does this sound like something that would be appealing to a demographic of people that maybe y'all have heard about. Is there any people out there who are like, you know what?

You can't control what happens in the outside world. You have to master yourself. The war that you need to fight is within. And once you start fighting the war within, then you will become powerful. You will become forceful. And then once you have that, the term control, you will then have power over something or someone. Master yourself first, and then the world will be your oyster.

Have you guys heard this anywhere, by the way? Is this familiar, completely new? I know this is a bit outdated, okay? Oh, shit, man, this is a paper from 1979. So I'm sure you guys haven't heard anything like this before, right? This is foreign. And by the way, I love this. Throughout the paper, I will refer to the anorexic as she.

In 1974, this did not apply to men. in 2026, it is the root of the manosphere. The world outside of you cannot be controlled. AI is taking your job. Women are only looking for men who have a certain sexual marketplace value. We as men, 50% of men under the age of 30 who are adults living in the United States, still live with their parents. we have these expectations for a man should provide, a man should do this, a man should do that.

We spend a lot of time on social media where women will talk about six foot and six figures and six this and six inches and all this kind of stuff. We can't control. The world is out of control. And what we learn from anorexia, and this is what's so scary, and tell you all the story,

anorexia is really hard to treat. Fucking hard to treat, okay? And the reason it's hard to treat, and this is why so much of this stuff is hard to treat, body dysmorphia is hard to treat too, is because the person who experiences this doesn't think of it as bad. Someone who has crippling social anxiety

doesn't want crippling social anxiety. Someone who is so depressed that their house is an absolute mess, they don't want to have low energy. They want this to be different. The problem with anorexia is they don't want it to be different. The problem with body dysmorphia is that they don't want to be different.

This is a good thing. So when I was working at McLean Hospital on the, you know, working with, there's a unit called Procter House 2. And Procter House 2 is the inpatient place for trauma and BPD, basically, borderline personality disorder. And one of the hardest things to do when we were working in those places and when I work in addiction. So when I work in an addiction rehab, if someone came in and had a history of eating disorder and substance use, what we found is that when you, decrease the substance use, the eating disorder behaviors skyrocket. So it was like playing whackamol. And when you go to eating disorder units and you control what they eat,

their substance use skyrockets. It's all about control. So with these people, the fundamental thing is, I cannot control anything outside of me. I am bad, too. I feel guilty and shame and all this kind of stuff. We'll get to where that comes from in a second. You guys will see this will be some lasagna of psychological suffering at the end.

That's what looks maxing is. Okay? So I can't control the world around me, but you know what I can control? I can control myself. There's almost this compensatory hyper-control in anorexia. The more chaotic the world is, the more I have to turn inward and I will control myself. I will control what goes into my body. And this is the weird thing with anorexia is like

the pain that you feel from starvation feels good. That means you are strong. That means your body is screaming at you. I need calories. I need food. I'm starving. And you're like, no, I am in control. You eat when I tell you to eat.

You eat what I tell you to eat. The more out of control they feel in their lives, the more the eating disorder behavior arises. And we see a world. where now men, we've been living in the patriarchy for like 100 years and like what we want it happened. And now we're catching up to women. Now we are being objectified.

Now we're no longer in control. I no longer have the capacity to make six figures. I no longer have the capacity. I never had the capacity to be over six feet. But back then, it didn't matter. Now it matters. Okay. Let's watch a clip real quick.

It's a clip I want to show now. Okay? So I think this kind of represents how people feel about it. It makes you. But your vanity, self-obsession, and insecurity certainly will. This is really what women are doing. They're clowning looks-maxers, turning off their phone, covering their face with makeup, and then swiping left on 95% of dating profiles, while calling you vain, calling you insecure.

Women were the original looks-maxers. What's more insecure than covering your face with a bunch of toxic chemicals every day and telling other people, looks don't matter. Are we living in reality? Do we actually lack this much self-awareness? I don't know. This is crazy work. Okay.

So, like, I think this is the sentiment that it's a really interesting sentiment because I think a big part of looks maxing is there is like equilibrium between men and women around appearance that's growing. But I think what's happening is that people feel out of control. And so if I want you all to think about this for a second, okay? So if my job is being stolen by AI and there's inflation, there's uncertainty, I was planning, I'm in my first year of petrochemical engineering, but I don't know what's going on. There's war in Iran.

People are moving off of fossil fuels. You know, electric cars are growing. I don't know if the industry that I'm in, I'm a programmer. but now AI is taking my job. Right? So like the world is fundamentally out of control. And I think a lot of things that people we don't realize is, you know, you can make arguments for the patriarchy fair enough.

But I think what's really scary is the patriarchy in some ways helps men. And this is not my area of expertise either. So like, this is just what I've observed as a clinician. Right. So there's some advantages to being a dude. But like a lot of like the advantages of being a dude or. only held by a certain amount of dudes. Right?

And if you're not one of those dudes, like, then what? Right? So the deck is stacked against you. There's no way to get people to fall in love with you, right? Which I think is true, but we're going to try to educate y'all with the guide to love sex and relationships. That's why we built that thing because we want to teach you all what actually works. But then, like, what do you do? Right.

How can you exercise control? There's only one domain that you have control over, which is yourself. And so the more out of control we feel, this is something that we learned from a paper from 1979 about anorexia, is there's a relationship between the more out of control you feel in the outside world, the more brutal you will be with yourself. Right. And there's this weird perverse angle to this, which like I want to go back to this idea of I'm going to use steroids and then die when I'm 30. Is like, I don't know if this makes sense. Man, how do I say this? there's a certain, like, if you're a dude, there's a certain, like, nobility to going out with a bang.

I don't need to be a candle. I'm going to be a fucking firework. And if the price that I pay is the sacrifice of my own death, this is something that men, we have been, we are raised in a culture where sacrificing ourselves is to be lauded. Band of brothers. You pay the price, but you ain't weak. Right? Like, does that kind of make, like, I don't know if women in the audience are going to get that. If you're a dude, hopefully that makes sense.

I don't know how else to say it. So, like the size of our sacrifice increases the moral value of what we do. I'm going to go hard. I'm going to go extreme. I'm going to research. And the more effort that we put in, the more we sacrifice, the more, more, more, more, more, we're getting over this insecurity. Right? This is increasing this right here.

The more we do, the more important it becomes. And so this is a big part of resting control away from a world that is filled with chaos. And there is evidence, for example, that if I am better looking, then my financial outcomes are better, my dating outcomes are better, my relationship outcomes are better. There's some evidence of that. Part of the reason we made the guide is because people are blown away by, or I was, when people learn this stuff, they're blown away by how little appearance matters. That if you look at good outcomes for, you know, making money, while appearance, while, so I want you all to understand this because it's kind of confusing, you can look at a study and you can say

people who are more physically attractive make more money than people who are less physically attractive. That can be true. But that's not the right question to ask. The right question is, which are the variables that contribute the most to financial success? And how does appearance rank against other things like showing up every day? Like EQ. Right? So, for example, what I observed when I was working a lot in banking and private equity and stuff, all these startups out of Harvard and MIT,

is like a balance of EQ and IQ is what it takes to get to the top. EQ IQ perseverance, work ethic, high amount of conscientiousness, a fair amount of anxiety, by the way, because if you're not worried about stuff, you're just kind of kind of chill, right? So when you have very, very, very low neuroticism, it's hard to get your ass up in the morning. People who are super chill are not super successful. It's harder to do it. It's not harder. There's just a different way to do it.

Right. So I think the problem with a lot of this research on, okay, appearance does all of these things, is that it doesn't include the rest of the variables in the equation. So as a simple example, we showed this cool paper, you know, several, like maybe about a year ago, about the drive for muscularity. And the drive for muscularity is inversely correlated with length of a relationship. Okay? So what this basically means is that the more muscular, more swole, you want to be length of relationship.

That's what it looks like. I'm sure it's not actually like that. I'm sure it's probably more like this, actually. It's inversely correlated. That's what they found. But I think the real thing is probably like this is my, hold on. I don't buy that. I think probably what it is is something like this.

Probably it's more like that. So a certain amount of drive for muscularity probably improves your relationship and then after that, and then if you average this out, right? So the overall trend of this line is still going to be like this. So it's still going to be an inverse relationship,

but I don't think it's a straight line down. It's a random aside. Okay? So a big part of it is control. Next thing. So let's talk about objectification. So this is the other big thing that's happening right now. So objectification theory posits that girls and women are typically a culture to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves.

Okay? What this means is that the way that people see me is the way that I see myself. This perspective on self can lead to habitual body monitoring, sound familiar, which in terms of, can increase women's opportunities for shame and anxiety, reduce opportunities for peak motivational states, and diminish awareness of internal bodily states. Okay? I want you all to remember these things.

They will become relevant later. Okay? Oh, sorry. So, justification. So what does self-objectification mean? Okay, so it's basically, I have an opinion of who I am.

And when somebody else sees me, this determines their opinion of me. Let's say they think I am attractive. And then this becomes this. Does that make sense? So they see me, they form an opinion, that opinion is this opinion. So normally what we consider healthy

is that I have an opinion of myself, which is, let's say, this, and then someone else sees me, and they have an opinion of me, and these two things can be different. And then I can even understand that they think of me in this way, but I'm able to hold a simultaneous opinion that is different.

And I'm not trying to be alpha-beta about this. It's not like, I'm just using those as representations. Okay? So when we start to, and this is the interesting thing about objectification theory, is like this came out of like feminist psychological research. This idea, what people started noticing in the 70s and 80s is like, okay, we're like, we have magazines, right? We have like lots of, you know, media about women and women were portrayed a certain way. And then people were objectifying women. and then women started objectifying themselves,

and they started determining their internal emotional state, internal emotions, and peak motivation, started being influenced by this. Okay, so let's take a closer look at the paper. We'll see if we can map on. Right? The common thread running through all forms of sexual objectification is the experience of being treated as a body

or collection of body farts valued predominantly for its use to or consumption by others. So I don't know if you guys saw this, right? So this is like, Jesus, this is going to be so bad. Right? Did you guys see this? Job applications at J.P. Morgan are up 686,000% this morning. Okay? So for those of you that don't know, there was an alleged scandal, we don't know what's true or not,

that there was a junior member at J.P. Morgan, a junior banker, who was basically repeatedly sexually assaulted by a woman who made all kinds of suggestive sexual remarks. And there was an allegation, right? And this is like, I think this is a kind of, it's funny, I was on my friends and we were actually laughing about it on Discord. And I was like, this is not funny, right? But we're sort of like, it's so weird how much we've been programmed. where it's like the things that this senior female banker did to this junior banker is something

that men would love to happen to them. They think that until they're actually in that situation. It's just a cycle. It's not, doesn't feel good to be sexually predated, even though men will joke about it. They don't understand. They have no frame of reference. Right. Thankfully, most of us don't have a frame of reference.

We've never been sexually assaulted. But the idea of being forced to do all kinds of things to your relatively attractive female boss is something that men will joke about like applications are up 700,000 percent. Right. So this is what's so interesting. I think, and this is what's so hard and fascinating to me is that we live in a culture, and this is not just true of men. Right. Where like this is something that many men I've worked with long for. Right? So this paper is talking about how sexual objectification leads to self-objectification.

But there are so many men I've worked with who would want nothing more than to be treated like a piece of meat that is desired by women. It's something that's strive for, and it's not just men, right? There's lots of women who feel this way too. I want to be the object of someone's lust. I don't care about them loving me as a person. I want to be that which is hungered and thirsted for. Now, the question is why on earth do they feel that way? And this is where I'm going to go off the rails again. Right? So for a lot of men, what happens is like, okay, a lot of tangents today, but we're just going to go with it.

So when we grow up, we develop templates of human interaction. And one of the most common templates that a lot of dudes develop is when they hit puberty and they get really horned. there is the object of their lust. And we can say that this is not good and it's dehumanizing and all this kind of stuff, which is true. We'll get to this in more detail when we get further into the self-objectification. But then in this template, there's the horny in cell, and then there's the sexually available person who gets their pick, right? I'm looking up at this thing. So the template that I have is that there's the high sexual marketplace value and the low sexual marketplace

value. And so what happens with human beings is when they develop a template, they don't try to scrap the template. They're actually very resistant to scrap the template. What they try to do is elevate themselves to the high position. So this is why people, kids who are abused at home become bullies. Because the template that they learn is there's a strong person, there's a weak person. The strong person hits. The weak person cries like a little bitch. And then when I go to school, which one do I want to be? They reclaim the power that they lose in this relationship by inflicting that pain on another person. This is how the cycle of trauma perpetuates. And when you have a lot of horny kids who aren't able to get dates and aren't able to get

laid, they strive to be, they objectify this person, right? And then they want to be objectified. I want women to surround me and want this body. Not necessarily who I am. but want this body. And then there's really fascinating science behind this, okay? So if we go up, diminish awareness of internal bodily states. This is another important element. Okay, we'll get to that in a second.

So let's see if there's something else, okay? So objectification theory posits that the cultural milieu of objectification functions to socialize girls and women, now men, at some level, treat themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated, right? So does this apply to looksmaxers? Do looksmaxers treat themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated? Women, now looksmaxers, often adopt an observer's perspective on their physical selves.

And then there's a certain sequence to this that we can get into, if you all want. It begins with compliance to minimally sufficient external pressures. So what does this mean? This means at the first stage, the first stage, so I'm going to walk you all through this, okay? So stage number one, diminished internal signal. This is going to become important too, okay? I'm going to just check in. You guys following me?

Two all over the place? Are you guys following? Okay. So this starts with external signals. Compliance with external pressures. So everyone wants me to be beautiful, right? So people want me to be beautiful. And then I'm going to comply with that.

I'm going to become beautiful. Then this leads to internalization and identification. So this isn't like really rocket science, but basically people say I should look a certain way. I start looking that certain way. And then I start to believe that I am that way. Okay. And then what that ends up with is claiming ownership of socialized values and attitudes. So we live in a world of dating apps where, like, this is another huge selection pressure.

Why is this changing for men? Part of the reason it's changing for men is because men are objectified on a level now, right, that like women were objectified in the 70s and 80s. Men are judged based on their appearance. It used to be that obesity didn't really matter at your way. workplace. Now it matters a lot. Now we have these billionaires who are all ripped and injecting peptides, right? Billionaires are no longer fat slobs who eat like whatever all day. They're people who have nutritionists and personal trainers or have testosterone replacement therapy and stuff

like this, right? So the male Ubermensch is a self-actualized individual who is sexy, attractive, the object of everybody's lust and rich and in control. of their lives. And then it gets incorporated into their true sense of self. Okay? This is where we end up. So now this goes back to this thing where like, now the way that I think about myself is the way that other people treat me.

Let me just make sure that there isn't more. I think that's enough. So I think this is just a cool. Capture this idea of the phrase of the looking glass self. So this is a self that is determined by what I see in the mirror. Okay? Body image satisfaction is positively correlated with sense of self. I think that's enough from this paper.

I mean, there's more, but we'll... Okay? Does this make sense? Now we get to... Oh, no, no, no, no. There is more. Okay. So, pointing out, however, that...

Pointing out, however, that only one in 40,000 women actually meet the requirements of a model's shape and size argues that the female... The ideal female body myth is unrealistic and vers... virtually impossible to attain. So this is where looks maxing comes in. Right. So back in the 70s and 80s, the ideal image of a woman was not attainable. And now we see why some of this hard maxing stuff like bone smashing and mewing and stuff like that, right, leg lengthening surgery, cosmetic surgery has accelerated. We have face contouring. We have makeup. We have all these things that are attainable. So back in the day, what happened is the psychological process for a woman who felt objectified,

was like, okay, we got to do that internal work because the external work isn't possible. There's nothing that you can do to become a supermodel. But in a world of cosmetic surgery, steroid use, testosterone, like bovine growth hormone injections,

leg lengthening surgery, we no longer have to do the psychological work because, oh, there is a system. There's almost a protocol with steps that you can do. Right? There are all of these things that you can do to attain this,

what used to be unattainable standard. Right? We can fucking inject IGF peptides. Insulin-derived growth, or insulin-like growth factor. Not derived. Insulin-like IGF, which boost muscle growth.

Okay? Let's go back to it. Okay. Then there's a couple of other things. So shame is a big emotion here, right? A desire to hide to escape painful gaze about others or to disappear alongside feelings of worthlessness or powerlessness. Okay, so I'm going to ask you all, right?

So there's, I don't know if you can see this clip. Right, so I want to, I'm going to ask you all a question. What do you think is the emotion of the person who is experiencing this? Right? So we see like anger. But like, right, when someone looks like this and then this happens, right, and then they look like this, like, what do you think when you have a looks maxing influencer? We don't know. Maybe he just was responding to the fact that he was assaulted and someone put hands on him.

Right? And so this is something that I think y'all can do is you all can, I encourage y'all, so here's what I would really like to happen. I want you all to finish listening to this lecture, and then I want you all to go back and look at clips of these people. And what I want you all to pay attention to is how much of this is them trying to, and this is so fucking simple, how much of this is these people trying to look a certain way, right? Like literally, and it's not even just about their looks.

Like, don't even focus on the looks. Notice what happens when someone, you know, there's like an interview with someone who says and the host says, look, I'm fine with the way that I look. And then what happens? You guys know what I'm referring to. Right? So look at these and look at how important it is for them to appear a certain way. Make sense?

So there's shame. Okay. And then there's a couple of other elements. Okay? So this is another thing that we find from self-objectification theory is that when you objectify yourself in this way, it is very motivating. Okay? How is it motivating?

Because now you're like working really hard, so now we get to the BPD element. Okay, so let's talk about BPD for a second. So we'll talk about motivation and BPD. Okay. So borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder that is characterized by a chronic sense of emptiness and has an internal sense of self that is unstable. Okay, so the two things are chronic emptiness and a sense of self that is unstable. I don't know who I am.

And what happens in BPD, we have our second most successful. video on the channel, on the YouTube channel is me explaining BPD. I love working with patients with BPD. A lot of people will avoid them because it's supposed to be difficult, but I have a lot of compassion. They're just amazing individuals who are just struggling because they don't know who they are. So then what happens with BPD is the way I feel about myself is determined by the way that people treat me. So being in a relationship with someone of BPD is very difficult because if I get angry at you and you've got BPD, my anger towards you is not me being angry, that becomes your sense of self-worth.

So if someone is angry at me, that means I am bad. So basically the problem in BPD is this step right here. This happens a lot, where if someone thinks about me in a certain way, then that's the way that I feel about myself. Okay? So then people with BPD have a challenge

because the way they feel about themselves is determined by the way that people treat them. So then what happens is people with PPD become very manipulative, subconsciously for the most part, but they do all kinds of things to manipulate other people's reaction to them. Don't ever get mad at me. So oftentimes the women that I work with will almost like, this is not really the right word, but it's the best word, they will weaponize sex. They will discover. So people with the history of BPD have high comorbital.

of substance use, which we'll get to in a second, and they also tend to have a history of intense and unstable relationships engage in a lot of high, high risk sexual behavior. Okay? And one of the reasons that they engage in high risk sexual behavior is because when a woman has BPD and she engages in a sexual activity, it changes the way that people, it changes the way that people react to her. It changes the way that she's treated. Right?

So when I have sex with someone, it increases the likelihood that they will treat me well, and they will hold me, and I'll feel good, and we'll feel good together. It'll be amazing. It'll be like in the movies. So they become dependent on other people's evaluation to determine their own self-worth.

And I think what we see in a lot of looksmaxers is a piece of that. This is when we take self-objectification, and we kind of elevate it a little bit more, we sort of end up in this BPD kind of character structure. I'm not saying looksmaxers all have BPD. I have no idea there's a whole set of diagnostic criteria. What I'm saying is that there is a core element of BPD

that I think predisposes people to looks maxing. Because when I don't feel good about who I am, when I don't feel confident in who I am, when I don't know who I am, and I start to change all of my appearance because I feel out of control and stuff like that. And then the most dangerous thing for a looksmaxer is for the world to respond the way that they want. Because now I know how to evoke this response. Now I know how to get respect. Now I know how to feel desired. Now I know how to be the person that people lust after instead of the one who is doing the lusting. And it feels amazing. Right. So the more

dependent you are on that kind of feedback from other people, the more addictive this is going to be. And then something cool happens for these people. Because we learn from self-objectification theory that peak motivation is also achieved. And this is where I think we go back to the self-help. Because if we look at the stuff that looks maxers do, it was really cool research on something called behavioral activation and depression. So when you have someone who's suffering from a major depressive episode, they don't feel like doing anything. But the more that you do, the better you start to feel.

See, a lot of people think you cure the depression or treat the depression, then you feel like doing stuff and then you do more stuff. It's actually the other way around. You force yourself to do things. And when you force yourself to do things, your mood actually elevates. You start to feel more in control of your life, which, by the way, is very attractive, by the way. So number one thing, not number one thing, but one of the top three things is in the guide to that people are, attracted to men and women is a sense of direction in someone's life, being in control of your life. You don't want to be in a relationship with someone whose life is directionalist in a dumpster fire.

You want to be in a relationship with someone who knows where they're going. Right? It doesn't have to be like a career. It can even be like you want to be a stay-at-home mom, stay-at-home dad. You're devoted to, you know, being a homesteader. Like, that works too. This is the kind of stuff we cover in the guide. But going back to motivation, like, it's so cool because if you're someone who's like life

is falling apart and you don't know what job you have and you don't know what's happening to your degree and you don't know if you can find a job but you can start taking control and you start doing stuff right you start liking the way that you look in the mirror you start hitting the gym your cortisol levels are better these looks maxers will will say hey you got to get eight hours of sleep every night you got to reduce your cortisol levels reduce your inflammatory burden start eating healthy and all this stuff and you get motivated to do all of these good things and when you start doing these things, you start to feel really motivated too. This is the self-help part of it.

This can feel really good. It can be really good and be really healthy. And so that stuff, I think, is fine. But then we also have the sense of diminished internal signals, right? And then we get to stories like this one, which is really sad. So, and then, like, this was the tweet that I think clavicular said, just got home. That was brutal. All the substances are just to cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public.

Right? But obviously, that isn't a real solution. And so this is the sentence that really, like, I felt for this guy, trying to feel neurotypical in public. Right? What does that mean to you all? Like, we don't know what it means to him exactly, right? We haven't talked to him or anything like that.

But, like, this is the thing. It's like this is an attempt to feel normal. Right? And this is the scary thing is, like, people with BPD have a higher risk of substance use. And this is exactly why, because they don't like the way they feel. on the inside. The way that they feel on the inside is determined by the way that people treat them. They also, people with self-objectification theory, what we know about these people is that they have diminished internal signals. So the reason that this is the case is because this is blocked.

Their ability to determine the way they feel about themselves is actually blocked. And this internal feeling, being blind to your internal state is also a risk factor for addiction. It's one of the fundamental risk factors for addiction, is when you don't know who you are on the inside. So you can't self-regulate internally naturally or you haven't learned how to do it. There's a lot of negative emotions, shame, anxiety, judgment, you feel bad about yourself. And so there are two things that people will do. They'll either change their appearance to change the way that people treat them, or they will use drugs. Right?

Those are the two ways. I can, but the fundamental thing, this is what's really kind of sad, and I think this is the basic work that I try to do with people when I'm working with someone who has this kind of structure is, you know, if you're with body dysmorphia or anorexia or whatever, right, like it's all about connecting with who you are within. Because once your sense of identity, once your sense of self-respect is independent of the way that people treat you, then you're golden. You can receive the judgment of others, acknowledge it's real-world impact, which is like,

okay, if I, like, don't look good, then my chances of promotion are lower. That is factually true. But there are also many other things that I can do to increase my likelihood of promotion outside of my appearance. If someone doesn't like the way that I look, that is okay. at the end of the day, what is my interaction with this person for the rest of my life? It's minimal. People can think I'm ugly and it's like not that big of a deal. I can go on and live my life. I can eat food that I enjoy. I can lay out in the sun. I can go swimming in the ocean.

I can read a good book. I can play a good video game. I can still enjoy working out and feeling healthy, right? Like all those things are fine. I can wear SPF skin care to try to optimize my appearance not against the optimization of your appearance. It's a fact that human beings like to look good. human beings like to be desired. Nothing wrong with that. It's just that when we're not careful about these psychological substrates, that's when we get into trouble.

Let me just see if there's other... There was one other set of papers. Yeah, so, I mean, I think the other kind of specific things that we should just talk about is that, you know, I imagine if you take a population of looksmaxers, that a subset of them will probably have some degree of body dysmorphia or muscle dysmorphia.

Kind of relates to self-objectification theory. I haven't gone too much into this. We can go into this if you all want. This is cool. I found a thesis. This is super cool. A senior thesis. This is publicly available.

I love it. So I know sometimes we'll cite these papers and reputable academic journals. I love like some guy, I think, is a dude. Right? James Cockburn. Why degenerate brain-rotted brain. Cockburn maxing.

But like this is cool. Like some dude spent a lot of time writing this thesis. And it's like, I'm going to read it, dude. No one else may, but I'm going to read it. And so there's absolutely an element of, you know, muscle dysmorphia, body dysmorphia in looks maxing. I think a lot of this stuff that is, you know, about like facial structure. and stuff like that, there is science that shows that a certain facial structure is attractive, but there's also like, just because that's true doesn't mean that some people don't over-index for

the importance of that. And that's what I think is going on. So I think there's an element of body dysmorphia. But the tricky thing about looks maxing is that once again, what we're kind of dealing with is not body dysmorphia, not borderline personality disorder, maybe some amount of self-objectification theory, some amount of pressure, like almost like an eating disorder kind of makeup of like feeling out of control and wanting to be control. I think this is what's kind of difficult and for me personally like exciting is that we're living in a world where like these labels don't, you can't apply those to looks maxers. At least I don't think you can.

And it's not even everyone in it is pathologic, right? This is where self-help meets self-harm. And what is the pathology? It is a combination of all of these things. And so when I work with people like this, it's not like I've worked specifically with looks maxer influencers, by the way, which is an important disclaimer,

or looksmaxers in general. I've worked with lots of people of body dysmorphia, lots of people who are in cells, you know, are very hyper concerned about their recessed chin and all kinds of stuff. But I think that's what's like so tricky about this. This is not like one thing. This is like a new thing.

It's these fundamental aspects of psychology that we learn from like feminist psychology studies in the 70s and 80s that are now happening to men. We are doing to men what we did to women 40, 50 years ago, arguably longer. That's when there was an awareness of it. This idea of acceptance, if you weren't a supermodel, that you don't have to have kids, that you don't have to have a job, that you as a woman have the right of self-determination,

and your value as a woman is not determined by how you look or what you do or whatever. That self-determination is a thing. And now this level of judgment we are seeing because of the rise of social media, the, you know, people are kind of getting hammered by all of these images. And then the sense of being out of control, it's turning into this soup that results in looks maxing. Okay. Yeah, bar baffication, right? And it's like, it's kind of like, I don't know if this is, it's so insane how much,

I'm blurry now. Focus. Focusing. Out of focus. Blurry. Blurry maxing, chat. There we go. It's insane, like, how much the looks maxing stuff is so parallel to what women do, right, including things like makeup.

It's like skincare and makeup used to be a chick thing. Now it's a dude thing, too, if you're a looksmaxer. It's like working out has been for both of us, you know, both genders, all genders. And yeah, I mean, so that's my take. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to post a link for questions. Maybe mods and chat can do that. Let me see real quick.

Slido chat link. So let's see if this gets posted. Can we get all doing it? Okay, I'm going to post. So here's what I'd like y'all to do. I'm going to take, you guys can post questions in the Slido chat. And what we're going to do, we have one episode of the guide that we can show y'all. So why don't y'all, if you're dating today, there's a really good chance.

Okay. So here's what we're going to do. Okay. I'm going to show you all a guide video. I'm going to just grab a bit of water. It's only about five minutes long. So if you guys want to see like a quick video about the guide, we can sort of start that now while we're waiting for questions to populate. So please populate questions and we'll do Q&A. Okay?

I'm going to take a quick break. We'll pick up back when we're... I'll be right back. If you're dating today, there's a really good chance that it's. some point, you feel like giving up. And if it hasn't happened to you yet, unfortunately, there's a decent chance that it will happen to you in the future. And this comes in so many different forms. For example, always being able to go on a single date, but no one wants to go on a second date with you. Or you're able to go on several dates, but inevitably things never

click. They never go to the next level. People just sort of lose interest or want to be friends with you instead of seeing you as a romantic partner. And when this kind of stuff happens to us, our mind tries to make sense on it, right? Like, what the fuck is wrong with me? Like, why does this keep happening? And the most natural thing for the mind to do is to make an identity-based conclusion, right? If I date 10 people and no one wants to go on a second date with me, that means that there must be something wrong with me, right? Because I'm the common denominator. One of my favorite sayings is, you know,

if you look around and everyone around you is an asshole, you're the asshole, right? You're the common denominator. You know, sometimes I'll work with people who are dating someone who is not quite sure what their sexuality is. So they're like in this space of fluid sexuality to where they haven't quite figured out

who they're attracted to, what they're attracted to. This is incredibly common when I work with people who are teenagers or very young adults, university students. And if the person that you're dating, let's assume a heteronormative relationship. So there's a boy and there's a girl. And if they're dating and one of them turns out to be gay, it's hard to not take that personally.

But it really has nothing to do with you, right? This is the reality of the world is that if people are not interested in you, that has just as much to do with them is it has to do with you. So as we go through negative experiences, our mind will try to find reasons why things are happening to us. And especially when it comes to dating in relationships, one of the most natural conclusions, if things aren't going well for you, is to think there's something wrong with you, right? It's just to conclude, oh yeah, the reason that I'm not doing well is because I'm ugly or I'm unlovable or there are just so many people out there who are better than I am.

And this is where there's a really important skill called cognitive flexibility. And basically a bunch of research shows that the more cognitively flexible you are, the more successful you are in relationships, in your career, in life in general. And when it comes to relationships, instead of forming an ego-based conclusion, it's really important to think about an alternative version of events. So let's take the simple example of someone didn't text you back fast enough, right? whatever fast enough means. And while it's really easy to take that personally,

maybe I did something wrong, maybe this person doesn't like me, since they didn't text me back, that means there's something wrong with you. And that's where, remember that there are a thousand other reasons why they may not have texted you back. Maybe they had to go to the grocery store.

Maybe their dog got sick. Maybe their phone died. So Dr. Kay says, don't make an ego-based conclusion about yourself. Develop alternate version of events. But there's still the basic problem that you can't get a second date, right? Like there are still these, even if we don't conclude that you're a loser, and even if we sort of acknowledge that people have all kinds of stuff going on,

there are still problems that you are consistently encountering in dating and relationships. And so those still need to be addressed. Basically, we need to fix our problems. But fixing our problems means focusing on the problem itself, not some broad, I don't know, like, it's like, if we're playing video games, right, I can conclude that I suck at video games, but that's not actionable. I can't really, like, do anything about that. Whereas if you look at, if you lose a video game and you want to win the next time around,

you need to be targeted about what your mistakes are and try different things. And that's exactly how we want to approach dating. So instead of sort of making this macro level conclusion of I am unlovable, We do want to take a moment to think a little bit about, okay, can I be better at texting? Should I respond to people in a different way? We want to focus on circumstance-based or action-based solutions instead of identity-based conclusions. When we make an identity-based conclusion, that sets us up for failure in future interactions. Whereas when we focus on our actions or we focus on the circumstances, that actually sets us up to succeed.

Okay. So yeah, I mean, I saw a message in chat, but I still have trouble getting a first date. That's the whole point of the guide is that we talk about all of it, right? So it's like, so here's basically what I found working with people and trying to help them find love in today's world, which is insane. You have to be like competent at everything. That's why it's so hard. See, the world we used to live in allowed you to suck at some of it. So I'm a prime example. So like I sucked at talking to women. And like like I could get I could sort of get dates, but it was just, I was just so bad at it, bros and girls. And then the thing is I went to university where I had classes with people where I saw them every day.

I went to frat parties and I like had my fraternity brothers or other people like even real brothers who like helped me figure out how to talk to girls and stuff like that. So the challenge is that if we look at like the history of humanity, the way that we evolved matched our environment. So you can look at like a snow leopard that sees another snow leopard once a year, but they have the biological equipment to be able to track down another snow leopard that's in heat. And so that worked. The problem that we struggle with now is that the society that we live in does not allow us for additional chances to catch up. And so the best that I can do there is to help y'all understand all of the steps. What is it that forms initial attraction? Why is it that things fizzle out after two or three days and people are looking for a spark?

What is that spark? How do you facilitate that spark in the best way possible? Here's like other random things. So you guys know people say, oh, movie is a terrible first date because you don't get to know anyone. This is scientifically not correct because what people find it forms a connection, is that is shared emotional experience. So when two people go to a movie together and we both laugh,

or we both feel scared, or we both cry, and we walk out of the movie, we feel bonded. Feeling bonded is an independent scientific thing from knowing someone, right? Which is why people used to go on a lot of first dates

that were movies. Why do you think we did that? There was a natural selection to this process. Someone figured out that, oh, if I go on a date, my first date is a movie, that actually is like, facilitates a long-term increases my chances of a successful relationship.

Right? So now we have like a lot of this wisdom, which makes sense. You don't get to know someone when you go see a movie. That's correct. You're correct. But does getting to know someone improve your chances of finding a relationship? And this is what's so weird. People say, well, obviously, no, no, actually no.

Form a bond, then get to know someone, right? Getting to know someone is a gradual process. and we're front-loading this on the first date. And then it feels like a job interview. And then if it feels like a job interview, there's no spark, there's no connection. Yeah, that's how it works. Right? So movies are slop now, which is a different problem.

My point is that, like, you all should understand, right? What are the components of feeling a spark? What are the components of falling in love? And it's simple stuff, like some of the stuff that, you know, I talk about in the guide, like there's a whole video to early relationship touch. which is like a lot of people get one or two, you know, dates and then don't get another one. I don't think they're utilizing touch properly because people are concerned about consent, which is fair enough, right?

So we walk through like what is ideally, I mean, it's not ideal, but what is like a rubric that you can use? Because a lot of the dudes that I talk to now, they're like, I have no idea what to do. Other really cool things I found out. We're going to talk about this. We have a video on science. We have a stream on science of flirting, which is like fascinating. So did you guys know there's like a bunch of research on flirting? This is insane.

So here's the interesting thing. Research on flirting shows that the first move made by a woman, generally speaking, if you look at human mating courtship, first move made by a woman. A lot of people don't are like, what? What do you mean? So there's a very specific move, which is signaling approachability. The first move is signaling that you're available. So it's your invitation to other people to approach.

It's hanging, it's flipping the door, is flipping the sign from close to open. And it's, that's the first move. You don't have to do anything beyond signaling availability, right? Which is interesting because we have these things. And what are these things again? What is this signal? Oh, fascinating. It's almost as if as a culture we like developed a system.

where we put something on some part of our body part that is visible, right? Not down here. In here. Not over here. Over here. That is clearly visible. And actually, what we're going to do is put a sparkly thing over here that attracts people's attention to this. So it signals my availability or lack of availability.

It's almost like, oh, wow, this science thing, if we look at the culture and the way that we evolved, it's almost like we have a symbol of availability or lack of availability. Interesting. And as you signal, if you're a woman who's not signaling your availability, you can be the hottest person. This is what's cool. This is a study. High attractiveness, low signaling.

Moderate attractiveness, high signaling. The person who is of moderate attractiveness and high signaling has way better outcomes. signal you're available. Anyway, so this is the kind of stuff that's in the guide. So if you guys want, like, other tidbits like that, check out the guide, okay? Let's get to these questions. Would you consider having a talk with Klav?

I think he's a very interesting person, and I think we could learn a lot. So we don't, I'm not going to answer that publicly. I'm not going to answer that one. I know it's the first question and the thing that people want to know. People are very divisive about this. right? So there's concerns that we're platforming someone and stuff like that.

I think one of the things that we try to do on the channel, which I hope you all, and by the way, we've got some cool content coming out for you all, content that we haven't done in a little while that we used to do a lot of, that we're back to doing. But one of the things that we're pretty, you know, it's interesting, we made a decision many years ago that basically, I don't know if you all remember this, but like five years ago before the days of viewbotting, right? So we broke the record of largest concurrent viewers for a live stream on Twitch by single streamer. Events were better.

Austin beat us out with his dating show. But it was like, we used to pull 40,000 concurrence before the days of viewboughting. And then we dropped to 2000. And we made one very intentional choice, which is that we're not here for voyeurism. We're here to help. So interviews that are in life. with that, we're more than happy to do. We're not so concerned about platforming people or not platforming people. I think a big part of this channel is having conversations with people that are like

engaging in conversation instead of judgment, trying to understand people's perspective. Right? And that's okay. So like, so I think about that. I don't, I don't regret that decision at all. And I'm sure that we would have dropped anyway because I think there was basically a meta at the time, which was Dr. K. But then we noticed there was a lot of like ambulance chase. energy, which is like not what we want to do. At the same time, we're open to interviewing people about stuff like looks maxing, right? Because here I am, let's talk about the shortcoming of this stream is like, I'm not a lux maxer.

So here I am making all of these fucking, like, theoretical things, right, about what, how they think and what's going on and showing all these papers and like this kind of diagram and stuff like that, whereas, like, this could be true and it may not be true. I mean, I'm pretty confident in what I'm saying, and I think there's plenty of literature back it up, and I think it's like, and here's the thing. So like I said, now that you'll know this, right, what I want you all do is think about this, okay? And now anytime you see a looks, max, or influencer talking or sharing or something that happens

in their life, not just their front-facing content where they're trying to teach something, but look at the way they react to things, right? What happens when they're out and about? and how much of this depends not just on the way that they look. This is what's so fascinating about it. It's not about the way they look. So here's the ultimate...

This is interesting. I didn't kind of realize this until this moment. Looks maxing is not about the way they look. It's about the way they're perceived. And once you understand that, you can make predictions about what would happen. It's not about the way they look.

It's about the way they're perceived. Right? So it's so interesting because there's certain... I'm not going to mention people. because we don't like to talk about people. Okay, that's something that we try really hard not to do on stream. So, because it's not fair, right? So the other person should be able to respond.

I think showing clips of, you know, like public tweets and stuff like that, I think is fair game. But like, we're not going to dive into what's going on in a particular person. But I think it's really interesting because if you look at what a lot of these people do on stream, right, they're showing something. And they're showing way more than their looks. They want to be perceived a certain way. because when they're perceived a certain way, they feel a certain way. Right? That's the big thing that I believe. But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Right? I don't know. I'm not telepathic. It's a good question. And let me ask y'all.

I mean, how would y'all feel about it? Because someone posted on our subreddit that someone preemptively posted, I hope Dr. Kay never talks to clavicular. I don't know if you guys saw that post. So what do you all think? And it doesn't, I mean, I'm not pretty, I mean, him or someone. else, right? Would you guys want me to talk to, right? So, so, so, right, so I think if you guys look at chat, right, I think this is the challenge is a lot of people are heavily against it. A lot of people are really in favor of it. And this is the challenge that we face at Healthy Gamer. See, this is what's hard about being me is that there's a clear right and there's a clear wrong, it's just no one agrees on what it is. Can you not poll the community? Sure, I could poll the

community, but hold on a second. Let's be clear. Polling the community is a useful bit of information, but a lot of what we've done is, it's not like we just want to do what the majority of people want us to do. If we had done that, we wouldn't have lost the 38,000 viewers, right? We would have continued to do what they asked for because 38,000 out of 40,000 wanted us to continue exposing people's internal psychological vulnerabilities for their viewing pleasure. And so it's not pop. I mean, there's a useful piece of information there. That's why I'm asking you all.

So it's very helpful for us to know. There's value to polling, but I just want to be clear that polling doesn't determine what we do. And someone's asking, would it be interviewing clavicular any different from interviewing Seneca? I think absolutely. Every human being that we interview on the planet will be different. 100%.

Right? And I know when I say that, it's like, yeah. Right? Because then this is the thing. It's like, not all these people are the same. And I see we're up to 11%. Thank you guys so much. The other thing that we struggle with is, you know, how do we maintain this engine that

is healthy gamer? And we try to build things that are helpful to y'all. And we base it on what y'all ask for. I mean, on our subreddit, we literally had to restrict all of the dating and relationship posts to one day a week because they were flooding the subreddit. So now if you guys are worried about dating and relationships, check out the guide. It's good. This is a good question.

How can you possibly help people if you're not willing to understand why Clav is so popular? Yeah. So you can help all the people who are not into that, right? But I think there's a huge challenge with dating, relationship, sexuality. Like, we started making this guide like a year ago. right? Because we, I mean, we're seeing the writing on the wall. It's hard. How does this relate to those who gave up on their appearance? Oh, what a beautiful question. Man, I love this. What if you've given up on your appearance? Right? I think it's a very similar mistake from overvaluing appearance.

So when I was a second year psychiatry resident at Harvard and McLean, I worked on a psychotic disorders unit. So we spent three months on a unit that is primarily for people who are psychotic, hallucinating, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder. And one of the cool things I learned about there was this concept of overvalued ideas. So if you look at people with schizophrenia or delusional disorder, disorders, oftentimes there are certain concepts in their mind that matter way more than everything else. That's what an overvalued idea is.

So a healthy human being is someone who values a lot of different stuff. So health is important, fun is important. Treating your body well is important. Treating your soul well is important. Working hard is important. Avoiding work and now and then taking a day off of work is important. right so we have to value a lot of things individual freedom is important playing by the rules is important right individual freedom is important but you should drive on the proper side of the road so interestingly enough

if you look at people who have given up on their appearance their value of appearance hasn't changed they've just given up the fight but what appearance means for their life is not changed does that kind of make sense so appearance still matters a lot for most of these people It's just they consider themselves powerless. Right? But oftentimes people who have given up, and I'm using that term specifically, are people who care about appearance a lot, they just think that they can't win. So when I talk to people who have given up on their appearance and I've worked with a lot of them, right?

Guys got to remember, we were born in the gaming community. Right? And we give up on our appearance really easily as gamers, because we don't think there's anything that we can do. But if you ask a gamer, hey, like, how important do you think appearance is? It's very important. And that giving up, I think, is the key word. So this isn't, giving up implies that you still value it, right? But you've given up.

Given up is not how important it is. It is how hard you are willing to work to get it. And even then, that's not even right. Not even how hard. It's that what is your perception of your efforts being able to achieve it? Because the big irony is a lot of people who have given up on their appearance are the ones who have worked the hardest, many times. It's just they still feel like that is insufficient and they're never going to get there, right?

So they're throwing in the towel. I think the right thing to do if you've given up on your appearance, because then something interesting happens, you feel like you can't attain it. And if you can't attain it, then you stay down here. There's no point because I can't get to the top. And they're really doing themselves a disservice because you can't get to the top. That may be true, but you can still get here. and this will still improve your life,

being here is better than being here. So usually when I work with people like this, the first thing is we have to still work on their overvaluing of appearance. So we have to ask them, you know, what does it mean to be good looking to you? What's the difference between people who are good looking and not good looking? Right? How are their lives different?

And then what we have to do is add the other variables, which literally we try to do. There's an episode of the guy that focuses on charisma. We have a YouTube episode on 2. People don't realize that appearance is number six when you do a weighted analysis of the elements of charisma. It's the sixth most important thing. Charisma.

This is charisma, okay? It's not initial reactions. So I think a lot of this stuff actually does apply. So let's be like a bit clear, right? So there's an element of control, whereas the anorexics will go down the road of I'm going to control it no matter what. People still give up on control. There's an element of self-identity. There's an element of, right?

There's an element of this too. So in the case, let's go through this. This is a great question. I love us. Let's go through our existing system. so they feel like they have no control. That's why they give up, because there's nothing that I can do that'll make it work.

Their sense of identity is low. So it's still determined by their appearance, right? Their empathic connections is actually also low. Now, I have to be specific here. This doesn't mean that you're not a good friend or a good shoulder to cry on. That means that people who have given up on their appearance oftentimes have difficulty accepting the respect

and value that people will give them. So even though someone else thinks of them is good, thank you so much, they will still see themselves as bad. Many times, not all the time. Does that kind of make sense? But this system is still here. This connection is still here.

Okay? And then there's absolutely a judgment on your own body, right? That shows up. Nope, lagging. Whatever. Okay. There's judgment on their own body. for sure. Right?

So I think it's a different, and this is why I like to talk about the roots of this stuff. Because if the cookie crumbles a certain way, you end up as a looksmaxer. If the cookie crumbles a different way, you end up as someone

who's given up on your appearance. And this is why looks maxing, actually it's not, it's the fucking same. Okay, think about this. People give up on their appearance and then out of heaven comes down the angel.

I'm a luxmaxer. I will show you. You are ugly, I will show you how to be beautiful. Do mewing, do skin care, go to the gym. I will show you all of the secrets to make the ugly person beautiful. It is no longer out of your control. If you look at people who are looksmasters, what do you think their relationship with their appearance was

before they were looksmasers? Many of them had given up and then there is a new thing. Oh, there's a new thing. Okay, look, look, you guys remember when we had this diagram? Where do you think the person who gives up on their appearances and what does looks maxing offer them? So some people are able to receive that and some people aren't. But I think there's a very shared psychological root. And the reason that you know there's a shared cycle, or not the reason that you know,

the hypothesis for why there is a shared psychological root has to do with the overvaluing of ideas. Now, I'm making a lot of assumptions about people who have given up on their appearance, but what I'm really reading into, reading probably too much into, is this phrase giving up. Right. So someone who is given up on their appearance and someone who is content on their appearance may do the same thing with their skin care, which is nothing. May do the same thing with the gym, which is nothing. But giving up implies something that they value and that they have given up on.

right so that's what i'm reading into great question is whole looks maxing thing about the illusion of healing and and uh nullifying your pain dulling your pain through looks sort of sort of right so i think this is what i mean hopefully what i was going to share today is that it's like a little bit more complicated than that i think what happens with looks maxing is it's not about healing it is about becoming. So there are people who have it and people who don't. It's not a journey of healing. It's not moving from pathology to health.

It's moving from have not to have. And once you're one of the halves, then you get money, you get financial stability, you get respect, you become the object of people's lust. Right? And I think it's dulling your pain

is not technically correct. It's not about dulling your pain. It is about making your pain go away through the way that people react to you. So I don't feel good about myself. I don't know who I am. It's hard to be neurotypical when I'm around people. There's a lot of badness in here that I don't like. There's a reduction of internal sense of connection, right, that we saw that as well. Do you guys remember this? Right, diminished internal signals, which goes back to Right? I think it's over here. I forget where this is.

But there's diminished internal signals. It's one of these papers. So what it is is it's modulating your internal environment through the reactions of others. The ultimate drug, right? And what is a drug? A drug is something that makes you feel good. The ultimate drug from a looks maxer is when you look outside and you see someone appreciating how you look. that's the ultimate drug.

So it is absolutely modifying your internal environment through the reactions of others. 100%. I mean, I don't know if it's 100%. I speak hyperbolicly a lot, but that's my sense. Beautiful questions. How can a man pursue becoming more attractive

while healing the part of himself that believes he isn't enough? Oh my God, what a great question. Okay. How can a man become more attractive while healing himself or while healing that part of him that says he isn't enough. So here's what's so devastating. Okay. Good question.

Oh my God. This is actually the trap that a lot of looksmaxers get into. Here's me. I am both ugly and have low self-esteem. So this is something, first thing that I want you all to understand. your opinion of yourself is independent of whether you are ugly. It's not completely independent. It has an influence.

But do you guys understand that physical attractiveness is a feature of your face, is a feature of your body? Your opinion of yourself is a feature of the mind. Like literally, right? Self-esteem is not something that you can like see in a mirror. Like you can't measure it with facial symmetry. These are qualitatively different buckets of stuff. We can physically measure someone's, we can rate their attractiveness, facial symmetry,

whether you have acne scarring, things like that, right? How short you are. There are physical measures of attractiveness, and there's your opinion of yourself. These are independent. They're related to each other, like they can influence each other. So one of the biggest mistakes that someone who is ugly can make, is when they become beautiful, and people start reacting to them.

So let's say when I'm ugly, they react to me in a negative way. And when I become beautiful, they react to me in a positive way. So here's the really scary thing. What they're reacting to is the beauty, not the esteem. So something really scary can happen,

which is that you get stuck in a cycle of now everyone is appreciating your beauty. But what about the real you? What about the you inside? So I see this a lot where people will say, I used to be ugly and now I'm attractive. And when people pursue me, I hate them.

I hate it that now, like people are after me now and like I love the attention, but I fucking hate them. It makes me so angry that now these people are here. And when I was nothing, there was no one. The other place I see this interestingly enough, is in startup founders. So what happens is they were a no-one, and then they become amazingly successful,

and then people start wanting to date them. And when they were a 19-year-old college dropout, no one wanted to date them, and maybe they were ugly too because they were at MIT, not a college dropout. And then now that they're 27, and they have a net worth of like $200 million, like everyone is coming around,

want to be their friend, everyone is so interested, Oh my God, you're such a passionate person. I love your passion and your beauty. And oh, my God, you have $200 million. That doesn't hurt. But really, I see you as a person. I love you as a person.

And so they get trapped into not literally, they don't know who is this person in love with. Are they in love with the person that I've become? Are they in love with the person that I used to be? It's really hard, right? Oh, my God, no, I would be with you forever. By the way, is that private jet book for the weekend? Do I need to talk to your personal assistant about that?

No, I would absolutely love you no matter what. Absolutely. Oh my God, my friends are going to this thing and can we take the jet? Oh my God, you're the best. My friends love you. Okay? So it's hard. Like once you're in no one and then you become a someone and then everyone starts loving you,

it actually traps you with your self-esteem. And they get angry, dude. Like, people get so angry by this. The people that are chasing you, you start to loathe them. Because what you wanted is you wanted them to love this. You wanted this. This is real acceptance. Right?

When you're a no-one and someone chooses you, when you're a someone, that doesn't actually affect your self-esteem. Because what are they looking at? We don't know. We actually don't know. So one of the biggest traps you can fall into if you struggle with self-esteem is to become beautiful. And I've worked with plenty of women.

I mean, I sort of assumed sort of a male perspective there, but I worked with plenty of women who like, this thing is so blurry. Blurmaxing chat. The irony. I've worked with plenty of women who like had the ugly duckling face and then they become beautiful and they start getting a lot of male attention and they feel isolated. They feel objectified. Baby's so hot. Oh, my God. I love you so much.

I love your personality. And those tits. I love him so much. I love you so much. You're the best. You complete me. You make me want to be a better man. And those tits are great.

That almost sounded like a Donald Trump impression, but it wasn't supposed to be. Oh, my God. Right? So here's the thing. I'm a huge advocate of like fixing both. And this is, I think, a big mistake that a lot of looksmaxers make.

You know, I made this comment on a podcast. Someone was asking about looksmax. And I said, a lot of people that I've worked with They're like using it as a proxy to solve other problems. And then a lot of people had issue with that, which I think is fair enough. But I think the problem is like you can't, the basic issue with looks maxing is that it actually isn't a substitute for any of the other stuff. It can help you with your career for sure.

It can help you with your relationships for sure. But for a moment, you can't, it's not going to solve everything. And this is what's really scary is then the question becomes, okay, Dr. K, how do you solve those other things? And this is exactly what's so hard about it is like, if we look at finding self-esteem, where is the guide and organization to that? When we talk about discovering self-love and setting boundaries with people, when we talk about the monstrous amount of work that all of this other stuff is, how do we even, how do I even? get started. Right? So I think a big part of it is, so I think the right balance, like, you know, if you're into

looks maxing, I think, great, go for it, right? Don't do anything that is unsafe. Skin care, great. Diet, great. Exercise, fantastic. Right? Don't do any of the weird stuff. Injections, things like that.

Anabolic steroid use bad. So the right way to do it, I think, is to spend some time away from the looking glass. So work on all this stuff, but then, like, go for a hike. Right? Go camping. spend time away from people who judge you based on your appearance. Develop a sense of self that is independent of other human beings.

So for me, the huge thing was going to an ashram where, like, no one cares how you look. I literally don't care. Right? No one treats you any differently whether you're rich or you're poor. I mean, not true for some of the ashrums, but some of the ones. Right? You go to a place like Rishikesh or Haridwar, and there's some yogi. who's at the foothill of the mountains.

And like, he doesn't care, whether you're a billionaire or a millionaire. Like, he lives off of the land, like, literally. He'll just live off the offerings of other people. And so whether you're beautiful or ugly, he's not looking to get laid, not looking to pay rent, completely independent of society.

You're not looking for anything from you. You could disappear tomorrow, won't make a difference to him. He spends his days meditating for 24 hours a day. Right? So then you go up to the guy and you're like, hey, can you teach me something about meditation? He's like, sure, bro.

And then 22 years later, his student is now an influencer on the internet, and this guy has no idea. He has no cell phone. I don't even know his name. To be completely independent of humanity is to be a yogi. And to be completely dependent on humanity is maybe to be a looksmaxer. Who knows? Maybe it's not a fair characterization.

Right? So you have to handle these things independently. You should work on it. your appearance. And you should improve the way that people react to you and you should get better socially. It should improve on your communication skills. But don't for a moment think that any kind of work is a substitute for another kind of work. No amount of filling your belly with water will ever kill your hunger, truly. It's not a substitute for calories. No amount of lust is a substitute for love. Right? Like it's just you can't mix the two. So,

time with yourself. Meditation is good. There's a lot of other stuff we have about, you know, putting your life together. Can Dr. Kay acknowledge that some men just want hookups with hot women and looks maxing is the only way to achieve that, especially with online dating? Yeah, I can achieve, here's what I can acknowledge. Some men just want to get laid with hot women. Totally agree. Online dating is a good way to do that. Also totally agree. It's like, when you say good way to do that. These are the kind of statistics that are in, you know, the guide that we sort of did. So 50 to 60 percent of people on Tinder, I think women on Tinder are in a relationship. About 50 percent of people on Tinder are looking to get needs met that are not dating or romantic at all.

They're looking for things like self-esteem, entertainment, stuff like that. Now, is it the only way to get laid? I don't think so. That I won't acknowledge because I don't agree with. Looks maxing, improving your appearance increases your chances of getting laid. Improving your appearance matters more

if the way that you are meeting people is appearance-based. That I will completely concede. And if you're just looking to get laid with hot people, go for it. I don't have any problem with that. Is looks-maxing the most effective way to do that? Probably.

If you say that an app-based approach to getting laid in short-term sexual relationships, looks maxing is the best thing you've got on the planet. I will concede that 100%. There's evidence, a lot of evidence that supports that. So you remember we talked about this statistic. So the drive for muscularity, more small you want to be, more swall you want to be, and the length of the relationship goes like this.

But for one night stands and short-term sexual relationships, relationships, it looks like this. Oh, percent chance of sexual relationship. So if you take a super chiseled dude, will more women want to sleep with him and want to have a short-term relationship with him? Absolutely, yes. So that's correct. I think I've talked about that before.

So being super sexy is great for short-term relationships. So I will acknowledge that. Thank you for offering, by the way. I really do appreciate that. I've been in the healthiest and longest relationship for the past six months, but my usual motivation to looks max, to grind, hit the gym to take care of myself, has vanished. I've given up on my appearance in a way. Any ideas on this? Oh, yes.

Okay, so we talk about this kind of stuff in the guide. Hold on a second. Let me see. Let me find the name of the video. So we have episode 13 is evolution of a relationship. This is exactly where I've made this, right? So it's like you're going to encounter this. So relationship has to evolve.

All right. So a lot of times we find that peak motivation, right? We get very motivated by things like looks maxing. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this in order to enter into a relationship in order to get laid for whatever outcome. But then I have a problem because if I am doing all of this stuff to get into a relationship

and then I get into a relationship, then my motivations can start to wane, starts to disappear. So a big part of maintaining momentum is evolving your reasons. This has to happen. So in a relationship, this is what's kind of interesting.

See, a lot of people want the relationship to stay the same. I miss the old days when the spark is gone. The spark is gone now. I wish that we could go back to the way that we used to be. You've changed. I want to feel excited and loved and the mystery and enticement of the early days of our relationship. I miss those things and those things aren't in this relationship anymore.

So I'm breaking up with you and I'm going to go find it with somebody else. You've become dull. Spark is gone. So here's what I want you all to understand. A relationship changes every single day, literally, technically. You change. you have learned new things, your brain has changed a little bit, you engaged in a little bit of neuroplasticity,

you've gotten a touch older, your telomeres have shortened by just a tiny bit. They have also changed a little bit. You may have gotten a little bit more in shape, they may have gotten a little bit less out of shape. So every day, so if you think about a relationship is between two people, the day we meet, I am one person and you are one person,

and the relationship is what is created between us. Tomorrow I'm a different person and you're a different person, the relationship is created between us. So if you're losing motivation because you were motivated because you wanted to get into a relationship, this is where you have to evolve your motivation. And if you look at people who have consistent upward trajectories in life, what you will see is that they're not, well, sometimes they're motivated by one thing, many times they are. Many times they're motivated by things that are never achieved, which is what they love. and then but I think the right thing is to evolve

right so you did this for this reason now why do you want to do it is there a bigger reason to continue to do it you did it in order to get somebody else's attention and love and affection can you continue to do it to get your own to maintain your own can you do it out of a sense of okay this is what I'm going to do

I used to do this for other people now I'm going to do it for myself I used to do this to get other people's attention. Now it is something that is independent of other people. I am doing it because I say that I'm going to do it. And I like, you know, there's this asana called wajira asana, which is like Thunderbolt pose. And Thunderbolt pose is kind of the classic Zen pose of sitting with your feet folded underneath you.

And so I think that there's like, I know this sounds kind of random, but this is sort of how I work. I think if you struggle with this sitting in Vajarasana, you have to get your work your way to it. Okay? But sitting in Vajarasana, I think, will help you with this problem. So Vajarasana is about being like a piece of light, a flash of lightning. It's about being like stable and secure and driven and focused

and from point A to Z in a moment. So you did this for this reason before, that reason has to evolve. Right? And that requires introspection. it requires effort. You do it the grind. I hate this term the grind.

It's so bad. It's forcing yourself, right? Find a reason to continue. Are you proud of what you accomplished? And I think this is really healthy and developmentally appropriate. You used to do it for that other thing. This is how you grow to the next level of human being.

The first level of human being is to do things to make the world around you a certain way. The next level of human being is working in here. So explore that. What does it feel like to do all of these things? Do you want to scale back a little bit? Have a conversation with your partner. What is another goal that you can devote yourself to?

You solve this. Good for you. Instead of trying to stay there and maintain that grind when you've now accomplished what you set out to accomplish, find something else. Start to realize that if you want to make a change in the world, that your physical body is a necessary component, that if the body is weak, what you are able to accomplish,

how many people you're able to help, how often you get sick, whether you pull a muscle in your back, all of these things will impact your Dharma, your duty. See, your body is an instrument of purpose towards something. It is a vehicle that carries you to where you want to go. So instead of just relentlessly moving in one direction,

think about where you want to go and do it in that direction. What's next? You've conquered relationship. And if looksmaxing is all about relationships, which it may be, I don't know, right? Then look for the next thing. Good for you. You've leveled up. Here's the big tragedy.

When you beat level one, level two is harder. That's why there are more looksmaxers than what does. Beautiful questions today. Can we talk about the cameras lighting and how perceiving people only through cameras effects dysmorphia? Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, like, I don't know if you guys saw this.

paper. All right. So the association between social media use and body dysmorphic symptoms and young people. Frequency of use of image-based but not text-based platforms was significantly and positively associated with body dysmorphic symptoms. Okay? So we have a pile of evidence, and I think things are getting worse, because now what's starting to happen is these social media platforms are automatically, like if you take a picture, if you take a selfie, people are automatically filtering it, right? They apply a filter, they use AI enhancements without even your consent or knowledge. So we got, someone told us that, yeah, like our TikToks look AI generated. We're like, we didn't do that. I don't know if it was TikTok or what, but like someone is doing it for us.

Like the platform is doing it automatically. And this is what's really scary. When you have a phone that applies a filter and makes you look beautiful, that's not the person you see when you look in the mirror. Because there ain't no filter in a mirror. right but mark my words billion dollar idea someone will make a mirror that is a screen layered on top that will filter your face and everyone will buy it everyone will buy it right because they're you still seeing this face moment you do that uh amazing so what we know is that so i you know i went to a spa in germany with my kids and there were a lot of like older German people there.

And older German people are not really what we imagine when we think of as a looks maxer. A lot of obesity, you know, a lot of big people with, you know, flabby bits. And it's not just Germans. Americans, we have y'all beat. Our obesity is even better than y'all's obesity. And the problem is we don't see normal people anymore. I want to tell to think about this.

See, a human being used to interact with other human beings. We used to spend time with old people. It used to be so much closer. We used to do things like go to church and have Thanksgiving and stuff. And now we spend six hours a day on this, where we see pretty people with fancy cameras and nice backgrounds. Right. And literally the perceptual input that we get for six hours a day is beautiful people. And a hundred years ago, it was maybe a couple hours a week.

And it shapes our idea of normal. And then when we add these filters to our selfies, it shapes our idea of normal. And here's the problem. What we think is now normal is not normal. It is grossly abnormal. Statistics show that a model is one out of 40,000 women. Now one out of 40,000 is what we think is normal, which means 39,999 people think they're abnormal. The irony.

And so literally the more that we perceive beautiful people, right, this is what creates the sense of imposter syndrome. Like I remember, I was an intern at Harvard and MGH, and I was in line with one of my co-interns, who was going to be a cancer doctor. We were just chatting. And he just started talking about cancer and internal medicine because he was like, I was like, holy, this guy is amazing. This guy is insane. I'm nowhere near him.

right so my first like few months at at Harvard were rough dude and like I talked to a friend of mine once when he started at Harvard Law School and I was like how is it he's like it's terrible I was like why is it terrible I thought you would have isn't that what everybody wants to do is go to Harvard Law School and he's like one of the most terrible things you can do on the planet is take a bunch of kids who used to be the smartest in the room and make them average overnight it's really easy to feel like an idiot when you are surrounded by the most brilliant people on the planet and here's the crazy thing about social media.

Being surrounded by the top 0.1% used to be something that was unusual. You had to go to a place like Harvard in order to be surrounded. You have to go to New York Fashion Week or L.A. where there are actors and actresses. In order to feel small, you used to have to do a lot. Now feeling small is the default because the internet allows us to select. for the most beautiful people, not in the country, not in medicine, not in even acting, on the planet. And we take the thousand most beautiful people

that you will ever see, and we stick them on your phone every single day. And no wonder you look ugly. To yourself, when you see yourself in the mirror. Are you ugly? No. In comparison to what you spend your time looking at, Are you ugly? Absolutely. And it's not even close. It's not even close. But the big irony, you're one of the 39,999 people. But you think you're the one out of 40,000. You think 39,999 people look the

way that they do. But they actually look the way that you do. Terrible. Looks maxing does objectively increase the chance of finding dates. So women are rewarding it. Okay. So, bro, first thing, where do we get the idea that looks maxing is exclusively for men, right? So, you know, an exclusive space for women to discuss subjective beauty, a comprehensive guide to looks maxing from someone who's gone through it, you know, hair, skin, right? So it's not, women aren't rewarding it. So I think we live in a culture. with online dating, and with online dating, it selects for certain things. It rewards certain things more than other things.

Right? So like a good example of this is like height is not better when it comes to sports. Competitive advantage when you play basketball, arguably disadvantage if you're a wrestler. So the game that you play determines the value of height. We forget this very easily. right, to be tall and fast and lanky, fantastic for basketball, not so clear that seven foot two is the average height of a sumo wrestler, right?

And then if you look at how to be great at sumo, not so clear that you'd crush it at basketball. So when we play a game where appearance is the way when you, when you are selecting out of 300 people based on appearance, looks maxing will help, duh, right? So it's not women rewarding it. It's like when you were picking people based on appearance, are you going to pick the most attractive people?

Right? So, and this is what so, this is why I like this concept, right? Because people will demonize it. I mean, hopefully I didn't. Maybe I did. I'm talking about the pathological aspects. But I started this by saying, look,

looks maxing is where self-help becomes self-harm. It's at the inflection point, right at the inflection point. And if you're on the healthy side of it, skincare diet routine, great. If you're talking about anabolic steroid use and things like that, the more extreme things, that's harmful. That's bad. We know that's bad.

It may help you achieve a certain kind of body type, right? So there's a lot of steroid use in bodybuilding and other kinds of competitions and sports and stuff like that. So it's not that there aren't reasons why people do it, but we know it's bad, basically, because it causes cardiovascular problems, shrinks your testicles, like all kinds of stuff. Right? Causes fertility issues. like, that stuff is bad. Heart disease is bad. So there is absolutely value to it. But here's the

really cool thing, and this is something we go through in the guide, just because dating apps select more heavily based on appearance doesn't mean that people are looking for the most beautiful people. If you look at what leads to a successful relationship, why people end up getting married, why people stay together for 40 years, looks is not at the top of the list. It's not even in the top five, right? And this is what people like don't get because we don't have, I don't know how you, how to say this, but it's hard to demonstrate the value of empathy in a relationship with short form content. How do you show someone who is emotionally supportive in a short? There are lots of things that people will do, right, but some of that feels so manufactured.

You know what I mean? Like even the emotionally supportive. content is manufactured. And sometimes emotionally supportive means telling your partner, hey, I just need some time to myself. And the most emotionally supportive thing that they can do is fucking disappear for 24 hours. Make you a plate of food, walk into your room, put it down, put down your favorite beverage, turn around and walk out the door. It's a kiss on your forehead before you go to sleep.

It's scheduling a trip with your friends. and you and taking care of your cats or children when you're out of town. Right? There's a lot of stuff that's hard to show, which actually is important for relationships. And everyone has this distorted view based on some set of data. The whole point of the guide is like, we want to give you the full set of data. Social media will show you people getting hit on. It will not show you what 40 years of successful marriage looks like.

sometimes it does it's harder to see right so like what is the actual data what are people actually looking for what do women actually want what do men actually want what do people actually want what are the indicators so security is a big one safety is a big one showing safety on social media is really hard to do

feeling safe is very important for the studies on female arousal show that feeling safe is at the top of the list. Not the size of your dick. Right? Listen to women. They're so scared of men. Why?

So, like, best thing you can do is not be a predator. Now, how do you do that? Ah. If only there were something that you could watch that would have a lot of stuff about emotional safety

and how to make someone feel safe. What is the science of feeling safe? How do we lower cortisol production? How do we help people deactivate their sympathetic nervous system? interesting tidbit to share that one of the key things for a most successful romantic date three things number three on the list is it should be a break from the hodgepodge of your life if you want to take someone out and have them have a fantastic date it needs to be non-stressful that's the number one

thing the rest of my life i have to worry about bills i have to worry about showing up on time i'm dealing with this shit, I'm dealing with this shit, my friend is trauma dumping on me. My sister is, is like not, she's having a baby. And so no one has time to listen to my stuff. You need to be a break from that person's life. But the moment that you start scheduling too much and this and that, and then when you show up, it's like we're talking about splitting the bill or not splitting the bill. And I'm not saying that any of these things are good or bad. I'm saying that what you want to create, the feeling that you want to create is this moment in, because everyone's life sucks. You guys get that? Not everybody, but most people's

life is sucky. And if you want to go on a good date, the best thing that you can do is this person's life sucks for 80 hours a week. The two hours there with you, they get to forget the rest of their life. Create that. And someone will be begging to go on a second date with you. And if you guys think about the dates that are magical, if you look at what we see in rom-coms, what we see in rom-coms is an escape from the regular drudgery of their life.

I'm crashed on an island with somebody else. Oh, my God. The rest of my life has disappeared, and there's this person in this very special place, and I'm with them. And, oh, my God, it's so magical because it's a break from my life. Yeah, it's a break from my life, too. And everybody else does this. But here, in you with this special place, now the rules apply. And then what is the conflict?

The conflict is we go back into the world. And then the rest of life shows up. And even today, if you look at successful relationships, people who are together for 20, 30 years, the whole point of a successful relationship is when you go to your partner, the rest of your life disappears. Your life sucks. Oh, my God. Grief. I lost a loved one.

When you're with your partner, that is better. There's someone who adds to your life. Adds to your life by removing you from your life. Create that kind of experience. Now, that's challenging because people need the schedule and, what kind of food do you like and things like that. Right? So that's where communication comes in.

What's the right way to communicate? There isn't a right way to, I mean, there's a right way to communicate, but it's not doing saying a particular thing. It is understanding principles of communication and using the right principles. It's kind of like how do you win a fight in Street Fighter 6? It is about reading your opponent and adjusting your play style accordingly. That is the essence of communication, which is why a lot of people who say, say this, don't say this.

Text, don't double text. None of that stuff works. You have to read your opponent. Is this someone who likes double texting? Do they see double texting as a sign of interest? Or do they see double texting as anxiety and controlling behavior? That depends on them. The right way to communicate is to read the other person.

Great questions. Isn't anorexia noble in its mindset and intentions? I think so. That's why it's so hard to treat. right? Because people who are anorexic don't see it as pathology. They see it as a good thing. This is why body dysmorphia is hard to treat. They don't see it as pathology. They see it as a good thing. So the biggest challenge is that when you're working with people who have anorexia and sometimes addictions to personality disorders, the hardest things to treat in psychiatry are the things that people want to do.

So marijuana addiction is kind of my classic example of like, hardest thing, hardest addiction in my mind to treat. I mean, sure, there's, meth is more addictive according to the literature. But like, is a clinician what I really struggle with is blur maxing.

It's like this. So confused. Hardest thing about marijuana addiction is like it helps people feel normal. And when I have a patient who feels normal on marijuana, what I'm asking them to do by giving up marijuana is go back to being abnormal. go back to suffering. Hey, bro, I know you are happy right now and you are enjoying yourself.

Have you considered suffering more on a daily basis? Have you considered having insomnia for 90 minutes a night? Have you considered being so socially anxious that you can no longer talk to people at parties? Right? It's like that meme of the offer, the trade offer. I offer you a theoretical perspective on health

and in return you give me insomnia, anxiety, and all kinds of other problems, right? It's hard. And so, and that's the thing, I mean, we learn this about anorexia, right? It's about control. These people are really out of control in their life. And so it's about helping them get back into control, helping understand what is the situation that makes you feel out of control.

But yeah, I think there's, I mean, that's why it's hard. You know, what's really scary about it is that it is because, I mean, so, you know, A lot of the work that I've done with anorexia is actually inpatient. So these are like people who are hospitalized. We give them IV nutrition that they hate and IV hydration and correct their potassium especially because if they, their potassium levels out of whack, they can have an arrhythmia and like literally die. Right?

So it's hard because, and they hate it. They hate that we are taking. It's like so traumatizing. It's like this really like hurts, but like the most traumatizing thing. that I have done to some of my patients are saving an anorexic's life because it's about control. And what we do as medical professionals is we take the one thing away that they are trying to get, which is control of their life. It's so challenging because it's necessary.

But you all see that? It's like the one thing they want is control. They're trying to, the world is surrounded by chaos or is it enveloped in chaos, and the one thing I can control is what I put into my body. and we're taking that away from you by forcing something into your body with needles and bags. I believe that that is the right thing to do, but I don't for a moment confuse what is right with what is traumatizing. And that's what's hard about medicine, right? And other examples of this are like when a kid asks, like when an eight-year-old asks, can I stop chemotherapy? I don't like the way it

makes me feel. Can I take a break today? One time a kid told me, can I have a a weekend from inpatient. They're like, and I was like, what do you mean? They're like, can I go home? It hurts. That's why we got to get better. You know, and I really understand what is going on with people. Like, it's not enough is, and I think we do a good job as psychiatrists.

I think we do pretty good. But, you know, it's like, it's not about treating you. It's about really understanding, like, where is this person coming from? And when it comes to looks maxing, like, what we're trying to do is understand where they're coming from. Like, when I look at these people, it's easy to judge and say they're talking about. toxic and dangerous and stuff like that. And there's no doubt that there's some truth to that, right? So taking a hammer to your face or injecting steroids is not good for you. But we shouldn't,

for a moment, confuse the harm that these people are potentially doing to themselves, potentially doing to other people through propagating these kinds of ideas. We still need to understand them. Why are you doing this to yourself? You're a kid who's 18 years old and you're injecting yourself, 16 years old, and you're ejecting yourself with steroids. Why? What are you looking for, man? what do you want? What's missing in your life? Who hurt you, bro? And we have to understand the psychology. And I don't think it's simple. I think it's actually quite unfair to say, oh, yeah, all these people are mentally ill and they have body dysmorphia. Like, that's arrogant, y'all. Very arrogant. And the more that I get into this stuff, and I sort of realize, like, that's

sort of what I'm doing. But like, I'm trying to understand, right? I'm trying to understand the complexity of this thing. That the human being is complex, that there are all kinds of things going on with people and why am I sharing this information? Because if you're someone who's struggling with this stuff, understand these things, right? Understand that what you should be doing, I mean, it's fine. You should optimize your appearance. First of all, that's great. Be sexy. Go for it. Sign. Right? We're fans of that. Like, look at this. Right. Goodymaxing. But also, like, understand that you, if you're not careful, you're going to fall into a trap where if you become one of the most beautiful people on the

planet, you can't afford not to be anymore. And that's why there are so many people I worked at scary. It's like, yeah, I don't mind trading 40 mid years of my life for 10 amazing years. And then what I want more than anything else is to, on 31st birthday, Gigi, I'm peace and out. I've worked with this stuff, guys. It's scary. Right? And what I want more than anything else is to help you all achieve inner peace. Like, that's my journey. That's why I became a That's why I tried to become a monk and wash out. Like, be happy. Like, come on, you guys deserve that, right?

To, like, wake up one day and not be worried about something. To not need a substance or a video game or pornography or a person to feel good about yourself. I don't know what kind of maxing that is, but that's the kind of maxing we're trying to do here. And unfortunately, a big part of that is relationships, which is why we built this guide. So we want to help you all get that. It's not just about achieving inner peace without achieving anything, right? So we're a healthy game where we talk about career stuff. We talk about relationship stuff.

What are we all want? Okay, one last thing. We have next Monday's stream. So a couple of things. On next Monday, we've got Dr. Rina Malick. So she's an awesome urologist, has an amazing, YouTube channel, talks a lot about sexual health. She's going to be here.

So we want to, if you guys have questions, we want to know what your questions are ahead of time. Okay. Yeah, so, look, calendar starts on Tuesday. Okay, so Wednesday is Dr. Malik's stream. So you guys can post your questions. Huge shout out to Dr. Matu. We got to hang out a little bit at Creator Summit. If you all don't know, Dr. Matu is an expert in anxiety, has an awesome YouTube channel himself,

is also good-looking guy. Could absolutely step into looks maxing and dumpster all of the competition. Great to see you, Ali. Ali, wonderful, yeah. And then, yeah, let's raid. 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 support.

Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.