HealthyGamerGG - Dr.K Breaks Downs Your Biggest Fears

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K explores the deep psychological roots of abandonment trauma and how it can shape a person’s personality, perception, and relationships. Through live questions and community voicemails, he shares actionable strategies for healing from early trauma, building healthier relationships, and reconnecting with desire. Key moments include: What “core trauma” really means and how it forms our personality How abandonment can lead to dissociation, helplessness, and survival-based behaviors Tips for supporting siblings raised by narcissistic parents How to break up in a way that minimizes emotional harm A deep dive into the fear of desire and how past disappointments can cause us to suppress our wants Whether you’re working through your own trauma or trying to support someone else, this episode offers thoughtful guidance, real stories, and grounded advice for growth. Reserve YOUR seat for Dr. Honda's "Healing from Narcissistic Parents" Workshop on 07/27: https://bit.ly/4486Pa4 HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream. Hey chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm I'm Dr. Al-O Knoja, 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. Let's get started.

Welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Alok Kanoja. Just a reminder that although I'm a medical doctor, nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. If you'll have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. Today, we're going to talk about a variety of things related to fear. And we're going to listen to some voicemails that are submitted by y'all.

So let's get started. Let me see, which one do I want to do? Hi, Dr. Kay. I was abandoned at birth. have problems with my adoptive parents. My adoptive mother says that my adoption was a mistake and that it would have been better if I died in an orphanage. I feel that these events still affect my life in many ways and I'm trying to fix this including with the help of my therapist. In stressful situations I feel broken and unwanted. I feel no inner strength. Any criticism

throws me of balance. In the most difficult periods I am flooded with helplessness, I could not speak or act. And with all this, I can't sympathize with myself and feel sorry for myself. When I try to imagine the time when I was abandoned, I get only slight whispers of pain, and then I lose a sense of my body and feelings. And the only things that is left is a paralyzing fear that if I continue to dig, I'll face immense amount of pain. The therapist says that being abandoned at birth is the reason for all this. But I don't understand at all what can be done about this trauma if I don't remember these events. I can't go back to a time before the trauma. So my question is, what can I do about this trauma

without having a memory of the event? Okay. This is incredibly hard to deal with. So let's kind of go over a couple of the features that I think are really, really, really important here. So first we have the case of someone who was abandoned at birth, someone who was adopted, and the adoptive parents said, you were better off... So you were better off dead. Okay?

So like this is brutal. So then what happens is like not only is there this problem, but then like this person, So I want you all to like understand this, okay? So these are like events. These are bad events. But then these events create a human being. A human being who has been conditioned, right?

To any time they encounter criticism, they feel helpless. They are unable to think or act. And they are unable to do things that we would normally expect humans to do. do, like be able to sympathize with themselves, be able to feel pity for themselves. And then any time they try to explore, they get this very, very, like, slight whisper of a feeling, and then they, like, sort of lose sense of their body. They essentially dissociate. And they're saying, like, I can't even recall the trauma because it happened so young.

So this is what I would kind of call, I don't know if this kind of makes sense. I would call this core trauma. And what do I mean by that? So as a psychiatrist, sometimes will work with people who have something called PTSD. So this is post-traumatic stress disorder. And post-traumatic stress disorder is when you have a human being who forms normally, right? So you have a nervous system, a cognitive system, an emotional system, a internal dialogue that is generally speaking healthy. And then what happens is you have a tremendous.

event which triggers neuroplasticity. So anytime we learn something, we are like the hippocampus is the only, one of the only places in the brain that continues to have neurogenesis. That's where we learn and we form memories and things like that. But we have a wiring which then gets altered. But the thing about something like PTSD,

it is that it is an alteration of a pre-existing, wiring that is relatively healthy. There are several patients that I've worked with that I would say that I would call it core trauma. So C-P-T-S-D is a good example of this, but I think it kind of... C-P-T-S-D is a particular kind of what I would call core trauma. And here's how I would define core trauma. Core trauma is not even trauma, right?

So trauma implies, like if I say that I have been traumatized, there is an object which gets damaged. But the thing about core trauma is that it is not damage to yourself. It is not something that breaks within you. It is the way that you form. Right. So if I like make a statue and then I take a hammer and I break off a part of the statue and the statue looks like a normal human being and I knock off an arm, that is a trauma done to an object that is formed in a healthy way. The problem with core trauma is that when I pour the concrete,

it forms in a particular way that is like not ideal, I would say. And there are a lot of things about this that are kind of like confusing to people, but this is the way that you are baked. It is baked within you. This is why when we look at like trauma early on in life, it doesn't necessarily form PTSD. In fact, it rarely forms PTSD. Most of the time, what trauma does early in life

leads us to personality disorders. Right? And what is a personality disorder? Your personality, so let's talk about this, okay? We're going to be like, oh God. We're going to be a bit technical, because we've got to be technical here. I want you all to understand, like,

this is like definitions become important, okay? So remember that with trauma, what's going on is like, I get damaged over here, but the core of me is still intact. In core trauma, what tends to happen is while I am forming, I'm formed in different ways. And when people are traumatized when they grow up, they usually don't get, they don't get, they don't develop PTSD. What they develop is often personality disorders. Now, that begs the question. what is a personality? Like what is a personality?

Let's be technical about it. Let's be precise. A personality is the way that you perceive, react internally, and behave in a situation. So, for example, this is simple, okay? So let's say I take person A and person B. And both of them go into a job interview

where the interviewer is disrespectful. let's say. And so both of these situations are identical, right? The circumstances that you're in are identical in both of these situations. Job interviewer is disrespectful. But the way that one person perceives that disrespect, let's say one person has NPD, let's say there's disrespectful job interviewer. And then one person has NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, and one person person has, let's just say, secure attachment. So even though this situation is identical, one person, the NPD person will think, oh my God, this person is trying to be mean, they're an asshole, they think I'm pathetic, they're trying to make me feel bad. And if you all

have like, make me feel bad is a great example of how like wild the perceptions of people with NPDR. So if you're like a normal human being and you deal with narcissists, what you'll find is like you'll do a completely ordinary thing. Like you'll do something stupid, like crazy. Like, oh, I went to a birthday party and I got a nice gift for my friend whose birthday it is. And the person with narcissistic personality disorder will come to you and they'll say, that's not what they're going to say. They're going to say, why are you making me look bad? You got them such an extravagant gift, I got them a less extravagant gift, why are you making me look bad? They perceive your actions in a polluted way. If you're securely attached and someone is mean to you in a job

interview, maybe you think, man, maybe they're having a bad day. Like maybe this person is just having a rough day. Holy crap. The way you perceive the world changes. And then this will lead to a variety of internal reactions. Let's have some compassion. Let's get angry and try to be insulting towards them. And then this leads to behavior. Actually, let's call it an insult the behavior. Now I'm going to insult them back and I'm going to ask, how is your day? So this is what personality is. It is the way that you perceive the world, the way that you react to what the world sends your way and the way that you respond to it, right? Your internal reactions. So the problem with core trauma is that this is fundamentally altered.

So this is not like a problem with one part of you. This fundamentally changes the way that you perceive the world. And we sort of hear this, right? So I'm going to go and play this again. And I want you all to listen to the way that this person perceives, reacts, and behaves in the world. We're going to listen to the voicemail again. And this is the hard part, okay?

So it's so easy to get caught up in how terrible these circumstances were. But if we want to help someone like this, if we want to understand this, we have to pay attention to this. I was abandoned at birth and have problems with my adoptive parents. My adoptive mother says that my adoption was a mistake. Sadge. That it would have been better if I died in an orphanage. I feel that these events still affect my life in many ways. Absolutely. Okay, let's stop right there in many ways, right? So this person's architecture of the way that they perceive the world. So that's why it's going to not affect many ways. It's going to affect if you have core trauma, it's going to affect every dimension of your life. And let's look at what those are.

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Okay. So now let's break this down. Stressful situation, right? stressful situation. Let's say if you're healthy, you respond to stress. What's the internal reaction? Feel broken. It's not even that you've made a mistake.

You haven't even screwed up yet, but you start by feeling broken. Feel no inner strength. No inner strength. Okay. Any criticism throws me of balance. Right? So this is also like criticism.

throws you off balance. In the most difficult periods, I am flooded with helplessness. I cannot speak, speak or act. And with all this, I can't sympathize with... Okay, so then this leads to inaction. Which is a form of action, by the way.

So, I don't know if this makes sense. Freezing, holding still is an act. Right? So when I'm an animal and there is like, let's say like I'm a gerbil and there's a snake nearby, I'm going to freeze. That's actually an action. So freezing is an action. Myself and feel sorry for myself.

Can't feel sorry for yourself. When I try to imagine the time when I was abandoned, I get only slight whispers of pain. And then I lose a sense of my body and feelings. And the only things that is left is a paralyzing fear that if I continue to dig, I'll face immense amount of pain. The therapist says that being abandoned at birth is the reason for all this. But I don't understand at all what can be done about this trauma if I don't remember these events. I can't go back to a time before the trauma.

So my question is, what can I do about this? Okay, great. What can you do about the trauma? So we're going to talk about it. Okay. Okay. So this sounds really bad, right? And let's be honest to this.

But there's a lot that can be done. And if we want to do the right thing, we have to understand, like, what's going on. Right. So this is where, like, the simplistic explanation of, you know, when the therapist says this is all due to your trauma, they're 100% right. And that feels really insufficient because you can't go back in time and change things. So what can you do? So what we want to do is, first of all, understand the. architecture that we live with.

And then we need to start modifying that architecture in a very, like, intentional way. Okay. So there's a lot of stuff here that this person says that they feel bad about, like, or that they, a lot of reactions that they have, which we may rebel against. I do not think that is a good idea. So this person says, I can't be sympathetic towards myself. And you shouldn't be. I know it sounds wild, okay?

You shouldn't be sympathetic towards yourself. If you have a fear that there is something deep down down there and there's a ton of pain, you are right. You are correct. So I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make when we have core trauma is that we start to assume that our path forward is using the solutions for people who have a healthy personality organization. So feeling sorry for yourself is really only something that works. when you're like a healthy human being. And this is what makes core trauma so hard, is if we look at the way that a lot of trauma is healed,

it is healed through new experiences. Right? So if I have an anxious attachment style, one of the ways that I can heal that is through having a relationship with a secure attachment style. If I have core trauma, one of the best ways that I can heal that is by engaging with people who do not

treat me like crap. And as I get new data as my brain continues to learn over and over and over again, hey, people like me, people like this is not like, you know, I'm a decent human being, people are treating me well. The problem, though, is that here's the like, what makes it this so hard to deal with, is that when you move out into the world, your attempts to engage in healthy behaviors will run into your personality organization. And your personality organization will interfere with the stuff actually healing you. Right. So this is what makes it so hard.

So if we say like, okay, if I have anxious attachment style or avoid an attachment style, what I need to heal is to have a relationship with a securely attached person. The problem is that when I get into a relationship with a securely attached person, person, my attachment style will sabotage the relationship. So the way that I kind of view trauma is I'm trying to, I'm walking into a room and I'm looking for an object, but there's a light source behind me and everywhere I turn, I cast my own shadow. So like, even though I'm looking for something, there's light there.

Oh, there's light over there. That's where the object is. As soon as I start moving towards it, I cast my own shadow. and put things into darkness. So whatever direction I move in, I like basically my personality structure and organization makes it really hard for like me to succeed. So people will give you all kinds of advice, like just put yourself out there and go to therapy and like, you know, heal from your trauma and be kind to yourself, be self-compassionate.

But that doesn't work if you've got core trauma. Sympathy doesn't do anything for you, practically. right and the reason it doesn't do anything for you the reason that you are wired this way is because you are wired for survival so i want you all to imagine when a child grows up in an environment where they're an orphan and their adoptive parents say that it was better off if you died instead of got adopted how do you think that that child wires to survive right sympathy doesn't get you anything inaction is actually protective so when When mom or dad says, hey, you should have died at birth anyway and you say, no, I shouldn't.

Or the child goes to school one day and, you know, they do something really, really well. And a teacher says, hey, you did a great job, child. And the child goes home, is proud, shares their pride with their mother or father or whoever, who's like a toxic fuck. And then toxic fuck says, you're never going to amount to anything. So how is this person forming? They're forming to be survival oriented. That the smaller you are, the more you just exist and you exist in a corner, the less notice you attract, the less drive you demonstrate. Because demonstrating drive means like people will be aware around you, right?

If you start doing something, people will be aware. And if they have a toxic attitude towards them, they're going to try to shut you down. This is why we have this response of feeling helpless right here, right? The paralysis, the inability to act or think. That is because acting or thinking helped you. It was your, sorry, inaction and not thinking helped you. And this is also where we get to dissociation. The moment that you encounter pain, I want you all to understand this is really important.

There's this principle called hemispheric lateralization. which is when the emotions in our right hemisphere get way too big, we cut off communication between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. We essentially emotions trigger dissociation. And this is like really important. Dissociation is probably happens to a certain degree in animals as well. So when you have an animal that is playing dead and trying to survive and what will happen is predators. So predators don't eat dead animals. reason they don't eat dead animals is because dead animals are full of bacteria and rot. We only

want to eat things that are freshly killed because lions on the Serengeti don't have access to refrigeration. So one of the best survival strategies for animals is to play dead. Now, when you play dead, a lion knows on some primitive level you could be playing dead. So what does it do? It scratches you. It bites you. It tries to trigger a reflex. If it can inflict pain, then you will twitch. And if you twitch, I know you're alive, you're going to get eaten. So what happened is this is some fascinating research on catatonia about this, where what the brain does to survive is triggers a dissociative response. Because if the emotions are too high, if the pain that we feel is like will trigger a reaction, what we actually want to do is shut down and freeze. So these are the responses that it triggers.

So this is the problem, is that you're wired for. a particular goal, which is to survive. Not act, not build anything, not be healthy, not even care for yourself. That's not the goal. The goal is survival. Now, the problem with this is that once again, once we try to fix this, things won't work in the same way. Like being nice to yourself, self-compassion doesn't work.

Like, you're not worth being compassionate towards. You don't even know what compassion really feels like. You don't know what it feels like to receive compassion. don't know what it feels like to give compassion. And that's not your fault. It's that if we sort of think about it, right, so we know that there are some critical periods of development for things like language. So if a human infant doesn't get exposed to language by a particular time, it's going to be incredibly difficult for that child to ever learn how to talk. Now, the good news about a lot of this trauma stuff is that this is not permanent. So you missed some of those key developmental

milestones, which is going to make your life really hard, but it doesn't mean that you're screwed. It just means that the standard solutions that work for other people, like self-compassion, don't register for you because your brain doesn't know what it's like to feel compassion, and it doesn't know what it's like to give compassion. Because you know how to give things by receiving them, right? So now the question becomes, what do we do? And this is where what I see with people with core trauma is that they will try to move into the world. But as they try to move into the world, they sabotage their own efforts.

And this is a good example. So this person says, when I feel criticized, I feel broken in some way. When there's a stressful situation, I have no inner strength. No inner strength, this is important to understand. This isn't no inner strength. a nervous system that has wired you towards inaction. It is going to actually make you feel weak. It doesn't want to give you strength.

It says, when stressful, do nothing. This is our survival strategy. We become a turtle. Right? So the turtle, like when a turtle gets attacked, it doesn't stick its flippers out, exert a lot of strength, and start, like, flapping its turtle flippers around.

That's not what it does. that's not the right survival strategy. So this needs to be rewired. And the way that we're going to rewire that is really, really, really scary. But this is the axis that when I work with people who have core trauma, this is the axis that they usually really struggle with. But if I had to say, in a nutshell, and if you guys, by the way, want a step-by-step process of how to do this,

check out Dr. Kay's guided trauma. I'll talk about it a little bit more, okay? But good, bad, comfortable, uncomfortable. So what I tend to find works incredibly well, basically like birds eye view, is to move from this axis to this axis. People who are traumatized will ping pong between good or people with core trauma, let's say, and bad. So they try to move towards feeling good and away from feeling bad. It makes a lot of sense, right? So what we tend to find is that people who have a history of trauma are more prone to addictions.

We'll have more avoidance motivation. Now, that may sound like a weird phrase. Because isn't avoidance the opposite of motivation? No. From a neuroscience perspective, you can be motivated to avoid things. And you all understand this, right? We try really hard to avoid things. We will go out of our way to avoid interactions with certain people, places, or all human beings.

And oftentimes what happens is when you have an issue of core trauma and you don't feel good on the inside, you will try to feel good. So you'll go towards things like dopamine, drugs, video games. So we're trying to move away from bad into good, which makes perfect sense. But oftentimes this gets us stuck. Now the next thing is what should we do? And this is where I think the axis that we want to move from is comfort to discomfort. And when I work with people with core trauma, what I find is that things that normal people find good is what makes you uncomfortable. So with core trauma, here's what happens.

We have all these scripts. We have all these reflexes. Dissociation. Helplessness. Inaction. Pushing you towards neutral. Pushing you towards neutral. Pushing you towards neutral.

Because what we know is safe. So here's the crazy thing. We look at this and we say, oh my God, this person, there's so much pity, so much pity, right? Abandoned birth, adopted. You better off if you died rather than God adopted. Now, I want you all to think about this. If a human being can survive that, that's really hard to survive.

This implies an endurance of 100. And so your safe zone is where you have an endurance of 100. Even though things are really, really hard and really, really bad, you know that. You lived through it every single day. You leveled up so well within. inaction with a sense of helplessness. These are familiar to you. And this is what's really crazy about human beings and animals in general.

Life prefers that which it knows and can survive to that which is uncertain. The devil I know is way better than the devil I don't. Right? And that makes sense from a survival standpoint. Even if this is bad, if I know how to survive this, I'm going to take that every time. And here's the other reason why people with trauma hate taking risks, hate putting themselves out there. So if I grow up in a world where my mom is bad and my dad is bad and I get bullied and that's bad. So this is bad, bad, bad.

what do I imagine the rest of the world is like? When my core caregiving figures, when the people who are supposed to look out to me are people who treat me like crap, what do I imagine? What prediction am I going to make about the rest of the world? My original parents abandoned me. My adopted parents told me I'm better off dead.

What do you think the rest of the world is like? Right? When you go to a sewer and your first three handfuls of sewage smell like shit, are you going to keep looking for more? Of course not. This is why they do not have a fundamental belief that the world is a safe place. And if this is super dangerous, but I can survive this, I never want to leave. I never want to go out.

It's not even worth it. Because who knows what kind of terrible things are out there. If my mom and dad think this badly about me, imagine what it's like if I ever find an enemy. If this is my family, what are enemies supposed to be like? This is terrible. Y'all get this? This is incredibly logical.

And this person's therapist is right. All roots back to abandonment. But rooting back to abandonment doesn't explain the layers at which this exists. So there is a fear of the unknown. There is a tendency towards inaction. There is a suppression in dissociation of internal experience. And this person says this, right? They say that if I explore the trauma, there's going to be a ton of pain.

What's the point to heal? I want you all to understand this. Okay, this is not about what the person is. says this is about their brain. What experience does their brain have of healing? Healing is, if you've got core trauma, healing is something that happens to other people. How on earth is this brain supposed to value healing when it's never experienced it? When you get adopted, your parents are supposed to love you twice as much to compensate for the injury of adoption.

from the injury of being given up. And when your parents hurt you way more, like, what are you supposed to do? No wonder you don't have sympathy for yourself. Because you have no idea what that is. So I think you've got to abandon all the things that work for other people. But there's one axis that you need to move towards. The core problem here is that you still need what we call emotionally corrective experiences.

Your brain needs news. data. It needs a data of like, oh, I can heal. Like, here's a little bit of healing. Oh, cool, this is possible. It needs some degree of sympathy. Then you'll have sympathy for yourself if somebody else expresses sympathy for you. Right. If you want to stop suppressing and dissociating, you have to do one of two things. Experience the fire and survive or experience something good on the inside. And since we dissociate, we turn down the volume on everything, which makes it really hard to have good experiences, which makes it really good to have really winning emotional experiences. We can have dopaminergic experiences.

Nucleus circumference is completely intact. That's why we gravitate towards addiction instead of fulfillment. So what do you do? Move towards discomfort. When I work with people with core trauma, oftentimes what happens is. is they'll have opportunities for corrective experiences. But the corrective experiences don't feel bad. They feel really uncomfortable.

When someone tells you that they love you, you feel uncomfortable. When someone tells you that you're doing a bad job, you feel bad, but you don't feel uncomfortable. You're comfortable with bad. That is the crux of the problem. And you are uncomfortable with good. This is the crux of the problem. And in order to have those corrective experiences from the rest of the world,

what you need to do is have, be able to move towards discomfort, survive discomfort. So this is where I think that this is kind of like a mixed bag, but if you look at ashrums, so what you'll find is that if you look at like spiritual organizations, churches, cults, oftentimes very wounded human beings come there and they find solace. Now this is sort of a double-edged sword because when you look at these places like churches, religious places, meditation, communes, cults, whatever, these places are rife for predators who can prey on abused individuals. But that is, I want to say, the exception rather than the rule.

Most places, like if you go to a meditation center, when I go to ashrums and things like that, like most people there are not abusive. And what I like about some of these centers, like a meditation center, for example, you got to be careful because the possibility of abuse is there, and it attracts sociopaths who are looking for victims. So that's absolutely a very real risk. But there's something about a space where everyone is there and will basically be relatively accepting for your shit.

there's no like real goal right so there's not like a performance aspect there's not like an exchange aspect it's not about like friendships can sometimes be hard because you have to like you know like there's some degree of reciprocity and connection and that may be hard for you like a meditation center and this is what i've just seen you know i realize now many years later that a lot of traumatized people will come there and they'll find healing because you show up every day and And then you like meditate for a while and people make small talk. And this is really important. So if you have core trauma, one of the most healing things, the way to start healing, and this is going to be uncomfortable, is to have repetitive, neutral experiences.

And meditation centers are great at this. It doesn't have to be a meditation center. I think other kinds of hobby oriented things can be really good. But those come with their own problems like politics and things like that. So what you really want to seek out is experiences that make you uncomfortable. Things that make you feel bewildered. Things that make you feel unsafe but are not unsafe. This is where it's really cool because if we listen to this person,

they're having all of these reactions, but their mind says, I should be sympathetic. So your mind is still intact. Your mind will hopefully be able to detect abuse, but recognize that what is good for you may feel uncomfortable and what is bad for you will feel comfortable. So it's to move away from feeling good and bad to moving towards feeling comfortable and uncomfortable.

And that starts with usually neutral repeated experiences as best as you can find them. So join an art club, join a meditation center. This is what we also try to provide in therapy. So when you go and sit with a therapist, my goal, if I'm a therapist of someone with trauma, is that trauma is going to rear its ugly head. They're going to have fear of abandonment, be neutral. Compassionate, stable, neutral. And as you engage in this kind of stuff, your patterns will start to melt away a little bit.

Your cognitions will become not quite as severe. Your reactivity will start to reduce. As your reactivity starts to reduce, your most. motivation will increase. Because remember that your action is to be still, is to freeze. And so as our reaction decreases, our action starts to change and we're no longer stuck being still. As I start to face those uncomfortable fears, that uncomfortable well of pain that is within you, and I tolerate that negativity a little bit, it becomes a little bit less scary.

And the reason that this works is because in our cells, I really believe this. I don't think this is like scientifically, I can't give you all a source. But I think if we look at our human being at the level of the cell, the level of the cell wants to heal. The level of the cell has a fundamental reparative mechanism. And that reparative mechanism when it comes to our amygdala, when it comes to our social circuitry, all of these things are striving towards something. That's how you know fundamentally when something feels good or feels bad. We have all of these internal signals of hunger and thirst to help us alleviate that, to feel love, to feel good about ourselves. Even though this is this person's

experience, there's a part of their mind that says this is not right, I need to change this. How does that, how do you even know? Because you don't even know what right is. You've never had an experience of it. That's because it's baked into your genetics. Last thing that I'll say is I built this trauma guide specifically to go through step by step of how to do this process. How to rewire your physiology first to reduce your autonomic instability. Right? So your nervous system is calm. That will alter your emotions.

because if your nervous system is calm, your emotions will change. If your emotions will change, your experiences start to change. If your experiences start to change, your emotions will alter your cognitions. Your cognitions will alter your experiences. Your experiences, as those start to change, will alter your identity. Your identity will alter your narrative. Those two things are linked. So from a step-by-step level, physiologic rewiring, emotionally rewiring, rewiring of the brain,

rewiring of the mind, rewiring of the identity. And that's how you heal at each of these steps. That's what's laid out in Dr. K's guide. And it's like hours and hours and hours of stuff because each of those things deserves its own like hour or more, including exercises and stuff. But this is really common, right? Some people are just so messed up.

But it's not really that they're messed up. it's that they've been, they've adapted to survive in a particular level of circumstances. You're not screwed. And the challenge is that you have been altered on so many levels, fundamental cognition, physiology, the way that you react to things, that it can feel overwhelming. And people will say, put yourself out there, find love, go to therapy, heal, uncover all of your emotions. They'll tell you to do all these things, have compassion for yourself. But those things are going to be inaccessible to you, which is totally fine.

You can get there, but you can't start from like a neurotypical kind of place. Make sense? Okay, let's move on. Yeah, someone saying like, yeah, put yourself out there as like how, exactly. Right? So putting yourself out there, it's about understanding that discomfort is the direction you need to go. It's not about just putting yourself out there. It is that discomfort makes you feel unsafe.

but discomfort is where you will find the data that will alter the way that you see the world and the way that you live. Hello, Dr. Kay. I was wondering if you had any advice on how to break up properly or like with the least amount of drawbacks because I know that there's no such thing as a perfect one. But like I've been in a relationship for like nine months now. it seems to have run its course and um you know i feel like it's it's about done for me but i don't know if if she feels like it and um you know i'm worried that if i do it'll be too sudden or like what signals i should show to to show that hey maybe this is uh i want to step out of this but also um like I don't know what to do for making sure that she doesn't have any adverse effects from it, or I don't have any adverse effects from it because I don't want this to be like a traumatic experience for either of us,

but at the same time, I don't really know how to do it without making it, you know, extremely hurtful for one of the two of us. And I know we communicate well and everything. It's just very hard because I feel like once that sentence gets uttered, everything changes and then communication becomes really difficult. And so I was just sort of wondering if you had any advice. I love this. I love this. Okay.

So if we look at the world today, people get traumatized by relationships all the time, right? People have these traumatic breakups. People feel terrible. They snap at you if you try to break up with someone. They're so fucking abusive towards you. They text you all this angry stuff. Sometimes you live rent-free in their head. Sometimes they live rent-free in your head.

Sometimes you get broken up with by someone and you can't move past them. You feel scarred. And this brilliant human being has a question. What's the best way to break up? And what blows my mind is that like this question is not, the answer to this question is not taught to everybody. Like, imagine what dating apps would be like. if everyone knew the best way to break up with someone.

Now, that begs the question. Is there a best way to break up with someone? And the answer is yes, right? So we can look at like, so let's, here's the logic of this. Okay. So if I break up with you in a particular way, will it be traumatic? Will you be really upset? There are things that I can do.

There are some breakups that are traumatic and some breakups that are not traumatic, right? So like we know that there is a variance. We know that there are ways that can be more harmful and less harmful. That's the first thing we have to establish. Now the question becomes, what is it that makes a breakup traumatic or not traumatic? And this is where we get to something really cool. So for a breakup to be traumatic, there are two fundamental influences. There is, let's say I'm breaking up with you or let's say you're breaking up with me because

you're in the power position here. So if you're breaking up with Dr. K, there are two things that determine the traumatic nature of this breakup. One is what you say or do, and the second is who I am. This is something we do not talk about enough. Some of y'all may have been unlucky enough or stupid enough to have dated someone who you know will not respond well to a breakup, no matter how you do it. no matter how you do it. And if we look at the research, which is exactly what we're going to do,

let's see what we can discover. Factors associated with distress following the breakup of a close relationship. Cool. This has been studied in the journal of social and personal relationships. The variables most highly associated with distress at the time of breakup

were non-mutuality in alternatives, i.e. partner having more interest in alternatives, commitment, satisfaction, greater effort in relationship initiation being left by the other and fearful attachment style. The variables most highly associated with current distress were commitment, duration of the relationship, fearful attachment style, dismissing attachment style, and time since breakup. So the first thing that I want to point out is that if you're worried about breaking up with someone, 50% or more of how traumatized they are has to do with them. Has nothing to do with what you do.

Right? So if we look at like how painful is a breakup, if you guys have been dating for six years, if you've been married for 20 years, if you've been dating for a week, the duration of the relationship determines how potentially painful it is. The second thing is who initiates, like that makes sense. right? What's the level of commitment? If you're more invested than the other person is, then that will cause suffering. But this is where I want y'all to think a little bit carefully about this. Because who is responsible for a certain level of investment in a

relationship? If you are more invested in the relationship than I am, is that my fault? So this is where it's so interesting, right, because a lot of people who get dumped will demonize their partner. And they'll be like, oh, my God, my partner is such an asshole, such an asshole, such an asshole, but your response to a breakup has a lot to do with you, has a lot to do with your perception of alternatives. Is this the only person that is available for you for the rest of your life, then it's going to hurt more. Do you have an anxious attachment style? Do you have a dismissive attachment style?

So the first thing to understand is a lot of the hurt on their end is going to be based on them and has nothing to do with you. Now, that doesn't mean that you can go be an asshole, but let's look at another paper. The breakup of romantic relationships, situational predictors of perception of recovery. So now this paper is looking at bouncing back. Okay? We examined a range of predictors that might influence the speed with which people recover emotionally from the breakup of a romantic relationship, focusing specifically on concrete situational variables, including initiator status, presence of social support, length of relationship, amount of time coupled typically spent together day to day, how much in love participants were, how soon they began dating again, how many previous relationships they had, how often they saw their ex after breakup. The results showed that relationship length and how quickly the individual began dating someone new were predictors of recovery from the breakup of a romantic relationship. Okay.

This variable also matters based on other studies. Hold on. Let me find out. Presence of social support is really important. How much time they spent together is also important according to other studies. So this is also where like basically how much a breakup hurts. hurts or not, depends a lot on how long y'all have been dating. Right?

So you can let them down soft. You can let them down easy. You can let them down. You can be an asshole. That's going to have an effect. We're going to get to what you can do in a second. But the first thing that I want y'all to understand is that there are a lot of factors that if you're breaking up with someone are out of your control.

What is their attachment style? What is their support structure? How long have y'all been dating? Arguably, you have some control over that. Right? But this is where my point is that if you're paranoid about not wanting to hurt your partner, that's good. And also, don't for a moment, because when I hear this person ask this question, I do not hear the acknowledgement that this person being traumatized by the breakup has a lot more to do, has a lot of variables that have not. nothing to do with what I say or do.

What's their attachment style? What's their social support structure? How long are they going to start? How long before they start dating again? These are the factors that predict recovery. And for those of y'all that are trying to figure out how do I recover from a breakup, the converse is also true. What's your social support structure?

How quickly before you start dating again? What's your attachment style? Right? These are the things that will determine how quickly you bounce back. Now the question becomes, what are the factors that you can control? So this is what I find is really helpful. And the data supports this as well. So the first is that it shouldn't be completely sudden.

So if you, you should signal to them in some way that the breakup is going to happen. You should signal your dissatisfaction with them. And this is really important for a relationship. I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make in relationships is when we are unsatisfied, we do not communicate that to our partners. So if you are unhappy in the relationship, you should vocalize your unhappiness in a limited and focused fashion. So you don't want to be complaining every single day about, I'm unhappy about this,

I'm unhappy about this, I'm unhappy about this. So you should communicate in a way that is designed to help the relationship. I don't want you to vent. I want you to think through why you are unhappy. Then think about what of this is your responsibility. Then think about what if this is their responsibility. Think about why the unhappiness matters to you, right? So I'm unhappy because you spend too many time, too much time with your friends. That's a behavior. So this is where what we want to do is take the behavior that you may be unhappy about in the relationship and tie it back to yourself. I feel unhappy about this thing that you're doing.

You spend too much time with your friends. The reason that makes me unhappy because of how it affects me, I want to be spending more time with you. That's why this thing matters to me. So tie the behavior to the impact on you. Spend some time thinking through it. And then present what you are going to say in a relatively concise manner. Okay, that's how you just express dissatisfaction.

Hey, this thing that you're doing bothers me. It bothers me when you drink alcohol. I do want you to stop drinking alcohol, so I think it's important to be honest. But the reason that I want you to stop drinking alcohol, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that I don't, like the person that I started to date was the sober you. That's the person I fell in love with. That's the person that I have a relationship with. When you drink alcohol, you turn into a different.

person. You become more demanding. You become more aggressive. I think your behavior negatively impacts our relationships as a couple. You kind of become grabby. Right. And like that bothers me. I want to be able to maintain healthy relationships. I feel like I have to apologize for your behavior after we go out. Right. So you should be clear about the behavior, how it affects you, what really bothers you about it. That's not easy to do. But, that will help with a breakup because then they will see it coming in some sense. Second thing that's really important to understand. The intensity of emotional reaction by your partner is usually inversely correlated.

Maybe not, but there's some evidence of this. This sounds crazy that I'm about to say it. I don't believe it myself. It's inversely correlated with how traumatized they are. Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. K's guide to mental health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. How does experience shape us as human beings? How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ?

And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use if we want to build the life that we want to. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today. So people who stay traumatized and get messed up by a breakup are the people who are brooding, ruminative, quiet. Then it lingers for years. They will never recover. People who are explosive after a breakup are actually more likely to move on. And there's data. I can pull up a paper in a minute if you guys want.

PTSD and social phobia, natural recovery from trauma. Okay? So identified three factors that are associated with both natural recovery from trauma and reduction of PTSD severity via exposure therapy. And basically this, let me find this. Yeah. Similarly, a delay. Okay. So dissociative symptoms such as feelings of de-realization and depersonalization during or following a trauma or amnesia for information related to the trauma have been conceptualized as strategies that

reduce emotional engagement in order to avoid trauma-related emotions. What this basically means is when we dissociate, we are avoiding engaging with our emotions. And dissociation is correlated with worse, with bad trauma, okay? Similarly, a delay in the peak reaction to the traumatic event may also be seen as an initial interference in emotional engagement and thus is expected to hinder emotional processing in natural recovery. Consistent with this hypothesis, individuals whose peak symptom severity

occurred within two weeks of the traumatic event were less symptomatic 14 weeks later than were individuals whose symptoms peaked between two and six weeks after the event. So what does this mean? This means that when you experience a lot of intense emotions up front that actually decreases the likelihood

of trauma down the road. intensity of emotions now reduces emotions over time. So if your partner gets really, really pissed at you, I'm not saying that you should make them pissed at you. I'm not saying you should be mean. But don't, if you're concerned about traumatizing them, if they get really angry or express a lot of emotion or a lot of intense sadness, that's actually healthy.

They're not depersonalizing. They're not de-realizing. They're not dissociating. It's okay for people to be really upset when you break up with them. That's actually healthy. It's okay for you to be really, really upset when someone breaks up with you. That is also healthy. So this is where sometimes I think what we do is we try to reduce the emotions of our partner.

And in doing so, we're not actually doing them favor. So I'm not saying be an asshole. Right. So if you're mean to them, that has its own painful, that has its own injurious capability. Right. So if I mean to you, that is an injury that is separate from your, emotions. But don't avoid like high emotions when you break up with someone. Okay? It's okay to say the way that you feel. Next thing that's really important is don't be friends afterward, generally

speaking. So more sustained contact post-breakup seems to correlate with worsening outcomes. So you can be friends with them six months later. That's totally fine. Y'all can stay friends. but generally speaking, the worst thing that you can do after you break up with someone is to be in their lives. And this is what feels so toxic. So, you know, sometimes I'll work with people who feel like they can't break up with someone because they're also their source of emotional support or also their roommate. That's when things get really toxic really fast. Not all the time, but it's a risk factor.

You all understand? We're talking probabilistically. So generally speaking, what you want to do is it's hard for people to, move on, especially when you break up with them, if you hang out with them. And this is where you've got to be really careful because you may feel guilty. And since you want to assuage your own guilt, you're going to be kind to them. You're going to cook for them. You're going to clean for them. It probably doesn't help them over time. Right. So you basically, like a Band-Aid, you want to sort of rip it off. You want to vocalize your unhappiness in the relationship. You don't have to,

like, if you want to break up with them now, don't like start complaining about shit because then you have like the foundation to break up with them in three months. That's dishonest. Don't do that. but generally speaking, if people are, if you're not enjoying a relationship, you should vocalize that as you go down the road. And don't spend time with them afterward. The last thing that helps a lot is closure. So I think the best thing to do is to vocalize the way that you feel and then give them the opportunity to respond, give them the opportunity to ask questions, give them the opportunity to listen to their feelings and even be validating is wonderful. So what doesn't help people, and there's studies on ghosting that basically show this, when you ghost someone, you don't give them an opportunity for closure.

And when you don't give them an opportunity for closure, that is harmful. So ghosting is painful, but ghosting is bad. So when you break up with someone, what I would recommend to this person, and here's what I would recommend, if you're trying to break up with someone, and you don't know what to say, pretend you were leaving Dr. K a voicemail. that is like two minutes long, exactly like this person said. And then that will be your nuggets. So then in the case of this person, you're going to go to this person, you're going to say,

hey, we've been dating for nine months. I really think you're a wonderful person. I feel like the relationship has run its course. Be a little bit more clear about that. I feel like, you know, we were hanging out for a while and things are fun, but the relationship doesn't seem to be growing in a way that I'm looking for. it feels like if anything we're kind of like, you know, petering out. That's how I feel about it.

I'm not so sure that I want to stay in this relationship at this point. And it's not that you didn't do, did anything wrong or anything like that. That's just kind of how I feel about things right now. How do you feel? And if they say something like, are you breaking up with me? And then you can say, like, that's sort of where I'm leaning right now, but I'm open to having a conversation about it. Right?

And this is also where like a, and I know I'm sort of saying, Like if you're sure you want to break up with them, then say that. But this is where things get a little bit tricky because a relationship that feels like it's run its course may not actually be over. That's a feeling that could be worked on. So I'm not saying that if you feel that way, you need to work on it. But the whole point of like a healthy relationship is that it involves dialogue, right? This is how I feel about it. How do you feel about it?

You may be surprised. They may say like, yeah, I feel like I've been putting in a lot of effort and things are not moving in the right. direction, maybe we can amically part ways. Maybe they're saying, yeah, I'm sorry that the relationship feels like it hasn't run its course. I really don't feel that way at all. I feel like we're on the cusp of something, and I feel like there's something that's getting in the way of us moving the relationship to the next level.

And I'd like to talk to you about that. And I'd encourage you to keep an open mind. But if you've made up your mind, then don't fuck around with it. Just be like, yeah, I'm not interested in this relationship anymore. I feel like it's run its course. I'm not really interested in like problem solving or working on it or anything like that. Like you can say that. So you're giving up on this relationship and you can say yes.

So this is the other cool tip. When you're breaking up with someone, they will think in a very black and white way. And they will say things that will hurt your ego. You're giving up on the relationship and you can say yes. Don't fall into the ego trap of, no, I'm not giving up. You're giving up. No, I'm not giving up. You're just feeling like I'm giving up.

Right? And you can reframe things your way if you want. Like, you can say like, I guess you could say that. You know, I feel like the relationship has run its course. That's the way that I would put it. If you're hearing that I'm giving up on it, okay. Because oftentimes when people are like trying to trick you, they'll make some ego statement. Right? And then like, does that make sense?

Like you, they're trying to trap you in a corner. And if you accept their premise and argue against it, you're just going to get trapped. And you can say, like, I mean, I guess so. That's not the way that I see it. I feel like it's really run its course and it's not worth pursuing. So if you want to call that giving up, sure. I can see why you would see it that way. Do you have any thoughts?

Do you have any questions? You know, how are you feeling about this stuff? And then if they kind of explode in your face, I think you can offer them a conversation later and you can say, look, if you want to talk again in a week or two and you need closure or something, I'm more than happy to try to provide that. But I think basically it's over. I feel like it's over. The other thing that is a little bit tricky is if they ask you for feedback, I would give it. So this is another one of those things where it hurts a lot to hear and will create a strong emotional response, but we'll probably help that person. over time. And I think it's okay to provide some general reasons, but I would not go into,

you do this wrong, you do this wrong, you do this wrong, unless they ask for it. And that's also where they say, like, did I do anything wrong? And you can ask them, well, like, what kind of answer are you looking for? Do you want like a five-minute answer, an hour-long answer? Like, what are you looking for? Here are the major things that did not work for me in this relationship. And some of those things I think you should be clear about, sometimes this doesn't work for me and sometimes this is bad. You know, there's a difference between sometimes you drink a little bit too much, and I really think your alcohol is a huge problem. Now, the other thing that I would say is for you to be really careful about, like I said, kind of staying attached. So be careful about conditionals.

If they say, if I do this, if I do this, if I do this, will you give me another chance? I generally speaking say that that's not a great idea. But the other thing that I have to say about relationships is that following the best advice is usually a way to end up in bad relationships. And oftentimes the best relationships come from doing stupid things. That's my clinical experience. That most of the happy relationships, mine included, have red flags at the beginning. Because most people are not perfect.

And not only not perfect, most people have some pretty fundamental fuck-ups in their personality structure in their life, and that a lot of tolerance and patience around those can be an incredibly strong foundation. Right? So it's like moderation in all things, including moderation. So I love this question. And I do think that there are very concrete ways to break up with someone in the right way. Do you all have questions? Okay, I got a... Oh my God, I can't stop chat scroll. Okay, this is good.

So there are a couple of questions about love. Do you have to feel like you're in love all the time? What if they tell you they still love you? So let's talk about love in relationships for a moment. So them loving you is not a... is not necessarily a sufficient reason to stay in a relationship. And I don't know if, I don't think love conquers all, but it certainly is worth a lot.

Like I would say love accounts for 51% of a relationship. Like, I believe in love. I think it's great. But I think that love, the problem is when love becomes a substitute for the rest of it. When people start using love as a substitute for becoming a better person, becoming more emotionally available, becoming financially independent, helping out around the house, changing diapers, that's when it becomes a problem. Love cannot replace anything else that a healthy relationship requires.

But if you have all of the checkboxes of a healthy relationship and you don't have love, I think that's not going to be. ideal. There are definitely cases of people growing into a different kind of love. And I think this is the other thing about love is that people, we use the word love as a, as one word. But there are several kinds of love. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make is that we don't cultivate the scenarios that create the feeling of love. So if we think about love as a neurological reaction our brain, that reaction requires usually a certain set of an environment. So I think love and libido requires energy. When I work with patients who have dead bedroom syndrome, oftentimes

there's like fundamental things about their life that have changed. They're working too much, their spouses are working too much. They have a three-year-old and a one-year-old at home. They have a three-year-old and a six-month-old at home. And there's just no space for love. Like love requires space to grow, right? Love requires like a certain amount of emptiness between two people. Love happens in the quiet moments. This is also why erotic transference is such a thing. So if you work with a therapist or psychiatrist, if you are a psychiatrist or therapist, erotic transference is incredibly common.

It is the sexual or loving, feeling like you're falling in love with your therapist. And let's think about the circumstances of that, right? Why do you feel like you're falling in love with your therapist? It's because there is a space between the two of you. There's a certain amount of vulnerability. There's a certain amount of connection. There's a certain amount of like not the humdrum of everyday life. It's not picking things up from the grocery store and getting air added to your tires and dropping this package off at the Amazon Return Center. There's a certain amount of just space for the two of you to coexist. This is also why we catch feelings. So who do you catch feelings for? You catch feelings for people who there is a space between the two of you. And what I mean by that is like a negative space that that gets filled in with this kind of like feeling of love. And the person that you catch feelings for, the reason they don't catch feelings back is because their space is not the same as your space. you have an opening in your heart that some human being can step into.

That's erotic transference. But their heart may not have that space. They may be crushing on someone else. It may be occupied by someone else. That's why you end up in the friend zone. The friend zone is simply erotic transference. That's one way to look at it. When you have an erotic transference towards your psychiatrist or therapist,

they may not feel the same way about you. Kind of the same thing. catching feelings. So I think love is really important. I think it's critically important. The biggest mistake that people make is that they think that it can substitute for the other stuff.

Love doesn't put food on the table. Sacrifice, effort, working hard, getting up at 6 a.m., that's what can put food on the table. And this is so confusing for a lot of people because when they feel like they're in love, they feel like that should be enough. It's not enough.

Now, if the love, is the fuel for you to do all of the other things. Like that's what I feel in my relationship, that my love is my primary source of energy to get my shit in order. To become a better human being than I was yesterday, because I love my wife, because I love my kids. So I strive to be better, and love is the fuel,

but it's not a substitute for the action. Right? That means preparing a D&D adventure instead of playing a game of Dota. That means going to the grocery store. I do this once every two weeks. I've been doing it less nowadays, but I used to do this thing where once every week,

I would just go to the grocery store at 10 o'clock because we had to get groceries. And the rest of our week would be better. Right? And that's something that you pay for with sweat, that you don't want to go to the grocery store at 10 p.m., but the rest of the week is better. Those small sacrifices are what really sustains a relationship,

not the love itself. Love without meaningful action is just an indulgence. And then the emotion of love, right, that neurochemical reaction of feeling in love comes and goes. And I think when it's gone for too long, that's when you have a problem. 10 p.m. Okay. Let's do another one.

Okay. So I am one of three siblings, 100% narcissistic parenting like most, I imagine, that are watching this video. My question is, I've come pretty far in my own mental health journey to this point, to where I'm joining this live stream. But I am burdened by being able to reach my siblings who seem to be successfully contained in that box that you were depicting. Do you have any advice for reaching siblings or how to, like I understand that reaching parents can be a lost cause, but what if you see this victimization in your loved ones like your brother and sister? What do you do? Dr. Gaye, help.

Sure. I'll do my best. Okay. So when we look at dealing with narcissistic parents, oftentimes we have to set boundaries. Oftentimes, you know, if you have a narcissistic parent, they have to do at least 50% of the work, or maybe about 50%, let's say. The challenge is that if you free yourself from a narcissistic parent, you still have the problem of your siblings being left behind. And so the challenge is that, you know, when you have narcissists for parents, they are going to shape your psychology. So one of the biggest risk factors for NPD, narcissistic personality disorder is having a parent with narcissistic personality disorder. It gets inherited to a certain degree. Some of that is genetic. A lot of that is developmental.

So the way that you were raised. Okay. And this is kind of the cycle. that we're talking about. So remember that when you have a narcissistic parent, what's the core issue? The core issue is that my identity is determined by how people treat me. So if everyone says I'm beautiful, I feel beautiful. If everyone says I'm brilliant, I feel great.

But if someone calls me stupid, then I feel bad. And since them calling me stupid makes me feel bad, what I try to do is control their behavior. Don't call me stupid. I will punish you for it. Right. So you will see this all the time on Twitter with some very prominent people. Where when someone criticizes them in some way, they will engage in a behavior to get that person to shut up. To stop talking. Stop talking about it. Stop talking about it. Stop talking about it. Stop talking about it. Stop doing this thing that makes me feel this way. So what happens with a narcissist is that your behavior or words creates their esteem, their self-esteem, their sense of esteem.

Therefore, what they try to do is they try to control what you do. Now, if you're on the receiving end of this, what you quickly discover is that your narcissistic parent is not available for you. If you feel a certain way, like if you're feeling hurt or lonely or you forgot a birthday present for your friend's party, when you suffer in some way, this becomes a failure of parenting. And then they feel guilty. So if you're seven years old and you go to a birthday party without a gift and then you call your mom and then you call them and you say, hey, everyone here has gifts. Where is our gift for my friend?

The parent realizes they made a mistake. They feel guilty. But if they can get you to shut up, then they will feel less guilty. So they start manipulating you. They start manipulating your feelings. And then what happens to you? The way that you feel,

your feelings, are now determined by your narcissistic parent. Right? So they're flipping the script on. you where they're acting in a certain way and then that then you feel bad so what do you do you you're a child you learn to adapt to your circumstances so you change the way that you act around them so that they don't act that way around you this is what we call walking on eggshells so you learn how to adapt your behavior to change their behavior and if their behavior changes

your feelings change makes sense so now you flip the script you just learn to do whatever they learn how to do. Another really scary example of this, not in NPD. But I've noticed that when they're very, very controlling parents, their kids end up with psychosomatic illnesses. Things like factitious disorder and stuff, conversion disorder and things like that. Because when you're playing the control game

and a parent controls you very, very, very, very, very tightly, the one avenue of control that you have as a kid is getting sick. Because when you're sick, they can't make you do anything. And if they force you to do something, you just start vomiting more. You don't feel like running. They're like, screw you, you're going to run, you're going to exercise, you're going to play tennis. You start getting sick.

You start getting sick. You start getting sick. Then you will be in control. Huge. So children will learn whatever their parents teach them. And if you're a parent and you're wondering, why is my kid this way, there are absolutely cases where you're doing a great job of parenting and your kid just has oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder or things like that. But the first place that you should look

is your own parenting and what are the lessons that you're actually teaching them. Now, getting back to the issue at hand, which is you have escaped from your narcissistic parents, but your siblings have not. They're stuck in this kind of cycle over here. They're trapped. So what do you do about that? So this is where it's really hard to convince them to leave. but I think the best thing that you can do for your siblings is to be a safe haven for when they want to leave. The best thing is, especially if you're an older sibling, model what a healthy relationship looks like.

Right, so we all have a need for love and acceptance. And if you become independent and you start your own colony away from this like polluted crime-ridden city, of Gotham, I'm going to start my own utopia over here, and you create a space where your siblings can go, that will naturally draw them towards you. So you don't need to convince them to leave. That'll evoke all kinds of weird dynamics and things like that. They'll feel pressure. They won't understand. And the other problem is that oftentimes I've seen this where

you know, siblings will try to snatch their younger siblings away from their parents. Sometimes in really bad cases, there are issues where, like, child protective services gets involved and kids get pulled out of the home because you have really abusive parents. And then that child comes and lives with you. That's going to be a problem child. And then it strains your relationship because they have been so messed up that it's hard. You're messed up. They're messed up.

You're in the process of healing. it requires a lot of secure confidence and stability to be able to raise a child who has been raised in an abusive environment. So oftentimes what I'll see is that siblings out of love move way too fast. So don't move super fast. Try to be a space where they can come to and let them dictate the level of interaction. Right. So hey, like, you want to come hang out and then like, When they come over or when you see them and they're taking art class or whatever,

like demonstrate a genuine interest. Or you're taking an art class. Can I see what your paintings are? This one is really cool. Hey, I just got my apartment. Can you please paint me something? That is going to be like water for a parched throat. You don't need to pull them out of narcissism.

You just need to be a good, caring human being and they will naturally come to you. Now, this will create all kinds of problems with your narcissistic parent. That's why I recommend you kind of keep it on the DL. Right? This is where we talked a little bit about narcissists play the game of symbols, not substance. They'll give you a gift, but they don't actually care about you. Right. They play on a very surface behavioral symbolic level.

I'm going to make all these sacrifices for you. I'm going to drive 12 hours. That means that I love you. But I'm not going to stop calling you ugly and say that you need to change your hair and you need to change your clothes. I'm not going to do that. No, are you kidding? What insanity is this? No, you're just so ugly.

You really need to do something with your hair. You need to lose some weight. Like, that's a fact. I'm gonna, I spent 16 hours trying to find the best bariatric surgeon in the country. I've spent, I made so many appointments for you so that you can get the weight loss surgery that you desperately need. Oh my God. I made sacrifices. I paid deposits.

I did everything. But you want me to accept you for who you are? Like, what absurdity is this? I was never accepted for who I are. am that's crazy right so as you are as you become the safe haven for your siblings expect a narcissistic explosion that's why you want to keep it on the d l that's why you don't want to make a symbol of come in love with come and live with me okay that being said there are times where you want to do that right so there's going to be a point i've seen this as well where you and your siblings are all

on the same page you'll have this moment of holy crap our parents are so messed stop and you can bond around that. Solid trauma bonding, like the good kind. And you can say, look, when you go to school and you want to leave our hometown and you don't want to live at home, you can come and live with me. And I know that we're going to be abandoning so and so, and so we got to sit down and talk to them without mom and dad knowing, right? So then you go to your 15-year-old and you say, look, 18-year-old is going to come live with me. I live in L.A., you all live in New York. Like, they want to get the hell out of there. It's going to be rough. There's a decent chance that mom or dad won't let you talk to either of us.

That doesn't mean we don't love you. And if you need a place to run, you know, like you've got to stay there until you're 18, but you can come live with us then. Here's how we're going to stay in touch. I've seen that happen to. So there are absolutely times where you do need to pull them out or you do need to offer for them to be completely extracted. But generally speaking, I think the best thing that you can do is to be a better older

sibling, be a stable older sibling. Just give them water. You don't have to figure out, you don't have to, when the body is dehydrated, all you have to do is put the water in the mouth and let it go into the gut. The gut will distribute. Your arteries and veins will distribute it to where it needs to go. So your job is to provide love, and it will distribute on its own to where they need it. It's not so much about a particular action, right? It's about an attitude, being that person for them, and follow their, lead. They'll tell you what they need. And it can be really painful for you to watch once you've escaped the cult that is your family. It can be painful to watch other people trapped by the cult.

But if you all pay attention to cults, you know that trying to extract someone can sometimes not go well. So what you want to do is be patient and encouraging. It's also infuriating as a therapist to do that. Because sometimes I'll have patients who are in abusive relationships. And I'm like, Like, get out. Get out. Get out now. Get out a week ago. Get out a month ago. I can't say that. Right. Sometimes I do. If they ask me, they're like, how do you feel about that relationship? What do you think a healthy relationship looks like? And in that question, there's the implication of what maybe you're in an unhealthy relationship. Right? So sometimes you can sort of say it. Why not? Because they're not in a space to hear it. See, there's a great story about a guy named Sahadev from the Mahapha. So the Mahabharat is an Indian epic.

And there's a lot of good life lessons in there. And it's basically the story of a civil war between two sets of cousins. There are the good guys and the bad guys. So of the good guys, there are five brothers. And one of the youngest brothers is the bottom two are twins. So unclear who's number four and who's number five. He's a guy named Sahadev. Now, Sahadev had a cool power.

He had the ability to see the future. And he learned the hard way that he developed a rule for himself, which is I'm not going to tell anyone anything unless they ask. So if you ask me what's going to happen, I'll tell you 100%. I'll tell you what you should do, what you shouldn't do, I can see the future. The reason he learned that lesson is because he tried to help people, and they just got pissed at him. Hey, by the way, your partner's going to cheat on you.

And they like don't like that, right? Like the bearer of bad, we like to kill the messenger. So generally speaking, if you try to force help onto someone, whether they need it or not, it's a very dangerous game. Sometimes in psychiatry, we have to do that. Right. So if someone is acutely suicidal or if I'm really worried about, you know, them being in danger, I'll put, I'll toss something out there.

I kind of kind of, you know, I'll sort of like fish. So I'll toss a lure out there. Hey, have you ever considered that you may be in a fucking abusive relationship? but it really has to be run by them. It's not our place as support characters to dictate what our patients do. And that can be hard when you care about someone, when you love someone. But generally speaking, I don't think it works well. Now, if you have a sibling who's a minor and things like that, sometimes you've got to take control.

There are times where being more forceful is going to be correct. But generally speaking, I think the best attitude is to be stable and safe. and they will come to you naturally. Hello, Dr. Kay. I'm Louis, a guy in my late 20s from the UK. I've recently become aware of fear of desire. I can feel this inner fear that my desires might somehow betray me. And I can find it hard to trust or even know how I really feel about something. I know it's...

Hello, Dr. Kay. I'm Louis, a guy in my late 20s from the UK. I've recently become aware of a fear of desire. I can feel this inner fear that my desires might somehow betray me, and I can find it hard to trust or even know how I really feel about something. I know it stems from past disappointments where my youthful excitement led to big letdowns, yet this fear still affects my life today. I've had no romantic connections for nearly a decade. I struggle with commitment to my decisions,

and life generally carries this kind of undercurrent of sadness. I never quite feel I'm where I'm supposed to be. I find it's all too easy to rationalise this fear as well, leading to being too cautious and dismissive, making life feel foggy and affecting my ability to make honest judgments. I can struggle to tell whether I'm being overly idealistic, self-sabotaging, or if I'm genuinely interested in something or someone. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I relate to the poor Eternus,

which no doubt contributes. to this, saying that, I do understand that my desires need to be tempered in the fire of lived effort, but it's just identifying those desires that's challenging for me. How might you suggest I manage this fear, embrace my desires and vulnerabilities, and avoid the confusion and self-tabotage that comes with? Thanks. Okay, I'm going to listen to that again, chat. I just need to hear it again. Hello, Dr. Kay. I'm Louis, a guy in my late 20s from the UK. I've got my late 20s from the UK. I've recently become aware of a fear of desire. I can feel this inner fear that my desires might somehow betray me, and I can find it hard

to trust or even know how I really feel about something. I know it stems from past disappointments where my youthful excitement led to big letdowns, yet this fear still affects my life today. I've had no romantic connections for nearly a decade. I struggle with commitment to my decisions, and life generally carries this kind of undercurrent of sadness. I never quite feel I'm where I'm supposed to be. I find it's all too easy to rationalise this fear as well, leading to being too cautious and dismissive, making life feel foggy and affecting my ability to make honest judgments. I can struggle to tell whether I'm being overly idealistic,

self-sabotaging, or if I'm genuinely interested in something or someone. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I relate to the poor Eternus, which no doubt contributes to this, saying that, I do understand that my desires need to be tempered in the fire of lived effort, but it's just identifying those desires that's challenging for me. How might you suggest I manage this fear, embrace my desires and vulnerabilities, and avoid the confusion and self-tabotage that comes with? Thanks. Okay, I'm going to think for a second, okay? Okay, I'm going to listen one more time. Hello, Dr Kay. I'm Louis, a guy in my late 20s from the UK.

I've recently become aware of a fear of desire. I can feel this inner fear that my desires might somehow betray me, and I can find it hard to trust or even know how I really feel about something. I know it stems from past disappointments where my youthful excitement led to big letdowns, yet this fear still affects my life today. I've had no romantic connections for nearly a decade. I struggle with commitment to my decisions, and life generally carries this kind of undercurrent of sadness. I never quite feel I'm where I'm supposed to be.

I find it's all too easy to rationalise this fear as well, leading to being too cautious and dismissive, making life feel foggy and affecting my ability to make honest judgments. I can struggle to tell whether I'm being overly idealistic, self-sabotaging, or if I'm genuinely interested in something or someone. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, I relate to the poor Eternus, which no doubt contributes to this, saying that, I do understand that my desires need to be tempered in the fire of lived effort, but it's just identifying those desires that's challenging for me. How might you suggest I'm...

Great. Thank you, Louis. All right. So let's talk about this. Sometimes something very dangerous can happen, which is that we begin to fear desire itself. So if I start to fear desire, right, if I feel like my desires can betray me, like I'm going to get in trouble for desiring things. Let's start with why that happens. So this is a, it's a really beautiful voicemail because it kind of lays all the pieces out. So we start with youthful exuberance, this idealism.

Oh, I'm so excited about something. This is going to be great. I want this thing. And then as I want that thing, I get disappointed. Right? So I strive for it. Something doesn't work out. I end up feeling disappointment.

And now you could even argue that at this point, I have a feeling of betrayal from desire. I've been betrayed by my desires. Well, you may say, like, that's not technically correct, but just think about it for a second, okay? I had this desire. And if we think about desire, what's the point of desire? desire. Desire is to make us happy. I have this desire for something and I want it. I want it so that I will be happy. I end up pursuing that desire and I end up feeling hurt. Desire is not supposed to hurt me. It's supposed to make me happy. It's supposed to make me feel fulfilled. It's supposed to drive me

to being more successful and more hardworking. It's not supposed to make me feel worse. Alas, I have been betrayed by desire. So remember that, you know, when we're, when we're having this conversation, and when y'all are listening to yourselves, the biggest mistake that you make you can make is that when you have an answer about what is going on inside you, you dismantle it because it's illogical. If you feel a certain way about yourself,

there is a reason for it. That is something to be understood. Because the moment that we say, oh, I can't be betrayed by my desires, you're lost. because that is real information as to what is going on within you. You need to incorporate it into your understanding of yourself, not discount it from your understanding of yourself, because it doesn't quote-unquote make sense.

The work is making it make sense. So your desires can absolutely betray you because you get excited about things, and instead of feeling better about it, you feel worse. So if I then feel worse about my desires, if I start to fear them, what is going to happen? I'm going to suppress them naturally, right? I don't want desires.

Desires are bad, not good. Now, where does that leave me? If I no longer have desires, I don't, I'm not driven towards anything now, right? I'm not moving towards anything. And this person says, Louis says, that he has this current of sadness in his life. Well, of course, what is a life if you have no pursuit of desire? What is a life if you're not moving towards anything? The second thing that it gives us is the sense of this is not where I'm supposed to be.

Louis says this feels like I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Well, of course, what is it in life that gets you where you're supposed to be? Desire. Right? Your desire is like literally like if I am in the rain and my body is like I want to move into a covered area. I'm going to step into the house. And I do not listen to that voice. Of course, I will not end up where I'm supposed to be.

Because there are internal signals that are telling you to move in a particular direction. You're suppressing those signals, not listening to those signals, starting to fear those signals. And I would bet you money, I don't know how much, that Louis has tried, right? Like if you're someone who's like this, you've tried. You've tried listening to your desire. But then you have this lack of commitment. You have this lack of follow-through. You know you need to put forth effort, but you just can't seem to do it.

And why is that? That's because you're internally conflicted. There's a part of you that says, don't trust the desire. So half of your mind wants to do it. Half of your mind is saying no. And then you can't be committed. Committed is being all in. But you can't be committed when you're afraid that your desires will betray you.

That's not possible. So you feel like you're not where you're supposed to be. Makes a lot of sense because you're not going anywhere. You feel this are undercurrent of sadness. The other thing that'll happen is you'll get confused. You'll become directionless because now you have no compass. Now he's like, I don't know which desires to believe and which desire is not to believe. Is this a gratification of the ego?

Is this dopamine? Should I do this? Should I not do this? I have no idea because you have no internal compass. Because one of the key things that desires tell you, desires are ways for you to learn about yourself. How do you know what you like? A desire isn't what you like. A desire is an opportunity to learn what you like.

So I was with my kids and I went to this place called Mochi Nut, which is some weird like donut mochi, hybrid thing. And I was like, that looks delicious. And I looked at this thing and I took a bite of it and I was like, this is disgusting. This is way too sweet. This is grotesque. I will never eat here again.

Right? And Chad is saying, good spot. Not for me. Okay? And it's like, but this is the key thing. See, we think desires make us happy. That's not correct. Desires tell us what makes us happy.

Do you all understand the difference? My kid says, oh, I want this toy. They get the toy. It doesn't, I want to date this person. Oh, my God, I'll be so happy. If I date this person, you date this person, this is a terrible idea. Desires don't bring us happiness. They bring us direction.

They bring us experimentation for happiness. So if you suppress your desires, you won't know what brings you joy. Okay? So you're going to get a lack of drive. If you suppress your desires, if you fear desire, you're going to get a lack of drive. You're going to get confusion. You're going to get a pervasive level of sadness. You're also going to get a lack of commitment.

Because commitment requires you to be all in. And if you are hesitating on the inside, it's hard to be all in. And then you get confused. Am I genuinely interested in this or not genuinely interested? I love the phrase genuinely interested. What does that mean? What is the difference between genuine interest and non-genuine interest? Right?

If you're interested, you're interested. This is a fake interest. What is a fake interest? It's like kind of weird, right? Or I'm pretending to be interested. Well, if you're pretending to be interested, you're not really interested, you're pretending. Right? So it's kind of like weird.

I'm not saying that that isn't a lived experience. But if you're interested, you're interested. If you're confused, maybe that's something else. But it's just an interesting phrase that I got kind of caught up on it. I'm not sure what that means. Right. It shows conflict. Good.

So now the problem still remains. If you're someone who has been betrayed by your desires, if you're not quite sure what you want, you don't really have the capacity to commit. And then there's all this stuff about I'm sabotaging, I'm idealizing, all this kind of like intellectual stuff. But I think if we want to fix a problem, we have to fix it at its root, generally speaking. So what is the root of all of this chat? Where do you all think this starts?

Let's see what y'all think. Oh, y'all are, y'all, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't give me, don't give me some fucking technical answer, right? Let's be simple. Where does this start? Attachment style. What kind of desire? the experiences that came before getting warmer,

give us some time fine. Y'all do know too much. So this is the other problem. See, this is actually like, it's not, it's not, okay, this is so good, actually. So this is what's so hard. Do you all get that, like, so I get the sense that Louis, like, watches a lot of our stuff.

And if you all watch a lot of our stuff, you have a lot of answers. But sometimes, when you face your problems, do you guys get? how useless everything I teach is? Because we have all these answers. And it's like, oh, I'm idealizing, I'm doing this, I'm a puer. This is desire.

I need detachment. It's ego. And it's like, it's so easy to get lost in the sauce. And this is why I can make a thousand videos. Because if a single one of my videos actually did it, then it would be over. And this is the challenge with the world, right? Is that you can look for answers outside of yourself, but like you can end up with more confusion.

So what I see is the root of this problem is I had a desire, and when I pursued it, I was disappointed. That is the key learning, which sets the entire cycle. Why do you feel like your desires betray you? Because they did. And as long as that root is, there, it's going to be really, really hard to dismantle this whole thing. And it's so cool because, like, I framed it that way.

But even if you listen to the voicemail, this is why I listen to it three times. If you listen to the voicemail, he says it. He says, I had this youthful exuberance, and when I pursued it, I was disappointed. The moment that changes, imagine if in this world I had a desire for something, I pursued it, and it was great. If you can make that shift, what changes? Now you're paying attention to your desires. Now you're willing to give things a shot.

Now, since my desires lead me to a good place, I'm willing to commit to them. Your planet is now marked for death. Marvel Studios, the Fantastic Four First Steps, is now streaming on Disney Plus. We will protect you. As a family. Light them up, Johnny! Marvel's first family is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That's fantastic.

And critics say it's one of the best superhero movies of all time. Marvel Studios the Fantastic Four First Steps. Now streaming on Disney Plus, we did PG-13. What time does it, Ben? It's overdo! Right? Everything will change. So what do we need to do?

Try to have a good relationship with desire. Instead of this part of our brain being conflicted with other parts of our brain, we need to get them all on the same page. And this is what's so dangerous is like, I know this sounds weird because I contradict I'm going to myself all the time. And the reason is, like, if you're not careful and you're like, oh, I'm going to dedge from all of my desires, like that's not going to fix the, maybe it'll fix the problem.

I think that kind of stuff can work. But I think it's not like, it's not, it's not the bullseye. So I think there are too many people who will go through heroic, spiritual growth because they don't know how to fix a simple problem. And it's not y'all's fault.

It's like we're ignorant, right? That's the basic problem in life. It's like we don't know how we work. No one teaches us. So if you're someone who is directionless, if you're someone who's confused, if you're someone who's afraid of your desires, that needs to be altered.

And this is what's really hard about it, is that if you're not careful, you'll try to alter it in the mind. But the mind is not where this is coming from. This is coming from a deeper level, right? this is coming from, I would call the brain, that you have some lived experience, which has shaped your neurons in a particular way,

to where now you have this cognitive fear of desires. And you can say you're idealizing, you can say you're self-sabotaging, you can circle-jerk yourself in your mind as much as you want to. It doesn't really solve the problem. And here's the basic problem, is that mental activity is almost never a substitute for lived experience.

No amount of reading erotica, no amount of watching pornography, no amount of listening to people talk about love on a podcast is the same as being in love and having a fulfilling sexual relationship with another human being. There's just no, it's apples and oranges. And we have become such cognitive creatures. We occupy what do we love in this world more than anything else? Our mind. The new version of death is not even death. brain death. If the brain is dead, the person is gone. That is what we call death. So this is where it's going to be tough. But I would re-engage with your desires in a small way. Watch out for the

youthful exuberance. You need to change your relationship with desire as a driving force within you. You can get excited, so be it. But don't rely on the excitement. Engage in some small desire. And this is what's really important. Change your attitude towards the desire. This desire is now an experiment. And I'm going to engage in this desire as an experiment, as a method of reprogramming. It is not about fulfilling desire or not fulfilling the desire. If I engage in this, what happens within me?

Do I move in the right direction? Do I move in the wrong direction? If I try to engage in this desire and a barrier comes up, how do I overcome that barrier and end up following through a little bit? Because this is what's so dangerous. If we say, oh, I have to have this effortful desire, we say, I say, I tell you that. And then you're like, okay, I need to do the effort. And you all know this. Effort without the right kind of awareness just leads to burnout.

Effort doesn't solve your problems. Effort buys you burnout. effortful effort with awareness with the right kind of awareness what am i doing this for and what we want to do is rewire ourselves just a little bit to where as we gravitate towards our desires we want positive feedback okay i learned that you know what i was super excited about the idea of art but i really don't like art or it feels really hard and then you ask yourself do you want to do it again tomorrow. Am I giving up on this because I really don't like art? Or am I giving up on this because there's a part of me that is frustrated with myself, that I really do want to create this,

but I lack the skill. Which one is it? And then can I bring myself to go tomorrow? You almost have to go to a meta level of desire, where the desire isn't making the art, the desire is following through with your desire for one week instead of one day. Something really powerful about going meta. Each level of meta we go, the better things become. We can try to deal with anxiety in the present. We can go one level deeper, go to the level of the unconscious, subconscious. And then we can even go one level deeper and go even more meta and transcend mind entirely

through something like meditation or psychedelics. right so when i'm sitting with a patient and i ask them hey can you tell me about your upbringing and they say i don't want to talk about my upbringing fair enough i don't need to push but the question that i want to ask is can you please tell me why you don't want to talk about your upbringing this isn't this is the tender spot i'm going to go over here so your problem is that you're dealing you're grappling with desire you're in the ring you need to step out of the ring and look from the outside what is my relationship with desire and this person has done a wonderful job of that right there's Hold on a second.

Something weird is going on. I feel like I've been betrayed by desire and I no longer like desire. That's a brilliant insight. That is a huge step forward. So change your relationship with desire. Explore desire. And then hopefully something cool will happen. This is what I've seen.

When we do this kind of thing and you gravitate, you say, okay, I want to learn how to paint. As I'm trying to learn how to paint, you know, I get frustrated with myself and that I feel like giving up. Is that a desire that is going to betray me? Absolutely. Right? Because if you're given the desire of giving up, then you will have betrayed yourself. And now you need to stop listening to your desires.

And then which ones should you listen to? to and which ones should you not listen to? If you are careful and if you pay attention, there are some desires that will betray you and some desires that won't. There's some things that you will start to do where if you do them, if you do them day after day after day, if you do it for one week, you will look back at yourself and you will say, hey, this was actually good. I can feel pride in myself. This should be intentional, by the way, because your brain may not do it automatically. How do I feel about this? Can I take pride in something that I've done? I actually did follow through for a week. Does my mind default to saying one week is not good enough?

If I followed through for one week, then I expect myself to follow through for a month. Do I keep on moving the goalposts? These are the cognitive steps that your mind takes that will keep you stuck forever. And the last thing that I would emphasize again is the goal here is not to follow your desires. The goal is to feed your brain with data and experience that can alter your cognition. And once you do that, things will be easy. Because if we listen to this, this is so hard. It's so confusing. It requires so much effort.

But listening to our desires can be the easiest life, right? when a child wants to go to sleep, it grabs its blankie, and it lays down. So simple. When it wants to eat, it eats something. Now, there's a way that that ends up is hedonism, but that's not what our problem is today. Right. So this is the other thing you got to watch out about. If when I said that, your response was, but does that mean I'm going to be hedonistic? Look, you're not even getting started because you're saying that there's going to be some problem at 99 steps down the road? That's Puaire. That's this possibility of hedonism down the road. is going to prevent me from even getting started today.

I need a perfect solution before I get started. That's a problem. All right. My voice is giving out. I've been struggling with recovering from illness recently. So I think I'm going to have to call it for today. The Uber Munch. But thank you all very much for coming.

Thank you for submitting voicemails. And I think we're doing another voicemail stream. There are so many that I wanted to get to today. Oh, my God. You guys submit they're all so good. It's so hard to pick. But y'all take care and we'll see you all. Yeah, I think we're streaming next Friday chat.

And then if you all are interested in healing from narcissistic parents, check out Dr. Honda's workshop. Have a good weekend. I will see y'all in the Dota or in Dune Awakening, depending on what y'all are playing. Take care, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life.

If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take. Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals. Because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at FirstCitizens.com.

slash ambition.